Secrets of the Deep

by Gordon R. Dickson

  The stem of the sloop was about ten feet below him. He was now in the shadow of the power boat overhead and drifting behind the canvas tube of the airlift, a device used by underwater searchers as early as the nineteen fifties to vacuum off the sand and silt covering objects buried on the sea bottom. Archeologists, Robby had read, never used it directly on a site for fear of damaging fragile discoveries—but for a second Robby thought of turning it on. Somehow, then, it would happen to suck up sand a little to one side of the site.Something would be uncovered . . .

  Abruptly, he came back from his daydream. He was still looking past the airlift tube at the dark deck of the ship.Something there had moved and caught his eye.

  As he watched, it continued to move. Something was emerging from the cabin, from the hatchway facing toward the bow, away from him. Slowly it rose above the level of the cabin’s roof, something shaped like the crown of a hat, with a feather sprouting beside it. Higher it rose. A broad brim came into view under the crown. Then shoulder-length hair appeared, and dark-coated shoulders, which soon revealed the back of a coat cut in sharply at the waist. The scabbard of a sword pushed out the skirts of the coat in back.

  Last came narrow breeches, and high, dark, wrinkled leather boots. Neither clothing nor boots seemed dampened by the water.

  Robby hung behind the airlift tube, staring at the back of a figure in the clothes of a Spanish captain of the eighteenth century. The tube of the airlift was between them, but Robby saw the figure clearly. For a moment it stood facing away from him, as if the ship it stood on was not lying on the sea bottom where it had sunk nearly three hundred years before,but heading once more before a stiff wind up the Florida Straits.

  Then, slowly, the strange figure began to turn in Robby’s direction.

  The Black-Clad Swimmer

  The next thing he knew, Robby was scrambling up through the water as fast as he could swim, clutching the underwater end of the metal ladder to the deck of the barge, and clambering up it. He had not waited until the figure below had turned full around. But there was an image burned into his mind of the side of a face as white as chalk, a face almost too big for the body on which it rode. A face with a black heavy mustache and black eyebrows under the hat brim. And no water lung collar below it or face plate covering its nose and mouth.

  Then he was standing dripping on the deck of the barge in the late afternoon light. The sun was shining merrily on the waves, down the reef a way a white gull was doing head-stands a few hundred feet in the air, and Bob and Robby’s father were deep in conversation by the ladder. Robby almost blundered into them.

  “Oh, there you are,” said Dr. Hoenig sharply, noticing him. “Why didn’t you come up with Bob when the bell rang? I suppose you were happily drifting around and dreaming of treasure, without a care in the world? For all we knew you’d fallen asleep down there.”

  Robby gasped. He had so much to say that the words blocked each other and left him choking on silence.

  “Cover your mouth when you yawn,” said Dr. Hoenig, severely. “Now, wake up. I want you to do something for me. You’re homesick. You want to get home to the Point Loma Station.”

  Robby stared, and found his voice.

  “But I don’t!” he said.

  “You can try, can’t you?” demanded his father. “Make an effort. Come on now. You want to go home. You’re tired of being around here. It’s dull. Nothing ever happens—”

  “But—” stammered Robby.

  “You aren’t trying,” accused Dr. Hoenig.

  “But why do I want to go home?” Robby burst out. “Why—”

  “Because maybe if you would start feeling as if you wanted to go home, that harebrained sea lion would start feeling the same way, and come back here to the barge, so we could load him on the power boat and get going for Miami.”

  “Mac?” asked Robby, staring. “Mac isn’t on the barge—I mean, on the power boat?” He looked over at the powerboat.

  “He is not,” said Dr. Hoenig. “He got that cargo door open again, and went overside into the water in a flash. It’s your curiosity and excitement keying him up again. Not only do I have a treasure-hunting son, I now have,” he said, turning to Bob, standing there, still in his swimming trunks and water lung, and looking sympathetic, “a treasure-hunting Steller’s sea lion. Though what sort of treasure Mac’s mind pictures baffles the imagination. A case of canned sardines packed in oil, no doubt, and a sea lion usable can opener.”

  He turned back to Robby.

  “You didn’t see any sign of him down there? No, I didn’t think so. Why have you got that peculiar look on your face?”

  “What—what kind of a look?” asked Robby, playing for time.

  “Like an oversize party cracker about to burst and spray surprises all over the place,” answered Dr. Hoenig. “Like a mouse who’s just stolen the cheese without springing the mousetrap. Did you see a three-hundred-pound, crazy sea lion down there, or didn’t you?”

  “No,” said Robby.

  “Well, that ties it,” said his father to Bob. “Mac’s too valuable for us to lose. It’s not just the rapport cap experiment, but the studies for fishworm and parasite medication we’ve been making on him.” He looked at Bob again. “That’s how we happened to be coining by. We were on our way back from taking Mac to the Whale Hospital in Nassau for his skin tests. We’ve been trying to find a medication to spray on the Bering Sea rookeries. The wild Steller’s are all subject to fungus infections. We’ve got a two-month history of medical tests on Mac’s skin. We can’t let that go down the drain.”

  He turned back to Robby.

  “I have to be at that conference on deep-sea oceanography in New York tomorrow morning without fail. There’s no way around it. However, if we both go off and leave Mac, he may just wander off, trying to find you, the way he always does at home. Only here, not finding you, he may revert to the wild.We’d never see him again. Which leaves it up to you, Robby,” said his father. “Are you willing to stay on the barge through tonight and tomorrow? Mac ought to be back as soon as you, yourself, calm down. And when he comes, you can tie or lock him up until I return late tomorrow night.”

  He stopped and frowned at Robby.

  “Now understand,” he continued, “you don’t have to stay if you don’t want to. You wouldn’t be alone here since Cal is remaining as watchman. And I’d expect you to do exactly as he says. But we can’t afford to lose Mac, and he’s partially your responsibility, as well as mine. How about it, Robby? Do you want to stay?”

  Robby hesitated. He had been bursting all along with the desire to tell his father and Bob about the ghost figure, but his father’s remark about the mouse who had stolen the cheese from the mousetrap had silenced him. He remembered his father kidding him in the plane about eating two pieces of apple pie. Scrooge, Dr. Hoenig had reminded Robby, had at first blamed Marley’s ghost on a piece of cheese he had eaten. But now that he was back up in the bright sunlight and the good, clear air, Robby was becoming more and more certain that there was something funny about that ghost. It was a little too good to be true, a ghost showing up right after Cal had warned him about it. Robby had a growing hunch that maybe the ghost was one of the crew on the power boat,with a ghost mask over his water lung, perhaps, whom Cal had dressed up in some unsoakable costume to go down to frighten Robby.

  If so, they had mistaken the boy they had to deal with,thought Robby. He was beginning to feel a little like Sir Bleoberis himself. If he insisted about the ghost, Robby knew his father would eventually give up kidding about it and investigate. But in that case, Robby would certainly not be left behind to recapture Mac.

  And the treasure. A sudden, magnificent thought burst like a many-colored skyrocket in Robby’s mind. If he stayed behind, he would have a full day and a night to investigate the site for treasure. And why shouldn’t there be treasure? In fact, with people pretending to be ghosts, perhaps there was some dark and underhanded scheme afoot. . .

  “I’ll
stay,” said Robby.

  “All right,” said his father. “Bob and I will get going then. He has to get his power boat to Miami before the repair dock there closes for the evening. Remember what I told you about obeying Cal. I’ll phone you tomorrow from New York and see how you’ve come out with recapturing Mac.”

  He turned with Bob toward the power boat. Then Bob stopped and turned back.

  “I haven’t time to hunt for Cal now,” he said briskly.“Will you ask him to phone me on the power boat when you find him? Tell him, too, I want him to finish putting the electric motors on La Floridana before I come back.”

  “I’ll tell him,” said Robby, watching his father jump aboard the power ship, the side of which was about a foot higher than the barge deck. “Electric motors? What for?”

  “To move the ship underwater to Miami,” answered Bob.He grinned at Robby. “We can’t bring the waterlogged wood of her hull out into the air until it’s treated, you know.Wood like that may look perfectly good while it’s still soaked,but as soon as it’s dried out it decays and crumbles. The whole ship will have to be soaked several weeks in carbowax—that’s polyethelene glycol. The wood takes up the carbowax instead of the water, and that way it’s preserved.”

  “Oh,” said Robby. “I’ll tell him.” He watched Bob follow Dr. Hoenig to the deck of the power boat.

  “Good luck with your sea lion!” called Bob, waving. He shouted from the door of the bridge of the power boat. “Let’s get traveling.” The power boat began to slide away from the barge. “Ask Cal for anything you want, Robby!” Bob called,as the distance between them widened.

  “I will,” Robby shouted back. “But he isn’t very friendly!”

  “Tell him I said he was to be friendly!” shouted Bob, laughing, his voice growing fainter.

  The power boat pulled away and as it gained speed, it began to lift up on its air jets and hydrofoil vanes. By the time it crossed the reef it was lifting two wide wings of silver spray on each side, and drawing only about six inches of water. Its speed mounted swiftly, and it looked like some strange sort of waterbug as it shrank toward the horizon, faster and faster, until it dwindled to a dot and was lost in the glitter of the waves under the descending sun.

  Robby watched until the boat was lost to sight. Then he went in search of Cal to give him Bob’s message. But it was some time before he finally located the small, mousy-haired man in the mess hall shack of the barge. Cal was drinking coffee from a large porcelain cup and eating a sandwich.

  “Help yourself. There’s milk in the refrigerator,” said Cal.His eyes followed Robby as Robby got a quart of milk from the big refrigerator. “So you stayed to look for your sea lion?”

  “Yes,” answered Robby, filling his glass. “Bob said for you to phone the power boat and put the electric motors on La Floridana.”

  “I’ve phoned them,” said Cal’s cold voice behind Robby.“And the motors are already on and we’re ready to go.”

  Robby turned around and found himself looking directly into Cal’s still gray eyes, as chilly and without feeling as a pair of sea-worn stones found on some lonely northern beach.The reddish eyelashes seemed to add a hard red glitter to the eyes themselves. Robby looked for some touch of friendliness, some sign of the humor to be found in eyes like his father’s, or Bob’s. But there was nothing; not even anger or dislike. It was like being watched from across some bottomless gap by someone who could not, and would never want to, cross over to your side.

  The eyes held Robby motionless. He was like a small bird fascinated by the hooded gaze of a hunting snake.

  “You’re going to be here overnight,” he heard Cal say, his voice also without feeling, without threat or anger. But Robby felt his heart beat, beat, beating in his chest as he listened, the way you can feel a small bird’s heart beating when you hold it in your hand. “I’d stay out of trouble if I were you. Yes, I’d keep out of trouble.”

  Having said this, Cal got up to refill his cup from the pot on the stove nearby, and Robby snatched up a couple of the sandwiches and slipped out of the mess hall. Cal did not even turn his head to see him go.

  Outside, in the clean, sunset air, Robby reached over to tap the barge side underwater in the signal that called Mac at Point Loma. But Mac did not come now. He took his milk and sandwiches to a far end of the barge and sat down to eat his snack with his back against an overturned rowboat. The white-painted side of the rowboat was warm from the last rays of the sun and so was the steel deck under him. These two warmths gradually soaked into him and began to drive out the coldness Cal’s eyes had given him.

  He sat there as the sun went down and a magnificent full moon started to climb up from another quarter of the horizon.The brilliant stars of the tropics began to come out and fill the sky. Inside him, as Robby watched, there slowly built a tale of treasure, and of finding it himself, locked in ironbound chests and drifted over with the sands of time . . .

  A splashing sound brought him out of this dream and he sat up with a start.

  “Mac . . . ?” he called. But there was no answer. And the noisy, young sea lion would at least have barked in reply if he was returning to the barge. Robby climbed to his feet and looked around him. The moon was so bright now that Robby could see the white sand sea bottom under the barge and the dark shape of La Floridana down below. The deck of the barge, the equipment and the buildings on it were still and white in the moonlight.

  Robby looked about him, a chilly, creepy feeling beginning to slide down his back.

  “Cal . . . ?” said Robby questioningly.

  Nothing answered. Nothing moved.

  The chill spread all through Robby. He turned swiftly and began to walk back along the barge.

  “Cal!” he called. He had been happy to get away from the cold-eyed man, but now he would have been glad to see him again. The utter silence on the barge was fearful, and suddenly even the lapping of the waves seemed full of unknown menace.

  “Cal!” shouted Robby, running back to the mess hall. He found it empty, a place of moonlight and shadows. Silver beams slanting in one window showed the plate with half a sandwich still left on it and Cal’s cup with a little dark coffee still in the bottom.

  Robby burst out of the mess hall and ran from building to building on the barge, tearing open the doors. But everywhere he looked there was silence and darkness.

  He was alone on the boat.

  Heart pounding, chest heaving, Robby came to a halt against the side of the radio shack. As he leaned against it,hope blossomed suddenly inside him. If he had not been gulping so hard for breath, he would have managed to laugh at himself. He had forgotten all about the phone in the radio shack. With that phone (which he knew how to use from experience with the radiophone at home in the Point Loma Station, which was several miles offshore from the Mexican coast) he could call to anyone. He could call Coast Guard Rescue Nine, which would come immediately, proceeding to the transmission point at a hundred and forty knots if necessary, and take care of—

  But just then, not fifteen feet from him, something broke water at the foot of the ladder over the side of the barge.There was a swirl and a splash that sounded as loud as a clap of thunder in the still night. A second later came another sound, the dull, slapping noise of hands clutching at the metal rungs of the ladder.

  Robby stood frozen.

  There was the bubbling sound of a body hoisting itself from the water. A second later a smoothly black and shining head lifted itself into sight over the edge of the barge and a face plate glinted in the moonlight, looking directly at Robby.Slowly and deliberately a figure clothed all in a skin-tight suit of black climbed on to the deck of the barge. It stepped toward Robby; and as it did, he heard a strange and tinny singing noise from the diaphragm of its face plate.

  The Dead Ship Sails

  The figure stopped in front of Robby, and the singing noise ceased too.

  “Ah, Robertson!” said a dry, distorted voice from the diaphragm of the face plate. “It
’s fortunate I’m not the sort t’demand a warm welcome from m’friends, or y’would have disappointed me sorely!” And with that, the figure pulled down its face plate, and the moonlight struck full upon the face of an odd, sharp-featured little man whom Robby knew well.

  “Mr. Lillibulero!” shouted Robby, with relief and happiness. “Mr. Lillibulero—where did you come from?”

  “From the sea, Robertson,” replied the little man, with a sniff of disdain. “From th’ocean, which y’may just have noticed the other end of this ladder dips down into.”

  And he bent his gaze, needle like even in the soft moonlight, on Robby.

  However, neither the gaze nor the tone of Mr. Lillibulero’s answer managed to dampen Robby’s happiness at seeing the little man before him. For this was indeed the Mr. Lillibulero of whom Bob Clanson had spoken, and whom Robby had seen in action against such enemies of society as Vandals,and also against such misguided individuals as the Tropicans, who had tried to blow up the Ross ice shelf at the South Pole. Robby knew that the little man’s reputation as perhaps the top agent of the International Bureau of Police was well-founded. He was also familiar with Mr. Lillibulero’s manner and way of speaking, and it no longer bothered him. There was, he knew, a great deal more to Mr. Lillibulero than met the eye.

  What met the eye was interesting enough. Mr. Lillibulero was hardly taller than Robby. Under the tight black head covering, his face was tanned brown like the face of a man who spends most of his time outdoors. His nose was straight,and his chin was sharp. Between his brown eyebrows was a short, sharp line like an exclamation point. Two other lines curved from the sides of his nose around the quirked-up corners of his mouth, which was thin-lipped and grimly humorous.

  In the moonlight it was impossible to see the color of his eyes, but Robby knew from the past that these were green as emeralds and sharp as knife points, so that few people with guilty consciences cared to meet them squarely. And on top of all this, there was the oddity of Mr. Lillibulero’s voice.