The Cross of Gold Affair - Davies Fredric. Страница 32

on land, but the underwater squad seemed to work just as hard, under tons of pressure in an environment that would snuff out human life as quickly as outer space would. Given a knife-fight with Thrush underwater, Napoleon thought, he’d bounce right in for the old team.

They finished checking each other out, and carried their swim-fins out to the submarine’s berth. As they climbed aboard, Napoleon noted that the four seals had been fitted with harnesses stenciled “U.N.C.L.E.”

“That’s so the Navy can’t be implicated in case some of us are intercepted,” said Gus. “Those are four prisoners who won’t talk, and all Thrush or anyone else can learn is that they were working for us.”

They found snug nooks inside the sub, and Bransen made as good a round of introductions as possible, considering that six of the eight-man crew responded by welcoming Solo over the intercom system. Before he had been “shown around” the sub from his station, they were out the sea-lock into the bay, through the fence, and turning south, routed for Coney.

“Are your unbarbered quartet keeping up?” Solo asked.

“If they aren’t, I won’t let them back in the zoo to feed the people. We’ve made this kind of run before, and the sub is pacing them at their top cruising speed. They can actually outrun us for short distances, but everybody wants them to arrive relaxed where the action is. Each seal has to surface twice during the run, so our periscope is up, elevated to leave a wake they can track. When we move into a re-group formation off the pier, I expect to step out the conning tower amid a chorus of happy barks from my friends. Each one gets a fish-flavored candy at that point, and then we really move into high gear.”

The submarine came to a churning halt off Coney Island’s beach, tower above water, half a mile offshore in line with Porpoise’s pier. Solo and Bransen synchronized their watches with the crew, climbed up the ladder, and undogged the hatch to find themselves surrounded by the four eager seals. While the candy was going down long gullets and the animals were as close to purring as a seal can get, the two men fixed each other’s tanks and donned their flippers. Napoleon

waved goodbye to the stars, and they slid over the side.

Bransen made sure Napoleon had a good grip on the cow named Sourpuss and took a big male for himself. Holding the harness made enough work for both hands as the animals turned on top speed and headed for land. The other two seals remained on guard, fanned out from the submarine and alert for any land of action. The same sentry duty served when they watched poised near Navy divers, using their tremendous sensitivity to their own environment as an improvement over watch-dogs and radar scanners.

The pair of man-seal units went in parallel to the pier, not under it, as Bransen had no desire to swim right into a bed of knives. Just as they reached the approximate location of the trap door from the Space Maze, Sourpuss turned and arrowed over to her mate to nudge Bransen in the shoulder. He looked at her and slapped his chest twice in command, but she pushed her black nose into his shoulder again. He shrugged, and signaled a return to the surface.

“She’s seen something way out of the ordinary,” he said, “and I doubt it’s the knives you warned us about. She knows what a pier should look like around here-she’s been near here about a dozen times. And she wouldn’t shy from those knives until we were nearly on top of them if they’ve been in the sea for a long time. She’s one of the canniest big bitches I’ve ever worked with.”

He barked at Sourpuss, and she pointed off toward the beach, at the base of the pier.

“She wants me to let her investigate something. She’s not afraid of it; it’s just something unusual, something she doesn’t think belongs in the ocean. If I’m any judge of seal hunches, we ought to take a minute and follow this up.” They pulled down their masks and submerged again.

Sourpuss led the way in when they gave her her head. Under the pier, she stopped abruptly, went back over to Gus, and nosed his shoulder again. Nestled cosily on an opened sphere of metal was a flying saucer, reflecting their flash-beams’ red light like Detroit’s newest chrome bumper.

“Did you see that?” asked Bransen when they surfaced again. “If that isn’t something straight out of The Day The

Earth Stood Still, Tm hallucinating. What’s a baby flying saucer doing underwater?”

“Well, I doubt that Thrush has an alliance with the Martians,” said Napoleon. “Whatever it is, I’m willing to bet that the gang upstairs will be planning on it being there, and they’ll be considerably discomfited if it isn’t, all of a sudden.” He looked at Sourpuss and her boyfriend, and turned to Bransen. “Do you think these two huskies could tow it out to sea, and give it to the submarine for safekeeping? We can wonder about what it is later at your base, when we can take it apart and decide why Thrush would want one.”

“Easy enough. If it navigates underwater, its weight ought to be balanced almost to an ounce. All we have to do is get it moving, and I think the two of them can do that. If not, I can get in behind and push, and even call in the other pair for more muscle with my sonar signal.”

“They better come in immediately, then. You get all four in position and tie them onto it, and I’ll make the assault on my trapdoor alone. If I can’t do it alone, it possibly can’t be done-besides, I think it’s designed to let people out suddenly, not to keep out surprise visitors.” He looked around.

“We’re already attacking Porpoise from two directions. I think that that saucer would be set to sound an alarm if anyone tampers with it, and then he’ll have what looks like three sides jumping him. I want you to be ready to move out on the double when your watch says quarter to the hour. I’ll have plenty of time to get inside by then, and give the signal to my crew on the beach simultaneously with your little hijacking job. With all that trouble hitting at once, Fatty won’t know which way to belch “first. In point of fact, if I may be permitted a small conclusion jump, I suspect that this saucer is his way out in case of trouble-maybe we’ll really give him an ulcer.”

With that, Napoleon headed back for the trapdoor and its bed of knives. He was still dragging a little from the punishment his body had been taking. “The cuts and bruises wouldn’t be so bad,” he subvocalized around his mouthpiece, “if only I could get some sleep once in a while.” He thanked his stars that the pain-killer U.N.C.L.E. doctors used

wasn’t habit-forming, but he hadn’t thought to ask if the pep-shots were.

Knives started showing up in his field of ^vision with an infra-beam sort of eerieness. He worked his way through the outer ones until he got up to the steel briar patch that waited under his trapdoor.

He hung his flippers on a nearby twelve-inch butcher knife, and strapped on a pair of telephone lineman’s spurs. Two very careful climbing steps brought him up under the latticed framework supporting the crisscrossed blades. From the pouch at his hip he took a tube not unlike a container of toothpaste. Squeezing the tube underwater proved to be more of a job than he had anticipated, but with growing skill he managed to get a minimum amount of the gray paste spread over key bars of the framework. Casting the empty remains of the tube well away from his point of vantage he depressed the plunger on his wristwatch. The burst of radio signal worked as well underwater as it ever had on the surface: the gray paste flamed brightly, and Napoleon felt the water warming momentarily.

Instead of falling clear as planned, the section of the bladed platform that Napoleon had freed from the rest jammed in place. The U.N.C.L.E. agent looked bleakly at his would-be doorway to the trap above. There was none of the incendiary paste left, and he wasn’t carrying a jemmy. For a lack of a better tool, Napoleon jabbed at the framework with his U.N.C.L.E. Special. The loosened rectangle of steel and knives lifted off the obstruction, twisted, taking the pistol from his hand, and slid through the opening into the depths. Napoleon picked his way around the few knives remaining. It was quick work climbing the piling he had shinnied up hours before with naked legs. He worked easily, with no waste motion, glorying in the leverage he had with spurs.