Marc spurted forward, then turned and faced the man squarely as he came on. Then he held out his hand, a gesture that could not be ignored. If the jerk didn’t understand enough English it really didn’t matter. There were three photographers now; they seemed to have come up out of the sand.
“Welcome to America!” Marc recited. “For decades this country has suffered under the lecherous greed of the capitalists. You have come.
The commander thrust out his arm and brushed him aside. Then he mounted stiffly into his vehicle.
Full-blown rage took hold of Orberg. He had worked and suffered for these people, he had paved the way for them more than any man who had ever lived and this was his thanks, the gratitude due him! As the vehicle began to move slowly in the sand he ran alongside. “You have come to make us free of the.
The commander was ignoring him, making him totally ridiculous before the whole world. “Listen to me, you goddamned pig,” he shouted, “I’m MARC ORBERG and.
The commander leaned sharply forward and barked a command to an aide sitting in the right front seat. The man responded at once; Marc saw him as he jerked out a pistol, saw the vicious weapon abruptly pointed at his own abdomen, and heard the blast of the shot.
A stab of sudden pain almost paralyzed him; with frightful speed it grew and became unbearable. His knees failed him; the soft sand suddenly became a morass. His lungs pounded in unfelt pain because of the burning horror in his belly; he pitched forward and for an instant felt the hard thump of the sand against his face.
The pain engulfed him; the agony became so frightful that his mind refused to do anything but focus on it in total desperation. He did not even know his own name anymore — only the all-consuming fire of incarnate hell that was raging in his body. He tried to kick his legs to mitigate the agony, but he could not tell if they had responded or not. Then, consumingly, he wanted to die; desperately he wanted death to terminate the intolerable pain he could not endure for another second. He tried to cry out to his god, but he had none to answer him.
Then he knew that he had been picked up. It came through to him that he was being carried, then the pain became the whole universe, consuming him alive. When he was thrown down, the hard contact with the ground went unfelt, for in the last moments before the two uniformed bearers cast him aside, consciousness left him and he entered into a world of total darkness.
14
In common with a great many other American industrial installations, the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard in San Francisco Bay was having considerable difficulty in maintaining a satisfactory work force. The occupying authorities who were in direct control of the facility had issued stern edicts against either quitting or slowing down on the job, but the normal attrition which affects every large employee group kept the size of the payroll steadily shrinking while the usual inflow of new applicants dropped almost to zero. Despite the reduction in personnel, during working hours the shipyard presented its usual picture of apparent total confusion continuously sustained at a high level. In the submarine dry docks the modification work which had been under way at the time of the Defeat continued under close control by the enemy for the eventual benefit of his own fleet. And at berth eight, near to the end of the North Pier, the U.S.S. Ramon Magsaysay remained tied up under intensive twenty-four-hour guard.
The presence of the Magsaysay at Hunters Point was a departure from the normal procedure. She had been en route from Bremerton, where she had loaded her missiles, to the Pacific Missile Range for her test firing when her captain had received urgent and classified orders to proceed to Mare Island. The Magsaysay had been within three hours’ running time of the Golden Gate when the word had come through that Mare Island, the normal habitat of the nuclear submarines, was already loaded to capacity and to put in at Hunters Point instead. She had still been there, undergoing modifications to some of her conventional systems, when the President had made his announcement.
The enemy had known all about the Magsaysay and had lost no time in seizing her when they had taken over the yard. It was quickly decided that the work in progress would be continued under strict supervision, but that no chances would be taken of allowing any false heroics. She was too deadly a weapon for that. All of her stores were removed, along with as much vital equipment as could be passed up through the thirty-inch hatches that were the largest openings in her pressure hull. While this work was still in progress a former U.S. Army 105-mm mobile fieldpiece was moved to the end of the pier and installed there, where it could keep a watchful and lethal eye on the Magsaysay and all that went on around her. The powerful gun was manned twenty-four hours a day by a succession of crews that were brought in and out by special vehicles in order to prevent any contact whatever with either the military or the civilian personnel of the shipyard. A white ring fifty feet in radius was painted around the fieldpiece; posted signs warned that anyone stepping within the ring, accidentally or otherwise, would be shot immediately by a member of the gun crew on duty. Near the brow which led from the pier to the deck of the Magsaysay a radiation detector kept a continuous watch over the shutdown power plant deep within the hull. Under the water the nearly twenty-foot diameter propeller of the Mag-saysay was reportedly chained to the piling.
The growing shortage of personnel had not interfered materially with the progress of the work going on within the Magsaysay’s hull. Most of the essential modifications had been completed and the estimates posted in the commander’s office indicated that she would be ready for takeover in approximately three weeks’ time. Most of the manpower loss was reflected in the support services; the massive dumpsters were for the most part completely filled with scrap a good part of the time, supplies were late in arriving, and the general housekeeping of the big yard slipped to a level that the American commander would not have tolerated for a day. A growing number of armed enemy guards patrolled the whole area and saw to it that the level of activity at least appeared to remain at a high level.
The flow of message traffic between Hunters Point, Treasure Island, Alameda, and Mare Island was heavy and continuous, but despite the level of his responsibility, the still acting commander scanned most of it personally. He was a square-built man with some remaining grizzled hair and a perpetual expression of harassed concern. That expression did not alter to the slightest degree when, in the midst of hundreds of communications, he found an unavailability report on a piece of welding equipment. He glanced at the clock, disposed of a number of additional messages, and then turned his attention to the personnel sheets. After studying them for a short while, he sent off a signal to Mare Island urgently requesting an additional crane operator.
As a result of that near demand a new man showed up for work the following morning. The enemy had a look at him before he was allowed on base and concluded that he would fit into the pattern of what was being done at the yard. He had an exceptional physique, the obvious result of much manual labor, and spoke with a fairly heavy mid-European accent which was approved; not being a native-born citizen he would probably be less averse to working for a foreign power and doing what he was told. As soon as the man was cleared and given his work permit, he was assigned to the huge high crane which provided the heavy lift capability required on the North Pier. After a brief period of instruction on the equipment he was allowed to carry on alone; the results were satisfactory and his presence on base was thereafter taken for granted. The commander never saw him and once he had made the work assignment, never displayed the slightest interest in his presence. He carried a heavy load and obviously had no time for such individual matters.