Andre Norton - Sea Siege

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by Andre Norton

All Customer Reviews

Avg. Customer Review:

Sea Siege, March 28, 2002

Reviewer:

This is an absolutely wonderful book. Exciting at all times. I have reread this book many times. And will

read it again. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable

Sea siege -andre norton's sensational Creation, February 3, 2002

Reviewer:

Mankinds ultimate nightmare has become a reality. The wonderful simple life on the island of San Isadore

-until the american seabees arrive,and with the secret project they construct.boats start to disappear and

a strange creature appears on the shore. now there is concern to everyone a impending threat of nuclear

war.! there is nowhere man can hide and what is doom headed our way --This text refers to an out of

print or unavailable edition of this title.

SEA SIEGE

An Ace Book, by arrangement with Harcourt, Brace & Co., Inc.

Printed in U.S.A.

Contents

PART ONE

Project Sea Serpent

ONE DUPEE-BEACHED

OCTOPI REEF

III

BASE HUSH-HUSH

COOPERATION-ENFORCED

DEPTH SCOUT

TOO LITTLE, MUCH TOO LATE

VII

THE ISLAND QUEEN DOES NOT REPLY

VIII

HOUR OF ULTIMATUM

WAR TWO WAYS

PART TWO

Operation Survival

THE GREAT SILENCE

NEWBORN WORLD

III

PORT OF REFUGE

SOS AMERIKANTSKY!

WHO IS THE ENEMY?

THE RETURN OF THE ISLAND QUEEN

VII

CAPTIVE CARGO

VIII

MAN IS A STUBBORN ANIMAL

THE LONG ROAD BACK

PART ONE

Project Sea Serpent

ONE DUPEE-BEACHED

"perfect opportunity—chance of a lifetime!" Griffith Gunston exploded to the empty reaches of the

wide blue sky. "I don't think!" he added forcibly.

He was standing defiantly, his hands on his hips, breasting the trade wind. It was blowing steadily,

push-ing the booming surf against reef and rock, sounding an organ's deep notes, bending the bushes and

trees with the flail of its invisible current. Griff knew that down on the beach one could hear another song,

the tuneful whisper of sand on the move, as restless under the push of the wind as he now was under the

lash of his personal frustration.

There were few real heights on San Isadore. It was an island born of the sea, not of volcanic eruption.

But the coral block building, once part of the old saltworks, which his father had turned into a combined

laboratory and home, was on the cliffs. And from this vantage point of headland Griff could now survey

not only the sleepy indifference of dying Carterstown but look across the wide sweep of Frigate Bay to

the waves smashing on the barrier reef—that division which separated the shal-lows he had explored,

during his exile of the past few weeks, from the depths into which a skin diver dared not venture.

Below him, the Island Queen, swung at her moorings, her spars bare to the pull of the wind. And

beyond her the rich aquamarine of the water was split by a wedge of silver flying fish. It was a world of

color—the sea. But, on the other hand, the island hues were muted, ghostly. Here was none of the gaudy

luxuriance of the tropics that one might find elsewhere in the West In-dies.

San Isadore was truly a sea island—encased, encrusted in salt. Gray-white crystals gathered not only

in the beds of the old saltworks but about the trunks of the trees, at the roots of shrubs, and lay in crusts

on the thin soil. The vegetation was largely silver-gray, some leaves glint-ing metallically in the sun.

Among the plants were the pointed, brittle fingers of cacti and the menace of skel-eton thorn trees, with

only the darker sheen of lignum vitae and sea lavender to break the salty sweep. Men had their gardens

on San Isadore, but they were planted and reaped in defiance of nature, not with her coopera-tion.

Griff strode into the full drive of the wind. He wanted to fight something. His impatience, repressed for

days, had come to a head with his father this morning—dis-astrously. He had advanced his plea to be

allowed to return to the States, advanced it, as he thought, with reasonable restraint. And what had

happened? Griff's fists clenched until his nails bit into the palms of his hands.

He wasn't ten years old and he was not going to be treated as if he were. To be spoken to like that

with Hughes sitting there on the other side of the table! The perfect assistant, Hughes, Dr. Ramsey

Gunston's shadow and alter ego. The calm good sense of all the answers Griff's father had marshaled had

only added to the hu-miliation and disappointment of that scene—every one of Griff's own points

demolished without any real un-derstanding of how he felt, what he wanted to do!

Run away little boy and play—find some way to amuse yourself—that was about the sum and

substance of Dr. Gunston's reply. But Griff wanted his own life—to fol-low the plans he had been making

for years. Did his father believe that he had existed in a sort of vacuum, growing no older, doing no

thinking for himself for the past five years? True, his father did not know him well —how could he?

Ramsey Gunston had been out in the East Indies chasing fish all over the place, writing scien-tific papers

that might be in an obtuse code as far as his son was concerned. What did Griff care about the dis-ease

of fish— Fish! He couldn't be less interested!

His father had turned up again just after Griff had graduated from Emmsly, swept him off to this West

Indies salt pot, as if his son had no right to a life of his own at all, and settled in for another season of

prying into stinking messes of seaweed, of analyzing scum.

Oh, he supposed it was important—at least some of the magazines and papers back home had said

that it was —this study of the Red Plague, of the strange new death in southern waters that had appeared

without warning a season ago and was making great inroads in the profits of the fishing industry, sending

the dead bodies of fish floating ashore by the millions along the lower coast of the United States and

among the West Indies. Dad's job was backed by both the American and the British governments. He'd

been brought halfway around the world to do it. But there wasn't one small piece of it his son could help

with. And Dr. Gunston had the perfect Hughes always at his elbow, making Griff's first fumbling but

honest attempts to help seem so childish that the younger Gunston soon stopped trying.

So—why should he be chained here, on an island even tourists did not visit, so far off the shipping

lanes that the Island Queen was their only link with civiliza-tion when she made her biweekly trip to

Santa Maria. And what was Santa Maria, in spite of its government house and port for freighters, but a

dirty flyspeck on some out-of-date charts? Let him go home and try out for the Academy. For a moment

Griff saw not the blue sea—but the blue sky. Jets—those were the future—not fish! He didn't know one

fish from another and had no desire to be formally introduced either.

But there Griff was belittling his own curiosity, a curiosity that he had no intention of admitting to either

of the two men now at work in the building behind him. His diving adventures along the reef during the

past few weeks, his companionship with Christopher Waite, the mate of the Queen, had taught him more

than he realized about the finned and shelled inhabitants of the bay—including some lore that might have

sur-prised Dr. Gunston. But Griff took a perverse and child-ish delight in keeping to himself the results of

his own underwater explorations. After all, both Dad and Hughes must have forgotten more than he

would ever know. Why babble about such kindergarten stuff to them?

He wanted to get away. If he didn't, he had a vague fear that he might fall under the same spell that

doomed Carterstown, that inertia that had sapped the energy of the islanders since the closing of the

saltworks. They fished; they planted a few grains of corn, melon seeds, some garden truck in those tiny

potholes of real soil to be found at such intervals that a small garden patch might cover several acres; they

caught conch and dried them to sell in Santa Maria for the only cash they ever saw. But no one worked

regularly or cared much about the future.

Griff, some of his hot resentment cooled by the press of the wind against his sun-browned body,

considered languidly his own plans for the day. He could take out the underwater camera and try for

some shots along the reef. He could strike inland to the plate-shallow salt lake and study the flamingos.

He could try to find the bat cave Le Marr said was back in the desert strip. Or, he could again tackle the

books he had flung aside last night with a petulance more suitable to someone half his age. He ought to

sweat out that course sometime, in case he could ever take the Air Force Academy exam—if Dr.

Gunston would even consider allowing him to try it!

Once more that stab of irritation. Lord, he didn't like fish, he never would! Moodily he stared down at

the Island Queen without really seeing her at all.

There was a stir of life on her deck. A figure wearing only ragged dungarees pattered barefooted on

the snowy-clean boards. That would be Rob Fletcher, his white-blond hair identifying him even at this

distance. The is-landers were an oddly mixed lot. Some "red-legs," rebel-convicts of the eighteenth

century political wars, Scot-tish clansmen after '45, or the Monmouth rebels, had been sent here by their

planter-masters to start the first of the salt beds. Then the pirates of the cays had added men from time to

time, marooned freebooters or ship-wrecked buccaneers. There were Negro slaves and a few

Indians—and now the islanders were a mixture of races, colors, heritages—Saxon names wedded to

black skins, blue eyes beneath thick fuzz, startling blond locks now and then. And among them was a

very small core of families who had not altogether slipped back to the semi-savage existence of the rest,

a core that produced from time to time an island leader or a man able to bet-ter his condition and try for

some degree of civilized living.

Angus Murdock, the captain of the Queen; Fletcher; and Chris Waite, his mate; Dobrey Le Marr;

Braxton Wells who managed the one store in Carterstown—you could count their number on the fingers

of one hand. But they were there, distinct from their fellows, with a measure of energy, a degree of

curiosity and of solid belief in themselves, and some ambition for the future.

Griff made his decision about the day's employment. He'd join the crew of the Queen, give them a

hand as he had so often done before. Chris had just come above deck, his darker bulk looming over that

of his slighter companion. The date of their scheduled trip to Santa Maria was still two days away, but

there was something in that sudden appearance of Chris that suggested ac-tion, and Griff hurried down

the winding cliff path.

He followed the rutted path, which could not be termed a road, between the tumble-down ruins of

Car-terstown. From one house in five he caught the sound of life. The rest were left now to the lizards

and the spiders. As he trotted into the main street, he almost ran into Angus Murdock.

"Slow you down." White teeth showed in a wide friendly grin, and a rich slur of voice somehow

soothed the sting left from the curt interview in the lab house.

Griff grinned back happily. "Care to sign on a new hand today, Cap'n?"

"You aimin' to go worryin' them fish 'long the reef?" was Murdock's counterquestion. His

well-muscled shoulders moved easily under his loose and very clean white shirt. The officer's cap, its

captain's insignia care-fully rubbed into winking brightness, was cocked over one eye in a way that gave

his square-jawed face a rather rakish cast. Murdock traced his lineage back to another captain, one

whose reputation at the time had been far from savory but over which modern romance cast a softening

glow. There are few modern sea-rovers who can state with truth that their

great-great-great-great--grandfathers were highly successful pirates.

"Not unless you do—" Griff returned, matching his stride to the other's rolling gait. "Is something up?"

"Up? What you mean, mon?" Murdock was at the dinghy, preparing to launch out to the Queen. "We

ain't sailin' today—"

But an impatient hail from the ship interrupted him. Chris was waving from the deck, his arm a

whirlwind of summoning, and Murdock, with Griff, pushed off, to swing through the water at an oar

speed much greater than usual. It was clear that something had happened, something actually drastic

enough to excite the usually placid Waite.

"They's found the S'Jawn, Cap'n!" Chris blew out his news in a mighty blast almost before his

superior of-ficer clambered over the rail.

Murdock, paused, pushing back his cap. Then, with a frown cutting a deep line between his brows,

he con-fronted Waite as if he were accusing the islander of be-ing personally responsible for bad news.

"Where they find her?"

"Driftin'—" Chris waved an arm to indicate the vast expanse beyond the reef. "She was

driftin'—without no mon 'board her. Jus' like the Neptune an' Flyin' Fish!"

"On the wireless you heard dis?" Murdock asked.

"Aye, Cap'n. They say it from San' Maria. She was found this mornin' by the Dutch freighter. No mon

'board her—driftin'—"

Rob Fletcher had a single comment, which he made with the sullen persistence of one who had said

the same thing before and did not expect to be attended to any more this time than he had been the last.

"Dupee—"

Murdock rounded on him, and the frown became even deeper. "A dupee? A ghost thing from the sea,

eh? That's what you say, mon? Me, I don't believe in no ghost dupee thing without I see it with these two

eyes—"

Rob shrugged. "So you don't believe, Cap'n? Then tell me true—what takes the mons from those

ships an' leave them sailin' without no mon on board? Tell me that? No storm, no fire, no thing bad, jus'

ship sailin' without no mon on her—that dupee work, that is!

"No mon knows what things be in the deep sea." He expanded his argument. "There's this red death

what be killin' off the fish, ain't there? And Buzzy Defere, he saw that debble thing a-swimmin' off the reef

in the moonshine—"

"All right," Murdock countered. "So there be things in the sea what be strange. But they're no

ghosts— They're things a mon can see—like barracuda or shark. I don' believe in dupees—no ghost

thing is gonna climb on the Queen an' push us off!"

It seemed to Griff that Rob did not look at all con-vinced. But he had a question of his own.

"What do you think does happen, Cap'n?"

Murdock was staring at the distant reef, to the deeper blue of the wave-ruffled water beyond.

"I think—subs!"

All the rumors of the past months, the tall tales that had passed from island to island, that had been

men-tioned on broadcasts from the States, were summed up in that one word—for not only had the red

scum come to plague the sea but also this other lurking menace.

Several years before, similar tales had come from the far islands of the Pacific. There, too, small craft

had cleared port with full crews and passengers for short runs between one landfall and the next—only to

be en-tirely lost in a calm sea or to be found drifting days or weeks later, deserted by any living thing,

with no evi-dence of any disaster such as fire or storm. And there had been rumors then of a new type of

shark prowling the lanes, a sub that struck, killed, and struck again for no gain anyone could fathom.

Because the tension between the Eastern bloc of na-tions and the West had been building, so that

they were on the brink of a holocaust, which both sides knew might put an end not only to the actively

warring nations but to perhaps the whole world, the story of an underseas scout, a lurking, unnamed

enemy, had been readily ac-cepted and believed. And only because the mysterious attacks had suddenly

ceased had real conflict been averted then.

Now within the circle of the Caribbean and the Gulf, the same game was being played once more.

Three small island ships, the Neptune, the Flying Fish, and now the St. John, had been plundered of life

and left to drift after the familiar pattern. And the affair of the St. John struck close to home with the men

of San Isadore. She was a small vessel with the usual crew of three—twin to the Island Queen—and her

home port was Santa Maria.

"Cap'n Luis, an' Sim, an' Marco." Chris was reciting the roll of the missing.

"An' Florrie, Sim's woman," Rob added. "She be 'long this time—do cookin'. Dupee done caught

hisself big mouthful!"

"Them Reds." Murdock's voice lost much of its warmth. "They's gonna find out that they's got some

real mons on their tail this time! We ain't gonna be gobbled up like the hound fish gobble up their dinner

'long the reef. We gits us some teeth like a shark an' then we goes 'til we can use them right!"

There was a menace in that last, though Griff won-dered how Murdock proposed to face up to a

modern sub, probably atomically powered and armed, with only three diver's knives, a shark gun, and

the automatic that was the captain's own prized possession, those being the total sum of all armament he

had ever seen aboard the Queen.

"They's give out a warnin' "—Chris's slower drawl was a cushion to the captain's heat—"do any ship

see some-thing, they say it by the wireless. Government boat, it be all ready steam out an' help—"

Rob shook his head. His long face was all solemn dis-agreement. "No government boat ain't gonna

find no dupee. Get Papa-loi make a gris-gris charm— That's the only thing send dupee back where he

belong. I speak Le Marr—he make gris-gris for the Queen—"

Murdock shrugged. "Gris-gris—an' guns! We git them both. Then we see who bigger—this thing in

the sea or we."

"Ahhhh—" The hail echoed over the waters of the bay, and the four on the deck of the Queen turned

to look at the dilapidated boat that was approaching un-der oar power from around the point. Its two

man crew was putting on a better burst of speed than Griff had yet seen any of the islanders produce,

and their excitement was manifest. Had the mysterious jungle "tele-graph" that operated on San Isadore

spread the news of the St. John's discovery this soon—or was it something else?

"Mosely Peeks." Chris identified one of the oarsmen without much concern, Mosely being on the

bottom rung of the island's social ladder and of little conse-quence to the more solid citizens now

represented in the gathering on the Queen. "Whyfor that mon make all this noise?"

"Got him a conch pearl an' think he be rich for all days," suggested Rob. "He talk, talk pearl all the

time since Josie find that one last month."

Murdock walked to the rail. "Mosely!" His hail held the ring of command. "Whyfor you yell your

throat sore that way? What big thing you have to say, mon?"

"Dupee—!" The word echoed over the water, rising above the boom of the surf. "Done found dupee

lyin' out there!"

Rob spat disgustedly into the water. "Done got sun in the head," was his verdict. "Dupee don't go

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byAndreNortonAllCustomerReviewsAvg.CustomerReview:SeaSiege,March28,2002Reviewer:Thisisanabsolutelywonderfulbook.Excitingatalltimes.Ihaverereadthisbookmanytimes.Andwillreaditagain.--ThistextreferstoanoutofprintorunavailableSeasiege-andrenorton'ssensationalCreation,February3,2002Reviewer:Mankindsultim...

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Andre Norton - Sea Siege

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