The Atlantic Abomination Read Online Free PDF Page B

often—even in girls who seemed at first contact vivacious, intelligent, interesting to be with—that he had taken to saving himself the money and trouble involved in finding out its nature.
    But the story she had told him while waiting for Luke had suddenly made her human in his eyes.
    A door opened. It was dark, but Mary wore her plain white shirt and skirt and it made her instantly recognizable. She stood out of the darkness near the bows like a vague whitestatue, leaning on the rail and looking at the traces of phosphorescence in the sea.
    Peter walked quietly toward her and leaned on the rail at her side. She acknowledged his presence with a turn of her head, and went back to staring at the water.
    He didn’t say anything. He let his hand first brush and then close around hers, and she returned his inquiring pressure with a squeeze. At length she spoke.
    “It was great of you to go out looking for Luke that way.”
    “What the hell did you expect me to do?” said Peter. “Sit in the ’nef and bobble off back to the surface singing songs?”
    She managed a courtesy laugh. It sounded forced. “No. I —well, I guess I might as well say it. I didn’t try very hard to persuade you not to, because I was trying like hell not to push for the lock and go hunting myself.”
    “I understand,” said Peter as gently as he could. “Coming on top of having told me that story, when the whole thing was fresh in your mind. …”
    She nodded. She was still gazing at the water. “That made it worse, of course.”
    “That story you told me,” Peter ventured. “You tell it often?”
    “Almost never. I told it to the Chief one time, when he was ribbing me about a student who was panting at my heels. He said I had no business in Atlantic, that I ought to be in a Park Avenue apartment. No, not often.”
    “And … to Luke?”
    “No.” The word was dry and isolated, as though cut off. “No. And now I never cant” Abruptly she had turned towards him, and sobs were shaking her while he comforted her as he had done in the ’nef when they left the site of Luke’s disaster. It felt better to be doing it in the open air.
    Peter said gently, “You really carried a torch for that guy, didn’t you? Hidden under a bushel, too.”
    She pulled away from him, her face suddenly still, her eyes searching his face. “You said you understood,” she breathed. “Only you don’t. You don’t at all!”
    While Peter was still standing with his mouth half open and hunting for a reply, the mess call sounded. Mary seized it as a cue to turn on her heel and walk away.
    That incomprehensible episode was stuck in his mind next noon, getting between him and the paper on which he was trying to compose the statement about Luke which the Chief had asked him for. He had firmly dismissed it for the tenth time and was renewing his attack when there was a sudden flurry of activity. Eloise and Dick weren’t due back for hours yet. He got up and went out, bumping into First Officer Ellington almost before he had left the doorway.
    “Hey! What gives?”
    “The ’nef’s surfacing,” Ellington answered. “I got it on sonar a couple of minutes back. They’re ahead of schedule, and that means trouble, most likely. Or something epoch-making in the way of discoveries, which they couldn’t sit on any longer. Excuse me.”
    Ellington was right. On both counts. How right, he did not learn for some time.
    There seemed to be nothing wrong with the ’nef as it progressed to the surface. The launch went skimming toward its point of arrival, Platt driving with all his test and repair equipment beside him. But as it could be seen that the ’nef was under perfect control, he slowed and ran a puzzled circle before closing in. The trouble must be with Dick or Eloise, not the mechanism.
    But two suited figures duly broke surface beside the ’nef, which was normal.
    And a third followed them. The third looked like—Luke.
    No. Correction. It
was
Luke!

VI
    T