Secrets of the Deep

by Gordon R. Dickson

  Red Carswell, evidently in a cold rage, had thrown all his remaining swimmers at La Floridana at once. Seeing this and the empty bubble over him, Mr. Lillibulero immediately decided that Carswell had somehow managed to get someone through to the barge to capture Robby. And, without the help of a spotter, the La Floridana’s lone defender could not standoff this final battle.

  The little man’s decision was instantantous. Important asLa Floridana was, that importance could not compare to the value of a human life. Abandoning the sonic rifle, which would be useless out of water anyway, Mr. Lillibulero arrowed upward toward the ladder on the side of the barge away from the reef while the attacking swimmers, seeing him do so, automatically changed direction and raced for the ladder on the reef side of the barge.

  So it was that the little man and the first of Carswell’s men climbed opposite sides of the barge at the same moment—just in time to see Robby call and see the apparently suicidal dive of Mac to the deck behind Millen in the center of the barge.

  They all froze. Instinctively, they expected to see the young sea lion smashed by his impact upon the deck.

  But it did not happen that way.

  Mac landed—not on his head, but on his large, strong-boned front flippers and swelling chest. The barge rang to his fall like an oil drum pounded by a monstrous club. But a second later, evidently unhurt, he was flinging himself at Millen. A shuffling, bellowing charge caught him up with the old man and Mac’s neck and head darted out as if he was only pecking at Millen. But Millen went down as if struck by lightning—which, considering the speed of the so-called “strike” of the Steller’s sea lion, had been practically the case.

  The next moment Robby was on his feet and the men from the tug, seeing a chance to get control of the barge, ran forward. But Mr. Lillibulero met them halfway. The first man to meet him flipped up into the air and over as if he had tripped on a springboard. The next took a fist in the stomach,and doubled up out of the fight. But then the rest were upon the little man, and though he knocked and tossed them about recklessly, more climbed out of the sea every second, and it seemed he would be overwhelmed.

  But at this moment Mac, whose short-sighted eyes had lost sight of Millen when the old man had fallen to lie still among the equipment on the deck of the barge, joined the battle.Roaring, he shuffled forward, his head striking right and left. And every time it darted out, one of Carswell’s men went head over heels. The men from the tug broke and turned to escape; but it was too late.

  Overhead, the flyer Robby had seen was dropping to the deck. Robby’s father, followed by Bob Clanson, popped out of it. They came running toward Robby, just as Coast Guard Rescue Nine slid over the reef to a stop alongside the barge, soaking everyone on it with the spray from the collapse of a portside wing.

  All at once, the deck of the barge was swarming with armed men in neat blue uniforms and the battle was over. Efficiently, they rounded up the swimmers from Carswell’s tug while another group in a small, armed skimmer took off and captured the tug itself. Millen was carried off the barge onto the Coast Guard ship on a stretcher while the captured swimmers were marched aboard.

  Mr. Lillibulero, the moment the Coast Guard arrived, had dived off the barge in search of just one man. But, as the barge was cleared of the last of its invaders, he climbed slowly back up the reefside ladder and pulled off his water lung face plate with a gesture of defeat.

  “. . . Amazing! . . . He did? . . . And then you called?. . . And Mac? ... He did?” Dr. Hoenig was saying excitedly as he got the details from Robby. Robby’s father broke off at the sight of the little man, however, to put a sympathetic question. “No luck?”

  Mr. Lillibulero stepped around Mac who, thoroughly calmed down by now, was scratching his left ear with his left hind flipper—an amazing sight, considering the smallness of his ear and the enormous size of the flipper. The little man shook his head grimly.

  “That makes one more time,” he said, “that yon Red Carswell’s slipped through m’fingers. He must have had a small underwater boat ready t’take him t’safety at a moment’s notice. But I’ll put salt on his shirttail one of these days.”

  He looked from Dr. Hoenig to Bob Clanson.

  “Y’arrived just in the nick of time, I see,” he said, and added dryly, “or perhaps just a wee moment after.”

  “When I couldn’t get through to Robby or anyone on the barge phone here,” said Robby’s father, “I cut the conference short and took the morning rocket to Miami. I found Bob and he hadn’t been able to phone through either, so we took the flyer, which was repaired by that time—oh, by the way, Robby,” said Dr. Hoenig, fishing a metal container out of his pocket, “I brought these sardines for you to tempt Mac in to the barge, in case he hadn’t come in on his own. But since he not only did so nobly, but made our experiment a success by proving Steller’s have rescue impulses—”

  He thrust the sardine can into Robby’s hands.

  “—For Mac. With my congratulations—Yip, Yip, Yarooo!” He wound up with a rebel yell he had learned in college. Everybody stared except Robby, who had heard the yell before and was busy getting the sardine can open without being shoved off his feet by Mac. Mr. Lillibulero sniffed disapprovingly.

  “It hardly becomes,” he said, “a grown man, let alone a scientist, t’screech like a wildcat, James.”

  “Never mind, Lillibulero,” said Robby’s father happily, “if you ever find yourself with a fifteen-year-old pet theory proved right, you may screech, too! Am I right, Bob?”

  “What I can’t understand,” said Bob, diplomatically, “is why Mac didn’t dash himself to bits and pieces on the deck?”

  “Oh, no,” said Robby. “I knew jumping down wouldn’t hurt him.”

  “Y’knew!” said Mr. Lillibulero, strongly.

  “Sure,” said Robby, seeing them both staring at him. “Anybody who knows about Steller’s knows that. They’ve known for years. There was an article on Steller’s back in a1959 issue of National History magazine. I wrote a report on the article and said we ought to study Steller’s for ways to land large spaceships on heavy gravity planets like Jupiter. The article told how even a twelve-hundred-pound bull Steller’s can jump twenty feet down onto solid rock.”

  “Solid rock!” said Bob Clanson. For once his blue eyes were solemn—in sheer amazement.

  “Well,” Robby continued, diffidently, “it’s the flippers, you see. The front flippers. They’re large and made to act like springs, almost. Steller’s come down on their flippers and then their ribs take the rest of the shock.”

  “I would not care,” said Mr. Lillibulero, “t’land from a fall of twenty feet on to my own ribs.”

  “They aren’t made like ours,” Robby explained. “The sea lion’s ribs are mostly cartilage, like sharks’ bones.” He turned to his father. “Isn’t that true, Dad?”

  “Yes,” said Robby’s father, nodding. “It’s true enough. And that article Robby’s talking about—the author was G.M. Daetz—explains the matter very well. Some excellent pictures of the Steller’s sea lions in their Bering Sea rookeries, too.”

  “I still have to think twice to believe it,” declared Bob. “But if Robby tells me it’s a fact. . ." His eyes twinkled on Robby.

  “Adaptation,” said Robby’s father, watching as Robby turned away for a second to struggle with the tab opener on the sardine can—which, like most such gadgets, was not unrolling properly—“is the answer. Adaptation is the secret behind the unbelievable abilities of most creatures—except Man. Give Mac enough generations and he’d adapt a tooth or a claw for taking sardines out of cans.”

  “Where, however,” said Mr. Lillibulero, sharply, “Man put them in the first place without needing t’adapt himself specially to do so. Adaptation may be wonderful, James. But it is nowhere so wonderful as the mind of Man, which does not need t’adapt t’get at th’treasures it seeks.”

  “True,” said Dr. Hoenig, looking sly. “The crow now—and most of the Corvidae family—
collects small and shiny objects into a hoard. But it treasures all items in the hoard equally. Along comes a man, examines the hoard, and with his superior mind identifies two objects in the hoard as a trouser button and a diamond ring. The crow would never recognize the use of these things—”

  “Indeed not!” murmured Mr. Lillibulero, approvingly.

  “—But the mind of the man understands immediately the proper use of both. The pants button will keep his pants from falling down and the diamond ring will get him married. And”— wound up Robby’s father, cocking an eye at the little man—“no one can deny that wearing pants and getting married make all the difference between the monkey in the cage at the zoo, and the man outside the cage watching him!” He winked at Bob, who grinned.

  “Y’may choose t’laugh, James,” said Mr. Lillibulero, coldly, “but with y’r son only recently endangered by an attempt t’steal a ship that can be accounted valuable only in th’sense of being a treasure of th’mind, y’can hardly dispute m’thesis that there is a magic quality available, not in diamond rings or trouser buttons, but only in Man. Th’wit to discover the presence of that invisible treasure that transforms th’ordinary something into an object beyond price.”

  “Pants buttons!” cried Dr. Hoenig. “That’s what the treasure is!”

  “You know that isn’t what he means!” Robby retorted, annoyed, looking up from the sardine can, which he had finally opened. He scowled at his father. “I know what Mr. Lillibulero means!”

  “Do you?” asked Dr. Hoenig, sobering suddenly. “Do you, Robby? Well, if you do I’ll be more than a little proud of you. In fact, I’ll ask you right now to accept my apologies for joking about it. What is it Mr. Lillibulero means?”

  “Why,” began Robby, “he means . . .’’ He saw suddenly that the eyes of all three men were upon him, waiting for his answer. He stood with his mouth open, but while he was sure that he knew inside him what he wanted to say, the word he needed would not come to his tongue. The silence stretched out . . .

  “You know!” cried Robby desperately, at last. “It’s what there is in everything you study and work at to find out something new about it...” He ran down, in chagrin and despair.

  “Knowledge,” supplied Bob. “That’s the word you want, Robby.”

  Dr. Hoenig nodded. His eyes were approving.

  “And the hunt for knowledge!” cried Bob happily, without warning, his blue eyes snapping and his grin flashing out at Robby. “That’s the thing—the best life in the world. The biggest adventure. Down to the deepest oceans... up to the highest mountains... off to the thickest jungles and into the knottiest problems with skill and learning! To come back at last with a secret no one ever knew before, a secret that will change the lives of millions of people in years to come. Tofollow . . .’ ” he broke off. “How does it go in that poem by Tennyson about the Greek wanderer, Ulysses? 'To follow knowledge . . .’ ”

  The young archeologist looked at Robby’s father as he asked the question. But surprisingly it was Mr. Lillibulero who answered, in a soft, ringing voice Robby had never before heard from him.

  “ 'Tfollow knowledge,’ ” quoted Mr. Lillibulero, softly, " 'Like a sinking star,—Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.’ ”

  For a second they were all silent. Even Mac, who had gobbled up all the sardines in the can and was busily licking the oil from Robby’s fingers. Then Bob Clanson broke the silence.

  “Right!” he said, looking slyly in his turn at Robby. “And not just some little, personal bit of knowledge. Something important. Who knows?” He winked at Robby. “Maybe you’re already on the trail with your sea lion approach to the landing of spaceships. Why, we’re liable to hear spacemen saying everywhere a dozen years from now, 'Everyone knows that nowadays. That’s the Robertson Hoenig Theory of Steller’s Sea Lion Impact Construction. Believe me, we’d never have been able to get down on Jupiter without it!’

  “Oh, well,” said Robby, embarrassed at being kidded, but rather pleased all the same. “It was just an idea . . . But I really was thinking I might write a report on La Floridana and underwater archeology sometime if you’d tell me what books to read and more about what you did here, sometime.” He looked hopefully at Bob.

  “Why not?” said Bob, firmly. “Nothing I’d like better. In fact, what’s wrong with right now? Care to go down with me now and look the site and sloop over again?”

  “Sure!” shouted Robby. “I’m ready—” he broke off, hesitating and turning to his father, “—if—if there’s time now?”

  “Why not, as Bob says?” answered Dr. Hoenig. “The last day of the conference in New York is getting on very well without me, anyhow. In fact, I think I’ll join you, and Bob can teach us both about underwater archeology. Always wanted to know more about it. How about you, Lillibulero?” he said, turning to the little man beside him. “Care to make it a foursome?”

  Mr. Lillibulero sniffed.

  “If,” he replied dryly, “y’are inviting me t’a game of golf or a hand of bridge with y’r talk of foursomes, I must decline. On th’other hand, James, as I’m not immediately due elsewhere upon m’duties, an invitation t’learn more about a fascinating subject such as underwater archeology finds me more than ready.”

  Mac, who had finished Robby’s fingers, looked up and barked as everybody began to move. He, too, was ready. At any time, anywhere, and for anything they had in mind that sounded like excitement and adventure.

  He shoved an oily nose companionably and lovingly into the empty right hand of Robby, in a last search for his own kind of treasure. For Mac, unfortunately, that treasure would always be sardines. But that did not matter as long as he had Robby.

  They were friends and there was nothing better, when you got right down to it.

  —Not even sardines.