The frogmen (12 page)

And there were the blue tennis shoes.

Going up, he saw that Tanaka was lying lengthwise on a copra sack, almost submerging it, his legs hanging limp at one end, his hands and wrists at the other.

Amos was about to reach out and touch the ankles to see if he was alive when he heard the thrum of propellers.

For a moment he lay still, getting a bearing on the sound but still unable to see the hull of the boat.

It sounded as though it was close inshore and moving slowly. He could not be sure with the sound of the rain confusing him, but it seemed that the boat was starting and stopping at irregular intervals.

Reeder's scuba lay beside the moray on the growth of brain coral a little to his left, and he swam down to it, getting the scuba and bringing it back.

Now he could see the hull of the boat clearly, about a hundred feet away, and could hear the sound of the motors but not the thrum of the screws.

There were half a dozen copra sacks in the water around the boat and, when one of them disappeared, Amos assumed that they were methodically being picked up by the crew aboard.

Then the screws began again, the boat moving slowly toward him.

At the first touch on his ankles, Tanaka jerked his feet feebly, but Amos pulled him straight down, walking his hands up until he had him by the head. Holding him with one hand, he pushed the mouth-

piece in between his teeth and clamped Tanaka's jaws.

Tanaka stopped struggling, and in a moment air began to burst from the valve.

Amos got one of the harness straps around Tanaka's back and buckled it, the scuba hanging awkwardly in front of him, the lead weights dangling around his feet. Tanaka seemed badly hurt. Even with Amos helping, he could barely get his arms around the tanks.

They were both sinking slowly, the boat now making a shadow on them, when, from nowhere, a man appeared.

He was small and very muscular, equipped with nothing but small goggles, each eyepiece separate. He had a knife in his right hand.

For an instant he and Amos stared at each other, both of them motionless with surprise.

Then Amos shoved Tanaka toward the bottom and let him go. Reaching out, he caught the man's knife hand at the wrist and pulled him straight down. At the same time he twisted the arm up and behind him. Clamping his other arm around the man's neck, he held him, but could not prevent the man's free hand from grabbing the air hose and yanking the regulator out of his mouth.

To save what air he had, Amos resisted as little as possible, just holding the knife up between his shoulder blades and putting all his effort into the arm that was choking him. He did nothing about

the man's free hand and legs, which clawed and beat at him.

It didn't take long. First the arm went limp and Amos slid his hand up and took the knife. Then the whole body sagged and collapsed, and Amos turned him loose and got his mouthpiece in again.

They were now almost under the bow of the ship, which was wallowing in the waves with no way on. He could hear the motors idling, but there was no thrash of propellers.

Dragging the man by the hand, Amos dived down to the moray.

He put the man against the coral, holding him there with his knee, and then opened the eel's mouth and drove the fangs into the man's neck, locking them in place.

As the blood oozed out, Amos got the man's knife and stabbed it into the eel, slanting it down so that it would not fall out.

Taking the man by the shoulders, he moved with him into the deep shadow of the boat's hull and then swam upward, pushing the man as he went, the eel, looking almost alive, turning and twisting as it hung from the throat.

When he reached the barnacled keel of the boat, he pushed the man around the turn of the bilge and kept pushing him until he came to the surface at about amidships.

Amos retreated back to the keel and waited, hoping the rain wouldn't suddenly stop. With the rain spattering on the surface and the clouds dark above

it, he knew that the men in the boat couldn't see down into the water at all. But if the rain stopped and the sun came out, they might spot Tanaka or his air exhaust coming up in streaks of silver bubbles.

There was a commotion in the water where the man was floating, his feet and the tail of the eel still visible, and then both disappeared, going straight up.

Amos put his fins against the rough hull of the boat and pushed himself down.

Tanaka was on the bottom, half-sitting, half-lying against the lava, the air bubbles streaming up its corrugated surface.

Taking him gently, Amos moved him toward the tunnel mouth, and into it, and then followed him.

Amos waited a few feet inside, watching for any other divers, but none appeared, and at last he heard the propellers start and saw the shadow of the boat heading back into the lagoon.

He turned to Tanaka, moving him so that he could get him through the tunnel without hurting him.

At the end of the tunnel, Amos surfaced and looked cautiously into the cave.

Max had already come back and was out of his gear. John was arranging the supplies over on the beach.

Amos pulled Tanaka clear of the tunnel and brought his head up above the water. "Give me a hand; he's hurt."

John and Max stared at him for a second and then splashed out into the water.

They swam Tanaka across the pool and let him lie with his body in the water and his head on the gravel as they took the scuba off.

"Leave him in the water until we get his clothes off," Max said. "Don't bend his neck or anything until we find out what's wrong with him."

Tanaka's breath was fast and shallow. "Is he out?" Amos asked.

Tanaka said weakly, "No."

When Max got his shirt off, John said in a whisper, "Look at that."

There was a great, swollen, purple bruise across the right side of Tanaka's back, the edges of it oozing dark, thick blood. It looked to Amos as though someone had hit him with a two-by-four, for the bruise was about three inches wide and extended down below his armpit.

Max began to touch him, the big hands moving gently. "His backbone's okay and so's his neck, but I think he's got some busted ribs. Something really belted him. Look, tear up one of those bags, make some strips."

Max peeled out of his wet suit and spread it on the beach. Then, as though lifting a child, he picked Tanaka out of the water and laid him face up on the rubber suit. "How you feeling, Commander?"

"Sick," Tanaka said.

"That's okay. We'll strap you up."

"You know how?" John asked.

"I know how they used to do it to me. Whenever some big mother broke my ribs, they'd strap me up so tight I couldn't move or breathe. Then they'd say, 'Get back in there, tiger, and give it to 'em/ m

Tanaka tried to smile, but it wasn't much good.

John was cutting one of the supply sacks into strips as Amos came out of the water and started taking off his gear.

"Hey!" John said. "Where'd you get the gun?"

Amos unhooked the .45. "I found it on the bottom. The boat's gone. Blown all to pieces."

"Gone?"

"Scattered all over."

John suddenly looked like a hurt and confused child. Even his voice sounded a little childish as he said, "But how are we going to get home?"

"And all the people?" Max said.

Amos turned back to Tanaka. "Is anyone else in the water?"

Tanaka shook his head. "They're gone."

"You're lucky," Amos said.

"I wasn't aboard." He winced as Max slid one of the straps under his back. "I was on the fantail when something hit me from behind. I think it was a section of the handrail, because it was in the water with me."

"It knocked you overboard?" Amos asked.

Tanaka nodded. "I saw Reeder forcing the crew into the engine room. He had that gun. . . ." Tanaka tried to point at the .45. "He shot at me again in the water, but he missed."

"You think his first shot hit the handrail?" Amos asked. "And then that hit you?"

Tanaka nodded.

"In a way, you were lucky," Amos told him. "That explosion blew the engine all the way out of the boat."

"Those poor guys," Max said softly. "They weren't even in this war. And they were almost home."

"Reeder got the boat underway," Tanaka said. "At first he held his course into the lagoon. But then he speeded up, and headed out again. It must have made them suspicious, so they fired at him. I was too far away to see, and it was raining."

"They didn't shoot," Amos said. "It was a mine."

Tanaka closed his eyes, his face suddenly tight with pain.

"He's got some busted ones, all right," Max said, tying a strip of the sack around his chest. "And if he was closer to that explosion than we were, it might've busted something else. I felt like my guts were caving in."

"No boat," John said, staring out at the pool of water. "What are we going to do, Amos?"

Amos shrugged.

"No radio," John said.

Tanaka, his eyes still shut, said, "John, was that really the coding board you had?"

"Yes, it was."

"That's good."

"Why?"

"We can still communicate."

"With what?"

"At least we've got it," Tanaka said.

John looked at Amos and made a twilling motion, his finger pointed at his head. Amos nodded. "Take it easy, Commander. Do you want some water?"

Tanaka shook his head.

Amos studied him for a moment and then looked up at Max.

Max shrugged a little. "I don't know."

"You don't know what?" Tanaka said.

"Nothing, sir."

John had the coding-board case in his lap. The board lay on the pebbles beside him. "There aren't any key-code strips in the case, Commander."

Tanaka's smile was just a weak baring of his teeth. "I told you, we don't need strips. The keys are in my head, John."

"That's good."

"There're mines all across the channel," Amos told him. "I don't know what kind. Cylinders, John, with four Hertz on top and some sort of firing mechanism."

"Tricky?" John said.

"Could be."

Tanaka's voice sounded weak and pitiful. "What is today? Does anybody know what today is?"

"Lousy," John said.

"No, no. The date."

"The nineteenth," Amos told him.

"Are you sure?"

'That's what my watch says."

"We've got to be sure!" Tanaka said. He tried to sit up, but the pain slammed him back on the beach.

"It's the nineteenth, Commander," Amos said. "Just take it easy."

Tanaka's eyes were wide open, staring at the rock ceiling. "I can't remember," he said. "I just can't remember. Not for the nineteenth."

"We got lots of time," John said. "Just a heap of

it.

"You take a little snooze," Max said. He pushed part of the wet suit up under Tanaka's head. "Here. Now just shut your eyes and take a little snooze."

Amos went over to the spare tanks, fitted two fresh ones into his harness, and slung the pack into place. As he buckled up, he said, "I'm going out to take a look."

"At what?" John asked.

"Around." Amos selected some tools out of the box and put them into the canvas tool bag hanging from his belt. "Check me for magnetic, John."

"Amos, ol' buddy," John said, "you're not getting the picture. Without the boat, we can't go anywhere. Without the radio, we can't talk to anybody."

"We've still got mines," Amos said, "and we've still got the coding board. Just check me, John."

John glanced over at Tanaka, who was either asleep or unconscious. "Mines, we got. But if he can't remember the keys, that coding board is just a piece of wood."

"Come on," Amos said.

"Amos," John said quietly, "let's just sit down and eat something and talk this thing over. Okay?"

"No," Amos said. "Anyway, we might be in here a long time, and we'd better start planning not to eat anything until we have to. And then not much. So check me out, John."

John came over and reluctantly began checking. "What for, Amos?"

"Because I don't want to sit around in here," Amos said. "It makes me nervous."

Max was sitting beside Tanaka, his feet in the water. "You know, I used to be pretty good at doping out where the ball was going." His voice sounded soft and remote in the silence of the cave.

"Got to get rid of that knife," John said, unhooking the scabbard from Amos' belt. "Must be solid iron. Here, take mine."

"So I'd be there," Max said. "Waiting for him. It was a good feeling to see that surprised look on his face when he saw me where I wasn't supposed to be. And he always looked a little sad too."

"Okay for magnetism," John said.

"But every now and then I'd dope it out all wrong, and the man I was waiting for wouldn't have the ball, and he'd look at me and grin and I'd look around, and the man with the ball would be long gone. It used to make me feel useless. Just downright useless."

Amos looked over at him, pulled the mask down, and fell forward into the water.

It was the first time Amos had been in the channel under a cloudless sky with the afternoon sun throwing dark shadows from the brilliant growths of coral. All around him now were bright fishes and vividly colored corals, and the water was so clear that it was hard to remember it was there, completely surrounding him.

The rows of gray mines stretched out across the channel, hundreds of the alien things, their silence, their lack of motion and color making them ugly.

The shadows of the mines were long across the bottom as he swam over to the one closest to the cave mouth and hovered above it.

The part he could see was a flat-topped cylinder about five feet tall and three feet in diameter. He could not tell how much more of the thing was imbedded in the sandy bottom.

The four contact horns set into the flat top about three inches in from the outer rim looked to him like standard Hertz horns; just hollow lead tubes, closed at the top and sticking up from the case about four inches.

The square metal box, which he assumed was the firing mechanism, was set between the horns in the center of the top.

Amos had never seen a mine like this. He lay in the water a long time, studying it, before he drifted down a little and, at last, reached out to it.