Looking at it, he felt immediately that it had to be a military instrument of some kind. The Navy, he knew, was constantly firing rockets from Cape Canaveral, up in central Florida. But the longer he looked at the thing the longer he doubted that possibility. The thing was too massive, too obviously built to take the kind of vicious punishment it was receiving at the hands of the sea, to be the light, expendable shell that was a missile prototype or a high-altitude test-rocket. There were tons of metal in it, and the barnacles were thick on it. He wondered how long it had

  The edge of the sea been surging along the bottom, urged and tumbled by the great hidden forces of the ocean, drifting this way and that until this morning the first high tide had heaved it up here to lie caught and scraping on the rocks, steaming as it dried under the early sun.

  He did not know what it was, he decided finally. Rocket, torpedo, shell, bomb, or something else, whatever it was, it was valuable and important. The Navy or the Army or Air Force would need it or want it for something.

  There was nothing on it to mark it as anyone's property. If anything had ever been written or engraved on that hull, it was gone now. He began to think of how he might establish his rights until he could reach a Navy installation of some kind. The only reason he had for going to Key West was that he had a friend in the sponge-diving business down there. The friend did not know he was coming, so there was no reason not to delay for as long as this business might take him.

  He had begun with nothing more than that to urge him on but, as the afternoon grew, the sea and the thing between them had trapped him.

  The thing lay awash with half its length over the usual high-water mark, and even when he found it, at low tide, the water curled among the rocks above it. He had thought about that, too, but he had not thought that a hurricane might have taken an unexpected turn during the night, while he drove his old car without a radio to tell him so. Only when the clouds turned grey and the water swirled around his knees like a pack of hounds did he stop for a moment and look out to sea.

  He had been clearing the smaller rocks away from around the thing and piling them in an open-ended square enclosing its forward sections, and had been scraping a clean patch in the barnacles with a tyre iron. It had been his intention to make it obvious someone was working on the thing, so he could then leave it and report it with a clear claim. The few cars going by on the highway had not stopped or slowed down - there was no place to stop, with his car on the bit of shoulder, and no real reason to slow down - and after a while the cars had stopped coming entirely.

  It was that, telling him the storm had probably caused the highway to be blocked off at either end, together with the look of the sea, that made him go up to the car and try to make a hawser. And by then he could not have left the thing. It was too obvious that a man had begun a job of work here. If he left it now, it would be too plain that someone had let himself be backed down.

  If he had gotten in his car and driven away, he would not have been Dan Henry.

  The water was almost completely over the thing now. He himself was working with the waves breaking over his head, trying to dislodge him. More important, the thing was rocking and slipping out of its trap.

  The next nearest key was a third of a mile away, bigger than this one, but still uninhabited. The nearest inhabited place was Greyhound Key, where the rest stop was for the buses, and that was out of sight. It would be battened down, and probably evacuated. Dan Henry was all alone, with the highway empty above him and the sea upon him.

  He set his back once more, and pushed against the concrete block again. If he could wedge the thing, even a storm tide might not be able to take it away from him. He could untangle his home-made rope and put the fan-belt back on his car. Then he could drive away to some place until the storm died down.

  The blood roared in Dan Henry's ears, and the encrusted concrete block opened the hide over his shoulders. A coughing grunt burst out of his mouth. The block teetered - not much, but it gave a little way. Dan Henry locked his knees and braced his back with his palms, pushing his elbows against the block, and when the next wave threw its pressure into the balance he pushed once more. The block slipped suddenly away from him, and he was thrown aside by the wave, flung into the wet rocks above. But the thing was wedged. It could roll and rear as much as it wanted to, but it could not flounder back into the sea. Dan Henry lay over a rock, and wiped the back of his hand across his bloody mouth in satisfaction.

  It was over. He could get out of here now, and hole up somewhere. After the storm, he would come back and make sure it was still here. Then he would make his claim, either at one of the little Navy stations along the chain of keys, or at the big base at Boca Chica. And that would be that, except for the cheque in the mail. The bruises and breaks in his skin would heal over, and become nothing more than scars.

  He took his rope off the thing and took it apart far enough to pick out the fan-belt. He let the rest of it wash away, shredded. As he got out of the surging water at last, he scowled slightly because he wondered if the car's spark plugs weren't wet.

  It was dark now. Not quite pitch-black, for the hurricane sky to the west was banded by a last strip of sulphur-coloured light at the horizon, but dark enough so that his car was only a looming shape as he climbed up to it. Then, suddenly, the wet finish and the rusty chrome of the front bumper were sparkling with the reflections of faraway lamps. He turned to look southward down the highway, and saw a car coming. As it came nearer, its headlights let him see the clouds of spray that billowed across the road, and the leaping white heads of breakers piling up on the piers and rebounding to the level of the highway. The storm was building up even more quickly than he'd thought. He wondered what kind of damned fool was crazy enough to drive the stretches where the highway crossed open water between keys, and had his answer when a spotlight abruptly reached out and fingered him and his car. Either the state or the county police were out looking to make sure no one was trapped away from shelter.

  The police car pulled up, wet and hissing, half-blocking the highway, and the driver immediately switched on his red roof-beacon, through force of habit or training, though there was no oncoming traffic to warn. The four rotating arms of red light tracked monotonously over the road, the key, and the water. By their light, Dan Henry realized for the first time that it was raining furiously. The spotlight was switched off, and the headlights pointed away, up the highway. It was the red beacon that lit the scene and isolated the two men inside its colour.

  The officer did not get out of the car. He waited for Dan Henry to come around to his side, and only then cranked his window down halfway.

  'Trouble with the car?' he asked, hidden behind the reflection on the glass. Then he must have thought better of it, seeing Dan Henry's broken skin. He threw the door open quickly, and slid out with his hand on the bone-gripped butt of his plated revolver. He was thick-bodied, with a burly man's voice and brusqueness, and he kept his eyes narrowed. 'What's the story here, Mac ?'

  Dan Henry shook his head. 'No trouble, 1 was down on the rocks. Waves threw me around some.'

  The officer's uniform pants and leather jacket were already sodden. Water ran down his face and he wiped it out of his eyes. 'What were you doin' down there? No brains?' He watched carefully, his hand firm on his gun.

  Dan Henry had been a policeman himself. He was not surprised at the officer's attitude. A policeman was paid to be irritated by anything that didn't have a simple answer.

  'I've got something down there I was salvaging,' he said reasonably. 'Storm caught me at it and knocked me around some before I got finished.' Telling about it made him realize he was tired out. He hoped this business with the policeman would be over in a hurry, so that he could fix his car and get into its shelter. The wind was chilly, and the constant impact of water on his skin was beginning to make him numb.

  The officer risked a glance down at the thrashing surf before he brought his eyes back to Dan Henry. 'I don't see nothin'. What kind of a thing was it ? What're you carryin' that belt around for ?'

  'It's metal,' Dan Henry said. 'Big. Never seen anything just like it before. I was using the belt to hold it.'

  The officer scowled. 'What's holdin' it now? What d'you mean, big ? How big ? And how come I can't see it ?'

  'I pushed a rock behind it,' Dan Henry said patiently. 'It's damn near as big as a car. And it's under water, now.'

  'Buddy, that don't begin to sound like a likely story.' The policeman pulled his gun out of the holster and held it down alongside his thigh. 'What kind of a lookin' thing is it?'

  'Kind of like a rocket, I guess.'

  'Now, why the hell didn't you say so!' the policeman growled, relaxing just a little. 'That makes sense. It'll be one of those Navy jobs. They've got 'em droppm' in the ocean like flies. But you ain't goin' to get anything out of it, Buddy. That's government property. You're supposed to turn it in. It's your duty.'

  The edge of the sea 'I don't think so.'

  'What d'you mean, you don't think so?' The policeman's gun arm was tense again.

  'It doesn't look like a Navy rocket. Doesn't look like anybody's rocket that I know of. I said it was kind of like a rocket. Don't know what it is, for sure.' Now Dan Henry was growing angry himself. He didn't like the way things were going. He kept his attention carefully on the gun.

  'Know all about rockets, do you ?'

  'I read the papers. This thing isn't just a piece. It isn't the bottom stage or the top stage. It's one thing, and it never was part of anything bigger. And it's been in the water maybe a couple of years without getting broken up. You show me the Navy rocket that's like that.'

  The policeman looked at him. 'Maybe you're right,' he said slowly. 'Tell you what - suppose you just step over here and put my spotlight on it. Reach through the window.' He stepped back casually.

  Dan Henry reached around and switched the spot on. He swept it down across the water, a little startled to see how far up the breakers had come. Under the light, the water was a venomous green, full of foam, rain-splotched and furiously alive. A gust of wind rocked the car sharply, and the light with it. The pale beam shot over the sea before it fell back, reaching beyond the swinging cross of red from the roof beacon, and out there the waves disappeared in a mist of rain.

  He found the thing, finally, after having to hunt for it. For an instant he thought it had been swept away after all, and felt a stab of anger. But it was still there, heaving under the waves, with only the dim, broad mottling of its back near enough to the surface to be seen at all, that and a constant stirring in the water, rolling it like an animal. 'There it is.' He was surprised how relieved he felt.'See it?'

  'Yeah. Yeah, I seen enough of it,' the officer said. 'You got somethin' down there, all right.' There was a sudden hardness in his voice that had been waiting all along for him to make the decision that would bring it completely out. 'I got my gun on you, buddy. Just step back from that car easy. Anybody foolin' around out here in a hurricane must want some thin' awful bad. If that somethin's a Navy rocket, I guess I know what kind of a son of a bitch that would be.'

  'Jesus Christ,' Dan Henry whispered to himself. He was angry with the kind of rage that is almost a pleasure. And not because the cop thought he was a Commie, either, Dan Henry suddenly realized, but because he persisted in not-understanding about the rocket. Or whatever it was.

  He turned around with a jump. The fan-belt in his hand whipped out with all the strength in his arm and all the snap in his wrist, and snatched the cop's gun out of his hand. It skittered across the wet concrete of the highway, and Dan Henry pounced after it. He scooped it up and crouched with the muzzle pointed dead at the cop's belly.

  'Back off,' he said. 'Back off. You're not takin' that thing away from me. I sweated blood to hang on to it, and you're not goin' to come along and throw me in jail to get it away.'

  The cop retreated, his hands up without his being told, and waited for his chance. Dan Henry backed him up the highway until the cop was past the cars, and opened the door of his own car. He threw the gun inside, together with the belt. He slammed the door and said, 'You can get that back later. Or you can try and take it away from me now, barehanded.' He was shaking with the tension in his bunched shoulders, and his arms were open wide. He was crouched, his chest deep as his lungs hunted for more and more oxygen to wash the rush of blood his heart was driving through his veins. The red flood of beacon on the police car swept over him in regular flashes.

  Til wait,' the cop said.

  'Now,' Dan Henry said, 'I want to use your radio. I want you to call in and report this. Only I want you to report it to the Navy before you call your headquarters.'

  The cop looked at him with a puzzled scowl. 'You on the level ?' he asked, and Dan Henry could see him wondering if he hadn't made a mistake, somewhere, in his thinking about what was going on here. But Dan Henry had no more time for him. The wind was a steady pressure that made him brace his left leg hard against it.

  The water flying across the highway was coming in solid chunks, instead of spray, and the two cars were rocking on their springs. The rain was streaming over them, leaving the officer's jacket a baggy, clinging mess. The sea was smashing violently into the highway piers, thundering to the wind's howl, and even here on solid ground the shock of the impacts was coming up through Dan Henry's bones.

  His throat was raw. Bit by bit, he and the officer had had to raise their voices until they had been shouting at each other without realizing it. 'Get in the car and do it!' he yelled, and the officer came forward as he backed away to give him room.

  The policeman got into his car, with Dan Henry standing watchfully a little behind the open door-frame, and switched on his radio. 'Tell them where we are,' Dan Henry said. 'Tell them my name - Daniel Morris Henry - tell them what I said about it's not being one of their rockets - and tell them I'm claiming salvage rights. Then you tell them the rest any way you see it.'

  The officer turned the dials away from their usual settings. After a minute, he picked his microphone out of the dashboard hanger and began calling Boca Chica in a stubborn voice. At intervals, he said, 'Over,' and threw the Receive switch. They heard the peculiar, grating crackle of radiotelephone static, trapped in the speaker. And only that.

  'Look, buddy,' the policeman said at last, 'we're not goin' to get any answer. Not if we ain't got one by now. Boca Chica radio may be knocked out. Or maybe my transmitter's shorted, with all this wet. Could be anything.' He jerked his head toward the water. 'How much longer you want us to stay out here?' Probably because he had seen many hurricanes, he was beginning to grow nervous.

  Try it again,' Dan Henry said. He watched the officer closely, and couldn't see him doing anything wrong. Dan Henry didn't know the Boca Chica frequency; that was where the trouble might be. But he'd used a police radio often enough so that any other trick wouldn't have gotten by him.

  The officer called Boca Chica for another five minutes. Then he stopped again. 'No dice. Look, buddy, you've had it. Maybe you're just a guy looking for some salvage money, like you say you are. Maybe not. But there's goin' to be waves coming across this road in a little while. Why don't we get out of here and straighten things out when this blows over ?'

  Dan Henry set his jaw. 'Get the vibrator out of that radio. Do it.' Now he had no choice. If he went with the cop, that was that. They'd throw him in some jail for resisting arrest and assaulting an officer, and keep him there until they were good and ready to let him out. By then, whatever happened to the thing down here, somebody would have figured out some way to get that Navy cheque instead of him. The only thing to do was to cripple the cop's radio and send him down the highway until he reached a phone. There was no guarantee that the radio wouldn't work on the police frequency.

  Maybe the cop would call the Navy right after he called his headquarters. Or maybe, even if he didn't, some higher brass at the headquarters would report to the Navy. Either way - if you believed it was a Navy rocket or if you didn't - it was government business. Then, maybe, the Navy would get here before the cops did. Or soon enough afterward so he'd still be here to talk to them. Once he got taken away from here, that chance was gone. On that decision, he was ready to cling to a hundred-foot key in the middle of an Atlantic hurricane. 'Let's have that vibrator.

  Right now.'

  The officer looked at him, and reached under the dash. He fumbled in the narrow space where the radio hung, and pulled the sealed aluminium cylinder out of its socket. But he was getting ready to grab for Dan Henry if he could reach him quickly

  enough.

  'Okay,' Dan Henry said, 'drop it on the road and clear out of here. You can get it back along with your gun. And just in case you have some brains in your head, when you get to a phone, call

  the Na—'

  The policeman had dropped the vibrator, and the wind had rolled it undej- Dan Henry's Chevrolet. Dan Henry had been in the act of letting the police car door close, when a thread of brilliant violet fire punched up from the water, through the red light, up through the rain, up through the black clouds, and out to the stars beyond.

  'There's something in that thing!' the officer blurted.

  Dan Henry threw the door shut. 'Get out of here, man!'

  Down in the drowned rocks, an arc hissed between the two struts in the thing's nose. The water leaped and bubbled around it but, for all the breakers could do, the blaze of light still illuminated the thing and the rocks it ground against, turning the sea transparent; and from the crown of the arc the thin violet column pointed without wavering, without dispersing, straight as a line drawn from hell to heaven.

  The police car's tyres smoked and spun on the pavement. 'I'll get help,' the officer shouted over the squeal and the roar of his engine. Then he had traction and the car shot away, headlights slashing, glimmering in the rain and the spray, lurching from side to side under the wind's hammer, roof beacon turning at its unvarying pace, the siren's howl lost in the boom of the water. And Dan Henry was left in the violet-lanced darkness.

 

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