Read Ebook: Silence is—Deadly by Shurtleff Bertrand Kolliker William A Illustrator

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Ebook has 254 lines and 13717 words, and 6 pages

SILENCE IS--DEADLY

Radio is an absolute necessity in modern organization--and particularly in modern naval organization. If you could silence all radio--silence of that sort would be deadly!

The wizened face of the older man was molded in intent lines of concentration, as his bushy gray head bent over his drawing board. Curtis got a glimpse of the design on which he was working, and his lips relaxed in a faint smile.

Curtis opened the door and looked out. Rain whipped against his face like a stinging wet lash. Overhead, the sky was a storm-racked mass of clouds, broken in one spot by a tiny patch of starlit blue.

The fellow was a headache to Curtis. He was overfriendly with a black-browed bos'n's mate named Joe Bradford--the worst trouble maker on board. But there was no question of his ability. He was a good navigating officer--dependable, accurate, conscientious. Nevertheless, his taut face, restless, searching eyes, and eternally nervous manner got Curtis' goat.

"Come in, Nelson!" he said.

Nelson shouldered his way inside, and stood there in his dripping oilskins, blinking his eyes against the yellow light.

Curtis closed the door and nodded toward the bent form of Zukor Androka, with a quizzical grin. "Old Czech-and-Double-Czech is working hard on his latest invention to pull Hitler's teeth and re-establish the Czech Republic!"

"I'm worried, sir!" Nelson said. "I'm not sure about my dead reckoning. This storm--"

Curtis threw his arm around Nelson's dripping shoulders. "Forget it! Don't let a little error get you down!"

"But this storm, sir!" Nelson avoided Curtis' friendly eyes and slipped out from under his arm. "It's got me worried. Quartering wind of undetermined force, variable and gusty. There's a chop to the sea--as if from unestimated currents among the islets. No chance to check by observation, and now there is a chance--look at me!"

He held out his hands. They were shaking as if he had the chills.

"You say there is a chance?" Curtis asked. "Stars out?"

"As if by providence, sir, there's a clear patch. I'm wondering--" His voice trailed off, but his eyes swung toward the gleaming sextant on the rack.

Commander Curtis shrugged good-naturedly and reached for the instrument. "Not that I've lost confidence in you, Nels, but just because you asked for it!"

Curtis donned his slicker and went outside, sextant in hand. In a few minutes he returned and handed Nelson a sheet of paper with figures underlined heavily.

"Here's what I make it," the commander told his navigating officer. "Bet you're not off appreciably."

Nelson stared at the computations with shaking head. Then he mutely held up his own.

Curtis stared, frowned, grabbed his own sheet again. "Any time I'm that far off old Figure-'em Nelson's estimate, I'm checking back," he declared, frowning at the two papers and hastily rechecking his own figures.

"Call up to the bridge to stop her," he told Nelson. "We can't afford to move in these waters with such a possibility of error!"

Nelson complied, and the throbbing drive of the engines lessened at once. Nelson said: "I've been wondering, sir, if it wouldn't be advisable to try getting a radio cross-bearing. With all these rocks and islets--"

"Radio?" repeated the little Czech, thrusting his face between the other two, in his independent fashion that ignored ship's discipline. "You're using your radio?" He broke into a knowing chuckle, his keen old eyes twinkling behind their thick lenses. "Go ahead and try it. See how much you can get! It will be no more than Hitler can get when Zukor Androka decrees silence over the German airways! Try it! Try it, I say!"

Bob Curtis stared at him, as if questioning his sanity. Then he hastened to the radio room, with Nelson at his heels, and the Czech trotting along behind.

The door burst open as they neared it. A frightened operator came out, still wearing his earphones, and stood staring upward incredulously at the a?rial.

"Get us a radio cross-bearing for location at once," Curtis said sharply, for the operator seemed in a daze.

"Bearing, sir?" The man brought his eyes down with difficulty, as if still dissatisfied. "I'm sorry, sir, but the outfit's dead. Went out on me about five minutes ago. I was taking the weather report when the set conked. I was trying to see if something's wrong."

The Czech inventor giggled. Curtis gave him another curious look and thrust himself into the radio room.

"Try again!" he told the operator. "See what you can get!"

The radio man leaped to his seat and tried frantically. Again and again, he sent off a request for a cross-bearing from shore stations that had recently been established to insure safety to naval vessels, but there was no answer on any of the bands--not even the blare of a high-powered commercial program in the higher reach, nor the chatter of ships or amateurs on the shorter.

"Dead!" Androka muttered, with a bitter laugh. "Yet not dead, gentlemen! The set is uninjured. The waves are what have been upset. I have shattered them around your ship, just as I can eventually shatter them all over Central Europe! For the next two hours, no radio messages can enter or leave my zone of radio silence--of refracted radio waves, set up by my little station on one of the neighboring islets!"

There was a long pause, while commander and navigator stared at him. Curtis was the first to speak.

"Your secrecy might well cost the United States navy one of its best light cruisers--and us our lives!" he said angrily. "We need that check by radio at once! If you're not talking nonsense, call off your dogs till we learn just where we are!"

Androka held out his palms helplessly. "I can do nothing. I have given orders to my assistant that he must keep two hours of radio silence! I can get no message to him, for our radio is dead!"

As if to mock him, the ship's radio began to answer:

Commander and navigator had both scribbled verifications of the numbers. Ignoring the gibbering Androka, who was wailing his disappointment that messages had penetrated his veil of silence, they raced for the chart room.

Quickly the parallels stepped off the bearing from the designated points. Light intersecting lines proclaimed a check on their position.

Curtis frowned and shook his head. Slowly he forced a reluctant grin as he stuck out his hand.

"Shake, Nels," he said. "It's my turn to eat crow. You and the radio must be right. Continue as you were!"

"I'm relieved, sir, just the same," Nelson admitted, "to have the radio bearings. We'd have piled up sure if you'd been right."

They went on through the night. The starlit gap in the clouds had closed. The sky was again a blanket of darkness pouring sheets of rain at them.

Nelson went back to the bridge, and Androka returned to the commander's cabin. Curtis lingered in the wireless room with the radio operator.

He lingered over the apparatus, checking and rechecking. Tubes lighted; wires were alive to the touch and set him to shaking his head at the tingle they sent through his inquiring fingers.

Curtis left him at it, and went to rejoin Androka in the cabin. He found the little inventor pacing up and down, shaking his fists in the air; pausing every now and then to run his bony fingers through his tangled mop of gray hair, or to claw nervously at his beard.

"Seems to me," Curtis said dryly, "this invention can harm your friends as much as your enemies."

The scientist drew himself up to his full height--which was only a little over five feet. His voice grew shrill. "Wait! Just wait! There are other inventions to supplement this one. Put them together, and they will defeat the Nazi hordes which have ravaged my country!"

Curtis was a little shocked by the hatred that gleamed in Androka's eyes, under their bushy brows. There was something of the wild animal in the man's expression, as his lips drew back from his yellowed teeth.

"Those tanks you have below," Curtis said, "have they some connection with this radio silence?"

Curtis said: "I understand."

"And if the Nazi agents in America knew of the islet from which my zone of silence is projected--" Androka paused, his head tilted to one side, as if he were listening to something--

On deck, there was shouting and commotion. Curtis rushed out, pulling on his slicker as he went. The shout from the watch forward had been picked up, and was being relayed all over the ship. The words struck on Curtis' ears with a note of impending tragedy.

"Breakers ahead!"

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