by Frederick
Perhaps—perhaps whoever it was who was so interested in my doings would try the opposite tack. Perhaps someone so neutral and inconspicuous as to be even less visible would be next.
With new eyes I looked at the crowd in the saloon.
In a moment I had found him; I was sure of it.
He was slumped down, staring at the floor, in the midst of his luggage. A small man, thin, shrunken. His narrow face was expressionless; his pale eyes blank. His garments were a neutral gray, neither neat nor shabby.
He was the sort of individual who could enter a room without being noticed, who had no single characteristic that would stick in the memory.
Of course—I told myself—I might be seeing ghosts.
He might be a perfectly harmless passenger. Perhaps no one on the ship was interested in me at all. Still—the persons who had gone to such lengths to knock me out and search me on the deserted San Francisco streets would likely keep an eye on me still.
At any rate, I was going to keep an eye on him.
A white-clad steward came toward me; I handed my bags over to him, tipped him, and let him go to my stateroom without me. I accompanied him just as far as the entrance to the saloon; there I waited, out of sight, to see what the gray man would do.
In a few minutes he hailed a steward, handed over his bags, and moved off in the same direction as my own steward had gone. I let him get well ahead, then followed.
The steward led the thin little man past the elevator which communicated with the steerage quarters, past the moving stairs that went to the luxurious suites above. Good; his stateroom would be on the cabin deck, with mine.
The steward stopped to unlock a door; and he and the little man went in.
As soon as the steward had left and closed the door, I hurried past.
It was stateroom 335.
And my own stateroom was number 334.
I found a steward to make sure; he led me to the room next to the gray man’s. He was going to be my next-door neighbor!
I no longer thought of coincidences. I knew!
The steward entered the stateroom behind me. He showed me how to adjust the Troyon light, how to regulate the gentle breeze of artificial air, how to work the temperature controls, the ship’s radio, the washstands and equipment. Then he busied himself tidying the towels on their racks, in the ancient custom of his kind while waiting for a tip.
It might be an accident…but I knew it was not The man in the red hat, after all, had had plenty of chance to find out my stateroom number—in the line behind me when I confirmed my reservation; or, if by any chance he had blundered enough to miss it then, when he went through my pockets later on. There could be no question that the gray man—assuming they worked together—could easily have arranged to get the stateroom next to mine.
But why?
I dug deep in my pocket to tip the steward.
He gave me a soft salute and started to leave. I stopped him.
“Say,” I said carelessly, “do you know who’s in the next cabin? I thought I recognized him as I came in.”
He looked at me. “If you know him, sir, why not just——-”
I added to the tip, and he gave me a different kind of look. “Can you find his name for me?”
The steward pursed his lips. “Certainly,sir. The passenger list will have it.”
“Please do.” He nodded, half winking, and left. Five minutes later he was at the door again.
“The name is E.A. Smith, sir. No address.” He hesitated. “Purser says it was a last-minute reservation,” he added.
“Thanks,” I said, trying to be nonchalant. “Guess I was wrong. There are lots of Smiths in the world.”
“And a lot who aren’t named Smith.” He closed the door with a half smile.
When I came out of my cabin the next morning the ship was under weigh. I felt the slight roll of the vessel, not choppy like a surface ship, but gentle and soothing, as the ship slid through the strong undersea currents; that, and the almost imperceptible vibration of the screws, was the only signal that we were racing forward at sixty knots or better.
It was achingly familiar…
I struck up a friendship with a junior officer after breakfast, and he offered to show me around the ship. I was delighted to take him up on it.
First we went to the narrow promenade around the cabin deck, just inside the hull. He opened a metal shutter inside a port and we looked out.
It was the sight I had seen so many times before: Darkness, and an occasional dimly luminous shape flashing past.
“We’re a hundred fathoms down,” the officer volunteered. “That water’s ice-cold. Under a pressure close to a quarter-ton to the square inch.”
I nodded. “I know,” I said. I reached out and closed the port. He looked at me curiously, but said nothing.
We went below; he showed me the ballast tanks with their powerful pumps the battery deck with its rows of Vauclain cells in the unimaginable event of a failure of the power reactor. We skirted the giant bulk of the reactor itself, whispering songs of neutrons and fission in its gentle tones. We went through the engine rooms, clean and orderly, smelling slightly of lubricating oil. It was almost soundless, only the dull vibration of the screws and the windy sigh of the steam coming out of the tur-bines, at the end of the heat-exchanger chain.
We saw it all—cargo holds, forecastle, steerage, upper deck with its pool and conservatory, superstructure atop the hull with its pilot house, chart house, radio room, officer’s quarters.
It was as different from the battered, cramped old Pocatello as an emerald is from mud.
But I knew which I would have chosen, had I had the choice.
The day passed. We ate; the afternoon drifted by; we ate again; the evening came. And the Isle of Spain lunged on through the submarine blackness.
It was growing late and I retired to my cabin.
Something was awry.
I stood on the threshold, key still in the door, listening and looking and waiting.
Through no sense that the doctors admit exists, I knew something had happened. The stateroom was not just as it had been when I left. Something had changed.
I switched on the Troyon tubes and looked around.
If there had been a search of my luggage, it had been unbelievably skillful. I could detect nothing that had been disturbed. But the feeling persisted.
I decided on an inch-by-inch examination of the cabin.
And in the bath, behind the towel rack, I found what I was looking for.
There was plaster dust on the floor beneath. And behind the rack itself, hidden by the bar on which the towels hung unless you looked just so, was a small round hole. It wasn’t more than a quarter-inch in diameter, perhaps less; it had been drilled through the wall.
For what?
A fresh puzzle. I couldn’t guess at the answer. Certainly it was not for spying—you couldn’t see past the towel bar from the other side. For listening? Hardly; there were electronic devices that were much, much subtler and more reliable.
But certainly it was for something…
If I couldn’t figure out for what, at least I could take a sensible precaution. I called a steward, and told him I had decided to vacate the room.
If I had known what the consequences would be…
But I didn’t. How could I have guessed?
The steward looked dismayed when I told him what I wanted.
“Very irregular, sir!” he sputtered. “Is the room unsatisfactory?”
It was not the same steward of the morning. I said, as haughtily as I could: “Steward, I want another room! That’s all; get it for me, please. I understand that I shall have to pay for two rooms. I am quite prepared to do so.”
It was a silly role to cast myself in; but the alternative was to tell him about the hole that had been drilled in the wall, and I wasn’t quite ready to take anyone into my confidence.
He sputtered and sputtered some more; but I found a suitable bill
in my pocket, and when it had been transferred to his he was much more co-operative. He shrugged. “This way, sir,” he said, with the resignation one expects in those whose careers make them deal with many people…
I slept like a baby that night. Soundly—
But by no means as soundly as I would have if I hadn’t moved.
10
The Long Sleep
When I woke it took me a moment to realize where I was. My shaving gear, with everything else I owned, was still in Stateroom 334. I should have gone back for it; but the whisper of sound from the screws told me that something was happening; they were changed from the sounds of the day before.
I dressed quickly in the clothes I had worn and stepped out into the corridor. A passing crewman told me we were about to dock at Black Camp, first of the dome cities of Marinia. I would just have time for breakfast and a quick trip to the ship’s barber for a shave.
I put off going back to my cabin.
The ship’s barber tidied me up quickly; I left him feeling much improved, and headed for the dining salon.
On the way, I met the little man in gray.
For the first time he seemed actually to see me.
He stared at me unbelievingly with his pale eyes. He gasped; his thin-lipped mouth opened as if to speak. Every trace of color drained from his gray face.
He was trembling as, abruptly, he turned and fled.
One puzzle more…
Why had he been so startled to see me? I couldn’t guess; I dismissed the question and went in to breakfast.
I had just finished eating when we docked at Black Camp—having made the run of two thousand miles and a bit in just over thirty-three hours. I hurried to the promenade, peered out through one of the shielded ports.,
My first view of a city of the sea! Its weirdness and its wonder almost made me forget the web of mystery surrounding my life.
The vast, level plain of radiolarian ooze, shining with a cold, pale phosphorescence. Through some illusion of optics it seemed to stretch to infinity, though actually, owing to the turgidity of the water, the visibility was only a few hundred yards at best.
The “sky”—the cold ocean above us—was utterly black.
Strange world: Luminous plains and glimmering mountains, under a black, black sky.
But all this was familiar to me. What was new was Black Camp itself, the huge hemispherical dome of Edenite that rose ghostly from the luminous plain. The massive bubble of metal armor that sheltered the city from the awful thrust of the sea.
The docking arrangement was the same as in all the deep-sea cities: tubes ran out from the city, under the rock of die sea-floor, the docks above them. The docks themselves were magnetic metal platforms, which the sub-sea vessel squats down to while a lock in her belly opens to join the tubes below.
From my stand on the promenade I could see only the featureless city dome and the unchanging sea; I wandered down to the saloon to watch the passengers disembark.
We took on a full score of passengers; at least as many got off.
And among those who got off was the gray man. He knew I was there; I caught one glimpse of his eyes on me out of the corner of mine, and in his I saw astonishment and what almost had to be fright. But then he looked at me no more. I stared after his departing back, wondering.
In a matter of minutes the locks were closed, the pressure-ports sealed, and the Isle of Spain was water- borne again.
I headed back toward my cabin. Since the little man was gone, there could be no reason to stay away. In fact, if I played my cards right—if the steward would let me in to Stateroom 335—I might learn something…
I never got the chance.
Heedlessly I unlocked my stateroom door. Heedlessly I swung it open, started to step inside.
Bluish vapors swirled out upon me.
I staggered back, blinded, gasping, tears streaming down my face. I breathed the tiniest fraction of a minute whiff of the gases—and I was strangled, choking, bent double with a rasping, shattering cough.
Instandy a steward was by my side.
“Sir!” he cried. “Sir, what’s the matter?”
Then he caught a whiff of the gas himself.
The two of us staggered away. He clawed at some sort of signal apparatus on the wall; in the distance, an alarm bell pulsed. A moment passed, then half a dozen crewmen appeared, in fire-fighting gear, masks and helmets giving them some protection.
Without word or question they raced past us, heading from Stateroom 334…
And in a moment two of them came lurching out. Between them they dragged a rigid, wax-faced form: the steward who had changed my cabin for me.
The captain of the Isle of Spain was considerate, tactful—and remorseless.
If I had had anything to hide, he would have had it from me. I was grateful that I could speak honestly to that bronze-faced man; I should not have cared to try him with a lie.
I told him everything. Starting with my forced resignation from the Academy—through the death of my uncle, the man in the red hat, the littie gray man. I held nothing back.
I wanted to hold nothing back. I had got a quick glimpse of the unfortunate steward: grotesquely, frozenly stiff; hideously white—color bleached even from his hair and eyebrows by the searing action of the gas. The ship’s doctor called the gas lethine; I had heard of it. It was deadly.
Whoever was behind the gray man was playing for keeps.
The ship’s officers acted promptly; as soon as they had heard the first words of my story, they radioed Black Camp to have the gray man put under arrest. But I had small doubt that the gray man would be hard to find; certainly he knew what he would have to expect as soon as the corpse was discovered.
Unfortunate steward! The captain speculated that my story had interested him; he had gone back to Stateroom 334 to see just what it was that I was willing to pay double fare to get away from. And his curiosity had been his undoing.
Eventually the questioning was over. The captain secured my promise that, when I arrived at Thetis I would stay put until the Marinian police had had a chance to question me, if they wished to do so, and then I was at liberty.
I didn’t go back to Stateroom 334. I had my belongings transferred to the new room. And I prayed that this last failure of my unknown enemies would exhaust their powers…
We were due to arrive at Seven Dome late that night; I debated staying up for it, but decided not to bother. I was weary and worn; it had been a difficult period, and that day had been the most difficult of all.
I retired to my cabin rather early. But I didn’t get a chance to go right to sleep.
There was a knock on my door. I flung it open; a steward smiled apologetically, and extended a scarlet envelope on a silver tray.
“For you, Mr. Eden,” he said. “Sorry to disturb you.”
I dismissed him and ripped open the envelope. The message said:
Dear Mr. Eden:
I am sorry to hear of your difficulties. As you perhaps know, your father, your uncle and I were once closely associated. Perhaps I can be of assistance to you.
Please come to my suite on A Deck when you receive this.
I stared at the note with the strangest mixed set of emotions I had ever known.
For the signature on the note was: “Hallam Sperry.”
11
My Partner, My Enemy
Hallam Sperry himself admitted me to his cabin.
It was a far cry from the small stateroom I occupied on the deck below. It was more than a cabin, it was a suite; and properly so, I suppose. After all, Isle of Spain was only one of a dozen giant subsea liners on the Sperry Line! There were giant photomurals on the walls, pressure-tanks of curious deep-sea flower-animals and darting, tiny fish, tinted Troyon tubes to warm the rooms and give them the semblance of upper-air sunshine.
Hallam Sperry clasped my hand in a grip as sturdy and as cold as steel. He was a giant of a man, as big as my uncle had been but dark where Uncle Stew
art had been fair, black-bearded where my uncle was ruddy. His eyes were a curious piercing blue; there was the coldness of the chill sea Deeps in those eyes as they looked into my mind. But there was a smile on his lips and his words were more than merely polite.
“Jim Eden,” he rumbled. “Know a great deal about you, young man. Knew your father and his brother well—too bad about Stewart, but he was always a daredevil. Heard about your bad break at the Academy from my boy.”
He offered me a spider-legged chair. What could I say to the man? That the “bad break” at the Academy had been his son’s own doing? That the struggle between him and the Edens was a public scandal?
I said nothing. We learned much at the Academy, but one of the first things we learned was not to speak until we knew what we had to say. It was possible that Hallam Sperry was not as black as he had been painted; it was not fair to attack him on the basis of rumor and old memories.
He offered me a crystal glass with a pale-green, stinging liquid in it; I tasted it and set it down—some strange liqueur from the Deeps. He said:
“An old friend of mine, Stewart Eden. Oh, we had our differences. But I always admired your uncle. Great man. Too bad he had to go like that.”
I made some answer; but what I had to say made no difference.
He rumbled right on, in his bass chiming voice. “Worked with Stewart for many years. Your father too. You’ll hear stories about our fights—probably heard lots of them already. No matter, boy. He’s gone now. Our differences are gone too. Question is, what next?”
I said, “I beg your pardon?”
“What next for you,” he rumbled impatiently. “What are you going to do now? You’re going to Thetis—why?”
I said stiffly, “I am my uncle’s heir, Mr. Sperry. He left all of his interests to me.”
“Interests!” Sperry snorted. “Guff! A bankrupt corporation and a sunk ship—I know what his ‘interests’ were.” He looked at me piercingly. “You may not know this,” he said. “Your uncle owed me money. Quite a lot. More than the value of his estate, boy.”