by Frederik
I said desperately: “Sir, can’t we do something?”
“Something?”
Lt. Tsuya looked at me for a moment. His gaze hadthat curious questioning quality that I had observed before. There was more on his mind, I knew, than the mere danger of the quake that lay before us all, great though that danger was. And, in a way, I could see his position. For here he was, conducting an experimental, untried station, and with a staff composed of two officers—and three cadets, each one of whom, in his own way, must have presented a huge problem to the Station Commander. There was Bob Eskow—behaving very queerly, by any standards! Myself—and, from Lt. Tsuya’s point of view, perhaps I was the biggest question mark of all; for it was on my testimony that all he knew of Bob’s behavior rested, and certainly he had to consider the possibility that I was somehow linked with my uncle in some evil and dangerous scheme. And finally there was Harley Danthorpe, the son of one of the men on whose good will the whole existence of the station depended.
No, it was no easy position!
Lt. Tsuya said reasonably: “Suppose we took matters into our own hands, Eden, and issued a forecast. Without the full co-operation of the Krakatoa Council and its police department, can you imagine what would happen? The panic would be incredible! There would be mob scenes such as you have never imagined!
“I doubt that that would save any lives, Eden.
“On the other hand—” and suddenly his quiet voice took on a new and harsher quality—“if it’s your own skin you’re worried about, then you can stop worrying. The Fleet has its own evacuation plan. And it has shipping enough to carry it out. I have communicated my forecast to the Base Commandant. The station here, of course, will be kept in operation until the last possible moment—but if you wish to ask a transfer from your present assignment so that you can be evacuated…”
“Sir!” I broke in sharply. “No, sir!”
He smiled faintly.
“Then,” he said, “I beg your pardon, Eden. Break out another geosonde. We’ll make a new forecast.”
The sonde blew up again at seventy thousand feet.
But there was no doubt of what it had to tell. Its transmissions showed that the negative gravity anomaly was still increasing under the city. Nothing had changed, not enough to matter.
When I had converted all the readings, and recomputed the equations of force and time, my answer was a force of eleven—probable error plus or minus one—and time thirty hours, probable error plus or minus twelve.
Lt. Tsuya compared my figures with his own and nodded.
“We agree again, Cadet Eden,” he said formally. “The only change is that the quake will probably be a little more severe, and will probably happen a little sooner.”
His voice was calm enough, but I could see white lines around his mouth. “I’m going to phone the mayor again,” he said.
Harley Danthorpe came into the station as Lt. Tsuya disappeared into his private office to phone. Harley was carrying thick white mugs of coffee from the mess hall.
“Here,” he said, handing me one. “Want a sandwich?” I looked at the plate he offered and shook my head. I didn’t have much of an appetite just then, though the station clock told me it was a long way past lunch. “Me too,” said Harley gloomily. “What’s the lieutenant doing?”
“Calling the mayor.”
“I wish,” said Harley Danthorpe irritably, “that he’d let me talk to my father! If I gave him the inside drift he’d have that council in session in ten minutes!”
Then he looked up. Tsuya’s office door was open, and the lieutenant was stepping calmly out.
“That,” he said, “won’t be necessary, Cadet Danthorpe. The council is in session now.”
“Hurray!” whooped Harley. “I tell you, now you’ll see some action! When my father gets—Excuse me, Lieutenant,” he finished, abashed.
The lieutenant nodded. “Lt. McKerrow,” he called, “I’m going topside to present the forecast to the council. I’ll leave you in charge of the statiorf.” McKerrow nodded wryly. “I expect a rough session with them,” Lt. Tsuya went on thoughtfully. “Some of the members are opposed to quake forecasting in any case. Now, of course, it will be worse.”
Harley said eagerly: “Sir, can I come along? I mean, if I’m there, my father will know that everything’s all right with the forecast—”
He stopped again, in confusion.
Lt. Tsuya said dryly: “Thank you, Cadet Danthorpe. I had already planned to take you with me—and Cadet Eden as well. However, your duties will be merely to help me display the charts.”
He nodded.
“I,” he said, “will do the talking. Remember that!”
The city hall of Krakatoa Dome was high in the northwest upper octant, between the financial district and the platform terminal deck.
The mayor and the council members were waiting for us in a big room walled with murals depicting scenes of undersea life—a kelp farm, a sub-sea uranium mine, undersea freighters loading cargo and so on. The murals were restful and lovely.
The gathering contained in the room, on the other hand, was nothing of the kind.
It was a noisy meeting, full of conflicting voices expressing their views in loud and quarrelsome terms; judged by Fleet standards, it was conducted in a most markedly sloppy fashion. The mayor called for order a dozen times before he got any order at all, and when he called on Lt. Tsuya to speak his piece there was still a quarrelsome undertone of voices nearly drowning him out.
But the lieutenant got their full attention in his very first words—when he told them dryly, without mincing words, that the chances were all in favor of a Force Eleven quake.
“Force Eleven?” demanded the mayor, startled.
“Possibly Force Twelve,” said Lt. Tsuya grimly.
Barnacle Ben Danthorpe broke in. “Possibly,” he sneered, “possibly Force Twelve. And possibly Force Eleven, right?”
“That’s what I said in the first place, Mr. Danthorpe,” said Lt. Tsuya.
“Or possibly Force Ten?” said Danthorpe.
“That’s possible too.”
“Or Force Nine, eh? Or maybe even Force Eight or Seven?”
“The chances of that, Mr. Danthorpe, are so small—”
“Small? Oh, maybe so, Lieutenant. Maybe so. But not impossible, eh?”
“Not quite impossible,” admitted Lt. Tsuya. “It’s all a matter of relative probabilities.”
“I see.” Ben Danthorpe grinned. “And on the basis of probabilities,” he said, “you want us to evacuate the city. Any idea of what that would cost, Lieutenant?”
Lt. Tsuya’s brown eyes glowed angrily. “Money is not the only consideration, Mr. Danthorpe!”
“But it is a consideration. Oh, yes. It is to us, Lieutenant, because we have to make it. We don’t live off the taxpayers, you see.”
Tsuya fumed silently; I could see the strain lines showing on his lean pumpkin face. Danthorpe went on easily: “I don’t deny that you scientists can give us a lot of useful information. After all, don’t you have my own son working with you? And he’s a smart boy, Lieutenant. A very smart boy!” I could feel Harley Danthorpe stiffen with pride beside me. “But Jie’s only a boy!” barked his father suddenly, “and we can’t let boys tell us how to run Krakatoa Dome! You tell us we’re sitting on a seaquake fault. All right. We know that. What do you expect us to do about it?”
“We can expect a catastrophic quake within forty-eight hours,” Lt. Tsuya said stubbornly. “Possibly within twelve. The city must be evacuated.”
“Not ‘must,’ Lieutenant!” Danthorpe blazed. “You make the forecasts, that’s all! We’ll decide what ‘must’ be done. And take this as a starter—the city cannot be evacuated.”
There was a moment of silence.
Then Lt. Tsuya took a deep, even breath. He pulled a sheaf of notes out of his portfolio and consulted them.
“I have spoken to the city engineers,” he said. “Here is their report.
&nb
sp; “According to them, the city was designed to survive a Force Nine Quake with an adequate margin of safety. They believe that, with the edenite safety walls in full operation, most of the inhabitants would survive—at least, if it were not overly prolonged in duration. But the dome will collapse under Force Ten.
“Our forecast, as you know, is for Force Eleven, possibly Force Twelve.”
Ben Danthorpe listened silently.
Then, without changing expression, he nodded. “I have exactly those figures in my own briefcase, Lieutenant,” he said. “Nevertheless, I repeat my statement. Krakatoa Dome cannot be evacuated. “Your Honor.” He turned to the Mayor. “Your Honor, tell him why.”
The mayor started slightly. He was a big, pink, perspiring man who seemed inclined to take his orders from Ben Danthorpe; he almost looked surprised at being asked to speak in this kind of a discussion.
But when he spoke, what he had to say changed things.
“My office staff has been working on the evacuation problem for many years, on a stand-by basis,” he said. “This morning I asked them to bring their findings up to date.
“It is a problem, Lieutenant! And I don’t think that a solution exists.
“Our total population is three-quarters of a million.
“The available sub-sea shipping could carry away no more than fifty thousand.
“We can set up an air-shuttle that would take another hundred thousand dry-side in two days—if we had two days.
“We can find emergency space for fifty thousand more up on the platform—maybe even a hundred thousand, if we stop the air-lift and stand them on the flight decks.
“But that leaves us with, at best, more than half a million. More than five hundred thousand men, women and children, Lieutenant, waiting down here to shake hands with old Father Neptune.”
Lieutenant Tsuya snapped angrily: “Why don’t you have a better plan? Didn’t you know that this might happen some day?”
“Lieutenant!” roared the mayor, his pink face rapidly turning red. “Don’t forget yourself!”
But Barnacle Ben Danthorpe cut in before the mayor’s explosion could get out of hand. “That’s only the physical problem, Lieutenant,” he said. “There’s also a psychological problem. Most of our people wouldn’t leave the city even if they could. This is our home. And most of them feel, as I do, that we don’t need any quake forecasters to tell us what to do.”
He turned back to the mayor. “Your Honor,” he said, “I move that we thank the lieutenant for his trouble, and send him back to his playthings.”
There was a roar of discussion at that; and an angry fight that lasted for more than an hour—getting into questions, at the last, of what had become of funds that had been appropriated for various quake control measures.
But ultimately the motion was passed.
We were sent back to our playthings—and to the knowedge that the life expectancy of every man in Krakatoa Dome was well under two days.
14
The Lead-Lined Safe
Lt. Tsuya was seething with concealed rage—not too well concealed, at that.
We marched silently out of the city hall, to the elevator landing platforms. “Sir,” said Harley Danthorpe timidly, “I hope you understand my father’s—”
“That’ll do, Danthorpe!” barked the lieutenant. “I won’t hear any excuses!”
“But I wasn’t excusing him, sir,” protested Harley, “He’s a businessman. You have to understand that.”
“I understand that he’s a murderer!” roared the lieutenant.
Harley Danthorpe stopped dead. “He’s my father, sir!”
Lt. Tsuya hesitated. “As you were,” he growled after a moment. “Sorry, Danthorpe. This business is getting on my nerves.” He glanced around him, and I knew what was going on in his mind. Here were the giant basalt pillars, the hurrying crowds of people, the elaborate, ornate offices and administration buildings of a huge and prosperous city. And yet, if our predictions were correct, in a matter of days—and not very many of them, at that—all this would be swept away. The thundering shrug of the sub-sea rock adjusting itself would topple the buildings and wrench the edenite skin off Krakatoa Dome; icy brine, steel-hard under three miles of pressure, would hammer in; in another week the benthoctopus and the giant squid would make their homes here in the wrecked, drowned ruin that had been Krakatoa Dome.
There was nothing we could do to prevent it.
And nothing the city itself would do to save the lives of all its people!
Suddenly—”Danthorpe!” rapped the lieutenant. Harley sprang to attention. “Danthorpe, get to a phone. Relay to the base commandant my respects, and inform him that the city council has rejected my recommendation. Suggest that he take independent action through Fleet channels.”
“Aye-aye, sir!” snapped Harley Danthorpe, and departed on the double for a phone.
“Not that anything can be done through the Fleet in time,” muttered the lieutenant, gazing after him. “But still, they may be in time to rescue part of the inhabitants.”
I said: “Sir, if there’s anything I can do—”
“There is, Eden,” Lt. Tsuya said strongly. “As soon as Harley Danthorpe gets back. We are all going to investigate the chance that these quakes are artificial.”
“Good, sir!” I burst out eagerly. “I’ll lead you to the sump, where I saw the MOLE. And we won’t have to drain it, sir. I’ve been thinking it over, and we can dive in thermosuits—”
“Slow down, Eden,” he commanded. He gave me a thin smile. “You’re making one mistake. I’m not going to begin this investigation in the drainage sump.
“I’m going to begin it in your uncle’s office.”
We dropped to Deck Four Plus, the three of us, as soon as Harley Danthorpe returned.
We didn’t speak; there was nothing to say. There didn’t seem to be much panic among the working people of the city. Radial Seven was still rumbling with heavy electric trucks. The factories and warehouses were busy; the air still reeked with the aromatic tang of the great sea’s produce, baled and stored.
I guided the lieutenant and Harley Danthorpe up the gloomy stairs between the warehouses at number 88. We marched, in clattering quick-step, down the hall to the door of Eden Enterprises, Unlimited.
I hesitated.
“Go ahead,” ordered Lt. Tsuya sharply.
I pushed the door open and we walked inside.
Gideon Park was sitting at a third-hand wooden table in the bare little anteroom, laboriously pecking out something on an old mechanical typewriter. He looked up, saw me, and almost knocked it over.
“Jim!” he cried. “Boy, we’ve been hoping you’d come!”
And then he saw that I was not alone.
His wide grin vanished. His black, friendly face became blank and impassive. He put the plastic cover over the old typewriter, concealing whatever it was he had been writing, and he stood up with a politely curious expression.
I said awkwardly: “This is Lieutenant Tsuya, Gideon.”
“I’m pleased to meet you, Lieutenant,” Gideon said politely.
But the lieutenant was having none of that. He demanded: “We want Stewart Eden. Why isn’t he here?”
Gideon pursed his lips. “But he is, Lieutenant,” he said civilly. “He’s in his private office.”
“Good,” snapped Lt. Tsuya, starting for the inner door. But Gideon moved quickly in front of him.
“I’m sorry,” he apologized. “Mr. Eden cannot be disturbed fust now. You see, he’s asleep.”
“Wake him up!”
“Oh, no, Lieutenant. Tm afraid that’s impossible. You see,” explained Gideon, still polite, still impassive, “Mr. Eden isn’t well. His doctor’s orders. He’s supposed to rest every afternoon at this time. I suggest you come back in an hour or so.” he said, nodding politely.
The lieutenant snapped: “You’re hiding something, Mr. Park! Get out of my way!”
But Gideon didn’t move. Stil
l calm, without any shadow of expression on his broad dark face, he stood immovable in front of the door.
Lt. Tsuya was pale, almost trembling with excitement. For a moment, I thought there was going to be a physical collision.
But then the lieutenant mastered his emotions and, still pale, stepped back.
“I beg your pardon, Mr. Park,” he said. “This is a rather critical matter, and I’m afraid I am acting too hastily. But I am here on behalf of the Sub-Sea Fleet.”
Gideon’s expression flickered slightly. “The Fleet?” he repeated.
“On a very important investigation, Mr. Park. If Stewart Eden is actually here, you had better get him up. He is in serious trouble, I assure you.
“And for that matter, Mr. Park, so are you. According to Cadet Eden, here, you are involved in some very mysterious behavior—including the possession of a MOLE and what appear to be nucleonic explosives!”
Gideon Park noded slightly. He turned, slowly, and looked at me.
“You followed us then, Jim,” he said gently, after a moment.
I nodded. “What the lieutenant says is true, Gideon. I think you had better wake up Uncle Stewart.”
Gideon sighed: “Perhaps so, boy. All right.”
He turned to the sea-green door and rapped on it. There was no answer.
After a moment he turned the knob and the door swung open. The first thing I saw was the huge steel safe in the far corner of the room, and a narrow cot beside it. My uncle’s sea-boots stood beside the cot. And on it—
My uncle Stewart leaned on one elbow, looking up at us, his old blue eyes still foggy with sleep.
“Jim!” His sea-faded face brightened suddenly as he recognized me. “Jim, it’s good to see you!”
And then he, like Gideon, saw that I was not alone; and the same quick change in his expression happened. It was like a misty veil that was suddenly pulled down between us, hiding what he felt.
When he spoke, his voice was controlled. “Is anything wrong?” he asked.
“A great deal!” rapped Lt. Tsuya. “Cadet Eden, is this your uncle?’
“Yes, sir!”
“Then permit me to introduce myself! I am Lieutenant Tsuya of the Sub-Sea Fleet, here on official business.”