Thin Air (39 page)

McWilliams was moaning, his words jumbled.

Hammond wrenched his eyes from the apparition's face. There, on the jacket over the breast pocket, was a name stenciled in black letters...

SARTOG.

McWilliams tried to pull away, but a ghostly hand locked onto his wrist and he shrieked. The head turned slowly and the eyes swung past Hammond to rest on the compass stand. Thin lips struggled to form a word, but there was no sound.

Hammond followed Sartog's gaze and saw the binnacle light on the compass wink out. Then the compass card spun rapidly back the other way, the degree indicators blurring in the dim light.

McWilliams threw up his hands violently, breaking the grip on his wrist. He crashed to the deck and rolled backwards.

As soon as contact was broken, the body started to fade from view. Hammond couldn't move: he was mesmerized by the pain and suffering etched into that tormented face. The vanishing hand stretched out toward him and the eyes pleaded for him to take it....

Yablonski shouted, "Grab him!" and lunged forward, tripping over McWilliams and sprawling to the deck.

Hammond tried to take the hand and missed. He watched the phantom disintegrate, fading to a dim pulse of light, then out, leaving no trace.

Yablonski crawled across the deck and jabbed at the air, trying to make contact again. Too late. The thing was gone. They were frozen in silence, listening to their own labored breathing. Hammond recalled Rinehart's chilling words: "Sartog went zero and got locked out." The phrase drummed at his mind again and again, finally blending with the rain beating overhead. And he remembered Warrington and the other crewmen getting locked out in their hospital rooms, the laying-on of hands the only thing that saved them. But this was something else. What had Rinehart called it? "Deadlock. A state of invisible suspension." The victim was trapped in another dimension. Scattered atoms, confined to a certain area, waiting to be brought back into a cohesive whole by human touch and something else....Residual velocity of the force field? After thirty-odd years? It didn't seem possible...or likely. He gazed again at the compass. There were magnets built into it to act as dampers, to keep it accurate. Only a magnetic field stronger than the one in the compass could have caused the shift they had witnessed.

And the reappearance of Sartog.

But what magnetic field? Where?

Yablonski stood up, shoulders sagging in despair. He took it as a personal failure. "He went zero on us, Hammond—"

McWilliams also rose. "Mother of God," he groaned. "What the hell was that?" He stumbled to the hatch, avoiding the area where the figure had materialized.

Hammond edged toward the spot and felt around slowly, carefully, for Sartog's body. Nothing. Not even a trace of body heat.

"Come on, Hammond. We've had enough." Yablonski was standing at the hatch with McWilliams.
      

"What do you mean, enough?" Hammond controlled his own shaking. "I thought you were hot to get these people. Christ, we've got more evidence than we can handle—"

"No heroics, damnit!" Yablonski snarled. "Let's be smart and get reinforcements." McWilliams nodded vigorously.

Hammond stared at them. Of course Cas was right. Hammond was himself feeling giddy, spaced-out. Events were moving too fast. Sartog—what an astonishing find! He felt daring, but he couldn't risk the lives of these two men.

He stepped out and looked fore and aft, but the rain obscured his vision. He swung his leg over the lip of the bridge and one-handed himself down the ladder, followed by the others.

On the main deck, he drew the Browning again, and released the safety. Now it was getting to him too. The silence seemed ominous. Even the rain thudded louder than usual. He motioned for Yablonski and McWilliams to go ahead to the gangplank.

Then they all heard a hatch slam open somewhere aft.

They stood like granite statues just behind the starboard breakwater, each one ready to urge the others to run, each so petrified he couldn't move.

A figure appeared on the main deck, and they fumbled with their flashlights. The figure froze, caught in the triple beam.

"McCarthy!"

It was Yablonski who yelled. Hammond peered through the rain at the figure backing away toward the lifeboat mounting.

Yablonski swore and charged after him.

Dr. McCarthy stumbled backward and almost fell through the open hatch.

"Yablonski!" Hammond yelled, cocking the Browning. He broke into a run, McWilliams following, and they caught up with Cas a moment after he had jumped into the passageway. A noise from aft drew all three flashlight beams. For an instant, they saw McCarthy again; then he shot down a ladder and disappeared from view.

"The engine-room!" yelled Hammond, wondering even as he said it why McCarthy would go there, allowing himself to be trapped.

Then Yablonski bolted down the corridor and Hammond stopped thinking. He just ran, with McWilliams at his heels. They stormed down the ladder, stumbled through two other compartments, then stopped just short of the engine room.

The overhead lights were off.

Hammond stuck his head through the hatch and looked down. "McCarthy!" he yelled. "You've had it! Come on out!"

No answer. Hammond beamed his flashlight down, taking cover behind the hatch. No one fired back at him, so he eased out onto the platform and swept the engine room with his light. McCarthy was nowhere to be seen.

Yablonski heard it first—a low whirring sound. He stiffened in alarm.

Hammond listened. The whirring sound grew.

On impulse, Hammond swung his light over to the pump casings. Fear shot through him as he realized how wrong all this was. McCarthy could escape just by punching the back of his neck and disappearing. Why run down here, back to the pedestal?

Unless it was a trap.

The balsa crate was lying where he'd placed it, and he could just make out the top of the pedestal. He swung the light away and realized the pedestal was glowing—horizontal shafts of orange-yellow, stacked one on top of the other like light through Venetian blinds...or through a vent.

And then he understood why Sartog had reappeared. The magnetic field generated by that thing when McCarthy had used it to come aboard—

"He's started the force field!" Yablonski shouted and yanked on Hammond's arm, making him drop the gun. It fell off the platform and smacked to the deck, going off with a loud crack!

Hammond whirled, stunned immobile. Of course! He watched Yablonski's eyes widen in terror as the pitch began to build. Like lambs to the slaughter, they had been
led
down here.

Hammond shoved McWilliams out of the hatch. "We've got to get off!"
 

McWilliams needed no further urging. He shot down the corridor, knocking the flashlight against a hatch and losing it. The beam whipped around before hitting the deck and going out.

By the time they made the ladder, the midsection was fading out in concentric radiation. McWilliams heaved himself up, then helped Yablonski and Hammond. He whirled to charge up the next corridor. Yablonski grabbed him.

"Grab hands!" he shouted, locking onto both of them. They careened along the corridor, trying to ignore the plates fading beneath their feet.

McWilliams got a glimpse of what was happening and slammed himself against the bulkhead. Yablonski kicked him and shouted, "Don't look! Run!"

The access hatch was only a faint outline when they stumbled through it, bashing their limbs against already invisible metal.

The main deck was completely invisible. Shadowy outlines shimmered below, then faded away. Machinery beneath their feet gave way to open water.

They sprawled on the solidity of the deck, afraid to move, yet they could see the next destroyer, whole and unaffected, only yards away. They scrambled toward it.

A wall of energy rolled over them as, with hands still linked, they struggled to their feet. They raced around the base of the bridge and crashed into the invisible deck gun.

"We're not going to make it!" Hammond yelled.

"We've got to!" Yablonski snapped back, and felt the way for them with his leg extended, around the open end of the steel wall.

Hammond felt himself falling. Yablonski tightened his grip and suddenly threw McWilliams forward like a discus, over the rail and onto the next ship. The effort was too much. He lost his own balance, staggered backwards, and sprawled on top of Hammond.

Then everything began to darken around them. Hammond tried to scoot toward the rail, but Yablonski held him down, warning, "Too late! Don't leave the field!"

Hammond remembered what had happened to Martin and stared with growing terror at McWilliams on the other DE.

McWilliams had landed in a heap and looked back, horrified-to see Hammond, Yablonski, and the
Sturman
completely disappear from sight.

Mooring lines that secured the four remaining ships went slack. The ships slipped into the trough left by the
Sturman.
McWilliams was thrown across the deck.

His yell of surprise was drowned out by the sound of snapping lines and grinding metal as the remaining DEs compensated for the outboard loss.

22

Sprawled on the deck on his hands and knees, Hammond watched with horror the destroyer vanishing underneath him.

In the misty grayness, with the .generator screaming to a high pitch around him, he saw his own flesh fade to a vague shadow. Fingers closed about his arm; vibrations coursed through the contact. His body became light and airy; his muscles relaxed; limbs turned to rubber. Forces built up around him, surging from beneath to totally engulf him. Pressure in his head became a rhythmic ache, pounding like surf on a rocky shore. The light waned to feeble, and the last thing he saw was the terror-stricken expression on Yablonski's nearly vanished face.

Then he slipped through a veil of blackness and lost all feeling, all sensation. He was numb even to the overwhelming sense of dread within him.

He drifted in space for an endless time, then consciousness rolled back and he felt a reassuring touch on his arm, a grip that rooted him to something.

Seconds later, he revived to the echo of turbines winding down in some vast expanse of enclosed emptiness. He thought he was in a tomb. Murky blackness, then a thunderous clap of water smashed against hull plates, and his eyes pierced a rapidly clearing fog. In the gloom, he felt his body and the deck beneath it return to solid wholeness.

He couldn't move. There was serenity and peace in not moving. He was afraid if he did move it would start all over again. His head weighed a ton and sagged between his stiffened arms; he still crouched on hands and knees. The grip on his arm had become viselike. He glued his eyes to the wooden deck and thought he could see molecules swarming back to inert stability.

After a moment, the pressure drained from his head and he was able to raise it a few inches, expanding his range of vision. It was still dark, though not as black as a moment before. Again he was sensitive to an echo and had the impression he was indoors. But it was still the deck of the
Sturman
under his touch. Through the darkness he saw shapes high overhead and immense wooden beams on either side.

Rafters. And the intersection of a catwalk.

He and Yablonski and the
Sturman
had all moved into some sort of huge enclosure. Not a tomb at all, but a old wooden shed.

Hammond glanced to his right to see what was gripping him. Yablonski's knuckles were bone-white, wrapped around Hammond's upper arm.

Hammond wobbled to his feet and helped Yablonski up. They heard shouting and tried to focus on the sound, somewhere off the starboard bow. They saw men with flashlights hurrying along a narrow platform that ran toward the hull of the
Sturman.

Suddenly, Hammond knew where they were. This enormous shed was a floating indoor drydock.

More shouts—from hefty men wearing gray jumpsuits, with automatic weapons slung over their shoulders. The platform inclined to an elevated ramp off the starboard side from which the men grabbed the
Sturman'
s mooring lines and attached them to stanchions.

Hammond had just taken a hesitant step forward when a voice boomed over a loudspeaker: "Commander Hammond, Mr. Yablonski, stay where you are. We'll come for you in just a moment."

Lights came on overhead, worklights among the rafters, castings eerie shadows across the
Sturman'
s
 
foredeck. Patches of illumination spread down the walls of the shed, lined with big squares of insulating fabric.

The
Sturman
sat in shallow water with her bow nosed in like a car in a garage. There was enough room on the port side to park a second ship of the same size. And along that opposite wall was an enormous movable derrick with a twenty-ton swinging crane, on a set of tracks sunk into a concrete abutment.

Off the stern, at the open-sea end, were huge doors that looked as if they were meant to swing outward on underwater rails. Some thirty yards beyond the bow was a broad loading platform that jutted from the back wall, then continued around the right side as a narrow ramp until it rose and spread into a wide dock; that was where the armed men were milling.