Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 Part 2

"Did they go aboard another vessel?" he pondered. "Abandon s.h.i.+p--open the sea-c.o.c.ks--sink it for the insurance?" He was trying vainly to find some answer to the problem, some explanation that would not impose too great a strain upon his own reason.

"I have reported to the owners," said Thorpe. "The _Minnie R._ was not heavily insured."

The Admiral ruffled some papers on his desk to find a report.

"There has been another," he told Thorpe. "A tramp freighter is listed as missing. She was last reported due east of the position you give.

She was coming this way--must have come through about the same water--" He caught himself up abruptly. Thorpe sensed that an Admiral of the Navy must not lend too credulous an ear to impossible stories.

"You've had an interesting experience, Mr. Thorpe," he said. "Most interesting. Probably a derelict is the answer, some hull just afloat.

We will send out a general warning."

He handed the loose papers and the log book to the younger man. "This stuff is rubbish," he stated with emphasis. "Captain Wilkins held his command a year or so too long."

"You will do nothing about it?" Thorpe asked in astonishment.

"I said I would warn all s.h.i.+pping; there is nothing more to be done."

"I think there is." Thorpe's gray eye were steady as he regarded the man at the desk. "I intend to run it down. There have been other such instances, as you said--never explained. I mean to find the answer."

Admiral Struthers smiled indulgently. "Always after excitement," he said. "You'll be writing another book, I expect. I shall look forward to reading it ... but just what are you going to do?"

"I am going to the Islands," said Thorpe quietly. "I am going to charter a small s.h.i.+p of some sort, and I am going out there and camp on that spot in the hope of seeing those eyes and what is behind them.

I am leaving to-night."

Admiral Struthers leaned back to indulge in a hearty laugh. "I refused you a pa.s.sage on a destroyer once," he said, "and it was an expensive mistake. I don't make the same mistake twice. Now I am going to offer you a trip....

"The _Bennington_ is leaving to-day on a cruise to Manila. I'll hold her an extra hour or two if you would like to go. She can drop you at Honolulu or wherever you say. Lieutenant Commander Brent is in command--you remember him in Manila, of course."

"Fine," Thorpe responded. "I'll be there."

"And," he added, as he took the Admiral's hand, "if I didn't object to betting on a sure thing I would make you a little proposition. I would bet any money that you would give your s.h.i.+rt to go along."

"I never bet, either," said Admiral Struthers, "on a sure loss. Now get out of here, you young trouble-shooter, and let the Navy get to work." His eyes were twinkling as he waved the young man out.

Thorpe found himself comfortably fixed on the _Bennington_. Brent, her commander, was a fine example of the aggressive young chaps that the destroyer fleet breeds. And he liked to play cribbage, Thorpe found.

They were pegging away industriously the sixth night out when the first S.O.S. reached them. A message was placed before the commander.

He read it and tossed it to Thorpe as he rose from his chair.

"S.O.S.," said the radio sheet, "_Nagasaki Maru_, twenty-four thirty-five N., one five eight West. Struck something unknown. Down at the bow. May need help. Please stand by."

Captain Brent had left the room. A moment later, and the quiver and tremble of the _Bennington_ told Thorpe they were running full speed for the position of the stricken s.h.i.+p.

But: "Twenty-four thirty-five North," he mused, "and less than two degrees west of where the poor old _Minnie R._ got hers. I wonder ...

I wonder...."

"We will be there in four hours," said Captain Brent on his return.

"Hope she lasts. But what have they struck out there? Derelict probably, though she should have had Admiral Struthers' warning."

Robert Thorpe made no reply other than: "Wait here a minute, Brent. I have something to show you."

He had not told the officer of his mission nor of his experience, but he did so now. And he placed before him the wildly improbable statement of the late Captain Wilkins.

"Something is there," surmised Captain Brent, "just awash, probably--no superstructure visible. Your _Minnie R._ hit the same thing."

"Something is there," Thorpe agreed. "I wish I knew what."

"This stuff has got to you, has it?" asked Brent as he returned the papers of Captain Wilkins. He was quite evidently amused at the thought.

"You weren't on the s.h.i.+p," said Thorpe, simply. "There was nothing to see--nothing to tell. But I know...."

He followed Brent to the wireless room.

"Can you get the _Nagasaki_?" Brent asked.

"They know we are coming, sir," said the operator. "We seem to be the only one anywhere near."

He handed the captain another message. "Something odd about that," he said.

"_U. S. S. Bennington_," the captain read aloud. "We are still afloat.

On even keel now, but low in water. No water coming in. Engines full speed ahead, but we make no headway. Apparently aground. _Nagasaki Maru._"

"Why, that's impossible," Brent exclaimed impatiently. "What kind of foolishness--" He left the question uncompleted. The radio man was writing rapidly. Some message was coming at top speed. Both Brent and Thorpe leaned over the man's shoulder to read as he wrote.

"_Bennington_ help," the pencil was writing, "sinking fast--decks almost awash--we are being--"

In breathless silence they watched the pencil, poised above the paper while the operator listened tensely to the silent night.

Again his ear received the wild jumble of dots and dashes sent by a frenzied hand in that far-off room. His pencil automatically set down the words. "Help--help--" it wrote before Thorpe's spellbound gaze, "the eyes--the eyes--it is attack--"

And again the black night held only the rush and roar of torn waters where the destroyer raced quivering through the darkness. The message, as the waiting men well knew, would never be completed.

"A derelict!" Robert Thorpe exclaimed with unconscious scorn. But Captain Brent was already at a communication tube.

"Chief? Captain Brent. Give her everything you've got. Drive the _Bennington_ faster than she ever went before."

The slim s.h.i.+p was a quivering lance of steel that threw itself through foaming waters, that shot with an endless, roaring surge of speed toward that distant point in the heaving waste of the Pacific, and that seemed, to the two silent men on the bridge, to put the dragging miles behind them so slowly--so slowly.

"Let me see those papers," said Captain Brent, finally.