But their deployment slowed and came to a halt. I think they, like myself, must instantly have missed the racketing of the jets. I looked up. The sky, a pale blue, with slowly moving clouds in which I was aware of greenish tints, was utterly empty of the four jets which were supposed to support our maneuver.
I whirled and looked back. Where the Caribbean had been there was a huge sprawl of desert, blinding in the midday sun, stretching away southward to a semicircle of brooding hills. I judged their crests to be at least four thousand feet high. And where those crests were, five minutes before, the Caribbean had been—fully a mile deep under the stern of the Odyssey! Where the Odyssey might now be I hadn't the slightest idea.
Just before we hit the beach there had been thickets of broad-leaved squatty trees behind the ridges of sand, into which the marines had been headed for concealment. Now there was nothing of the kind. There was nothing but sand and silence—silence so deep that even breathing broke it into brittle bits.
The three LCVP's were still with us, high and dry on the sand in the middle of the desert. Each was manned by a coxswain and a radioman. These six men—they were sailors, of course—were now sitting in their positions aboard the three crafts, like statues; as if they had been fossilized by the suddenness of whatever had happened.
At first I thought something was wrong with me. Then the marines became uncertain, and when marines are uncertain the situation is definitely out of hand. If I was seeing things that weren't there, so were seventy-four other marines and six sailors.
Captain Haggerty was giving the "assemble" signal and pointing to me. Even before he gave it the marines were walking slowly toward me, their weapons at ready, their eyes taking in all there was to see. I moved back to the central landing craft.
"My radio is dead," I called. "How about yours?"
"Nothing, sir. They couldn't be deader on Judgment Day!"
I leaned against a corner of the LCVP and waited for the men to assemble. Nobody said anything. They just looked at me. I felt helpless.
"First," I said, "let's make a check. I want to be sure I haven't gone completely daft! If what I say is true, say 'Aye, aye!' Got it?"