Secrets of the Deep

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Secrets of the Deep Page 6

by Gordon R. Dickson


  “I’ll be all right,” Robby growled.

  “See that y’are. And now,” went on Mr. Lillibulero, “t’track down the sea badger. We’ll be going to where we saw it last, and follow the footprints it seems the beast has a habit of leaving.”

  He gathered up the plio-film cartons and the two water jugs and hid them in a crevice of the rocks. Then he adjusted his lung and slid off the rock into the water. Robby followed,still annoyed.

  They swam down through the green water, and Balthasar came to tow them. Robby took one of the reins of the dolphin’s harness, Mr. Lillibulero took the other, and they headed towards the place of the battle between the killer whale and the sea badger. Robby looked nervously around for sharks. But if they had been attracted by the fight, they were now at their business in other parts of the ocean. Only a two-foot-long hammerhead shark, too small to be dangerous,cruised along the bottom below them.

  When they reached the gully the footprints were no longer to be seen. The gently moving waves had erased them from the loose, light sand.

  Robby, however, pointed out the narrow gully down which he had seen the Martian creature go. For a while it seemed that they might be right on the trail, but in a little while the gully became so broken up by hollows and high spots and little valleys splitting off that it was soon apparent that they were wandering about at random.

  It was at this moment that Balthasar gave them a helping hand. He had been swooping and stunting about them ever since they reached the place where the fight occurred. Balthasar,compared to them as swimmers, was like a blooded racehorse trying to hold his pace down to that of a humble donkey. He could literally swim rings around them, and usually did. It was all the more interesting, then, when he suddenly stopped doing so and, as suddenly, began pushing Robby back the way they had come.

  “Hey!” cried Robby, excitedly, through his mask to Mr. Lillibulero. “I bet we’re getting close to the sea badger—stop it, Balthasar!”

  Balthasar expressed his concern with every fluke and flip-per of his being,

  “Now, stop it, Balthasar!” said Robby. “It’s perfectly harmless. It’s a vegetarian Martian.”

  Balthasar protested.

  “That’s enough of that!” said Robby sharply, giving Balthasar’s harness a warning jerk that ordered him to obey,no matter what. Balthasar shivered backwards in the water but did as he was told.

  After a little while Robby and Mr. Lillibulero came upon the creature’s tracks. They seemed to wander about without any real plan.

  “Why do you suppose he’s going around all over the place like this?” Robby asked Mr. Lillibulero.

  “I’ve no idea,” replied the small man, briefly.

  “He acts like he’s looking for something,” said Robby, but he said it half to himself, and Mr. Lillibulero gave him no answer.

  Several times they lost the trail when the sea badger walked over rocks, or where the bottom was so hard that it did not show footprints. Then they had to swim around in bigger and bigger circles until they caught sight of the tracks again.

  Mr. Lillibulero was leading the way between two spires of rock when he stopped so suddenly that Robby swam into him from behind.

  “What is it?” asked Robby, wriggling forward. Mr. Lillibulero caught him with a hard hand on one shoulder.

  “Moray eel,” he said.

  Robby looked into a dark hollow between the rock spires.

  Sure enough, there, his eyes glittering above his sharp snout and snarly mouth, was a member of the family of the Muraenidae. His angry jaws gaped at them, daring them to approach too close.

  “It’s all right,” said Robby. “I know him. If we don’t come too near, he won’t bother us.”

  Writhing and slithering about in the water, the eel cocked a bitter eye at them. It was quite true. Vicious as he is, if provoked, the moray eel always has his own territory and prefers to fight on it if given his choice. For he is conservative, as a great many fish are—and fish he is in spite of his snakelike shape and actions. The eel, whether moray, conger,or any other kind, is simply a fish grown long and limber and narrow. In Europe, he is caught and sold in the markets and eaten in large numbers.

  “However,” said Mr. Lillibulero, “we’ll take the long way round and risk no risks.” And he led the way out from between the spires to pick up the trail beyond.

  Robby followed, sneering. He was feeling unkind towards things in general. Lifeboat emergency rations and a short nap in the hot tropical sun were poor substitutes for a normal schedule of sleep and food. So this was the brave Mr. Lillibulero, thought Robby disdainfully, afraid of a morayeel! So this was the dangerous Mr. Lillibulero! So this was the Mr. Lillibulero who was supposed to look after the station and Robby while Robby’s father was gone! So this was . . .

  “Watch y’r head,” warned Mr. Lillibulero, and Robby, who had been so busy thinking that he had almost swum directly into the little man’s wavering swim fins, checked himself.

  “Huh!” muttered Robby. “Watch your own self!” But he muttered it under his breath, and if Mr. Lillibulero heard, he ignored it.

  All this time they had been following the tracks of the sea badger as they wound about the ocean floor. Now those tracks led them to a pile of underwater rock that Robby knew well. Nor did they stop at the rock. For there was in this rock a huge hole, a cave like entrance like the opening into atunnel. The tracks went directly in and did not come out again.

  Mr. Lillibulero peered into the darkness at the mouth of the hole.

  “Well,” he said, at last, “I fear there’s no hope for it. You wait here, Robertson. I’ll go in and see if the beast is there now.”

  Robby opened his mouth to protest, then closed it again. He had just had a thought. It was something he was to regret later, but at the moment he hugged it to himself secretly.

  Mr. Lillibulero swam alone into the hole.

  Alone Against the Raiders

  Robby hung in the water, waiting for Mr. Lillibulero to reappear, and the moments slipped by. To occupy himself, Robby thought about his idea.

  It was really not so much an idea as a piece of secret knowledge. For he happened to know that the hole in front of him was not a hole, but a tunnel in the rock. And in the tunnel was an octopus. It was not a large octopus, and Robby knew octopi are shy creatures and not really dangerous, any-way. But he was hoping that Mr. Lillibulero would not know this, and would come flying out in fear.

  Floating in the water, Robby daydreamed of how he would swim to the rescue, and of how impressed Mr. Lillibulero would be. Meanwhile, there was no sign of Mr. Lillibulero.The minutes continued to crawl by. Balthasar, becoming bored, had swum away, though he probably had not gone far.Now, as Robby waited, a small spiny puffer swam out of the tunnel, saw Robby, and immediately blew itself up in alarm.It bobbed in the water like a little round ball studded with spikes.

  “Don’t be crazy,” said Robby to it, “I don’t eat puffers. You think I want to get poisoned?”

  The puffer backed speedily off through the water, but remained inflated until it was a safe distance away. Then it returned to its normal shape and size.

  Balthasar came back and nosed Robby inquiringly. For the first time, Robby began to feel uncomfortable.

  Mr. Lillibulero had had plenty of time—not just to find the octopus and retreat in fright, but to reach the far end of the tunnel and open water, and return for Robby. But he had not come back.

  Robby was now a little scared. He felt sure that Mr. Lillibulero had run across the octopus, and something wholly unexpected had happened. The more Robby turned the idea over in his head, the more worried he became.

  At last Robby swam nervously into the tunnel, unaccompanied even by Balthasar who had wandered off once more.

  The tunnel’s darkness enfolded him at once. It was like swimming into absolute night. But his eyes began to adjust quickly, and he had the advantage of knowing how the tunnel turned and twisted.

  He swam on, and very soo
n the water began to grey and lighten as he approached the far end where the octopus should be.

  Here, the roof of the tunnel began to reveal openings to the water overhead. But the sunlight, filtering down from above,showed no octopus. And no Mr. Lillibulero. What it did show was something frighteningly different. Just ahead, where the end of the tunnel was choked by coral, sand, and rock ripped from the tunnel floor, a gaping hole opened in the ocean bed. The hole was so deep and dark that Robby could make out nothing in it. But in the soft sand and rubble in front of it, there was a deep print—the heavy mark of the sea badger’s clawed foot. The footprint pointed into the hole.There was nothing pointing out again.

  Robby found himself swimming, panic-stricken, as fast as he could. He burst out of the entrance to the tunnel, almost blundering into Balthasar who was now waiting there for him. He grabbed at the reins and flipped them. Balthasar spun about with a swirl of the water and raced off, trailing Robby behind him.

  Robby torpedoed through the water. As he put a little distance between himself and the tunnel, his panic began to grow less. It ebbed from his mind, leaving behind the almost as frightening fact that Mr. Lillibulero and the sea badger must be down there in that hole together. The footprint Robby had seen showed that the Martian creature had gone in and not come out again. Mr. Lillibulero had also gone in. There was nowhere else for him to be, with the far end of the tunnel blocked the way it was. Mr. Lillibulero ought to have comeback by this time, Robby thought. That is, if he were able to come back at all.

  Robby could feel his heart throbbing like a propeller. Mr. Lillibulero was in serious trouble, and there was no one but Robby to do anything about it. For a moment Robby thought wildly of going to the Vandals in the station, giving himself up, and begging them to rescue Mr. Lillibulero. It would mean, of course, that the Vandals would be able to recapture the sea badger after all. But human life, Robby’s father had always said, was sacred. Mr. Lillibulero—or any person, for that matter—was more important than the Martian.

  That is, thought Robby, if Mr. Lillibulero were still all right. A creature like the sea badger that could drive off a killer whale could do just about anything it liked to a single human swimmer.

  Then, unexpectedly, Robby remembered something. There had been no sign of sharks around the tunnel entrance. That meant that, whatever else had happened, Mr. Lillibulero had not been wounded by the sea badger. Sharks could scent blood in the water from great distances, and they would have been on the spot by this time, hoping to finish off whatever was there.

  So at least Mr. Lillibulero had not been hurt. And, beside that, he should be fairly safe for the moment. His face mask would go on manufacturing oxygen from the water around him, and the hole looked big enough for there to be plenty of fresh water circulating into it. But, thought Robby unhappily,he could not stay where he was forever, underwater, without food or rest. And there was no telling what a strange being like the sea badger might be up to. It could have dug the hole to make itself a nest. It might even be planning to hibernate,to save its strength, since it was cut off from its usual sources of food.

  Robby suddenly straightened up in the water. Why, he wondered, hadn’t he or Mr. Lillibulero thought of it before?It was the most sensible reason anyone could imagine for the way the sea badger had been prowling around. Being a Martian, it would probably not eat any of the earthly seaplants any more than the Martians in die station tanks had ever been able to do so. It would need Martian vegetation.And if that were the case, Robby thought he knew how he could lure the sea badger out of the hole and give Mr. Lillibulero a chance to escape.

  Then, once the little man was free, he could do the deciding about what the two of them would do next. Robby made himself a silent promise that from now on he would let Mr.Lillibulero make the decisions for both of them. From now on, that is, as soon as Mr. Lillibulero was free. Robby twitched at Balthasar’s reins and headed the dolphin towards the station.

  They came in low, skimming the sea bottom, with Robby keeping a wary eye cocked for Vandal swimmers in the water. But there were none to be seen. He aimed for the salt-water intake on the fifth level. A gentle current helped pull him into it.

  The opening was too small for Balthasar, and it would have been cramped for a grown man, but Robby could travel along it very well. He swam through the intake to the pumping chamber, circled the screen around the pump with only a little difficulty, and turned down the conduit leading to the tank that held the station’s Martians.

  Where the conduit joined this tank it was equipped with a complicated filter-mixer which made sure the sea water was altered to conform in every way to the slightly different sort of sea water found in the Martian caves. To open the tank entrance, as Robby planned to do, would be to mix this special water with ordinary sea water. But Robby reminded himself that the sea badger seemed to live in earth’s ocean water well enough, so possibly it would be all right for the other Martians. The openings were set up to be handled easily for maintenance purposes, and Robby got them undone without any trouble.

  It gave Robby a quivery feeling actually to be in there with the Martians, as if he were one of the specimens, himself. He had looked through the glass walls of the tanks from the other side so many times that he could imagine how he must appear, swimming round inside. Several small, ribbon-shaped creatures took alarm as he approached, and they dashed off to hide, much as their earthly cousins might have done in a similar situation. But Robby ignored them. He was busy pulling up large handfuls of the delicate, bamboo-like Martian plants. When he had an arm-load, he swam out of the tank with it, carefully locking the entrance again behind him, and headed back towards the outside of the station. A few stems floated out of his arms as he went and settled to the bottom of the conduit, but he was able to hold on to most of what he had. He reached the pumping chamber, and, with a small struggle against the incoming current, he got through the intake pipe into the open sea.

  Balthasar was glad to see him and curious about the vegetation. Robby pushed aside the dolphin’s inquiring head and grasped his reins. He steered Balthasar away from the station,leaving a trail of the plants which sank to the sea bottom. Like the sea badgers, most of the Martian plants seemed to be heavier than their earthly counterparts. This was odd, since the gravity on Mars is much less, and one would expect Martian natives to be rather flimsy and light. It was thought that temperature-induced currents in the underground Martian seas might in part be responsible, too. But Robby had no time to think about that now. He was too busy.

  When he dropped the last plant, he checked Balthasar and turned him back. Now that the job was done, he remembered again, in a rush, how hungry and weary he was.

  He had just recalled the boat in the boathouse from which Mr. Lillibulero got the emergency rations. There would be still more food and water in the lockers. All he had to do was to sneak in and get it. He could swim in underwater, climb directly into the boat itself, then eat, drink, and hide there until the sea badger released Mr. Lillibulero. Perhaps Mr. Lillibulero could start the boat without the key, and they could scoot for shore.

  All was quiet from within the station as he carefully floated up underneath the boathouse. The water darkened around him as the boat’s shadow came between him and the sun. He rose,and his head broke water beside the boat, tied to the four bits that anchored it. The room echoed to the gentle lapping of the little waves in the dimness of the boathouse. Robby reached for the side of the boat to pull himself aboard, and the hull bumped loudly against the bits. Robby froze. But no sound of alarm came from the platform outside. Rapidly changing his mind, he swam over to the end of the boathouse where the platform built around the three sides of the boat was open to let a swimmer climb up. He grabbed hold and hoisted himself out of the water. It was an effort, for he was tired.

  At last he stood upright in the fresh air. His legs trembled a little with his own weight. But before he could take a step towards the boat, the door at the end of the boathouse opene
d behind him.

  Strong arms clamped suddenly around him, catching him.A man’s voice yelled in his ear.

  “Harry! Charlie! Come quick. I’ve caught one of them!”

  In the Hands of the Vandals

  Rough hands hauled Robby out on to the platform. For a moment the bright sun dazzled him. Then he saw a big bushy-bearded face looming before him. Twisting his head,he saw another similar beard on the face of the man holding him. Both men were big. In blue zippered jackets and white trousers, they looked fierce. Robby tried to think that he wasn’t frightened, but his heart thudded in his chest.

  “It’s just a kid,” said the one in front of Robby.

  “That’s all right!” said the one holding him. “It’s still on eof them. The Captain’ll be glad to see him. Where’s Charlie?”

  “He went down again. Bring the boy along. Captain’s in the office downstairs.” He shoved his bushy face down towards Robby. “Where is everybody? Where’s your folks?”

  “They’re g-gone,” stammered Robby.

  “Never mind you asking him questions, Harry!” interrupted the Vandal holding Robby. “Captain’ll ask the questions. Come on, kid!”

  He walked Robby forward to the entrance. They all de-cended together, Robby first, the Vandal who had captured him just behind, and the one named Harry bringing up the rear. As they marched down to the library-office, Robby had a chance to see that whatever else the Vandals were, they were not good housekeepers. There were full ash-trays everywhere and lots of sweet wrappers screwed up and dropped carelessly on the floor.

  At the door of the office they knocked. The door opened, and a fair-haired boy of about sixteen years old looked out.

  His hair was uncombed and he had a few scraggly whiskers on his face. His eyes widened as he saw Robby.

  “Hey, Jones,” said the Vandal holding Robby, “I got a prisoner for the Captain.”

 

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