by Frederik
That made me speak. “Unexpected? But—I mean, sir, isn’t it true that these things can be forecast?”
He whirled and nodded. “Yes, Jim! It is very nearly a science these days. But this one was not forecast. There was nothing to indicate any activity in that area—nothing at all.
“But all the same the eruption occurred. I was at Krakatoa Dome when the waves from this disturbance were picked up by the seismographs there,” he went on deliberately. “The epicenter was less than two thousand miles away. I set out at once to make observations on the spot. By the following night I was at the epicenter.”
Though what he was saying told me nothing about what had happened to my uncle, it increased my respect for Father Tide. I couldn’t help being interested.
He told me: “The surface of the sea was still agitated. Beneath, I found a new flow of lava and mud that had spread over dozens of square miles. The lava was still hot, and the explosions of steam were considerable, even though my own sea-car is designed for use in the vicinity of seaquakes. I don’t suppose you know the area, but it is almost uninhabited. Fortunately! If there had been a city dome in the area, it would have been destroyed with enormous loss of life. Even so, I fear that there may be deaths that we shall never learn of. Miners, perhaps.”
“Sir,” I said, pointing at the briefcase, “those things. You didn’t find them there?”
He nodded somberly. “I did. But please bear with me, Jim. I was cruising over the sea floor, near the edge of the field of hot lava. I was making scientific observations—and also looking for survivors who might require my aid. My microsonar equipment had been half wrecked by the explosions, and of course the water was black with mud.
“All the same, I picked up a sonar distress signal.”
“My uncle?” I demanded. “Was it his signal?”
“I don’t know, Jim,” he said softly. “I recognized the signal at once as being from an automatic emergency transmitter. I was able to pinpoint it, and to follow it to its source, at the very edge of the lava flow.
“There was a wrecked sea-car there, half buried under boulders and mud.
“I signaled, but there was no answer. Since there was a chance of survivors, I got into edenite armor and went aboard the wreck.”
I gasped, “You did what?” But didn’t you know how dangerous it was?” I caught the Commandant’s eye on me and stopped; but that told me a lot about Father Tide. Know? Of course he had known; but it hadn’t stopped him.
He only said: “It was necessary. But I found no one. I believe the sea-car was struck by boulders thrown up in the eruption and disabled. The locks were open. All the scuba gear was gone.”
And that marked him as a true sea-man too, for no lubber would refer to Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus by its nickname, scuba.
“So the people in the car were able to get out?” I said hopefully.
He nodded. “Yes. But I am far from certain that they got away from the volcano.” He gestured at his briefcase. “I found those things in the sea-car. Then I had to leave—barely in time. I was almost trapped in another flow of volcanic mud.”
I started, “What—” Then I had to gulp and start again. “What do you think happened to my uncle?”
Father Tide’s blue eyes were cold and keen—surprisingly; for I would have expected them to be warm with sympathy.
“I was hoping you could tell me. Or at least—well, I was hoping that you would tell me that these things were not his property.”
“They are. But I can’t believe he was lost!”
“He’ll have my prayers,” Father Tide assured me. “Though perhaps he would not ask for them.”
He sighed, and looked out again over the bright blue sea. “Unfortunately,” he said, “being lost is not the most disturbing possibility for your uncle.”
I stared at him. “What are you talking about, sir?”
“I am accustomed to dealing with death,” he told me solemnly. “For that I feel well prepared. But this undersea volcano has presented me with other problems.” He paused, without saying what the problems were, while his blue eyes searched my face.
He asked suddenly: “Why was your uncle in the Indian Ocean?”
“I can’t say, sir. He was at home in Thetis Dome the last I knew.”
“How long ago?” he rapped out.
“Why—two months, it must have been.”
“And what was he doing there?”
“He was ill, Father Tide. I doubt that he was able to do much at all. He is in bad shape, and—”
“I see,” Father Tide interrupted. “In other words, he was desperate. Perhaps desperate enough to do—anything.”
“What are you suggesting?” I demanded.
For thirty seconds, the little priest looked at me sadly.
“This quake was not forecast,” he said at last. “There is evidence that it was—artificial.”
I sat staring, bewildered; he had lost me completely. “I don’t understand, sir,” I admitted.
“Only a trained seismologist can evaluate the evidence,” he said in his warm, clear voice, as though I were in a classroom. “I admit, also, that no point on the surface of the earth is entirely free from the danger of an unpredictable quake. Yet forecasting should give some indication. And this eruption is only one in a series of several—relatively minor, all located in uninhabited sections—which seem to follow a certain pattern.
“There have been six. They have become progressively more intense. The focus of the first was quite shallow; the foci of those that came later have become progressively deeper.”
“So you think—” I broke off; the idea was almost too appalling to put into words.
Father Tide nodded. “I suspect,” he said clearly, “that someone is perfecting an unholy technique for creating artificial earthquakes.”
I swallowed. “And my uncle—”
He nodded.
“Yes, Jim. I fear that your uncle, if he be still alive, is somehow involved.”
3
Fire Under the Sea
Artificial seaquakes! And my uncle Stewart Eden charged with setting them off, by this strange priest who called himself Father Tide!
It was too much for me to grasp. I was no longer worried; I was angry.
He left me there in the Commandant’s office, almost without another word. I stopped him as he was going out, asked for my uncle’s belongings.
He hesitated, glanced at the Commandant, then shook his head. “I’m sorry, Jim. Later they will doubtless be yours. But they are evidence. If it is necessary for the officers of the Sub-Sea Fleet to take over the private investigation I have begun, they will doubtless wish to examine them.”
And he would say no more.
I suppose the Commandant dismissed me, but I don’t remember it.
The next thing I remember was standing in a payphone booth, trying to reach my uncle in Thetis Dome. It took forever for the long relay lines to clear…and then, no answer. No answer from his home. No answer from his office. In desperation, I had him paged in the hotels and sea-car terminals—both him and his loyal aide, Gideon Park. But there was no answer.
This much was true of what Father Tide had said: My uncle had disappeared from sight.
I stood staring into space. I had no idea where I was.
By and by the object I was looking at began to make sense to me. It was a huge map of the world on the Mercator Projection; the map that, as a first-year lubber at the Academy, I had tirelessly memorized for the glory and grandeur that it spelled out. It was a strange map, at least for dry-siders—for the continents themselves were featureless black, showing only the rivers and a few of the largest cities.
But the oceans!
They sparkled in brilliant luminous colors. Shades of blue and green to indicate the depths of the sea bottom. Wash overlays of crimson and orange to show the submarine mountain peaks and ranges. Brilliant gold for the cities; lines of webbed silver that showed the pipelin
es and vacuum tubeways that linked them; shaded tracing that showed the vast mineral deposits that lay on the ocean’s bottom. There was incalculable wealth there! Enough to make a million millionaires! But dishonest men were wrecking what had so laboriously been built by the pioneers of the deeps, such as my uncle and my father.
And yet, my uncle was one of those dishonest men, according to the man who called himself Father Tide.
I came to with a start, shook myself and turned away from the great map of the deeps.
I was in Dixon Hall, the Academy’s exciting museum, where all the history of the subsea service was on display. I had no recollection of how I got there.
And someone was calling my name.
I said: “Oh. Hello. I—I didn’t see you come in.”
It was Bob, with Harley Danthorpe.
“You didn’t see anything at all,” Danthorpe rasped. “Can’t you find a better place to daydream than a dump like this? We’ve been looking all over for you.”
I expected something from Bob at that point, for he was nearly as devoted to Dixon Hall and the living history it contained as I.
But he was paying no attention. “Look!” he said, pointing.
It was a tapered metal tube, four inches thick and about three feet long, mounted in a glass display case.
The polished walls of it were glowing like edenite—the fantastic armor that my uncle invented, the pressure film that turns the deadly pressure of the water back on itself, making it possible for men to plumb the deeps.
But it was not edenite, or not of any sort that I had ever seen. For the glow of this was not the even shimmering green of submarine edenite armor. It was filled with little sparking points of colored fire that came and went like Christmas lights seen through the waving branches of a tree.
It’s a model mole!” cried Bob. “Look at the sign!”
He pointed to the card in the case:
Working Model of
Mechanical Ortholytic Excavator
Experimental craft of this type, now under test by the Sub-Sea Fleet, offer the promise of new opportunities to Academy graduates. With it explorations may be made at first hand of the strata beneath the sea bottom.
“Beneath the sea bottom,” I read aloud, wonderingly, “Do they mean actually underground?”
Harley Danthorpe twanged: “If you want the inside drift on the mole, just ask me.” He came up behind us, squinting at the shining model. “My dad has money in the basic patents,” he bragged. “On the ortholytic drill. Get it? Mechanical—Ortho—Lytic—Excavator. M-O-L-E.” He patted the case reassuringly. “Dad says it will slice through basalt rock like a bullet through butter. He says a time is coming when self-contained drilling machines will cruise through the rocks under the floor of the sea like submarines under the surface of the water. And he says the mole is going to earn millions for the man with the inside drift.”
“Great,” said Bob, disgusted. “A thing like this, and all you can think of is how to make money out of it!”
“What’s wrong with money?” Danthorpe demanded hotly. “After all, if it wasn’t—”
“Wait a minute,” I interrupted. “I remember hearing about this thing. They’re having trouble with it, right? The model is fine, but the big machines have bugs.”
Danthorpe confessed, “Well, all atomic drills generate a lot of heat—and the ortholytic drill cuts faster, but if makes more heat. And the earth’s crust is already plenty hot, when you get a few miles down. They’ve got a terrific refrigeration problem.”
“At the least,” Bob agreed. “But they’ll lick it! And—Wow!”
He stopped and pointed at the big clock on the wall, under the sign that read; The Tides Don’t Wait.
“Five minutes before seventeen hundred!” he cried. “Come on, we’ve got to get to the Commandant’s office!”
We stood at ramrod attention, while the Commandant came around his big desk and inspected us with critical eyes as cold as the polar seas.
He said nothing about the scene in his office a few hours before. He didn’t show by a look or a gesture that it had ever happened.
For that I was grateful.
He walked behind the desk again and sat down deliberately.
“Gentlemen,” he said, his voice as hard as his seascarred face, “you are nearing the end of a course of training. You have reached the stage when certain selected cadets are chosen for detached duty as a part of their training. On this occasion, I want to remind you of your enormous duties, and of your peculiar opportunities.”
Opportunities!
It was a strange way for him to put it. I didn’t say anything. I didn’t even move. But I could hear Bob Eskow catch his breath beside me.
The Commandant was lecturing.
“The Sub-Sea Fleet,” he was saying, “was originally designed to protect American interests under the sea. That was back before all the world’s weapons were placed under the direct supervision of the U.N. We looked out for American cities, American mining claims, American shipping. That is still an important part of our duties. But the Sub-Sea Fleet has a broader mission now.
“Our enemies down deep are seldom men in these days. In fact, the old institution of war was drowned in the deeps. There’s room and wealth enough for everybody.
“But getting them takes co-operation. Edenite was an American invention—” Did I imagine it, or did he glance at me when he said that? “But the British devised the techniques of sub-sea farming. The ortholytic drill was originally a German idea. The Japanese have pioneered in sub-sea quake forecasting.
“Against the hazards of the sea, all men fight together.”
He paused and looked at us.
“‘The Tides Don’t Wait!’” His voice rang out with the old slogan of the Academy. “That means that the Sub-Sea Fleet doesn’t live in the past. We recognize the fact of change. We are quick to make the most of new technologies.
“Gentlemen,” he said in his cold voice of command, “on a basis of your unusual aptitudes, indicated by the scores you have earned on the psychological tests and confirmed by your actual achievements here at the Academy, you have been selected for a mission involving the application of such a new field of scientific development.
“You are placed on orders.
“You will be ready for departure by air at twenty-one hundred hours tonight. You will proceed via New York and Singapore to Krakatoa Dome. You will report to the commanding officer of the Fleet base there, for a special training assignment.
“Gentlemen, you are dismissed.”
And we saluted, about-faced and marched out.
“I told you so,” hissed Harley Danthorpe, the moment we were out of the Commandant’s private office. “I had the inside drift!”
But even Danthorpe couldn’t tell us what the “special training assignment” might be.
4
Seaquake City
We were gaining on the sun.
It was less than an hour above the horizon as the last plane of our journey slowed the thunder of its jets, dumped its flaps and came swooping in to the crossed buoyed “runways” of the sea over Krakatoa Dome.
The plane slapped hard against the waves, small though they were—electrostatic “pacifiers” had smoothed out the highest wavecrests between the buoys that marked our landing lane. But our pilot had placed the first contact just right. We skipped once and settled. In a moment we were moored to the bright X-shaped structure that floated over the Dome, the edenite-shielded city that lay three miles beneath us.
“All right, you men! Let’s get ready to debark!”
Eskow looked at me and scowled, but I shook my head. Because Danthorpe’s name came ahead of ours alphabetically, it had appeared first on the orders—and he had elected to assume that that put him in charge of the detail. It graveled Bob; but, after all, one of us might as well be in charge, and at least it made sure that Danthorpe was the one who had to worry about making connections, clearing customs and so on. We sto
od up, picked up our gear, and filed out of the overseas jet on to the X-shaped landing platform.
Colossal floating dock! It was nearly a thousand feet along each leg—big enough for aircraft to land in an emergency, when the sea was too rough for even the pacifiers. It towered two hundred feet above the waterline; the keel of its floats lay two hundred feet below; it was a small city in itself.
And yet, it was only a sort of combination front door and breathing tube for the sub-sea city itself. The platform was a snorkel, with special flexible conduits, edenitearmored, to inhale pure air and exhale what came out. Older cities had made do with air-regeneration apparatus; Krakatoa Dome pumped fresh air from the surface. We clambered past the vents that exhaled the air from fifteen thousand feet below and felt the cold damp reek of busy industry, oozing salt water and crowded humanity from far below. It was a familiar smell. All of us looked at each other.
“Hup, two!” cried Harley Danthorpe, and marched us out of the crowded terminal into the three-mile magnetic elevators. The door closed; there was a whoosh; and abruptly the bottom of the elevator car dropped out from Tinder our feet. Or so it felt.
Eskow and I instinctively grabbed out for something to support ourselves. Harley Danthorpe roared with laughter. “Lubbers!” he sneered. Don’t you think you ought to keep on your toes? If an elevator scares you that much, what’s going to happen when there’s a seaquake?”
Eskow, pale but game, snapped: “We’ll see what happens. I guarantee one thing, Danthorpe. If you can stand it, Jim Eden and I can.”
We stepped out of the elevator, wobbly-kneed, and at once we were in another world.
We lay three miles under the surface of the ocean! The blue sky and the sea breeze were gone; fifteen thousand feet of the Indian Ocean rolled over our heads; and the position of the sun no longer mattered.
“Hup, two!” chanted Danthorpe, and marched us from the elevator station at the crown of the dome to the exits. By slidewalk. elevator and passage he escorted us through the teeming, busy heart of Krakatoa Dome. Fleet Base lay down on dock level, at the dome’s lower rim; to reach it, we had the whole depth of the dome to pass through. Harley led us through what must have been the longest way.