Danger Below!

by John Blaine

  DANGER BELOW!

  A RICK BRANT

  SCIENCE-ADVENTURE

  STORY, no. 23

  BY JOHN BLAINE

  AGAINST an authentic background of deep-sea diving, John Elaine tells a fast-paced, entertaining adventure.

  To solve the mystery of a sunken oil-drilling platform, Rick Brant and his pal Don Scott must find out why their diving boat was sabotaged, fight their way through the menace of a blue shark pack, and use the technique of helium-oxygen diving from the submersible Sea Horse at a quarter of a mile below the surface of the Atlantic.

  Clues above and below the sea and combat with a giant lobster-all figure excitingly in a nefarious plot that challenges the detective skills of Rick and Scotty.

  CHAPTER I

  The “Sea Horse”

  Page 1

  Torrential rains, forerunner of Hurricane Donna, lashedSpindriftIsland . The gloom was that of twilight, although it was only midafternoon of an August day. Rick Brant, tall teen-aged son of the Spindrift Scientific Foundation Director, stood at the kitchen window in the big Brant home on the island’s northeast corner and peered through the curtain of rain at the gray bulk of the laboratory building-

  “It” was in the lab, waiting for him-whatever “It” was. He had been trying to guess, but he had no basis for guessing. Behind him, at the kitchen table, he knew that his pretty sister Barby was smiling to herself.

  One of Rick’s principal characteristics was curiosity, as Barby well knew. Rick smiled as he turned away from the window. It wasn’t often that Barby had a chance to keep him in suspense, and he didn’t begrudge her the opportunity. But he did want to see the surprise she had promised.

  His mother and the girls had met Scotty and him less than two and a half hours ago atKennedyInternationalAirport , and no sooner were the boys through Customs than Barby had burst out with her big news.

  “Wait until you get home and see what’s in the lab! You’ll flip, honestly. It’s the absolute, incredible end!”

  She had refused to say any more, and she had sworn Jan and Mrs. Brant to secrecy.

  Seated at the kitchen table with Barby were Mrs. Brant, Don Scott-who rated as a member of the family-and Jan Miller, daughter of one of the staff scientists. They were all watching Rick with knowing grins. He decided to be casual.

  “Are you sure this surprise is important enough for us to get soaking wet? Won’t it keep until Dad gets home fromPhiladelphia ?Or until the rain stops?” He had been wondering, too, what business could have taken his father to thePennsylvania city. He knew of no Spindrift interests there.

  Barby, a slim, pretty blond a year his junior, matched the casualness with which he had asked the question. “Of course it will keep. We can look tomorrow.” Her blue eyes were laughing.

  Lovely, dark-haired Jan Miller added, “Of course, the rain may not stop for several days. This is hurricane weather, Rick.”

  Scotty, a husky, powerfully built boy slightly older than Rick, grinned with appreciation. “This silly dialogue sounds real. A stranger would never know that Rick is itching to get into raincoat and hat and run to the lab. Or that Barby and Jan can’t wait until he does.”

  Rick sat down at the table and grinned at Scotty. I’m glad you’re so casual about it.”

  “Nothing bothers me,” Scotty said airily.

  “And that,” Barby stated, “is as phony as Rick playing it cool. Mother,may we be excused? We’ve all had enough.”

  “The boys didn’t eat very much,” Mrs. Brant said.

  “If you knew how much food we’ve stowed away in the past couple of weeks, you’d put us on a diet,”

  Scotty told her.

  Rick gave his mother a kiss. “We’ve had more than enough, Mom. After all, it’s only a few hours until Page 2

  dinnertime.”

  Again he wondered what the laboratory held. Whatever it was, the project must have come up suddenly. A few weeks before, as he and Scotty had been winding up their plans for a trip toEurope , the Spindrift scientists had been planning to spend the summer completing reports, writing papers for publication, or teaching summer seminars at the nearby universities. No new projects were scheduled until fall.

  Rick had been invited to an International Technological Youth Conference to give a report on his homemade rocket belt, which had played a key role in the adventure called Rocket Jumper. He had gone to the conference inCopenhagen , then had flown to theNetherlands for a meeting atLeidenUniversity . After the meeting Scotty had met him inAmsterdam , where they had accidentally become involved in the case of The Deadly Dutchman. Then, while they were on a motor-scooter sightseeing tour acrossBelgium andFrance , something had happened at Spindrift, something about which both girls were obviously excited.

  Jan looked up as she pulled on a boot and smiled. “I wouldn’t miss the expression on your face for anything, Rick.”

  “It must be good,” he said noncommittally.

  “It is,” Barby promised. “I’ll give you a hint. There’s a little sea animal that really knows how to put males to work. When mother lays a batch of eggs, father puts them in a pouch and keeps them there until the babies hatch and swim out. Know what it is?”

  Rick did. He stared at her, puzzled.“A sea horse.Or perhaps a pipefish. Is it a live sea horse?”

  “Sorry. Try again.”

  “It’s a Trojan sea horse made of wood,” Scotty guessed. “We’re going to hide in it and get the Atlanteans to pull us into Atlantis, then we’ll swim out at night and steal all their smiggles .”

  “What are smiggles ?” Barby asked suspiciously.

  “I don’t know,” Scotty admitted, “but I’ll bet they’re valuable. Anything from Atlantis would be.”

  “Send him back toHolland ,” Jan suggested.

  “I’ll send him somewhere,” Barby threatened.

  “Come on, Jan. Give me a clue,” Rick urged.

  The girl gave him an impish grin.“All right. Barby only gave you half a clue. What’s the largest animal that ever lived on earth?”

  “The blue whale,” Rick answered promptly.

  “That’s it.” Jan had finished buttoning her raincoat and was pulling a rain hat over her dark hair. “Illtell you the secret, Rick.” She opened the door. “It’s a project to cross sea horses with blue whales so divers can have something big enough to ride.”

  Page 3

  Rick groaned and reached for her, but she was already gone. He, Scotty, and Barby ran after her lithe figure, the rain beating into their faces. Jan could run like a doe. At the lab building, Rick made a feint, as though to cut her off, and she ran around the corner of the building, laughing. The three opened the door and went in. They peeled off the soaking rain clothes and hung them up, then waited for Jan to appear.

  After a moment Barby said, “She must have gone around to the back door. Come on, you two. It’s in the main shop.”

  The Spindrift laboratory was divided into a number of workrooms, lab rooms, and office areas. At the west end was a single large room with the many tools and pieces of equipment necessary for making large models or full-scale experimental units. Barby led the way, pushed open the door with a dramatic flourish, and proclaimed, “There it is!”

  Rick and Scotty stopped dead in the doorway. They stared, speechless.

  It was about 40 feet long, cylindrical except for nose, tail, and hatch fairing, and gleaming white. The nose was streamlined, and slightly flattened, like the nose of a shovelnose shark. The sharklike effect was enhanced by two portholes inset where the eyes would be. Around the hull were otherports, and Rick saw a hatch on the bottom. The tail was like that of a small aircraft, with elevators and rudder. From just forward of the tail assembly, and just a
ft of the nose, steerable propellers jutted.

  Rick’s heart beat fast with pleasant anticipation. He smiled as he looked at the insignia painted on the upper hatch, a red sea horse. Under the image was lettered, also in red, Sea Horse.

  When a sea horse opened his pouch, the children swam out, Rick thought. The name was appropriate.

  Although he had never seen this particular craft before, he knew instantly that it was a deep submersible designed to carry divers. The pouch of the sea horse was the hatch on the bottom.

  “What a beauty!” Scotty breathed.

  “Like my surprise?” Barby asked.

  Rick put an arm around his sister and squeezed. “You couldn’t have produced a nicer one, Sis.”

  “Don’t get your hopes up,” Barby warned. “It’s here to have the sonoscope installed. There aren’t any plans for dives.”

  So that was it, Rick thought. The Spindrift Submobile, a tethered submersible suspended from a cable, had been decommissioned and its pressure hull given to a university engineering department for ocean engineering experiments. Now Dr. Hartson Brant was selling or leasing the sonoscope from the Submobile to an industrial firm. The sonoscope was an extremely fine-grain sonar device that permitted seeing a very good image underwater. The image was projected on a tube, much like a TV screen. It was the only device of its kind.

  Rick was naturally optimistic. He and Scotty might be able to work some kind of deal to get a dive in the Sea Horse, especially if they helped with the sonoscope installation. And, he thought, some plan ought to be worked out to get the girls a ride, too. He looked around suddenly. “Hey, where’s Jan?” He started for the door without waiting for an answer.

  Jan came in as he was getting into his raincoat. He stopped and looked at her as she wiped rain from her face. “How do you like it, Rick?”

  Page 4

  “Just the way you were sure I would,” he said with a relieved smile. “What kept you, Jan?”

  “The oddest thing,” she said as Barby and Scotty joined them. “When I ducked around the corner I caught a glimpse of a man on the oppositeshoreofPirate ’s Cove. The visibility wasn’t very good, but I’m sure he was carrying a big pack on his back, and I thought I saw aluminum tent poles lashed to it.

  Anyway, they looked too thick to be a radio antenna. I got the impression he was looking for a place to camp.”

  “More likely he was breaking camp,” Scotty suggested. “He may be a surfcaster who hated to give up, but finally had to fold up his tent and leave.”

  “I don’t think so, Scotty. He seemed to be testing the ground with his heel as though looking for a place where his tent pegs would hold.”

  “Did he start to set up camp?” Barby asked.

  “No, Barb. He went into the woods.”

  “Funny,” Rick said with a frown. “If he was leaving, he’d go along the cove shore toward Whiteside. If he is just setting up camp, he’ll be in trouble. He and his tent will fly away like stormy petrels.”

  They had heard the latest weather report on Hurricane Donna on the car radio while driving home from the airport. Donna was now offCape Hatteras , on a path that would bring her inland nearAtlantic City , not far south of Spindrift. The island was directly in the path of the hurricane’s eye.

  The Spindrifters weren’t worried. The island was already secure against the coming winds, and all the buildings had withstood hurricanes before. But no tent could survive the coming blasts.

  What could bring anyone to the shore in the teeth of Hurricane Donna? Rick wondered.

  CHAPTER II

  The Hurricane Watcher

  Hartson Brant returned fromPhiladelphia in time for dinner, and he was not alone. With him was Roger Pryor, a small, slight, brown-haired man with horn-rimmed glasses who looked far too young to have the important job of Director,Project Sea Horse, for Seafaring Industries, the big ocean engineering firm.

  The second newcomer was even more interesting to Rick. He was Dick Antell, a big, redheaded young man built like a football tackle, who was pilot of the deep submersible.

  Rick and Scotty had learned from Barby and Jan that the two men would be guests at Spindrift until the sonoscope installation was completed. They had learned, too, that the Sea Horse had been landed at Pirate’s Cove on the south side of the island by the Sea Beast, a specially equipped mother ship and tender for the submersible. The Sea Beast had gone back toPhiladelphia .

  The boys had already inspected the Sea Horse from the outside. Although the hatch had not been Page 5

  locked, neither had risked damaging delicate electronic equipment by climbing inside without an advance briefing. Peering through the portholes with the aid of a portable work light, they had found that the pilot’s compartment had seats for two, and the divers’ compartment had room for four. From the hoses coiled inside the divers’ section and tanks labeled Helium and Oxygen, Rick had also determined that the divers would be “saturated”-that is, they would enter the submersible already breathing a mixture of helium and oxygen, called heliox. That meant the divers could be carried down to continental shelf depths, to a thousand feet and more.

  As the group sat down to one of Mrs. Brant’s excellent dinners, Rick asked Roger Pryor, who was seated next to him, if it were possible to get a look inside the Sea Horse.

  Hartson Brant smiled at his son from the head of the table. “You and Scotty will most assuredly get a good look inside, Rick. I’ve already committed the two of you to help us install the sonoscope.”

  Scotty let out a subdued yip, and Rick grinned at him. After all, the first step toward taking a dive was to get inside the submersible, even on dry land. And working side by side with the project officer and the pilot would be a rewarding experience.

  “Your dad tells me you and Scotty are pretty good technicians,” Roger Pryor said.

  “We’re learning,” Rick replied. “We don’t always understand why we’re doing something, but we can follow instructions.”

  “Both Rick and Scotty are very good technicians,” Barby said proudly. “You should see some of the things they’ve built.”

  The redheaded submersible pilot accepted a helping of Yankee pot roast from Mrs. Brant, then turned to Rick. “What I’d like to see is that rocket belt Barby has been telling us about.”

  The rocket belt had been left atLeiden for copying by the university’s rocket club. It was due to be shipped back by air during the coming week. Rick took a deep breath and grasped the opportunity chance had offered. “I’ll tell you what, Mr. Antell, the belt will be here within a week, probably by the time we’re finished with the installation. And we can make a trade. I’ll check you out on the belt, if you’ll show Scotty and me how to pilot a deep submersible.”

  The pilot chuckled. “Call me Dick, Rick. With names that sound alike, we should have skills alike. I can’t promise a thing, but I’ll use my influence with Roger, here, if the opportunity arises.”

  Roger Pryor smiled. “He’s pretty influential, I will admit. But seriously, I don’t know what to say. We have no plans for a dive around here. Once the sonoscope is installed, we will take the Sea Horse to our test range in theBahamas and check it out there.”

  “Shouldn’t the installation be checked before you leave Spindrift?” Scotty asked.

  “It will be, by instruments,” Hartson Brant replied. “If we find it operates normally, we know it will work under water. That’s why Seafaring Industries is leasing it from us. It’s a proven instrument.”

  “That’s right,” Pryor agreed. “Anyway, if our plans change, we’ll see what we can do. After all, I wouldn’t want Dick to miss a chance to fly a rocket belt. I’ve always suspected he’s a frustrated astronaut who got his directions mixed and went down instead of up.”

  Page 6

  Dick Antell grinned. “Those spacecraft aren’t safe. You can’t get out and swim home.”

  “Can you?” Barby asked curiously.

  “Sure, as long as we’re not more than a hun
dred feet deep. Any deeper than that and I’ll have to walk home.”

  “Leaving footprints in the sea on the way,” Barby finished.

  Rick was interested in the conversation, but he was having a hard time keeping his eyes open. He and Scotty had leftParis that morning, arriving inNew York in the early afternoon. Now the traveler’s problem of time adjustment, caused by modern high-speed transport across the time zones, was catching up with him. He was suffering from a case of “jet lag.” It was only seven-thirty in the evening in the Brant house, but his body was still operating onParis time-and inParis it was two-thirty in the morning on the following day. It would take him and Scotty about two days to adjust to the seven-hour time lag.

  As soon after dinner as courtesy permitted, the boys excused themselves and went to bed. Rick’s own bed felt wonderful after the variety of sleeping accommodations he and Scotty had had inEurope , but he couldn’t drift off to sleep immediately. The thought of the man Jan had seen kept intruding. It was an oddity. No one went camping in a hurricane. When he finally fell asleep his mind was made up.

  He would find out in the morning why the man was camping on an exposed piece of coastline in a storm.

  Rick slept untilnoon -butnoonParis time. It was only five in the morning at Spindrift when he awakened.

  For a few moments he lay quietly, then he heard Scotty whisper through the door connecting their rooms.

  “Slept enough, Rick?”

  “I’m afraid so,” he whispered back.“How about you?”

  “I’ve been awake for quite a while. And I’m hungry. How about going downstairs and whomping up a nice big breakfast of bacon and eggs?”

  Rick needed no urging. The boys washed up, being very quiet,then slipped into comfortable old clothes.

  Over a breakfast sufficient to feed an Army squad, Rick told Scotty about his decision of the night before. Once faced with a puzzle, it bothered him until he solved it.

  “Scotty, let’s go see if that man really was setting up camp on the other side of the cove.”

  His pal grinned. “Wish I’d had someone to bet with last night. I’d have put my fortune-the whole dollar-onyour making that suggestion this morning. Trouble is, everyone here knows you too well. There wouldn’t have been any takers.”