Operation Malacca

by Joe Poyer

  A small, heavily guarded boat stage was attached to the forward main support. One small powerboat was tied up at the moment, while the guards smoked and lounged in what little shade was provided by the deck. Charlie could see a narrow ladder mounted between the two buildings and reaching the top of the deck near the drilling rig. Several black oil drums were clustered at the top.

  Small groups of men were working near the derrick, but other than that, the deck was deserted. He caught the sound of one of the patrol boats approaching, and taking another deep breath, he submerged carefully and moved forward.

  The water seemed to be quite thick and was full of refuse that hampered his vision. He swam between the columns, around a second and a third, until he emerged on the other side. Turning to his left, he swam out of the refuse-laden water and switched on his cameras. Immediately, he received a pulse close to his ear that told him the humans were aware that he had activated his equipment. He swam slowly forward until a large pillar again appeared. The water was much heavier here, with a nauseating taste to it, and the current so slow that he was barely able to detect it. He was directly in front of the pillar, some forty feet away. He could see practically nothing visually, but his sonar defined everything sharply for several hundred yards in every direction. Satisfied, he waited for the double pulse that would mean that Keilty was seeing what he saw. It did not come. Puzzled, he swam closer, cutting the distance in half. He could just make out the hazy image of the tower substructure with his eyes, but still no pulse. When he was less than ten feet away, the pulse came suddenly. They must be blind back there, he muttered to himself.

  Now he began to swim even more slowly, letting himself rise up the pillar until he nudged something above him. He backed away to investigate and saw that it was some kind of barnacle-encrusted shelf. Then he saw that the pillar fitted neatly into the center of the shelf. Something shiny attracted his attention to the leg of the tower and he moved over to investigate. As he watched, a glistening drop broke away and formed a bubble, which shot towards the surface. When the next one detached itself, he snapped at it with his beak and immediately his mouth filled with a thick cloying taste that burned.

  Violently, he expelled all the stored air in his lungs and rushed for the surface. He broke the surface in a jump that carried him half out of the water. He drew in deep draughts of water, sloshing it from side to side until he was able to clear some of the taste from his mouth. The burning was not quite so bad now and he lay quietly on the surface, shuddering through his entire length, fighting to regain his breath. Though he did not know it, what he had tasted was a much higher concentration of the substance in the water around him — lubricating oil to keep sea life from encrusting the retractable legs of the sea tower.

  Three quick pulses were repeated over and over. Keilty was sending a query, puzzled as to why the transmission had broken off. Charlie pulled himself together, and began swimming slowly. It was quite dark where he was, although a ring of bright sunlight showed all around. He deduced that he was under whatever the pillars were holding up.

  Off to his right, a long shaft — sunk straight down into the water — blocked the light from a small segment of the circle. Charlie swam to it, and taking a deep breath, he began to swim down the column hesitatingly. The pulses came again to show that Keilty was interested in what he saw. The shaft was quite a bit thicker than the others and was formed of segments rather than being one continuous column. It ended forty feet below the surface in a large bulbous structure some twenty feet across that looked like a flattened rubber ball.

  There was a large hatch, which he investigated, making sure that the camera picked up a good image of the hatch and its opening mechanism. He swam around the structure and then under it. Beneath was a heavy steel plate that flared upward, supplementing the spheroidal steel structure. This steel plating was featureless, without even rivet holes, which would have been meaningless to Charlie anyway.

  The dolphin bumped at it with his nose, smelling the steel, but not tasting it. He had learned his lesson. He became aware of the chafing of the equipment belts around his shoulders in the form of a violent itch. To scratch it, he tried to rub his back against the plating. Suddenly, his ears were filled with an insistent chattering. At the same time, Keilty began sending excited pulses to tell him to stay where he was. Charlie held motionless, his back bumping against the plating while the chattering continued. Keilty pulsed the code that indicated to him that he was to swim slowly forward. As he did so, the chattering lessened in frequency.

  He backed and turned in obedience to the pulses until Keilty had him swimming slowly beneath and almost touching the flattened sphere. The chattering was continuous now.

  After about fifteen minutes, Keilty directed him to get what pictures he could from beneath the structure. By the time Charlie had finished, the sun was halfway below the horizon. In response to Keilty's signals, he surfaced cautiously some five hundred yards from the tower structure.

  The red sun painted the white steel tower golden in the dwindling twilight, licking drops of quicksilver from the long swells pushing up the strait. Charlie paused to breathe and then began swimming slowly towards the structure in a circling maneuver. The main deck of the tower was clearly lighted against the deepening blue of the eastern horizon.

  Lights were appearing on the tower and the superstructure of the drilling rig. The monotonous clanking of the drilling machinery served to cover the faint noises the dolphin made as he swam to within fifty feet of the tower and began to circle it.

  The figure of a man appeared briefly near the railing, clearly outlined against the sky.

  He fumbled briefly with something

  near the railing and Charlie sounded, startled as floodlights bathed the area around the tower. Charlie's thoughts were strictly dolphinic as he rose again to the surface, this time staying completely underwater, except to breathe. He began to swim away from the lighted area, until the shadows were deep enough to surface. By now he was some eight hundred feet away from the station. He took a good look, letting the cameras pan over the scene. The tower was too far away to detect details, and his sonar told him that there were several surface craft making random search patterns around the station.

  He let himself settle again until he was about twenty feet below the surface, and began extending his sonar field. His maximum sonar range was ten miles or so, although he was not aware of the distance in human terms.

  The station commanded most of his field to the east, and to the west he could just barely make out the dim echo of the Bradley. The sharply defined echoes and subechoes from the station said 'human' to Charlie, as they were sharp but vibrating at the same time. He concentrated on the station, laying out its underwater pattern until he was sure where every underwater leg and support was. Then he began to examine the area around the tower – the island rising beyond, the slope of the channel bottom to the island shore.

  Except for the crosscurrents which he could detect, the picture was relatively un-interesting: volcanic sand bottom with a profusion of marine growth.

  Charlie narrowed his sonar beam until it was pulsing outward in a forty-five-degree arc, and started sweeping around in a circle:

  A clearer, tighter picture built up: the island sloping away into a narrow channel, the bases of several more distant islands showing, and schools of unfamiliar fish. Charlie pivoted slowly on until the beam was fanning an open area of channel between two islands that led away to the South China Sea.

  A reflection appeared. At first Charlie thought it was a whale. Then he noticed it was resting on the bottom. The object was near the limit of his sonar's capability. Keilty had said to get back as fast as possible, so he could not waste any time for a closer look. He waited, sorting out the multiplicity of reflections until he isolated the one he wanted.

  There, shimmering near the limits of his awareness, was the peculiar echo and sub-echo of metal. Charlie was puzzled. The object seemed to be resting less than a mile
from the base of a large island. He

  watched it for a while, examining the blurred image as best he could until he had it as sharply defined as possible. Suddenly he remembered. He had seen a submarine once before in his home waters, and had chased it for miles, watchings its strange antics as it maneuvered around several surface ships in the area.

  His curiosity satisfied, he completed his sonar sweep and surfaced for a last look around.

  The sun had set and darkness had swiftly blanketed the area. He could see nothing of the tower now but the lights in the rigging and the floodlit expanse of water all around.

  He wondered again about the submarine and its presence near the base of the island, then forgot about it as a wide beam of light, mounted on the drilling rig, began to sweep the water beyond the limits of the floodlights. He watched the distended oval of light ripple across the water to him, and taking a breath, settled slowly. Seconds later, it passed over him, creating a pattern of tangled silver on the mirrorlike underside of the surface. They were certainly being careful, he thought, then turned away and swam strongly for the netting.

  A few minutes later, he surfaced again only twenty feet from the net. Complete darkness had fallen by now, and turning, he could see the bright ring of floodlights glowing like a broad band of fire on the surface. Above was the flickering searchlight, with the aircraft warning lights dangling below.

  He had done as Keilty had asked him to. Keilty had explained about the Geiger counter before they left the Keys. The fact that it had worked — the loud clicking — meant they had found the bomb. Now, he wondered, what was the next step?

  He thought he knew enough about humans to guess. The bomb posed a threat to one side

  — Keilty's side. But it was the upper hand for the other side. That meant that Keilty's side would have to go and take it away. In the process, a lot of people could get killed.

  That last fact meant little to him, no more than if he were a human and knew that several dolphins might be killed if, say, sharks attacked. If you could find enough foolhardy sharks, he thought seriously.

  So long as Keilty was not killed, the death of a human meant little to him, because beyond Jack, Margaritta, Keilty, and now Rawingson, he knew very little of humans.

  And, he suspected, he knew little — important data, that is — about the four he did know.

  The fact that he had found the bomb meant that he had now taken sides in human affairs.

  Something he had wondered about

  – and had halfway decided not to do – ever since he had started watching the TV set Keilty had installed in his pen.

  He thought to himself, without humor, that he had come to the point were he was studying humans, as much as Keilty was studying his people. Who had the upper edge here: Keilty, because he was a trained observer, or himself, because the television and the microfilmed books gave him – with his totally fresh viewpoint – a greater insight into the mind of humans, a mind which he was coming more and more to discover was not only a product of the particular society in which a man lived, but in addition, contrary to the widespread human concept, did little to shape an individual's relations with other humans?

  As Keilty had once told him, a human was a totally selfish animal. He loved because he liked the feeling. He helped someone in need because it made him feel good. He was patriotic because it satisfied what was left of his almost atrophied herd instincts. Charlie took this one step further. Man did not live on a rational level, but on an emotional level.

  Charlie's people, on the other hand, more closely approached the rational level, and he was discovering, in reviewing his past life now that he had the mental tool – vocabulary

  – to work with, that in the dolphin, emotions were almost atrophied and the herd worked and existed together on a rational level.

  Now that he was discovering the effects of emotions, he was beginning to realize just how strong they could be.

  Not far away, the silence was shattered by the passage of a patrol boat touring the net perimeter. Startled, he dove, suddenly aware of the dangers to which he had left himself open. He executed a fast 36o° turn, sonar and hearing tuned to the sharpest possible degree. The images were familiar: the tower; odd schools of fish, nothing big; the patrol boat; and dimly, the Bradley. The submarine was completely out of range now.

  He watched the patrol boat, and as soon as it was far enough away, he cleared the nets in one jump and headed quickly back to the Bradley.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The lights went up in the crowded wardroom, highlighting the wreaths of cigarette and pipe smoke coiling suddenly in the steaming air. Keilty sat to one side of the long captain's table, silently listening to the quiet arguing of the gathered officers and civilians.

  Keilty's contempt for the military and civil service mind had never been stronger. They had been sitting for hours in the crowded wardroom, all through the hot, sticky late afternoon, debating the pros and cons of the information that Charlie had brought back. It was all there for them to see, but some remained stubbornly unconvinced. Sitting next to him, almost wilting in the heat, was a slight, balding man. He drummed nervously on a small sheaf of papers until they were almost unreadable – the penciled calculations were smeared and blurred with perspiration.

  Keilty had been on deck earlier in the evening, shortly after Charlie had returned, when the MTh had come sliding up alongside the Bradley. Lines were secured as he slouched on the railing, watching. The American secretaries of State and Defense, the British Foreign Secretary and Minister of War, and their Australian, Malaysian, New Zealand and Indonesian counterparts, and respective retinues came aboard the destroyer. The seas were beginning to pick up and the ship was rolling heavily in the increasing swells. They had gone below, some of them already green, and a few moments later a messenger had come for him. Keilty finished his cigarette and went below. They were waiting for him, impatiently, and with a barrage of questions.

  He produced an extremely black Connecticut-broadleafwrappered and foul-smelling cigar, and lit up. Puffing on it with relish, he began to answer questions. The small wardroom soon filled with the cloying stench but the questions went on and on. Finally Keilty had to admit defeat. The smoke was getting to him as well. As unobtrusively as possible, he extinguished the cigar and covered it with an empty paper cup. Later, the tapes were produced and he narrated the now-familiar scenes as Charlie approached the station, examined the structure and support columns, the blur of motion as he surfaced and tried

  to rinse the taste of the oil from his mouth, and the underwater shots of the bomb housing.

  The silence was nearly complete when he finished, broken only by the whirring of the overworked and totally ineffective air conditioner.

  `There, gentlemen, you have it. It's as plain as the warts on a hog what is going on. What'

  s to be done is now your bailiwick.' And he sat down.

  As the argument renewed and dragged on, he talked quietly with the balding man next to him. It turned out that he was Dr. Iver Jensen, a Pentagon expert on the effects of nuclear weapons. So far, he had not been asked to speak.

  Keilty turned his attention to the discussion. Some Australian official was pooh-poohing the idea first of all, that there was a bomb, and secondly, that the subsequent detonation of said nonexistent bomb could do the damage expected. He was supported by several others, notably the Americans. The Malaysians were looking extremely worried. Keilty glanced across the wardroom at Rawingson's set expression and decided it was time to do something.

  He stood up and whistled. The piercing scream of the whistle echoed in the steel-walled wardroom, overriding even the nasal tones of a loud-mouthed American general who turned surprised and angry eyes on Keilty. Keilty paid no attention. He had disliked this man ever since he had seen him on television years before, defending a particularly obnoxious right-wing group.

  The American Secretary of State turned and peered at him through his steel-rimmed glasses. 'You ha
ve something to contribute, Dr. Keilty?'

  'Nope, but Dr. Jensen does. Why don't you all shut up and listen to him for a while. You fatheads are not making much sense anyway.'

  Admiral Rawingson, grinning widely, told a junior officer to shut up and sit down, then settled back comfortably and waited.

  'Some of you here,' Keilty continued, unabashed at the angry mutterings, 'know who Dr.

  Jensen is – you explain to the guy next to you if he doesn't. Dr. Jensen?' Keilty indicated the audience and the speaker's position.

  Jensen stood up, all traces of his nervousness disappearing quickly as he adopted his favourite speaking attitude and launched into his speech.

  'Gentlemen, we have beyond a certainty established that the Vietnamese have now manufactured, not one, but several nuclear bombs. There is no reason to doubt that fact any longer. At the latest count, there are some fourteen nations with nuclear weapons.

  Now, thanks to Dr. Keilty's dolphin, we know where at least one of these bombs is. It is sitting not twenty-five miles from us, forty-five feet below the surface of the entrance to the Strait of Malacca.

  He waited until the angry murmuring from both sides of contention died away somewhat.

  'Whatever you believe at the moment is of no importance. There can be no doubt about it. That bomb is there. The radiation readings are too strong to be anything but those from a crude fusion device, poorly shielded ...' Jensen raised his hand to forestall a question. 'No, the radiation is much too strong to come from drilling or current-tracing processes.