# Deep Sea Death44444

Лев Переводчик Шкловский

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feet underwater, but the concussion that tan through the sea from the incredible force that disintegrated the island pushed outward in every direction, from the depths of the ocean to a height of several hundred feet above the surface. She knew she was going to die. It would all be over soon and she had never prepared for it. Young people didn't think they were going to die. Life was going to go on forever, or at least for one hell of a long time. Thoughts on death just weren't part of this healthy young woman—until now. The force took her and her sled like a piece of seaweed, churned it to the surface, and carried it on the crest of a huge wave for what seemed like hours. She tumbled in the process an that she was looking at an unfriendly sky one moment and the green-black of an angry ocean the next. At one point. above the crest of the wave--her arms almost pulled out of their sockets as she hung perately—she thought she saw the wave pick up a ships as if they were toys in a child's bathtub them along as it was tossing her.

Howard Schmidt saw the incredible explosion foss island and was glad he'd wom the dark glass brought along. Men beside him in Brenner's con timed away and moaned as the bright new sun them from less than ten miles. Brenner stood beside him, he too wearing protect against the flash. "lee-sus," the admiral "I've seen this on film, but it's . I can't descri He obviously couldn't go on. "Look at the tidal wave form," Schmidt said. "It'll several hundred feet high when it hits us." "No way. That's impossible," B "Where's the nearest bedroom?"

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"My quarters. The door behind you. Why?" "I advise you to get your men rolled up in mattresses or something," Schmidt said. "Nonsense. Don't be such an alarmist," Brenner re-plied. "My men and I will stand watch until this is over." The second island went up like the first, and while it was almost twenty miles farther away, the flash was spectacular. "Two separate tidal waves. Damn! I'd hoped they would be simultaneous—maybe cancel each other out." "Get the hell out of my control room!" Brenner barked. "My pleasure," Schmidt said as he headed for the stateroom. It was large and more luxurious than he'd expected. He pulled the mattress off the bed, folded it in two with difficulty, and tied a sheet around each end to hold it closed like a hinged sandwich. He squeezed himself inside, the meat of the sandwich, and curled himself into a ball.

Zendal stood in his control room, his deep voice hoarse from screaming, his back to the window that looked out to • A bright light illuminated the room for a moment, hurt-ing his eyes. The two scientists standing in front of him started to change from white-coated apparitions to brown. In slow motion they seemed to blister and disintegrate until they tumed to ash in front of him and blew away with the rest of the room. His reaction was anger and disbelief, but the thought was only momentary because he too was dead and he was experiencing the last impressions of disintegration as his eyes and body transported the impression to a brain that was no longer there. He wanted to go on but

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Carter had lost time in getting his torpedo away. He knew it would reach its target, but Barbara's would deto-nate first and they'd have two shock waves instead of one. As he clung to the sled that raced him from the destruc-tion, he realized he'd be the only one to know. Barbara would feel the first, and have a good chance of surviving it, but she could be caught unawares by the second, off guard, vulnerable. He tried to reach her through their underwater communi-cations system. Static crackled through both sides of his headset and his voice was lost in the race to freedom. The shock hit him in the middle of his concern for her and he was tumbling wildly, desperately holding on to the sled for what seemed like bouts. The pressure was coming from his left, from the north. It should have been right behind him. It dawned on a brain that was being tumbled about as if in a washing machine, that he'd been hit by Barbara's shock wave and not by his own. The thought was barely born when he was picked up from the depths by a force from behind, carried to the surface, and planed on a wave, whose size even the most fanatical surfer could not imagine. He could see for -miles. The sled performed perfectly, taking him straight ahead, a ride that lasted long enough to be ten miles or more. Finally the force started to wane and he found himself sliding down the following trough. It seemed as low as the crest was high. The sled slipped to the bottom and kept on going, plunging to the ocean floor, taking him i His mouth was raw from the power of the tried to dislodge his mouthpiece. He fought like a tiger to keep the mouthpiece in, fought until muscles ached and finally cramped.

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185 The pressure slowed. He had dived deep. possibly too deep. Slowly he started the long climb back to the surface.

Admiral Brenner stood with his men as the wave carne at them. It was a wall as high as the tallest skyscraper and solid, boiling straight at them, stretching from horizon to horizon. "Oh, shit!" his executive officer, a captain, said as he stood beside him. "The ship wasn't built for this." "Hang am, the admiral called out, but the wave had hit and the men were tossed from one bulkhead to another as the ship tumbled crosswise to the monster wave.

Barbara came to the surface and took the mouthpiece from her mouth as the huge wave left her in a relatively tranquil sea. She took a deep breath of fresh air, then realized it could be contaminated. What the hell. It didn't matter. She was either going to die or live. It wasn't up to her. Life had taught her a major lesson in a very few minutes, a lesson that would be with her as long as she lived. She put the mouthpiece back in place just as the second wave hit. It was much weaker than the first. She figured she had to be at least ten miles from the explosion and the cresting wave had spent much of its power by the time it hit her. As the wave passed she found herself deep beneath the surface and came up to have a look around. She was disoriented. Where were the landmarks she'd expected to use? All she could we in the whole ocean was three peaks. The fleet should have been to her right but she saw no ships. The three peaks had to be the middle three islands. Both targets were gone, sheared off or disintegrated at sea level or below. Incredible amounts of rock tonnage had

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186 NICK CARTER been pulverized and blown away into the wind that whipped around her head. Where were they all? Where was Nick Carter? She floated on the surface, the sled's power turned off momen-tarily, and she began to cry.

Schmidt gave it another fifteen minutes. The second shock had passed. He'd been thrown around the room like the ball in a squash court and he felt as if every part of him would be black and blue. But he was still alive. He peeked out one end of the mattress. The room was a shambles, the furniture pulled loose from its sea fastenings and splintered from repeated battering against the bulkhead walls. Miraculously. he stood on the decking and not the ceiling when he pulled himself out of his cocoon, so the ship was upright. He was almost afraid to examine the rest of the ship and what lay outside. but he forced open the damaged door and stared at the carnage in the control room. The bodies had been smashed against the walls. They were lying flat on the floor, limbs at strange angles, torsos jellylike, as if all bone structure had gone on strike. Brenner's body was in the far corner, his neck at an impossible angle, his eyes glazed, his mouth awash with blood and saltwater. Schmidt knew he had to tell Hawk the truth about the man's pigheadedness but suspected the dead here would all be afforded heroes' funerals. He walked to a shattered window and looked islands. They had been reduced from five to found a pair of binoculars, one eyepiece cr scanned the three islands. They had been dev wasn't surmised. Wind howled through the broken glass of room, almost at gale force. It was southwesterly

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187 carry the radiation toward the least populated part of the Pacific. By the time it passed over other islands. it would be at relatively safe levels. Even the remaining pieces of rock here would be inhabitable, but he couldn't imagine anyone even mildly interested in them now.

Carter reached the surface and felt no aftereffects beyond a great weariness. He turned the sled at low speed toward the center island and his promised rendezvous. He had survived but he had no assurance that anyone else had. He looked around for 360 degrees and saw nothing but the three towers of desolate rock. The sled pulled him on, his arms numb from the strain. He wasn't in a hurry. He wasn't even sum that he could make it at fidl speed. He saw no fish. It might be days before wildlife came back to this blighted spot. But he'd slowed earlier to take his stiletto from the sled's waterproof compartment and strap it on. This was not unlike the aftermath of nuclear war. No one had experienced it, so no one knew what to expect. As the drought occurred, a spear pierced his calf and emerged from the other side, blood seeping from its shaft at both ends. He looked around in disbelief to see a clone racing for him at full speed, his spear gun discarded, a long knife in his right hand. It was too late for a cluster bomb. Carter couldn't maneuver the sled fast enough for a shot. Where had the damned thing come from? he wondered. He didn't need this. He never ran from a fight, but he was exhausted and this thing was only part human. It had some bionic parts. It might even have an artificial heart for all he knew. At any man, it would have one hell of a lot mom strength and energy than he.

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about to be fancy about the kill. He gave the clone his torso to go for, pulled in his gut at the last minute, and slashed Hugo's long thin blade across the massive peck as the figure passed. Now, as the cloud of blood obscured his vision, Carter had to think fast. His assailant was finished but the shark was king of these waters and he'd have to be dealt with. The Killmaster peeled a long snip of wet suit from the clone and pushed him in the direction of the shark. While the huge fish made its first pass at the clone, Carter broke the thin shaft of the spear, pulled out both ends, and bound the wound with the strip of rubber. The sled had sunk about twenty feet. Tired arms or not, he retrieved the sled, turned it toward the island, and flipped on its booster power. He wanted no more encoun-ters with either man or beast.

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Barbara positioned herself facing the three islands and dived to have a last look at the ship that had brought her there. She cruised the ocean floor along the ridge long enough to realize that the ship was gone, that they were both gone. The force of the underwater currents set up by the explosions had sent them to the deep. She doubted if anyone would find them or even mount an expedition. When she started fan the surface at the end of her search pattern she was way off to the southwest. A disturbance in the water ahead of her brought her up sharp. She put the sled in neutral until she knew what it was. "My God," she muttered into her face mask. Two sharks were fighting over a body. "Nick!" she screamed, then saw an arrn that was far from human. A clone. She flipped the booster control on full and hung on for her life as the sled took her far to the south.

The island was dead. Carter could find no other way to describe it. All the trees had been uprooted. Everything but the shortest grass and moss had been tom loose and blown away, leaving fresh scars against the lava rock of the island's base. The Chriscraft was a mass of floating splinters rocking back and forth in the narrow harbor that had been its refuge. Carter moved below the floating wood in his scuba gear and gradually salvaged enough undamaged supplies to last a survivor for a week or more. He even found a couple of bottles of wine, a first aid kit, and miraculously, a can opener. Later, he found the earth station wedged between two rocks, the cone slightly bent but otherwise undamaged. The beach was no place to set up shop to wait for Barbara. He worked on his leg for a few minutes, than went exploring. On the lee side of the island he found a cave fifty feet above the level of the wrecked ship. ma

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floor was coated with matted palm fronds. old but dry. He moved all his supplies to the cave and started a fire. He was ravenous but settled on some tuna eaten from the can with his stiletto. The earth station was easy to repair. He was on the air in minutes broadcasting to Schmidt or anyone he could reach. "Schmidt hem. Christ, Nick, I wasn't sure I'd he hear-ing from you." "I'm all right. I'm in a cave on the middle island." "You should be all right them. I figure the fallout went straight up, then floated southwest." "Barbara's not hem. Did you see her?" "No. I'm in a bit of a mess here myself. Brenner is dead and a lot of his people am too." "Shit. How many?" "Fifty. Maybe mom. Most of the men were smart enough to protect themselves from the shock wave." "Am the civilians from Zendars cavern all right?" "Everyone. More than seven hundred of them. headed straight for Hawaii in their subs long ago, all but • I few. Four or five were trapped with Zendal." "So we took the right odds." "If Brenner hadn't been no stubborn, we'd have a betel• survival rate. We lost twenty-five from the new ship, tb Lance." "What about Brenner's ships?" "We had ourselves some kind of crazy miracle. Thera was lots of damage, but they were all topside up when if

"Thank God for that." "What about Barbara? Do you think she made it?" Caner couldn't answer for a long time. He'd eamc earth station with him to the highest peak hadn't seen a sign of her.

DEEP SEA DEATH "Wait," he said, a 1101C of wonder in his voice. "Wait


191 "Wait," he said, a note of wonder in his voice. "Wait a goddamned minute! Something is coming out of the water at the beach. It's Barbara's sled! call you later!" He was off to the beach as fast as one bad and one good leg would take him. She was stretched out on the sand when he got there, unconscious but alive and unhurt. He carried her up the steep slope to the cave as if she weighed ten pounds. He put her down on the soft bed of fronds in the cave and emptied a can of soup into a pot that he placed in the fire. He pulled off her cold suit and the sodden long johns. Her limbs were blue. He massaged life back into her and held her close until she opened those incredible hazel eyes and smiled at him. "What are you doing in your clothes on our island?" she murmured weakly. "Don't try to talk. You need your strength. We—" "Take your damned clothes off," she said, trying to struggle up on one elbow. "1 dreamed about this all the way back. It was all that drove me on," she pleaded, her voice hoarse. "1 want the feel of you inside me." He pulled off his wet suit and the still damp long johns underneath and lay beside her. He held her against his body, his mouth to her ear. "It will wait. You need to gain back some strength," he whispered in her ear. "No. I need to feel close, as close as we can get. God, Nick, we'm lucky to be alive." He kissed her slowly, his tongue intertwining with hers. Her breath was het, her skin becoming wanner. He kissed her neck and reached for the hard tips of her breasts that had been soft only seconds before. As he entered her gently and settled down for a long and slow encounter, he felt her start to chuckle beneath him. "What's no funny?" he asked.

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