On The Beach

He laughed, and took her arm to guide her. "Sure it's good," he said. "Best in the U.S. Navy. This way." She repressed the comment that it was probably the only one in the U.S. Navy; no sense in hurting him.

He took her down the gangplank to the narrow deck and up on to the bridge, and began explaining his ship to her. She knew little of ships and nothing about submarines, but she was attentive and once or twice surprised him with the quick intelligence of her questions. "When you go down, why doesn't the water go down the voice pipe?" she asked.

"You turn off this cock."

"What happens if you forget?"

He grinned. "There's another one down below."

He took her down through the narrow hatchways into the control room. She spent some time at the periscope looking around the harbour and got the hang of that, but the ballasting and trim controls were beyond her and she was not much interested. She stared uncomprehending at the engines, but the sleeping and messing quarters intrigued her, so did the galley. "What happens about smells?" she asked. "What happens when you're cooking cabbage underwater?"

"You try not to have to do it," he told her. "Not fresh cabbage. The smell hangs around for quite a while. Finally the deodorizer deals with it, as the air gets changed and reoxygenated. There wouldn't be much left after an hour or two."

He gave her a cup of tea in the tiny cubicle that was his cabin. Sipping it, she asked him, "Have you got your orders yet, Dwight?"

He nodded. "Cairns, Port Moresby, and Darwin. Then we come back here."

"There isn't anybody left alive in any of those places, is there?"

"I wouldn't know. That's what we've got to find out."

"Will you go ashore?"

He shook his head. "I don't think so. It all depends upon the radiation levels, but I wouldn't think we'd land. Maybe we won't even go outside the hull. We might stay at periscope depth if the conditions are really bad. But that's why we're taking John Osborne along with us, so we'll have somebody who really understands what the risks are."

She wrinkled her brows. "But if you can't go out on deck, how can you know if there's anyone still living in those places?"

"We can call through the loud hailer," he said. "Get as close inshore as we can manage, and call through the loud hailer."

"Could you hear them if they answer?"

"Not so well as we can talk. We've got a microphone hooked up beside the hailer, but you'd have to be very close to hear a person calling in reply. Still, it's something."

She glanced at him. "Has anybody been into the radioactive area before, Dwight?"

"Why, yes," he said. "It's okay if you're sensible, and don't take risks. We were in it quite a while while the war was on, from Iwo Jima to the Philippines and then down south to Yap. You stay submerged, and carry on as usual. Of course, you don't want to go out on deck."

"I mean-recently. Has anyone been up into the radioactive area since the war stopped?"

He nodded. "The Swardfish-that's our sister ship-she made a cruise up in the North Atlantic. She got back to Rio de Janeiro about a month ago. I've been waiting for a copy of Johnny Dismore's report-he's her captain-but I haven't seen it yet. There hasn't been a ship across to South America for quite a while. I asked for a copy to be sent by teleprinter, but it's low priority on the radio."

"How far did she get?"

"She got all over, I believe," he said. "She did the eastern states from Florida to Maine and went right into New York Harbor, right on up the Hudson till she tangled with the wreck of the George Washington Bridge. She went to New London and to Halifax and to St. John's, and then she crossed the Atlantic and went up the English Channel and into the London River, but she couldn't get far up that. Then she took a look at Brest and at Lisbon, and by that time she was running out of stores and her crew were in pretty bad shape, so she went back to Rio." He paused. "I haven't heard yet how many days she was submerged-I'd like to know. She certainly set a new record, anyway."

"Did she find anyone alive, Dwight?"

"I don't think so. We'd certainly have heard about it if she did."

She stared down the narrow alleyway outside the curtain forming the cabin wall, the running maze of pipes and electric cables. "Can you visualize it, Dwight?"

"Visualize what?"

"All those cities, all those fields and farms, with nobody, and nothing left alive. Just nothing there. I simply can't take it in."

"I can't, either," he said. "I don't know that I want to try. I'd rather think of them the way they were."

"I never saw them, of course," she observed. "I've never been outside Australia, and now I'll never go. Not that I want to, now. I only know all those places from the movies and the books-that's as they were. I don't suppose there'll ever be a movie made of them as they are now."