At the Midway (50 page)

When William repeated his story, the meter went wild, indicating complete calm and truthfulness.  Singleton had expected at least some variation.  It was almost like applying the test to a corpse.

Fifteen minutes later he stood before Captain Oates on the foredeck.

"Is that test of yours infallible?" Oates asked, turning red.

"By no means.  But this boy's not lying about the
Lydia Bailey
.  Something sank her, and I don't think it had anything to do with Japanese battleships.  He's too detailed.  The only thing analogous would be…I mean to say, the only thing that jibes..."

"Jibes with what?  Are you saying he saw some kind of dinosaurs?  I've been almost fifty years at sea, Doctor.  I've heard of many a strange thing.  Seen a few myself.  But never anything like this."

"Dinosaur, yes.  What he describes sounds very much like a plesiosaur.  But he ascribes it too many non
-
reptilian characteristics.  Traces of hair, for one.  Not an abundance.  A few bristles around the snout.  But he remembers them vividly.  He also says one of them roared so loudly they could not hear for several minutes after.  I know of no reptiles that can make that kind of noise.  The creatures seemed to move extremely fast when they wanted to, which does not fit the conception of large cold
-
blooded lizards.  Also, the plesiosars were very slender.  Gracile, one could almost say.  Pegg says his animals had extraordinarily thick brows.  That might account for their ability to pound at the whaler without injuring themselves.  But that's not a plesiosaur characteristic."

"Why are you telling me this?  He elaborated on his hallucination and you're passing it on as fact."

"A myth is as good as a mile.  Sorry.  I'm speaking of possibilities, not facts.  Quite different things.  You're right, of course.  Nothing nature could come up with would be more dangerous than Admiral Togo coming over the horizon, except perhaps a typhoon.  You have to prepare for the worst.  And I agree.  Camouflaging the
Florida
in battle gray is the most prudent course.  I'm only saying there's a degree of truth in what Pegg's telling us.  There has to be, or the psychogalvametric response wouldn't have been so clear."

The smell of nearpaint lay thick over the
Florida
.  Another day and she would be difficult to spot from a distance.  There would be a line of white running along the base of the ship's hull.  She rode so low in the water, however, that Oates believed the waves would hide it.

"This is no help," Oates berated Singleton.  "I want to find out if those three serpents were really Japanese battleships

"That boy is as sane as you or I."

"You?"

"Very well, Captain.  As sane as
you
."

"What did he see?"

"Monsters of the mind?  That's what you want, isn't it?"

"Of all people, I would have thought you'd be skeptical."

"Understood," the doctor chuckled.  "But note this:  What that boy describes sounds very much like a Mesozoic plesiosaurus.  Are you familiar with that animal?"

"A sea-going dinosaur.  I saw fossils of one at the Natural History Museum in London."

"First discovered in the Lias rocks of Lyme Regis in 1821.  Extinct for a hundred million years.  Yet sailors and historians have been describing a creature very similar to it for the last two thousand years.  Aristotle, in
Historia
Animalium
, describes plesiosaur-like creatures living off the coast of Libya.  They attacked oxen on the shore, as well as sailing vessels.  He wrote that the serpents could sink a large trireme by holding on and pulling it down."

"He wrote a great deal of other nonsense as well."

"In
Historia
de
Gentibus
Septentrionalibus
Olaus Magnus reported the destruction of a Norwegian fishing fleet by serpents in 1567."

"And some charts still have sea monsters on the compass rose.  I know the fairy tales, doctor.  I wouldn't have thought someone like you had made a study of them."

"I read newspapers, too.  If you want modern sightings, there is much to choose from.  I suppose the most famous was in '91, when an enormous long-necked creature attacked bathers at Pablo Beach, Florida.  In 1902 there was the
Fort
Salisbury
incident.  The officer of the watch, the helmsman and the lookouts all agreed the beast they saw was nearly six hundred feet long by thirty feet wide.  And there's the prize, just three years ago.  The Earl of Crawford--former president of the Royal Astronomical Society--was cruising off Parahiba, Brazil in his steam yacht, the
Valhalla
."

"I remember," Oates sighed.

"The yacht was crammed to the bulwarks with scientists who all saw the same thing.  We can't dismiss the boy's story out of hand, captain.  Not while they're putting stories of sea serpents on the front page of the Illustrated London News, reported by some of the preeminent scientists of our day.  My only qualm concerns the size of the creatures Pegg describes.  They can't possibly be that huge.  If the whaler was sunk, it was perhaps due to mishandling.  Maybe her master was trying to catch them and hit a reef instead."

"Let's return to the realm of probability.  I've seen how the ocean can trick a man, especially when he's on his last leg.  I'm a lot more concerned about Jap shells and torpedoes than what Pegg thought he saw.  That's why I let you out of your cabin.  I want to know if I might be facing battleships or cruisers, a single ship or a fleet.  You should share my concern, doctor.  If we go down, you go with us.  I've heard too many of these monster stories."  The doctor's floppy straw hat taunted him.  He had to fight down an impulse to snatch it off Singleton's head and toss it overboard.  "My father spun all these yarns for me when I was a boy."

"Captain
-
-
"

"I repeat, there's a good chance we'll be going into battle soon, Dr. Singleton.  If so, there's an equally good chance we'll all die.  If you want to help
-
-
if you don't want to die uselessly
-
-
I suggest you conduct yourself in a more logical manner.  Otherwise, you can confine yourself to quarters."

"But Captain Oates ," said Singleton with a perky flip of his brow,  "I've shown you another possibility.  Why do you refuse to consider it?"

"Probably because I can still smell the liquor on your breath."  Oates had turned sharply on his heel to return to his wardroom when the wireless electrician burst through a nearby hatch.

"Captain!  I've gotten a signal from Midway!"

June, 1908

28°20'N, 177°22'W

0906 Hours

Filling the balloon with coal gas was a tricky procedure.  Great care had to be taken to keep the net from going askew as the envelope expanded.  It had to be weighted down firmly, but not tightly.  After inserting the gas hose and opening the retort valves, Hart began walking nervously around the balloon, shifting sand bags as it filled.  All the while he kept Ace by his side, giving him instructions.

He told him how to use the drag rope, the barometer, the thermometer, and the index.  The latter was simply a light ribbon, about a foot long.  "You can't always tell what direction you're going in.  If the ribbon stays flat down, you're going up.  If it flutters up, you're coming down."

"Ah," said Ace profoundly.

"If you start coming down before you're ready, throw out the drag rope.  If you start coming down too fast, toss the ballast: these bags of sand."  He spent the rest of the lecture explaining the tail valve and the maneuvering valve.  Then he asked the Japanese to repeat his instructions.  Ace nodded several times, then answered, "Don't fall out."

"Good enough."  Hart smiled grimly, patting him on the shoulder.  A little later he noticed Ace downing a small meal of raw fish and rice.  "Be careful with that.  It's rougher up there than it looks."

"Ha!  I ride big waves in my little boat and never sick."

It took an hour to inflate the envelope.  When it was ready, Ace hopped in the car.  He was grinning.

"Give 'em hell, Ace!" Lieber shouted.

The higher the balloon, the higher went the reflector and antenna wires attached to the gondola.  No matter how still the air, the balloon would be constantly moving.  This would make any signals they received erratic, to say the least.  While Hart might be able to broadcast two or three hundred miles, he hoped to pick up wireless communications over a much wider area.  He also realized that someone a thousand miles away might hear him--or no one at all.

On the ground, everyone but Ziolkowski cheered.  Outside of giving orders, he had been glumly silent since the loss of Depoy and Kitrell.

Ace waved wildly.  Then, abruptly, he heaved.  The men below scattered to avoid being hit by his breakfast.

At four hundred feet he pointed south.  A sentry atop the warehouse saw him and focused his binoculars in that direction.  It took him several moments to spot the three creatures basking outside the lagoon.  When he relayed his sighting the men murmured their disappointment.  They had hoped the one wounded in the eye might be dead by now.

The balloon was anchored in the center of the compound.  Hart had taken extra care as to the stoutness of the winch cable.  There was no way to maneuver the balloon beyond raising and lowering it.  He set up his wireless set near the winch.  He'd found an undamaged headset in the relay station.  After adjusting the earphones he hooked up the batteries--and was immediately immersed in a sea of static.

The marines around him crouched like freezing men afraid of fire.  To most of them a wireless telegraph was an ominous device, transmitting the unseen and receiving same.  Using one was a little like talking to ghosts.

Hart had been keying no more than fifteen minutes when he suddenly grabbed the headset and held it tight against his ears.  Men not on duty or asleep drew closer.  Finally, the civilian looked up.

"My God, a battleship!  The
Florida
!  Not four hundred miles southeast and heading our way.  They heard me!"

"The
Florida
?  Last I heard she was at Juan's-Toe-in-the-Mole."

They ignored Ziolkowski's skepticism.  A battleship!  The men cheered.

"What is it, Top?" Lieber asked the sergeant when he remained aloof from the celebration.

He snorted.  "A battleship?  Not likely.  Maybe he's mixed up his signals."

"Top, listen, about Kittrell."

"I should never've posted men on the beach.  I should've pulled everyone into the bunker. There's room.  The monsters won't attack the distillery.  If they wanted fresh water they would've taken it before."

"Top, how would they--"

"They must drink seawater somehow.  Ah, Jesus, we could've dug holes like the mules if we had to drink.  How many have we lost?"

"You cannot blame yourself."

"Now Hart's the only one left who can play chess and he's Jorgensoned out.  Gone gooney."

"Take it easy, Top," Lieber said in a low voice.  "You're not making sense."

Ziolkowski gave him a long look, then lowered his head and nodded.

Hart keyed some more, then listened.  "They're at flank speed.  They'll reach us late tomorrow morning.  They keep asking about a Japanese fleet.  They seem to think we're under attack."

"They got it half right."

"They're low on coal.  They want us to load up our barges and bring them out when they arrive."

"How low?" Ziolkowski asked, glancing west at the umber smokestack of their disabled sea tug.  The
Iroquois
had been beached because of damage to her steam tubes.  Without it, they couldn't shift the barges up the channel to the coaling station, let alone out of the lagoon.

"They won't be more specific.  I think they think I might be a Jap, trying to lead them into a trap.  Either that or they think Togo's eavesdropping.  My guess is the position their wireless operator gave me is bogus, to deceive the enemy.  She might be much closer than four hundred miles.  I can't believe my signal reaches that far."

"Well, tell them the sorry truth.  She's going to have to get her engineers ashore to repair the
Iroquois
or no one's going anywhere.  Damn.  Why didn't they bring coal ships with them?  Don't they know we're at the end of the earth?"

"Do I tell them about the serpents?  We have to give them some kind of warning.  But they might not believe me.  Might even think it's part of the 'trap.'"

Ziolkowski hesitated a minute before responding.

0915 Hours

Lifting his cap and mopping the sweat off his brow, Lieutenant Grissom leaned further into the wireless compartment and repeated, "
Serpents
?  How does he sound?"