Secret sea; (5 page)

Jl ete tested the device for seven more days. As he and the operator got more familiar with it and learned to interpret the wavery green lines, Pete began to believe in the infallibility of the gadget. Working with stuff on the bottom, it was almost miraculous and, during the last few days, when they worked with moving submarines, it caught them every time.

"Wish we'd had this thing when Hitler was sending his wolf packs in here," Pete said. "And the Japoons had better stand back when we put this doohickey in the Pacific."

"I used to think Vd like to serve in subs," the operator said. "But after watching this thing . . ."

"Shut her down," Pete said. On the phone to the bridge he said, "Take her home."

The PC turned her sharp bows toward Key 44

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West, and the off section of the watch began breaking out their whites and looking forward to a few days' Hberty on the beach.

In Pete's cabin he completed the entries on the admiral's chart and, as he was rolling it up, someone knocked. Pete shoved the chart into its steel tube and said, **Come in."

It was Bill Williams's assistant, a lieutenant (j.g.), younger than Pete and a genius with engines. Pete liked him. He was a quiet, studious man who never said very much. And he was a first-class officer. He had served in cans in the Pacific and knew the score.

"Afternoon, Captain," Walsh said. **Sit down, Sandy," Pete said, waving at the bunk. "What's the trouble?"

Walsh smiled shyly. "Shivering shaft. Captain. Don't know if Mr. Williams mentioned it, but I think we're going to have to lay her up for a while."

"All right. I'll see if we can get availability." Pete called in the messenger and sent a dispatch requesting space in the repair yard up to Communications. "It'll give the crew a little breather on the beach. They've been at sea pretty steadily during the last month."

Pete glanced at the calendar on his desk and saw that he hadn't changed the months. He ripped off July and dropped it in the wastebasket.

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"August 3, 1945," he said. "Tve been in the Navy exactly four years and twenty minutes."

"YouVe got a year on me," Walsh said. "What's this scuttlebutt about you going back to the Pacific, Captain?" "Soon," Pete said. "Want to?"

Pete grinned. "Scared to death."

"I am too," Walsh said. "But Vm fed to the eyes on this training racket. *This is a valve, gentlemen. This is a piston. It goes up and down.' "

Pete laughed. "The way they were throwing kamikazes at Okinawa last month, they won't have any left by the time I get out there. I'm scared of those buzzards."

Walsh lit a cigarette and blew a smoke ring. "Don't you think it's winding up. Captain?"

Pete nodded. "But if that stubborn streak holds out, it'll be a long time. The little yellow monkeys don't know when they're whipped." Pete grinned at Walsh. "I think there'll be plenty of time for you and me both to sweat out another tour."

"What're you going to do when it's over, Captain?"

"Search me," Pete said.

"What does your father do?"

"He's dead. He was a pilot on the early airlines. Hit a mountain in Pennsylvania."

"Sorry," Walsh said.

"How about you?"

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"Fm trying to make Regular Navy. I like engines, Captain, and I like the Navy although a Reserve isn't supposed to say so."

Pete laughed. "Fll probably end up being the second assistant windshield wiper in a filling station. I've got a mother and a kid brother to support."

Walsh started to say something when the phone from the bridge rang. "Making port, Captain."

"Very well," Pete said.

"How about chow at the club tonight, Sandy?" Pete asked as he put on his cap. "Bill will be back and we'll tie one on."

"Roger, thanks."

As soon as the PC was tied up, Pete took the chart around to the admiral.

"What do you think of the gadget, Martin?" the admiral asked.

"It's a little better than they claimed it is. Admiral." He unrolled the chart and spread it out. "Where we couldn't find a sunk sub, I think there wasn't one, Admiral."

"Good work. I'd like to have a full report on it, Martin."

"In the morning, sir."

The admiral put the chart away. "I've got a ship for you," he said. "Brand spanking new and

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all finished with the trial and shakedown. One of the new 'chasers."

**Thanks very much, Admiral."

"Your orders are on the way."

Pete's throat felt a little dry. "Admiral, could I have a couple of days to go see my folks up in Georgia?" he asked.

"Certainly. Let's see, this is the third. Get back Tuesday night, please. That'll be the seventh."

"Aye, aye, sir. Thanks very much. Admiral."

When Pete went up the gangplank of his ship, the officer of the deck saluted him and handed him a telegram.

Pete put it in his pocket, thanked the OD, and went on to his cabin. He checked through the various reports from the division officers and was opening the telegram when Bill Williams knocked and came in.

Bill closed the door, put the log, still wrapped up, down on the desk, and said, "Dad says its genuine. HSMS Santa Ybel never returned to Spain and no trace of her has ever been found after she sailed from Vera Cruz, Mexico, on the twenty-second of September, 1520."

"I've got a little news, too," Pete said. "But hold up until I read this." He unfolded the telegram. It read:

JOHNNY HURT CAN YOU COME HOME.

MOTHER.

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Pete gritted his teeth and read the thing again.

"Bad?" Williams asked.

"My kid brother." He handed Bill the telegram.

"What do you think happened?"

"Don't know. But Mother doesn't yell easy, Bill."

"You'd better get emergency leave."

"Just got four days from the admiral. But I've got a lot to do before I can go."

Pete rang for a messenger. "Please find Lieutenant Walsh and ask him to come up here," he told him. "And the executive officer. And the first lieutenant and the ship's clerk. Tell him to bring plenty of pads and pencils."

"Aye, aye, sir."

"While you were on leave, Bill, we ran some tests. The admiral wants a report tonight. And we're going in dry dock tomorrow."

"Yeah. Sandy Walsh told me. When'll you be through because I know a guy in Operations at the air station and maybe I can get you a plane ride?"

"That'd be fine. Around midnight, Bill."

"Roger. I'll be waiting for you in my car."

"Thanks a lot. Is the phone connected to shore yet?" •

"Yep."

Pete explained to the Navy switchboard that 49

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it was a personal emergency and then put in his call. As he was waiting, Sandy Walsh knocked.

"Sandy, Fm sorry as I can be, but the dinner's off. My kid brother's hurt himself and I'm going up there tonight."

"Fm sorry. Captain," Walsh said.

"Come on with me, Sandy," Williams said. "We'll give the skipper a rain check."

As Bill went out he tapped the package significantly with his finger. Pete saw him and nodded. "Fll take care of it," he said.

Then the ship's clerk came in and Pete started dictating to him the report of the experiments with the detector. "This is all top secret, Matthews," he said. "Burn your notebook and all your carbon copies when you finish."

It took more than an hour to get the call through and Pete's mind kept wandering away from the detector. He kept seeing his kid brother —a towheaded, good-looking kid who seemed to be always at the point of boiUng. He did everything at top speed and with complete enthusiasm.

But at last the phone rang, and Pete picked it up. The connection was very bad, and he could hardly hear what his mother said. He thought she said something about football, but there wasn't much football played in August. He kept repeating slowly that he was coming home, and at last she understood him.

While he waited for the ship's clerk to type

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up the report, he packed a few things in a suitcase. Bill WilUams came back and said there was a plane standing by out at the field.

At last the report was finished. Pete sent it over to the Officer Messenger Center and then locked the log of the Santa Ybel in his desk safe.

In Williams's, car going to the air station, Pete said, "We were testing an underwater detector, Bill, and close to two small islands it picked up a hulk of something about two hundred and fifty feet long by forty thick lying in a hundred and ten feet of water."

**What do you think?"

"I don't know how long a 'league' was in those days and the dead reckoning they used in 1519 to navigate with must have just about kept them in one ocean. But the book said the ship was sinking four leagues from one island and five from the other. Figuring a league at three nautical miles, that hulk lies just about where the Santa Ybel would have sunk."

"Dad says the log is the real McCoy, Pete. He looked up a lot of stuff about Cortez and the backbiting that went on between those Spaniards in Cuba and Mexico. Dad says the whole picture fits in with the known history. Cortez had been living the life of Riley in what we call Mexico City—they had some other name for it—when the Aztecs or whoever they were rose up and threw old Cortez out.

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"The city was built up on an island in a big lake with dirt causeways leading to shore. When the citizens began tossing the Spaniards out, Cor-tez and his boys grabbed all the loot they could get. That much is in the history books. And the fact that some of Cortez's men deserted him as soon as they got on shore is in the books. What isn't in the books is what happened to the swag. Somebody made off with it and Dad thinks it was the bunch of Spaniards who deserted Cortez. Anyway, it disappeared and—so did the Santa YbeV'

"And," Pete said, "if that wreck near the islands is the Santa Ybel, all you've got to do is dive down and bring up the gold."

"Did you get a fix on it?"

"Brother, Fve got the latitude and longitude down to tenths of,seconds written right across my brain," Pete said.

"All right, when this unpleasantness with His Lowness, Hirohito, is over, Dad says he wants to go look for the Santa Ybel. Of course, he can't go—he can't even get out of a wheel chair by himself—but he's got a little money and he wants to get up an expedition to go after it."

"What about you. Bill?"

Williams twisted a big gold ring around on a finger of his left hand and shook his head. "No. I'm staying in the Navy, Pete. I'm an old Annapolis man—excuse me. Trade School boy—and

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I'm making a career out of it. Always wanted to ride around in ships and the Navy is the only place you can have a ship but not pay for it."

As the car turned in to the airport, Pete said, "We're talking like a couple of civilians, Bill. Let's forget the whole thing. After all, I'm getting orders. I'm going back into the shooting war."

"You're taking me too, pal.**

Pete looked at Bill's face as the beacon swung across it. "You want to go?"

"No. But who'll run your engines for you if you don't take me?"

"You'll be sorr-eee."

"Sure. But how will you get another Navy Cross if you don't have me to save again?"

Bill stopped outside the operations shack. "Give Johnny my best, Pete," he said. "And I hope it isn't serious. See you when you get back."

"Thanks. By the way, stick around while we're in dry dock and see that those hammerheads don't leave a hole in the bottom of the boat, will you?"

"I'll get 'em to put curtains over your portholes. Captain."

It was after midnight when they took off in the SNJ. Pete looked down at the moonlit, dimmed-out country sliding below, and as he got closer to Georgia, his worry about his brother grew stronger. With nothing to do in the plane,

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he kept imagining things which a fourteen-year-old could do to hurt himself.

At last he got home. Lights were on in the little house, and as Pete walked up the path, he saw, without noticing them, the magnolia blossoms still on the two trees.

His mother and Dr. Norfleet were standing in the living room talking when he came in. He kissed his mother and looked at her eyes. They were too dry, Pete thought.

*'What happened?" he asked.

**He was playing football, Pete," his mother said. **In that field behind the ice plant. Freddy said he was running for a pass with his head turned back watching the ball, and he ran into something—a pile of junk, crates, old iron things."

Pete looked at the doctor.

**Back. Two places," the doctor said.

"Can I see him?"

"Don't stay long, Pete," the doctor said.

In his brother's quiet, hot room the moonlight made the bed look very white, and Pete wondered if the white pillow and the white sheets were what made Johnny's face look so white. All the sunburn seemed to have been drained away, and Johnny's arms, already as strong as a man's, looked limp and heavy.

Pete said quietly, "Hello, Jawn," and saw his eyes open slowly.

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**Hi, Commander," Johnny said, but it was only a slow whisper.

"Hear you got fouled up."

"As a quarterback I'm a good water boy."

"Stop bragging and go to sleep, Jawn. I'll see you in the morning."

"Roger . . . wilco," Johnny whispered.

Pete shut the door softly and stood for a moment in the dark hall. A hard, painful lump was in his throat, and he swallowed twice before he went back to the living room. Pete put his arm about his mother's shoulder. "What happens now?" he asked the doctor.

"It's going to take a long, long time, Pete. Maybe he'll recover, maybe he won't. And it's going to take"—the doctor paused and looked first at Pete's mother and then up at Pete—"a whale of a lot of money. He'll have to be in a special hospital, with special doctors and nurses and expensive treatments. Lot of money, Pete."

"Okay," Pete said. "I've got a thousand now."