“If anybody else in the world feels as futile as I do,” said Coburn bitterly, “I feel sorry for him!”
Janice said softly: “You’ve got me.”
But that was less than complete comfort. It is inborn in a man that he needs to feel superior. No man can feel pride before the woman of his choice while there is something stronger than himself. And Coburn especially wanted to feel that pride just now.
There were very probably discussions of the important part of what Coburn had reported, of course, during the rest of the morning. But there was much more discussion of purely military measures. And of course there were attempts to get military intelligence. Things were reported in the sky near South Africa, and from Honolulu—where nobody would ignore what a radar said again, especially the juiced-up equipment just modified on orders—and from other places. Not all the reports were authentic, of course. If there were any observations inside the Iron Curtain, the Iron Curtain countries kept them to themselves. Politics was much more important than anything else, in that part of the world.
But Coburn need not have felt as futile as he did. There was just one really spectacular occurrence in connection with the Invaders that day, and it happened where Coburn was. Almost certainly, it happened because Coburn was there. Though there is reason to believe that the newspaper campaign on shore, declaring that the American fleet risked the lives of all Naples by its mere presence, had something to do with it too.
It was very spectacular.
It happened just after midday when the city and its harbor were at their most glamorous. Coburn and Janice were above when it began. There was an ensign assigned to escort Coburn about and keep an eye on him, and he took them on a carefully edited tour of the carrier. He took them to the radar room which was not secret any longer. He explained reservedly that there was a new tricked-up arrangement of radar which it was believed would detect turtle-shaped metal ships if they appeared.
The radar room was manned, of course. It always was, with a cold war in being. Overhead, the bowl cages of the radars moved restlessly and rhythmically. Outside, on deck, the huge elevator that brought planes up from below rose at the most deliberate of peace-time rates.
The ensign said negligently, pointing to the radar-screen: “That little speck is a plane making for the landing field on shore. This other one is a plane coming down from Genoa. You’d need a good pair of binoculars to see it. It’s a good thirty-five miles away.”
Just then, one of the two radar-men on duty pushed a button and snapped into a microphone: “Sir! Radar- pip directly overhead! Does not show on normal radar. Elevation three hundred thousand feet, descending rapidly.” His voice cut off suddenly.
A metallic voice said: “Relay!”
The ensign in charge of Coburn and Janice seemed to freeze. The radar-man pressed a button, which would relay that particular radar-screen’s contents to the control room for the whole ship. There was a pause of seconds. Then bells began to ring everywhere. They were battle gongs.
There was a sensation of stirring all over the ship. Doors closed with soft hissings. Men ran furiously. The gongs rang.
The ensign said politely: “I’ll take you below now.”
He led them very swiftly to a flight of stairs. There was a monstrous bellowing on the carrier’s deck. Something dark went hurtling down its length, with a tail of pale-blue flame behind it. It vanished. Men were still running. The elevator shot into full-speed ascent. A plane rolled off it. The elevator dropped.
An engine roared. Another. Yet another. A second dark and deadly thing flashed down the deck and was gone. There was a rumbling.
The battle gongs cut off. The rumbling below seemed to increase. There was a curious vibration. The ship moved. Coburn could feel that it moved. It was turning.
The ensign led them somewhere and said: “This is a good place. You’d better stay right here.”
He ran. They heard him running. He was gone.
They were in a sort of ward room—not of the morning conference—and there were portholes through which they could look. The city which was Naples seemed to swing smoothly past the ship. They saw other ships. A cruiser was under way with its anchor still rising from the water. It dripped mud and a sailor was quite ridiculously playing a hose on it. It ascended and swayed and its shank went smoothly into the hawse-hole. There were guns swinging skyward. Some were still covered by canvas hoods. The hoods vanished before the cruiser swung out of the porthole’s line of vision.
A destroyer leaped across the space they could see, full speed ahead. The water below them began to move more rapidly. It began to pass by with the speed of ground past an express train. And continually, monotonously, there were roarings which climaxed and died in the distance.
“The devil!” said Coburn. “I’ve got to see this. They can’t kill us for looking.”
He opened the door. Janice, holding fast to his arm, followed as he went down a passage. Another door. They were on the deck side of the island which is the superstructure of a carrier, and they were well out of the way, and everybody in sight was too busy to notice them.
The elevator worked like the piston of a pump. It vanished and reappeared and a plane came off. Men in vividly-colored suits swarmed about it, and the elevator was descending again. The plane roared, shot down the deck, and was gone to form one of the string of climbing objects which grew smaller with incredible swiftness as they shot for the sky. Coburn saw another carrier. There was a huge bow-wave before it. Destroyers ringed it, seeming to bounce in the choppy sea made by so many great ships moving so close together.
The other carrier, too, was shooting planes into the air like bullets from a gun. The American Mediterranean fleet was putting out to sea at emergency-speed, getting every flying craft aloft that could be gotten away. A cruiser swung a peculiar crane-like arm, there was a puff of smoke and a plane came into being. The crane retracted. Another plane. A third.
The fleet was out of the harbor, speeding at thirty knots, with destroyers weaving back and forth at higher speeds still. There were barges left behind in the harbor with sailors in them,—shore-parties or details who swore bitterly when they were left behind. They surged up and down on the melee of waves the fleet left behind in its hasty departure.
On the fleet itself there was a brisk tenseness as it sped away from the land. Vesuvius still loomed high, but the city dwindled to a mere blinking mass of white specks which were its buildings. The sea was aglitter with sunlight reflected from the waves. There was the smell of salt air.
Men began to take cryptic measures for the future. They strung cables across the deck from side to side. Arresting gear for planes which would presently land.
Their special ensign found Coburn and Janice. “I’m supposed to stay with you,” he explained politely. “I thought I could be of use. I’m really attached to another ship, but I was on board because of the hassle last night.”
Coburn said: “This would be invader stuff, wouldn’t it?”
The ensign shrugged. “Apparently. You heard what the radar said. Something at three hundred thousand feet, descending rapidly. It’s not a human-built ship. Anyway, we’ve sent up all our planes. Jets will meet it first, at fifty thousand. If it gets through them there are… other measures, of course.”
“This one beats me!” said Coburn. “Why?”
The ensign shrugged again. “They tried for you last night.”
“I’m not that important, to them or anybody else. Or am I?”
“I wouldn’t know,” said the ensign.
“I don’t know anything I haven’t told,” said Coburn grimly, “and the creatures can’t suppress any information by killing me now. Anyhow, if they’d wanted to they’d have done it.”
A dull, faint sound came from high overhead. Coburn stepped out from under the shelter of the upper works of the island. He stared up into the sky. He saw a lurid spot of blue-white flame. He saw others. He realized that all the sky was interlaced with contrails—vapor-trails of jet-planes far up out of sight. But they were fine threads. The jets were up very high indeed. The pin-points of flame were explosions.
“Using wing-rockets,” said the ensign hungrily, “since fifty-calibres did no good last night, until one made a lucky hit. Rockets with proximity fuses. Our jets don’t carry cannon.”
