On The Beach

3

Nine days later USS Scorpion surfaced at dawn. In the grey light, as the stars faded, the periscopes emerged from a calm sea off Sandy Cape near Bundaberg in Queensland, in latitude twenty-four degrees south. She stayed below the surface for a quarter of an hour while the captain checked his position by the lighthouse on the distant shore and by echo soundings, and while John Osborne checked the atmospheric and sea radiation levels, with fingers fumbling irritably upon his instruments. Then she slid up out of the depths, a long grey hull, low in the water, heading south at twenty knots. On the bridge deck a hatch clanged open and the officer of the deck emerged, followed by the captain and by many others. In the calm weather the forward and aft torpedo hatches were opened and clean air began to circulate throughout the boat. A lifeline was rigged from the bow to the bridge structure and another to the stern, and all the men off duty clambered up on deck into the fresh morning air, white faced, rejoicing to be out of it, to see the rising sun. They had been submerged for over a week.

Half an hour later they were hungry, hungrier than they had been for several days. When breakfast was sounded they tumbled below quickly; the cooks in turn came up for a spell on deck. When the watch was relieved more men came quickly up into the bright sunlight. The officers appeared upon the bridge, smoking, and the ship settled into the normal routine of surface operation, heading southwards on a blue sea down the Queensland coast. The radio mast was rigged, and they reported their position in a signal. Then they began to receive the broadcasting for entertainment, and light music filled the hull, mingling with the murmur of the turbines and the rushing noise of water alongside. On the bridge the captain said to his liaison officer, "This report’s going to be just a little difficult to write."

Peter nodded. "There’s the tanker, sir."

Dwight said, "Sure, there’s the tanker." Between Cairns and Port Moresby, in the Coral Sea, they had come upon a ship. She was a tanker, empty and in ballast, drifting with her engines stopped. She was registered in Amsterdam. They cruised around her, hailing through the loud hailer, and getting no response, looking at her through the periscope as they checked her details with Lloyds Register. All her boats were in place at the davits, but there seemed to be nobody alive on board her. She was rusty, very rusty indeed. They came to the conclusion finally that she was a derelict that had been drifting about the oceans since the war; she did not seem to have suffered any damage, other than the weather. There was nothing to be done about her, and the atmospheric radiation level was too high for them to go on deck or make any attempt to board her, even if it had been possible for them to get up her sheer sides. So, after an hour, they left her where they found her, photographing her through the periscope and noting the position. This was the only ship that they had met throughout the cruise.

The liaison officer said, "It’s going to boil down to a report on Honest John’s radioactive readings."

"That’s about the size of it," the captain agreed. "We did see that dog."

Indeed, the report was not going to be an easy one to write, for they had seen and learned very little in the course of their cruise. They had approached Cairns upon the surface but within the hull, the radiation level being too great to allow exposure on the bridge. They had threaded their way cautiously through the Barrier Reef to get to it, spending one night hove-to because Dwight judged it dangerous to navigate in darkness in such waters, where the lighthouses and leading lights were unreliable. When finally they picked up Green Island and approached the land, the town looked absolutely normal to them. It stood bathed in sunshine on the shore, with the mountain range of the Atherton tableland behind. Through the periscope they could see streets of shops shaded with palm trees, a hospital, and trim villas of one storey raised on posts above the ground; there were cars parked in the streets and one or two flags flying. They went on up the river to the docks. Here there was little to be seen except a few fishing boats at anchor up the river, completely normal; there were no ships at the wharves.

The cranes were trimmed fore and aft along the wharves and properly secured. Although they were close in to shore, they could see little here, for the periscope reached barely higher than the wharf decking and the warehouses then blocked the view. All that they could see was a silent waterfront, exactly as it would have looked upon a Sunday or a holiday, though then there would have been activity among the smaller craft. A large black dog appeared and barked at them from a wharf.

They had stayed in the river off the wharves for a couple of hours, hailing through the loud hailer at its maximum volume in tones that must have sounded all over the town. Nothing happened, for the whole town was asleep.

They turned the ship around, and went out a little way till they could see the Strand Hotel and part of the shopping centre again. They stayed there for a time, still calling and still getting no response. Then they gave up, and headed out to sea again to get clear of the Barrier Reef before the darkness fell. Apart from the radioactive information gathered by John Osborne, they had learned nothing, unless it was the purely negative information that Cairns looked exactly as it always had before. The sun shone in the streets, the flame trees brightened the far hills, the deep verandahs shaded the shopwindows of the town. A pleasant little place to live in in the tropics, though nobody lived there except, apparently, one dog.

Port Moresby had been the same. From the sea they could see nothing the matter with the town, viewed through the periscope. A merchant ship registered in Liverpool lay at anchor in the roads, a Jacob’s ladder up her side. Two more ships lay on the beach, probably having dragged their anchors in some storm. They stayed there for some hours, cruising the roads and going in to the dock, calling through the loud hailer. There was no response, but there seemed to be nothing the matter with the town. They left after a time, for there was nothing there to stay for.

Two days later they reached Port Darwin and lay in the harbour beneath the town. Here they could see nothing but the wharf, the roof of Government House, and a bit of the Darwin Hotel. Fishing boats lay at anchor and they cruised around these, hailing, and examining them through the periscope. They learned nothing, save for the inference that when the end had come the people had died tidily. "It’s what animals do," John Osborne said. "Creep away into holes to die. They’re probably all in bed."

"That’s enough about that," the captain said.

"It’s true," the scientist remarked.

"Okay, it’s true. Now let’s not talk about it any more."

The report certainly was going to be a difficult one to write.

They had left Port Darwin as they had left Cairns and Port Moresby; they had gone back through the Torres Strait and headed southward down the Queensland coast, submerged. By that time the strain of the cruise was telling on them; they talked little among themselves till they surfaced three days after leaving Darwin. Refreshed by a spell on deck, they now had time to think about what story they could tell about their cruise when they got back to Melbourne.

They talked of it after lunch, smoking at the wardroom table. "It’s what Swordfish found, of course," Dwight said. "She saw practically nothing either in the States or in Europe."

Peter reached out for the well-thumbed report that lay behind him on the cupboard top. He leafed it through again, though it had been his constant reading on the cruise. "I never thought of that," he said slowly. "I missed that angle on it, but now that you mention it, it’s true. There’s practically nothing here about conditions on shore."

"They couldn’t look on shore, any more than we could," the captain said. "Nobody will ever really know what a hot place looks like. And that goes for the whole of the Northern Hemisphere."

Peter said, "That’s probably as well."

"I think that’s right," said the commander. "There’s some things that a person shouldn’t want to go and see."

John Osborne said, "I was thinking about that last night. Did it ever strike you that nobody will ever—ever—see Cairns again? Or Moresby, or Darwin?"

They stared at him while they turned over the new idea. "Nobody could see more than we’ve seen," the captain said.

"Who else can go there, except us? And we shan’t go again. Not in the time."

"That’s so," Dwight said thoughtfully. "I wouldn’t think they’d send us back there again. I never thought of it that way, but I’d say you’re right. We’re the last living people that will ever see those places." He paused. "And we saw practically nothing. Well, I think that’s right."

Peter stirred uneasily. "That’s historical," he said. "It ought to go on record somewhere, oughtn’t it? Is anybody writing any kind of history about these times?"

John Osborne said, "I haven’t heard of one. I’ll find out about that. After all, there doesn’t seem to be much point in writing stuff that nobody will read."

"There should be something written, all the same," said the American. "Even if it’s only going to be read in the next few months." He paused. "I’d like to read a history of this last war," he said. "I was in it for a little while, but I don’t know a thing about it. Hasn’t anybody written anything?"

"Not as a history," John Osborne said. "Not that I know of, anyway. The information that we’ve got is all available, of course, but not as a coherent story. I think there’d be too many gaps—the things we just don’t know."

"I’d settle for the things we do know," the captain remarked.

"What sort of things, sir?"

"Well, as a start, how many bombs were dropped? Nuclear bombs, I mean."

"The seismic records show about four thousand seven hundred. Some of the records were pretty weak, so there were probably more than that."

"How many of those were big ones—fusion bombs, hydrogen bombs, or whatever you call them?"

"I couldn’t tell you. Probably most of them. All the bombs dropped in the Russian-Chinese war were hydrogen bombs, I think—most of them with a cobalt element."

"Why did they do that? Use cobalt, I mean?" Peter asked.

The scientist shrugged his shoulders. "Radiological warfare. I can’t tell you any more than that."

"I think I can," said the American. "I attended a commanding officers’ course at Yerba Buena, San Francisco, the month before the war. They told us what they thought might happen between Russia and China. Whether they told us what did happen six weeks later—well, your guess is as good as mine."

John Osborne asked quietly, "What did they tell you?"

The captain considered for a minute. Then he said, "It was all tied up with the warm water ports. Russia hasn’t got a port that doesn’t freeze up in the winter except Odessa, and that’s on the Black Sea. To get out of Odessa on to the high seas the traffic has to pass two narrow straits both commanded by NATO in time of war—the Bosporus and Gibraltar. Murmansk and Vladivostok can be kept open by icebreakers in the winter, but they’re a mighty long way from any place in Russia that makes things to export." He paused. "This guy from Intelligence said that what Russia really wanted was Shanghai."

The scientist asked, "Is that handy for their Siberian industries?"

The captain nodded. "That’s exactly it. During the Second War they moved a great many industries way back along the Trans-Siberian railway east of the Urals, back as far as Lake Baikal. They built new towns and everything. Well, it’s a long, long way from those places to a port like Odessa. It’s only about half the distance to Shanghai."

He paused. "There was another thing he told us," he said thoughtfully. "China had three times the population of Russia, all desperately overcrowded in their country. Russia, next door to the north of them, had millions and millions of square miles of land she didn’t use at all because she didn’t have the people to populate it. This guy said that as the Chinese industries increased over the last twenty years, Russia got to be afraid of an attack by China. She’d have been a great deal happier if there had been two hundred million fewer Chinese, and she wanted Shanghai. And that adds up to radiological warfare..."

Peter said, "But using cobalt, she couldn’t follow up and take Shanghai."

"That’s true. But she could make North China uninhabitable for quite a number of years by spacing the bombs right. If they put them down in the right places the fall-out would cover China to the sea. Any left over would go around the world eastwards across the Pacific; if a little got to the United States I don’t suppose the Russians would have wept salt tears. If they planned it right, there would be very little left when it got around the world again to Europe and to western Russia. Certainly she couldn’t follow up and take Shanghai for quite a number of years, but she’d get it in the end."

Peter turned to the scientist. "How long would it be before people could work in Shanghai?"

"With cobalt fall-out? I wouldn’t even guess. It depends on so many things. You’d have to send in exploratory teams. More than five years, I should think—that’s the half-life. Less than twenty. But you just can’t say."

Dwight nodded. "By the time anyone could get there, Chinese or anyone else, they’d find the Russians there already."

John Osborne turned to him. "What did the Chinese think about all this?"

"Oh, they had another angle altogether. They didn’t specially want to kill Russians. What they wanted to do was to turn the Russians back into an agricultural people that wouldn’t want Shanghai or any other port. The Chinese aimed to blanket the Russian industrial regions with a cobalt fall-out, city by city, put there with their intercontinental rockets. What they wanted was to stop any Russian from using a machine tool for the next ten years or so. They planned a limited fall-out of heavy particles, not going very far around the world. They probably didn’t plan to hit the city, even—just to burst maybe ten miles west of it, and let the wind do the rest." He paused. "With no Russian industry left, the Chinese could have walked in any time they liked and occupied the safe parts of the country, any that they fancied. Then, as the radiation eased, they’d occupy the towns."

"Find the lathes a bit rusty," Peter said.

"I’d say they might be. But they’d have had an easy war."

John Osborne asked, "Do you think that’s what happened?"

"I wouldn’t know," said the American. "Maybe no one knows. That’s just what this officer from the Pentagon told us at the commanding officers’ course." He paused. "One thing was in Russia’s favour," he said thoughtfully. "China hadn’t any friends or allies, except Russia. When Russia went for China, nobody else would make much trouble—start war on another front, or anything like that."

They sat smoking in silence for a few minutes. "You think that’s what flared up finally?" Peter said at last. "I mean, after the original attacks the Russians made on Washington and London?"

John Osborne and the captain stared at him. "The Russians never bombed Washington," Dwight said. "They proved that in the end."

He stared back at them. "I mean, the very first attack of all."

"That’s right. The very first attack. They were Russian long-range bombers, II 626’s, but they were Egyptian manned. They flew from Cairo."

"Are you sure that’s true?"

"It’s true enough. They got the one that landed at Puerto Rico on the way home. They only found out it was Egyptian after we’d bombed Leningrad and Odessa and the nuclear establishments at Kharkov, Kuibyshev, and Molotov. Things must have happened kind of quick that day."

"Do you mean to say, we bombed Russia by mistake?" It was so horrible a thought as to be incredible.

John Osborne said, "That’s true, Peter. It’s never been admitted publicly, but it’s quite true. The first one was the bomb on Naples. That was the Albanians, of course. Then there was the bomb on Tel Aviv. Nobody knows who dropped that one, not that I’ve heard, anyway. Then the British and Americans intervened and made that demonstration flight over Cairo. Next day the Egyptians sent out all the serviceable bombers that they’d got, six to Washington and seven to London. One got through to Washington, and two to London. After that there weren’t many American or British statesmen left alive."

Dwight nodded. "The bombers were Russian, and I’ve heard it said that they had Russian markings. It’s quite possible."

"Good God!" said the Australian. "So we bombed Russia?"

"That’s what happened," said the captain heavily.

John Osborne said, "It’s understandable. London and Washington were out—right out. Decisions had to be made by the military commanders at dispersal in the field, and they had to be made quick before another lot of bombs arrived. Things were very strained with Russia, after the Albanian bomb, and these aircraft were identified as Russian." He paused. "Somebody had to make a decision, of course, and make it in a matter of minutes. Up at Canberra they think now that he made it wrong."

"But if it was a mistake, why didn’t they get together and stop it? Why did they go on?"

The captain said, "It’s mighty difficult to stop a war when all the statesmen have been killed."

The scientist said, "The trouble is, the damn things got too cheap. The original uranium bomb only cost about fifty thousand quid towards the end. Every little pipsqueak country like Albania could have a stockpile of them, and every little country that had that, thought it could defeat the major countries in a surprise attack. That was the real trouble."

"Another was the aeroplanes," the captain said. "The Russians had been giving the Egyptians aeroplanes for years. So had Britain for that matter, and to Israel, and to Jordan. The big mistake was ever to have given them a long-range aeroplane."

Peter said quietly, "Well, after that the war was on between Russia and the Western powers. When did China come in?"

The captain said, "I don’t think anybody knows exactly. But I’d say that probably China came in right there with her rockets and her radiological warfare against Russia, taking advantage of the opportunity. Probably they didn’t know how ready Russia was with radiological warfare against China." He paused. "But that’s all surmise," he said. "Most of the communications went out pretty soon, and what were left didn’t have much time to talk to us down here, or to South Africa. All we know is that the command came down to quite junior officers, in most countries."

John Osborne smiled wryly. "Major Chan Sze Lin."

Peter asked, "Who was Chan Sze Lin, anyway?"

The scientist said, "I don’t think anybody really knows, except that he was an officer in the Chinese Air Force, and towards the end he seems to have been in command. The Prime Minister was in touch with him, trying to intervene to stop it all. He seems to have had a lot of rockets in various parts of China, and a lot of bombs to drop. His opposite number in Russia may have been someone equally insignificant. But I don’t think the Prime Minister ever succeeded in making contact with the Russians. I never heard a name, anyway."

There was a pause. "It must have been a difficult situation," Dwight said at last. "I mean, what could the guy do? He had a war on his hands and plenty of weapons left to fight it with. I’d say it was the same in all the countries, after the statesmen got killed. It makes a war very difficult to stop."

"It certainly made this one. It just didn’t stop, till all the bombs were gone and all the aircraft were unserviceable. And by that time, of course, they’d gone too far."

"Christ," said the American softly, "I don’t know what I’d have done in their shoes. I’m glad I wasn’t."

The scientist said, "I should think you’d have tried to negotiate."

"With an enemy knocking hell out of the United States and killing all our people? When I still had weapons in my hands? Just stop fighting and give in? I’d like to think that I was so high-minded but—well, I don’t know." He raised his head. "I was never trained for diplomacy," he said. "If that situation had devolved on me, I wouldn’t have known how to handle it."

"They didn’t, either," said the scientist. He stretched himself, and yawned. "Just too bad. But don’t go blaming the Russians. It wasn’t the big countries that set off this thing. It was the little ones, the Irresponsibles."

Peter Holmes grinned, and said, "It’s a bit hard on all the rest of us."

"You’ve got six months more," remarked John Osborne. "Plus or minus something. Be satisfied with that. You’ve always known that you were going to die sometimes. Well, now you know when. That’s all." He laughed. "Just make the most of what you’ve got left."

"I know that," said Peter. "The trouble is I can’t think of anything that I want to do more than what I’m doing now."

"Cooped up in bloody Scorpion?"

"Well—yes. It’s our job. I really meant, at home."

"No imagination. You want to turn Mohammedan and start a harem."

The submarine commander laughed. "Maybe he’s got something there."

The liaison officer shook his head. "It’s a nice idea, but it wouldn’t be practical. Mary wouldn’t like it." He stopped smiling. "The trouble is, I can’t really believe it’s going to happen. Can you?"

"Not after what you’ve seen?"

Peter shook his head. "No. If we’d seen any damage..."

"No imagination whatsoever," remarked the scientist. "It’s the same with all you service people. That can’t happen to me." He paused. "But it can. And it certainly will."

"I suppose I haven’t got any imagination," said Peter thoughtfully. "It’s—it’s the end of the world. I’ve never had to imagine anything like that before."

John Osborne laughed. "It’s not the end of the world at all," he said. "It’s only the end of us. The world will go on just the same, only we shan’t be in it. I dare say it will get along all right without us."

Dwight Towers raised his head. "I suppose that’s right. There didn’t seem to be much wrong with Cairns, or Port Moresby either." He paused, thinking of the flowering trees that he had seen on shore through the periscope, cascaras and flame trees, the palms standing in the sunlight. "Maybe we’ve been too silly to deserve a world like this," he said.

The scientist said, "That’s absolutely and precisely right."

There didn’t seem to be much more to say upon that subject, so they went up on to the bridge for a smoke, in the sunlight and fresh air.

They passed the Heads at the entrance to Sydney Harbour soon after dawn next day and went on southwards into the Bass Strait. Next morning they were in Port Phillip Bay, and they berthed alongside the aircraft carrier at Williamstown at about noon. The First Naval Member was there to meet them and he was piped aboard Scorpion as soon as the gangway was run out.

Dwight Towers met him on the narrow deck. The admiral returned his salute. "Well, Captain, what sort of a cruise did you have?"

"We had no troubles, sir. The operation went through in accordance with the orders. But I’m afraid you may find the results are disappointing."

"You didn’t get very much information?"

"We got plenty of radiation data, sir. North of twenty latitude we couldn’t go on deck."

The admiral nodded. "Have you had any sickness?"

"One case that the surgeon says is measles. Nothing of a radioactive nature."

They went below into the tiny captain’s cabin. Dwight displayed the draft of his report, written in pencil upon sheets of foolscap with an appendix of the radiation levels at each watch of the cruise, long columns of small figures in John Osborne’s neat handwriting. "I’ll get this typed in Sydney right away," he said. "But what it comes to is just this—we found out very little."

"No signs of life in any of those places?"

"Nothing at all. Of course, you can’t see very much, at periscope height from the waterfront. I never realized before we went how little we’d be able to see. I should have, perhaps. You’re quite a ways from Cairns out in the main channel, and the same at Moresby. We never saw the town of Darwin at all, up on the cliff. Just the waterfront." He paused. "There didn’t seem to be much wrong with that."

The admiral turned over the pencilled pages, stopping now and then to read a paragraph. "You stayed some time at each place?"

"About five hours. We were calling all the time through the loud hailer."

"Getting no answer?"

"No, sir. We thought we did at Darwin just at first, but it was only a crane shackle squeaking on the wharf. We moved right up to it and tracked it down."

"Sea birds?"

"None at all. We never saw a bird north of latitude twenty. We saw a dog at Cairns."

The admiral stayed twenty minutes. Finally he said, "Well, get in this report as soon as you can, marking one copy by messenger direct to me. It’s a bit disappointing, but you probably did all that anybody could have done."

The American said, "I was reading that report of Swordfish, sir. There’s very little information about things on shore in that, either in the States or in Europe. I guess they didn’t see much more than we did, from the waterfront." He hesitated for a moment. "There’s one suggestion that I’d like to put forward."

"What’s that, captain?"

"The radiation levels aren’t very high, anywhere along the line. The scientific officer tells me that a man could work safely in an insulating suit—helmet, gloves, and all, of course. We could put an officer on shore in any of those places, rowing in a dinghy, working with an oxygen pack on his back."

"Decontamination when he comes on board again," said the admiral. "That makes a problem. Probably not insuperable. I’ll suggest it to the Prime Minister and see if he wants information upon any specific point. He may not think it worth while. But it’s an idea."

He turned to the control room to go up the ladder to the bridge.

"Will we be able to give shore leave, sir?"

"Any defects?"

"Nothing of importance."

"Ten days," said the admiral. "I’ll make a signal about that this afternoon.’’

Peter Holmes rang up Mary after lunch. "Home again, all in one piece," he said. "Look, darling, I’ll be home sometime tonight—I don’t know when. I’ve got a report to get off first, and I’ll drop it in myself at the Navy Department on my way through—I’ve got to go there, anyway. I don’t know when I’ll be back. Don’t bother about meeting me—I’ll walk up from the station."

"It’s lovely to hear you again," she said. "You won’t have had supper, will you?"

"I shouldn’t think so. I’ll do myself some eggs or something when I get in."

She thought rapidly. "I’ll make a casserole, and we can have that any time."

"Fine. Look, there’s just one thing. We had a case of measles on board, so I’m in a kind of quarantine."

"Oh, Peter! You’ve had it before, though, haven’t you?"

"Not since I was about four years old. The surgeon says I can get it again. The incubation time is three weeks. Have you had it—recently?"

"I had it when I was about thirteen."

"I think that makes you pretty safe."

She thought quickly. "What about Jennifer, though?"

"I know. I’ve been thinking about her. I’ll have to keep out of her way."

"Oh dear... Can anyone get measles when she’s as young as Jennifer?"

"I don’t know, darling. I could ask the surgeon commander."

"Would he know about babies?"

He thought for a moment. "I don’t suppose he’s had a great deal of experience with them."

"Ask him, Peter, and I’ll ring up Dr. Halloran. We’ll fix up something, anyway. It’s lovely that you’re back."

He rang off and went on with his work, while Mary settled down to her besetting sin, the telephone. She rang up Mrs. Foster down the road who was going into town to a meeting of the Countrywomen’s Association and asked her to bring out a pound of steak and a couple of onions. She rang the doctor who told her that a baby could get measles and that she must be very careful. And then she thought of Moira Davidson who had rung her up the night before to ask if she had any news of Scorpion. She got her at teatime at the farm near Berwick.

"My dear," she said. "They’re back. Peter rang me from the ship just now. They’ve all got measles."

"They’ve got what?"

"Measles—like you have when you’re at school." There was a burst of laughter on the line, a little hysterical and shrill. "It’s nothing to laugh about," Mary said. "I’m thinking about Jennifer. She might catch it from Peter. He’s had it once, but he can get it again. It’s all so worrying...

The laughter subsided. "Sorry, darling, but it seems so funny. It’s nothing to do with radioactivity, is it?"

"Oh, I don’t think so. Peter said it was just measles." She paused. "Isn’t it awful?"

Miss Davidson laughed again. "It’s just the sort of thing they would do. Here they go cruising for a fortnight up in parts where everyone is dead of radiation, and all that they can catch is measles! I’ll have to speak to Dwight about it, very sharply. Did they find anyone alive up there?"

"I don’t know, darling. Peter didn’t say anything about it. But anyway, that’s not important. What am I going to do about Jennifer? Dr. Halloran says she can catch it, and Peter’s going to be contagious for three weeks."

"He’ll have to sleep and have his meals out on the verandah."

"Don’t be silly, darling."

"Well, let Jennifer sleep and have her meals out on the verandah."

"Flies," said her mother. "Mosquitoes. A cat might come and lie on her face and smother her. They do, you know."

"Put a mosquito net over the pram."

"I haven’t got a mosquito net."

"I think we’ve got some somewhere, that Daddy used to use in Queensland. They’re probably full of holes."

"I do wish you’d have a look, darling. It’s the cat I’m worried about."

"I’ll go and have a look now. If I can find one I’ll put it in the post tonight. Or I might bring it over. Are you going to have Commander Towers down again, now that they’re home?"

"I really hadn’t thought. I don’t know if Peter wants to have him. They may be hating the sight of each other after a fortnight in that submarine. Would you like us to have him over?"

"It’s nothing to me," said the girl carelessly. "I don’t care if you do or don’t."

"Darling!"

"It’s not. Stop poking your stick in my ear. Anyway, he’s a married man."

Puzzled, Mary said, "He can’t be, dear. Not now."

"That’s all you know," the girl replied. "It makes things a bit difficult. I’ll go and look for that net."

When Peter arrived home that evening he found Mary to be somewhat uninterested in Cairns but very much concerned about the baby. Moira had rung up again to say that she was sending a mosquito net, but it would clearly be some time before it could arrive. As a makeshift Mary had secured a long length of butter muslin and had draped this round the pram on the verandah, but she had not done it very well and the liaison officer spent some time on his first evening at home in fashioning a close-fitting cover to the pram hood from the muslin. "I do hope she’ll be able to breathe," his wife said anxiously. "Peter, are you sure she’ll get enough air through that?"

He did what he could to reassure her, but three times in the night she left his side to go out to the verandah to make sure that the baby was still alive.

The social side of Scorpion was more interesting to her than the technical achievements of the ship. "Are you going to ask Commander Towers down again?" she inquired.

"I really hadn’t thought about it," he replied. "Would you like to have him down?"

"I quite liked him," she said. "Moira liked him a lot. So funny for her, because he’s such a quiet man. But you never can tell."

"He took her out before we went away," he said. "Showed her the ship and took her out. I bet she leads him a dance."

"She rang up three times while you were away to ask if we had any news," his wife said. "I don’t believe that was because of you."

"She was probably just bored," he remarked.

He had to go up to town next day for a meeting at the Navy Department with John Osborne and the Principal Scientific Officer. The meeting ended at about noon; as they were going out of the office the scientist said, "By the way, I’ve got a parcel for you." He produced a brown paper packet tied with string. "Mosquito net. Moira asked me to give it to you."

"Oh—thanks. Mary wanted that badly."

"What are you doing for lunch?"

"I hadn’t thought."

"Come along to the Pastoral Club."

The young naval officer opened his eyes; this was somewhat upstage and rather expensive. "Are you a member there?"

John Osborne nodded. "I always intended to be one before I died. It was now or never."

They took a tram up to the club at the other end of the town. Peter Holmes had been inside it once or twice before, and had been suitably impressed. It was an ancient building for Australia, over a hundred years old, built in the spacious days in the manner of one of the best London clubs of the time. It had retained its old manners and traditions in a changing era; more English than the English, it had carried the standards of food and service practically unaltered from the middle of the nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth. Before the war it had probably been the best club in the Commonwealth. Now it certainly was.

They parked their hats in the hail, washed their hands in the old-fashioned washroom, and moved out into the garden cloister for a drink. Here they found a number of members, mostly past middle age, discussing the affairs of the day. Amongst them Peter Holmes noticed several state and federal ministers. An elderly gentleman waved to them from a group upon the lawn and started towards them.

John Osborne said quietly, "It’s my great-uncle—Douglas Froude. Lieutenant General—you know."

Peter nodded. Sir Douglas Froude had commanded the army before he was born and had retired soon after that event, fading from great affairs into the obscurity of a small property near Macedon, where he had raised sheep and tried to write his memoirs. Twenty years later he was still trying though he was gradually abandoning the struggle. For some time his chief interest had lain in his garden and in the study of Australian wild birds; his weekly visit into town to lunch at the Pastoral Club was his one remaining social activity. He was still erect in figure though white haired and red of face. He greeted his great-nephew cheerfully.

"Ha, John," he said. "I heard last night that you were back again. Had a good trip?"

John Osborne introduced the naval officer. "Quite good," he said. "I don’t know that we found out very much, and one of the ship’s company developed measles. Still, that’s all in the day’s work."

"Measles, eh? Well, that’s better than this cholera thing. I hope you none of you got that. Come and have a drink—I’m in the book."

They crossed to the table with him. John said, "Thank you, Uncle. I didn’t expect to see you here today. I thought your day was Friday."

They helped themselves to pink gins. "Oh no, no. It used to be Friday. Three years ago my doctor told me that if I didn’t stop drinking the club port he couldn’t guarantee my life for longer than a year. But everything’s changed now, of course." He raised his glass of sherry. "Well, here’s thanks for your safe home-coming. I suppose one ought to pour it on the ground as a libation or something, but the situation is too serious for that. Do you know we’ve got over three thousand bottles of vintage port still left in the cellars of this club, and only about six months left to go, if what you scientists say is right?"

John Osborne was suitably impressed. "Fit to drink?"

"In first-class condition, absolutely first class. Some of the Fonseca may be just a trifle young, a year or two maybe, but the Gould Campbell is in its prime. I blame the Wine Committee very much, very much indeed. They should have seen this coming."

Peter Holmes repressed a smile. "It’s a bit difficult to blame anyone," he said mildly. "I don’t know that anybody really saw this coming."

"Stuff and nonsense. I saw this coming twenty years ago. Still, it’s no good blaming anybody now. The only thing to do is to make the best of it."

John Osborne asked, "What are you doing about the port?"

"There’s only one thing to do," the old man said.

"What’s that?"

"Drink it, my boy, drink it—every drop. No good leaving it for the next comer, with the cobalt half-life over five years. I come in now three days a week and take a bottle home with me." He took another drink of his sherry. "If I’m to die, as I most certainly am, I’d rather die of drinking port than of this cholera thing. You say you none of you got that upon your cruise?"

Peter Holmes shook his head. "We took precautions. We were submerged and underwater most of the time."

"Ah, that makes a good protection." He glanced at them. "There’s nobody alive up in North Queensland, is there?"

"Not at Cairns, sir. I don’t know about Townsville." The old man shook his head. "There’s been no communication with Townsville since last Thursday, and now Bowen has it. Somebody was saying that they’ve had some cases in Mackay."

John Osborne grinned. "Have to hurry up with that port, Uncle."

"I know that. It’s a very terrible situation." The sun shone down on them out of a cloudless sky, warm and comforting; the big chestnut in the garden cast dappled shadows on the lawn. "Still, we’re doing our best. The secretary tells me that we put away over three hundred bottles last month."

He turned to Peter. "How do you like serving in an American ship?"

"I like it very much, sir. It’s a bit different to our navy, of course, and I’ve never served in a submarine before. But they’re quite a nice party to be with."

"Not too gloomy? Not too many widowers?"

He shook his head. "They’re all pretty young, except the captain. I don’t think many of them were married. The captain was, of course, and some of the petty officers. But most of the officers and the enlisted men are in their early twenties. A lot of them seem to have got themselves girls here in Australia." He paused. "It’s not a gloomy ship."

The old man nodded. "Of course, it’s been some time, now." He drank again, and then he said, "The captain—is he a Commander Towers?"

"That’s right, sir. Do you know him?"

"He’s been in here once or twice, and I’ve been introduced to him. I have an idea that he’s an honorary member. Bill Davidson was telling me that Moira knows him."

"She does, sir. They met at my house."

"Well, I hope she doesn’t get him into mischief."

At that moment she was ringing up the commander in the aircraft carrier, doing her best to do so. "This is Moira, Dwight," she said. "What’s this I hear about your ship all getting measles?"

His heart lightened at the sound of her voice. "You’re very right," he said. "But that’s classified information."

"What does that mean?"

"Secret. If a ship in the U. S. Navy gets put out of action for a while, we just don’t tell the world about it."

"All that machinery put out of action by a little thing like measles. It sounds like bad management to me. Do you think Scorpion's got the right captain?"

"I’m darned sure she hasn’t," he said comfortably.

"Let’s you and me get together someplace and talk about a replacement. I’m just not satisfied myself."

"Are you going down to Peter Holmes’ this weekend?"

"He hasn’t asked me."

"Would you go if you were asked? Or have you had him keel-hauled for insubordination since we met?"

"He never caught a sea gull," he said. "I guess that’s all I’ve got against him. I never logged him for it."

"Did you expect him to catch sea gulls?"

"Sure. I rated him chief sea gull catcher, but he fell down on the job. The Prime Minister, your Mr. Ritchie, he’ll be mighty sore with me about no sea gull. A ship’s captain, though, he’s just so good as his officers and no better."

She asked, "Have you been drinking, Dwight?"

"I’ll say I have. Coca-Cola."

"Ah, that’s what’s wrong. You need a double brandy—no, whisky. Can I speak to Peter Holmes?"

"Not here, you can’t. He’s lunching with John Osborne someplace, I believe. Could be the Pastoral Club."

"Worse and worse," she said. "If he happens to ask you down, will you come? I’d like to see if you can sail that dinghy any better this time. I’ve got a padlock for my bra."

He laughed. "I’ll be glad to come. Even on those terms."

"He may not ask you," she pointed out. "I don’t like the sound of this sea gull business at all. It seems to me that there’s bad trouble in your ship."

"Let’s talk it over."

"Certainly," she replied. "I’ll hear what you’ve got to say."

She rang off, and succeeded in catching Peter on the telephone as he was about to leave the club. She came directly to the point. "Peter, will you ask Dwight Towers down to your place for the weekend? I’ll ask myself."

He temporized. "I’ll get hell from Mary if he gives Jennifer measles."

"I’ll tell her she caught it from you. Will you ask him?"

"If you like. I don’t suppose he’ll come."

"He will."

She met him at Falmouth station in her buggy, as she had before. As he passed through the ticket barrier he greeted her with, "Say, what happened to the red outfit?"

She was dressed in khaki, khaki slacks and khaki shirt, practical and workmanlike. "I wasn’t sure about wearing it, meeting you," she said. "I didn’t want to get it all messed up.

He laughed. "You’ve got quite an opinion of me!"

"A girl can’t be too careful," she said primly. "Not with all this hay about."

They walked down to where her horse and buggy stood tied to the rail. "I suppose we’d better settle up this sea gull business before meeting Mary," she said. "I mean, it’s not a thing one wants to talk about in mixed company. What about the Pier Hotel?"

"Okay with me," he said. They got up into the jinker and drove through the empty streets to the hotel. She tied the reins to the same bumper of the same car, and they went into the Ladies’ Lounge.

He bought her a double brandy, and bought a single whisky for himself. "Now, what’s all this about the sea gull?" she demanded. "You’d better come clean, Dwight, however discreditable it is."

"I saw the Prime Minister before we went off on this cruise," he told her. "The First Naval Member, he took me over. He told us this and that, and among other things he wanted us to find out all we could about the bird life in the radioactive area."

"All right. Well, did you find out anything for him?"

"Nothing at all," he replied comfortably. "Nothing about the birds, nothing about the fish, and not much about anything else."

"Didn’t you catch any fish?"

He grinned at her. "If anyone can tell me how to catch a fish out of a submarine that’s submerged, or a sea gull when nobody can go on deck, I’d like to know. It could probably be done with specially designed equipment. Everything’s possible. But this was at the final briefing, hail an hour before we sailed."

"So you didn’t bring back a sea gull?"

"Was the Prime Minister very much annoyed?"

"I wouldn’t know. I wouldn’t dare go see him."

"I’m not surprised." She paused and took a drink from her glass, and then more seriously she said, "Tell me. There’s nobody alive up there, is there?"

He shook his head. "I don’t think so. It’s difficult to say for certain unless one was prepared to put a man on shore, in a protective suit. Looking back, I think that’s what we should have done in some of those places. But we weren’t briefed for that this time, and no equipment on board. The decontamination is a problem, when he comes back in the ship."

"‘This time,’" she quoted. "Are you going again?"

He nodded. "I think so. We’ve had no orders, but I’ve got a hunch they’ll send us over to the States."

She opened her eyes. "Can you go there?"

He nodded. "It’s quite a way, and it’d be a very long time underwater. Pretty hard on the crew. But yet—it could be done. Swordfish took a cruise like that, and so could we."

He told her about Swordfish and her cruise around the North Atlantic. "The trouble is, you see so very little through the periscope. We’ve got the captain’s report on the Swordfish cruise, and, when you sum it all up, they really learned very little. Not much more than you’d know if you sat down to think it out. You can only see the waterfront, and that from a height of about twenty feet. You can see if there’s been bomb damage in a city or a port, but that’s about all you can see. It was the same with us. We found out very little on this cruise. Just stayed there calling on the loud hailer for a while, and when nobody came down to look at us or answer, we assumed they were all dead." He paused. "It’s all you can assume."

She nodded. "Somebody was saying that they’ve got it in Mackay. Do you think that’s true?"

"I think it is true," he said. "It’s coming south very steadily, just like the scientists said it would."

"If it goes on at this rate, how long will it be before it gets here?"

"I’d say around September. Could be a bit before."

She got restlessly to her feet. "Get me another drink, Dwight." And when he brought it she said, "I want to go somewhere—do something—dance!"

"Anything you say, honey."

"We can’t just sit here mooning and moaning about what’s coming to us!"

"You’re right," he said. "But what do you want to do, more ‘n you’re doing now?"

"Don’t be sensible," she said fretfully. "I just can’t bear it."

"Okay," he said equably. "Drink up and let’s go up and meet the Holmes, and then go sail that boat."

They found at the flat that Peter and Mary Holmes had arranged a beach picnic supper for the evening’s entertainment. Not only was it cheaper than a party and more pleasant in the heat of summer, but in Mary’s somewhat muddled view the more the men were kept out of the house the less likely they were to give the baby measles. That afternoon Moira and Dwight went down to the sailing club after a quick lunch to rig the boat and sail her in the race, while Peter and Mary followed with the baby in the bicycle trailer in the middle of the afternoon.

The race went reasonably well that time. They bumped the buoy at the start, and engaged in a lulling match on the second round which ended in a minor collision because neither party knew the rules, but in that club such incidents were not infrequent, and protests very few. They finished the race in sixth place, an improvement on the time before, and in much better order. They sailed in to the beach at the conclusion of the race, parked the vessel on a convenient sandbank, and waded on shore to drink a cup of tea and eat small cakes with Peter and Mary.

They bathed in leisurely fashion in the evening sun; in bathing costumes they unrigged the boat, put away the sails, and got her up to her resting place upon the dry sand of the beach. The sun dropped down to the horizon and they changed into their clothes, took drinks from the hamper, and walked out to the jetty’s end to see the sunset while Peter and Mary got busy with the supper.

Sitting with him perched upon a rail, watching the rosy lights reflected in the calm sea, savouring the benison of the warm evening and the comfort of her drink, she asked him, "Dwight, tell me about the cruise that Swordfish made. Did you say she went to the United States?"

"That’s right." He paused, and then he said, "She went everywhere she could along the eastern seaboard, but all it amounted to was just a few of the small ports and harbours, Delaware Bay, the Hudson River, and, of course, New London. They took a big chance going in to look at New York City."

She was puzzled. "Was that dangerous?"

He nodded. "Minefields—our own mines. Every major port or river entrance on the eastern seaboard was protected by a series of minefields. At any rate, that’s what we think. The West Coast, too." He paused for a moment in thought. "They should have been put down before the war. Whether they got them down before, or whether they were put down after, or whether they were never laid at all—we just don’t know. All we know is that there should be minefields there, and unless you have the plan of them to show the passage through—you can’t go in."

"You mean, if you hit one it’d sink you?"

"It most certainly would. Unless you have the key chart you just daren’t go near."

"Did they have the key chart when they went into New York?"

He shook his head. "They had one that was eight years old, with NOT TO BE USED stamped all over it. Those things are pretty secret; they don’t issue them unless a ship needs to go in there. They only had this old one. They must have wanted to go in very much. They got to figuring what alterations could have been made, retaining the main leading marks to show the safe channels in. They got it figured out that not much alteration to the plan they had would have been possible save on one leg. They chanced it, and went in, and got away with it. Maybe there were never any mines there at all."

"Did they find out much that was of value when they got into the harbour?"

He shook his head. "Nothing but what they knew already. It’s how it seems to be, exploring places in this way. You can’t find out a lot."

"There was nobody alive there?"

"Oh no, honey. The whole geography was altered. It was very radioactive, too."

They sat in silence for a time, watching the sunset glow, smoking over their drinks. "What was the other place you say she went to?" the girl asked at last. "New London?"

"That’s right," he said.

"Where is that?"

"In Connecticut, in the eastern part of the state," he told her. "At the mouth of the Thames River."

"Did they run much risk in going there?"

He shook his head. "It was their home port. They had the key chart for the minefields there, right up to date." He paused. "It’s the main U. S. Navy submarine base on the East Coast," he said quietly. "Most of them lived there, I guess, or in the general area. Like I did."

"You lived there?"

He nodded.

"Was it just the same as all the other places?"

"So it seems," he said heavily. "They didn’t say much in the report, just the readings of the radioactivity. They were pretty bad. They got right up to the base, to their own dock that they left from. It must have been kind of funny going back like that, but there was nothing much about it in the report. Most of the officers and the enlisted men, they must have been very near their homes. There was nothing they could do, of course. They just stayed there awhile, and then went out and went on with the mission. The captain said in his report they had some kind of a religious service in the ship. It must have been painful."

In the warm, rosy glow of the sunset there was still beauty in the world. "I wonder they went in there," she observed.

"I wondered about that, just at first," he said. "I’d have passed it by, myself, I think. Although... well, I don’t know. But thinking it over, I’d say they had to go in there. It was the only place they had the key chart for—that, and Delaware Bay. They were the only two places that they could get into safely. They just had to take advantage of the knowledge of the minefields that they had."

She nodded. "You lived there?"

"Not in New London itself," he said quietly. "The base is on the other side of the river, the east side. I’ve got a home about fifteen miles away, up the coast from the river entrance. Little place called West Mystic."

She said, "Don’t talk about it if you’d rather not."

He glanced at her. "I don’t mind talking, not to some people. But I wouldn’t want to bore you." He smiled gently. "Nor to start crying, because I’d seen the baby."

She flushed a little. "When you let me use your cabin to change in," she said, "I saw your photographs. Are those your family?"

He nodded. "That’s my wife and our two kids," he said a little proudly. "Sharon. Dwight goes to grade school, and Helen, she’ll be going next fall. She goes to a little kindergarten right now, just up the street."

She had known for some time that his wife and family were very real to him, more real by far than the half-life in a far corner of the world that had been forced upon him since the war. The devastation of the Northern Hemisphere was not real to him, as it was not real to her. He had seen nothing of the destruction of the war, as she had not; in thinking of his wife and of his home it was impossible for him to visualize them in any other circumstances than those in which he had left them. He had little imagination, and that formed a solid core for his contentment in Australia.

She knew that she was treading upon very dangerous ground. She wanted to be kind to him, and she had to say something. She asked a little timidly, "What’s Dwight going to be when he grows up?"

"I’d like him to go to the Academy," he said. "The Naval Academy. Go into the navy, like I did. It’s a good life for a boy—I don’t know any better. Whether he can make the grade or not, well, that’s another thing. His mathematics aren’t so hot, but it’s too early yet to say. He won’t be ten years old till next July. But I’d like to see him get into the Academy. I think he wants it, too."

"Is he keen on the pea?" she asked.

He nodded. "We live right near the shore. He’s on the water, swimming and running the outboard motor, most of the summer." He paused thoughtfully. "They get so brown," he said. "All kids seem to be the same. I sometimes think that kids get browner than we do, with the same amount of exposure."

"They get very brown here," she remarked. "You haven’t started him sailing yet?"

"Not yet," he said. "I’m going to get a sailboat when I’m home on my next leave."

He raised himself from the rail that they had been sitting on, and stood for a moment looking at the sunset glow.

"I guess that’ll be next September," he said quietly. "Kind of late in the season to start sailing, up at Mystic."

She was silent, not knowing what to say.

He turned to her. "I suppose you think I’m nuts," he said heavily. "But that’s the way I see it, and I can’t seem to think about it any other way. At any rate, I don’t cry over babies."

She rose and turned to walk with him down the jetty.

"I don’t think you’re nuts," she said.

They walked together in silence to the beach.