The Incredible Tide

THE INCREDIBLE TIDE

WESTMINSTER BOOKS BY ALEXANDER KEY Sprockets—A Little Robot Rivets and Sprockets Bolts—A Robot Dog The Forgotten Door Mystery of the Sassafras Chair Escape to Witch Mountain The Golden Enemy The Incredible Tide

BY

ALEXANDER KEY

THE WESTMINSTER PRESS PHILADELPHIA

COPYRIGHT © MCMLXX ALEXANDER KEY

CONTENTS
1. SURVIVOR 5 13 19 28 35 45 53 62 69 74 82 90 2.SECRET 3. BRAND 4. ORLO 5. PATCH 6. DANGER 7. FLIGHT 8. SAIL 9. CHASE 10. ISLET 11. LOST

All rights reserved—no part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review in magazine or newspaper. STANDARD BOOK NO. 664-3247-3 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NO. 70-100952BOOK DESIGN BY DOROTHY ALDEN SMITH

12. GUIDE

PUBLISHED BY THE WESTMINSTER PRESS PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA ® PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

1. Survivor

Pag. 3

To a people unknown, of a land long lost – for surely what is written here has happened before. It depends upon us alone whether it is a reflection or a prophecy.

Pag. 4

1. Survivor

1. SURVIVOR
Theseabirds, Conan’s only friends, aroused him at dawn by screaming and dropping pebbles on his hut. He crawled out eagerly and raced down to the narrow beach, sure that a school of fish had entered one of his tidal traps. The birds always called him like this when fish had been caught. But the traps, he soon found, were empty — and still the gulls and terns wheeled about him, making a great racket. Whatwere they trying to tell him? He turned and ran up the steps to the highest point of his rocky islet, and climbed upon the stone platform he had built long ago. A quick look around showed only emptiness, save for the two smaller islets of the group, dim in the distance on either side. They bounded his world. Beyond them, and all around in the mist-haunted sea, nothing was visible, not even thehorizon. “What do you see, Tikki?” he asked, as a slenderwinged tern circled close, giving quick little twitterings as if trying to speak. “Where is it? Show me!” The tern brushed his lean cheek with its pinions, wheeled high, and shot away in the direction of the eastern islet. Several of the other birds followed. Conan watched until they were fading specks in the mist. Something was out there, surely,but it was far beyond the islet and invisible from here. A whale? No, a school of whales, most likely. Nothing else could cause such a stir among his friends. There wasn’t anything else in existence that was big enough or unusual enough. Or was there? Conan gave a little shake of his tawny head and slumped down on the platform, hugging his knees in sudden misery. To judge from the evidence, therewas very little left on the planet but water. As for people, if many remained after what had happened, most of them were probably castaways like himself. In the years since the last fleeing helicopter had crashed in that incredible tide, breaking apart and flinging him alone into the darkness, he hadn’t seen or heard a craft of any kind, air or sea, nor had he even spotted so much as a vaportrail or a gleam of light. Was he the only person left? But of course he wasn’t. He had proof that Lanna was safe.... His mind leaped back to his twelfth birthday, a point in time he couldn’t forget because that was the day he had crawled ashore here. Before that — but it was better not to think of before. He had been Conan of Orme — but Orme no longer existed, nor did any of the Western world. Timestarted when he was twelve, when, chilled and battered and hardly conscious, he managed to crawl from the sea. He was just Conan then. Conan, a lost and naked creature all alone. He remembered how horribly cold he felt later, and how hungry, and how it got worse as he huddled against the rocks, wondering what to do. And there wasn’t anything he could do, because there was nothing here. Nothing....