His pudgy little wife beamed at his bravery and said, “Dear, that was marvelous!”
“Yes” was all he could answer. His voice was quite humble. Inside all he could think was that that little bugger had scared the crap out of him.
Hooker and Judy were outside the scene, but they had found something of their own. Protruding from the sand was a huge piece of curved, shaped metal. Unlike most of the iron and steel around the base, this one showed no trace of rust at all. Hooker pried up a piece of board and began shoveling away the sand until four feet of it showed plainly. Judy said, “Is that what I think it is?”
Hooker nodded. “Part of it, anyway.” He poked away just below it and hit something solid. “A blade of a propeller. And here’s another one.”
“That second one’s awfully close to the other one, isn’t it?”
“Well, it’s more than a four-bladed baby, that’s for sure. At the angle I see here, this prop must have carried eight or ten blades.”
“How big across, would you say?”
“The circumference of rotation would have to have been at least twelve feet.” He started pushing the sand back into its original position. “That was a big bastard for World War One.” His face had a puzzled expression and Judy noticed it when he joined her.
“What’s the matter, Mako?”
“There’s no rust on that prop.”
“What about it?”
“The thing isn’t stainless steel, but it’s in better shape than what we’re producing today.”
“But it’s just laying there.”
“I know,” he told her. “Apparently the German metallurgists were way ahead of their time. They didn’t even bother to try to hide what they had. They just used it, figuring they were going to win the war anyway.”
“Hooker... is it that important?”
“No, not now. We can produce hardened, nonrusting metals ourselves, but back then it would have been quite a coup, as the Indians say.”
“Then why did you cover it up?”
“Because there might be something there that needs looking into. We’ll let Captain Watts send a team in to recover it.” He scanned Judy’s half-closed eyes. “What’s bothering you now?”
“That propeller had been here since 1918. How come nobody else ever spotted it?”
“Maybe they did, but who cared? The war was over. Nobody wanted this island, it was all history and destined to rust.”
“Except that it didn’t rust.”
“No, and neither do your zippers on your jacket. We caught up, okay?”
She thought a moment, then agreeably nodded. “Okay.”
Mako took her hand and led her back into the maze of aging girders. In the rubble was the culture of another generation; a single shoe of heavy leather, a piece of striped clothpart of an apronboth too rotted to touch. The mouth of a whiskey bottle protruded from the sand and in one corner was a heap of old beer bottles, some with corks still in them.
At the far end was the office or what was left of the office. The furniture was not what any native would use, so it was sand-covered, but recognizable. The wooden filing cabinets had come apart and only shards of papers were to be seen, but an ancient typewriter, still covered by a cracked rubber hood, sat on a sturdy table, looking totally untouched.
Judy asked why.
“Natives could have been superstitious. This was the home area of the place to them. They didn’t like the unexplainable, so this place could have been taboo. Anyway, who knows?”
“The others from the ship could have taken souvenirs from here.”
“Not likely, kid. This was adventure, not an auction. It’ll all look better in photographs. You hungry?”
“Starved.”
Mako glanced at his watch. “We can beat them to the tables if we shake it a little.”
From a good distance away, Lee Colbert put down his binoculars. For an hour he and Chana had stayed out of sight but kept a close watch on Judy and Mako. “They’re just kicking up sand,” he said.
“Balls. Hooker’s up to something.”
“Chana, knock it off,” Lee told her testily. “They haven’t been looking for anything and they haven’t found anything.”
“Then why is he here?”
“Damn it, Chana, he’s here because he’s got a woman with him!”
“What difference does that make?” she spit back.
Very quietly, but very nastily, Lee said, “At least he knows she won’t shoot him.”
Captain Don Watts wasn’t about to miss a meal on the beach. For too long he had been exposed to the superb elegance of French and Italian trainee chefs on board the ship, and now he wanted the smell of charcoal fires and to hear the sizzling of plain old hamburgers on the grill. A pair of the islanders who worked on the Sentilla had already buried yams and a fresh-caught fish in leaf wrappings, and the aroma hung over the beach like a pleasant cloud.
A portable plank bar had been set up above the high tide mark, bottles of distilled spirits glistening like jewels, but the glassware was heavy and old-fashioned. A half keg of beer was chocked in place at the end of the bar, an old wooden spigot rammed into the bung. Thick mugs with heavy handles were grouped around it.
“A miniature Sloppy Joe’s,” Judy said.
“Anything for a change,” Hooker told her. “They’ll be lining up at a keg and spilling the suds all over the place. I wonder when was the last time these old boys bellied up to a beer bar?”
She looked up at him and grinned. “Oh, these old boys have been there and back, believe me. Two in that crowd started out in push-carts.”
“Selling what?”
“War surplus,” she said. “The government threw it away and they sold it back to use in Korea.”
Before he could answer, he spotted Captain Watts coming up the beach and waved. Watts was sipping the foam off a mug of cold suds, washing down a mouthful of hamburger with apparent relish.
When he got closer he yelled, “You’d better get into the chow before the crowd gets here.”
“We intend to,” he said, pulling Judy to an angle to intercept the bar. When they all had a beer and burger they curled down into the sand far enough away from the squealing of the happy crowd so that they could talk without shouting.
Judy asked, “How long are you staying, Don?”
“When they dry up the bar they’ll be ready to go back. This bunch is always ready for a little extracurricular activity. They never miss an outing. Some of them wanted to go skin diving, but none were qualified.”
“You need a certificate out here?” Judy put in.
Watts shook his head. “Didn’t have to explain. We just pointed out the sharks the boys had piled up on the dock and that slowed them down pretty quickly.” The captain stopped and stared over Mako’s and Judy’s heads a moment, then said, “Company coming,” and stood up.
Hooker got up with him and let out a tight smile at Chana and Lee Colbert. Judy waved from her position in the sand. There was another girl with them, and this one was no tourist. The sun had burned her almost as dark as Mako, but she had gremlin eyes where diving goggles had given her a strange mask of white, and in the dimming light it was almost impossible to tell if she was plain or pretty.
Captain Watts made the introductions. The girl was Kim Sebring, an oceanographer from Woods Hole who was researching ocean currents around the area where the Sentilla was operating.
When everybody was back in the sand again, Judy asked her why Woods Hole would be interested in this area.
“You know the history of Reboka Island?” Kim asked.