Alita closed her eyes and opened them again. “I’ve been wondering about us. Why is it that just you and I and Conda and Helene and a few others survived the sinking. Why didn’t some of the hundreds of others join us? What are we?”
The old woman moved her feet slowly, rippling currents.
“We’re Guardians, that’s what you’d call us. A thousand people drowned when the USS Atlantic went down, but twenty of us came out, half-dead, because we have somebody to guard. You have a lover on the convoy routes. I have four sons in the Navy. The others have similar obligations. Conda has sons too. And Helene—well, her lover was drowned inside the USS Atlantic and never came half-alive like us, so she’s vindictive, motivated by a great vengeance. She can’t ever really be killed.
“We all have a stake in the convoys that cross and recross the ocean. We’re not the only ones. Maybe there are thousands of others who cannot and will not rest between here and England, breaking seams in German cargo boats, darkening Nazi periscopes and frightening German crewmen, sinking their gun-boats when the chance comes.
“But we’re all the same. Our love for our husbands and sons and daughters and fathers makes us go on when we should be meat for fish, makes us go on being Guardians of the Convoy, gives us the ability to swim faster than any human ever swam while living, as fast as any fish ever swam. Invisible guardians nobody’ll ever know about or appreciate. Our urge to do our bit was so great we wouldn’t let dying put us out of action. . .
“I’m so tired, though,” said Alita. “So very tired.”
“When the war is over—we’ll rest. In the meanwhile—”
“The convoy is coming!”
IT WAS Conda’s deep, voice of authority. Used to giving captain’s orders for years aboard the USS Atlantic, he appeared below them now, about a hundred yards away, striving up in the watered sunlight, his red hair aflame around his big-nosed, thick-lipped face. His beard was like so many living tentacles, writhing.
The convoy!
The Guardians stopped whatever they were doing and hung suspended like insects in some green primordial amber, listening to the deeps.
From far, far off it came: the voice of the convoy. First a dim note, a lazy drifting of sound, like trumpets blown into eternity and lost in the wind. A dim vibration of propellers beating water, a bulking of much weight on the sun-sparkled Atlantic tides.
The convoy!
Destroyers, cruisers, corvettes, and cargo ships. The great bulking convoy!
Richard! Richard! Are you with them?
Alita breathed water in her nostrils, down her throat, in her lungs. She hung like a pearl against a green velvet gown that rose and fell under the breathing of the sea.
Richard!
The echo of ships became more than a suggestion. The water began to hum and dance and tremble with the advancing armada. Bearing munitions and food and planes, bearing hopes and prayers and people, the convoy churned for England.
Richard Jameson!
The ships would come by like so many heavy blue shadows over their heads and pass on and be lost soon in the night-time, and tomorrow there would be another and another stream of them.
Alita would swim with them for a way. Until she was tired of swimming, perhaps, and then she’d drop down, come floating back here to this spot on a deep water tide she knew and utilized for the purpose.
Now, excitedly, she shot upward.
She went as near to the surface as she could, hearing Conda’s thunder-voice giving commands:
“Spread out! One of you to each major ship! Report any hostile activity to me instantly! We’ll trail with them until after sunset! Spread!”
The others obeyed, rising to position, ready. Not near enough to the surface so the sun could get at their flesh.
They waited. The hammer-hammer churn-churn of ships folded and grew upon itself. The sea brimmed with its bellow going down to kick the sand and striking up in reflected quivers of sound. Hammer-hammer-churn!
Richard Jameson!
Alita dared raise her head above water. The sun hit her like a dull hammer. Her eyes flicked, searching, and as she sank down again she cried, “Richard. It’s his ship. The first destroyer. I recognize the number. He’s here again!”
“Alita, please,” cautioned the old woman. “Control yourself. My boy, too. He’s on one of the cargo ships. I know its propeller voice well. I recognize the sound. One of my boys is here, near me. And it feels so very good.”
The whole score of them swam to meet the convoy. Only Helene stayed behind. Swimming around and around the German U-boat, swimming swiftly and laughing her strange high laughter that wasn’t sane.
Alita felt something like elation rising in her. It was good, just to be this close to Richard, even if she couldn’t speak or show herself or kiss him ever again. She’d watch him every time he came by this way. Perhaps she’d swim all night, now, and part of the next day, until she couldn’t keep up with him any longer, and then she’d whisper goodbye and let him sail on alone.
THE destroyer cut close to her. She saw its number on the prow in the sun. And the sea sprang aside as the destroyer cut it like a glittering knife.
There was a moment of exhilaration, and then Conda shouted it deep and loud and excited:
“SUBMARINE!”
“Submarine coming from north, cutting across convoy! German!”
Richard!
Alita’s body twisted fearfully as she heard the under-water vibration that meant a submarine was coming in toward them, fast. A dark long shadow pulsed underwater.
There was nothing you could do to stop a moving submarine, unless you were lucky. You could try stopping it by jamming its propellers, but there wasn’t time for that.
Conda yelled, “Close in on the sub! Try to stop it somehow! Block the periscope. Do anything!”
But the German U-boat gnashed in like a mercurial monster. In three breaths it was lined up with the convoy, unseen, and squaring off to release its torpedoes.
Down below, like some dim-moving fantasy, Helene swam in eccentric circles, but as the sub shadow trailed over her she snapped her face up, her hot eyes pulled wide and she launched herself with terrific energy up at it, her face blazing with fury!
The ships of the convoy moved on, all unaware of the poisoned waters they churned. Their great valvular hearts pounding, their screws thrashing a wild water song.
“Conda, do something! Conda!” Alita shivered as her mind thrust the thoughts out at the red-bearded giant. Conda moved like a magnificent shark up toward the propellers of the U-boat, swift and angry.
Squirting, bubbling, jolting, the sub expelled a child of force, a streamlined torpedo that kicked out of its metal womb, trailed by a second, launched with terrific impetus—at the destroyer.
Alita kicked with her feet. She grasped at the veils of water with helpless fingers, blew all the water from her lungs in a stifled scream.
Things happened swiftly. She had to swim at incredible speed just to keep pace with submarine and convoy. And —spinning a bubbled trail of web—the torpedoes coursed at the destroyer as Alita swam her frantic way.
“It missed! Both torps missed!” someone cried; it sounded like the old woman.
Oh, Richard, Richard, don’t you know the sub is near you. Don’t let it bring you down to… this, Richard! Drop the depth charges! Drop them now!
Nothing.
Conda clung to the conning tower of the U-boat, cursing with elemental rage, striving uselessly.
Two more torpedoes issued from the mouths of the sub and went surging on their trajectories. Maybe—
“Missed again!”
Alita was gaining. Gaining. Getting closer to the destroyer. If only she could leap from the waters, shouting. If only she were something else but this dead white flesh. …
Another torpedo. The last one, probably, in the sub.
It was going to hit!
Alita knew that before she’d taken three strokes more. She swam exactly alongside the destroyer now, the submarine was many, many yards ahead when it let loose its last explosive. She saw it come, shining like some new kind of fish, and she knew the range was correct this time.
In an instant she knew what there was to be done. In an instant she knew the whole purpose and destiny of her swimming and being only half-dead. It meant the end of swimming forever, now, the end of thinking about Richard and never having him for herself ever again. It meant—
She kicked her heels in the face of water, stroked ahead clean, quick. The torpedo came directly at her with its blunt, ugly nose.
Alita coasted, spread her arms wide, waited to embrace it, take it to her breast like a long-lost lover.
She shouted it in her mind:
“Helene! Helene! From now on— from now on—take care of Richard for me! Watch over him for me!
Take care of Richard—!”
“Submarine off starboard!”
“Ready depth-charges!”
“Torpedo traces! Four of them! Missed us!”
“Here comes another one! They’ve got our range this time, Jameson! Watch it!”
To the men on the bridge it was the last moment before hell. Richard Jameson stood there with his teeth clenched, yelling, “Hard over!” but it was no use; that torp was coming on, not caring, not looking where it was going. It would hit them amidship! Jameson’s face went white all over and he breathed something under his breath and clutched the rail.
The torpedo never reached the destroyer.
It exploded about one hundred feet from the destroyer’s hull. Jameson fell to the deck, swearing. He waited. He staggered up moments later, helped by his junior officer.
“That was a close one, sir!”
“What happened?”
“That torp had our range, sir. But they must have put a faulty mechanism in her. She exploded
