The Martian Pendant (25 page)

Lopez, evidently delighted at having her to himself that evening, replied, “He’s in the wheelhouse plotting our final course with the Navigator. We’re only a day from our destination, south of Guam.”

“Wait,” she responded, “Guam is a U.S. military base, and there will be air patrols everywhere!” As she said that, she hoped that her tone would imply that she was on their side, perhaps afflicted with the Stockholm syndrome, where captives sometimes begin to empathize with their captors. “I’m afraid that if we’re stopped by the U.S. Navy, they’ll arrest me along with all of you. How will our little lifeboats escape capture and trial for piracy? You know the penalty for that.”

Lopez drew close to her, and whispered, “Yes, I’m fully conversant with Marine Law. But if you stick with me aboard the starboard motorboat, which I will pilot, we’ll have a good chance to escape in the dark. Our fuel supply and the emergency sailing gear will be sufficient for us to reach Ulithi Atoll in the Carolines, eventually making our way to Palau, the capital of that non-aligned island nation. It’s as idyllic as any tropical paradise can be.”

Relieved that she had intuitively stashed her specimens advantageously, and seeing her opportunity, she adopted a conspiratorial manner, asking, “But what about the Captain? Won’t he insist on my accompanying him? He seems quite happy with me, at least here at the table.”

“I think not,” Lopez replied. “He won’t need you any more as a hostage, and is so dedicated to this mission that he won’t chance anything going wrong. Despite the phenomenal luck we’ve had, until now going almost undetected, and with a promise of achieving our rendezvous with fate, he still can’t rid himself of the sailor’s superstition that having a woman aboard is bad luck. That sort of thing comes easily to one so devout. He’ll be convinced that whichever boat is without you will fare much better.”

She gave him a smile. “What of my fossil bones and other findings? I can’t have my discoveries thrown overboard. If he has his way, they’ll be given the deep six along with the cargo in the hold. Do you feel the same way?”

“You mean about his religious fanaticism regarding this material from Mars disrupting the monotheistic religions? Not I. But there is a realistic concern over what could happen to the ties of brotherhood, however strained, between Christians, Muslims and Jews, if
Genesis
is debunked. Much of the core beliefs of those faiths have to do with their mutual creation myth, and this commonality may be all that is keeping them from going for the proverbial jugular. Myself, I couldn’t care less. I’m more interested in what you’ve said about the connection between your Martians and our ancestors. I think you’re on the right track, and I’ll do what I can to help you get home with your proof.”

Although relieved, she was still concerned about his motives.
Perhaps
, she thought,
all she had to do now was cool his ardor on the way home
. She spent much of the last day on deck at the rail, as they churned at full speed through the bright blue sea, again accompanied by an escort of porpoises, and a frequent flying fish, breaking the surface, and gliding parallel to the ship for fifty or more yards.
What predator
, she wondered,
had flushed them from the deep, the same waters they would be braving soon in the small boats
. She had readied her gear for boarding the lifeboat, but hadn’t found her hat, an essential item in the tropics. Raul noticed her at the rail and joined her there.

“A penny for your thoughts.”

“You can pay me by giving me one of your caps,” she said, as she squinted, despite her dark glasses, in the glare of the sun, “And that would answer your question as well.”

“Yes, I see, sunburn can be a problem in an open boat, but you needn’t worry your pretty little head about that,” he replied. “You won’t have to be exposed like the common seamen, because you’ll be my guest in the cabin.”

She detected a hint of a leer on his face. “I’m sure you’ve noticed this ring,” she said firmly, holding up her right hand. “As a war widow, to me it means loyalty and commitment. If you can’t handle that, I’ll take my chances with the crew.”

“The war ended thirteen years ago! Surely you miss having a man to share your bed. And in regard to the crew, don’t be so rash. You must know you may need my protection.”

“Oh, indeed, protection from the coyotes by the wolf? No thanks.”

“Would it change your mind if I promise to be a gentleman, and pledge that I will do anything you say?”

He said that in a tone that added to her distrust of him. She thought
she could probably protect herself from the advances of one man at a time, but what of the four men in the lifeboat crew?

That evening, supper was sandwiches and tea. The Captain showed up late, in dungarees, absorbed in conversation with the Navigator at the foot of the table. She thought it odd that he had not approached her about what had happened to her fossils. Her cabin had again been searched, as had the bags containing the personal things she had readied.

Lopez nudged her, whispering, “I told him that the search crew had thrown them overboard at my orders, in anticipation of your trying to smuggle the material aboard the lifeboat. He’s so preoccupied with finding the right water to scuttle the ship in that he isn’t thinking of much else.”

Exactly one hour later, everyone was called back to the mess. The Navigator described the precise work needed to fully realize their plan.

“In another hour, it will be almost dark, and we’ll be over the deepest known place in any ocean, the southern end of the Mariana Trench, which extends offshore to the west for the length of that island chain. We’re now 170 miles southwest of Guam, which is the southernmost island in the Marianas. Our destination is what is known as the Challenger Deep. Soundings have shown the water there has a depth of just over 36,000 feet. Our plan is to sink the
American Traveler
into that trench. Our course will bring us to within less than a mile of the deepest point, and wherever she hits, the steepness of the walls of the declivity leading to the bottom, combined with gravity, should do the rest.”

The Captain got up. “The course the lifeboats will follow is southwest to the Yap Island group, the closest being Fais Island, 180 miles away. A larger atoll, Ulithi, will be our goal 50 miles west of that. I’ll be leading in lifeboat one, with our Navigator here. Lopez, as First Officer, will be in command of lifeboat two. We’ll be able to communicate by wireless, but only if we have an emergency, so as to evade American radio surveillance. Take what extra food and water you can carry after you stow your bags. While we have ample supplies stored in each boat, our voyage may take longer than expected. When the winds are right, we’ll use our sails in order to conserve our fuel as long as possible. As you must know, our range under power is quite limited, but the engine will be important in approaching any island.” Looking briefly at his watch, he added, “Now it’s time to lower the boats.” Turning, he said, “Mister Lopez, make it so.”

EIGHTEEN

Scuttled

In the Navy’s search headquarters on Guam, the radio operator reported to the officer of the day, “Sir, our air patrol has located the
American Traveler.
They’re about 200 nautical miles south of us, on a heading northwest at what looks like full speed for a freighter of that type. What instructions do you have for the fly-boys?”

Looking at his watch, and then at the chart spread out on his desk, the officer, a Captain, replied, “They are to keep shadowing them until dark, and then return to base. Our destroyer patrol is proceeding at flank speed to intercept them.” Turning around, he found another radioman standing behind him, who handed him a paper.

“Sir, we have another message just in from Pearl. Their cryptographers have decoded it. Here’s the printout.”

Snatching the strip of paper, the Captain hastily read it. “Send this out, ‘Quarry headin
g north, not east of the Ryukyu chain, but to the west, aiming to slip into Nagasaki in exactly forty-eight hours.’ It’s OK, in the clear.”

As the radio operator turned to comply, the Captain muttered, half to himself, “Can you beat that?  Their communication was in one of their Second World War military codes. Does that say anything about who’s orchestrating this whole thing?”

Just then, the message was received from their aerial surveillance that two lifeboats were being launched. The officer exclaimed, “That means they intend to scuttle! Get on the horn to our destroyers, in the clear again. Tell them to close for boarding with all possible haste.”

“Sir, they’re already full out, and even at forty knots they couldn’t possibly be in a position to board for another three hours, could they?”

Merely shrugging, the officer said, almost as an afterthought, “Well, we can still intercept the lifeboats. At least we’ll have the pirates then, with what information we can get from them about this whole thing.”

*    *    *

In the Buell office above the computer room, an analyst was going over the GeoSat intercepts of the previous few days, displayed on the wall the way that had helped Diana to originally interpret the significance of the data from East Africa. Turning to a co-worker, he remarked, “Hey Julie, look at this. When we first saw this hot spot, we thought it represented nuclear fallout, but when it moved 750 miles in eighteen hours in the wrong direction, we knew it had to be from a ship. Well, look closely at these blow- ups. Do you see one or two foci of radiation now?”

She studied the sheet closely for a minute, then said, “I see two, definitely, and looking over at the first image, there is a difference. Could this mean that the ship GeoSat found has picked up a tail? I heard that the Navy confirmed they had no nuclear vessels in that part of the Pacific, but nothing was said about some other country’s Navy. Maybe it’s a Soviet sub!”

*    *    *

The launching of the boats went reasonably well, although rust for a time threatened to jam the mechanism of the aft davit lowering Diana’s boat. No real lubrication was available, so one of the crew emptied the contents of a water-can on the balky bearing. That did it, and aside from an unsettling screeching, the stern reached the water almost as soon as the bow, easing their concerns. Tensions again mounted as they awaited crew to re
join them after opening the seacocks and setting the timers for the explosive charges.

*    *    *

Just then, a submarine, resembling a huge black whale, surfaced in a rush of compressed air and a mound of white water not a hundred yards away. For a moment Diana thought it was American, but as the foam fell from its conning tower, a large red star was revealed.

“Quickly, men,” Lopez shouted, “into the boat!” Then, gunning the engine as the last of the seamen boarded, he piloted the craft along the freighter’s starboard side and turned away from the submarine and its crew, who were just appearing through hatches on the conning tower and on the foredeck. As they passed the other lifeboat on the port side of the ship, he shouted through a bullhorn.

“It’s a Soviet nuclear submarine! They’ll be putting a salvage crew aboard the
Traveler
to save her from sinking, and then we’ll be next. We can’t hope to escape them!”

As he pushed the throttle forward on the other lifeboat, the Captain said, “That’s why I put Lopez in charge of the number two lifeboat, and chose you, my Navigator, to accompany us. Cool heads are essential at times like these. You see, it’s twilight now, and at these tropical latitudes it won’t be long before it will be pitch dark, with only the stars as light. Even with night-vision glasses, it will be difficult for them to follow us, especially since we are distancing ourselves as I speak.”

“But what of their radar, sir? Surely that will be enough to pinpoint us and sink us with their fire, even in the blackness.”

“You’re right about the radar, Rodriguez, but they’re low in the water and so are we, and if we keep lifeboat number two directly between them and us, our combined shadow will confuse them enough for one of us, at least, to escape.”

“But look,” the Navigator said, handing the Captain his glasses, pointing to the boarding crew that was jumping up and down in apparent jubilation. “I think they’ve stopped the incoming water. She’s not settling. And they’re acting like they’ve interrupted the timing device for our charges.”

Putting the glasses down, the Captain replied, “Here, take the wheel, we still have a trick up our sleeve.”

Taking a small black box from under his lifejacket and smiling slyly, he pressed a red button. Nothing happened for what seemed an eternity. Then a tremendous flash appeared, combined with a huge sooty geyser of water from below the ship’s waterline, thrusting her keel almost to the surface. At that point the sound of the explosion hit them, followed by the sight of the freighter breaking in two with the noise of rending steel. It was all over in five minutes, the otherwise calm seas seething with massive quantities of air bubbling up through an appreciable whirlpool that was left as she headed for the bottom.

Both lifeboats were a mile away by that time, when the disappearance of the
American Traveler
revealed the fleeing craft to the Soviet vessel. As the smoke from the vanished ship cleared, the submarine appeared to be getting underway, after an initial fruitless search for survivors of their boarding crew. On the after deck, Diana looked on in awe as a flash of red smoke was seen aboard the Soviet submersible, followed by a streak of fire headed toward them, passing just overhead in a whistling roar, exploding in the pilot house of the lead lifeboat.

It all happened so fast, she could hardly anticipate what came next. Something twanged against the back of her life-vest, and she was propelled overboard. As she clutched for some support, her fingers closed on the handle of the emptied water can. There was no time to cry out as she hit the surprisingly warm Pacific, with the rapidly receding lifeboat continuing on, not even slowing through the debris left by the lead boat and its two struggling survivors.

She could barely keep her nose above the surface, thanks to her replacing some of the kapok flotation with her fossil jawbone, the book, and her journal with its photographs. In the immediate confusion of finding herself in the water, the world took on a surreal character, where sound dominated. With her ears submerged, all she could hear, loudly at first, was the awful grinding made by the ship as it sank through the increasing depths, its steel sides crumpling, compressed together as contained air escaped, adding the overtone of a terrible whooshing.

Luckily, the big, shiny, metal water can bobbing next to her gave her more buoyancy. By holding its handle, with the spout down to avoid it filling, she was able at first to keep her head fully above the surface. Just then the Soviets, starting the chase, launched another TOW missile at the fleeing boat, missing narrowly, but exploding just alongside.

The next one will strike home, she thought; alternately, the swift nuclear craft would easily overtake them and then deal with that beast, Lopez, and the rest of the crew. But for some reason the blaring of a klaxon recalled the deck crew, and it began a crash dive. In only thirty seconds it was gone, leaving barely a trace of white foam.

She was not alone, as two crewmen, both apparently wounded, were floating in their bright orange lifejackets not fifty yards away. As she called out in the increasing dusk, something abrasive brushed against her legs as a dark shadow knifed past her, its unmistakable dorsal fin breaking the surface.

“Shark!” she cried, frantically kicking toward the bleeding men, in a vain effort to help them. There was just one bubbling scream, and then absolute quiet. She was almost alone in the Pacific, except for the two now-circling sharks. Her thought, for a fleeting moment,
was a flash of light in front of her eyes. “I’m next!”

Luckily she was wrong; the sharks were next. Out of nowhere came twin streaks of gray and white, passing her and ramming the sharks in the side just behind their gill slits. Paralyzed, the sharks slowly sank out of sight. Night was upon her then, and after the short tropical twilight, her defenders left as suddenly as they had appeared, in twin streaks of phosphorescence. She could only marvel at another example of porpoises saving humans from hungry sharks. As she continued her struggle to stay afloat, she mused that it must have been payback time. Her saviors had to be those that had played so long in the bow wave of the ship.

She spent three hours clinging to her float, but it seemed like forever. Her eyes stung from the saltwater, and her arms began to feel like lead from the effort. She looked at the sky, trying to pick out the North Star to help with her bearings, but it was below the horizon. Twice she lost her grip as she dozed off in the tepid water, sinking as the scanty kapok flotation became more and more waterlogged.

On one occasion she awakened spluttering with saltwater, after a trance-like episode in which she thought she could breathe underwater, as in a dream. Struggling to the surface, she began to scream, more to jar herself awake than to attract help, as rescue was the faintest of possibilities in the blackness. She thought,
you’d think that the sub’s crew would have made more of an effort to pick up survivors,
but then it occurred to her that something caused them to abandon their chase of the lifeboat and dive. But what? That gave her hope. She didn’t know it was the high-flying patrol bomber that was then heading back to base.

Contemplating spending the tropical night in the water, she vowed to stay awake. She sang. She shouted. She thought of her year’s labor, and the reason they had been hijacked. This enraged her, and the flow of adrenaline stimulated more anger, at the hijackers and especially at the Pope. She thought of whatever curse could be the most blasphemous of all, and settled on an oath absolutely forbidden in her household when she was growing up. She
had learned it from her mother, an American of Swedish parentage. But she was unable to utter it. In English it seemed bad enough, so she began to scream over and over, “Priest Devils!” She only
thought
the forbidden,
“Prästa Djävulen.”
And that made her madder and more determined than ever to make it out of her predicament alive.

*    *    *

As the two American destroyers knifed through the sea at 38 knots, they began to pick up coded radio traffic not heard before. Short wave was always full of noise--static, carriers, Morse code, and voices--often identifiable by the various accents, but at times disguised and encoded, entirely gibberish. But these new transmissions seemed different to the radio operator of the lead ship, the
U.S.S. Gregory.
Rushing to the bridge, his Chief exclaimed, “Here, sir. Get this, just picked up. It’s obviously in Russian, but encrypted, on the frequency they use to communicate with their subs out of Vladivostok. It’s been coming in every two minutes for the last half hour. They finally got a response, allowing us to get a fix on the position of their vessel, probably a nuclear submarine. It’s dead ahead, sir, according to our radar man.”

“How far?” The Watch Officer snapped.

“Only nine nautical miles, sir,” was the crisp reply.

“Then you’d better raise the Captain right now. We could trigger off an international incident if we close on them.” Turning to his waiting signalman, he commanded, “Signal the
Jarvis
. Battle stations, of course, but safeties on, repeat, safeties on!” He then sounded the klaxon to get everyone’s attention, repeating those orders for the crew.

Not much more than ten miles away, Diana heard what seemed to come as an echo of her last blasphemous shriek, but she realized there c
ould be no echoes on the open sea. With renewed hope, she began to yell again.

“Help!” She screamed repeatedly, until her cries became hoarse. It was only a few minutes before the whine of ships’ screws could be heard in her submerged ears.

She didn’t know who they were, but at that point she knew it was her last chance. It didn’t occur to her that more than six thousand tons were bearing down on her at forty-five miles an hour. All she could think about over the next half-hour was being rescued.

Rapidly approaching her, the
Jarvis
was leaving a long greenish phosphorescent wake. Several of the men on the fantail, grouped around the depth charges, a destroyer’s prime sub-killer, were marveling at the beauty of the balmy night. There was little thought of dropping the twin rows of the deadly charges, despite their being called to action stations. They weren’t at war, and already had endured enough calls to action stations in the month-long search for the fugitive American freighter to make them somewhat blasé.