Then he headed out of the arms of Hilger's Island into the open Sound.
At first it wasn't bad. There was a heavy swell running but it was coming from the southeast. The extremity of Long Island was a shield from the Atlantic's fury. But there were nearly five miles between Long Island and the cruiser and the shielding was hardly as effective as it might have been.
Ivan's course was almost precisely east-southeast. He knew that he should follow the marked courses, but they would have had the Ivalor rolling in the swells and she was none too steady as it was. Her draft was a scant thirty inches, and the charts gave no indication of shallows until you were close to Willet's Cove. But the wind was rising steadily and the Ivalor's nose bucked as Ivan held her quartering into the swells.
Ivan figured there were only about six or seven miles to the shelter of Willet's Cove. The greater landmass of Long Island near Montaugan should bring a lessening of the seas. Ordinarily the Ivalor could make that distance in about twenty minutes, perhaps twenty-five. But the engine must be kept throttled down, and between the lessened power and the increasing head wind it would take longer--much longer.
The visibility grew poorer as the windblown spume turned to a salt mist and the lowlying stem of Long Island disappeared.
After a while Erica came out of the cabin. She stood beside him.
"Is it bad?" she asked.
"I don't know," he said. He turned on the radio, but all it said was small craft should make for shore quickly, and he was already doing that.
The radio said winds were rising to gale force but he didn't need to be told. He could hear them roaring at the Ivalor's superstructure. Then it said they were shifting from southeast to south, and he didn't have to be told that, either, because the Ivalor was wallowing in the trough of the swells, and he had to change course, heading in directly toward Rocky Point.
The little vessel bucked now like a newly saddled mustang, spanking bottom after each swell and creaking ferociously.
Ivan cut the throttle still further because the pitching of the boat was bringing her propeller half out of the water. Now she had only a bare headway--hardly enough to keep her headed in the wind. In the darkness, without instruments, Ivan was fairly sure she was being borne farther out into the sound by the wind.
That was when he began to feel the first faint touch of fright. He looked at Erica. She wasn't frightened. She wasn't anything except a little glassy-eyed. He decided she was drunk.
The glass of the deckhouse was coated with the salt spray so there was hardly any visibility. Then it started to rain, and the rain washed the glass clear, but all there was to see was the bucking bow and the familiar roof of the cabin. Occasionally the vacuum formed by the suction of the wind at the open back of the deckhouse drew the rain inside to beat about his legs, It grew colder.
The radio faithfully reported that the winds were shifting to southwest. He swung the bow to match and turned on the running lights. He had no transmitter abroad, or he would have radioed for help.
Then the dinghy was swamped and he had to cut it loose while Erica held the Ivalor's nose into the wind.
After that the situation deteriorated rapidly. There was a sharp, explosive sound, and the engine began racing madly. That was the propeller shaft. In a matter of seconds the Ivalor had swung broadside to the wind and was wallowing in the surging seas.
He cut off the engine and the radio. The battery could not carry more than the running lights. The boat rolled wildly. Seas broke over into the cockpit.
Ivan tried to improvise a sea-anchor out of some canvas and a rope from the cabin, but there was no way of getting to the bow with the seas breaking over it. He started the engine again and ran the pump with it, but the water kept creeping up under the cabin flooring. He found a package of signal flares and began setting them off, though the visibility was so bad it seemed hopeless.
All the while Erica clung to something on the deckhouse walls, and said nothing. She watched him as he set off flares, but there was no accusation in her eyes. Only a sort of deadened look.
He didn't need her accusation. He knew the Ivalor wouldn't last much longer, and he knew it was his fault ...
AUGUST HENNLER
Practically anything, these days, was enough to touch off the alarm system of August Hennler's tight little nerves.
The last moment of driving the car into the parking lot and going across the road to the company buildings was a struggle in self-control which any little thing could shatter. This morning, though, he felt a little better. The violence of the storm, last night, had somehow been relieving, as though it were an outlet for the violence and the fear in his mind.
He was almost gay this morning as he came into the main building. He was thinking he'd let himself get out of touch, put himself in a sort of synthetic leprosarium of the mind. If you kept that up a while it was bound to look suspicious. That was something you must guard against. Somebody might say--as Evelyn already had--notice how funny Augie's behaving ever since that crack up? Then they might get to wondering why and start looking into it.
So instead of turning right toward the radio room he turned left and went to the main offices. He saw all the passengers milling around the checkin counter and that was kind of funny. Then he saw Jack Williamson. Jack was talking to a CAA inspector. Hennler's heart jumped with fear. Jack's face was angry and the CAA man looked insistent, and then Jack saw August and said, harshly, "What are you doing up here? Get down to the shack and relieve Mason."
There was nothing to do but go. Walking the passageway he tried to figure what they could be saying. Maybe. "That tape your radio man cut doesn't sound right, and they're wondering if maybe it isn't a dub."
Terror mounted in him as he went. What would they do? Arrest you? Throw you in jail for trial? What would happen to Evelyn and the kids? What would Mother Gaines say?
And the kids? That was why you did it in the first place--on account of the kids. Because Heaslip didn't have a family and kids and you did. Your job was important to four people, and his only to one. But the kids were afraid of you now--as though they sensed that you had killed all those people in the plane.
Or was the children's fright no more than a reflection of your own personal guilty? Maybe you should cut out, go to South America? Maybe you should tell Jack Williamson you were quitting? But they'd find you, wouldn't they?
He opened the door of the radio room and Mason got up from his seat by the transmitter. "Christ," he said, "Am I glad to see you."
August tried to keep his voice steady. "Why? What's cooking?"
"Williamson. And he ain't just cooking. That monkey is broiling. He's been eating everybody out all morning. Me too, and I didn't do anything."
"What happened?"
"Some stupid jerk left the gust locks off a ship tied down outside the hangar last night. The wind bent hell out of one of the elevator surfaces."
"What's a gust lock?"
"It's that little wooden board they tie to the rudder and the elevators to keep them rigid in a wind. One of the mechanics just forgot and, when they started to check this morning, Browning caught it and he showed it to Tony Spell and Tony said the ship wouldn't fly right and they haven't got a spare elevator for a 'three' on the field. They're flying one out from LaGuardia, but all those commuters are mad--man are they mad, and they're all talking about switching to the railroad. All right, I'm going home. Man, what a morning."
August almost fell into his chair, each of his joints suddenly unhinged. His knees trembled as he watched Mason gather up his lunchbox and newspaper and go out the door. It was the same thing again. Another false alarm. But how long could this go on, those periods of fright over nothing? 'Til September? Would September solve anything?
Then it started up again, because the intercom connected with the tower let out a squawk. "Got a bulletin for you," a voice said, and promptly gave the bulletin then went on, "Another thing, Augie. This is Morley. I would've told you this yesterday, bu
t it was my day off. Anyway, Heaslip was up here snooping around Sunday, asking all kinds of crazy questions. I thought I ought to let you know."
The crazy little nerves jangled wildly. Hennler forced control on his voice. "What did he want to know?" he said.
"What happened on the field at the time of the crash. Nothing important."
You couldn't show too much interest. You said. "I guess he's just sort of scrabbling around for almost anything."
"I guess," Morley said. "Okay. I thought I ought to let you know."
Hennler leaned back, shaking. Then he remembered the bulletin. Couldn't let it happen again. He relayed the information to flight one-oh-seven.
What in hell could Heaslip be after? He must have something in mind.
Then, for one terrible moment, you felt as though you were inside Heaslip, feeling whatever it was that Heaslip felt. Jobless. Framed for the death of seventeen people. Unable to find any way out, no matter where you turned.
It was a terrible feeling to have, that feeling of being inside Heaslip, because even he didn't, couldn't know for sure how completely innocent he was. And you knew, understood, felt with him--and couldn't do anything about it.
Then, completely irrationally, you remembered the dream you had last night. It was no time to be concerned with dreams. But it ran through your mind.
You had been chopping at a tree in your front yard--though there wasn't really a big tree like that there. Up in the tree there was this kind of a bird's nest, like an oriole's, sort of hanging; and then the tree came down with a great crash. Then there were two policemen coming up the walk. They climbed over the fallen tree and one of them said, "August Hennler, you are under arrest for the murder of this house." Then you looked and saw that the nest was really a miniature copy of your own house, only there were the bodies of lots of little birds, all dead, scattered about the crushed birdhouse. You turned back to the policeman who had spoken, and he looked just like your father. You reached out your hands and he put handcuffs on you--and that was the end of the dream. But the part that was the most unpleasant about the dream wasn't the handcuffs. That part had seemed, in a funny way, nice. But it was all the dead little birds. They had been naked and featherless, and their skins had been transparent so you could see right into them. It made them very pathetically real and very dead. You knew dreams were supposed to mean something, to you thought about this one for a while.
Then the radio squawked again and you were busy for a few minutes, and it was just after you got done handling one-oh-seven and your nerves were all calmed down again, that the door opened. Harvey Browning came in and sat down on one of the desks. He waved his hand and said, "Hi, Augie," and then just waited, sitting, until one-oh-seven's captain rogered.
Hennler swiveled his chair around to face the chief pilot. "What's cookin', Harve?"
"Nothing much," Browning said. He looked a little embarrassed, "Just thought I'd drop by." There was something wrong. Your heart was speeding up again, and your head felt this awful hollowness.
"They get that business straightened out with the elevator?"
"Yeah," Harvey said. "Don Freilig's going to take her for a test hop."
For a minute they sat in silence, then Hennler picked up his log and began to make entries. But he couldn't seem to remember what it was he was doing. It was almost as though time had slowed down or you had speeded up or something, because ideas came so fast you couldn't even remember them.
Could Harvey have come down to tell you they had figured everything out and you were fired and the CAA men would be around in a little while?
Browning got on his feet and shuffled a little nervously. Then he said, "Augie, there was one thing I wanted to ask you. It's about Heaslip. I checked that guy out myself, and it isn't like him to make that kind of mistake."
Now he was going to say it. Browning was going to say. "... so we looked into that tape recording and we found out it was a dub and ..." Then the real words came. "The thing is, couldn't there be something wrong with your radio at the time that might make three thousand sound like two thousand?"
The relief was so great that you missed the wonderful opening. "I'm sorry, Harve," Hennler said. "I checked the thing myself the next day. Not a wire loose. Not a tube sour. It was clear as a bell."
"Well, that's all I wanted to know. Take it easy, Augie." He was gone.
Then it came to Hennler he had lost his chance. He could have cleared Heaslip--got the guy off his conscience, removed one of the pressures to investigate further. All he had to say was, "Yeah, Harve, the set was kind of funny that day." But he had missed that chance.
Suddenly, dreadfully, August Hennler put his head down and began to weep.
GARY HEASLIP
When Erica sought him out, that evening, Gary was entirely prepared to take it in his stride because he had just gone through a session of contemplation and had decided each member of the Carter household was screwier than the last.
Like Irene. She was a problem. She'd reached the point where there was no keeping her away. She was always around the garage, dressed in dungarees and eager to help. If you let her, then she told you how she had foregone some date, skipped some party, disdained some tennis match for the reward of your presence.
It was getting to be damned embarrassing. Underlying it all was an insistence that you must accept her as a woman.
He was sitting in the screened-in playroom, smoking and watching the fitful firefly sparkling of remote lighthouses and bell-buoys on the sound, and the nearer clustered constellations of the airport lights. It was the kind of night when the sheer beauty of things made you achingly lonely--as though all this loveliness were too much unshared.
Then in spite of himself he thought of Erica. Not exactly wanting her there or anything; just thinking of her as a kind of unexpected image in his mind. Only the way he thought of her was the way she had been the night of the Ivalor's sinking. With Dolores and Irene he had driven to meet the Doctor and Erica where the Coast Guard's rescue vessel was to land them.
They had found the pair waiting for them in an office near the docks. The Doctor was faintly loaded on medicinal brandy. He had flung a Coast Guard blanket about him as though it were a Roman toga. Erica, though, huddled small and stringy-haired in her blanket, looking pale and frightened and child-like.
Gary had picked her up and carried her out to the car, surprised at the smallness and lightness of her body. He had put her in the front seat beside him, and they had driven home in morose silence. But, somewhere along the road, Erica had reached out and lightly touched his arm.
For a brief moment he had looked at her in the flash of a passing street light. She was gazing up at him with great wide eyes, like a small girl asking an important question. He turned back to the road. A moment later he felt her shift on the seat, curling up, and her head rested against his shoulder.
She had been asleep when they reached the Carter house, Gary had carried her to her room where Vera, the cook, had installed her in bed.
Somewhere in Willet's Cove an outboard motor roared up and subsided to a sputtering chug. In a moment he could see a tiny pinpoint of light moving across the dark water. The beam of a searchlight flickered across a cloud like remote heat lightning. The frogs and crickets gurgled and chirred at the silence and somebody honked an automobile horn. Then he caught a footstep on the gravel. It was indeterminate as to distance, and might be the cook putting out the garbage. He waited for the slam of the foot-treadle lid on the buried receptacle. It did not come.
The pulse of the outboard in the Cove rose to a sharp splat and the moving light dwindled rapidly soundward. Something, perhaps a rat, rustled in the garage behind him.
Then a voice said, "Gary?" from the doorway. It was Erica.
"Right here," he said. He flashed his cigarette lighter, holding it so the glare kept from his eyes. She looked pale and beautiful as she came toward the tiny flame. "Shall I put on the lights?"
"No thanks," Erica s
aid. "Can I take a pew?"
He closed the lighter. "Sure. Want some beer?"
"Thanks." She dropped into the chair beside his. He brought beer and lit a cigarette for her. For silent moments they stared into the night.
What were you supposed to say to her? "I'm glad you came out," he said. "I guess I wanted somebody to talk to about how pretty it is out here."
"I don't think I've ever seen it so clear," she said.
She said, "Gary?" tentatively. "How is that business of yours coming along? I've been thinking about it a lot. I wanted to do anything I could to help."
"I don't know," he said. He shifted in his chair to face her. The dim starlight and the manmade constellations outlined her face and the soft lines of her summer dress. She seemed small and beautiful. "I don't seem to get anywhere. Maybe there's nowhere to get. Maybe I'll give up, take what they dish out and forget about flying."
"You can't do that," she said. "Flying's important for you, isn't it? What's it like, anyway? I don't mean what's it like to be in a plane. I've flown that way. What's it like to be the man who makes the plane fly?"
His grin was lost in the darkness. "It's different now than it used to be. I mean, at first I was all full of sensations like being just a little drunk. Maybe the sensations have changed, or maybe I've sorted them out. Now, I guess it just feels--well, natural. It's like not having the use of all my abilities until I get in a plane, the way a rooster feels when they clip his wings. I'm running the show when I'm flying my own ship. It's not just as running the ship and all the people in it. It's running the whole show--the world down below, too. I guess that's pretty silly, but it really feels a lot like that."
"It's not silly," she said. "Anything that people really feel isn't silly." Neither said anything for a long time.
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