The Wanderer

Agreement on the coffee suggestion was unanimous. Everybody was tired and glad to sit or flop on the platform, up off the gritty sand. In their midst on the cot was Ray Hanks, with his leg wrapped and taped until it looked, in Wojtowicz’s words, like a section of sewer pipe. But the injured man was resting tolerably after being dosed with the rest of Doc’s whiskey — and with the Ramrod keeping a light “healing touch” on his hip.

Ida poured first for the Hixons, who were sitting side by side now, he with his arm around her. They looked at each other, then touched cups rather solemnly. It set a tone. There was something solemn about them all as they started to sip their last scant cups of brewed coffee. As Hunter had divined earlier, each in his way felt that this place was home and dreaded the moment of departure. Here on the beach there were no hills to fall, no buildings to collapse and burn, no gas pipes to crack and flare hot yellow, or wires to fall and flash blindingly. (True, there was the beach house, looking lopsided now with one wall knocked askew by the quake, but it was dark and low and boarded up, and so could be ignored.) There were no strangers monitoring their actions, no victims to enjoin their aid. Static choked what messages of catastrophe, what do’s and don’t’s, what police and Red Cross and Civilian Defense directives must be crowding the airwaves. It was good to dream of just staying here, a compatible little beach colony — just staying here and watching the Wanderer, which was sinking and showing toward the ocean, the moon again eclipsed behind it and the planet itself showing a face like that of a bull charging purple head on, the yellow target-center half out of sight and a larger, lower yellow round creeping into view. By chance, or conceivably by intention, two small yellow ovals made eyes. Doddsy set down his coffee cup to sketch it.

FIVE HOURS

“El toro,” Margo said.

Rama Joan said: “The head of an octopus. The Cretans drew it just so on their vases.”

“But we’re going to have to get out of here — and in three or four hours,” Doc said suddenly, as if aware of the general, unstated dream of staying forever on the beach. “The tide.”

Hunter frowned at him warningly and Doc hastened to say: “Now, don’t anybody get me wrong — we’re in no danger right now, in fact, just the opposite. The high-water interval here is about ten hours, which means a low tide comes about four hours after the moon’s at the top of the sky. In other words, in about an hour the tide’ll be dead low. See how far away the edge of the surf is? That leaves us ample time for a good rest — which I for one fully intend to take.”

“But whaddya mean, Doc, the tide?” Wojtowicz asked.

Again Hunter frowned and shook his head slightly.

Doc said to Hunter: “No, Ross, I think we better face up to it now when we’ve got a breathing space.” Then, turning toward Wojtowicz: “You know of course how the moon — the mass of the moon — is the main cause of the tides? Well, now we’ve got the Wanderer out there. It’s about the same place as the moon, so we can expect the tides to have about the same general pattern as before.”

“That’s good,” Wojtowicz said. “For a minute you had me scared.”

But most of the others were looking at Doc now and they weren’t smiling. He sighed and said: “However, judging from the way it’s captured the moon, the Wanderer must have a mass about as great as Earth — in other words, a mass eighty times that of the moon.”

There was a rather long silence. The one word “eighty” hung in the air like a gray rock, getting bigger and solider every second. Only the Ramrod and his two women didn’t seem greatly concerned. Hunter was frowning worriedly, watching reactions. Rama Joan, her lap once more a pillow for her sleeping daughter, suddenly smiled at Doc warmly. Mrs. Hixon put out her hands a little as if to say, “But…” Her husband drew them down to her lap and hugged her a little tighter as he nodded solemnly at Doc. Paul did the same, at last putting an arm around Margo. The Little Man pocketed his notebook and folded his arms.

Doc looked back at them all with a rather sorrowful, thoughtful grin.

It was young Harry McHeath who finally put it into words.

“You mean, Mr. Brecht, that although the tides will be coming at the same times and in the same general way as before, they’ll be… eighty times bigger?”

“He didn’t say that!” Hunter interposed hotly. “Rudy, you’re not allowing for the age of the tides. We should have a day’s grace in any case. Besides that, tides are a resonance phenomenon — it should take quite a while for the oceanic tidal bands to get to vibrating in a larger amplitude.”