Free Ghostboat by George E. Simpson, Neal R. Burger Page A

provide you with the implements of torture.”
    Diminsky left the base commander’s office without getting satisfaction. Once he had calmed down and sorted everything out, he realized the admiral hadn’t withheld anything. He had only been miffed.
    Diminsky stood on the dock as the TV crew were wrapping up and suspected the fine hand of Ed Frank. But he had no proof. And, as yet, no motive.
    For the rest of the afternoon, he couldn’t find Ed Frank anywhere.
    Diminsky left Washington on a 9 P.M. flight, unaware that the information from Captain Walters had arrived earlier aboard the same plane. Frank was very pleased with his tactics so far. He had the publicity he wanted—he watched it on TV at 6 P.M.—he had Diminsky out of his hair for a few days, and he had managed to spend the day hiding in Captain Melanoff’s office, poring through the mountain of documents sent by Walters.
    Frank set to work consolidating the papers and notes. By late evening, after a supper of sandwiches, Frank had decided that Hardy could be approached, though he would have to be handled with kid gloves: He appeared to be an extremely sensitive man. It would take maneuvering to get him to help out on this project. But Frank would do whatever had to be done; he felt that Jack Hardy’s assistance was crucial.
    Frank sat back and went over his notes, sipping soda water and sucking on his pipe.
    Over the years, that last night of December 11, 1944, must have become the most baffling riddle in Jack Hardy’s life. Was that riddle directly responsible for his entry into the field of oceanography? It seemed likely that he would have felt a strong urge to become involved in the one field of study that might provide answers to the mystery of the Candlefish.
    Frank rummaged for Cook’s folder and flipped through the records on the Board of Inquiry. No one on the Board had ever openly cast doubt on Hardy’s story, but the evidence seemed to suggest they had managed to get him so rattled and insecure that after a few days he was no longer sure what he believed. They never pieced together a story that satisfied Hardy, but what they settled on seemed to satisfy them.
    So Hardy had found his way into oceanography—perhaps in an attempt to justify himself, to prove his theories right. He had taken advantage of the GI Bill after the war to put himself through Scripps School of Oceanography, which in those days was little more than fledgling. He got into the field on the ground floor. He studied marine biology, marine geology, marine geography, and aided in the development of early programs for research submersibles.
    Over the years he had tried to associate himself with study projects involving marine phenomena similar to what he suspected had occurred December 11th, 1944. But nothing ever panned out. His one venture out to the infamous Bermuda Triangle, aboard the support ship Estefette in 1955, proved an abortion. He had assembled a project on the magnetic index of cross-currents and was trying to prove the existence of powerful electromagnetic field centers in that area. It was a dismal failure. The equipment refused to respond. The other scientists insisted that the instruments failed simply because there were no such electromagnetic forces. But Hardy was convinced the instrumentation had been affected by the very forces he was seeking—only he couldn’t prove it. And no one was very much interested in spending more time or money on it.
    So he had returned to Scripps and concentrated on research and the preparation of other men’s programs. His heyday was in the 1950s, when he nearly made the project team on board the Trieste, one of the first and most important of the research submersibles. The records showed that he had placed applications, had been seriously considered by the project team, but the minute the Navy got into it, Hardy was dropped.
    Frank searched further in his notes. Every time the Navy got involved in a submersible project that