The Martian Pendant

by Patrick Taylor

  The hijackers had pre-empted the Mafia conspirators, sabotaging their motor cruiser, causing the engines to seize up an hour out of port, leaving them adrift, blown by the westerlies toward the open sea. As soon as the ship’s bridge was under their control, the freighter came about, and set a course southeast, which would take them out of the shipping lanes, where the chance of detection would be minimal. It wasn’t long before Diana was released from her bonds by a smiling European, she guessed by his accent, a Spaniard.

  “Forgive me, lady,” he said, “Subduing you in that way was essential to the success of our mission. I’m sure you understand that had you given the crew a timely warning, much bloodshed would have resulted.”

  “I rather see your point,” she replied, “but who are you, and why have you resorted to this piracy? This is an American vessel, and will be the subject of pursuit by the U.S. Navy. The result will be just as with the Bey of Tripoli, subdued in his own capital for his piracy against American merchant ships.”

  “If they find us. I’m Raul Lopez, First Officer. Further explanation will be given in due time by Captain Chalmers. In the meantime, continue your usual routine aboard. We mean no harm to you or to the ship’s cargo. Just don’t try to send any messages.”

  After visiting her cabin, and noting it had been searched, probably for a radio transceiver, and finding her scientific material intact, she readied herself for the evening meal. Let’s hope they know their way around the galley. Recalling her earlier experience in Spain, she began to envision paella.

  When she reached the dining area, the chatter of the pirates ceased. At the head of the table, the ship's new Captain, a short blond man with piercing blue eyes, stood and motioned her to take a place next to him.

  “Miss Howard, we are truly honored to have your presence among us this evening. Most people would be cowering in their cabins after today’s excitement. But judging by the cargo of the American Traveler, you can’t be considered ‘Most people.’ We hope to enjoy your presence, not only because of your obvious beauty, but also for the alien secrets that accompany you. Come. Please sit, and raise a glass to our mutual project.”

  “My first question,” she said sullenly, sitting down next to the Captain, “is who the devil are you, and what mutual project?”

  The Captain laughed and replied, “Those are two questions. So it is doubly to be hoped that you will give what I say some thought. We are the crew, commissioned by our Holy Pope, charged with delivering the cargo to Japan, now the most peaceful nation on earth, so that the warlike powers of the world, the Communists, and yes, the United States too, will not learn the secrets of a people so advanced over ours. You see, we have grave doubts about our world’s morality being up to the enormity of the newly discovered technology.”

  “I’ll have to grant you that, especially concerning the metals and the nuclear engine, but what of the fossil skeletal remains? They are my only reason to be aboard. What is intended for them?”

  The meal was being served by then, neither remotely Spanish nor even European. After all, since it was still an American ship, its stores full of American produce, the meal consisted of hamburgers and French-fried potatoes, with canned string beans. The wine was Gallo Hearty Burgundy. Despite the uninspired menu, the appetites generated by that exciting day led everyone to pitch in without complaint, including the Captain.

  In between mouthfuls, he finally answered, “We haven’t received word from the Vatican on that yet. I suppose they could decide to suppress anything regarding your specimens having human characteristics, on the grounds that God’s souls could only have been created here on earth. Hasn’t the Bible defined all that?”

  Diana mulled that over. She thought of the Church’s suppression of Galileo and his theories. Of course, by then, humanity had barely emerged from the Dark Ages. Still, her precious specimens could be subject to any whim of the Catholic Church. She couldn’t do much about the specimens in the hold, but that was all the more reason to keep the material in her trunk safe.

  On the third night out, the ship’s mess was subdued, even sorrowful, far from the jubilation that had prevailed previously. She saw the sadness mostly in the common seamen, whose murmuring was mostly inaudible to her. She did catch the word “Papa” several times, however. At the head of the table, the air was different. The Captain and the First Officer, lost in conversation when she took her place, glanced at her with concern, and she could see doubt, not sorrow, written on their faces.

  “I hope I’m not intruding on your conversation, but it can’t be ignored that something important has changed the attitude of the entire crew, including that of you two gentlemen.”

  Lopez looked pensively into his soup, but the Captain leveled his gaze at her and said, “The news is dismal. Our Holy Father died October ninth, a week ago. We received the news only this morning.”

  Diana was not surprised, since the Pope had been known to be in failing health for some time. But, despite her decidedly mixed feelings, she attempted to sympathize. “I’m so sorry. His reign of almost twenty years has made his presence important, indeed to all the world, even to non-Catholics.”

  The Captain thanked her with a dismissive wave of his hand, causing her to wonder.

  “Sorrow for his passing isn’t our concern. The question is, will his policies be continued? Until the College of Cardinals elects a successor, the Camerlengo, Cardinal Tisserant, the Pope’s deputy, will decide how to continue his policies. We have no recourse but to follow Pius’s directive, although his own deputy had voted against him in his election in 1939. The Pope’s message was clear. He wanted his legacy to personify peace.”

  She couldn’t help recall, however, that particular Pope’s background in aiding Adolf Hitler’s establishment of the Nazi Party as the predominant force in Germany in the Thirties. He took the title Pius XII on his elevation from Cardinal in 1939. How ironic, she thought, after helping set the stage for the bloodiest war in history. But then, religion in the West was never really about peace.

  “Pious? That word means religious, doesn’t it?” she responded, “Any modern Pope would have to be religious. And his record reflects that he was more interested in increasing the power of the Catholic Church by every available means, including fighting the Communists, than working for actual peace. I wonder, in view of his obsession concerning ‘Godless Communism,’ what was behind his plan to capture this Martian cargo? Godless aliens?”

  The Captain, returning to his soup, didn’t respond, and the rest of the meal was eaten in silence.

  * * *

  The ship’s course continued southeast, and then, after a few days, was altered to due south. Diana could follow all that with the little compass she had carried with her around the dig, but at first had only a rudimentary concept of the ship's speed. Later, in her walks, she found by pacing its length, that the ship was around 450 feet long. Throwing a stoppered bottle from the ship’s prow, and then timing when the stern passed it, allowed her to calculate that they were making about 20 miles an hour. That was fast for a freighter, around 17 knots. She had nothing else to go on, but figured they were making perhaps 500 miles each day. And it was getting more temperate. She realized then that they were making for far southern seas, where ships rarely ventured.

  The days slipped by with a sameness that made recalling each one difficult. Had she not kept a log of their progress, she soon would have become totally disoriented regarding their position. It was at least a week before they reached the “Roaring Forties.” At that south latitude, the winds from the west often blew at gale force, with the swells accordingly huge. By that time, the temperature had dropped to near freezing at night; the ship’s deck had become hazardous without access to the railing or the safety lines that had been rigged. At first, the swells from the west buffeted the ship abeam, which caused her to roll so alarmingly that when Diana was on deck, she had to hang on for dear life. No more jogging, only a halting hand-over-hand progress was possible. All
the while the wind shrieking in the sparse rigging above added to the tumult.

  It was during that period that she experienced her first seasickness, which passed after a wretched two days. At its peak, however, on the first day of the malaise, as she leaned over the rail, desperately sick, she couldn’t help looking down into the cold green water below and finding its depths welcoming, holding the promise of relief from the abject physical desperation she felt. It occurred to her that it was the sight of that same water that gave rise to the tales of beckoning mermaids and the seductive voices of the Sirens.

  When at last they turned east, her calculations suggested they were as far south as the 50th parallel. The huge green seas coming from astern added to the ship’s speed, as it surfed along before them. She worried that the helmsman would have to keep on his toes to avoid yawing in the gigantic swells, now mostly capped with white spume, their tops breaking like huge rollers crashing ashore. What would be the result if they broached? She shuddered at the thought.

  The days seemed to follow each other endlessly; not another ship was seen. By her log it was two weeks before they had altered course, taking a different heading. But to her surprise, her compass showed that instead of northeast, they were again moving southward. This was puzzling at first. Knowing their destination was Japan, she then realized that in avoiding the probable naval and air searches, they would have to turn north into the Pacific west of New Zealand, rather than traverse the densely island-studded Melanesian and Micronesian waters. This required that they avoid the more direct route, north through the Tasman Sea between Australia and New Zealand. But that would take them at least 2,000 miles out of their way! Did they have enough fuel for a voyage two-thirds of the way around the world?

  That evening, over a supper of pot roast, potatoes and canned carrots, she asked the Captain about that. At first he avoided an answer, but changed his mind when she told him of her concerns, and what she had observed.

  “Are all you Englishwomen so observant? You seem to know as much of our course as our navigator, Rodriguez, here! About the fuel: you’re right, our supply is low, despite our having had the advantage of the winds and the huge following seas. Obviously, we can’t put in to a port friendly to your country, so we are going well south, around the tip of New Zealand’s South Island for a night rendezvous with a Japanese oiler, the Kyoto Maru, which is en route to re-provision stations in Antarctica. The seas won’t be as heavy in the lee of the Island, visual detection will be minimal at night and if we are close enough to the other ship, radar may be fooled. It will be a calculated risk, but so has everything we’ve done so far.”

  Two days later, they were back at 50 degrees south, and that night, after steering northwest parallel to the island’s east coast, they met the oiler awaiting them. The water was rough, but luckily nothing like the mountainous seas that had driven them on their sail eastward. It was a struggle, nevertheless, to bring the heavy refueling hose over by motorboat. At one point the little craft was threatened with being crushed between the two heaving ships, but at the last moment, the peak of a swell caused both ships to separate further, allowing enough space to avoid impact. When the fuel tanks had finally been filled, the crew dropped the Kyoto Maru’s fueling hose, leaving the Japanese to reel it in. No time was lost in heading directly away from the island, using the other ship’s radar shadow as long as possible.

  They turned north at daylight, setting a course that would take them well east of the Fiji Islands. The weather progressively deteriorated over the next ten days, until once again they were being buffeted by winds and swells, but coming from the northeast. This finally let up as they neared the Equator, well west of the southern part of the Marshall Island chain. With subsiding winds, the cloud cover that had followed them for 5,000 miles finally cleared. The ship was there for all to see, but aside from a few curious fishermen, who in their catamarans would match the freighter’s cruising speed for miles on end, they had little company, except for playful porpoises breaching and then surfing down the ship’s bow wave.

  Those on watch had their attention riveted to the skies during the day, but no aircraft were seen. They had no way of knowing then that while the air search was well to the west, they had already been spotted by GeoSat, which, as it passed far overhead, had detected radiation from the ship’s cargo. When the data from the satellite was received in Buell’s Culver City facility, it was promptly downloaded into the Cray computer there. The analyst, perusing the printouts that day, remarked about the faint signal, previously not recorded over that area of the Pacific. He attributed the signal to drift of radioactive fallout from one of the U.S. atomic tests that had ended just six weeks before, at Eniwetok and Bikini Atolls, to the north. The trade winds would be expected to cause the fallout to drift westward from there.

  Coincidentally, it was then that the freighter’s course was altered in that direction for another two days, after which they again continued north, now west of the Marshall chain for another thousand miles. In that way, it was calculated, they would avoid discovery by not sailing into waters over which active air traffic between the United States and the atomic testing headquarters on Kwajalein Island in the Marshalls was continuing.

  When they were due west of that atoll, the ship’s nuclear cargo was again detected in GeoSat’s next transit over that area. This second discovery caused a stir. The signal was then 700 miles northwest of the initial pickup. Although it was only a few hundred miles from the sites of the atomic testing, it became obvious--because its “signature” was identical to that of the first sighting, and because it was not going in the direction of the trade winds--that it was from a ship rather than drifting fallout.

  The question was raised about the presence of nuclear-powered submarines or carriers in those seas, but the Navy Department confirmed it had no craft in the western Pacific at the time. In turn, the Navy was informed that the sightings must mean the presence of the fugitive American freighter. It wasn’t long before the air-sea search effort was shifted in that direction.

  When Naval Intelligence was informed of the heading of the American Traveler, they contacted their opposites in Yokohama, to enlist support in the search. While giving assurances of their cooperation, with the promise of ships and aircraft, the Japanese officer in charge hastily called the Prime Minister’s office, informing them of the potential loss to Japan of the promised nuclear and metallurgic secrets. A hastily coded message was sent by radio, with instructions to change course west due to their being discovered. This would take them south of Guam, at the southern tip of the Marianas chain. From there, with the search focused well to the east, it was assumed they would have smooth sailing up the middle of the Philippine Sea west of Japan’s Ryukyu archipelago to their goal, Nagasaki.

  Aboard the hunted ship, Captain Chalmers was puzzled. The whole plan of the voyage had been based on total secrecy in arriving in Japan. There, the Martian materiel was to be secreted as promised, never to be released as long as super-powers capable of unleashing nuclear war on one another existed. Certainly the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States fulfilled that condition. After unloading in Japan, the American Traveler was to be scuttled in secret off Honshu’s east coast, disappearing into the abyssal depths of the Japan Trench. No trace of the ship likely would ever be found, and even if stumbled upon somehow, no salvage equipment existed that could ever raise her to verify the absence of her precious cargo.

  The Captain was a devout Catholic, and like most of the faithful, even those of exceptional intelligence, he had bought into the concept of Papal infallibility, at least in matters of faith and morals. That made his mission the same as Pius XII’s mission of peace on earth at all costs. But how could the Pope’s plan work when the entire world would be aware that the alien technology would be in the hands of the Japanese? His fear was that the neo-militarists among them would be able the use the nuclear secrets and the Impervium to create a new Japanese war machine. A fusion-powered and ar
med Imperial Navy, built with impervious armor! He could only imagine the reaction of the U.S. and the Soviets. The Pope’s intended legacy of world peace could become the inheritance of Armageddon.

  It was with these fears that he determined to defuse the international crisis that was sure to occur, and at the same time fulfill His Holiness’ last wish: a peaceful destination for the potentially earthshaking technology, one that would be free of explosive international acrimony, and which would put the secrets of the Martians out of reach of contesting world powers for a hundred or more years. Wouldn’t that be long enough?

  They were then on a heading that would allow them to round the island of Guam in just two days. Soon after it was taken over, the ship had been rigged with explosive charges in the bilge to scuttle her when the time came. He resolved that would happen much sooner than the Japanese or the Vatican Camerlengo expected. Two potential problems were recognized: a boarding party, now that they were in waters frequented by small craft, and complications with everyone escaping safely. That day he had the crew stage a lifeboat drill, making sure that his passenger participated, and thereafter he tripled the watch, his crew heavily armed.

  Diana noticed the officers’ side arms, but thought little of it until just before the afternoon watch, when crew showed up on deck with submachine guns slung across their chests and took positions along the railing. That evening at supper, there was little talk, as the Captain and the First Officer grimly downed their food.

  The fare was much tastier than usual, fish with spices and fresh fruit picked up the day before from natives in outrigger canoes off that little atoll they had passed. She was puzzled at the officers' apparent lack of savoring what was the best meal of the voyage.