The Star (20 page)
‘I’m not a spy!’ answered Hans indignantly as the meaning of the words penetrated. ‘You can’t do this! I’m a loyal American citizen!’
The other ignored the outburst. He handed over the photograph.
‘Do you recognise this?’ he said.
‘Yes. It’s the inside of Captain Zipp’s spaceship.’
‘And you designed it?’
‘Yes.’
Another photograph came out of the file.
‘And what about this?’
‘That’s the Martian city of Paldar, as seen from the air.’
‘Your own idea?’
‘Certainly,’ Hans replied, now too indignant to be cautious.
‘And
this
?’
‘Oh, the proton gun. I was quite proud of that.’
‘Tell me, Mr Muller—are these all your own ideas?’
‘Yes,
I
don’t steal from other people.’
His questioner turned to his companion and spoke for a few minutes in a voice too low for Hans to hear. They seemed to reach agreement on some point, and the conference was over before Hans could make his intended grab at the telephone.
‘I’m sorry,’ continued the intruder. ‘But there has been a serious leak. It may be—uh—accidental, even unconscious, but that does not affect the issue. We will have to investigate you. Please come with us.’
There was such power and authority in the stranger’s voice that Hans began to climb into his overcoat without a murmur. Somehow, he no longer doubted his visitors’ credentials and never thought of asking for any proof. He was worried, but not yet seriously alarmed. Of course, it was obvious what had happened. He remembered hearing about a science fiction writer during the war who had described the atom bomb with disconcerting accuracy. When so much secret research was going on, such accidents were bound to occur. He wondered just what it was he had given away.
At the doorway, he looked back into his workshop and at the men who were following him.
‘It’s all a ridiculous mistake,’ he said. ‘If I
did
show anything secret in the programme, it was just a coincidence. I’ve never done anything to annoy the FBI.’
It was then that the second man spoke at last, in very bad English and with a most peculiar accent.
‘What is the FBI?’ he asked.
But Hans didn’t hear him. He had just seen the spaceship.
First published in
Satellite
, June 1957
Collected in
Tales from the White Hart
This story was written in Miami, in 1954. Despite the lapse of time, many of the themes of this story are surprisingly up-to-date, and a few years ago I was amazed to read a description in a scientific journal of a ship-borne device to extract uranium from sea water! I sent a copy of the story to the inventors, and apologised for invalidating their patent.
The adventures of Harry Purvis have a kind of mad logic that makes them convincing by their very improbability. As his complicated but neatly dovetailed stories emerge, one becomes lost in a sort of baffled wonder. Surely, you say to yourself, no one would have the nerve to make
that
up—such absurdities only occur in real life, not in fiction. And so criticism is disarmed, or at any rate discomfited, until Drew shouts, ‘Time gentlemen,
pleeze
!’ and throws us all out into the cold hard world.
Consider, for example, the unlikely chain of events which involved Harry in the following adventure. If he’d wanted to invent the whole thing, surely he could have managed it a lot more simply. There was not the slightest need, from the artistic point of view, to have started at Boston to make an appointment off the coast of Florida…
Harry seems to have spent a good deal of time in the United States, and to have quite as many friends there as he has in England. Sometimes he brings them to the ‘White Hart’, and sometimes they leave again under their own power. Often, however, they succumb to the illusion that beer which is tepid is also innocuous. (I am being unjust to Drew: his beer is
not
tepid. And if you insist, he will give you, for no extra charge, a piece of ice every bit as large as a postage stamp.)
This particular saga of Harry’s began, as I have indicated, at Boston, Mass. He was staying as a house guest of a successful New England lawyer when one morning his host said, in the casual way Americans have: ‘Let’s go down to my place in Florida. I want to get some sun.’
‘Fine,’ said Harry, who’d never been to Florida. Thirty minutes later, to his considerable surprise, he found himself moving south in a red Jaguar saloon at a formidable speed.
The drive in itself was an epic worthy of a complete story. From Boston to Miami is a little matter of 1,568 miles—a figure which, according to Harry, is now engraved on his heart. They covered the distance in thirty hours, frequently to the sound of ever-receding police sirens as frustrated squad cars dwindled astern. From time to time considerations of tactics involved them in evasive manoeuvres and they had to shoot off into secondary roads. The Jaguar’s radio tuned in to all the police frequencies, so they always had plenty of warning if an interception was being arranged. Once or twice they just managed to reach a state line in time, and Harry couldn’t help wondering what his host’s clients would have thought had they known the strength of the psychological urge which was obviously getting him away from them. He also wondered if he was going to see anything of Florida at all, or whether they would continue at this velocity down US I until they shot into the ocean at Key West.
They finally came to a halt sixty miles south of Miami, down on the Keys—that long, thin line of islands hooked on to the lower end of Florida. The Jaguar angled suddenly off the road and weaved a way through a rough track cut in the mangroves. The road ended in a wide clearing at the edge of the sea, complete with dock, thirty-five-foot cabin cruiser, swimming pool, and modern ranch-type house. It was quite a nice little hideaway, and Harry estimated that it must have cost the best part of a hundred thousand dollars.
He didn’t see much of the place until the next day, as he collapsed straight into bed. After what seemed far too short a time, he was awakened by a sound like a boiler factory in action. He showered and dressed in slow motion, and was reasonably back to normal by the time he had left his room. There seemed to be no one in the house, so he went outside to explore.
By this time he had learned not to be surprised at anything so he barely raised his eyebrows when he found his host working down at the dock, straightening out the rudder on a tiny and obviously homemade submarine. The little craft was about twenty feet long, had a conning tower with large observation windows, and bore the name
Pompano
stencilled on her prow.
After some reflection, Harry decided that there was nothing really very unusual about all this. About five million visitors come to Florida every year, most of them determined to get on or into the sea. His host happened to be one of those fortunate enough to indulge in his hobby in a big way.
Harry looked at the
Pompano
for some time, and then a disturbing thought struck him. ‘George,’ he said, ‘do you expect me to go down in
that
thing?’
‘Why, sure,’ answered George, giving a final bash at the rudder. ‘What are you worried about? I’ve taken her out lots of times—she’s safe as houses. We won’t be going deeper than twenty feet.’
‘There are circumstances,’ retorted Harry, ‘when I should find a mere six feet of water more than adequate. And didn’t I mention my claustrophobia? It always comes on badly at this time of year.’
‘Nonsense!’ said George. ‘You’ll forget all about that when we’re out on the reef.’ He stood back and surveyed his handiwork, then said with a sigh of satisfaction. ‘Looks OK now. Let’s have some breakfast.’
During the next thirty minutes, Harry learned a good deal about the
Pompano
. George had designed and built her himself, and her powerful little diesel could drive her at five knots when she was fully submerged. Both crew and engine breathed through a snorkel tube, so there was no need to bother about electric motors and an independent air supply. The length of the snorkel limited dives to twenty-five feet, but in these shallow waters this was no great handicap.
‘I’ve put a lot of novel ideas into her,’ said George enthusiastically. ‘Those windows, for instance—look at their size. They’ll give you a perfect view, yet they’re quite safe. I use the old aqualung principle to keep the air pressure in the
Pompano
exactly the same as the water pressure outside, so there’s no strain on the hull or the ports.’
‘And what happens,’ asked Harry, ‘if you get stuck on the bottom?’
‘I open the door and get out, of course. There are a couple of spare aqualungs in the cabin, as well as a life raft with a waterproof radio, so that we can always yell for help if we get in trouble. Don’t worry—I’ve thought of everything.’
‘Famous last words,’ muttered Harry. But he decided that after the ride down from Boston he undoubtedly had charmed life: the sea was probably a safer place than US I with George at the wheel.
He made himself thoroughly familiar with the escape arrangements before they set out, and was fairly happy when he saw how well designed and constructed the little craft appeared to be. The fact that a lawyer had produced such a neat piece of marine engineering in his spare time was not in the least unusual. Harry had long ago discovered that a considerable number of Americans put quite as much effort into their hobbies as into their professions.
They chugged out of the little harbour, keeping to the marked channel until they were well clear of the coast. The sea was calm and as the shore receded the water became steadily more and more transparent. They were leaving behind the fog of pulverised coral which clouded the coastal waters, where the waves were incessantly tearing at the land. After thirty minutes they had come to the reef, visible below them as a kind of patchwork quilt above which multicoloured fish pirouetted to and fro. George closed the hatches, opened the valve of the buoyancy tanks, and said gaily, ‘Here we go!’
The wrinkled silk veil lifted, crept past the window, distorting all vision for a moment—and then they were through, no longer aliens looking into the world of waters, but denizens of that world themselves. They were floating above a valley carpeted with white sand, and surrounded by low hills of coral. The valley itself was barren but the hills around it were alive with things that grew, things that crawled and things that swam. Fish as dazzling as neon signs wandered lazily among the animals that looked like trees. It seemed not only a breathtakingly lovely but also a peaceful world. There was no haste, no sign of the struggle for existence. Harry knew very well that this was an illusion, but during all the time they were submerged he never saw one fish attack another. He mentioned this to George, who commented: ‘Yes, that’s a funny thing about fish. They seem to have definite feeding times. You can see barracuda swimming around and if the dinner gong hasn’t gone the other fish won’t take any notice of them.’
A ray, looking like some fantastic black butterfly, flapped its way across the sand, balancing itself with its long, whiplike tail. The sensitive feelers of a crayfish waved cautiously from a crack in the coral; the exploring gestures reminded Harry of a soldier testing for snipers with his hat on a stick. There was so much life, of so many kinds, crammed in this single spot that it would take years of study to recognise it all.
The
Pompano
cruised very slowly along the valley, while George gave a running commentary.
‘I used to do this sort of thing with the aqualung,’ he said, ‘but then I decided how nice it would be to sit in comfort and have an engine to push me around. Then I could stay out all day, take a meal along, use my cameras and not give a damn if a shark was sneaking up on me. There goes a tang—did you ever see such a brilliant blue in your life? Besides, I could show my friends around down here while still being able to talk to them. That’s one big handicap with ordinary diving gear—you’re deaf and dumb and have to talk in signs. Look at those angelfish—one day I’m going to fix up a net to catch some of them. See the way they vanish when they’re edge on! Another reason why I built the
Pompano
was so that I could look for wrecks. There are hundreds in this area—it’s an absolute graveyard. The
Santa Margarita
is only about fifty miles from here, in Biscayne Bay. She went down in 1595 with seven million dollars of bullion aboard. And there’s a little matter of sixty-five million off Long Cay, where fourteen galleons sank in 1715. The trouble is, of course, that most of these wrecks have been smashed up and overgrown with coral so it wouldn’t do you a lot of good even if you did locate them. But it’s fun to try.’
