Man From Atlantis Read online

  “Just the closest place where we can get to the water,” Elizabeth said, still holding the man’s wrist and looking at her watch.

  “That’d be ole Burger’s beach.” The driver nodded and pushed down on the accelerator, not easing off even to make a sharp left turn.

  The other attendant leaned over to the driver and said quietly, “Ain’t that where we picked this fellow up?”

  “Yup.”

  “Well, what the hell?”

  “Maybe they’re throwin’ him back. Maybe he’s too small a catch.”

  “Looks big enough to me.”

  They chuckled softly.

  The driver maneuvered the ambulance skillfully as he sped toward the ocean. Drivers of cars, seeing the flashing red lights and hearing the siren, pulled to the curbs at either side as the ambulance whizzed by. They approached a red light at an intersection. Two cars, having the green, began to enter the intersection from either side.

  “Watch it,” one attendant said.

  “Got it,” the driver said.

  At sixty miles per hour, the ambulance burst through the gap between the two cars, missing each by only a foot.

  The driver spun the wheel to the left, careening around a corner, bumping the curb slightly.

  “That’s one,” said his partner.

  The driver swung into a right turn, brushing the other curb.

  “That’s two.”

  “You ain’t never gonna see me hit three.”

  They sped past darkened houses and apartment buildings, into a neighborhood of single-story ocean-front homes. The driver swung to the left smoothly, the tires whining. Then he slowed as they passed an empty guard shack and wheeled into the big, empty, oceanfront parking lot. He glanced into the mirror. “Here?”

  “Right to the water,” Elizabeth barked. “Close as you can get.”

  “I’ll put the wheels right in the water for you, if you want.”

  “I want.”

  He skidded the ambulance into a 180-degree turn and headed for a break in the fence where the boardwallc went through. They slipped through the fence with inches to spare, bumped across a wide strip of grass, and, with the two left wheels on the boardwalk, dipped down toward the surf. The ambulance slid sideways to a stop with the waves lapping over the wheels.

  “Now what?” the driver asked.

  “Just help us get him out of here,” Elizabeth said.

  The attendants went around to the back and opened the doors. They pulled the transporter out and lowered it into the edge of the water.

  Elizabeth jumped down,, followed by Doug.

  “Now you guys can just back off. We’ll handle it from here.”

  The attendants backed away from the water, looking down at their soggy shoes, and stood in the sand several yards away.

  Elizabeth and Doug pulled the transporter until the water reached their thighs. Then they unbuckled the man and slid him off into the water, face down.

  Doug helped Elizabeth mechanically, as if in a trance. Dimly he knew what she was doing, dimly he knew why, but his mind refused to accept it fully. He watched her put her hands under the man’s shoulders.

  She pulled him away. “I’ll take it from here, Doug.”

  She dragged the man further out, her chiffon gown darkening in the water.

  The two attendants gaped at the scene.

  “She’s drowning the guy.”

  “Sure looks that way.”

  “Shouldn’t we do somethin’?”

  “Nope. Must be Navy business. And keep your mouth shut about it too, just like the resident said back at the hospital.”

  “I ain’t tellin’ nobody. I don’t even believe what I see.”

  Elizabeth was waist-deep in the water now, and waves splashed over her face. Her hair streamed dark and wet over her shoulders. She continued pulling the man forward under the water, now circling with him. She struggled, slow step by slow step, gagging occasionally as the waves hit her, but never ceasing to drag the man forward under the water, much as one might propel a sick shark to force water through its gills.

  For several minutes she moved in a circular path, looking down at the man between waves. Doug watched dumbly from nearer the shore. The attendants on the beach stood rock still and staring.

  For a time her legs ached, then they became numb. She sucked for breath in the brief spaces between waves, holding her breath when they hit her. Her eyes were fogged with exhaustion and salt spray. The man was heavy. Her hands cramped under his arms. She felt him slipping gradually from her.

  She closed her eyes and tried to hold the weight. She kept plodding in a circle.

  She was so weary that at first she didn’t notice what was happening. It only slowly dawned on her that the man was no longer slipping through her hands. She was able to hold him firmly.

  He was lighter.

  She stared down at him, blinking the spray out of her eyes. He was much lighter now. His body was moving, the chest expanding and contracting with regularity.

  More and more it became clear to her: he was breathing, under the water.

  His weight became nothing. Cautiously, slowly, she slid her hands from him. He floated beside her, just under the surface, his body edging forward with slight eely undulations. He moved around her. She turned to follow him with her eyes.

  He moved with painful slowness, the undulations of his body barely perceptible. It took him two full minutes to make one complete revolution around her.

  Then for some moments he lay still in the water before her. Only then did she become conscious of the sounds of the waves and a few hovering gulls.

  She dared not touch him; she could see that he was breathing, and beyond restoring that ability to him, she didn’t know what she should do.

  At last he rolled languorously over and faced her through the few inches of water above him. His eyes were open, and she saw them for the first time. His strange green metallic eyes were unblinking. The ebb and flow of the waves over him distorted Elizabeth’s view of his face.

  They stared at each other in this way for a time, Elizabeth oblivious to the waves washing over her. His face showed no emotion, only a blank expression. She could see that he was breathing steadily, and with strength. Gradually she began to smile at him. She felt herself smile as if it were an alien maneuver.

  He did not smile. Nor did he blink or move his face at all. He just stared at her.

  But then he moved a hand. He raised it slowly until it broke the surface. It was no longer black. He extended it up to her. Carefully she took it in her own. She did not try to pull him up, nor did he exert any force on her. He lay just under the water looking at her while she held his hand and smiled.

  His hand was warm. Unconsciously she moved her thumb down to cover his pulse. It beat firmly. She felt herself laughing with joy.

  She didn’t even notice that between his fingers were small tissues of skin that webbed the fingers together.

  She let him lie in the water for a long time. Then she gave his hand a gentle tug upward. He resisted, and she understood. He needed more time.

  The first light of dawn was appearing over the Mis when she pulled gently on him again. This time he allowed her to pull his arm up. He dropped his feet to the bottom and his head emerged from the water. The tide was low. Water drained off his well-muscled shoulders and chest.

  She led him slowly out of the water and up onto the beach. His walk was unsteady, and he leaned on her for support.

  She and Doug—who by then had recovered his wits—helped him into the ambulance, and he lay down on the transporter.

  “Where to, ma’am?” the driver asked, his voice shaky.

  “Undersea Center. You know where that is?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He started the ambulance and churned back up the beach and through the parking lot onto the road.

  “Listen, fellows,” Doug crouched over their seatback, “what happened here is not public business. It’s Navy. You know the slogan, w
hat you hear here, what you see here...”

  “Stays here. Yes sir. We know it. We’re secure.”

  “You better be. She’s a general, you know.”

  “In the Navy?”

  “Well, I’m not authorized to give you her real rank.”

  “Yes sir. We’ll be at the center in a minute. Should I hit the siren?”

  “No. And no lights. Just nice and easy.”

  “You got it.”

  chapter 2

  The Naval Undersea Center was a low, sprawling white complex of buildings at the side of a narrow, manmade ship channel. Two gray research vessels, bristling with electronic gear and winches and davits, were moored at the dock. Surrounding the buildings and their neatly tended yard was a twelve-foot, heavy-gauge chain-link fence. Two guards manned the entrance gate.

  Inside the complex, in the various laboratories and water tanks, Elizabeth spent several days in near-total secrecy with her silent, newfound partner. She watched him swim and walk and exercise, monitoring his every movement and life system with instruments, scopes, and computers. She monitored him both awake and asleep, sleeping little herself, and never leaving the Center.

  Few of the ranking officers knew what she was doing, even fewer knew any details of her work. Only two assistants aided her, but no one other than she knew everything she was working on. The arrangement was—and the Center brass trusted her implicitly, given her dedication and results over recent years—that when she was ready to report, she would report. And even then she would report only to those few she decided should hear the results of her testing of this strange man.

  When she wasn’t watching the man perform, or keeping her eye on the banks of monitors, she immersed herself in books. She kept notes in a shorthand only she could decipher.

  That she was tired, near exhaustion, never occurred to her. For she was deeply, profoundly excited. She didn’t know what her discoveries would mean to anybody, but she knew they would be important.

  She wasn’t quite sure herself why she insisted on such secrecy. It just seemed proper to keep all this under wraps at least until she knew what they were dealing with. And fortunately she didn’t have to defend her demand for secrecy, because the Navy was most comfortable with secrecy, regardless of what it concerned. She thought of the Navy’s attitude as being one craving not so much secrecy as privacy, like a club of experts who preferred to go about their work without kibitzers or meddlers or questioners.

  She knew that some people thought she didn’t like the Navy, or that it frustrated her. That wasn’t true at all. It was just that the Navy wasn’t her first love—research was. And where else but in the Navy could she have the opportunity to do the things she did? With the water-man, for example?

  After her many days with him and the monitoring machines, she knew more about this “thing” or “being” or “man” than he probably knew about himself. She didn’t know what to call him. “Thing” and “being” were far too cold. “Person” didn’t quite fit either, because, although many of his systems were entirely human, some—most clearly the respiratory system—were not at all.

  “Man” would be partially accurate. At least he looked like a man. He was six-feet one-inch tall, and weighed 182½ pounds. His muscles were long and firm, like—naturally enough—a swimmer’s.

  Except for the misleading suggestions of the word, Elizabeth would have described him as “handsome.” Such a description was not scientific, however, so she kept that to herself. But he was: a strong face with fine, regular features and a square jaw; a body she would have described, unscientifically, as “perfect.”

  But there were other aspects of his looks that quickly set him apart from an ordinary human male. He had a nice head of black hair, but no hair at all on the rest of his body. His skin was smooth as a baby’s, but much tougher.

  Two physical qualities in particular made him obviously different. First and most noticeable were his eyes. They were, in a way, captivating, magnetic, haunting, intimidating. They were also, except for the small white spots in their centers, entirely green, with no apparent white sclera at all. If the white spots were pupils, Elizabeth’s ophthalmoscope detected no contractions or dilations to accommodate changes in light—not when he was out of the water, in any case. The tear ducts were incompletely developed, by human standards. He didn’t blink often and the eyes tended to dry out quickly when he wasn’t submerged in the pool.

  His eyes, like his muscles and his respiratory system, functioned best under water.

  And the other externai physical feature that distinguished him was even more patently aquatic: the webbing on his hands and feet.

  The webbing between his fingers and toes was not as extensive as a duck’s. The tissue extended only halfway to his first knuckles, and was not immediately noticeable unless he spread his fingers wide. Under ordinary circumstances on land, a person not looking for the webbing would probably not notice it.

  On land, where his gill-like respiratory system could tolerate his breathing for a few hours at a time, he moved about like a man, with strength and agility about normal for a man of his build and condition. But under water he was something else.

  He didn’t really swim as humans swim. He glided like an eel, undulating, with his arms tight to his sides and his legs together. And he moved at clearly inhuman speed. In the water, he displayed an agility and flexibility that suggested a body containing not firm bones but softer cartilage. That was an illusion, Elizabeth knew, for his body contained bones just like any human’s. His style of swimming or gliding was not something he could have learned, but must have been innate. Like his strength. As normal as his strength was on land, under water he had enormous power. He could lift and pull tremendous weights.

  Of all the things that puzzled Elizabeth, the difference between his physical abilities on land and in the water was not the most puzzling. The matter that intrigued her abone all else was something to which she had no clue at all: where had he come from?

  She had no clue because he never spoke. Whether or not he had some method for underwater communication she couldn’t say; her instruments detected no vocal sounds. Still, he seemed to have quite human vocal equipment. Obviously he heard her speak, and he seemed to be able to follow her instructions. She didn’t know if he could speak or not, or if he could, why he didn’t.

  But in so many ways he seemed like a human man that Elizabeth had to control her frustrations. Occasionally she found herself losing patience with him, perceiving him as just a man too stubborn to answer her. But for all that, he was cooperative, and terribly interesting.

  For lack of any better terms, she applied those normal masculine ones—”he” and “him” and so forth —in referring to this tantalizing new creature, and came to think of him as more a human man than anything else, a man with highly individual characteristics, to be sure, a man so different that the Navy stamped him in his entirety as “classified.”

  She named him Mark Harris. She had determined to give him an unmistakably human name, one with no subtle aquatic implications; and a name which had personal associations for her. Mark was what she had always thought she would name a son, if she had one. She had lost interest in having a son when she had lost interest in getting married—which was when she realized her total involvement in her work, and recognized the fact that she could probably never devote herself entirely to one man.

  Harris was the last man she had considered marrying, when she was in college. He was a Finnish lad from Connecticut, Harjis Pekkanen, whom everybody called “Harris.” He was handsome and appealing and exciting in many ways, but he was weak and self-destructive. He wanted to be a writer, which was fine with her, but he would always start things he could not complete, or he would quit when success was near. She had too positive an attitude to put up with that, too many things she wanted to accomplish, and believed she could accomplish to be dragged down by his negative attitude.

  She had become more and more absorbed by medica
l and scientific research. And while she still enjoyed the company of men, they were, like the Navy, not her primary interest.

  Mark Harris was the exception. To the extent that he was a “man,” a man was now what dominated her interest.

  She was under increasing pressure to reveal what she had discovered about Mark Harris. Those few Navy brass who had an inkling of what she was researching were anxious to learn about her discoveries. Curiosity was part of that; ego was a larger part. Ranking officers didn’t like to think that something important was going on in their labs without their advice and control.

  Elizabeth felt she could have gone on with her private research for month. Her knowledge was still advancing in small increments. But a major, crucial set of facts still eluded her and her computers and machinery and monitors: who was Mark Harris really? Where did he come from? How did such a man-creature evolve?

  Finally she sent word to Admiral Dewey Pierce—of whose domain the Undersea Center was part—in Washington, telling him that she was ready to give a presentation of her work to date.

  In the conference room, Admiral Pierce, a whitehaired, white-bearded, gimlet-eyed man of fifty, sat in a high-back leather swivel chair, an aide standing behind him, as Elizabeth narrated color slides.

  Still photographs showed Mark in the water and walking around the pool.

  “... After the second week he was able to leave the pool for short periods of time,” she said, “and gradually those periods could be extended by several minutes. His general physical recovery and ability to perform under water were remarkable. It took somewhat longer for him to regain his equilibrium on land, and he was often reluctant to come out of the pool. For the most part, I deferred to his own inclinations to remain under water, both to gain his trust and because I supposed he knew best what he needed for being nursed back to health.”

  Then there were shots of Mark bare-chested in Navy work pants, being hooked onto testing machines—EKG, EEG, breathing apparatuses, exercise equipment.

  “...Then we began physiological studies. In these shots he is hard at work. But you will notice he doesn’t show ordinary signs of exertion. He doesn’t sweat, for example. Still, he did get tired, as you might expect.”