All of a sudden I felt very alone and very hopeless. The Sloe Gin was in her death throes, tilted to a 45 degree angle. The boom, along with Sarge's crushed and lifeless body, disappeared into the churning water. She would blow at any minute.
I clawed my way back to the wheelhouse and worked myself up on the incline of it. The rain was hammering down, and the wind was whipping the sea into a frenzy. Time was running out, and there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it. It was all up to Hannah now. I figured it was the final insult and commentary on my life when I saw my survival kit slide gracefully into the water and sink rapidly out of sight.
The next ten minutes, and I wasn't at all sure I would live to record the fact, were the longest of my misspent life. The Sloe Gin snapped, creaked, moaned and splintered, and in the process she sent out all the wrong signals to all the wrong critters. The encroaching waters were suddenly teeming with dorsal-finned creatures looking for spoils. I wrapped my fingers around the radio antenna and held on for dear life.
The water was lapping at my feet, and there was nowhere else to go when I heard the distant sound of the submersible. She appeared out of the mist like the cavalry in a grade B western, circled what was left of the Sloe Gin and threw up the hatch. Her head emerged. She was screaming.
"Now, dammit, now! For God's sake, hurry! The suction from the Sloe Gin is pulling me under. I'm taking on water faster than the pumps can handle it."
There are times when even the most rational kind of man turns it over to pure instinct. As I started to slide into the water, I snapped off the steel radio antenna, somehow managed to twirl it in my good right hand and stabbed violently at a thrashing five-footer. The jagged end of the steel rod ripped into the creature's head like a fork in a bowl of jello. The wounded beast suddenly became the main course for a whole school of fellow indiscriminate diners. The water boiled with the frenzy, and I leaped as far as I could in the opposite direction.
Hannah gunned the PC-13A in an arc and swung it between me and the sharks, who had already finished their appetizer and were headed straight for me. They were too damn close for comfort when Hannah leaned out of the cockpit and pulled me aboard.
"Hold on," she shouted, "this could get a little hairy."
The words were no more than out of her mouth when one of the beasts buried his blunted head into the side of the submersible. The impact made the craft tip sideways, slamming both of us up against the bulkhead.
"Bolt the hatch, dammit," Hannah shouted. I could see sparks shooting from the panel. The acrid smell of burnt wiring filled the tiny personnel chamber. "Brace yourself. Here comes another one."
It was like taking a direct hit with a sledge hammer. They were in a frenzy. The sound of sheer mass colliding with sheer mass ricocheted the length of the fuselage.
"What the hell is going on?" I shouted.
Hannah was still in control. "The blind bastards probably think we're a wounded…" She never got the chance to finish. We took another direct hit, and the PC-13A turned upside down. "Hold on," she shouted again, "I'm going to try something."
I heard it. The main engine sputtered to life, and I wheeled to look out the aft observer port. The whirling blade sliced deep into the head of one of the pack and the feeding frenzy was on again.
There was something that sounded like a depth charge. Lawrence's second device had gone off, but it was a little too late.
The PC-13A righted itself, and Hannah slammed the butt of her hand against the plunger marked "forward thrust." As I felt the surge, the wind rushed out of me. I wondered how long it had been since I had breathed.
I rolled over, somehow maneuvering my arm into position so I could check the time. I had no idea how long we had been there, how long I had been out, or even how we got there. The only thing I knew for certain was that I was counting my blessings. I had a watch and an arm on which to wear it and eyes with which to read it. In short, I was alive.
The storm had subsided, reducing itself to a steady, irritating drizzle. Even at that it was hard to distinguish it from the ominous gray mist that held domain over the useless chunk of rock. I pushed myself up on my elbow and surveyed the surroundings. There was nothing — not a blade of grass, not an insect, nothing. Everything was colored a lifeless gray, like a moonscape that had been frozen in space and time.
I glanced down at my arm. Someone had done a makeshift repair job. The sleeve of my shirt had been torn off at the shoulder and the fabric used to construct a crude bandage. It hurt like hell, but I could move it.
"It's a clean wound," Hannah said objectively. "You're lucky. It went right on through."
"Lucky? What's your idea of bad luck?" I grimaced.
I heard something that sounded like a crackling fire behind me and rolled over. Between the two of them they had rustled up enough dead branches from the decaying trees to produce a pretty good blaze. We were under a small overhang about 30 or so feet from the edge of the water.
"Want a damage report?" she asked.
I nodded. "How bad is it?"
"First tell me how these islands are configurated." She reached over to the fire and pulled out a charred stick. "Draw me a picture in the sand."
I did what the lady wanted. In the coarse half-soil, half-rock, I sketched out a crude diagram of the Cluster and pointed to the spot where I thought we were.
"How far from here to Deechapal?" she asked.
"Three, maybe four hours if we had a halfway decent boat and sailed around the perimeter. But," I cautioned, "that's only an educated guess."
Hannah sighed, studied the diagram and leaned back on her haunches. "Suppose we went island hopping and stayed close to shore. Suppose we tried to get through here." She traced her finger along the southeast coast of the big island and drew a line to one of the smaller ones — the one called Edora Ben.
"Too shallow," I protested. "Some of the places between here and there the water isn't more than six to eight feet deep."
"That may be to our advantage."
"We could make better time underwater where we could use the main power system."
Hannah shook her head. "It's not a matter of how fast. It's a matter of whether we can even make it."
Huntington had been listening. "She says the submersible has been badly damaged."
"Your friends back there put a kink or two in our tail. The underwater guidance system was knocked out, plus we're low on fuel. I figure we can make it farther if we run on top and use the auxiliary engine."
"The question is — can we make it to Deechapal?"
Hannah shrugged. "If I calculated it right, we can. But only once — not twice."
"Can the damn thing handle all three of us?" I questioned.
"The less weight, the further we go," she said candidly.
Huntington's face had the look of impending panic. "I told her we could build a raft and tow it. That would work, wouldn't it?"
Hannah looked down at me and shook her head. "I don't think so. That stuff is rotten. I don't think it would hold together much."
The little man looked crestfallen. "You can't just leave me here," he protested.
Admittedly the idea had some appeal, but Hannah had a look of compassion on her face and I knew better than to suggest it. "Got any other ideas?" I asked.
"One," Hannah said, "but it's a long shot. I drive and you and Huntington ride topside. Long or not, it may be our only shot."
The long wet day turned into a long wet night. It was decided that we couldn't even try the island hopping routine until the rains let up and the waters surrounding our objective chunks of coral were less choppy. We occupied ourselves by trying to get the PC-13A ready for the task, a chore that proved rather difficult since we didn't have much to work with. We had no food, and the only thing we had to drink was the trapped rain water. Hannah advised everybody to pray for a break in the weather. Huntington, surprisingly enough, turned out to be pretty good at that.