On the Beach

by Nevil Shute

  “Ah well, you never know with these men. Perhaps he’ll spring it on you one day as a surprise.”

  “But what about the Pogo stick?”

  “Well, then when he’d bought the bracelet he asked Mr. Thompson, the fair haired one, the nice young man—he asked him if he knew where he could buy a Pogo stick. He said he wanted it for a present for a little girl.”

  “What’s wrong with that?” Miss Davidson asked quietly. “It would make a very good present for a little girl of the right age.”

  “I suppose it would. But it seems such a funny thing for the captain of a submarine to want to buy. In Simmonds’ of all places.”

  The girl said, “He’s probably courting a rich widow with a little girl. The bracelet for the mother and the Pogo stick for the daughter. What’s wrong with that?”

  “Nothing,” said Mrs. Fraser, “only we all thought that he was courting you.”

  “That’s just where you’ve been wrong,” the girl said equably. “It’s me that’s been courting him.” She turned away. “I must get along. It’s been so nice seeing you. I’ll tell Mummy.”

  She walked on down the street, but the matter of the Pogo stick stayed in her mind. She went so far that afternoon as to enquire into the condition of the Pogo stick market, and found it to be depressed. If Dwight wanted a Pogo stick, he was evidently going to have some difficulty in getting one.

  Everyone was going a bit mad these days, of course—Peter and Mary Holmes with their garden, her father with his farm programme, John Osborne with his racing motor car, Sir Douglas Froude with the club port, and now Dwight Towers with his Pogo stick. Herself also, possibly, with Dwight Towers. All with an eccentricity that verged on madness, born of the times they lived in.

  She wanted to help him, wanted to help him very much indeed, and yet she knew she must approach this very cautiously. When she got home that evening she went to the lumber room and pulled out her old Pogo stick and rubbed the dirt off it with a duster. The wooden handle might be sandpapered and revarnished by a skilled craftsman and possibly it might appear as new, though wet had made dark stains in the wood. Rust had eaten deeply into the metal parts, however, and at one point the metal step was rusted through. No amount of paint could ever make that part of it look new, and her own childhood was still close enough to raise in her distaste at the thought of a second-hand toy. That wasn’t the answer.

  She met him on Tuesday evening for the movie, as they had arranged. Over dinner she asked him how the submarine was getting on. “Not too badly,” he told her. “They’re giving us a second electrolytic oxygen regeneration outfit to work in parallel with the one we’ve got. I’d say that work might be finished by tomorrow night, and then we’ll run a test on Thursday. We might get away from here by the end of the week.”

  “Is that very important?”

  He smiled. “We shall have to run submerged for quite a while. I wouldn’t like to run out of air, and have to surface in the radioactive area or suffocate.”

  “Is this a sort of a spare set, then?”

  He nodded. “We were lucky to get it. They had it over in the naval stores, in Fremantle.”

  He was absent-minded that evening. He was pleasant and courteous to her, but she felt all the time that he was thinking of other things. She tried several times during dinner to secure his interest, but failed. It was the same in the movie theatre; he went through all the motions of enjoying it and giving her a good time, but there was no life in the performance. She told herself that she could hardly expect it to be otherwise, with a cruise like that ahead of him.

  After the show they walked down the empty streets towards the station. As they neared it she stopped at the dark entrance to an arcade, where they could talk quietly. “Stop here a minute, Dwight,” she said. “I want to ask you something.”

  “Sure,” he said kindly. “Go ahead.”

  “You’re worried over something, aren’t you?”

  “Not really. I’m afraid I’ve been bad company tonight.”

  “Is it about the submarine?”

  “Why, no, honey. I told you, there’s nothing dangerous in that. It’s just another job.”

  “It’s not about a Pogo stick, is it?”

  He stared at her in amazement in the semi-darkness. “Say, how did you get to hear about that?”

  She laughed gently. “I have my spies. What did you get for Junior?”

  “A fishing rod.” There was a pause, and then he said, “I suppose you think I’m nuts.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t. Did you get a Pogo stick?”

  “No. Seems like they’re completely out of stock.”

  “I know.” They stood in silence for a moment. “I had a look at mine,” she said. “You can have that if it’s any good to you. But it’s awfully old, and the metal parts are rusted through. It works still, but I don’t think it could ever be made into a very nice present.”

  He nodded. “I noticed that. I think we’ll have to let it go, honey. If I get time before we sail I’ll come up here and shop around for something else.”

  She said, “I’m quite sure it must be possible to get a Pogo stick. They must have been made somewhere here in Melbourne. In Australia, anyway. The trouble is to get one in the time.”

  “Leave it,” he said. “It was just a crazy idea I had. It’s not important.”

  “It is important,” she said. “It’s important to me.” She raised her head. “I can get one for you by the time you come back,” she said. “I’ll do that, even if I have to get it made. I know that isn’t quite what you want. But would that do?”

  “That’s mighty kind of you,” he said huskily. “I could tell her you were bringing it along with you.”

  “I could do that,” she said. “But anyway, I’ll have it with me when we meet again.”

  “You might have to bring it a long way,” he said.

  “Don’t worry, Dwight. I’ll have it with me when we meet.”

  In the dark alcove he took her in his arms and kissed her. “That’s for the promise,” he said softly, “and for everything else. Sharon wouldn’t mind me doing this. It’s from us both.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Twenty-five days later, U.S.S. Scorpion was approaching the first objective of her cruise. It was ten days since she had submerged thirty degrees south of the equator. She had made her landfall at San Nicolas Island off Los Angeles and had given the city a wide berth, troubled about unknown minefields. She had set a course outside Santa Rosa and had closed the coast to the west of Santa Barbara; from there she had followed it northwards, cruising at periscope depth about two miles off shore. She had ventured cautiously into Monterey Bay and had inspected the fishing port, seeing no sign of life on shore and learning very little. Radioactivity was uniformly high, so that they judged it prudent to keep the hull submerged.

  They inspected San Francisco from five miles outside the Golden Gate. All they learned was that the bridge was down. The supporting tower at the south end seemed to have been overthrown. The houses visible from the sea around the Golden Gate Park had suffered much from fire and blast; it did not look as if any of them were habitable. They saw no evidence of any human life, and the radiation level made it seem improbable that life could still exist in that vicinity.

  They stayed there for some hours, taking photographs through the periscope and making such a survey as was possible. They went back southwards as far as Half Moon Bay and closed the coast to within half a mile, surfacing for a time and calling through the loud hailer. The houses here did not appear to be much damaged, but there was no sign of any life on shore. They stayed in the vicinity till dusk, and then set course towards the north, rounding Point Reyes and going on three or four miles off shore, following the coast.

  Since crossing the equator it had been their habit to surface once in every watch to get the maximum antenna height, and to listen for the radio transmission from Seattle. They had heard it once, in Latitude Five North; it had gone on
for about forty minutes, a random, meaningless transmission, and then had stopped. They had not heard it since. That night, somewhere off Fort Bragg, they surfaced in a stiff north-westerly wind and a rising sea, and directly they switched on the direction finder they heard it again. This time they were able to pin-point it fairly accurately.

  Dwight bent over the navigation table with Lieutenant Sunderstrom as he plotted the bearing. “Santa Maria,” he said. “Looks like you were right.”

  They stood listening to the meaningless jumble coming out of the speaker. “It’s fortuitous,” the Lieutenant said at last. “That’s not someone keying, even somebody that doesn’t know about radio. That’s something that’s just happening.”

  “Sounds like it.” He stood listening. “There’s power there,” he said. “Where there’s power there’s people.”

  “It’s not absolutely necessary,” the Lieutenant said.

  “Hydro-electric,” Dwight said. “I know it. But hell, those turbines won’t run two years without maintenance.”

  “You wouldn’t think so. Some of them are mighty good machinery.”

  Dwight grunted, and turned back to the charts. “I’ll aim to be off Cape Flattery at dawn. We’ll go on as we’re going now and get a fix around midday, and adjust speed then. If it looks all right from there I’ll take her in, periscope depth, so we can blow tanks if we hit anything that shouldn’t be there. Maybe we’ll be able to go right up to Santa Maria. Maybe we won’t. You ready to go on shore if we do?”

  “Sure,” said the Lieutenant. “I’d kind of like to get out of the ship for a while.”

  Dwight smiled. They had been submerged now for eleven days, and though health was still good they were all suffering from nervous tension. “Let’s keep our fingers crossed,” he said, “and hope we can make it.”

  “You know something?” said the Lieutenant. “If we can’t get through the strait, maybe I could make it overland.” He pulled out a chart. “If we got in to Grays Harbor I could get on shore at Hoquiam or Aberdeen. This road runs right through to Bremerton and Santa Maria.”

  “It’s a hundred miles.”

  “I could probably pick up a car, and gas.”

  The captain shook his head. Two hundred miles in a tight radiation suit, driving a hot car with hot gas over hot country, was not practical. “You’ve only got a two hours’ air supply,” he said. “I know you could take extra cylinders. But it’s not practical. We’d lose you, one way or another. It’s not that important, anyway.”

  They submerged again, and carried on upon the course. When they surfaced four hours later the transmissions had stopped.

  They carried on towards the north all the next day, most of the time at periscope depth. The morale of his crew was now becoming important to the captain. The close confinement was telling on them; no broadcast entertainment had been available for a long time, and the recordings they could play over the speakers had long grown stale. To stimulate their minds and give them something to talk about he gave free access to the periscope to anyone who cared to use it, though there was little to look at. This rocky and somewhat uninteresting coast was their home country, and the sight of a café with a Buick parked outside it was enough to set them talking and revive starved minds.

  At midnight they surfaced according to their routine, off the mouth of the Columbia River. Lieutenant Benson was coming to relieve Lieutenant-Commander Farrell. The Lieutenant-Commander raised the periscope from the well and put his face to it, swinging it around. Then he turned quickly to the other officer. “Say, go and call the captain. Lights on shore, thirty to forty degrees on the starboard bow.”

  In a minute or two they were all looking through the periscope in turn and studying the chart, Peter Holmes and John Osborne with them. Dwight bent over the chart with his executive officer. “On the Washington side of the entrance,” he said. “They’ll be around these places Long Beach and Ilwaco. There’s nothing in the State of Oregon.”

  From behind him Lieutenant Sunderstrom said, “Hydro-electric.”

  “I guess so. If there’s lights it would explain a lot.” He turned to the scientist. “What’s the outside radiation level, Mr. Osborne?”

  “Thirty in the red, sir.”

  The captain nodded. Much too high for life to be maintained, though not immediately lethal; there had been little change in the last five or six days. He went to the periscope himself and stood there for a long time. He did not care to take his vessel closer to the shore, at night. “Okay,” he said at last. “We’ll carry on the way we’re going now. Log it, Mr. Benson.”

  He went back to bed. Tomorrow would be an anxious, trying day; he must get his sleep. In the privacy of his little curtained cabin he unlocked the safe that held the confidential books and took out the bracelet; it glowed in the synthetic light. She would love it. He put it carefully in the breast pocket of his uniform suit. Then he went to bed again, his hand upon the fishing rod, and slept.

  They surfaced again at four in the morning, just before dawn, a little to the north of Grays Harbor. No lights were visible on shore, but as there were no towns and few roads in the district, that evidence was inconclusive. They went down to periscope depth and carried on. When Dwight came to the control room at six o’clock the day was bright through the periscope and the crew off duty were taking turns to look at the desolate shore. He went to breakfast and then stood smoking at the chart table, studying the minefield chart that he already knew so well, and the well-remembered entrance to the Juan de Fuca Strait.

  At seven-forty-five his executive officer reported that Cape Flattery was abeam. The captain stubbed out his cigarette. “Okay,” he said. “Take her in, Commander. Course is zero-seven-five. Fifteen knots.”

  The hum of the motors dropped to a lower note for the first time in three weeks; within the hull the relative silence was almost oppressive. All morning they made their way south-eastwards down the strait between Canada and the United States, taking continuous bearings through the periscope, keeping a running plot at the chart table and altering course many times. They saw little change on shore, except in one place on Vancouver Island near Jordan River, where a huge area on the southern slopes of Mount Valentine seemed to have been burned and blasted. They judged this area to be no less than seven miles long and five miles wide; in it no vegetation seemed to grow although the surface of the ground seemed undisturbed.

  “I’d say that’s an air burst,” the captain said, turning from the periscope. “Perhaps a guided missile got one there.”

  As they approached more populous districts there were always one or two men waiting to look through the periscope as soon as the officers relinquished it. Soon after midday they were off Port Townsend and turning southwards into Puget Sound. They went on, leaving Whidbey Island on the port hand, and in the early afternoon they came to the mainland at the little town of Edmonds, fifteen miles north of the centre of Seattle. They were well past the mine defences by that time. From the sea the place seemed quite undamaged, but the radiation level was still high.

  The captain stood studying it through the periscope. If the Geiger counter was correct, no life could exist there for more than a few days, and yet it all looked so normal in the spring sunlight that he felt there must be people there. There did not seem to be glass broken in the windows, even, save for a pane here and there. He turned from the periscope. “Left ten, seven knots,” he said. “We’ll close the shore here, and lie off the jetty, and hail for a while.”

  He relinquished the command to his executive, and ordered the loud hailer to be tested and made ready. Lieutenant-Commander Farrell brought the vessel to the surface and took her in, and they lay-to a hundred yards from the boat jetty, watching the shore.

  The Chief of the Boat touched the executive officer on the shoulder. “Be all right for Swain to have a look, sir?” he enquired. “This is his home town.” Yeoman First Class Ralph Swain was a radar operator.

  “Oh, sure.”

  He s
tepped aside, and the Yeoman went to the periscope. He stood there for a long while, and then raised his head. “Ken Puglia’s got his drug store open,” he said. “The door’s open and the shades are up. But he’s left his neon sign on. It’s not like Ken to leave that burning in the daytime.”

  The Chief asked, “See anybody moving around, Ralph?”

  The radar operator bent to the eyepieces again. “No. There’s a window broken in Mrs. Sullivan’s house, up at the top.”

  He stood looking for three or four long minutes, till the executive officer touched him on the shoulder and took the periscope. He stood back in the control room.

  The Chief said, “See your own house, Ralphie?”

  “No. You just can’t see that from the sea. It’s up Rainier Avenue, past the Safeway.” He fidgeted irritably. “I don’t see anything different,” he said. “It all looks just the same.”

  Lieutenant Benson took the microphone and began hailing the shore. He said, “This is U.S. Submarine Scorpion calling Edmonds. U.S. Submarine Scorpion calling Edmonds. If anybody is listening, will you please come to the waterfront, to the jetty at the end of Main Street. U.S. Submarine calling Edmonds.”

  The Yeoman left the control room and went forward. Dwight Towers came to the periscope, detached another sailor from it, and stood looking at the shore. The town sloped upwards from the waterfront giving a good view of the street and the houses. He stood back after a while. “There doesn’t seem to be much wrong on shore,” he said. “You’d think with Boeing as the target all this area would have been well plastered.”

  Farrell said, “The defences here were mighty strong. All the guided missiles in the book.”

  “That’s so. But they got through to San Francisco.”

  “It doesn’t look as though they ever got through here.” He paused. “There was that air burst, way back in the strait.”

  Dwight nodded. “See that neon sign that’s still alight, over the drug store?” He paused. “We’ll go on calling here for quite a while—say half an hour.”