Secret sea; (13 page)

By five o'clock in the afternoon the radio compass gave Pete a position almost clear of the Florida Keys. When Mike came on deck, Pete said, "We're almost in the Gulf. I'm going to take my first real breath when we get in it."

'*Do you think old Narrow Face is still looking for us?"

"Fm sure of it. And I want him to have a lot more area to search than the Straits."

"Wish rd seen him coming out of the galley," Mike said. "Fd have let him have it with that marlinespike right between his little peepers."

"I wouldn't care if I never saw him again," Pete declared.

Mike settled down in the cockpit. "Wind's shifting," he said, turning his cheek from side to side. "She'll go around 180 and then die."

Pete nodded. "I hope this sky stays down until dark, though. One more night's run and he'll never find us."

But the sky didn't. Slowly the clouds receded, the wind seemed to push them back, and the small

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circle in which the Indra seemed to have been sailing steadily widened.

Mike took the wheel and Pete went over to the chart board. He was marking in the afternoon DR position when he heard Mike say in a low voice, "Look."

Pete turned slowly around and looked aft.

About a mile away, just emerging from the wall of cloud and sea, was the black sloop, its sails ghostly white.

Pete felt his knees turning to water, and he leaned back against the chart board. On the sloop, standing in the bow, was the figure of a tall, thin man.

Pete slowly lowered his eyes and looked at Mike. The boy was looking up at him, his eyes steady.

"How did he do it?" Mike asked slowly.

Pete shook his head. "I don't know. But he did it."

Mike turned slowly and looked back at the sloop. "What do we do now?"

Pete walked slowly over and sat down beside Mike. "How did he do it?" Pete said, his voice almost a whisper. "In all the thousands of square miles he had to search, how did he find us? In the storm, in visibility less than five hundred yards, how did he get right on our stern?"

Suddenly Pete yanked open the compartment where the long binoculars were kept. He un-

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consciously and from long training in the Navy wrapped the neck strap around his wrist before he brought the glasses up.

Then, for a long time, Pete stood going over every inch of the black sloop with the glasses. At last he lowered them.

"That's how he did it," he said.

"How?" Mike asked.

"Radar," Pete said.

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JVadar?" Mike asked. "You mean that stuff can see right through a fog?"

Pete sat down, his back to the black sloop. He put his elbows on his knees and held his face in his hands. "Yeah."

"Then he's just been following us wherever we went?"

Pete nodded. "I thought I was being so smart,"

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he said bitterly. "And he's been sitting there looking at us on the scope."

Pete slowly straightened up and looked aft. As he did, the jib of the black sloop luffed and slowly the boat lost speed and the clouds began to close in upon her again. At first wisps of clouds drifted around her and then, as her outline grew wavery and her white sails grew gray, the black sloop vanished again into the cloud.

"Can he see us now?" Mike asked.

"Perfectly," Pete said. "We're a pretty little green line."

"How does that stuff work?"

"It isn't stuff, it's a thing," Pete said. "I don't know much about it except that it's a cathode-ray tube and a radio receiver and transmitter. The transmitter sends out a radio pulse which lasts about a millionth of a second. If the pulse doesn't hit anything, nothing shows on the tube, but if it does hit something, it bounces back. Since radio waves travel at the same speed as that of light—I think it's 186,000 miles per second or minute or something—the radar has a gimmick that can measure how long it took the pulse to get there and how long it took the reflection to-get back, so you can read right off the cathode-ray tube the distance the thing is away from you. That's where *radar' came from—*radio detecting and ranging.' Of course the thing sends out millions of those pulses, not just one, but it

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doesn't send out another one until the reflection comes back or just peters out."

"Can he see us all the time then? Can he see us moving around and steering and all?"

"No, it's not that good. All he sees is a wavery green line on a dark round glass thing—the business end of the cathode-ray tube—they call it a pip.

"Can it go right through mountains and houses and things?"

"Oh no. It can't go through anything but air. But it goes right through fog or rain or darkness."

"H'mmm," Mike said. "We could really use a good-sized mountain right back there, couldn't we?"

Pete turned and looked back at the now blank wall of cloud. As he looked and saw nothing, a feeling of helplessness gripped him; a feeling of being trapped. Weber, with a faster, more easily handled boat, could always outsail him except in very heavy weather. And as long as the Indra was within twenty or thirty miles of the sloop, Weber could see it with the radar. Pete suddenly remembered once, in a laboratory, watching some rats in a glass cage.

He began to beat on his forehead with his right fist. Could he jam the radar the way the British jammed the Nazi Wiirzburg system? No. He had no transmitter. Could he run back to the Keys and count on their obscuring the Indra on

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the scope? No. They weren't high enough. Could he, somehow, destroy the radar set on the sloop? Down in the cabin Pete had an M-1 carbine. But the sloop would have to come within three hundred yards before he could hope to hit the radar antenna on the mast. And even if he could hit it, it would be easy to fix. And Pete didn't want to start the shooting.

There was nothing he could do. In a little dark room somewhere on the black sloop the cathode-ray tube glowed faintly—glowed like the eye of evil—and the Indra, d. green line, was always on it.

"Why don't we just call it a day?" Mike asked. "If that bird brain can follow us with the gadget everywhere we go, he's got us licked. Just as soon as we get to the Santa Ybel all he's got to do is come alongside and swarm on us. You got anything that'll shoot?"

"Only a carbine," Pete said.

"One of those toy guns?"

"Not exactly, but it's no cannon."

"Well, let's go back to Miami and go into the cupcake business. You don't need that gold wheel anyway; you got plenty of dough."

Pete looked at him somberly. "You know something, Mike? I've got a brother about your age. You know what he can do?"

Mike looked curiously at Pete. "No, what can he do, Mac?"

"He can wiggle his right thumb. And—that's 143

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all he can do. He's lying up in a hospital paralyzed from the neck down."

Mike frowned. "You mean just a kid my age?"

"Yeah. And I haven't got any money, Mike. I've got a little in my pocket. I owe a whale of a lot and I've got to keep Johnny in the hospital. If we don't get that stuff out of the Sajzta Ybel, it'll be the end of Johnny—and me."

Mike turned slowly and, in a low voice, began to curse the thin man. He raised his fist and shook it at the blank wall of cloud. Then he stopped and looked at Pete. "Are those pulses or whatever you called 'em coming right out of those clouds, right now?"

Pete nodded.

"Isn't there some way you can cut 'em off?"

"If I had a high-frequency resnatron tube putting out about 50,000 watts, I could give him a headache. Only it takes seven eight-wheel trucks just to carry it around."

"Then what are we going to do?"

Pete shrugged and slowly stood up. "We might as well eat something."

"Why don't we heave to and both of us cook?" Mike asked.

"Why?"

Mike grinned a little shyly. "I feel sort of funny. All those pulses coming and going and I can't see 'em."

"They haven't bothered you so far." 144

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"I didn't know about 'em, Mac." "All right, you do the cooking. They can't get down in the galley."

As Mike banged around in the galley, Pete watched the dim sunlight fading out while the darkness of night seemed to seep down through the clouds toward the sea. The wind had shifted more than ninety degrees and was falling so that soon, Pete thought with part of his mind, they ought to shake out those reefs and get along.

Then, almost imperceptibly, it became dark. Pete was startled when Mike turned on the lights in the cabin and the skylights glowed yellow ahead of him. "Mike!" Pete yelled. Mike came to the companionway. "Pull the shades on the skylights, will you?" "What for?"

"So Weber can't see us. It's clearing fast." "What difference does it make? He can see us with the gizmo anyway." "Pull 'em," Pete said shortly. Mike came slowly up the ladder. "Listen, bub," he said slowly, "you're not in the Navy now, see?"

Pete looked steadily in the boy's direction. "Mike, pull the shades on the skylights," he said quietly. "During chow we'll discuss the Navy angle."

"Have it your own way, Mac. But don't start throwing your weight around."

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"I'll try not to," Pete said.

The little flare-up worried Pete. Coming on top of the radar, it seemed even worse than it was. Pete hoped that he was no arbitrary martinet who gave orders just to see people jump; but he knew from bitter experience what it was like to be in a sloppy ship where there was no discipline.

Mike came on deck with two plates of food and, in silence, put them down and went below for the coffee. When he came back, he and Pete both ate in silence for a long time; each waiting for the other to begin it.

At last Pete put down his plate. "Mike," he said.

"Go ahead," Mike said.

"Let's get squared away."

Mike put his plate down. To Pete it looked as though he had slammed it down. "Suits me right down to the ground, Mac," Mike said, his voice belligerent. "As long as you don't start throwing out your chest and pushing me around, we're all squared away."

"Good," Pete said quietly. "But this is a ship, and there can only be one master in a ship. Do you want to be the captain or do you want me to be?"

"Don't hand me any of that old Navy bushwa," Mike said. "This is nothing but an old wooden tub, and it doesn't need a captain."

"It's going to have one," Pete said. "We're not

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Sunday-sailing around the harbor. We're up against a vicious, smart joe who wouldn't hesitate to kill us both any longer than he hesitated to slap you in the puss with a pistol. We're starting a dangerous journey, Mike, where a split second may decide whether somebody gets hurt or not. That means that one of us has got to obey the other one."

**I don't take orders from nobody," Mike said surlily.

Pete clamped his jaw for a moment and then said, his voice still controlled and quiet, "All right. Then do you think you're the man to give the orders aboard this ship?"

Pete saw Mike's head turn toward him. **Do you mean you'd let me be captain around here?"

"One of us has got to be captain. No matter what you think she is, this is still a ship."

Mike put sugar in a coffee cup and then, holding his thumb down in the cup to measure with, he slowly poured coffee in the darkness. Pete watched the blur of his hand as he stirred the sugar slowly, the spoon clanking on the metal rim of the cup.

"Okay," he said at last, "have it your way, ^Captain.' "

His voice was unpleasant, sneering. Pete shook his head. "I don't want it that way, Mike," he said.

Mike stood up, the cup in his hand. "Don't get

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me to crying, bub," he said. Before Pete could answer, he went down the ladder and Pete heard the cabin door shut.

Pete slowly poured out a cup of coffee and sat on the wheelbox drinking it. Now, he thought, I've got two problems on my hands. And I can't handle either one of them. Behind me is the radar. Below is Mike.

Two problems? Pete asked himself. No. Three. There's Johnny lying in a narrow white bed, and he can wiggle his right thumb.

For a long time Pete sat there feeling as though he were at the bottom of one of those "pile-ons" they used to play in school. The pile, pressing down on him, grew heavier and heavier. Weber, and Mike, and Johnny. The radar, the reform school, the hospital. The Santa Ybel, a .45 automatic, a cathode-ray tube. Johnny and Mike and Weber.

Pete at last shook his head as though to clear his brain. One thing at a time, he thought. Let's tackle one thing first. Which one? He couldn't do a thing about Johnny. Mike? He could do nothing more there. It was up to the kid now. The radar?

Pete looked up at the sails of his ship, gray and ghostly in the dark. Invisible pulses of radio energy were striking them, striking the masts, the hull, the cabin structure. And bouncing back like

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tattletales to the black sloop. He couldn't stop the evil, invisible things.

And slowly, as his mind drifted, Pete began to remember one night in the Pacific. On Eniwetok Island he had gone ashore and found an old friend of his, Lieutenant "Fish" Fishburne, who was in charge of radar.