Nevil Shute - On The Beach

The liaison officer said, "But that must mean there’s somebody alive up there."

"It’s just a possibility. You can’t have radio without power, and that means starting up some kind of a motor. A big motor, to run a big station with global range. But—I don’t know. You’d think a guy who could start up an outfit of that size and run it—you’d think he’d know Morse code. Even if he had to spell it out two words a minute with the book in front of him."

"Do you think we’re going there?"

"Could be. It was one of the points they wanted in-formation on way back last October. They wanted all the information on the U.S. radio stations that we had."

"Did you have anything that helped?"

Dwight shook his head. "Only the U. S. Navy stations. Very little on the Air Force or the Army stations. Practically nothing on the civil stations. There’s more radio on the West Coast than you could shake a stick at."

That afternoon they strolled down to the beach and bathed, leaving Mary with the baby at the house. Lying on the warm sand with the two men, Moira asked, "Dwight, where is Swordfish now? Is she coming here?"

"I haven’t heard it," he replied. "The last I heard she was in Montevideo.

"She could turn up here, any time," said Peter Holmes. "She’s got the range."

The American nodded. "That’s so. Maybe they’ll send her over here one day with mail or passengers. Diplomats, or something."

"Where is Montevideo?" asked the girl. "I ought to know that, but I don’t."

Dwight said, "It’s in Uruguay, on the east side of South America. Way down towards the bottom."

"I thought you said she was at Rio de Janeiro. Isn’t that in Brazil?"

He nodded. "That was when she made her cruise up in the North Atlantic. She was based on Rio then. But after that they moved down into Uruguay."

"Was that because of radiation?"

"Uh-huh."

Peter said, "I don’t know that it’s got there yet. It may have done. They’ve not said anything upon the radio. It’s just about on the tropic, isn’t it?"

"That’s right," said Dwight. "Like Rockhampton." The girl asked, "Have they got it in Rockhampton?" "I haven’t heard that they have," said Peter. "It said on the wireless this morning that they’ve got it at Salisbury, in Southern Rhodesia. I think that’s a bit further north."

"I think it is," said the captain. "It’s in the middle of a land mass, too, and that might make a difference. These other places that we’re talking about—they’re all on a coast."

"Isn’t Alice Springs just about on the tropic?"

"It might be. I wouldn’t know. That’s in the middle of a land mass, too, of course."

The girl asked, "Does it go quicker down a coast than in the middle?"

Dwight shook his head. "I wouldn’t know. I don’t think they’ve got any evidence on that, one way or the other."

Peter laughed. "They’ll know by the time it gets here. Then they can etch it on the glass."

The girl wrinkled her brows. "Etch it on the glass?"

"Hadn’t you heard about that one?" She shook her head.

"John Osborne told me about it, yesterday," he said.

"It seems that somebody in C.S.I.R.O. is getting busy with a history, about what’s happened to us. They do it on glass bricks. They etch it on the glass and then they fuse another brick down on the top of it in some way, so that the writing’s in the middle."

Dwight turned upon his elbow, interested. "I hadn’t heard of that. What are they going to do with them?"

"Put them up on top of Mount Kosciusko," Peter said.

"It’s the highest peak in Australia. If ever the world gets inhabited again they must go there sometime. And it’s not so high as to be inaccessible."

"Well, what do you know? They’re really doing that, are they?"

"So John says. They’ve got a sort of concrete cellar made up there. Like in the Pyramids."

The girl asked, "But how long is this history?"

"I don’t know. I don’t think it can be very long. They’re doing it with pages out of books, though, too. Sealing them in between sheets of thick glass."

"But these people who come after," the girl said. "They won’t know how to read our stuff. They may... animals."

"I believe they’ve gone to a lot of trouble about that. First steps in reading. Picture of a cat, and then C-A-T and all that sort of thing. John said that was about all that they’d got finished so far." He paused. "I suppose it’s something to do," he said thoughtfully. "Keeps the wise men out of mischief."

"A picture of a cat won’t do them much good," Moira remarked. "There won’t be any cats. They won’t know what a cat is."

"A picture of a fish might be better," said Dwight. "F-I-S-H. Or—say—a picture of a sea gull."

"You’re getting into awful spelling difficulties."

The girl turned to Peter curiously. "What sort of books are they preserving? All about how to make the cobalt bomb?"

"God forbid." They laughed. "I don’t know what they’re doing. I should think a copy of the Encyclopedia Britannica would make a good kickoff, but there’s an awful lot of it. I really don’t know what they’re doing. John Osborne might know—or he could find out."

"Just idle curiosity," she said. "It won’t affect you or me." She stared at him in mock consternation. "Don’t tell me they’re preserving any of the newspapers. I just couldn’t bear it."

"I shouldn’t think so," he replied. "They’re not as crazy as that."

Dwight sat up on the sand. "All this beautiful warm water going to waste," he remarked. "I think we ought to use it."

Moira stood up. "Make the most of it," she agreed. "There’s not much of it left."

Peter yawned. "You two go and use the water. I’ll use the sun."

They left him lying on the beach and went into the sea together. As they swam out she said, "You’re pretty fast in the water, aren’t you?"

He paused, treading water beside her. "I used to swim quite a lot when I was younger. I swam for the Academy against West Point one time."

She nodded. "I thought you were something like that. Do you swim much now?"

He shook his head. "Not in races. That’s a thing you have to give up pretty soon, unless you’ve got the time to do a lot of it, and keep in training." He laughed. "I think the water’s colder now than when I was a boy. Not here, of course. I mean, in Mystic."

"Were you born in Mystic?" she asked.

He shook his head. "I was born on Long Island Sound, but not at Mystic. A place called Westport. My Dad’s a doctor there. He was a navy surgeon in the First World War, and then he got this practice in Westport."

"Is that on the sea?"

He nodded. "Swimming and sailing and fishing. That’s the way it was when I was a boy."

"How old are you, Dwight?"

"I’m thirty-three. How old are you?"

"What a rude question! I’m twenty-four." She paused. "Does Sharon come from Westport, too?"

"In a way," he said. "Her Dad’s a lawyer in New York City, lives in an apartment on West 84th Street, near the park. They have a summer home at Westport."

"So you met her there."

He nodded. "Boy meets girl."

"You must have married quite young."

"Just after graduation," he replied. "I was twenty-two, an ensign on the Franklin. Sharon was nineteen; she never finished college. We’d made our minds up more than a year before. Our folks got together when they saw that we weren’t going to change, and they decided that they’d better stake us for a while." He paused. "Her Dad was mighty nice about it," he said quietly. "We could have gone on until we got some money somehow, but they thought it wasn’t doing either of us any good. So they let us get married."

"They gave you an allowance."

"That’s right. We only needed it three or four years, and then an aunt died and I got promoted, and we were all set."