Ghostboat (37 page)

Hardy glanced self-consciously at his underwear. He rubbed his arms, aware of the bone-chilling cold.

Cassidy’s head appeared in the hatchwell at their feet. “Okay,” he said, “who did we kill?”

Hardy glanced from one to the other, afraid of how they would react.

“I know what’s happening!”

“What is happening?” the Captain challenged him.

Hardy licked his lips. “The boat is after
me.”

There was a stunned silence. “It’s what?” croaked Dorriss.

“It’s come back to get
me!”

“Really?” said Frank smoothly. He never took his eyes off the Professor.

“It’s true! That crew has returned to get the one man they left behind.” He looked at Cassidy for support; Cassidy was aghast. “I was supposed to go down with this boat thirty years ago!”

Dead silence; then a snort of surprised laughter from the Captain. “Thirty years... ?” he said.

“Goddammit! I know I’m right!” Hardy grabbed Frank by the shoulders and spoke into his face. “If you and this crew stay aboard, they’ll take you too! We’ve got to stop the boat and get everybody off!”

Frank pulled away. Hardy looked around wildly. “Listen to me! Today is December eleventh! There’s less than
one
day to go!”

A smile that Hardy recognized as amused contempt appeared on Frank’s face. Then Hardy noticed the Captain’s hand: It was holding down the switches on the battle-phone circuit. Every word Hardy said was being transmitted to the crew. Hardy stared in anguish at the betraying fingers, then swept a gaze up to Frank’s icy, determined face—and was confronted by the cold-blooded disdain of Billy G. Basquine.

“Well, Mr. Hardy, if you’re through dispensing portents, perhaps you will return to your bunk and allow the rest of us to go about our business.”

Hardy stared at the small group of strangers in the conning tower, realizing he must sound like a maniac to these men. Hardy moved to the well and started down, but Dorriss’s mocking voice caught him short.

“Shouldn’t stalk around in your shorts, Jack. Christ, if you’d only wear socks, you wouldn’t get those damned cold feet all the time.”

Hardy couldn’t speak; even his breath stuck in his throat. He went below and heard Frank’s voice over the intercom: “Resume speed. Ahead full on two engines.”

Hardy glanced once at Cassidy, who could not meet his gaze and turned to go back to his station. Hardy looked at Lieutenant Stigwood. The surprise was gone from his face too, replaced by the sort of sniggering hostility that Hardy used to get from Stanhill and the rest of the 1944 crew. The other men in the control room, Roybell and the auxiliarymen, hardly even made an attempt to hide their derisory smiles. Everybody was in on the joke, and Hardy was the butt of it.

He hurried back to his quarters, more frightened than angry. He tried to pull on his pants, and discovered how badly he was shaking. His fingers refused to cooperate. He sat on the bunk, unable to stop the flow of tears.

Were they going to drag him back to Latitude 30°? Was that all there was to it? Seemed rather pointless—a purpose lacking in logic, even for ghosts. He felt the uncertainty again. If he wasn’t crazy, surely this would drive him to it. Would the
Candlefish
really have come back just to get
him?
Or was there another purpose he had not yet seen?

PART V

CHAPTER 21

December 11
 

0212 hours.

Hardy stepped out of the CPO quarters and stood in the corridor trying to formulate a plan of attack. He had to stop this boat dead—had to cost them at least twenty-four hours of travel.

The conning tower was out. He had already made his move there. The helmsman would call for the Captain if he so much as set foot on the upper deck. The control room—Dorriss would have told Stigwood to keep an eye on him, so the central diving controls were out. He would not even be able to get near the planes, the manifolds, the valves...

The pump room, below decks directly under the control room? Impossible—he would have to go through the control-room hatch; he would be stopped, questioned. The batteries? He could increase the acid level—no! Increase the
load
level to a battery section, turn on the high-speed battery intake valves, take on sea water—yes! The salt water would get into the circuits, then into the cells—there would be massive electrolysis. He would have to see that at least five circuits were affected, and all of them yards apart. The result would be quantity emissions of noxious chlorine gas. Greenish-yellow vapors would seep up through the ventilating system into several compartments. They would have to seal off those compartments, turn off the vents, and eventually send a man down with a chlorine lung to determine which cell was the source. Then, one by one, they would have to track down the others.

Hardy smiled. It would take several hours for them to secure battery balance again. Several hours of costly, premium
time.
If he could just delay them enough so they wouldn’t connect with Latitude 30° at the precise moment—

The only problem was—fore or aft? The forward battery was directly below officers’ country. He could probably get down there and arrange some of the damage, but he ran a big risk by doing so. He would be alone. What if he made a slip and was overcome by the gas?

He would be better off going aft, to the battery compartment below the crew’s quarters, where if something went wrong he could holler for help, make some excuse...

The beauty of it astounded him. Not only would Frank fly into a panic to make repairs, but he wouldn’t be able to charge batteries sufficiently for a full daytime submergence in the morning, which meant they would have to lie low on the surface for several hours without making progress.

—He stepped through the connecting hatch to the control room and nodded to Stigwood, whose eyes swung away. The silent treatment. Ostracism. So he was right back where he had been in 1944. Well, so what? It didn’t matter now.

The entrance to the after battery compartment was a deck hatch in the forward section of the crew’s quarters. It was normal procedure for an officer to check the acid level in the cells, so no one questioned Hardy when he lifted the hatch, stretched prone on the deck, then lowered the top part of his torso into the compartment, head first. He gazed down the long rows of enormous battery cells. Each lead-acid unit was almost as big as a small man, and there were dozens of them. He could just crawl around among them and pick and choose—

The alarm bell went off in his head:
time!
Too much time. It would take forever to organize all this and then have it come off at the right moment. It was no good; he needed speed and surprise.

Grimly he rose from the compartment.

“Anything wrong?”

It was Clampett, stretched out on a nearby bunk, watching him curiously.

“No. No... nothing.” Hardy closed the hatch and smiled at the torpedoman, who responded with a sour look. Hardy made his way aft, heading for the engine room.

He pulled himself through the hatch and immediately began to examine dials and gauges on the bulkheads around him, his mind racing now to find another method of stopping the boat—before
he
could be stopped.

“Anything wrong?”

Good God, am I that obvious? Hardy asked himself. If they all ask the same question, pretty soon one of them is going to catch on. He swung around, face to face with Walinsky. The pipe was at an angle, hanging from the side of the Chief s mouth. He had asked the question with concern, rather than suspicion.

“Well?”

Hardy blinked at Walinsky. “You tell me—is everything up on the line?”

“Sure.”

“No trouble spots?”

“You forget, I built this boat.”

Hardy nodded, started around him, then stopped. He looked back at Walinsky. Walinsky? No—Cassidy! Hopalong Cassidy, He just said, “I built this boat.”
Cassidy
had a hand in its construction—
not
Walinsky.

Hardy was convinced that each man aboard had become his counterpart from 1944: A massive personality exchange had taken place, with the substitute personalities quite drastic departures from the originals.

But Cassidy and Walinsky were practically the same man. Whatever differences there were between them were so minute as to be almost unnoticeable. They were both the old men of the boat, both had been mechanical wizards, both were Hardy’s friend...

That was the key. Appeal to Cassidy’s friendship- treat him as Cassidy—make him believe he is Cassidy—
drive Walinsky out of him.

He stepped closer to Cassidy and looked into his eyes. “I need your help,” he said.

He took Cassidy’s elbow and led him back to his station. Huddled in a corner, out of earshot, Hardy poured out the details of the situation as he saw it, carefully feeding Cassidy morsels that couldn’t be refuted: the series of coincidences, the sinking of the ships, the change that had come over the Captain.

“Naw. He’s always been like that—”

“No, he hasn’t,” Hardy objected, “only since Byrnes was killed!”

“Byrnes?” Puzzlement filled Cassidy’s eyes.

“Byrnes—the Captain!”

Cassidy looked blank. “Basquine’s the Captain. Lieutenant—what the hell are you talking about?”

“Cassidy, I sailed on this boat in World War Two! Thirty years ago—when you were at Mare Island, building these boats. I served aboard the
Candlefish
two years after she was launched!
And you put her together!
You—
Cassidy!
Walinsky never worked in the yards.”

“But that’s not—but I—?”

Cassidy backed against the bulkhead, looking terribly confused. Hardy pressed on. “Did you read my log?”

“Your what?”

“Read it again! Locker number four in the aft torpedo room. Get one from there. Skim it You’ll see what I mean right away.”

Cassidy nodded helplessly.

“Cassidy, I’ve been where we’re going. Believe me, we can’t go there again.”

“Right.”

“The boat will sink. Everyone will be killed. We have to stop it.”

“You’re right.”

“Cassidy, look at me!” Cassidy looked. “We will hit Latitude Thirty and we’ll just disappear.” He snapped his fingers: “Just like that. You have to help me.”

Cassidy stared at him. “How?”

“Get everyone off!”

“Only the Captain can do that.”

“He won’t.”

“Well, then, the Exec—”

“He
won’t! You don’t understand—they’re not going to cooperate. It’s down to you and me, and we’ve only got one day!”

“Well... what do you want to do?”

Hardy moved closer and whispered into Cassidy’s ear, “Stop the boat. Right now—here. Sabotage...”

He missed the sudden flash of horror that shot across the Chiefs face. Cassidy or Walinsky, the Chief was old-line Navy. You don’t sink your ship unless it’s already going down and you want to be sure it doesn’t fall into enemy hands. There was no way he would be willing to endanger the sub. It was time to stop humoring Hardy. The old Chief gave him a shaky smile and gripped his arm in reassurance.

“Look—you just sit down, sir, and I’ll go get us some coffee. Just sit right here and everything will be okay. I’ll be right back.”

Hardy sensed the tone. He was losing the one ally he had aboard the boat—losing him to the past. If Cassidy was about to betray him to the Captain, then Hardy wanted to plant at least the seed of doubt.

“Cassidy, listen to me. Your name is Cassidy. You sailed from Pearl on November twenty-first. Byrnes was the captain. Byrnes was killed on December second and Ed Frank took command. Is any of this coming back to you?”

Cassidy went blank for a moment, then seemed to react. “Ed Frank, yes.”

“Okay, now go to the control room and
see how he signs the log!”

Cassidy hesitated a moment, then hurried off to the galley. Hardy watched him go, the tightness going out of him, but he was still grim. He hoped it hadn’t been a wasted effort. At least now he had a plan.

He turned and headed for the after torpedo room.

On his way to the galley, Cassidy struggled with what Hardy had told him. It was such a maze of contradictions, such a jumble of thoughts. The unfortunate part was that he liked Hardy. But if it came to a choice between Hardy and the sub, the boat got first consideration.

What was Hardy trying to tell him about the Captain? He stopped at the entrance to the crew’s mess and scowled. How could one man think he was another man—how could an entire crew think they were some other crew? It was insane.

He went cold. Maybe all those stories that Stigwood and Dorriss had been spreading were true. Maybe Hardy
was
off his rocker. If so, he presented a potential threat to the sub.