“His name is Cerberus,” put in Robby.
“Direct Cerberus t’some destination by means of that Control Box we picked up.”
“That’s right,” said Robby. “I thought maybe I could write a message, put it in his collar, and send him to McMurdo. The only thing is, I don’t know which way McMurdo is. I’m all turned around on this ice.”
“I’m afraid,” said Mr. Lillibulero a little grimly, “th’Tropicans will have caught us again before Cerberus could swim th’ distance t’McMurdo. McMurdo’s a distance of pack ice and the full width of the Ross ice shelf from us. It’ll be more than five hundred miles at the least.”
“Oh,” said Robby, crestfallen. Then he looked up hopefully. “Maybe they won’t try to catch us again. They didn’t look very excited when we were swimming past the windows of the yacht.”
Mr. Lillibulero chuckled with a sound like a heavy iron key rattling in an old iron lock.
“I suspect,” he said, “that those two large twins were none too quick to rush t’Waub and admit I had gotten aboard their Headquarters, and you and I had escaped, taking y’r friend Cerberus with us. That’ll be the reason there was no immediate alarm and pursuit of us.”
“Oh,” said Robby.
“However,” said Mr. Lillibulero, “sooner or later they’ll have gotten up their nerve to report what happened. Then the Tropicans’ll be fast after us.”
“How did you get into their Headquarters?” asked Robby.“I heard the flyer blow up, and I looked around when I landed because I thought you’d be coming down with your copter-chute behind me. But I couldn’t see you anywhere.”His throat felt a little dry, remembering. He swallowed. “I almost thought you were still in the flyer when it blew up.”
“Indeed,” said Mr. Lillibulero, “that was precisely what I wanted thought, not by you, Robertson, but by the Tropicans who were without doubt watching. Consequently, when I jumped just behind you, I let myself fall free as far as I could before opening my copter-chute.”
“What good would that do?”
“I fell past you, laddie,” Mr. Lillibulero said, “while you were coming down slowly with your copter-chute. As I hoped,they watched you and the exploding flyer, and I was able to land on the ice without being noticed.”
“I wish you’d told me what you were planning,” said Robby. “I thought I was all alone out there.”
“I wasna sure I could do it successfully,” said Mr. Lillibulero.
“That’s point number one. Point number two, there was no time to tell you. And point number three, I watched you comedown and started to you as soon as you landed, but I could not catch up with you before y’began to run from the seal.And when y’did that, I lost you among the tumbled ice.”“Then how’d you find the Headquarters and my room?”“Shortly,” said Mr. Lillibulero, “after I lost sight of you—” He broke off abruptly as the same skua that hadscreamed at them earlier swept past again. “There’s something about that bird I dinna like. But to answer y’r question, Robertson, I caught sight of you shortly afterwards, traveling in friendly fashion with Cerberus. Since it was not natural, I suspected the Tropicans were somehow controlling the seal;and I followed behind the two of you, without letting m’self be seen.”
“You swam down after us under the ice?” said Robby,staring at the little man. For it had been a very brave thing to do, even for Mr. Lillibulero. He would have had no way of knowing what was waiting for him down below.
“Keeping a safe distance so’s not t’be discovered,” went on Mr. Lillibulero calmly, “I watched you enter the yacht. It hen swam around the outside of the Headquarters until I located you. Y’were just leaving Waub’s room at the time. I made sure of the room y’ended up in, and then set about searching the inside of the yacht.”
“But you said you knew where I was?”
“I knew that,” said Mr. Lillibulero, “but I did not know the answer to th’ question that’s kept me on the trail of Waub these six months. I needed to know how he intended to carryout his plans.” He looked sharply at Robby. “And I found out.”
“Have you been after them for six months?” said Robby.“Aye,” said Mr. Lillibulero, “shortly after it was learned this yacht was setting sail for parts unknown. I tracked it halfway over the world, from port t’port as it picked up men we knew to be Tropicans. But two months ago I followed it south to the Antarctic, and here it gave me the slip.”
“And I helped you find it,” said Robby.
“In a manner of speaking, yes,” said Mr. Lillibulero severely. “However, it might be more accurate t’say it helped me to find it, through you. Y’were not exactly concerned with the Gondwanaland question until Waub shot our flyer down and captured you.”
“Is it a question?” said Robby. “Gondwanaland, I mean?”
“I would say so,” said Mr. Lillibulero. “It’s a geological theory that such existed in the Devonian Period of the Paleozoic Era—or from about three hundred million years ago when the fishes were just beginning to come ashore and trade their fins for feet. And the continent theoretically lasted until the JurassicP eriod of the Mesozoic, or until the time of dinosaurs.”
“Then why do you say it’s a question?” said Robby.
“Because it’s a theory,” said Mr. Lillibulero, “and not yet a proven fact.”
“What good is a theory if you can’t believe it?” asked Robby.
“It’s good for considering,” said Mr. Lillibulero. “First,because it may turn out to be right, after all. Second, because it may turn out to be wrong. If y’prove either that it’s right or wrong, you usually have turned up evidence that’s very valuable, and learned something—even if it’s not what you wanted to believe in the first place.”
“Don’t they have evidence about Gondwanaland?”
“They do,” said Mr. Lillibulero. “Coal beds under the ice at the South Pole here, which means plants once grew where that coal is now—”
“Mr. Waub mentioned that,” said Robby, a little smugly. “—Giant rock scratches in India and Africa, indicating glaciers moving in a direction that favors the Gondwanaland theory. Similar beds of rock in South America and Africa that makes it look as if it was the same bed of rock broken apart when the continents separated. Fossils that are very much alike in widely different places. And, last, evidence about the position of the earth’s magnetic poles, which seemed to have moved around from time to time.”
“That’s a lot of evidence,” said Robby.
“Aye,” said Mr. Lillibulero. “But on the other side there are the facts that we know th’ Tropical Zones covered much more of the earth at times in the past than they do now. That,and the wandering of the Poles, could account for the coal.Similar conditions could result in th’ laying down of similar sedimentary rocks such as the argument is about. There are fossils that aren’t alike when they might be, as well as ones that are alike in different continents. Also, if South America,for example, had been joined to Africa, we would expect the plants and animals of South America to be like the plants and animals of Africa. While actually the South American plants and animals are like those of North America. And the North American varieties would have been living not on Gondwanaland at all, but on Laurasia, the North Pole continent, according to the Gondwanaland theory.”
Robby thought about that. This sort of evidence was in his own field of knowledge. He knew something about the animals of North and South America, and Africa.
“They aren’t,” he said at last. “The animals in South America are most like the animals in North America.”
“There you are,” said Mr. Lillibulero.
Robby thought for a moment.
“Would it be so bad, though?” he said, “If Gondwanaland was true?”
“It would not necessarily be bad by itself,” said Mr. Lillibulero. “What’s bad is Waub’s acting as if it was true, and that it’s being true was an excuse to do a great deal of harm.”
“Making the earth a tropical paradise? Would that
do harm?”
“Stop and think it through, Robertson,” said Mr. Lillibulero. “If it was warm enough t’be tropical here at the South Pole,how hot would it be at the equator, or even around your own home off the coast of Mexico?”
“Oh,” said Robby. “Pretty hot?”
“Too hot. The equatorial lands would become desert where nothing could live for the heat.”
“But it’d be nice and warm up around New York and Canada, and Europe and Asia,” said Robby.
“Too warm,” said Mr. Lillibulero. “Those places are in the Temperate Zones. And the Temperate Zones are the great producers of food grains and other eatables for the world. Wi’ the middle of the earth all desert and the Temperate Zones all tropical, where would we raise the food to feed the population of the world?”
“We could live off seafood,” said Robby.
“Now, perhaps, we could live off seafood,” said Mr. Lillibulero. “But with the Equator boiling hot, the temperature of all the oceans would be affected and most sea life canna stand much change of temperature. Much of the sea life would die off.”
“Oh,” said Robby. He did not like the idea. He was close enough to the creatures of the sea to want to keep them safe from extinction.
“Indeed,” said Mr. Lillibulero. “But I don’t know why I continue t’make a horror tale out of it, Robertson. Because the truth is Waub could never possibly change the world as he plans.”
“He couldn’t?” said Robby, staring.
“Not if his Headquarters was packed to the roof wi’ tunnel-buster explosives,” said Mr. Lillibulero. “The ice of the Antarctic is two thousand five hundred miles across and averages more than a mile thick. There is not enough man-made explosive in the world to do more than nibble at it, let alone melt it entirely.”
“But if they could—”
“If it could be done, the result would be that the sea level would rise all over the world from a hundred and thirty to two hundred feet, depending on whether the ocean bottom sank under the extra weight of water. But this would only drown the shorelines of the continents for hundreds of miles inland. It would not drift all the southern continents back together at the South Pole here and make th’ world a tropical paradise.”
“Well,” said Robby, somewhat sharply, “if it can’t be done, why worry about the Tropicans?”
“Because,” said Mr. Lillibulero, “Waub has a great deal of very dangerous nuclear explosive and the determination to set it off no matter who gets hurt. What he believes in isn’t possible, but he is not sensible at all about it. He refuses to see anything that argues against it, and he will sacrifice the real lives of real people in the impossible task of bringing what he believes in to pass.”
Mr. Lillibulero looked grimly at Robby.
“There are stations on the Ross ice shelf and nearby wi ’innocent people in them who could suffer if Waub’s tunnel-busters are set off. The shore ice is not so thick or stable as the ice inland. He could cause a tidal wave, perhaps—”
He broke off as the same skua screamed past them once again.
“Mr. Lillibulero!” cried Robby. “I just thought of something. One of those two twins you had to fight told me when he was taking me to my rooms that they were going to bring Gondwanaland back inside of the next twenty-four hours. And that must have been hours and hours ago!”
Mr. Lillibulero jumped to his feet on the ice. This is not an easy thing to do in one motion from a cross-legged seated position, but Mr. Lillibulero was one of the few men in the world who could do it. And he did it now.
“Robertson!” he cried. “Robertson, why did y’not tell met his before?”
The Skua Speaks
“I didn't think of it,” said Robby.
“True. True—with all that’s been happening, it’s not y’r fault. I should have thought to ask what you’d learned,” said Mr. Lillibulero. “When was it that Waub said twenty-four hours?”
“Not Waub,” said Robby. “Dick, or Harvey. After I left Waub.”
“That’ll have been about eight hours ago,” said Mr. Lillibulero, as Robby, too, scrambled to his feet. “If Waub was that close to setting off his explosives, he may not wait t’load up that last batch of penguins and seals—”
“Load them up?” said Robby.
“Aye, Robertson,” said Mr. Lillibulero. “That’s been his scheme from the start. To strap explosives on to certain of the wild creatures of the ice pack, and either let them wander and spread of their own free will, or direct them to spread out by use of th’ Control Caps. Then, when he was ready, he would set off the explosives all at once by radio control.”
“But that’s terrible!” said Robby. He was thinking at the moment more of the penguins and seals who had been equipped to blow themselves up than of the other damage the explosives might do.
“It is,” said Mr. Lillibulero, who was not thinking of the penguins and seals at all, but of the people on the ice and offshore. “We’ve no more time to waste. You canna send Cerberus here with a message to McMurdo—and likely they’d shoot him there on sight without waiting to let him get close enough to show he was carrying a message—”
“They’d believe he was a wild leopard seal,” put in Robby. “I didn’t think of that.”
“But,” said Mr. Lillibulero, “in the small time that’s left us, we might send him far enough out to sea so that one of the boats bound for McMurdo from Tierra del Fuego or the South Shetland Islands might pass by and see him. If we could only fit th’ beast now with some sort of flag, or signal—”
“I’ve got it! I’ve got it!” shouted Robby. “Dad was moving this way with the whales! I could send him to Dad.He wouldn’t shoot a leopard seal on sight. Dad never shoots anything. And when Cerberus got close enough I could talk to Dad through the transceiver on Cerberus’ collar—the way Waub talked to me through his Control Box when he had Cerberus catch me!”
Mr. Lillibulero frowned, but the frown slowly faded.
“It’s a chance,” Mr. Lillibulero said. “It’s true James was t’bring his pod of whales toward McMurdo, t’make it easier for whoever was to come out and relieve him. He was about six hundred miles from the McMurdo side of the Ross ice shelf when we left him. How close do y’think he’ll have come in about ten hours since then?”
Robby thought.
“The pod travels as slow as three miles an hour, or as fast as ten,” he said. “He could be a hundred miles closer. Of course, if the pod decided to really move, whales can go pretty fast.”
“Then it’s no use,” said Mr. Lillibulero, shaking his head.“He could be no closer than twenty or thirty miles, and he’d be several miles out from the pack ice edge, no doubt. Y’r Cerberus, swimming at—what? Six miles an hour?” Robby nodded. “. . . would take five hours or more t’reach him even if we knew just where to send the beast. And we don’t.”
“But we don’t have to!” cried Robby, ready to bounce up and down with impatience and excitement, and only keeping himself from doing so by remembering he was too old and sensible for such antics. “The Control Caps have a special radio unit in them to broadcast a distress signal! That’s why Dad and I weren’t in the Palship when it was broken into and you got there. We were out helping a whale whose Control Cap had broadcast a distress signal. I can set Cerberus’s cap to do that, and Dad’s is the nearest Palship, and he’ll pick up the signal, and it’ll ring an alarm in the Palship, and he’ll see the signal isn’t one of his whales, and go to it at eighty miles an hour in the Palship and find Cerberus!’’
Completely out of breath with all those “ands,” Robby fell silent, staring at Mr. Lillibulero. But this time Mr. Lillibulero did not frown.
“Robertson!” said the little man. “I take m’hat off to you—or would, if I was wearing one inside m’helmet. Come on. The sooner we get the beast headed out to sea, the better.”
He turned on one boot heel and headed off across the level ice. Robby hurried after him, Cerberus bringing up the rear, like a well-tr
ained hunting dog.
The skua, which seemed to have taken a special interest in them, swooped and screamed, and followed also.
They had a level stretch of ice to cross—it was really not true ice but “fim,” which is what the icelike hard-packed snow of the Antarctic is called. Then there was a short distance of jumbled snow blocks frozen hard together—a sort of icy badlands like the rough, rocky Bad Lands of South Dakota, only on a smaller scale. Through this, Cerberus in particular had hard going. Luckily, however, it was merely a narrow strip on the larger strip of ice floe they had landed on.Inside of minutes they came out on another level stretch of fim. And fifty yards ahead of them, they saw the heaving expanse of open ocean, with no more ice in sight.
They went on to the edge of the floe, and Robby made the necessary adjustments in Cerberus’ Control Cap. When he altered the cap to operate on the frequency of the Palship X Two, he also set his Control Box on the same frequency. He had to undo his Outside Suit to get it out, and then reseal the suit, which closed with the Waub Magnetic Clothes-Fastener.This way, Cerberus would get Robby’s signals, but no signals from the Tropicans’ Control Boxes. Robby also set Cerberus’s cap back to passing on signals at normal strength.
“It’s a long way offshore,” said Mr. Lillibulero, who had watched Robby do all this, “and there’ll be a chance of killer whales about. Do y’think he’ll swim out willingly?”
Robby looked and felt unhappy.
“I hope he does,” Robby said. “I think he will.”
In the back of Robby’s mind was the fear he had felt earlier that Cerberus’s spirit had been broken by Waub’s brutal handling. He was on the verge of mentioning this to Mr. Lillibulero, but for a second time he decided against it.
“I could try forcing him if he wouldn’t,” Robby said.“But I don’t know how well it would work, and I don’t want to try it if I don’t have to.”
“Indeed.” Mr. Lillibulero nodded approvingly. “Force is always t’be thought of as a last resort. Let’s see what the beast will do for friendship’s sake.”
Secrets of the Deep Page 15
