“Ah, indeed?” replied Mr. Lillibulero, not in the least impressed. “Well now, I’ll just finish this up, and we’ll go have a look at him.” And he turned back to the box and the panel.
“I don’t know where he is right now,” muttered Robby.
“Don’t y’now?” said Mr. Lillibulero. “I know where my scannar is.” And he tapped the box beside him.
Furious, Robby stamped up the stairs and pressed the button on the platform. It rang the same underwater bell that had summoned him and Balthasar home earlier in the day. For a second there was no response, and then Balthasar broke surface in the water which was already red from the descending sun.
“So yon’s the beast,” said Mr. Lillibulero’s voice in Robby’s ear. Robby jumped. He had not heard the little man approach behind him. Balthasar plunged and came up, rubbing his side against the edge of the platform at their feet. He opened his mouth playfully at Mr. Lillibulero.
“Gramphidelphis griseus,” murmured Mr. Lillibulero thoughtfully.
“Gramphidelphis griseus X,” Robby corrected him. “X for experimental breed.”
“Och, aye?” said Mr. Lillibulero, still gazing at Balthasar,in a kinder voice than Robby had heard him use before. “Well, he’s a fine beast, and it’s no harm t’have him about.”
“If he sees anyone coming, either on top of the water or under it, he butts the bell button on the air lock down on the third level,” said Robby.
As he spoke, the sun, which had been slipping into the far-off waterline of the horizon, took the last few degrees of its plunge and disappeared with tropical suddenness, leaving them only the fading blue of the sky.
“Ah,” said Mr. Lillibulero, squinting his green eyes at the west. “Time to button up.”
Robby followed him down, closing and locking the platform hatch as he went.
“Come along, laddie,” said Mr. Lillibulero. “We’ll make a security check of the entire estableeshment.” He led the way, and they made the rounds down to the stand-by tanks on the fifth level. Mr. Lillibulero looked with interest at the squid, the small basking shark, and the other creatures.But he stopped to linger over the tank holding the Martians.
“This’ll be them?” he said to Robby.
“They’re the Martians,” said Robby.
“Are they now?” said Mr. Lillibulero. “ ’Tis interesting to obsairve they’re little different from earthly creatures.”
“There isn’t much difference,” said Robby. “Anybody who knows anything about marine biology knows there couldn’t be. Their sea water isn’t quite as salty as ours on earth, and there’re little differences like that—but that’s all.”
“I wouldna say they look exactly like earthly fish and plants,” commented Mr. Lillibulero, following a ribbon-like Martian with his eye as it eeled its way among some waterplants remarkably like orange-coloured bamboo shoots.
“That’s because of the environment,” said Robby. “There probably were some species quite like our fish, but all we’ve got is the live forms that adapted to living in underground caves and were sealed off and frozen in underground lakes.Nobody thought there was anything more than a plant or two on Mars until geologists started drilling in the dead sea bottoms and discovered the ice caves way under the ground.They didn’t discover any higher Martian life forms—only these simple plants and fish that were gradually frozen as Mars cooled.”
“And is that a fact, indeed now!” said Mr. Lillibulero, and moved off. Robby, his ears burning with embarrassment,realized that the small man probably already knew these things.
He did not speak to Mr. Lillibulero again, and the two went their separate ways about the process of buttoning up the establishment. What Robby did was to check the temperatures on all tanks of fish, check the filters in the tank, feed the fish whose turn it was to be fed. Turn off the lights in the laboratory. Tidy the kitchen.
Last of all, he made a couple of sandwiches, poured a glass of milk, took the snack to his room, and shut the door.
Meanwhile Mr. Lillibulero, with a diagram of the station in one hand, proceeded to test the water intake and topside ventilators to make sure no one could get in. Lock the first-level hatch leading to the platform above. Secure the air lock. Check his gun and knife.
And do eighty one-arm push-ups (forty for each arm), a hundred sit-ups, a hundred and fifty squat-jumps, two hundred deep-knee bends, and touch his toes three hundred and one times without stopping and without bending his knees.
Then he sat down to relax in Dr. Hoenig’s office, with theSmithsonian Scientific Series, Volume Number Ten, on shelled invertebrates.
Robby, one level below, was also relaxing. It would have been hard not to relax in Robby’s room, in fact, for it was very pleasant. It was shaped something like a big slice of pie,with a door where the point of the slice would be. Two walls spread out the way the edges of the slice would have run. And where the crust of the pie would have been, there was the outside wall of the station which, in the case of Robby’s room, was one big window.
Along the walls were all sorts of interesting things, such as a fishing gun that worked on compressed air, the huge top shell of a sea turtle, big enough to be the shield of a knight in the Middle Ages, the jaws of a tiger shark showing several rows of teeth, a photograph of the Syrtis Major area of Mars,taken from a spaceship fifty miles above the surface, and a picture in coloured chalk, rather smudgy around the edges, of Balthasar, done by Robby himself.
But the best part of Robby’s room was the window. He could lie on the bed in the daytime and look out as if into a giant aquarium full of fish and plants of every colour and size. But at night it could be even better. There was no telling what might come up after dark, attracted by the light of the reading lamp, to bump its nose on the window. After the lights were turned out, if there was a full moon on the water above, it became even more mysterious. Just enough light filtered down for Robby to see the strange shapes coming and going and turning before the window. He could lie in bed watching and wondering about them until his eyes slipped closed without his even noticing. When he blinked them open again it was bright green, watery, sunlit morning.
Now, Robby ate his sandwiches and drank his milk. He tried to read for a little while, but then decided against it. He switched off his lights and lay in the dark, watching the faint flickers of fish he could not quite make out. Once Balthasar swam down and looked in, and Robby recognized the dolphin by his size and the outline he made against the glass. Gradually, Robby felt himself slipping, slipping, down that long smooth slide into sleep. His last drowsy thought was that if not liking Mr. Lillibulero was something a Vandal might do, then he wasn’t too sure he blamed the Vandals for being the way they were. And then Robby was asleep.
Sometime during the night he began to dream that he was steering Balthasar through the watery ways of a city like Venice that used canals for streets. No one was moving up and down the canals except Robby and Balthasar, although on the pavements that ran alongside, people were busily going to and fro. He thought he recognized some Vandals by the bushy beards which Vandals liked to wear, but nobody else seemed to be noticing them.
Then, far away, he heard a sound like a police siren, and his first thought was that he and Balthasar had been speeding.
He slowed down and steered Balthasar to the side of the canal so that the siren could catch up with him. But the siren did not catch up, though the noise went on and on. Looking about, he could see no sign of a pursuing police boat.
Finally he urged Balthasar ahead. They swam until they reached an intersection. There in the centre on a pedestal rising out of the water, he saw Mr. Lillibulero in a blue police uniform directing the water traffic.
“What’s wrong?” he asked Mr. Lillibulero. Mr. Lillibulero reached down and took Robby by the shoulders.
“Up!” he snapped. “Up! Up! Wake up! Wake.”
Robby opened his eyes to find the real Mr. Lillibulero shaking him. A siren was keening through the station.
“I—I’m awake,” mumbled Robby, blurrily. I'm awake. What is it?”
“Up and out of bed, laddie,” replied Mr. Lillibulero. “That’s my scannar system hooting y’hear. There’s a ship approaching us fast and underwater. We’ll have t’abandon the station.”
“But why . . . ?” said Robby, thickly. “What ship? Who’s coming?”
“A submersible, Robertson,” said Mr. Lillibulero. “And it’s a submersible which has not called the station to warn of its arrival—as, by international marine law, it is required to do. Only Vandals would do such. And by the size of the ship on the scannar screen it’s a good-sized gang of the rascals we’ll be having about our ears in the next five minutes!”
The Killer Whale
“Y’ll have t’leave the watch,” said Mr. Lillibulero as Robby rolled out of bed and reached automatically for his swimming trunks and sandals. His quick fingers slipped the expansion band over Robby’s right hand and he dropped on the dresser the calendar watch-depth indicator Robby had got for his birthday just a few months before.
“Why?” said Robby, who was just sleepy enough to argue.
“We can have no metal about us. They’ll have searching equipment, too.” said Mr. Lillibulero. “Dressed? Then come along. It’s up to the platform and out into the water for us, before they arrive.”
“But my watch . . .” protested Robby, trailing after him.
“Y’notice I’ve left my knife and gun as well,” said Mr. Lillibulero, slipping out the bedroom door.
“What do we have to leave for?” gasped Robby, catching up with the little man. They started up the ladder to the surface platform.
“Discretion,” replied Mr. Lillibulero, not the least out of breath, “is the better part of valour. Particularly when y’r outnumbered.” They emerged into the night. “It’s only a wee bit after five in the morning,” said Mr. Lillibulero, sniffing the darkness. “ ’Twill be daylight in an hour. Here y’be.”
He handed one of the underwater breathing lungs to Robby and slipped one on himself.
“We’d best stay t’gether,” he said, and plunged into the water. Robby followed him, and the warm, night-time sea closed over their heads.
He swam down, keeping the shape of Mr. Lillibulero before him. Out of nowhere a large, dark body rushed at them. Mr. Lillibulero swung about sharply to face it but Robby spoke into the microphone that allowed him to talk through the face mask.
“It’s Balthasar,” he explained.
“Och, aye?” came back Mr. Lillibulero’s voice, rather tinnily, through the water. “Keep the beastie with us, if y’can. It may be all t’our good that they dinna know we’ve such a creature about.”
“All right,” said Robby.
“Now,” went on Mr. Lillibulero, “where’s a close place we can hide and watch?”
Robby thought. There was Seal Rocks, a jumbled mass of coral and rock that stuck up from the sandy bottom of the sea about fifty feet from the station. He told Mr. Lillibulero about it.
“Vairy good,” said Mr. Lillibulero. They turned, Robby leading the way from memory, and swam for the rock. When it loomed up before them they circled about it and then settled down, holding lightly on to an outcropping.
They did not have to stay there very long before things began to happen. They heard the rumble of the approaching submersible, the water tumbling away behind its powerful stem jets, while it was still some distance out. The vibration it setup touched them with a feeling like water in air, rippling over them. The rumble grew louder, the vibration increased, and suddenly they felt, rather than heard or saw, the big body of the ship come to a stop between them and the station. An underseas shock wave bounced at the rock so that they were forced to hold on tightly to keep from being swept away.
For a moment the ship was quiet. Then there was a sudden banging and clattering as the topside hatch was flung open, and Robby could hear men jumping from it to the station platform. With a crash the platform hatch was forced back,and a second later they heard sounds inside the station.
Robby listened, considerably surprised to hear how noisy his familiar station must have seemed to underwater creatures when something energetic was going on inside. It was easy to forget how quickly sound travels in water, where it has five times the speed it has in the air, and the way it echoes in the ear. Now, it seemed to him that the Vandals must be tearing the station apart.
He put his mask close to Mr. Lillibulero’s ear. “What’d they want to come here for?” he asked in a worried voice.
Mr. Lillibulero merely shook his head, as if he were at a loss for an answer. “Quiet now, laddie,” he murmured, and pushed off from the rock, towards the ship.
Robby and Balthasar swam after him. There is one nice thing about creeping up on something underwater. You can make your approach without giving any warning whatever. On the surface, of course, you splash. But underwater you can glide along as quietly as an owl swooping through the night-time forest.
They came silently up to the submersible, looming enormous in the water. From its bottom plates to its top plates it measured a good twenty feet or more. If it had not been for the streamlined shape, a ship this size would have scraped the sea bottom here in shallow water. As it was, it had only five feet of water above it and five below. To someone from th etwentieth century, the submersible would have looked more like an aircraft than a submarine. In fact that was what it most resembled, a jet plane of the 1950s, one designed for super-sonic speeds, with little, stubby, back-raking wings and along, needle nose. The submersible, however, was thicker-bodied and had a cargo section just forward of the rudder and diving planes. This section looked exactly like the rudder and the tail on an aircraft, and did the same duty.
Robby and Mr. Lillibulero approached the heavy, swelling mass of the submersible from the rear, where the large, round openings of the jet tubes were located. They skirted these, not wanting to be caught in the thrust if the motor of the submersible were suddenly turned on. They were just about to make an exploratory trip under the length of the ship when they bumped head-on into a trailing cable.
The cable stretched back some distance, but soon Mr. Lillibulero came to the end of it, with Robby and Balthasar right behind him. From it waved a thin, white material which stretched over the sea bottom in enormous shreds and tatters.
“A pod!” breathed Robby.
“Aye,” agreed Mr. Lillibulero.
They recognized the pod at once, although there were many people who would not have. Robby was not the son of two marine biologists for nothing. As for Mr. Lillibulero, he knew a great many more things than most people suspected.
What they were looking at had once been a device for transporting large ocean creatures without harming them. The idea behind it was simple enough. It was merely to put a big creature in a bigger bag through which sea water continually flowed as the bag was towed behind a ship like the submersible. The idea was simple, but the execution was difficult until the invention, a dozen years before, of a tough, durable plastic that could withstand the pressure of the water and the weight of even the largest whales.
What was so astonishing now was the shreds and tatters. If one of the great blue whales could not burst open such a bag, what could? Perhaps, thought Robby, it had caught on something very sharp and very hard.
“Come,” said the voice of Mr. Lillibulero softly in Robby’s ear. “ ’Tis getting light. We’ll have to hurry to see the rest of this ship.”
He led the way back to the underside of the submersible. Here they ran smack into another mystery.
The bottom of the cargo section was ripped open from the inside, as if by a giant tin-opener.
More than this they could not see in the dark waters. Although the paleness overhead showed that dawn was on its way, the interior was black as pitch. Only the faint glimmer of self-sealing bulkheads showed where the water was locked back from the rest of the submersible, which otherwise would have flooded and sunk.
&nb
sp; Mr. Lillibulero put his hand on Robby’s arm to guide him away from the station. At that moment they were startled by aloud bubbling noise.
The bubbling came closer. And then—so close that they might have reached up and caught one of his swim fins—a swimmer thrashed by overhead. A stream of air bubbles came from a clumsy, full-sized breathing helmet, and the man struggled with the painful awkwardness of someone who was decidedly unacquainted with operating underwater.
He was patrolling the side of the submersible’s hull and required the full helmet, no doubt because of the beard which most Vandals grew in order to look different from other people. The neat little lung Robby and Mr. Lillibulero were wearing could not fit tightly over a hairy face.
Robby and Mr. Lillibulero, followed by the faithful Balthasar, swam quietly off into the dimness. They passed Seal Rocks, and Mr. Lillibulero waved at Robby to keep going. About them the dark waters of night slowly and imperceptibly lightened, changing from blackish murk to a pearly grey. Almost within minutes, for the sun in the tropics comes up as fast as it goes down, it was clear shimmering day above the sandy sea bottom again.
But by that time they were out of sight of the station. At the Castle, where Robby had discovered the footprints the day before, Mr. Lillibulero settled down and signalled Robby to do likewise.
Robby grabbed for one of the battlements, but the moment he touched the rock Balthasar bumped him.
“No!” said Robby sharply, and tried again. Again, Balthasar shoved him away. Robby reached back behind the dolphin’s head and caught hold of the harness to which the reins were anchored. He jerked quickly on it, with his “Now, stop that nonsense” signal. Balthasar backed off, but began to circle the two human beings excitedly.
“We’re some eight miles from shore now, are we not?” asked Mr. Lillibulero.
“Eight miles and a bit,” said Robby.
“I’m thinking about swimming ashore,” nodded Mr. Lillibulero. “When I first saw yon ship approaching, I tried to get a message for help out on the phone, but on the sub they’d already blocked off our communications wi’a jammer. If I could get ashore and call the coastguard, now—”
Secrets of the Deep Page 3
