Graham edged around the other side of the large boulder and held his fire until he was sure he was lined up on the flashes of one of the guns of the pursuers, and fired a burst. Then, without waiting to see the results, he slid back behind the boulder and began crawling away. It would take them some time to find he had gone.
He could move a little faster now, for the light in the east was just beginning to show up the form of the rocks over which he was walking, though not yet their color. He caught up with his party just before they reached the ravine up which they had come from the beach, and which could now be seen as a darker gash in the dark tumbled surface.
“Here,” said Gil, leaning on his elbows, half-in and half-out of the ravine. Graham handed him the gun.
There was a sudden rattle of rock and a groan from the darkness below.
“What is it?” said Graham, lowering himself into the gash.
“I have turned my ankle,” said Varnipaz. Then: “It is all right; I can still walk on it.”
Graham followed his companions down the ravine to the beach, using hands like a monkey. Whatever the differences between the internal structure of human beings and Krishnans, it was interesting to know that the latter had ankles subject to sprains like those of people.
Behind Graham, the machine gun clattered once. Then over the sound of the surf he heard the overturning of rocks, and Gil stumbled and scrambled his way after them.
“Just a meenute!” called the Brazilian. “Before you run, give me a couple of those gelatin sticks!”
Varnipaz paused and fished the explosives out of the bag he carried. Gil and Graham fitted a couple of lengths of slow fuze into them, lit them, and tossed them as far as they could up the ravine.
Then they ran. Sklar and Jeru-Bhetiru were already far ahead of them. Graham passed Varnipaz, who limped painfully from his mishap. Graham knew they would have to hurry from now on. Hitherto conditions had been with them. The rough terrain favored the defense, and the light had been just strong enough to see one’s way without being bright enough for accurate shooting. Now however they would be out in the open with the light waxing every minute.
When they reached the place where the raft had been left, Graham found that Sklar had already untied the painter and tossed his paralyzer into the vessel, saying: “Graham, you and Varny take the rear end, on account of that’s heaviest. I’ll take the front. Don’t hit the propeller on the rocks.”
They picked up the raft while Gil flattened himself against the base of the cliff and aimed his machine gun back towards where the ravine debouched onto the beach.
As they neared the place where the sea should be, Graham saw with a thrill of horror that the water was not where it had been. It had begun to recede, and even as they ran towards it it fled before them, faster and faster.
“The tsunami!” Graham yelled. “Catch that water and get out to sea, quick!” He shouted back: “Come on, Gil! The wave’s coming!”
The gun clattered briefly, and then Gil was running after them. A muffled boom came from the direction of the ravine, and out of the corner of his eye Graham saw the puff of dust and rock fly into the air.
He could not tell if they had harmed the enemy by the explosion. Gil panted after them. They stumbled over loose shingle, sank ankle-deep in mud, and meandered around outcrops of jagged lava. On the exposed sea bottom seaweeds lay sprawled, and stranded sea creatures flopped and scuttled.
The sharp crack and bright flash of the electrostatic projector made Graham cast a glance back. In the dim pre-dawn light he could make out forms moving on top of the cliff and others sliding down it to the beach. He thought he saw the tall tailed reptilian figure of The’erhiya among them. Gunshots sounded, and the nasty crack of h-v bullets whipped about their ears.
Gil turned, threw himself down behind a rock, and aimed his machine gun—and suddenly collapsed, dropping the gun.
“Hold it!” said Graham, letting go his corner of the raft. He ran back a few steps. One glance at Gil, the top of whose head had been taken off by a bullet, was enough to tell him the young man was dead.
Graham picked up the machine gun and fired at the moving figures. The gun barked once and then stopped. Mud in the works, thought Graham, and worked the bolt a couple of times until it seemed to slide easily. Then it fired several bursts without difficulty. The pursuers sought cover or threw themselves down flat.
Bullets and high-voltage arcs whipped past Graham. He felt a sudden blow on his right arm that almost knocked him over, then a sharp pain. He looked down: A bullet had gone through the sleeve of his shirt and grazed his arm. Luckily it was a flesh-wound only; a square hit might have taken his arm clear off as a result of the terrific m-v of modern firearms. He fired another burst—why does a target always look so much smaller over a gunsight than when looked at in the normal fashion? The bolt clicked and the gun, now uncomfortably hot, was empty again.
Graham got up and ran to catch up with the others. At least it was light enough now so you could really see where you were going. He zigzagged around the larger rocks and leaped over the smaller.
Varnipaz was still limping, and Jeru-Bhetiru was manfully carrying the corner of the raft that Graham had dropped. “Gil?” asked Varnipaz.
“Dead,” replied Graham. They had almost caught up with the receding water.
Sklar splashed into the surf and dropped the front end of the raft. The others pushed it off and piled aboard. Graham threw the machine gun into the body of the little vessel, pushed the raft ahead of him until he was knee-deep, and leaped in himself. Then he hunted around the outboard motor until he found the starting button. The motor buzzed into life, sending the water foaming back from the spinning screw. The raft gathered speed, which, added to the rapidly increasing velocity at which the receding water was bearing them away from Ascension, made them seem to be leaving at airplane velocity.
Shots still came after them. Graham put one of his reserve clips into the machine gun and fired back at the shore, though the pursuers were now so distant that from this unsteady platform he could do little more than spray the landscape in the hope of keeping down the return fire. Sklar and Varnipaz added to his barrage with a few shots from their pistols.
“Oh-oh!” said Sklar in the bow. “Here comes that wave of yours. Does anybody know how to pray?”
Graham put the gun on safety and looked around. He had always been in the habit of saying that, having studied tsunamis, he had no desire ever to see one in person. Now, it seemed, he was going to meet one whether he liked or not.
The earthquake wave did not take the steep clifflike form of a breaker. Instead the horizon—close at hand from their low position amongst the swells—seemed to hump itself up against the paling eastern sky little by little. The raft slowed as it headed up a steeper and steeper slope. Behind them the exposed sea bottom and the beach spread themselves out below their level. Ahead the slope of the tsunami extended away like that of a great rounded hill.
“Look!” cried Jeru-Bhetiru, pointing shoreward.
They were now on a level with the top of the small cliff, and rising higher. The water had stopped receding and was now rushing back shoreward. Far ahead and below them the edge of the water foamed over the exposed bottom towards the beach. They were still rising, so that now they were above the highest point on the northern peninsula, and could see clear across to the ocean beyond. To their right Graham glimpsed the March turtle farm before the waters overwhelmed it, liberating all the thousands of March’s turtles. Now their great hill of water was carrying them swiftly back towards the peninsula.
Along the beach, little figures, mere specks in the distance, could be seen frantically scrambling back up the cliff. The water roared up the beach, spurted high as it lapped against the cliff, and then submerged the cliff itself. Then the curve of the watery hill hid the land ahead from those in the raft. The raft went faster and faster, drifting north and shoreward, and began to spin round and round like a top. A great current wa
s rushing around the northern tip of Ascension Island, rising higher and higher until most of the peninsula was one vast cascade over which sped a sheet of water. Graham gripped a couple of the rope handholds and hoped they would stay right side up. The roar of the water drowned everything else.
The raft pitched and heaved madly. Gouts of foam burst all around it, spraying its passengers with salt spray. Ascension Island slid past them as deep water poured over the northern peninsula. Ahead of the raft the water sped over the land to meet the other water that had poured around the northern end of the island in a millrace of leaping waves splashing tens of meters high.
Graham screamed: “Hold on!” at the top of his lungs, but could not even hear himself.
Now the whole peninsula was submerged, all but a few of the highest rocks, past which they spun. Then they were sliding down the long slope towards the maelstrom on the lee side which, though it had subsided somewhat, was still boiling.
Then they were in it. Graham snatched a quick breath and held it. They seemed to run head on into a wall of water, and for a few seconds there was nothing but green-and-white smother all around them. Then, when it seemed as though his bursting lungs could stand it no longer, Graham realized that his head was clear. The raft righted itself and there they were, drenched and coughing, and gripping their loops of rope with the grip of desperation. The raft still tossed, and water sloshed back and forth around their legs, but at least they could breathe. The machine gun and the other loose gear had disappeared, and the engine had stopped.
When he had coughed the water out of his lungs and squeezed the water out of his eyes, Graham looked towards the island. The air was filled with the screams of tens of thousands of terns flooded off their nests. In the dawn light he could now make out the rugged reddish-brown form of Ascension and see many of its forty volcanic cones, culminating in Green Mountain with its cloud cap.
As they watched, the land of the peninsula began to appear above the water—first a rock here and there, then continuous stretches, and finally the cliffs around the edges.
Meanwhile the backwash from the first wave sucked them northward around the tip of the peninsula. As the minutes passed the whole of the peninsula emerged, the water running off its top in sheets and cascades. The water slowly sank to its normal level; then another rise sent them spinning back westward around the tip of the peninsula again. However, this and subsequent waves came nowhere near submerging the peninsula; they merely rose and fell like speeded-up tides.
The four people in the raft, two human and two Krishnan, stared at the rusty, barren land. Graham picked up the bucket that was attached by a line to the raft and methodically began bailing.
“What was that?” said Varnipaz, coughing.
“What?” asked Sklar.
“I sounded like a voice crying for help. In—that direction, I think.” Varnipaz pointed.
“I don’t think nobody could have come through that alive,” said Sklar. “Probably one of these seagulls.”
Graham was fussing with the engine, which stubbornly refused to start. At last he got out the oars.
“If you’ll move a bit,” he said, “I’ll try to row. Mr. Sklar, you take the paddle in the stern.”
“You know about boats and thinks?” said Sklar with raised eyebrows.
“I’ve—uh—had a little experience.”
“Okus dokus, then you be captain.”
The sun was now half-above the horizon. Graham looked at Jeru-Bhetiru, who in her unembarrassed semi-nudity looked like the most desirable thing on earth. He asked: “Betty, why are you wearing that rig?”
She explained: “In Rio, I tried to get away when they were putting me into their airplane to fly out here. They caught me and my dress got so torn they gave me these instead. What is wrong with your arm? Were you wounded?”
“Just a graze,” he said, but submitted gladly to letting her bind up his wound.
The cry came again so that all could hear it. Sklar steered the raft in that direction. Presently as the swells lifted them they began to see a couple of black dots bobbing about between them and the shore. Graham pulled hard, and soon they drew alongside the swimmers. One was the fat bald Warschauer, the other a lemurlike extra-terrestrial: Adzik of Thoth.
“Well,” said Gordon Graham, “fancy meeting you here! Don’t b-be afraid; you’re among fiends.”
He reached for his pistol, but Sklar said: “Hey! (cough) Don’t shoot with your gun all wet. You’ll blow it up.”
Graham therefore hunted among the compartments of the raft until he found a fish spear in three sections. As the raft came closer to Warschauer, who struck out strongly and caught one of the ropes, Graham assembled the spear. He said to Warschauer: “All right, now t-tell us what this whole plot was about.”
“I’m not talking until I see my lawyer,” said Warschauer.
“Yeah?” said Graham, thrusting the spear into the man’s face. “Want me to stick this into your guts and turn it around a few times?”
“You wouldn’t do that!”
“Try and see. The s-same for you,” he told Adzik, who had paddled up alongside Warschauer and had hold of another rope.
Warschauer coughed up some sea water and said: “Okay, you win. Especially since it looks as though Adzik’s gang has double-crossed us. Adzik (cough) was the head of the syndicate on Earth; The’erhiya was just the hypnotist who kept us in line. he had control of me too, so I couldn’t tell you this except I’ve been half-drowned and that seems to break the hold.”
“What was the objective?” asked Graham.
“To colonize Gamanovia with Thothians, stupid.”
“How?”
“Adzik’s a member of a private syndicate, most of them government people as well. That’s how they do things on Thoth. They wanted Gamanovia raised ahead of time to break the contract so March would own the whole continent. Or rather Joe Aurelio, who bought the Rock from March.”
“What then?”
“Joe signed an agreement to sell the continent to the syndicate, who would in turn sell it (at a colossal profit) to the Thothian planetary government. Before Earth knew what was happening, the continent would be full of surplus Thothians dumped there from spaceships.”
“They couldn’t get away with that!”
“Think so? Remember the case of Thor versus Earth? When the Terrestrials grabbed a continent on a similar deal, and then argued that since ancient wrongs could never be righted they should be left in possession?”
“It’s not the same—”
“Legally it is. At that time the court set up the precedent that legal immigrants to a planet might not be expelled except for individual crimes.”
“But the W.F. wouldn’t allow this immigration in the first place!”
“How could they stop it? Under their constitution the right to limit immigration is reserved to the nations—and the World Court says that means immigration from other planets too.”
“But this immigration would be based on fraud! Kidnapping people, hypnotizing the project scientists . . .”
“Sure, but you’d have had a hell of a time proving that if the plans had gone through as scheduled.”
“So the W.F. spends billions to make a home for monkey-rats! Is that so, Adzik?” said Graham, pointing the spear at the Thothian.
“Yes,” squeaked Adzik, “though I must protest your use of the insulting term ‘monkey-rat.’ May we come aboard now? I am tired of swimming.”
“Okay, but one false move and back you go. Where are the rest?”
Warschauer snorted. “What d’you think? Drowned. Lundquist stopped a bullet before the tidal wave came. The’erhiya couldn’t swim, and the only reason we’re alive is I’m too fat to sink and Adzik swims like a seal. What the hell happened? Earthquake?”
“You’ll find out in the clink,” said Sklar. “Say, ain’t we driftink?”
The trade wind had indeed blown them several kilometers to the northwest. Graham made one more frui
tless effort to start the motor, then got out the sail and the waterproof instruction book for setting it.
Half an hour later they had the sail rigged: a simple triangular lateen sail swung from the top of the stubby mast. Graham, who knew at least the theory of sailing if not the practice, thought he could tack back to Ascension. However, he soon found that despite its stiff rubber keel the shallow craft drifted to leeward faster than he could beat to windward. Ascension continued to recede.
“We’ll have to row,” he said. “Mr. Sklar, keep the spear on these two. Warschauer, take one oar and I’ll take the other. Betty, you take the paddle. Mr. Sklar, poke him every time he catches a crab.”
“How should I catch a crab out here?” asked Warschauer innocently.
Sklar, who had given up trying to light a soaked cigarette, asked: “How lunk are we going to last in this boat?”
“We’ve g-got food and water for some days in the compartments. And if we run out, there’s always our friends.” Graham nodded towards Warschauer and Adzik.
“I have been looking into the Earthly law on cannibalism,” said Varnipaz. “To kill a man for the main purpose of eating him is illegal, but if he dies for any other reason it is all right. So if Mr. Warschauer forces us to kill him by acting obstreperous . . .”
Warschauer’s expression showed that he considered this a joke in very poor taste.
With the oars they made time back towards the island. They were still a kilometer from shore when a noise overhead caused them to look up: a swoosh like that of a gasoline blow torch amplified. Graham recognized the blast of a spaceship’s rocket motor.
“There she is!” said Sklar, pointing.
Down came the ship, growing from a speck to a spot to a rocket standing on its tail. It dropped towards the northern peninsula of Ascension. To Graham it somehow looked neither like a standard Viagens Interplanetarias ship nor an Osirian ship . . .
The Continent Makers and Other Tales of the Viagens Page 29
