XXI
June, 1908 28°20'N, 177°22'W
0906 Hours
Filling the balloon with coal gas was a tricky procedure. Great care had to be taken to keep the net from going askew as the envelope expanded. It had to be weighted down firmly, but not tightly. After inserting the gas hose and opening the retort valves, Hart began walking nervously around the balloon, shifting sand bags as it filled. All the while he kept Ace by his side, giving him instructions.
He told him how to use the drag rope, the barometer, the thermometer, and the index. The latter was simply a light ribbon, about a foot long. "You can't always tell what direction you're going in. If the ribbon stays flat down, you're going up. If it flutters up, you're coming down."
"Ah," said Ace profoundly.
"If you start coming down before you're ready, throw out the drag rope. If you start coming down too fast, toss the ballast: these bags of sand." He spent the rest of the lecture explaining the tail valve and the maneuvering valve. Then he asked the Japanese to repeat his instructions. Ace nodded several times, then answered, "Don't fall out."
"Good enough." Hart smiled grimly, patting him on the shoulder. A little later he noticed Ace downing a small meal of raw fish and rice. "Be careful with that. It's rougher up there than it looks."
"Ha! I ride big waves in my little boat and never sick."
It took an hour to inflate the envelope. When it was ready, Ace hopped in the car. He was grinning.
"Give 'em hell, Ace!" Lieber shouted.
The higher the balloon, the higher went the reflector and antenna wires attached to the gondola. No matter how still the air, the balloon would be constantly moving. This would make any signals they received erratic, to say the least. While Hart might be able to broadcast two or three hundred miles, he hoped to pick up wireless communications over a much wider area. He also realized that someone a thousand miles away might hear him--or no one at all.
On the ground, everyone but Ziolkowski cheered. Outside of giving orders, he had been glumly silent since the loss of Depoy and Kitrell.
Ace waved wildly. Then, abruptly, he heaved. The men below scattered to avoid being hit by his breakfast.
At four hundred feet he pointed south. A sentry atop the warehouse saw him and focused his binoculars in that direction. It took him several moments to spot the three creatures basking outside the lagoon. When he relayed his sighting the men murmured their disappointment. They had hoped the one wounded in the eye might be dead by now.
The balloon was anchored in the center of the compound. Hart had taken extra care as to the stoutness of the winch cable. There was no way to maneuver the balloon beyond raising and lowering it. He set up his wireless set near the winch. He'd found an undamaged headset in the relay station. After adjusting the earphones he hooked up the batteries--and was immediately immersed in a sea of static.
The marines around him crouched like freezing men afraid of fire. To most of them a wireless telegraph was an ominous device, transmitting the unseen and receiving same. Using one was a little like talking to ghosts.
Hart had been keying no more than fifteen minutes when he suddenly grabbed the headset and held it tight against his ears. Men not on duty or asleep drew closer. Finally, the civilian looked up.
"My God, a battleship! The Florida! Not four hundred miles southeast and heading our way. They heard me!"
"The Florida? Last I heard she was at Juan's-Toe-in-the-Mole."
They ignored Ziolkowski's skepticism. A battleship! The men cheered.
"What is it, Top?" Lieber asked the sergeant when he remained aloof from the celebration.
He snorted. "A battleship? Not likely. Maybe he's mixed up his signals."
"Top, listen, about Kittrell."
"I should never've posted men on the beach. I should've pulled everyone into the bunker. There's room. The monsters won't attack the distillery. If they wanted fresh water they would've taken it before."
"Top, how would they--"
"They must drink seawater somehow. Ah, Jesus, we could've dug holes like the mules if we had to drink. How many have we lost?"
"You cannot blame yourself."
"Now Hart's the only one left who can play chess and he's Jorgensoned out. Gone gooney."
"Take it easy, Top," Lieber said in a low voice. "You're not making sense."
Ziolkowski gave him a long look, then lowered his head and nodded.
Hart keyed some more, then listened. "They're at flank speed. They'll reach us late tomorrow morning. They keep asking about a Japanese fleet. They seem to think we're under attack."
"They got it half right."
"They're low on coal. They want us to load up our barges and bring them out when they arrive."
"How low?" Ziolkowski asked, glancing west at the umber smokestack of their disabled sea tug. The Iroquois had been beached because of damage to her steam tubes. Without it, they couldn't shift the barges up the channel to the coaling station, let alone out of the lagoon.
"They won't be more specific. I think they think I might be a Jap, trying to lead them into a trap. Either that or they think Togo's eavesdropping. My guess is the position their wireless operator gave me is bogus, to deceive the enemy. She might be much closer than four hundred miles. I can't believe my signal reaches that far."
"Well, tell them the sorry truth. She's going to have to get her engineers ashore to repair the Iroquois or no one's going anywhere. Damn. Why didn't they bring coal ships with them? Don't they know we're at the end of the earth?"
"Do I tell them about the serpents? We have to give them some kind of warning. But they might not believe me. Might even think it's part of the 'trap.'"
Ziolkowski hesitated a minute before responding.
0915 Hours
Lifting his cap and mopping the sweat off his brow, Lieutenant Grissom leaned further into the wireless compartment and repeated, "Serpents? How does he sound?"
"Sound, sir?" the young wireless electrician asked.
"Can't you tell something about an operator by the way he keys?"
"He sounds okay to me, sir. He's identified himself as HH with Commercial Pacific. Old hands never spell out their names. This guy sounds like he's been pounding the keys for years. Hard to tell, though. The signal keeps breaking up."
"Sweet Jesus...." Grissom turned to Captain Oates. "It has to be the Nips, sir. If they had someone who knows Morse and English, they could lead us into an ambush."
"With serpents, Grissom? It would be a better trap if they did nothing at all. Just lay low and wait."
"Maybe they're trying to frighten us away."
"Too risky for them. We might see the ploy and think they're afraid of a fight." A yeoman handed Oates a note from the wireless electrician. After perusing it, he handed the pad to Grissom. "You might be right, though. They say their tug is beached. Boiler tubes. Perfectly feasible. It always seems to come down to weather and tubes, doesn't it?"
"It could be a clever ruse--trying to get us to turn about before we even see the island."
"Or...?" Oates asked, seeing doubt on his face.
"As unlikely as it is... the boy, sir. He claims to have seen three serpents. It's a pretty big coincidence."
"Notify the Chief Engineer we need him to cobble together a group of his men to go in with the landing force."
"Aye aye, sir."
1132 Hours
Outside of its isolation, its coral reef and the omnipresent birds, the most noticeable aspect of Midway was its brightness. Even more common than an ankle twisted by stepping into a mutton bird hole were persistent, blinding headaches caused by the reflection of sun off sand and water.
Heinrich Lieber had once heard a Lutheran pastor go on and on about the Eternal Light of Heaven. But eternal light could be as much a hell as the eternal abyss, the daggers of brightness lodged permanently in one's eyes and brain. Midway cast a blazing analytical eye on everyone who landed on the atoll. Certainly, more than one marine felt like a specimen on a slide.
Lieber had to cover his face with his hands and squint through his fingers in order to keep track of the gondola. After a couple hours of this, he turned to Hart. "I haven't seen him for a long time. Could he be sick?"
"We know he's hungry," said Ziolkowski. "Fritz is right. Let's haul him in."
They took hold of the winch cables and brought the balloon down. There was no sign of Ace until the car had landed. He was lying in the bottom of the basket.
"Ace!"
"Uh...."
Although Ace was soaked in vomit, Lieber did not hesitate pulling him out.
"Same thing's happened to me a couple times," said Hart. "There's nothing more I can do to stabilize it."
"Where did you see them last?" Ziolkowski shouted at Ace, trying to reach through his stupor.
"They gone... sail away...."
"Like hell. You can't even look at your fucking nose without tossing."
"I'll go up."
Ziolkowski gave Lieber a skeptical glance. "You're too heavy." He turned to Hart. "He's too heavy, right?"
"He doesn't look much heavier than me," said Hart, studying his new volunteer. "If he needs, he can get rid of some of the ballast."
"Won't one of them do better?" Ziolkowski indicated the Japanese knotted around Ace. He was loath to send up one of his men in a contraption he was sure would, sooner or later, plummet out of control.
"It's all right, Top. I used to work at Coney Island. They had balloons there and no one got hurt. Looked fun."
"Fun! I've got four dead men and one dead lieutenant!" He counted only Occidentals. "Then go up with the gooneys! You'll land the same way." He illustrated the gooneys' clumsy and sometimes fatal landing style with a brusque clap of his hands.
The envelope was refreshed with a burst of coal gas. Lieber watched and listened closely as Hart demonstrated the valves and equipment. Lieber climbed in and the anchor line was released.
The most unsettling thing about the balloon was just that: There was no place to settle. Although Hart had put a firm floor in the gondola, as soon as the balloon was off the ground Lieber felt as if the basket was dropping out from under him. His slightest movement was instantly exaggerated. He made the mistake of watching the ground during the ascent. His last meal began to churn as the island whirled beneath him. The nausea abated somewhat when he raised his eyes.
The grand spread of the planet was breathtaking. The zenith sun laid a faint muggy mist on the horizon. Scanning the jewel-blue ocean, he soon spotted the creatures. All three of them, still to the south. The sergeant was right. Ace had lost his wits along with his breakfast.
The monsters seemed to be in a purposeless daze, floating idly under the noon sun. Even with binoculars, the only indication they were alive was an occasional swan-like lifting of a head. Lieber wondered if all the donkey meat they'd eaten had made them sick.
Or maybe they were finding humans hard to digest.
1248 Hours
"Gentlemen, what Mr. Pegg has described is this...." A tripod and board stood before the officers in the wardroom. Uncovering it, Singleton revealed one of the drawings he had labored on all afternoon, with William guiding each stroke. His brief training in draftsmanship stood him in good stead.
Dr. Singleton had acquired a new habit. He'd begun to clasp his hands in front of him, nervously kneading his fingers. When he caught himself at it, he stared down in wonder and made himself stop. Five minutes later, he found himself doing it again.
"As you can see, one of the creatures is as long as the whaler, or nearly so. I've drawn an outline of the Lydia Bailey for comparison. The only creature we know of this size is alive this very day: the blue whale. Not only that, the blue whale is the largest animal ever known to have existed. Now, if we take into account the refraction of sunlight in water, as well as the human element--men under duress almost invariably exaggerate their adversary--we might safely say we are dealing with a creature a little more like this...." He uncovered a second drawing. "The plesiosaur."
It was then that the officers' skepticism became open. Low laughter riffled through the assembly. The animal Singleton indicated, even in threes, could not possibly sink a whaler.
"While not as grandiose as what Mr. Pegg has envisioned, we are speaking of a discovery of the utmost magnitude. A plesiosaur can pose no danger to a modern battleship. Our real challenge is to capture one of these creatures alive."
The laughter became louder. Singleton smiled and nodded.
"All right, gentlemen, maybe you'll appreciate this: If there are plesiosaurs at Midway and we do capture at least one of them alive, the fame and wealth you achieve will not end until the day you die."
A hush fell across the wardroom.
Up to now, William, still seated on the cushioned chair from where he'd presented his story, accepted Singleton's rebuttal with equanimity. But the talk of capture startled him. He stared at the doctor with stark amazement.
"Beggin' your pardon, Doctor. There's no way you can catch any of the serpents…."
Singleton lowered his head, like a matador challenged by a calf. In deference to William's sufferings, he would say no more. But there was no doubt the men in the room were more impressed by the boy than by the scientist. Oates had told them about Hart's transmissions. The marines on Midway could not have been pushed into such desperate straits by the fishy beanbags Singleton described. The doctor, besides being a knocker, was a know-it-all who refused to be proven wrong. If he could not cast aside his books and face the thing before him, he would have to be put aside himself. They did not believe the boy's story--they just preferred to.
As the meeting broke up, several men went over and patted William on the shoulder.
Not one word was spoken to Singleton.