Gates of Neptune (10 page)

Now Lenomar moved behind the young man and again put his hand on his head. His voice grew deeper, and he began to repeat certain phrases over and over again rhythmically. “King Cosmos is evil—he will destroy Atlantis— you are the rightful ruler.” Over and over again he said these things, and then, “The Sleepers must die—the Sleepers must die—the Sleepers must die. And when all is done, Lord Necros will make you king of Atlantis, but the Sleepers must die.”

Aramis sat there stiffly. Finally, when the voice of Duke Lenomar paled, he opened his heavy eyes and whispered, “The Sleepers must die. King Cosmos is evil. The Sleepers must die.”

Lenomar smiled and went at once to the door. Opening it, he spoke to one of the guards. “Lord Aramis has a message that must be sent to all units.”

“Yes sir, I will take it myself.”

“Lord Aramis commands that every available mariner
be sent to search for those called the Sleepers. They must be found.”

“Yes, my lord.” The guard nodded obediently. “And what shall be done with them, sir? Shall they be brought here to the Citadel?”

“No!” The dark eyes of Lenomar gleamed, and he said in a chill voice, “Kill them! When you find them, kill them at once. This is the order of the Lord Admiral Aramis!”

W
e'll have to go around Hook Reef,” Valar said grimly. “It's a dangerous place, but we've got to get away from the guards. They'll be coming this way any time.”

“Can't we just go straight on through to the Citadel?” Josh asked.

Val shook his head, his mouth clenched tight. “There's no hope at all that way. There are outposts strung in front of it, and the guards fan out in all directions.” He said roughly, “We don't have as much chance now as we did. We've set the alarm off, and you can be sure that Aramis is smart enough to close the gates. Are you sure you don't want to turn back?”

“No,” Josh said quickly. “We can't do that.”

“There's a difference between courage and foolhardi-ness,” Val said. “We don't have much chance, whichever way we go.”

“But Goel told us what we're to do,” Sarah said. “He's never led us wrong. Please—” she put her hand on Val's arm “—please, let's try. We've got to do our best.”

Val shrugged. “All right, but if you remember the map, we're up close to the top of the Hook now. We'll have to go back to the shank, go around, and come up the other side.” He hesitated. “I have to tell you, they call that area on the south side of Hook Reef the Sea of Rays.”

“That sounds nice,” Abbey said. “You mean like rays of the sun?”

“No, I mean like giant stingrays.”

Wash's eyes popped open. “You mean them big things that look like bats? I've seen them on TV”

“You haven't seen any like these,” Val said. “These are not just stingrays. Some of those, in the old days, got to be as much as three or four feet across, some of them even larger. But—”

“You mean—” Jake stared at him “—you mean these are bigger than that?”

“I mean some of them are fully fifteen feet across, wing tip to wing tip.”

The group just looked at him. Dave finally swallowed hard and said, “What about stingers? Do they have those too?”

“Worse than anything you ever heard of,” Val said gloomily. “It's kind of like a dart, and a sting would be bad. They go right through a diving suit. The suits automatically seal, but unless you get to a doctor real quick, you're a goner.” He looked around. “Maybe we'd better take a vote about whether to go on or not.”

“No,” Josh said grimly, “we've all decided to go on to the Citadel. This is just going to make it harder, that's all.” He looked at Val. “We're in your hands, I guess, and I'll follow wherever you lead.”

Val smiled then. “Well, I'll try to get us through, but let's hope we don't run into a swarm of giant rays.”

He led out again, and by the time they had reached the eastern side of Hook Reef and turned back west, Wash and Reb rode close together. Josh heard Reb say, “You know, it's downright pretty down here, ain't it? Everything's all in Technicolor.”

Everybody knew Wash was still afraid of water, but as he looked about at the swarms of red, yellow, and purple fish, some of them bigger than the Sleepers themselves, Wash said, “I'd like to get a picture of all this.” As they moved on, he asked, “Are you scared, Reb?”

“I don't know. I'd hate to tell you if I was.”

Wash said, “Shoot, I ain't afraid. Oh, well … maybe a little. But we'll be OK.”

They moved along the reef. Josh too was conscious of the brilliant colors of all sorts of animal life. He had never dreamed that a reef was so busy nor had he ever seen such weird, fantastic formations.

They had gone for almost an hour when Val said, “All right. This is where the Sea of Rays begins. Keep a lookout.”

They gathered in a group to have more firepower.

“This is kinda like pulling the wagons around in circles, ain't it?” Reb said. “That's the way they did it out West. Then the Indians would gallop around but couldn't get at them, they were all so close.”

“Well, if you ask me,” Jake said, his eyes darting about nervously, “I think these rays Val's talking about are worse. The Indians didn't have stingers in their tails, anyway.”

On and on they swam. The shark sea beasts moved beneath them effortlessly. At one point Val led them down deeper, saying, “Less current to fight down here.”

Only a few moments later, he cried, “Look out, there they come! See—over there!”

Josh saw overhead a group of huge, shadowy stingrays approaching. They looked like great bats, their wings moving slowly.

“Stop,” Val said. “Be absolutely still. Maybe they won't see us.”

The Sleepers drew up their beasts and grouped as close together as they could. For a moment Josh thought the monsters overhead would pass, but suddenly one of them veered downward.

“They've seen us,” Jake yelled. “Here they come!”

“Get ready,” Val commanded. “Load your guns.”

Josh grabbed a compressed-air dart, loaded it, waited, and saw that the others had done the same.

The first ray came fluttering down, the stinger in his tail twitching back and forth, as if it belonged to a huge cat.

“Don't everybody fire. We'll have to fire volleys so that when some of us are reloading, the others are still armed,” Val yelled. “Jake, you and Wash and I are one group, the rest of you the other group. Get ready, and the first group will fire.”

The rays swam above them like great birds. “That's what they do,” Val said. “They get down on top of you and smother you. Get ready, they're all hitting at once. One— two—three—fire!”

Jake, Wash, and Val fired quickly—the first beast was only ten feet away—and all three spears sank in its midsection, penetrated hide, and went off with a muffled sound Josh heard even through the water. The ray suddenly flipped over. Writhing wildly, it tried to swim away but had gone no more than twenty feet when it began to sink, absolutely motionless.

“Here comes the rest of them,” Reb yelled. “Our turn now.”

Josh yelled, “You and Dave take that one on the right, and we'll take the other two.”

The giant ray began to settle as the spears flew upward. Unfortunately two missed, and it was Val with his group who had reloaded who were able to drive the others off.

Val was the hero of the hour. “Stay together, fire volleys, wait till they get down right over us, but watch out for those stingers.”

That was exactly what they could not do. Three big rays came in at once, and while the Sleepers killed two of
them, the other one suddenly covered Reb, who had moved off to one side.

Frozen with fear, Josh saw the stingray settling down on his friend.

Reb reached up and tried to shove the huge, rough beast away. It didn't work. Then Reb turned his compressed-air gun toward the stingray's leathery stomach.

“Here she goes!” Reb cried.

The dart fired off, drove into the beast's middle, but apparently at such an angle that the ray was only wounded. It turned and began to flutter away, and then the wildly twitching tail suddenly collided with Reb's right leg.

Josh left his sea beast and swam quickly down. “Are you all right, Reb?” But Reb's eyes were turned upward in his head, showing only the whites.

“Got to get him out of here!” Grabbing Reb's arm, he pulled him back to the group and found that the rest of the rays seemed to have been discouraged and were slowly withdrawing, their huge wings moving slowly.

“Reb got hit by a stinger. We've got to help him.”

Val shook his head. “We'll have to get him out of here. And the only place to go is up on the eastern side of the island. It's called Theor's Cave. Can you tie him into the saddle? Maybe we can make it.”

They worked quickly getting Reb tied into the saddle, and Josh and Dave rode on each side to be sure that he didn't fall off.

“Come on,” Val said, “we've got to make it as quick as we can. The poison works fast.”

They drove their sea beasts to the limit of their speed, but still it was an hour before they turned north. Five minutes later, Val led them into what seemed to be a wall of solid rock.

“Here,” he said. “This cave moves upward and has an air space in it. Hurry!”

Josh held Reb, who had become totally helpless.

As they entered the cave there was darkness, but then they emerged into an above-water cavern.

“Hang on. I know where the lights are,” Val called out. He had switched on his own light, such as they all carried, and quickly moved out of sight. “Just like an underground river,” he said, hurrying back. “We'll tether the beasts here. Bring him up on the shore.”

Dave and Josh carried the limp form of Reb up onto the beach and laid him down.

“What is this place?” Sarah asked, looking around. It was not a large cave, probably no more than forty feet in diameter, but obviously it had been built, for the walls were not rough coral, but smooth.

“We made it for a tidal wave, or in case anybody ever got lost or trapped in enemy territory. See,” Val said, “there's food stored here, and we can make a fire.”

“Let's do it. Reb's cold,” Josh said. He pulled Reb's helmet free and felt his forehead. “He's freezing to death.”

Soon they had made a fire out of materials left in one of the lockers, and it made the place a little more cheerful. They stripped the diving suit off Reb and wrapped him in blankets they found stored in another locker, but he was absolutely motionless.

“Can't we do anything else for him?” Sarah pleaded. She was holding Reb's head in her lap and was frightened at the absolute stillness of his body.

“It's the poison,” Val said. “Most people die when they get hit by a ray that big.”

“No,” Sarah cried out. She held the boy's head closely. “We've got to do something. He can't die!”

Val's face was grim. “Everybody dies.” He looked upward and added tightly, “We'll all die if Aramis takes us.”

They made a quick meal out of the food that had been stored. No one was hungry, but they all tried to eat something.

Josh and Sarah stayed close to Reb, and Wash took up his position by the boy's side and held his hand. “Ain't we going to do something?” he begged. “We can't let him die like this.”

Sarah looked at Josh, who said, “I'd do anything I could, but who could know about a thing like this?”

Sarah said suddenly, “I wish we'd never come. I wish you'd never listened to me.”

Josh moved closer and put a hand on her shoulder. “You can't blame yourself, Sarah. We came at God's command. That's all we could do, and we've got to keep on going, no matter what happens. Even if—”

He suddenly broke off. He had intended to say “even if Reb dies.”

Sarah looked down at Reb's pale face. “I don't know what to think anymore. I don't know how to talk or how to ask Goel for help or anything else.” There was desperation in her voice. She lowered her head and began to weep.

Josh, feeling self-conscious, put his arm around her and drew her close. “I guess we all fed that way,” he said. He held her for a long time.

Finally she cried herself out, and then she looked up at him with a tired smile. “You do have a time with me, don't you, Josh Adams?”

He was embarrassed by the question. “Oh, I don't know.” The two sat there with Wash as the time went on, and with each moment it seemed Josh could see life leaving the still form of Reb Jackson.

F
or hours Sarah and her friends took turns watching the sick boy. At times he would appear to wake up, but he never spoke anything resembling logical speech. A raging fever took him, and they had to bathe him with cold cloths to fight it down until it was not deadly.

Val stared down at him. “There's only one thing that would help,” he said hesitantly.