A tiny sound came from the adjoining room. The cot creaked, the way a cot does when a sleeper turns. By and by the outer door creaked. Parker got up. He didn’t put on his shoes. He went to the door, the gun in his hand.
There was a full moon overhead. The moon and the light illumined the tiny island.
A shadow was moving along the walk toward the landing. Bobo. While Parker watched, the native went to the end of the landing and dived into the sea.
Keeping out of sight, the lighthouse keeper slipped down to the edge of the water. Bobo was splashing in the sea, apparently having the very devil of a good time. He dived and swam and turned somersaults in the water with all the grace and agility of a seal.
Parker took the gun out of his pocket. He looked at it thoughtfully, to make certain the safety was off.
Bobo came out of the water. He shook himself like a dog, then strode along the walk and went into the lighthouse tower.
Parker followed. Bobo was in the radio room again. The trap door was open. There was no light in the radio room except the dim glow coming from the tubes of the transmitter. Bobo had turned on the filament heaters. He was working in the dark, doing something to the transmitter; what it was Parker couldn’t see. The native seemed to be making changes in the wave coils. The set operated on a wave length of six hundred meters. Bobo was making changes. He didn’t seem to be hesitating about them; he seemed to know what to do and to be able to do it with a deftness that would have amazed the Navy experts who had installed the equipment.
The set was designed for either voice or code. Like all continuous-wave transmitters, it was silent in operation, except for the tapping of the key when code was used. Bobo began to use the key.
Parker knew Morse. He tried to follow the key. Now and then he seemed to catch a letter. It was hard to follow that racing key, so damned hard that Parker eventually knew that Bobo wasn’t using Morse. He didn’t know what code the native was using, but it certainly wasn’t Morse.
Bobo stopped transmitting. Clamping the earphones over his head, he began to twirl the dials of the receiver. Parker watched. The native went back to the transmitter. He examined it carefully and seemed to be making minute changes. Again the key rattled. Again Parker couldn’t follow it.
This alternation between transmitter and receiver kept up for perhaps half an hour. Parker, his head just level with the floor, watched. He had the impression that each successive failure sank the native in deeper gloom.
Then Bobo got a reply. He almost danced for joy. He rapped off a hasty answer on the key, listened once, then rapidly began changing the wave coils back to their former frequency values.
Parker went down the steps, went into his room and waited. Bobo came in, went directly to his room. The cot creaked as he lay down.
He didn’t move again all night; Parker stayed awake to make certain. Once Parker got up and went up to the top of the tower to inspect the light. Bobo didn’t follow him.
Parker was up with the sun.
“Hey, Bobo,” he called. “Lighthouse keepers have to be up early in the morning. Out of it.”
Rubbing his eyes, the native came out of his room.
“Sleep good?” Parker asked.
“Sure. Sleep damned good, you bet.”
“O.K. I’m going up to turn off the light.”
Bobo didn’t follow him up the tower. He turned off the light, made notes on the temperature, wind direction, and barometer readings; then, mindful of the Navy’s wishes, he picked up the binoculars and swept the surface of the sea. There was no sign of a sub. There was no ripple of a periscope breaking the surface. The Gulf was calm.
He looked down toward the wharf. Bobo was swimming again; he seemed to have almost a mania for the water.
Parker went down to the radio room. By the time he got the transmitter warmed up, Bobo had come up the steps. He shook himself like a dog, and a spray of water flew from his glistening, powerful body.
“What do?” he asked curiously, as Parker picked up the microphone.
“It’s time for the regular morning report,” the lighthouse keeper answered. “You know, report by radio.”
Bobo merely stared at him.
Parker got through to the base station. He reported the temperature, wind direction, barometer reading—dope collected for the weather bureau.
“How’s Johnson?” he asked when his report was finished.
“Johnson?” the speaker rattled, after a silence.
“Yes, Johnson. How’s his arm coming along? He fell down the stairs and broke it, you know.”
“Oh, his arm. Yes. I don’t have any dope on it yet this morning, but it’s probably doing all right. Anything else?”
Parker hesitated. He glanced sideways at Bobo. The native hadn’t moved, but he wasn’t watching Parker; he was looking out the window toward the sea.
“No, nothing more,” Parker said. He snapped the switches that fed juice into the transmitter, rose to his feet.
“Breakfast, Bobo,” he said.
The native jerked around to face him. “Breakfast? You mean eat? Oh, sure, you bet. Eat damned good.”
“O.K., you go on down. I’ll be down in a minute.”
“Go on down ? Sure. You bet.”
Still dripping water from his recent swim, the native went bounding down the stairs. Parker followed slowly, a thoughtful look on his face. The thoughtful frown was replaced by a look of incredulous amazement the instant he set foot outside the tower.
Bobo was not waiting for him in the house. He was not waiting at all. He was racing along the boardwalk toward the landing, running so rapidly that his legs seemed to blur.
But it was not Bobo’s action that stamped the look of incredulous amazement on Parker’s face. It was something else, something that was moving across the surface of the sea toward the island and emerging as it moved. It was a round, bulging dome. It threw a long wake behind it.
“A sub!” Parker gasped. “She was lying out there under the surface all the time. Hey, Bobo!” he yelled. “Don’t try to swim out to that thing. Stay away from it. No good. Bad. You hear? Bad!”
The native didn’t answer, but kept running along the walk.
“By heaven!” Parker rasped in understanding. “So that’s the way it is! So that’s why you were sneaking in and using the radio transmitter! You’re an educated native, eh? Or maybe you’re not a native at all.”
“Halt!” he shouted.
Bobo kept running.
The gun seemed to leap into Parker’s fist. Its explosion smashed the morning silence into a million pieces. A tiny splash showed where the bullet had struck.
“Halt!” Parker shouted. “The next time I’ll shoot to kill.”
The native had reached the landing. Never hesitating in his stride, he dived into the water.
Cursing, Parker raced down the walk. In the water, Bobo would be entirely at his mercy. The sub would have to stay well out because of the shoals, and while he didn’t know the sub’s intentions, as long as he held Bobo, he would have a strong bargaining point. It might easily be a bargaining point on which his life would hinge. That sub would not be likely to leave him here to report its presence. And it would be armed. It could stand off from shore and send a hail of machine-gun bullets smashing over the island. True, America wasn’t at war, but no nation seemed to bother much about a declaration of war these days. If he had Bobo, the sub wouldn’t dare shell him. Or would it?
A dark shadow was moving through the water. It was Bobo, swimming under the surface. Parker sent a bullet downward. It smacked into the water, but Bobo never halted. Probably the bullet didn’t touch him. He was too far under the surface.
“All right, damn you,” Parker gritted. “You’ll have to come up for air sometime, and when you do—”
The sub was coming closer now. A great bow wave was curling out from it as it drove toward the shore. It was lifting farther and farther out of the water. Men were tumbling out of an opening in the side of
the conning tower.
“They’ll have a gun in operation in a minute!” Parker thought. “Damn that native! Will he never come up?”
Bobo didn’t come up. Parker began to itch, waiting for him. Seconds ticked away. A minute passed. Then two. Three. Parker felt cold. Nobody could stay underwater that long. His eyes followed the shadow that was Bobo. Swimming like a fish, he was moving out toward the sub. Although he was completely under the surface, he was using a kicking stroke that would have made a South Sea islander turn green with envy.
And he wasn’t coming up. He was out a hundred yards, then farther. Parker expected his head to break the surface any second. It didn’t. The native kept swimming underwater. He was too far out for anything but a lucky shot to get him.
All over his body, Parker’s skin seemed to be crawling. He cast a glance at the submarine, at the shadow that was Bobo, then turned and ran toward the lighthouse.
He was expecting a blast of machine-gun fire to let go any instant. Or perhaps a cannon. That sub simply couldn’t let its presence here be known. Uncle Sam would raise merry hell about a submarine in the Gulf, merry hell indeed. Hence—machine-gun slugs.
But none came. Yet.
Parker was aware that he was holding his breath as he ran. His back tingled from the bullets he was expecting.
There wasn’t a spot of cover where he could hide. All he hoped to do was to reach the radio transmitter in time.
He pounded into the lighthouse and up the steps. With a single bound he was through the trap door and into the room, snapping switches that fed current to the tubes. It took time for the tubes to warm up. It would probably take more time to contact the base station. This wasn’t the regular hour for calls. Of course, there would be an operator on duty, but it might take fifteen minutes to raise him. A lot could happen in fifteen minutes.
Through the window Parker had a perfect view of everything that was happening. The sub was still coming in, emerging more and more all the time. Bobo was still swimming toward it. He reached it, was drawn quickly aboard. He had swum underwater all the way to the sub. It was a quarter of a mile at least, probably nearer a half, but Bobo hadn’t broken the surface once in all that distance.
“Now it’s coming,” Parker thought. “Bobo is safely on board. Now it will be my turn.”
He leaped to the meter panel. The needles were beginning to wiggle, the transmitter was warming, juice was beginning to flow through it.
“Hurry, damn you, hurry,” Parker prayed. “They’ll have a machine gun and a landing party on the way in no time.”
The meter needles suddenly jumped. Juice was flowing. Parker grabbed the microphone.
“Calling base station lighthouse service, Station 719 calling base station lighthouse service, Station 719 calling base station lighthouse service, calling—”
He switched to the receiver.
No answer.
“Calling—”
Suddenly he stopped. Through the window he could see the submarine. No machine gun had been unlimbered. No ugly-snouted cannon had appeared on the foredeck. The men on the sub were not working with a gun; they were entering the conning tower.
Parker stared.
“Calling base station lighthouse service,” he said automatically. He didn’t notice what he was saying. He was watching that sub.
It was turning, heading away from the island, heading out to sea. It was going away. It wasn’t sending a landing party ashore.
A white wake spread behind it. It was moving faster, still faster. It was going faster than any submarine had ever gone before. And it was still emerging from the water.
A low drumming sound, like distant thunder, was beginning to throb in the air.
“Station 719 calling base station light—”
That was as far as he got.
The thunder had grown in volume, had become a roaring torrent of distant sound. More than ever, it sounded like the growling of thunder in a tropic storm.
The sub was still rising out of the water. Jets of fire were appearing along the edges of its hull. It seemed to lift itself on those fire jets; fire spurted from its tail.
It was big, far bigger than any submarine he had ever seen. It had no wings, but in spite of that it was rising into the air. Into the air!
With fascinated eyes, Parker stared at the thing. It was completely clear of the surface of the sea. Gaining speed, it was rising on a long slant, moving very fast now. The spurts of light from the fire jets were fading into tiny flashes; the drum thunder was diminishing in the distance.
It went up, up, up. It went out of sight, still going up.
Suddenly Parker sat down. He was weak. Beside the transmitter a pad of yellow paper caught his attention. He stared at it for a long time before he realized what he was seeing. Then slowly his brain began to register the message his eyes were bringing.
The pad of paper had been lying there all the time, but another sheet of paper had been lying on top of it. Somehow, in his haste to get the transmitter into action, he had knocked off the top sheet, revealing what was written on the pad.
Object much resembling submarine appeared in the sky. Flashes of fire leaped from it and it made a noise like thunder. It glided down to a landing near the island. I saw it first from the light room. After moving across the surface, it stopped for a few minutes, then suddenly submerged. Went out in boat and tried to locate it, but was unable to do so. On returning to island, found I had a visitor who looks like a Carib and calls himself Bobo. He seemed very stupid at first. Couldn’t speak English. He began to pick it up from me. From the speed with which he picked it up, I am beginning to doubt that he is a native. I suspect he came here in that strange flying submarine and that he was caught on its deck when it suddenly submerged. Unable to return to his ship, he swam ashore here. He seems very fascinated by our radio equipment, which is another reason I suspect he is not the wild Carib he seems. No native could grasp the operation of radio apparatus so quickly.
The message had been hastily scribbled. Apparently it was a series of notes made while the events it described were fresh in the observer’s mind.
It was in Johnson’s handwriting.
Abstractedly, Parker flipped on the receiver.
“Lighthouse service calling Station 719,” the speaker squawked, as if the operator had been calling for several minutes and was annoyed because he hadn’t received an answer. “Go ahead, Station 719.”
“Put Hanson on,” said Parker tersely. “Do it fast.”
The loud-speaker squawked, and there was a series of clicks. Parker was suddenly sweating; drops of sweat ran down his face. He wiped them away with his hand, stared at his sticky palm.
Hanson came on. “What do you want, Parker?” he demanded.
“I want to report—” Suddenly Parker choked. Sweat was in his eyes. Sweat was all over his body.
“I want to know what happened to Johnson!” he said.
“Johnson? He broke—”
“Skip that part of it,” Parker snarled in a tone so savage it startled him. “You can tell that to the Marines. I want to know what really happened to him.”
The speaker rattled noisily as Hanson cleared his throat.
“Well, if you must know, he went off the deep end and I had to recall him. He’s in a psychopathic hospital for observation. The doctors say there is nothing seriously wrong with him, that when he has a good rest he’ll be all right again. I’m arranging a shore job for him.”
Parker swallowed. “Then why did you tell me he had a broken arm?”
“For a very good reason,” Hanson said exasperatedly. “If I told you the truth, the suggestion might start you seeing things, too.”
“The devil!” Parker said. “What did he report he saw—a flying submarine?”
“What?” the speaker croaked. “How did you know what he thought he saw? Have you gone off your head, too?” There was suspicion in Hanson’s voice.
Parker thought swiftly. Lighthouse-keep
er’s sickness, they called it. The loneliness caused it. Under different names, sheepherders and forest rangers and lonely trappers suffered from the same illness.
His hands were sticky with sweat. He swallowed.
“Nope,” he said.
“Then how did you know what Johnson thought he saw?” Hanson demanded.
“Oh, that,” Parker answered. “I ran into some notes he had made, so I thought I would call you and get the truth of the matter.”
Invaders of Earth Page 5
