Chapter THREE: Bjarnsson’s Submarine

Fallon stopped the car and got out stiffly, feeling suddenly tired and disinterested. He hesitated. Why bother with a crazy hunch? The rolling crash of gunfire was getting closer. Why not forget the whole thing and go while the going was good?

He realized that Joan was watching him with sapphire eyes grown puzzled and hard. “Damn it!” he snarled. “Stop looking at me as though I were a bug under glass!”

Joan said, “Is that Bjarnsson in the doorway?”

For the third time Fallon’s hands clenched in anger. Then he turned sharply, white about the lips with the pain it cost him, and strode up to the small rustic cabin.

Einar Bjarnsson remembered him. He stood aside, a tall stooped man with massive shoulders and a gaunt, cragged face. Coarse fair hair shot with grey hung in his eyes, which were small and the color of frozen sea-water.

He said, in a deep, slow voice, “Come in. I have been watching through my telescope. Most interesting. But it gets too close now. I am surprised you are here. Duty to your paper, eh?”

Fallon let it pass. He might get more out of Bjarnsson if the explorer thought he was still with the _Observer_. And then the thought struck him--what was he going to do if his hunch was right?

Nothing. He had no influence. The statesmen were handling things. Suppose Japan did take the Pacific States? Suppose there was a war? He couldn’t do anything about it. Let the big boys worry. There’d be a beach somewhere that he could comb in peace.

He made a half turn to go out again. Then he caught sight of a map on the far wall--a map of the Pacific.

Something took him to it. He put his finger on a spot north and east of the Hawaiian Islands. And even then he couldn’t have said why he asked his question.

“Your volcanic formation was about here, wasn’t it, Bjarnsson?”

The tall Norseman stared at him with cold shrewd eyes. “Yes. Why?”

“Look here.” Fallon drew a rough circle with his fingertip, touching the Pacific Coast, swinging across the ocean through the Gilberts and the Marshalls, touching Wake, and curving up again to Vancouver.

“The volcanic formation is the center of that circle,” Fallon said. “It was also the epicenter of the recent quake, according to Cal-Tech seismologists. That’s what gave me the hunch. The monsters seem to be fanning out in a circle from some central point located about there.”

“That is already explained,” said Bjarnsson. “The Japanese may have their projector located there. And why not?”

“No reason at all,” Fallon admitted. “You mentioned, in your interview, something about a Japanese ocean survey ship coming up just as you left. That ship might still have been near there at the time of the quake, mightn’t it?”

“It is possible. Go on.” There was a little sharp flame flickering in Bjarnsson’s eyes.

Fallon said, “Could these super-evolutionary rays be caused by volcanic action?”

Bjarnsson’s grey-blond shaggy brows met, and the flame was sharper in his eyes. “Fantastic. But so is this whole affair.... Yes! If an area of intense radioactivity were uncovered by an earth-shift, the sea and all that swims in it might be affected.”

“Ah!” Fallon’s lips were drawn in a tight grin. “Suppose the officers of the Japanese ship saw the beginnings of the effect. Suppose they radioed home, and someone did some quick thinking. Suppose, in short, that they’re lying.”

“_Ja_,” whispered Bjarnsson. “Let us think.”

“I’ve already thought,” said Fallon. “Two weeks would give them time to arrange everything. The important thing is this--if the force is man-made, even destroying the projector won’t do any good. They’ll have others. But if it were a natural force, the psychological aspect of the thing alone would be tremendous. There’d be a chance of doing something.”

The explorer’s deep light eyes glinted. “Our people would fight better if it was something they _could_ fight.” He swung to the big telescope mounted in the west windows. “Bah! It gets worse. Those creatures, they don’t know when they are dead. And the way they come! We must go soon.”

* * * * *

He swung back to Fallon. “But how to find out if you are right?”

“You have a submarine,” said Fallon.

“So has the Navy.”

“But they’re all needed. Yours can go where the big ones can’t--and go deeper. These monsters are all heading for land, which means they gravitate to the surface. You might get through below.”

“Yes.” Bjarnsson strode up and down the cluttered room. “We could take a depth charge. If we found the volcano to be the cause, we might close the fissure.

“Time, Fallon! That is the thing. A few days, a few weeks, and the sheer pressure of these hordes will have forced the defenders back to the mountains and the deserts. Civilian morale will break.”

He stopped, making a sharp gesture of futility. “I am forgetting. The radiations, Fallon. Without proper insulation, we would evolve like the sea-things. And it would take many days to make lead armor for us, even if we could get anyone to do the work.”

“Radiations,” said Fallon slowly. “Yeah. I’d forgotten that. Well, that stops that. Projector or volcano, you’d never reach it.”

He brushed a hand across his eyes, all his brief enthusiasm burned away. He was getting like that. He wished he had a drink.

“Probably all moonshine, anyway,” he said. “Anyhow, there’s nothing we can do about it.”

“Nothing!” Joan Daniels spoke so sharply that both men started. “You mean you’re not even going to try?”

“Bjarnsson can pass the idea along for what it’s worth.”

“You know what that means, Webb! The idea would be either laughed at or pigeonholed, especially with the Jap propagandists doing such a good job. The government’s got a war on its hands. Even if someone did pay attention, nothing would be done until too late. It never is.”

She gripped his arms, looking up at him with eyes like sea-blue swords.

“If there’s a bare chance of saving them, Webb, you’ve got to take it!”

Fallon looked down at her, his wolf’s eyes narrowed.

“Listen,” he said. “I’m not a fiction hero. We’ve got an Army, a Navy, an air force, and a secret service. They’re getting paid for risking their necks. Let them worry. I had a hunch, which may not be worth a dime. I passed it along. Now I’m going to clear out, before anything more happens to me.”

Joan’s face was cut, sharp and bitter, from brown wood. Her eyes had fire in them, way back.

“Your logic,” she whispered, “is flawless.”

“I saved your life,” said Fallon brutally. “What more do you want?”

The color drained from the brown wood, leaving it marble. Only the angry fires in her eyes lived, in the pale hard stone.

“You’re remembering how I kissed you,” said Fallon, so softly that he hardly spoke at all. “I don’t know why I did. I don’t know why I came here. I don’t know....”

He stopped and turned to the door. Bjarnsson, very quietly, was picking up the phone. Fallon took the knob and turned it.

“I am sorry,” said a quiet, sibilant voice. “You cannot leave. And you, sir--put down that telephone.”

* * * * *

A small neat man with a yellow face stood on the threshold. He was holding a small, neat, efficient-looking automatic. Fallon backed into the room, hearing the click of the cradle as the phone went down.

“You are Einar Bjarnsson?” The question was toneless and purely rhetorical. The black eyes had seen the whole room in one swift flick. “I am Kashimo,” said the man, and waited.

“Fallon,” Webb said easily. “This is Miss Daniels. We just dropped in for a chat. Mind if we go now?”

“I am afraid ...” said Kashimo, and spread his hands. “I have been discourteous enough to eavesdrop. You have an inventive mind, Mr. Fallon. An inaccurate mind, but one that might prove disturbing to our plans.”

“Don’t worry,” grunted Fallon. “I have no business whatsoever, and I attend to it closely. Your plans don’t matter to me at all.”

“Indeed.” Kashimo studied him with black, bright eyes. “You are either a liar or a disgrace to your country, Mr. Fallon. But I may not take chances. You and the young lady I must, sadly, cancel out.”

“And I?” Bjarnsson asked.

“You come with us,” said Kashimo. Fallon saw four other small neat men outside, close behind their leader in the doorway.

He said, “What do you mean, ‘cancel out’?” He knew, before Kashimo moved his automatic.

Kashimo said, “Mr. Bjarnsson, please to move out of the line of fire.”

No one moved. The room was still, except for Joan’s quick-caught breath. And then motion beyond the west windows caught Fallon’s eye. A colder fear crawled in his heart, but his voice surprised him, it was so steady.

“Kashimo. Look out there.”

The bright black eyes flicked warily aside. They widened sharply, and the cords went slack about the jaw. Fallon sprang.

He had forgotten the wound across his back. The shock of his body striking Kashimo turned him sick and faint. He knew that the little man fell, staggering the others so close behind him.

He knew that Joan Daniels was shouting, and that Bjarnsson had caught up an ebony war-club and was using it. Shots boomed in his ears. But one sound kept him from fainting--the thunder of slow relentless giant wings.

He got up in unsteady darkness. A round sallow face appeared. He struck at it. Bone cracked under his knuckles, and the face vanished. Fallon found a wall and clung to it.

Hands gripped his ankle--Kashimo’s hands. Bjarnsson was outside mopping up. Fallon braced himself and drew his foot back. His toe caught Kashimo solidly under the angle of the jaw.

“Joan,” said Fallon. The wings were thundering closer. Joan didn’t answer. A sort of queer panic filled Fallon.

“Joan!” he cried. “Joan!”

“Here I am, Webb.” She came from beyond the door, with a heavy little idol in her hand. It had blood on it. Her golden hair was tumbled and her neck was bleeding where a bullet had creased it.

Fallon caught her. He felt her wince under his hands. He didn’t know quite what he wanted, except that she must be safe.

He only said, “Hurry, before those things get here.”

The throb of wings was deafening. Bjarnsson came in, swinging his club. His cragged face was bloody, but his pale eyes blazed.

“Good man, Fallon,” he grunted. “All right, let’s go. There’s a cave below here. Take their guns, young lady. We’ll need them.”

The sky beyond the west windows was clogged with huge black shapes. Fallon remembered the smashed windows of the department store in Santa Monica. “Joan,” he said, “come here.”

He put his arm around her shoulders. He might have walked all right without her, but somehow he wanted her there.

* * * * *

They dropped down the other side of the hill into a little brush-choked cleft. There was a shallow cave at one end.

“There go my windows,” said Bjarnsson, and cursed in Swedish. “In with you, before those flying devils find us.”

They were well hidden. Chances were the rays would go right over them--after they’d finished off Kashimo and his men. Bjarnsson said softly, “What did they want with me, Fallon?”

“There’s only one thing they couldn’t get from somebody else,” returned Fallon. “Your submarine.”

“Yes. The mechanisms are of my own design. They would need me to operate it. Does that mean we are right about the volcano?”

“Maybe. They’d have made plans to control it, of course. Or they may want your ship merely as a model.”

There was silence for a while. Outside, heavy wings began to beat again. They came perilously low, went over, and were gone.

Einar Bjarnsson said quietly, “I’m going to take the chance, Fallon. I’m going to try to get my ship through.”

“What about the radiations?”

“If Kashimo was planning to use the ship, he’ll have arranged for that. Anyway, I’m going to see.” His ice-blue eyes stabbed at Fallon. “I can’t do it alone.”

Joan Daniels said, “I’ll go.”

Bjarnsson’s eyes flicked from one to the other. Fallon’s face was dark and almost dangerous.

“Wait a minute,” he said gently.

Joan faced him. “I thought you were going away.”

“I’ve changed my mind.” Looking at her, at her blue, unsympathetic eyes, Fallon wondered if he really had. Perhaps the stunning shock of all that had happened had unsettled him.

Joan put both hands on his shoulders and looked straight into his eyes. “What kind of a man are you, Webb Fallon?”

“God knows,” he said. “Where do you keep your boat, Bjarnsson?”

“In a private steel-and-concrete building at Wilmington. Some of the improvements are of interest to certain people. I keep them locked safely away. Or so I thought.”

Fallon rose stiffly. “Kashimo didn’t come in a car, that’s certain. He’d have been arrested on sight. Any place for a plane to land near here?”

The explorer shook his head. “Unless it could come straight down.”

Fallon snapped his finger. “A helicopter! That’s it.”

He led the way out. They found the ’copter on a small level space beyond the shoulder of the hill. Fallon nodded.

“Ingenious little chaps. The ship’s painted like an Army plane. Any pilot would think it was a special job and let it severely alone.” He turned abruptly to Joan.

“Take my car,” he told her. “Get away from here, fast. Find someone in authority and make him listen--just in case.”

She nodded. “Webb, why are you going?”

“Because there isn’t time to get anyone else,” he told her roughly. “Because there’s a story there....”

He stopped, startled at what he had said. “Yes,” he said slowly, “a story. My story. Oh hell, why did you have to come along?”

He put his hands suddenly back of her head and tilted her face up, his fingers buried in the warm curls at the base of her neck.

“I was all set,” he whispered savagely. “I knew all the answers. And then you showed up. If you hadn’t, I’d be half-way to Miami by now. I’d still be sure of myself. I wouldn’t be so damned confused, thinking one way and feeling another....”

She kissed him suddenly, warmly. “I’ll make somebody listen,” she said. “And then I’ll wait--and pray.”

Then she was gone. In a minute he heard the car start.

“Come on,” he snarled at Bjarnsson. “I remember you said you fly.”