The Martian Pendant

by Patrick Taylor

  “But look,” the Navigator said, handing the Captain his glasses, pointing to the boarding crew that was jumping up and down in apparent jubilation. “I think they’ve stopped the incoming water. She’s not settling. And they’re acting like they’ve interrupted the timing device for our charges.”

  Putting the glasses down, the Captain replied, “Here, take the wheel, we still have a trick up our sleeve.”

  Taking a small black box from under his lifejacket and smiling slyly, he pressed a red button. Nothing happened for what seemed an eternity. Then a tremendous flash appeared, combined with a huge sooty geyser of water from below the ship’s waterline, thrusting her keel almost to the surface. At that point the sound of the explosion hit them, followed by the sight of the freighter breaking in two with the noise of rending steel. It was all over in five minutes, the otherwise calm seas seething with massive quantities of air bubbling up through an appreciable whirlpool that was left as she headed for the bottom.

  Both lifeboats were a mile away by that time, when the disappearance of the American Traveler revealed the fleeing craft to the Soviet vessel. As the smoke from the vanished ship cleared, the submarine appeared to be getting underway, after an initial fruitless search for survivors of their boarding crew. On the after deck, Diana looked on in awe as a flash of red smoke was seen aboard the Soviet submersible, followed by a streak of fire headed toward them, passing just overhead in a whistling roar, exploding in the pilot house of the lead lifeboat.

  It all happened so fast, she could hardly anticipate what came next. Something twanged against the back of her life-vest, and she was propelled overboard. As she clutched for some support, her fingers closed on the handle of the emptied water can. There was no time to cry out as she hit the surprisingly warm Pacific, with the rapidly receding lifeboat continuing on, not even slowing through the debris left by the lead boat and its two struggling survivors.

  She could barely keep her nose above the surface, thanks to her replacing some of the kapok flotation with her fossil jawbone, the book, and her journal with its photographs. In the immediate confusion of finding herself in the water, the world took on a surreal character, where sound dominated. With her ears submerged, all she could hear, loudly at first, was the awful grinding made by the ship as it sank through the increasing depths, its steel sides crumpling, compressed together as contained air escaped, adding the overtone of a terrible whooshing.

  Luckily, the big, shiny, metal water can bobbing next to her gave her more buoyancy. By holding its handle, with the spout down to avoid it filling, she was able at first to keep her head fully above the surface. Just then the Soviets, starting the chase, launched another TOW missile at the fleeing boat, missing narrowly, but exploding just alongside.

  The next one will strike home, she thought; alternately, the swift nuclear craft would easily overtake them and then deal with that beast, Lopez, and the rest of the crew. But for some reason the blaring of a klaxon recalled the deck crew, and it began a crash dive. In only thirty seconds it was gone, leaving barely a trace of white foam.

  She was not alone, as two crewmen, both apparently wounded, were floating in their bright orange lifejackets not fifty yards away. As she called out in the increasing dusk, something abrasive brushed against her legs as a dark shadow knifed past her, its unmistakable dorsal fin breaking the surface.

  “Shark!” she cried, frantically kicking toward the bleeding men, in a vain effort to help them. There was just one bubbling scream, and then absolute quiet. She was almost alone in the Pacific, except for the two now-circling sharks. Her thought, for a fleeting moment, was a flash of light in front of her eyes. “I’m next!”

  Luckily she was wrong; the sharks were next. Out of nowhere came twin streaks of gray and white, passing her and ramming the sharks in the side just behind their gill slits. Paralyzed, the sharks slowly sank out of sight. Night was upon her then, and after the short tropical twilight, her defenders left as suddenly as they had appeared, in twin streaks of phosphorescence. She could only marvel at another example of porpoises saving humans from hungry sharks. As she continued her struggle to stay afloat, she mused that it must have been payback time. Her saviors had to be those that had played so long in the bow wave of the ship.

  She spent three hours clinging to her float, but it seemed like forever. Her eyes stung from the saltwater, and her arms began to feel like lead from the effort. She looked at the sky, trying to pick out the North Star to help with her bearings, but it was below the horizon. Twice she lost her grip as she dozed off in the tepid water, sinking as the scanty kapok flotation became more and more waterlogged.

  On one occasion she awakened spluttering with saltwater, after a trance-like episode in which she thought she could breathe underwater, as in a dream. Struggling to the surface, she began to scream, more to jar herself awake than to attract help, as rescue was the faintest of possibilities in the blackness. She thought, you’d think that the sub’s crew would have made more of an effort to pick up survivors, but then it occurred to her that something caused them to abandon their chase of the lifeboat and dive. But what? That gave her hope. She didn’t know it was the high-flying patrol bomber that was then heading back to base.

  Contemplating spending the tropical night in the water, she vowed to stay awake. She sang. She shouted. She thought of her year’s labor, and the reason they had been hijacked. This enraged her, and the flow of adrenaline stimulated more anger, at the hijackers and especially at the Pope. She thought of whatever curse could be the most blasphemous of all, and settled on an oath absolutely forbidden in her household when she was growing up. She had learned it from her mother, an American of Swedish parentage. But she was unable to utter it. In English it seemed bad enough, so she began to scream over and over, “Priest Devils!” She only thought the forbidden, “Prästa Djävulen.” And that made her madder and more determined than ever to make it out of her predicament alive.

  * * *

  As the two American destroyers knifed through the sea at 38 knots, they began to pick up coded radio traffic not heard before. Short wave was always full of noise--static, carriers, Morse code, and voices--often identifiable by the various accents, but at times disguised and encoded, entirely gibberish. But these new transmissions seemed different to the radio operator of the lead ship, the U.S.S. Gregory. Rushing to the bridge, his Chief exclaimed, “Here, sir. Get this, just picked up. It’s obviously in Russian, but encrypted, on the frequency they use to communicate with their subs out of Vladivostok. It’s been coming in every two minutes for the last half hour. They finally got a response, allowing us to get a fix on the position of their vessel, probably a nuclear submarine. It’s dead ahead, sir, according to our radar man.”

  “How far?” The Watch Officer snapped.

  “Only nine nautical miles, sir,” was the crisp reply.

  “Then you’d better raise the Captain right now. We could trigger off an international incident if we close on them.” Turning to his waiting signalman, he commanded, “Signal the Jarvis. Battle stations, of course, but safeties on, repeat, safeties on!” He then sounded the klaxon to get everyone’s attention, repeating those orders for the crew.

  Not much more than ten miles away, Diana heard what seemed to come as an echo of her last blasphemous shriek, but she realized there could be no echoes on the open sea. With renewed hope, she began to yell again.

  “Help!” She screamed repeatedly, until her cries became hoarse. It was only a few minutes before the whine of ships’ screws could be heard in her submerged ears.

  She didn’t know who they were, but at that point she knew it was her last chance. It didn’t occur to her that more than six thousand tons were bearing down on her at forty-five miles an hour. All she could think about over the next half-hour was being rescued.

  Rapidly approaching her, the Jarvis was leaving a long greenish phosphorescent wake. Several of the men on the fantail, grouped around the depth charges, a destroyer’s prime s
ub-killer, were marveling at the beauty of the balmy night. There was little thought of dropping the twin rows of the deadly charges, despite their being called to action stations. They weren’t at war, and already had endured enough calls to action stations in the month-long search for the fugitive American freighter to make them somewhat blasé.

  The two men closest to the railing lit up cigarettes, keeping the glow away from their deck officer, a chief gunner’s mate.

  “These damned fruitless chases can be fun the first couple of times, especially in these waters at night with the wake lit up so. Makes a guy want to light up himself, doesn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” replied the other, taking a deep draw. “But what I like most is when we spook a big fish, and it shoots away from us, leaving its own trail of light.”

  Flipping his cigarette butt into the roiling foam below, the first sailor remarked, “Isn’t it amazing how quiet it gets when you get used to the sound of the turbines and the spinning of the propeller shafts and screws at this speed?”

  “Wait,” the other exclaimed. “What’s that? I could swear I heard a voice crying ‘Help’ off there to port.” Thinking quickly, he called to the gunner’s mate on the starboard rail.

  “Someone’s in the water out there. Get on the horn to the bridge to come about!”

  Leaping to the phone, the deck officer shouted the message. A hand overboard always took precedence when the safety of the ship was not an issue. With its klaxon blaring, and the Captain on the bridge, the Jarvis heeled, leaving an arc of green in her wake as a high speed 180-degree turn to port was made. She slowed, her searchlights playing on the chop, as she glided through the spray of her own wake. To the watching crew, there was a sudden, almost dead silence, marred only by the gentle slap of waves against the destroyer’s sides. Every ear was listening.

  “I can’t hear anything now except the noise the turbines made the last few hours,” the taller of the two seamen whispered.

  The deck officer, who had come over to their side to dress them down for smoking, called for silence after a faint, hoarse cry of help was heard off the port quarter. It didn’t take long for the searchlights to be brought to bear in that direction. A rubber dingy was launched, and began to make ever-widening half-circles in the search.

  The dingy and its occupants cast a long shadow in the light of one of the searchlight beams, while the other briefly caught a flicker of reflection, seen from the elevation of the bridge. But then it was gone, and the search went on for another hour.

  Almost too exhausted to grasp the water container any longer, so hoarse from shouting that her voice was a muted croak, Diana began to despair, thinking I might not be found in this blackness after all. But then she recalled that some of the newer lifejackets were equipped with a small light to mark their presence in the dark. She hadn’t noticed one on hers in her haste to conceal her specimens, however.

  “Just my luck,” she muttered partly aloud as she felt through the lining of the flotation garment. No dice. Ready to give up, she reached up in frustration to scratch her neck for some reason, and there she felt the small cylinder of a marker light and battery, and turned it on. On the bridge, the sharp-eyed signalman spotted her gently bobbing light, tiny against the black velvet of the night. Using a bullhorn, the men in the dingy were quickly directed there. They almost ran over the water can.

  “It’s just some debris reflecting our lights,” exclaimed the man at the bow, retrieving it with a boat hook, as the beam of a searchlight continued to play. “Tell ’em to douse the glim. Maybe movement in the dark will throw some phosphorescence.”

  When the Jarvis’s lights were cut, it was plain that something, now underwater, was glowing off to the side.

  “It’s a marker light,” shouted the man in the bow, using the boat hook in that direction. Pulling it toward him, his elation could be heard on the bridge a quarter-mile away. “It’s someone in a lifejacket. Guys, give me a hand to bring him in, his head is under water, and he’s dead weight!”

  As they hauled Diana over the side, coughing up water, she was rolled face up onto the floorboards. Alert then, and sweeping her wet hair from her face, she looked up at them. “Thanks, chaps,” she croaked, “just like the U.S. Cavalry, bugle call and all, and just in time!”

  “Holy shit,” the crew exclaimed almost in unison, “it’s a girl!”

  They were soon jarred out of their astonished immobility by the bullhorn on the bridge, and it wasn’t long before Diana found herself tenderly lifted from the dingy and escorted to the officer’s wardroom, there to be surrounded by the solicitous Captain and his fellow officers. Enlisted men crowded the doors, and all were proudly beaming at their rescued female.

  “Here, have a Coke! But you sound British, so maybe some tea? Put on these dry dungarees, that’ll help,” all offered almost simultaneously, and in the concerned voices of those gathered around. Someone added, “Let me help you off with that soggy lifejacket, it’s no damned good anyway.”

  “Thanks for saving my life, gentlemen! I’ll have about four Cokes, but I’m keeping this vest, if you chaps don’t mind. And how can a lady get into dry clothes with everyone hanging around gawking?”

  As soon as she had changed in the little adjoining head, she emerged with her treasured specimens, wrapped and watertight still. Sitting down comfortably, despite the tent-like fit of her navy issue, exhausted but happy, she began slowly to down her Cokes.

  She told the story of being kept as a hostage on the American Traveler, and thrown into the drink by the passing TOW missile’s control wire. She answered their questions about the identity of the submarine, with its distinguishing red star. Her information that the otherwise obscure name looked like Cyrillic script excluded the Chinese, who were not known to have nuclear ships anyway. It had the number “64” or “84” on its conning tower also, which was helpful to them.

  In the meantime, the Gregory’s contact with the nuclear sub was lost as the Soviet vessel took advantage of the noise the freighter made as it headed into the depths, and the interference with sonar by the mass of sinking steel. The fact that a major international incident had been avoided between the rival navies of the cold war was a minor triumph. As for the attack on the lifeboats, that could easily be justified under marine law, merely pursuit of perpetrators of piracy on the high seas. The USSR could even claim credit, instead of being condemned for having attempted to hijack the American ship and its cargo for themselves.

  * * *

  As the little destroyer flotilla headed back to Guam, and the widespread search operation was called off, the second lifeboat was under sail, slowly moving southwest. As Lopez had told Diana, his goal was the nearest non-aligned island nation, where he would have a fair chance at freedom. The distance was greater than the lifeboat’s diesel fuel supply, but the boat still had some sailing capability. The second missile, a near miss, had splintered their mast, killing two of the four crewmen, and had reduced the canvas to barely enough for a jury-rig, which was augmented occasionally with the engine when Lopez became impatient.

  The days passed slowly, as they either baked in the unforgiving sun, or cooked in the stifling cabin. During the day the deck was too hot to stand on for long, even in their sneakers. At night the stars feebly lit the swells when the moon was new, and as it was waxing, they could see a persistent shark fin following them, although warded off in daytime by Lopez's angry rifle fire.

  The lifeboat had only a hundred miles to go before first landfall, when the fuel ran out. They could make barely two knots an hour in a good breeze, but they were in the doldrums. It could still take weeks of that hell to reach their island refuge on their voyage of escape. At first spurred on by Lopez’s description of how pirates were dealt with, the heat and the monotonous food slowly sapped the two crewmen’s resolve, despite his gory description of their fate if caught by the Americans.

  On the thirtieth day, a fresh breeze filled their little sail, the promise of nearby land heralded
by an occasional seabird. The direction of the swells had changed, and getting a fix on the stars with his sextant, Lopez was able to correct their heading to account for the current, which was carrying them far to the west. On a night that in his log he had entered as December the Twelfth, and riding almost due south on appreciable swells, they were awakened by the sound of thundering surf ahead. The wind had died down. Somewhere out there in the darkness was a coral reef, possibly that of Fais, the closest island of Micronesia.

  “Not exactly as I calculated, but good enough.” Lopez said to the two frightened seamen. “Get out the oars,” he ordered, as he put the wheel over to come about. The flapping of the sail was disconcerting, as the boat only partially responded, continuing to drift, the increasing swell now abeam.

  “Dios mio, row!” He shouted, “We have to avoid approaching the reef in the dark. If we can stand off until first light, then we’ll have a chance.” After a few minutes, he feverishly ordered them to drop anchor. Paid out to the end of its chain, it failed to ground, and their drift toward the increasing thunder of the surf continued, despite the men’s frantic efforts on the oars. In the inky darkness they could see the faint greenish-white of the monstrous surf lighted by the phosphorescence of its tumultuous motion as it crashed against the jagged coral reef.

  “Every man for himself,” Lopez yelled, as he put on his lifejacket, grabbing an extra one provided for the crew. Overboard he went, to the amazement of the lifeboat’s other occupants, and was not seen again, swept away by the current to an unknown fate.

  The two frightened sailors began to pray, and just then, the anchor caught, swinging them around stern-first to the foam and spray. They huddled in the cabin until dawn, repeating the Hail Mary in Spanish uncounted times. When the light of day encouraged them to go on deck, they could see an entry to the atoll’s lagoon just fifty feet away.