BLAM!
Heller had fired!
For an instant I thought hopefully he must have missed. Nothing flew apart on the Coast Guarder. It didn’t blow up. It swerved to the south as it slowed.
Then, suddenly, the two-man gun crew leaped away from their naval piece, screaming!
THEIR GUN BREECH WAS MELTING!
Heller had fired a heat shot, centered by handgun computer, down the barrel of the thing!
“Now that the odds are more equal,” said Heller, “we can get back at it.” And he slammed his throttles wide open!
He sent the Sea Skiff toward the shore, glancing back to see what the Coast Guarder would do.
His radio was still on. It began to crackle. The Coast Guarder was calling his base.
“Can’t have that,” said Heller.
He raised and centered the handgun. He twirled a knob.
BLAM!
The handgun fired.
The big whip aerials of the patrol craft shimmered and melted!
Heller aimed the handgun at the patrol-craft bridge. The Coast Guarder was getting underway in pursuit.
“Blast,” said Heller. “I don’t want to kill you guys. You’re Fleet.”
It was the kind of insane gallantry you could count upon from Heller. I felt now that we still had a chance to get him.
He shoved the handgun into his belt. He grabbed the sack Izzy had given him and got something out of it. Then he reached under the foredeck and grabbed an Aldis signal lamp.
The Coast Guarder was streaming after him. Heller raised the Aldis lamp. He centered it on the 81’s bridge. He began to send a single letter over and over. A dot and a dash. Ah, International Code. That letter must mean something like “You’re running into danger.”
The Coast Guarder did not slacken its chase. White fans of spray flying, it was roaring after Heller. But through the Aldis sights, the men on its bridge could be seen coming out and training glasses on Heller, peering. Then a couple of men with rifles raced up to its bow. One of them fired!
Heller spelled out audibly, “Y-O-U-R E-N-G-I-N-E-S A-R-E A-B-O-U-T T-O B-L-O-W U-P.”
Sudden racings about on the other ship!
Three men sprang up out of an after hatch and raced forward.
“Now that you’re all in sight . . .” muttered Heller. And he put a small box device on top of the Aldis lamp and pressed its trigger.
There was no sound. There was no flash.
ALL THE MEN ON THE COAST GUARDER DECK COLLAPSED!
He had said he wasn’t going to kill them and then it appeared that he had!
Heller glanced at his device as he shut it off. Suddenly, I knew it: a radio nerve-paralysis beam!
He looked forward.
The shore of New Jersey was dead ahead and coming up fast!
“Oh, you blasted fools!” he muttered. “You left your engines running! You’re going to have a marine disaster!”
He threw down the Aldis lamp.
He was grabbing some twine out of his pocket. He wrapped it around his throttles.
Both ships were tearing straight at the beach!
Moving fast, Heller flipped some fenders that were tied along the coaming so that they fell outside. He grabbed the throttle strings he had fixed.
He worked the autopilot. The speedboat banked in a wide curve.
The Coast Guarder was streaking straight at the beach at forty knots!
Heller timed it. He was just ahead of the fast patrol craft and to its port. It overtook him.
He swerved the Sea Skiff slightly.
The suction that occurs between two ships brought them together side by side with a crunch.
Heller leaped up and grabbed the patrol-craft rail. He hit the autopilot switch and yanked the strings.
The Sea Skiff swerved away, engines suddenly silent.
Heller sprang over the rail. He jumped across the reclining bodies.
He stared ahead.
The beach was almost there!
He leaped into the pilothouse. He looked at the controls. He yanked a pair of levers back.
There was a racing whine and then a crunch.
He spun the wheel.
He had reversed the propellers at full speed!
Forward way had carried them into light green water.
Sand was boiling up.
There was a thump and scrape.
And then the Coast Guarder was backing into darker, deeper sea.
He looked out on the deck where a man with a lot of chevrons on his jacket was lying draped over a bitt. Peevishly, Heller said, “You’re supposed to SAVE people, not GET saved.”
PART FORTY-NINE
Chapter 7
I wondered what he would do now. The Apparatus would never have acted this way so I was totally adrift. He should have left the 81 to explode itself to bits against the beach and gone happily on his way. There is no understanding these Fleet people!
My next guess was that he would take her out into deeper water and sink her with all hands. Maybe he thought that would destroy the evidence. There were houses along the Jersey shore here. Maybe he didn’t want witnesses.
As soon as I found out what he was going to do, I could call Captain Grumper and let him organize other effective steps to handle.
Heller got the 81 well clear and then, at slow speed, went back to the drifting Sea Skiff. He coasted the patrol craft alongside. He got a line and fastened it on the foredeck chock of the Sea Skiff and then passed it aft on the Coast Guarder and made it fast to the towing bitts.
Then he came back to the 81 forward deck.
One by one, he dragged the unconscious crew into the salon. He went back and collected the rifles and a couple of caps and then threw them in.
He looked at the gun breech. It surely was melted. It was still hot and smoking. He found a CO2 extinguisher and sprayed it, probably to cool it off. Then he picked up its canvas cover and lashed it in place, probably to obscure the odd damage.
Next he looked at what was left of the aerials: just puddles of melted metal. Methodically, he scraped up the silvery blobs and threw them overboard.
He got his sack and took out a pair of cutters and neated up the aerial stubs so they looked sheared, not melted.
That done, he affixed a short piece of wire to one of the stubs and left it dangling.
He went into a ship office and started going through bookcases. He found a manual which gave the uniforms and ship complements of the Coast Guard.
He went back up to the salon and gazed at the recumbent bodies which lay upon the floor.
Apparently satisfied, he went below and started going through quarters and lockers. He located the uniforms of the most senior man aboard and changed his clothes.
He went back up to the bridge.
He eased the throttles forward and soon, towing the Sea Skiff, had the 81 going down the coast at a leisurely pace. He put it on autopilot.
He went to the radio and turned its volume high. Sure enough, there was a constant chatter, rather faint due to the lack of much aerial, calling for the 81 to come in.
Heller picked up the mike. He acknowledged.
A voice from the speaker, “What’s wrong? We couldn’t raise you!”
“We had a little mishap,” said Heller.
“You’re coming in only Signal Three here. I can barely hear you.”
Heller yelled into the mike, spacing his words distinctly. “We had a little mishap to radio and engines. Nothing serious. Everybody is a bit flaked out. The capture was successful. We are proceeding down the coast at reduced speed.” He began to imitate a fade-out with his voice. “Radio is packing up. See you tomorrow afternoon. . . .”
“Repeat last sentence, please.”
Heller put down the mike and went back to gaze at the beautiful day.
It was probably his attitude, probably the way he propped his elbow on a radar and cupped his chin in his palm. Heller can drive anybody absolutely insane with things like that!
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I went crazy. I phoned Captain Grumper.
“What’s wrong now?” he said.
It was on the tip of my tongue to scream that an extraterrestrial had just seized his fast patrol craft. I checked myself in time. It would sound odd.
“The man,” I said, “that you were supposed to capture has TAKEN OVER THE 81!”
“Oh, I think not,” said Grumper. “We’ve just had a message here that after a brave sea battle, fully commensurate with the exacting standards of the Coast Guard, the capture was made.”
“You haven’t got the full story!” I snarled.
“Well, they did have some trouble. Engines and radio. But it’s all handled.”
“You’re not in communication with that craft!”
“Well, as I said, they had radio trouble.”
“Why is he heading south instead of north?”
“Oh, is he?” said Grumper. Then, after a moment, “But his base is to the south.”
“Listen, Grumper, if you value your commission, you had better send out ships and planes and recover your craft!”
“Yes, sir! At once, sir!”
I rang off. I had jarred them out of their complacency. What riffraff! Letting an extraterrestrial Royal officer walk right in and grab off one of their ships!
It made me pretty angry, I can tell you, having to sit there and watch Heller’s view.
He seemed to find the sea gulls interesting.
Then he YAWNED!
He finally got busy. He checked the chart and some landmarks. He was going right on by Manasquan Inlet. He wasn’t going to go into the Intracoastal Waterway where it went inland! He was just continuing on down the coast in the broad Atlantic! He was even edging further and further from the shore. You couldn’t make out the houses now.
He got interested in the radio log. He found the message directing them to intercept him.
“Hmm,” he said. “Strong language.”
He looked over the ship’s log, noting the time they had first sighted him and then the sketchy entries of the chase. These ceased abruptly with the notation of his Aldis lamp message to them about their engines.
Heller got his sack and looked through it. He took out a small vial. With great care he eradicated all the entries from the moment of first sighting on.
He got a scrap of paper and practiced calligraphy from earlier entries.
Then, instead of “Sighted Sea Skiff 329-478A,” he wrote, “Sighted appalling sea monster—orange wings, purple horns, flaming breath, 300 feet in length. Speaks Scandinavian.”
He made the next entry, “Giving chase. Sea monster traveling at forty-eight knots.”
Then he wrote, “Sea monster has turned on ship. Demanding coffee.” Then, with appropriate times, “Has now boarded over bow.” “Is melting cannon with flaming breath.” “Ate antennas.” “Crew fainted, all except me. Goodbye, cruel world.”
A roar of engines sounded in the sky.
Heller glanced out.
Three choppers were swiftly overtaking the slow-moving patrol craft.
One in the lead dived close.
Heller put his arm out of the pilothouse and waved.
THE THREE CHOPPERS WENT AWAY!
Raging, I got on to Grumper. “You’re being hoodwinked!” I screamed. “That patrol craft is in enemy hands!”
“Oh, come now,” said Grumper. “It’s as I said. We have the Sea Skiff in tow. And one of the pilots even recognized the chief petty officer that is captain of the craft. Chief Jive, one of the most able blacks we have in service. Please, Mr. Swindle and Crouch, can’t you let us get back to our normal duties? The Coast Guard’s work is efficient beyond reproach.”
The phone dropped out of my hand.
I sat there, stricken.
At first I had thought that the cops hadn’t recognized Heller at Hudson Harbor because they had all seen the Whiz Kid on TV and thought they were looking for buckteeth and glasses. And now the truth dawned. He’d done it in the Stockbroker’s Bar!
(Bleep) Spurk! With this rig, you couldn’t see the man’s own face! Heller had used the same trick he had played in Connecticut! As he was wearing black cotton gloves, I hadn’t seen his hands and neither had anyone else.
I watched with great care. And I confirmed it in the pilothouse window reflection at last. Heller was blackfaced! And blacks all look alike to whites. No wonder the day had looked so beautifully hazeless! He was wearing tan contact lenses!
(Bleep) Heller! How can you keep up with such a man!
I did the only thing I could do, then. I phoned the harbor master at Atlantic City. I told him, “I am a Fed. I have to advise you that an attempt will be made to board and blow up the Golden Sunset sometime later today or tonight.”
“Good Christ!” he said. “Blowing up a ship that size would make a harbor obstruction!” He was horrified.
“Precisely,” I said. “So alert the ship and put her under arms. Don’t let any vessels approach her, particularly the Coast Guard.”
“Coast Guard?” he said. “Why not?”
“They’re not all they’re cracked up to be,” I said. “They lose ships right and left and won’t listen. But here is the important part: the saboteur is a black man, the most evil and deceptive (bleepard) anyone ever saw. If you catch a glimpse of him, don’t even challenge. Just shoot on sight.”
He promised faithfully he would.
PART FIFTY
Chapter 1
The afternoon was waning and I could see, as Heller looked at a chart and spotted his position, that he must be doing only ten knots or less and that it would be hours before he came abreast of Atlantic City.
It was just as well. The girls were home as I could hear. Quite a hubbub. They were not alone.
Presently Pinchy or Adora or Mrs. Sultan Bey—or whatever the Hells her name was now—came to my door and peered in. “You can watch TV later,” she said. “Come on, you (bleepard), and do your husbandly duties!”
Very mindful they could have me arrested for bigamy and thrown in the clink if I did not please, I put on a robe, patted my face plaster so the edges would not lift, and went out.
Two lesbians were there. Mike, a somewhat sallow woman of thirty-five, dressed in very mannish clothes, was smoking a joint in a long holder and swinging her leg as she sat on the arm of a chair. She was not bad-looking really, though awfully tall. Mildred, the other one, might have been twenty-five: she had a rosy complexion, was soft and round and quite pretty. She was eyeing me with a speculative smile. Neither one of them looked like they were going to perish during the reeducation into sex and I started to feel better.
And then I saw the other one! She was standing back of Candy in a corner. TEENIE! What the Hells was she doing back here?
I said to Adora, “WHAT THE HELLS IS SHE DOING BACK HERE?”
“Oh, pish, pish and tush, tush,” said Adora. “She felt she didn’t have it right. As an adult, dear husband, one has certain responsibilities, as you should learn. These consist of making sure the young are properly educated. How would you feel if you let her grow up to womanhood with totally wrong conceptions and conditionings in the field of sex?”
“I’d feel great!” I said, eyeing this bony, scrawny specimen with her proclivity for sinking nails in faces at the slightest (bleep).
“Well, that may be, dear husband,” said Adora, “but Teenie is an opportunity. During her slack time in licking stamps for Rockecenter’s office, who knows? He might proposition her and (bleep) her on his desk when Miss Peace isn’t looking. And if Teenie knew her business and Rockie had a real (bleep), it might cure him of this god (bleeped) determination to push Psychiatric Birth Control. So it is of vital necessity that we educate the young, whatever you may think. Besides, she’s just here to watch and take pictures so she can develop the knack.”
“Ignore me,” said Teenie, her huge hazel eyes entreating. “I promise to be very quiet and very good. I love spectator sports, but I won’t even cheer. I promi
se.”
There was no arguing with five women. I opened my robe and Mike, the tall one, went kind of white. “Jesus!” she said.