by Frederik
Trust him. It was a tall order—but somehow, I began to be able to do it.
I growled, “All right,” and cleared my throat. Watching his fingers work so feverishly over the radio-sonar apparatus a thought struck me. I said: “One thing, anyway. When we get back to the Academy—if we ever do—I’ll be able to report to Coach Blighman that you finally qualified…at twenty thousand feet!”
He grinned briefly at me, and returned to the distress transmitter.
It was built to send an automatic SOS signal on distress frequency radio, and simultaneously on sonarphone. The sonarphone would reach any cruising subsea vessels within range—and precious short the range of a sonarphone was, of course. The radio component would transmit the same signal electronically. Of course, with most traffic under the surface of the sea these days, there would be few ships to receive it—but its range was thousands of miles, and somewhere there would be a ship, or a monitoring relay buoy retransmitting via sonarphone to a subsea vessel beneath, to hear—and to act.
I bent closer to see what he was doing.
He was disconnecting the automatic signal tape!
While I watched, he completed his connections and switched on the transmitter. He picked up a tiny microphone on a short cable and began to talk into it.
I stared at him as I heard what he said.
“Diatom to radiolarian, diatom to radiolarian.”
It didn’t mean anything! It was the same garbled gibberish he had mumbled before. I had taken it to be the half-delirium of a mind just waking up from a shock—yet now he was saying it into a transmitter, and it was going out by radio and sonarphone to—to whom?
“Diatom to radiolarian,” he said again, and again. “Diatom to radiolarian! The molluscans are ripe. Repeat, the molluscans are ripe! Hurry, radiolarian!”
I sank back, unbelieving, as the little emergency raft bobbed up and down, up and down in the swell.
Below us, our friends were fighting for their lives.
And up here on the surface, where we had fled—my friend Bob Eskow had gone mad as old Jason Craken himself.
But—appearances are deceiving.
I sat there on that wet, flimsy raft, staring at my friend. And finally I began to understand a few things.
Bob looked up at me, almost worriedly.
I said: “Hello, diatom.”
He hesitated for a second, and then grinned. “So you’ve guessed.”
“It took me long enough. But you’re right, I’ve guessed. At least I think I have.” I took a deep breath. “Diatom. That’s your code name, right? You are diatom. And radiolarian—I suppose that’s the code name for the Fleet? You’re what we call an undercover agent, Bob. You’re on a mission. All this time—you’ve been working for the Fleet itself. You came with us not for the fun of it, not to help me pay my family’s debt to the Crakens—but because the Fleet gave you orders. Am I right?”
He nodded silently. “Close enough,” he said after a moment.
It was hard to take in.
But—now that I had the key, things began to fall into place. All those mysterious absences of Bob’s back at the Academy—the hours, the afternoons, when he disappeared and didn’t tell me where he had gone, when I thought he had been practicing for the underwater tests—he had been reporting to Fleet. When he had hesitated before promising secrecy to David Craken—it had been because he had his duty to the Fleet, and couldn’t promise until David so worded it that it didn’t conflict.
And most important of all—when he had seemed to be deserting our friends down there beneath us, at the bottom of the Trench, it was because he had to come up here, to use the radio to report to the Fleet!
I said: “I think I owe you an apology, Bob. To tell the truth, I thought—”
He interrupted me. “It doesn’t matter what you thought, Jim. I’m only sorry I couldn’t tell you the truth before this. But my orders—”
It was my turn to interrupt. “Forget it! But—what happens next?”
He looked sober. “I hope we’re in time! ‘The molluscans are ripe’—that’s our SOS. It means the battle is going on, way down there at the bottom, Jim. The Fleet is supposed to be standing by, monitoring the radio for this signal. Then they’re supposed to come racing up and—”
His voice broke. He said in a different tone: “They’re supposed to come down, pick us up, and take over in the Trench. You see, the Fleet knew something was up here—but they couldn’t interfere, as long as there was no violence. But we’ve cut it pretty fine, Jim. Now that the violence has started—I only hope they get here before it’s too late!”
I started to say, “I wish we could—”
I stopped in the middle of the wish, and forgot what it was I was going to wish for.
Something fast and faintly glowing was brightening the swells beneath us. I pointed. “Look, Bob!”
It was a faint blue shimmer in the black water; it grew brighter, and shaped itself into the long hull of a sub-sea ship, strangely familiar, surfacing close to us.
“They’re here!” I cried. “Bob, they’re here!”
He stared at the gleaming hull, then at me.
He said dazedly, “I should have cut off the sonarphone. They heard me.”
“What are you talking about?” I demanded. “You wanted the Fleet, didn’t you?”
I stopped then, because all at once I knew I was wrong—badly wrong, terribly wrong.
I knew then why that long hull, shimmering blue under the gentle wash of the waves, had seemed familiar. I hardly heard Bob saying:
“That’s not the Fleet. It’s the Killer Whale! They heard my message on the sonarphone!”
21
Aboard the Killer Whale
The amphibians had us aboard their sub-sea cruiser and hatches closed. I don’t think it took more than a minute. We were too startled, too shocked to put up much of a fight.
And there was no point to a fight, not any more. If there was any hope for us anywhere, it was as likely to be aboard the Killer as waiting hopelessly on the raft.
The Killer stank. The fetid air reeked with the strange, sharp odor of the gleaming plants of the Trench, the aroma I associated with the amphibians. The whole ship was drenched with fog and trickling, condensed moisture. Everything we touched was wet, and clammy, and dappled with rust and mold.
There must have been twenty amphibians aboard the Killer. They manhandled us down the gangways, with hardly a word. I don’t know if most of them spoke English or not; when they talked among themselves it was with such a slurring of the consonants and a singing of the vowels that I couldn’t understand them.
But they took us to Joe Trencher.
The pearl-eyed leader of the amphibians was in the conn room, captain of the ship. He was naked to the waist and he had rigged up a spray nozzle on a water coupling that kept him continually drenched with salt water.
He stood scowling at us while he sprayed his fishbelly skin. He looked like some monster from an old legend, but I didn’t miss the fact that he had conned the ship into a steep, circling dive as briskly as any Fleet officer.
“Why do you interfere against us?” he demanded.
I spoke for both of us. “The Crakens are our friends. And the Fleet has jurisdiction over the whole sea bottom.”
He scowled without speaking for a moment. He broke into a fit of coughing and wheezing under his spray.
“I’ve caught a cold,” he muttered accusingly, glowering at us. “I can’t stand this dry air!”
Bob said sharply: “It isn’t dry. In fact, you’re ruining this ship! Don’t you know this moisture will rot it out?”
Trencher said angrily: “It is my ship! Anyway—” he shrugged—”it will last long enough. Already we have defeated the Crakens and once they are gone we shall no longer need this ship.”
I took a deep breath. Defeated the Crakens! I asked: “Are they—are they—”
He finished for me. “Dead, you mean?” He shrugged again. “If
they are not, it will be only a short time. They are defeated, do you hear me?” He hurled the spray nozzle away from him as though the mere thought of them had infuriated him. At least there was still some hope, I thought If they could only hold out a little longer…
Trencher was wheezing: “Explain! We saw you flee to the surface, and we heard your message. But I do not understand it! Who is diatom? Who is radiolarian? What do you mean about the molluscans?”
Bob glanced at me, then moved a step toward him.
“I am diatom,” he said. “Radiolarian is my superior officer, Trencher—a commander of the Sub-Sea Fleet! As diatom, I was on a special mission—concerning the Tonga pearls and you and your people. I needed information, and I got it; and my message will bring the whole Fleet here, if necessary, to put down any resistance and take over this entire area!” He sounded absolutely self-assured, absolutely confident. I hardly recognized him!
He went on, with a poise that an admiral might envy: “This is your last chance, Trencher. I advise you to give up. I’m willing to accept your surrender now!”
It was a brave attempt.
But the amphibian leader had courage of his own. For a moment he was shaken; he stood there, blinking and wheezing, with a doubt in his eye. But then he exploded into raucous, gasping laughter. He caught up his spray again and wet himself down, still laughing.
“Ridiculous,” he hissed, wheezing. “You are fantastic, young man. I have you here aboard my ship, and you live only as long as I wish to let you live. And you ask me to surrender!”
Bob said quickly: “It’s your only chance. I—”
“Silence!” Trencher bellowed. He stood there, panting and scowling for a moment, while he made up his mind. “Enough. Perhaps you are a spy—I don’t know. But I heard your message, and I did not hear a reply. Did it reach the Fleet? I think not, my young air-breather. And you will not have another chance, for we are now diving toward the Trench.”
He played the spray nozzle on his face, staring at us through the tiny slits that half-covered his pearly eyes. “You will not see the sky again, young man. I cannot let you live.”
Joe Trencher shrugged and spread his webbed fingers in a gesture that disclaimed responsibility. It was a sentence of death, and both Bob and I knew it.
Yet—even in that moment, I saw something in the amphibian’s cold, pearly eyes that’might almost have been sadness—compassion—regret.
He said heavily: “It is not that I wish to destroy you. It is only that you have left us no choice. We must keep the secret of the Tonga Trench to ourselves, and you wish to tell it to the world. We cannot allow that! We must keep you in the Trench. It is too bad that you cannot breathe salt water—but it is your misfortune, not ours, that this air will not last forever.”
I was sweating, even in the cold and damp, but I tried to reason with him. “You can’t keep your secret, Trencher. The exploration of the sea is moving too fast. If we don’t come back, other men will be here to find the saurians and the shining weed and the Tonga pearls.”
“They may come.” He nodded heavily. “But we can’t let them go back to the surface.”
I demanded: “Why?”
“Because we are different, air-breather!” Trencher blinked, like a sad-faced idol in some queer temple, with Tonga pearls for eyes. “We learned our lesson many generations ago! We are mutations, as Jason Craken calls us—but once we were human. Our ancestors lived on the islands. And when some of us tried to go back, the islanders tried to kill us! They drove us into the sea. We found the Trench—and it is a kind world for us, young man, a world where we can live at peace.
“At peace—as long as we are left alone!”
He was wheezing and panting and struggling for breath—and it seemed to me that part of his distress was in his feelings and his mind. He sounded earnest and tragic. Even though he was saying that, in cold blood, he was going to take our lives—I couldn’t help thinking that I almost understood how he felt.
Perhaps he had good reasons to hate and fear the breathers of air!
I said slowly: “Trencher, it seems there have been mistakes on both sides. But don’t you see, we must make a peace that is fair to your people and to men! Men need you—but you need men, as well. You amphibians can be of great help in carrying out the conquest of the sea bottoms. But our society has many things you must have as well. Medicine. Scientific discoveries. Help of a thousand kinds—”
“And more than that,” Bob put in, “you need the protection of the Fleet!”
Trencher snorted, and paused to breathe his salt fog again.
“Jason Craken tried to tell us that,” he puffed contemptuously. “He tried to bribe us with the trinkets your civilization has to offer—and when we welcomed him, he tried to turn us to slaves! The gifts he gave us were weapons to conquer us!”
“But Craken is insane, Trencher!” I told him. “Don’t you see that? He has lived here alone so long that his mind is wandering; he needs medical care, attention. He needs to be placed in an institution where he can be helped. He needs a—”
“What he needs,” Trencher wheezed brutally, “is a tomb. For I do not think he is any longer alive.”
He paused again, thoughtfully, and once more it seemed there was a touch of regret in his milky eyes. “We thought he was our friend,” he said, “and perhaps it is true that his mind has deserted him. But it is too late now. There were other men once, too—other men we thought our friends, and we could have trusted them. But it is also too late for that. It is too late for anything now, air-breathers, for as I left the dome to follow you to the surface it could have been only a matter of minutes until it fell.”
I asked, on a sudden impulse: “These other men—what were their names?”
He glanced at me, wheezing, his opaque pearly eyes curious. “Why,” he said, “they were—”
There was an excited, screaming cry from one of the other amphibians. I couldn’t understand a word of it.
But Joe Trencher did! He dived for the microsonar screen the other amphibian had manned.
“The Fleet!” he wheezed, raging. “The Fleet!”
And it was true, for there in the screen were a dozen fat blips—undersea men-of-war, big ones, coming fast!
The Killer Whale went into a steep, twisting dive, and there was a rush and a commotion among its crew. Bob and I were manhandled, hurled aside, out of the way.
I felt the Killer shudder, and knew that jet missiles were streaking out toward the oncoming task force. We were in trouble now, no doubt about it! For if the Fleet won, it would be by blasting the Killer to atoms—and us with it; and if the Fleet, by any miraculous mischance should lose…then Joe Trencher would put us to breathing salt water, when the air ran out!
I said tensely to Bob: “At least they got your message! There’s still some hope!”
He shrugged, eyes fast to the bank of microsonars. We were nearing the bottom of the Trench now. I could pick out the dimly seen shape of the sea-mount, the valleys and cliffs about it. I said, out of a vagrant thought, “I wish—I wish the Fleet hadn’t turned up just then. I had an idea that—”
Bob looked at me “That what?”
I hesitated. “Well—that the men he spoke of were, well, someone we might know. But I couldn’t hear the names—”
“You couldn’t?” Bob asked, while the amphibians milled and shouted around us. “I could. And you’re right, Jim—the men he said he might have been able to trust were the only other men who have ever been down here. Stewart Eden and your father!”
I stared at him.
“Bob! But—but don’t you see? Then there’s a chance! If he would trust them, then perhaps he’ll listen to me! We’ve got to talk to him, stop this slaughter while there’s still some hope—”
“Hope?”
Bob laughed sharply, but not with humor. He gestured at the microsonar screens, where the bottom of the Trench now was etched sharp and bright. “Take a look,” he said in a tight, chok
ed voice. “Take a look, and see what hope there is.”
I looked.
Hope? No—not for the Crakens, at any rate; not for Laddy Angel, or Roger Fairfane, or the man who had saved my life once before, Gideon Park.
There was the sea-mount, standing tall in its valley; and there was the dome Jason Craken had built.
But it no longer stood high above the slope of the sea-mount.
The saurians had done their frightful work.
The edenite shield was down—barely a glimmer from a few scattered edges of raw metal.
And the dome itself—it was smashed flat, crushed, utterly destroyed.
22
“Panic Is the Enemy!”
A dozen blossoming flares flashed in the microsonar screen at once.
It was the Fleet, replying to the Killer’s fire. There was a burst of flares to starboard, a burst to port, a burst above.
Joe Trencher wheezed triumphantly: “Missed us!”
“That was no miss!” I rapped out. “We’re bracketed, Trencher! That was a salvo from the Fleet unit to warn us to halt and cease offensive action—otherwise, the next salvo will be zeroed in on us!”
He choked and rasped: “Be quiet!” And he cried orders to the other amphibians, in the language I could not understand.
The Killer Whale leaped and swung, and darted around behind the wreck of the dome, into the patterned caverns and fissures where the saurians maintained their breeding place. The Killer swooped into a crevice near what had once been the base of the dome itself; in the microsonar screen I could see the looming walls of the crevice closing in behind us and below. I thought I could see things moving back there—big things. Big as saurians…
But at least the Killer was out of sight of the Fleet.
Gently it dropped to the rocky floor of the cut. There was a sharp, incomprehensible order from Trencher, and the whir of the motors, the pulse of the pile-generators, stopped.