“And you thought the missile was in the fissure,” said Troy a few seconds later. “Which was why you came back yesterday.”
“We were going to salvage it for you and give you a worldwide scoop,” added Nick, his feeling of betrayal softened somewhat by the obvious sincerity of her apology. “You were using us all the time.”
“You could call it that,” Carol conceded, “but as a reporter, I don’t see it that way.” She noticed the tension in the room. Nick seemed especially guarded. “But now it doesn’t matter anyway,” she continued. “What is important is that I have given an explanation for the Navy’s presence at the dive site. During the last two days I have made several inquiries at all levels about the clandestine activities that the Navy currently has underway to search for the missile. Last night that Mexican lieutenant got a good look at our best close-ups of the missile in the fissure. Undoubtedly someone put two and two together.”
“Look, angel,” Troy spoke after another short silence, “I don’t know anything about a missile. And too much is going on for me to be hurt because you lied to me. I’m sure you had your reasons. What I need to know now is whether or not you will help me take this stuff back to the ETs or aliens or whatever you want to call them.”
Before Carol could answer, Nick stood up again and started walking toward the door. “I’m very hungry,” he announced, “and I want to think through this entire situation. If you don’t mind, Troy, I’ll have an early supper and meet you later on tonight with my answer.”
Carol realized that she also was extremely hungry. It had been a long, exhausting day and she had not eaten anything significant since breakfast. She was also a little concerned about Nick’s response to her confession. “Why don’t I join you for a bite?” she said to Nick. He gave a noncommittal shrug, as if to say suit yourself. Carol gave Troy a hug. “Let’s all meet at my room in the Marriott around seven-thirty. I have to go there anyway to dress for my interview with the triple creeps. You guys can give me some pointers.”
Her humor did not lighten the atmosphere in the room. Troy was clearly worried about something. His face was very earnest, almost stern. “Professor,” he said to Nick in a soft and deliberate monotone, “I know I didn’t have all the answers to your questions. I don’t even have the answers to my own. But I do know one thing for certain. Nothing like this has ever happened on the Earth before. At least not in recorded history. The creatures who built that spaceship are, when compared to us, as we would appear to the ants or the bees if they could comprehend us. They have asked the three of us for help in repairing their vehicle. To say that this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity would be a colossal under-statement.
“It would be great if we could sit around and debate this issue for weeks or even months. But we can’t. Time is running out. The Navy is certain to find them soon, maybe they have already, with possibly dire circumstances for the human beings on this planet. They have made it clear to me that their mission must be fulfilled, that they must repair their vehicle and continue their voyage, even if they must interfere with the Earth system to achieve their goal.
“I know all this sounds incredible, maybe even absurd. But I am going to collect some lead weights from my diver friends and pick up the compact discs at the library. With or without your help, I want to be over their spaceship at dawn tomorrow.”
Nick studied Troy very carefully during this speech. For an instant in the middle, it seemed as if it were not Troy speaking at all, but someone or something else speaking through him. An eerie chill raced down Nick’s spine. Shit, he thought. I’m as bad as they are. I’m now caught up in this thing too. He gestured to Carol to follow him and walked out the door.
7
As I have told you twice before?” the voice sounded tired and bored, “I was out diving with my friends, Nick Williams and Carol Dawson. She had a problem with her equipment and decided to make a quick return to the boat. We had found a particularly interesting reef, with some very unusual features, and we weren’t certain we would be able to locate it again. So I decided to stay and wait for her to come back. When I finally surfaced half an hour later, there was no sign of them or the boat.”
The recorder clicked off. The two lieutenants stared at each other. “Shit, Ramirez, do you believe that bastard’s story? Any part of it?” The other man shook his head. “Then why the hell did you let him go? That black shitass sat there for an hour, making fools out of us with ridiculous answers to our questions. and then you summarily released him.”
“We can’t detain someone without positive evidence of wrong doing,” responded Ramirez, as if he were quoting from a military manual. “And swimming in the ocean ten miles from the nearest island, although strange, does not constitute wrong doing.” Ramirez could see that his colleague was scowling. “Besides, he never slipped up. He always told exactly the same story.”
“The same bullshit, you mean.” Lieutenant Richard Todd leaned back in his chair. The two men were sitting around a small conference table in an old room with white plaster walls. The tape recorder was on the table in front of them next to an empty ashtray. “He didn’t even believe his own story. He just sat there, that cocky grin on his black face, knowing that we couldn’t charge him with anything.” Todd put all four of his chair legs back on the floor and pounded the table for emphasis. “An experienced diver would never stay down by himself for five minutes, much less thirty. Too many things could go wrong. As for his friends, why the hell did they leave him?” Now Todd stood up and made gestures in the air with his hands. “I’ll tell you why, Lieutenant. Because they knew he was all right, that he had been picked up by a Russian submarine. Shit, I told you we should have taken one of the new vessels. We probably could have spotted the sub with the upgraded electronic gear.”
Ramirez was playing idly with the glass ashtray while Todd was giving his lecture. “You really believe that those three are involved with the Russians in this, don’t you? It sure seems farfetched to me.”
“Fucking A,” replied Todd, “nothing else makes even a tittle sense. Every engineer we have talked to says there are no conceivable failures that are consistent both with the observed behavior of the missile and the telemetry we received at our tracking stations. So the Russians must have commanded it off course.”
Todd grew excited as he explained the rest of the plot. “The Russians knew they would need some local help to find the exact location of the missile in the ocean, so they hired Williams and crew to search for the bird and then tell them where it was. They planned to pick it up with one of their subs. Adding that Dawson woman to their team was a master stroke; her inquiries have slowed down our own search by making us more concerned about the press.”
Lieutenant Ramirez laughed. ‘You always sound convincing, Richard. But we still do not have even one shred of evidence. I don’t believe Troy Jefferson’s story any more than you do, but there could be many reasons why he lied, only one of which is any of our business. Besides, there still is a fundamental problem with your explanation. Why would the Russians go to all this trouble just to seize a Panther missile?”
“You and I and even Commander Winters may not know the true story of the Panther missile,” Todd countered quickly. “It may be designed to carry some new breakthrough weapon that we haven’t even heard about. It’s not all that unusual for the Navy to represent a project falsely and to keep its true purpose hidden.” He stopped to think. “But what’s motivating the Russians is not that important to us. We have evidence of a conspiracy here. Our job is to stop it.”