"There's a fast current running here," said Madison above the hiss of the downpour. "Did you see how fast we sped away from the ship? Or maybe it's the wind. No, there isn't any wind. Yes, I think there is some wind...." He was holding up a finger to test it. A wave knocked his hand down. "No, there isn't any wind. It's the waves. Yes, I think it is the wind...."
"Oh, Gods, make up your mind!" I yelled, trying to bail with my straw hat.
"I'm much better with a typewriter," said Madison. "Give me a nonbouncing desk and I could handle this. Eighteen point quote STORM unquote 20 point quote STORM SUBSIDES unquote 22 point quote MADISON SAVED...."
I thought the inflatable was going to sail up into the air, flip like a pancake and come down. Then it slid and slithered from one mountainous crest to the next and then, for variety, tried to be a pancake again.
"Wait," said Madison. "I think I hear surf."
I stopped bailing. It was all running out of the holes in the hat anyway. I took time out to retch.
The faint haze of light, cast by the moon far above this holocaust, grew stronger for a moment.
"There's land over there!" said Madison.
He promptly put his back to it and even though he caught crabs now and then and even though we spun entirely about occasionally, we seemed to be making progress.
To my right I heard a snarl. I knew what it was at once. The monster who had been waiting for days had decided to attack full force and swallow me at last.
I saw a faint but nearby glimmer of white. It could be nothing but teeth.
"Hold on!" cried Madison. "I'll try to surfboard in!"
Up we rose. Down went the bow of our craft. And suddenly we were going at sixty miles an hour! Through white-frothed blackness!
Then we tripped.
With a roaring ferocity, the surf devoured us!
Down I went in the churning maelstrom.
Abruptly I realized that the life jacket was not a life jacket anymore. It was a death jacket. Full of magazines, it was taking me straight to the bottom!
I tried to get rid of it. The machine gun across my back was holding it on!
I felt myself surging forward in the depths.
Now something was strangling me!
I struck something on the bottom. A rock?
Something was towing me!
Oh, Gods, the sea had decided to take me off to its cave where it could eat me at leisure.
It was too much for me. I passed out.
A bit later, I opened my eyes. There was a roaring in my ears.
Something was over me, outlined against the luminous sky. This was where the sea would boil me alive and have me bit by bit for snacks.
"Goodness," said a voice. "I'm glad you're still alive."
The sea doesn't talk English and it wants to see everybody dead. I was reassured.
I raised my head. The roaring wasn't in my ears. I could see the waves in the faintly luminous glow. They were roaring and thundering away but I was at least ten feet up the beach from the water.
Something was still strangling me. I tried to pry it off. The boat painter! It had gotten wrapped around my neck. When I pulled at it impatiently, the boat nearby gave a jerk.
"Thank heavens I didn't have to go diving for you," said Madison. "When I pulled the boat further up out of the water to get my suitcase, you were tied to it. You're lucky."
"Don't talk to me of luck!" I said. I got myself untangled. Then I became aware of the firmness of the ground. It was only moving a little bit under me. I felt it again. It was moving less. I put both my hands against it and pushed. It wasn't moving at all. Maybe I was lucky.
"I don't know if they followed us," said Madison.
That brought me around very swiftly. At the moment the clouds were thinner but there was still rain. I couldn't see the yacht or any lights but then, actually, I didn't know where to look except out into the sea. We might even have come around some point.
I looked behind us. A hill loomed.
"Come!" I said. "We've got to find cover! If they send anyone after us, we must not get caught in the open."
I got up and took a step forward. Ouch! I was barefoot! The scuba shoes must have come off.
Nevertheless, I must walk!
Stumbling and stubbing, I led the way up the hill through underbrush. We climbed and climbed. At last I came limpingly onto a flat area. At first I thought it was a road, for it seemed to be paved. The luminescence from above the rain brightened the scene for a moment. It wasn't a road. It seemed to be a wide floor, half an acre at least.
Aha! A ruined city or the fragments thereof. Greece abounds with them. I thought I knew where we must be now. There is an ancient excavated city from the Bronze
Age at the southeast end of Chios and it is on the side of the island which faces away from Turkey. Emborios, I think its name was. I felt encouraged. I was sure that I had landed on the island where Homer had written his famous poems. The odyssey I was engaged upon might not satisfy Ulysses but it certainly contained a lot more horror than I was comfortable with.
I went further up the hill, Madison trudging after me. I came to a rocky prominence. In spite of rain, I caught a whiff of goats. Perhaps there was some shelter here along the face of these cliffs.
I took the flashlight Madison had retained in his pocket and played it cautiously ahead of me. I found a faint path. It ended in a shallow cave.
It was very low and it was very plain that goats used it, but it was shelter from the rain. I crawled in and Madison followed.
I turned the flashlight on my feet. Blood! I knew I could not walk any further: I had no shoes.
I glanced apprehensively down through the dark where the sea must be, far below. They would be after us, I had no doubt. Black Jowl had meant business. Kidnapping from Greek soil with no witnesses around would not cause him a second thought.
I gloomed. Maybe I was not safe after all!
PART FIFTY-NINE
Chapter 1
Lying in the stinking cave, licked now and then with gusts of rain, I wondered what the future held for me. Something awful, I had no doubt. I was right.
Music!
Home, home on the range,
Where the deer and the antelope play,
Where seldom is heard a discouraging word
And the skies are not cloudy all day!
Jesus! On the Greek island of Chios, drenched in rain, with the ghost of Homer haunting around, how could a western ballad get in here?
It was Madison. He had taken a small portable radio out of his suitcase and had it on Radio Luxembourg.
"Turn that thing off!" I wailed.
"I was just trying to liven things up," he said. "It's kind of dull."
"As soon as it gets daylight," I snarled, "you won't find it dull. I'm going to have to sell our lives as dearly as possible!"
"Maybe I can find some blues," he said. "But I do think country western is a more suitable soundtrack if you're going to start shooting."
The radio said, "We now have a request from our armed forces in Turkey, 'Join the Big Round Up in the Sky.'"
"Oh, Gods, turn it off," I begged.
He did.
Wait a minute. Radio! I was suddenly hit by a brilliant idea!
I untied the sack from my belt and spilled its contents out on the floor. I picked up the two-way-response radio.
Oh, thank Gods! Raht answered!
In rapid military Voltarian, I said, "Listen and get this straight. Put a message through to the base. Order Captain Stabb to take off in the tug and pick me up quick!" Hope was surging in me. That flat space back there might serve as a landing place. Stabb could whisk me to the depths of Africa or someplace safer than here.
Raht said, "Got the message. But where are you?"
"I think I'm on the southeast end of the Greek island of Chios."
"You think" said Raht. "If a spaceship is going to pick you up, you better be sure where you are and right down to a pinpoint. They'r
e not going to wander all over the place trying to locate you. They'd have to kill any inhabitants they ran into if they made a mistake. You're risking a Code break."
"Look," I said, "I have not got much time. They are running a race with dawn. Pinpoint me with that radio."
"It's not that accurate at such ranges. Tell you what. I'm not at the office but I'll rush over there. I can put your carrier beam on the grid analyzer if you transmit to it. Hold on. I'll get right over there." He clicked off.
"What language were you speaking?" said Madison. "It didn't sound like any lingo I ever heard."
I masked the flashlight and looked at him. He knew too much already. If the Countess Krak ever got her hands on him, I was dead for sure!
Before I could stop him, Madison took the flashlight and began to paw around in the mound of papers I had spilled out of the sack to get my radio. "Well, look at all the passports!" he said. "Inkswitch, Federal Investigator; Achmed Ben Nutti, United Arab League; Sultan Bey... I don't see any here for Smith." He looked up. "What is your real name, anyway?" He looked back at the papers. "And what's this writing?" I had used a blank Apparatus gate pass to scribble amounts of money on: the printing was three-dimensional, of course, and it plainly said, Coordinated Information Apparatus, Voltar Confederacy. It even had the logo the Fleet called the "drunks." "Three-dimensional printing?" he said. "That's out of this world, man."
At first I hadn't stopped him because I was thinking of something else: about what to do with him. Then I hadn't stopped him because the gesture of doing so would have alerted him to the fact that he was into something secret. And when he hit the gate pass blank he had gone beyond mere stopping. Code break. Madison would have to be shot.
Then, much as it was unlike me, I stayed my hand as it reached instinctively toward the machine gun. Madison was too valuable. Madison could wreck men's lives and start wars and raise Hells in a way Voltar had never heard of: PR. Lombar was always looking for ways to ruin people and this was one he had never heard of.
Despite my condition, decision was swift. When the tug picked us up, I would simply order Captain Stabb to take Madison back to base, put him in detention and ship him off to Lombar with a note. Maybe it would make Lombar less brutal on me if I gave him such a gift. It would not only get Madison safely beyond any Krak interrogation-which would be extremely fatal now that he knew my other names-it would also put me in good with Lombar Hisst.
I had to dissimulate. But I am trained in that. I forced a chuckle. "Your instincts as an investigative reporter will get you in trouble yet, Madison," I said. "Just don't spread it around and you'll find out all about it someday."
"Oho!" he said. "I smell a story! Eighteen-point Mystery Man Tells All."
He sealed his fate right there.
Chapter 2
After a tense interval that seemed hours my radio went live. Raht's voice: "I'm in the New York office now."
"What the Hells was the delay?"
"This analyzer hasn't been used for years," said Raht. "I couldn't find a power pack. But it's operating now. Just hold down your transmit plate and I'll get it into the computer."
I did. There was a pause. Then Raht came on again. "It's a good thing I checked before I called the base. You're not on Chios."
"You must be making a mistake," I said. "I am definitely on Chios, right beside the ruins of Emborios. Check again, you idiot!"
There was a pause. "I rechecked. You're not on Chios. I have the Voltarian grid map of this planet right on the scope. You're at 43-17-4.1052 exactly."
"That doesn't tell me anything. Give it to me in Earth geography."
"Let me get a blowup of an Earth globe, get it to the same scale and superimpose... Here it is. You're 340.2 yards up from the beach and 9.1 miles west by south of Karaburun."
"WHAT?"
"You're just across a narrow strait from Chios. You're on the Turkish mainland."
Oh, GODS! I had gotten turned around in the rain and dark! And ruins were a dime a dozen in this land!
The ground under me went suddenly hot.
"Raht," I pleaded, "please, please tell them at the base to send that tug quick. I've GOT to get out of Turkey!"
"All right," he said. "I'll relay the message. But don't go running off. They'll have my head if they make a fruitless trip. I'm gone."
Madison said, "Who is that you're talking to?"
I was numb from shock of finding where I was. "New York," I said.
"On that little thing?" said Mad. "It's not much bigger than a cigarette lighter."
I didn't answer him. He'd find out all about real electronics soon enough. On Voltar. I was more interested in that blackness out there. I couldn't see much but I had to be alert for the tug.
I hoped they didn't direct their blueflash this way when they settled down on that expanse of pavement. It was around a shoulder of the hill but still, I must take care to protect my eyes with my arm. I didn't care if
Mad got a pupil full of it. He'd be knocked out soon enough anyway, for shipment.
It seemed like hardly any time at all before I saw a haze of light. But wait, there was something wrong. The whole terrain was getting gray.
IT WAS DAWN!
With a sudden sickening I realized I had been too late! They couldn't make it in the short span of darkness that had been left.
I moaned softly.
The intensity of morning twilight increased. Bushes began to take on detail. The waves in the surf below were no longer just white streaks.
It stopped raining. There were clouds but even these were thinning.
The ships!
The Golden Sunset, two or three miles away, was growing distinct. It was obscuring nearly all of another craft beside it. I could not make out the kind of vessel the other was. A fishboat? A yacht? A patrol craft? All I knew for certain about it was that it wanted me! And here I was pinned down, hidden it is true, but trapped in Turkey, the very place I must not be.
To my left, lying out in the water, three islets emerged from the twilight. And then directly before us but some miles away there seemed to be a bulk of land.
Suddenly a random shaft of sunlight moved in under the scudding clouds. It was from directly behind us.
The sun rises in the east, I told myself. My cave in the cliff was facing due west. I was looking across the narrow strait at Chios. Any hope I had that Raht might be wrong collapsed. Even the sun said I was in Turkey.
There is something discouraging about having a thing you already know pounded home with sledgehammer force.
Chios was only a few miles away. A wild plan to swim for it folded up like a popped paper bag.
MEN!
They came from around an outcrop on the beach. One, two, three, four, five, six... BLACK JOWL!
They were working north along the beach. They must have landed in a quieter cove to the south, not choosing to dare the pounding surf opposite me where we had landed.
THEY WERE SEARCHING!
Scattered out they would examine the shore and then the slope above it with their deadly eyes.
Black Jowl was carrying a hand radio. He would pause and speak in it from time to time and look out toward the ships. Oh, Gods, on those ship radios he would be in communication with all the world. What was he ordering? A general mobilization of the armed forces of Turkey? Maybe at any moment now fighter planes would come screaming out of the dawn sky: I keened my ear for the clank of tanks, the scuttle of infantry. I scanned the horizon: maybe the Turkish navy would show up. After all, I had entered the country without passing through immigration: they would use that as a crime to turn me over to Black Jowl and then stand back laughingly as I was stoned alive. That is, if they did not kill me on the first frontal assault.
I looked to my machine gun. I upended the barrel. A stream of water came out. Never mind, it would still shoot. I braced myself on my elbows and drew a bead on Black Jowl. Then I paused. It was only a .22 caliber weapon and while I had heard that a .22 would t
ravel a mile, I didn't think it had a very lethal impact at long range. I had better wait.
A shout rose up above the distant boom of surf. The men raced forward.
One was pointing.
Our inflatable!
Oh, why hadn't I pushed it back into the sea?
Black Jowl came and stood before it. He talked into his radio, looking at the ship.
How had they known the inflatable was there? And then I realized they had followed us in on radar last night. Probably the thing even had a radar target on it!
The men fanned out. I knew what they were looking for: footprints!
They found the trail! Probably blood from my broken feet. No, that would have been obliterated by the rain. But they seemed to be following something.
I cocked my machine gun.
Suddenly the black-jowled man shouted something to the rest of them. They halted.
The black-jowled man was talking into his radio. I could not hear what he was saying due to the hiss and boom of the sea. Oh, if I only had a listening device. But then, I didn't need it. From his gestures to the men it was very plain that he knew I was up there on that cliff.
But it was puzzling. They did not come charging up. They were just standing there three hundred yards away, looking first to the cliff and then to the black-jowled man.
His communication seemed very lengthy. I could guess what it was: he was ordering a full frontal assault by the combined forces of NATO! Then women with stones would act as the mop-up squad.
Then something very peculiar happened. Black Jowl removed his radio from his mouth and made an arm signal to his men.
They picked up the inflatable, punched the gas out of it and folded it up. Black Jowl was making sure I did not escape by sea!
Carrying the craft they filed off to the south. They vanished around a turn of the beach. Very soon, in two boats, they came into view again.
They headed for the ships.
I watched as they crossed the water. I looked up at the sky for any fighter planes.
At long last they boarded the vessels.
Sometime later the yacht, still obscuring the other ship, got under way. Both of them sailed northward. For Istanbul?
Mission Earth 07: Voyage of Vengeance Page 24
