“No. In fact we believe it’s in rather early infancy.”
“But how can you tell?”
Hendricks sighed. “It would be impossible to explain all our deductions to a layman. But I can say this. By comparative anatomy and by various measurements, we are almost positive of our conclusion.”
“You mean there may be a full-grown Gorgo around somewhere?”
Flaherty joined in the conversation. “It’s a fair assumption. Where there are offspring, there are generally parents.”
“Perhaps the large ones were destroyed in the volcanic upheaval. In that case, Gorgo is the only one.”
“Perhaps.” Hendricks seemed dubious.
I rubbed my chin, looking up into the shadows at the dinosaur recreation looming above us. “How big would a full-grown Gorgo be?”
Hendricks snorted a moment into his mustache. “Well, I can give you only an approximate guess. Come along with me. The Brontosaur exhibit might give you a fair estimate.”
We moved to another corner of the big room. I looked at the exhibit, a small skeleton about the size of a crocodile. This was mounted directly below a monster Brontosaur thirty feet high at the shoulder.
“That would make a mature monster of Gorgo’s type nearly two hundred feet high!”
Flaherty nodded. “At the very least.”
I wondered if Hendricks and Flaherty were pulling our legs, trying to dream up some crazy story that couldn’t be checked out in a drafty attempt to squeeze Gorgo away from us.
“This is some kind of gag to put the heat on us,” I said. “Why don’t you admit it?”
Flaherty smiled with superiority. “The heat, Mr. Slade, may already be on.” He turned to Hendricks. “Obviously the proper authorities must be notified at once.”
That got me mad. “You mean you want to stir up a hornet’s nest just because of a few calculations you’ve made on a piece of paper? The hell with that noise, gentlemen!”
Hendricks’ tone dripped with scorn. “I am afraid Mr. Slade, that the decision is no longer in your hands. And you can tell Captain Ryan and that entrepreneur, Dorkin, I said so, if you wish.”
“You bet I will!”
But in the cab headed back for Battersea Park, I had some second thoughts. I knew one thing: eggheads don’t operate like other human beings. With them, everything is for science. The worst thing they could do would be to make a mistake and look foolish. They wouldn’t say Gorgo was an infant unless the monster actually was. How they knew for sure, I couldn’t guess. But I realized they were not lying.
In that case, I had a momentary qualm. Suppose Gorgo’s parent, say the monster’s mother, decided to look up her lost baby? Would this two hundred foot giant come striding up out of the water the same way Gorgo had? Had it, too, been released from the suboceanic depths in the same volcanic upheaval that had released Gorgo?
Sweat rolled off my face. I didn’t want to think about a struggle like that one! Against a two hundred foot Gorgo? Impossible to imagine.
I thought for the first time in many days of the Island of Nara. I thought of the lighthouse, the radio shack, and McCartin’s cottage with its grass-thatched roof. I thought of Moira, and that undid me.
Somhairle. I could hear her voice. I could feel the touch of her hand, the velvet softness of her body. Why had I left her? Why had I tried to forget when I knew I couldn’t? Even if she had tried to trick me, she was mine. My thoughts always turned to her, no matter how hard I tried to keep them in check.
Now I knew I had to go back to Nara to see her. She had a hold over me that I couldn’t break. Even though I realized I was the biggest fool in the world, laying myself wide open to another doublecross, I had to go back to Nara. To Moira.
I rapped on the glass and told the cabby to take me to the nearest airport where I could get a plane for Galway, Ireland. He nodded and turned down Grosvenor Road at the Thames, and went on to Westminster Bridge, and directly to Croyden Airport, south of London.
At Croyden I caught the midnight plane to Shannon Airport and Galway. I got to Galway in the early hours of the morning. It was no trick at all to rent myself a launch, and I set out for the island along about noon, after packing two box lunches.
At sundown I caught sight of the odd bald-pated outline of Nara in the distance, and I must say I was glad to see the old hellhole. Mostly, I guess I was glad to be so close to Moira again.
I pulled into the harbor, tied up at the dock, which seemed to be showing some signs of repair, and roused a villager at one of the sod huts along the beach.
“Moira McCartin,” I told him, handing him a note. I gave him money. “Amháin di Moira McCartin.” I said stressing only. He nodded. I knew he got the idea. Probably spoke English better than I did.
Then I ate the box lunch I’d brought along from Galway, and headed the launch out around the lighthouse point. I came into the cove, tied the launch out of sight in the cave, and went out on the beach.
And there I waited for Moira.
She came the way she had always come, like a wraith out of the darkness. And once there I held her tight in my arms, and I knew she was no wraith. Those lips, those eyes, and the feel of her against my body—all these things were very real.
“Somhairle!” she sobbed, and I could tell there were tears in her eyes. “ ’Tis really you, come back. I had given you up, I had.”
I kissed her again. “You’re in my blood, Moira. Even though you’re as untrustworthy as all women!”
She disentangled herself long enough from me to look me in the eyes. “ ’Tis a fine one you are to be talking ‘untrustworthy’ to me Somhairle!”
“I saw you in Joe’s bunk there! I saw you kissing him, and enjoying it!”
“Why should I not go to another man’s arms, when my own man does not even have the decency to tell me he’s married!”
I held her in my arms, stunned, unable to think. Married? Did she mean me?
“Who told you I was married?” I asked abruptly.
“There, ’Tis said!” Moira whispered. “I never meant to bring it up, because I was too deep hurt, but ’tis the truth, and you know it, and now you know I know it.”
“I’m not married!” I snapped out, and suddenly the whole scheme of Joe’s was laid bare before my eyes. “Joe told you didn’t he? He told you I was married. So he could make time with you himself!”
Moira’s eyes were fiery. Her face was flushed. “I saw the picture of you and your wife! I saw them, Somhairle! How can you deny it?”
Anita! Sure. Joe had taken a snapshot of Anita and me at a beach party. He had it in his wallet. He’d shown that to Moira and told her I was married to Anita. No wonder she’d let him kiss her like that! No wonder . . .
I held her tightly. “Moira, Joe lied. I’m not married. I swear it. I’m not married and I love only you. I’ve been with other girls, certainly, but it is you I’m in love with. I always will be! Now can you believe that?”
“Oh, yes!” she cried. “And ’tis you only I’ve ever loved. That in the ship’s cabin with Captain Ryan was merely a woman’s way. ’Twas spite, Somhairle. Spite against you for being married and leading me on the way you did!”
“And you and Joe,” I said hesitantly. “The two of you—?”
“ ’Twas never a thing between us, Somhairle. Believe me, never a thing but a trick to turn you green with jealousy!”
I laughed. “I love you, Moira.”
She sighed. “Oh, Somhairle,” she said, and she leaned into my arms and we were one again for a long, crashing, breathless moment. And when we came out of it, she was weeping tears. “I would have gone with you on the Triton, if I’d known the truth,” she said. “But when Captain Ryan cut the line to my father’s launch, I thought I’d best come back to Nara and forget you. That’s why I didn’t board the ship, Somhairle. I knew we couldn’t free the monster, no matter what, once you were discovered.”
“It’s all right now,” I said.
“And Sean!�
� she cried suddenly. “He is all right?”
“Right as rain, Moira. You’ll be with him again as soon as we can get to London. Then we’ll never be apart again, I promise you that.”
“We can leave tonight?” she asked, her eyes glistening.
“Yes Moira,” I said, and I pressed her tightly to me. And as we lay there, I told her how Joe had misrepresented her motives for freeing the monster, how he had hinted that her father was trying to steal the monster and exhibit it himself.
Moira chuckled and was amused at my gullibility. She assured me there was nothing to it at all, and I laughed and felt like a kid again. I knew that Joe had been trying to play us, one against the other.
I felt her soft flaming hair pressing against my face, and I felt the warm soft curves of her body warm against mine, and I forgot all about the reason I had come to Nara. I kissed her again, and she closed her eyes, holding me to her with her arms twined about my neck. It was warm in the sand, and I gently slipped off her dungarees and unbuttoned her shirt so that her breasts fell free and gleamed in the starlight above us.
She lay there naked on the sand, a study of voluptuous curves and gentle planes, and her moist lips gleamed. She touched my belt with her hand and released its clasp, and then her hands were around my waist, clawing at my back, crushing me close. We struggled against one another, moving our bodies into the age-old position of duality and completeness, and her lips tasted of salt and tears and I touched the taut nipples of her breasts and she cried out in the night and dug her head into the sand, arching her back to me. She seemed to reach outward with every fiber of her being, and surround me, and then she twined her legs about me in one terrible last shudder of emotion and the world whirled about us and the sea pounded on the beach and the skies opened and we seemed to be in the middle of space somewhere, with absolutely nothing else in the universe but us, our two bodies, and the one love that held everything, universe, planet, and us, together forever.
Spent, we lay there naked in the sand, staring up at the clear night and the stars twinkling there, and we touched each other without a word, and let our sated, glowing bodies drink in the nourishment of our remembered pleasure.
“My wife,” I whispered through the flaming soft hair, into her intricately formed, marvelously wrought ear.
“My husband,” she said. “Mo fear,” she repeated in Gaelic, and I said it after her. She laughed. “You say, ‘mo bean.’ My wife.”
“Mo bean,” I said.
And the darkness moved over us and enveloped us and it was just like that until I could feel a vibration in the air, a strange uneasy phenomenon I could not explain, and I turned to Moira and I asked her, “Do you feel that, too?”
She sat up, her eyes wide and fearful. “There is something out there.”
I looked into the cove. “Something?”
She shivered. “If Ogra were not already captured—”
With sudden shock I remembered why I had come to Nara. The two hundred foot monster!
Speechless, I turned to her. But as I did so I saw it in her eyes. Disbelief. Fear. Horror.
I turned. It was coming up out of the water, just as I had imagined it might, rising like a giant formless thing, weaving back and forth in the darkness, scenting out the island, towering closer and closer, moving with its giant tail through the water, coming to Nara, coming to wreak vengeance on the world, coming to destroy us all.
“Oh, Somhairle!” Moira cried, and hid her face in my chest.
I stared, petrified, as the monster towered high over the lighthouse, and then reached out with one talon, slapped at the striped tower, and sent it spinning in a million pieces into the waters of the bay, the waters that were now surging and flowing outward like miniature tidal waves from the monster’s moving body. With a shuddering crash the lighthouse structure disintegrated, and the huge, unbelievable sea serpent came lumbering out of the water, looming over us like some avenging demon, its fiery red eyes focused on us.
Part Three:
ARMAGEDDON
Chapter 12
It was Moira’s quick thinking that saved us. The instant she comprehended what had happened—that this towering, two-hundred foot sea serpent was reality, she leaped to her feet, crying for me to follow her. Acting purely on instinct, I did so, and she led me to the only safe spot, the caves.
Naked, shivering, absolutely drained of all emotion by the sheer weight of the terror hanging over us, we clung to each other like frightened stone-age beings, hiding our bodies from the inhuman manifestation from below which thundered about us and threatened our puny existence.
The ground shook all about us. Huge waves crashed in through the channel joining the cave to the sea. The launch was hurled time and again against the side of the rock walls by the violent rocking of the water spray shot toward us, draining off the impossibly huge body of the saurian beast. Its growl and snarls filled the air like the thunder of a tremendous electric storm.
In my numbed mind all I could see was the stunning sight of that immensely magnified approximation of our own Gorgo, slapping at the striped lighthouse at the tip of the cape, demolishing it with one swipe of the massive tail.
We heard other strident noises as well. The radio tower’s collapse. The cottage’s destruction. We heard boards and glass ripping and shattering on the open island above us.
Moira sobbed, unable to contain her grief. Obviously all the human population of the island of Nara would be dead or dying in a matter of moments. Everyone except us. We were in the only possible shelter anywhere. The beast was destroying everything in its frenzied search for Gorgo. Every minute or so the sound of destruction would cease. But only for an instant. A tremendous thumping would make the whole rock mass of the island shudder violently. I could imagine the big beast beating the island flat with its powerful tail, enraged and frustrated in its search for its young.
In my arms Moira sobbed and clung to me. Our naked bodies were shaking with fear. This was certainly the end of the world. I had one consolation. We would, at least, go together.
The bellowing continued amid the sounds of shrieking, terrified human beings coming to us as the sea monster bashed in more of the rock cottages down by the harbor.
After a long time we heard a tremendous splash, and then a silence like death descended upon the island.
“The beast has gone,” I said. I hoped it was the truth.
“Oh God!” Moira sobbed, clinging to me, her breasts warm and soft on my naked chest. She buried her head and her lustrous hair on my shoulder.
“Come on,” I said. “We’ve got to be sure.”
I led her out of the cave. Outside we came upon a sight I shall never forget. Towering clouds of dust spiraled into the air from the wreckage of the lighthouse, the radio tower, and the McCartin cottage. There was no sound on the island.
I scanned the horizon of the sea. And there, like a telltale wake that was as obvious as a trade mark, gleamed a line of phosphorescence, exactly like the trail Joe and I had seen from the stern of the Triton.
The monster was gone.
But I had the uncomfortable thought that it was going exactly where the Triton had gone. The terribly unnerving premonition occurred to me that it was in pursuit of Gorgo; the beast was headed directly for London.
We gathered up our clothes and dressed hurriedly.
Without mentioning my fears to Moira, I helped her climb the cliffside. The island of Nara, to all intents and purposes, had ceased to exist as a human habitation.
Moira’s cottage was completely destroyed. Only scattered piles of ripped-up planking and rubble remained. The rest of it was scattered to the four winds. The same was true of the cottages that had made up the stone village on the beach.
We ran to the twisted ruins of the McCartin cottage.
“Father!” screamed Moira. She scrambled from me.
It was inconceivable to me that there was anything left of Kevin McCartin, but I followed her anyway.
Under a pile of splintered planks, the big red bearded man lay, his eyes closed, his flesh bleeding and torn. Moira stooped over him, crying out his name in the lost, pitiful way of a distraught child.
He opened one eye, looking up at us through a film of pain. “Child,” he whispered.
“You’re all right!” she cried hysterically. “You’re all right!”
He tried to smile. It took courage. I gritted my teeth and bent over him. “Take it easy.”
“Slade,” he said stiffly. Then he winked. “Take care of my little girl and boy.”
I reached for his hand, lying in the dirt, and squeezed it tightly.
“The Monster of Nara. The Monster I invented. It came and got me!” he said. “All the gold. All McCartin Retribution for the death of Dórach Dolan.”
That was all he said. He went limp then, the great body convulsing for one last time under the pile of timber, and then letting go, relaxing to death.
Moira crossed herself and lifted her face to the heavens, trying, in the only way she knew, to prepare the soul of Kevin McCartin for its ordeal to come.
We buried him quickly in back of the site of the cottage.
No one on Nara was alive. We searched the ruins. And then we hurried to the launch which I had tied up in the cave, possibly the only place on the island safe from the monster’s destructive onslaught.
By dawn we were back at Galway, and I put in a telephone call to Joe in London. I gave him a brief report of the appearance of the new monster at Nara Island, and then Moira and I flew to Shannon Airport, and on to London.
When we landed at Croydon and walked across the big floor in search of a cab, we were approached by two burly Marine Sergeants.
“Mr. Slade,” the bigger one of them said.
“Yes.”
“You’re to come with us.” Each of them stepped to one side of me and took an arm.
“I’m not under your orders! What do you mean I’m to come with you?”
“Orders of the admiral,” the big one said, stiff-lipped and unsmiling. There was under his urbane politeness a driving urgency which somehow unnerved me.
Gorgo Page 11
