by Frederik
We quickly changed into off-duty whites and headed toward the gate. The guards were still stiffly formal, at ramrod attention; but as we automatically braked to a halt in front of the guardbox and reached instinctively for the passes that we didn’t have, one of them unbent and grinned. “You’re on your own time now, cadets!” he murmured. “Have a good time!”
We nodded and walked past—
But not very far.
“Bob Eskow! Jim!”
A voice crying our names, behind us. We turned, but even before I looked I knew who it was.
Eladio Angel! His face was serious and determined. He was trotting to catch up with us.
Bob and I looked at each other as he came toward us, his dark eyes serious, his mouth grim. In all these months we had hardly spoken to him, barring the one time I had met him under the boat hull and had left him so abruptly.
And now—just when we could least afford to have him with us, here he was!
He stopped in front of us, panting slightly.
“Jim,” he said sharply. “Come, I am going with you.”
“With us? But—but, Laddy—”
He shook his head. “No, Jim. It is no use to argue with me. I have thought, and I am not wrong.” He smiled faintly, seriously. “I ask myself, why should Jim Eden be rude? There is no answer, for you are not the sort who does this. No answer—unless there is something you do not wish to tell me. So I wait there, Jim,” he said earnestly, looking into my eyes. “I wait there under the boat, where you have left me. And I look at the rain which is coming down by torrents and buckets, Jim, the rain which you have said is almost over. And I say: ‘Jim Eden has one secret.’ What can this secret be? Ah, there is only one answer, for I have noticed the look on your face when I mention a certain name. So I ask questions, and I find you have been going off grounds much of the time. Many times. And always to the same place—and there is someone there you visit, someone no one sees.
“So—the secret is no secret, Jim, for I have figured it out.” He grinned openly, with friendly warmth. “So let us go then, Jim,” he said, “all three of us—let us go to see my friend who is not lost, my friend you have been visiting by stealth—David Craken!”
The electronic beam leaped out, coral-pink in the afternoon daylight, and scanned my face. “You may enter,” rapped out the voice from the watchman-machine, and the doors wavered slightly and relaxed.
We walked through the fairy garden, following the palely glimmering Troyon lights that marked the path we were permitted to take. Since the watchman had been repaired there had been no other trouble. But of course, the one time was enough.
We came to a crossing and Laddy absentmindedly started to take a wrong turning, down a shell-pink lane toward a fountain that began to play as we came near it. At once the coral scanning ray leaped from a hidden viewport, and the mechanical voice squawked: “Go back, go back! You are not permitted! Go back!”
I caught Laddy Angel by the shoulder and steered him onto the right path. It wasn’t entirely safe to disobey the orders of the electronic watchman. It had its weapons against intruders—true, it was not likely to shoot Laddy down, merely for stepping on the wrong path; but there was the chance it might transmit an alarm to the Police headquarters in Hamilton if its electronic brain thought there was danger to its master’s property. And we still didn’t want the publicity the police might bring.
“Funny,” said Bob Eskow from behind me.
“What’s funny?”
“Well—” he hesitated. “Roger Fairfane. He talks so much about how important his father is, and how he has the run of Trident Lines. And yet here he’s restricted to the boathouse. Doesn’t it seem funny to you, Jim? I mean, if his father is such a hot-shot, wouldn’t the Atlantic manager of his father’s line let Roger have the run of the whole place?”
I shrugged. “Let’s not worry about it,” I said. “Laddy, here we are. David is waiting in the apartment there, above the boat basin.”
I had been a little worried—worried that David would be angry because we’d brought Laddy along.
But I needn’t have worried. It took two or three words of explanation, and then he was grinning. He shrugged. “You’re quite a detective, Laddy,” he conceded. “To tell you the truth—I’m glad you figured it out. It’s good to see you!”
Gideon hadn’t returned from Sargasso City yet, and there wasn’t much to do until he did. So the four of us—five when Roger showed up, half an hour or so later—spent the next couple of hours talking over old times. David had food ready in the automatic kitchen; we ate a good meal, watched a baseball game on the stereovision set in the living room, and just loafed.
It was the most relaxing afternoon I had spent in a long time.
Unfortunately, it didn’t last.
It was getting late when we heard the distant rattle of the gate loudspeaker challenging someone and, a moment later, I saw from the window the tiny violet sparks of the Troyon lights marking the pathway for the visitor.
“Must be Gideon,” I cried. “He’s coming this way. I hope he’s got good news!”
It was Gideon, all right. He came in; but he didn’t get any farther than the door before all five of us were leaping at him, firing questions. “Did we get it? Come on, Gideon—don’t keep us waiting! What’s the story? Did we get the Killer Whale?”
He looked at us all silently for a moment.
The questions stopped. Every one of us realized that something was wrong in the same second. We stood there, frozen, waiting for him to speak.
He said at last: “Jim, did you say you saw this Joe Trencher in Sargasso City when you put in the bid?”
“Why—why, yes, Gideon. He was poking around the papers, but I don’t think he—”
“You think wrong, Jim.” Gideon’s black, strong face was bleak. His soft voice had a touch of anger to it that I had seldom heard. “Do you remember anything else about that day?”
“Well—let me think.” I tried to think back. “We went down to the Fleet basin. There were the ships that were up for surplus—the Killer and that other one, the heap of rust. The Dolphin. We looked the Killer over and filled out the forms. Then, while I was calling my uncle, Joe Trencher started poking around the papers. And—well, we couldn’t catch him. So we just filed the bid applications and caught the sub-sea shuttle back here.”
Gideon nodded somberly.
David cried: “Gideon, what’s wrong? I’ve got to have that cruiser! It’s—it’s my father’s life that’s at stake. If we didn’t bid enough—well, then maybe we can raise some more money, somehow. But I must have it!”
“Oh, the bid was enough,” said Gideon. “But—”
“But what, Gideon?”
He sighed. “I guess Joe Trencher knew what he was doing,” he said, in that soft, chuckling voice, now sounding worried. “He put in a bid himself, you see.”
It was bad news.
We looked at each other. David said at last, his voice hoarse and ragged: “Joe Trencher. With the pearls he stole from me, he bought the ship I need to save my father’s life. And there’s no time now to go back and try something else. It’s almost time—”
Time for what, I wondered—but Roger Fairfane interrupted him. “Is that it, Gideon?” he demanded. “Did Trencher make a higher bid, so that we don’t have a ship?”
Gideon shook his head.
“Not exactly,” he said. “Trencher owns the Killer Whale now, but he got it for fifty thousand dollars—the same as you bid.”
“But—but then what—”
“You see,” said Gideon gently, “Trencher wasn’t just looking at those papers. He—changed them. Changed them his way. I made the Fleet commander show them to me, and it was obvious that they’d been changed—but of course I couldn’t prove anything.” He looked at us somberly. “The ship you bid on wasn’t the Killer Whale,” he said. “Not after Trencher got through with the papers. What you bid on—and what you now own—is the other one. The heap of
rust, as you called it, Jim. The Dolphin.”
12
Rustbucket Navy
The next day David Craken and I went to Sargasso City to pick up our prize.
The Killer Whale still lay in the slip beside it. Obsolescent, no doubt—but sleek and deadly as the sea beast for which she was named. She lay low in the water, her edenite hull rippling with pale light where the wavelets washed against it.
Next to the Killer, our Dolphin looked like the wreck she was.
Naturally, there was no sign of Joe Trencher. For a moment I had the wild notion of waiting there—keeping a watch on the Killer Whale, laying in wait until Trencher came to claim the ship he had cheated us out of and then confronting him…
But what good would it have done? And besides, there was no time. David had said several times that we had only a few weeks. In July something was going to happen—something that he was mysterious about, but something that was dangerous.
It was now the beginning of June. We had at the most four weeks to refit the Dolphin, get under weigh, make the long voyage down under the Americas, around the Horn (for we had to avoid the Fleet inspection that would come if we went through the Canal)—and help David’s father.
It was a big job…
And the Dolphin was a very small ship.
David looked at me and grinned wryly. “Well,” he said, “let’s go aboard.”
The Dolphin had been a fine and famous ship—thirty years before.
We picked our way through a tangle of discarded gear—evidently her last crew had been so happy to get off her that they hadn’t waited to pack!
We found ourselves in her wardroom. The tarnished brass tablets welded to the bulkhead recorded the high moments of her history. We paused to read them.
In spite of everything, I couldn’t help feeling a thrill.
She had held the speed and depth records for her class for three solid years.
She had been the flagship of Admiral Kane—back before I was born, on his Polar expeditions, when he sonargraphed the sea floor under the ice.
She had hunted down and sunk the subsea pirate who used the name Davy Jones.
And later—still seaworthy, but too old for regular service with the Fleet—she had become a training ship at the Academy. She’d been salvaged two or three years back, just before any of us had come to the Academy, and finally put up for auction.
And now she was ours.
We took a room for the night in one of Sargasso Dome’s hotels. It was a luxurious place, full of pleasures for vacationers and tourists anxious to sample the imitation mysteries of the fabled Sargasso Sea. But we were in no mood to enjoy it. We went to bed and lay awake for a long time, both of us, wondering if the Dolphin’s ancient armor would survive the crushing pressures of the Deeps…
Roger Fairfane shook us awake.
I sat up, blinking, and glanced at my wristchronometer.
It was only about five o’clock in the morning. I said blurrily, “Roger! What—what are you doing here? I thought you were still in Bermuda.”
“I was.” He was scowling worriedly. “We had to come right away—all of us. Laddy’s with me, and Bob and Gideon. We took the night shuttle from Bermuda.”
David was out of his bed, standing beside us. “What’s the matter, Roger?”
“Plenty! It’s that Joe Trencher again! The bid he made on the Dolphin—it was in the name of something called the Sub-Sea Salvage Corporation. Well, somebody checked into the sale of surplus ships—and they found that no such firm existed. Gideon found out that an order is going to be issued at nine o’clock this morning, canceling all sales.
“So—if we want to use the Dolphin to help your father, David, we’ve got to get under weigh before the order comes through at nine!”
It didn’t give us much time!
David and I had looked forward to at least a full day’s testing of the Dolphin’s old propulsion and pressure equipment. Even then, it would have been dangerous enough, taking the old ship out into the crushing pressures that surrounded Sargasso Dome.
But now we had only hours!
“Well—thank heaven we’ve got help,” muttered David as we dressed hurriedly and checked out of the hotel. “I’m glad Gideon flew in from Marinia! And Laddy. We’ll need every one of us, to keep that old tub of rust afloat!”
“I only hope that’s enough to do it,” I grumbled. We raced after Roger Fairfane, down the corridors, through the passenger elevators, to the sea-floor levels where the Dolphin and the Killer Whale floated quietly…
“It’s gone!” cried Dave as we came onto the catwalk over the basin. “The Killer’s gone!”
“Sure it is,” said Roger. “Didn’t I tell you? Trencher must have heard too—the Killer was already gone when we got here. Isn’t that the payoff?” he went on disgustedly. “Trencher’s the one that caused all this trouble—but he’s got away already with the Killer “
Gideon was already at work, checking the edenite armor film, his face worried. He looked up as we trotted up the gangplank to the above-decks hatch.
“Think she’ll stand pressure, Gideon?” I asked him.
He pushed back his hat and stared at the rippling line of light where the little wavelets licked the Dolphin’s side.
“Think so?” he repeated. “No, Jim. I’ll tell you the truth. I don’t think so. Not from anything I can see. She ought to be towed out and scuttled, from what I see. Her edenite film’s defective—it’ll need a hundred-hour job of repair on the generators before I can really trust it. Her power plant is ten years overdue for salvage. One of her pumps is broken down. And the whole power plant, pumps and all, is hot with leaded radiation. If I had my way, I’d scrap the whole plant down to. the bedplates.”
I stared at him. “But—but, Gideon
He held up his hand. “All the same, Jim,” he went on, in his soft voice, “she floats. And I’ve talked to the salvage officer here—got him out of bed to do it—and she came in on her own power, with her own armor keeping the sea out. Well, that was only a month ago. If she could do it then, she can do it now.”
He grinned. “These subsea vessels,” he said, “they aren’t just piles of machinery. They live! This one looks like it’s fit for the junkyard and nothing else—but it’s still running, and as long as she’s running, I’ll take my chances in her!”
“That’s good enough for me!” David said promptly.
“I’ll go along with that,” I told them. “How about Laddy and Bob?” “They’re belowdecks already,” Gideon said. “Trying to get the engines turning over. Hear that?”
We all listened.
No, we didn’t hear anything—at least I didn’t. But I could feel something. Down in the soles of my feet, where they touched the rounded upper hump of the Dolphin’s armor, I could feel a faint, low vibration.
The ship was alive! That vibration was the old engines, turning over at last!
Gideon said, “That’s it, Jim. We can push off as soon as they’ll open the sea-gates for us.” He turned to Roger Fairfane. “You’re the only one who hasn’t expressed himself. What about it? You want to come along—or do you think it’s too dangerous?”
Roger scowled nervously. “I—I—” he began.
Then he grinned. “I’m coming!” he told us. “Not only that—but remember our ranks! I’m the senior cadet officer of the whole lot of us—and Gideon and David aren’t even cadets, much less officers. So I’m the captain, remember!”
The captain nearly had a mutiny on his hands in the first five minutes.
But Gideon calmed us down.
“What’s the difference?” he asked us, in his soft, serious voice. “Let him be captain. We’ve got to have one, don’t we? And we’re all pulling together…”
“I don’t know if he is,” grumbled Bob. We were in the old wardroom, stowing our navigation charts away, waiting for the Fleet officer to give us clearance to go through the shiplocks into the open sea. “But—I guess you’re rig
ht. He’s the captain, if he wants it that way. I don’t care…”
There was a rattle and blare from abovedecks. We leaped out of the wardroom to listen.
“Ahoy, vessel Dolphin!” a voice came roaring through the loudhailers of the Fleet office. “You are cleared for Lock Baker. Good voyage!”
“Thank you!” cried Roger Fairfane’s voice, through the loudspeakers from the bridge. We heard the rattle of the warning system, and the creaking, moaning sound of the engines dogging down the hatch.
We all ran to our stations—doublemanning them for this first venture into the depths.
My station was at the bridge, by Roger Fairfane’s side. He signaled to Laddy Angel and Bob Eskow, down at the engines, for dead slow speed ahead.
Inch by inch, on the microsonar charts before us, we saw the little green pip that marked the Dolphin crawl in to Lock Baker.
We stopped engines as the nose of the ship nuzzled into the cradle of rope bumpers.
The lock gates closed behind us.
The Dolphin pitched sharply and rolled as high-pressure sea water jetted into the lock from the deep sea outside.
I could hear the whine of the edenite field generator rise a whole octave as it took the force of all that enormous pressure and turned it back upon itself, guarding us against the frightful squeeze.
The hull of the old ship sparkled and coruscated with green fire as the pressure hit it.
The lock door opened before us.
Roger Fairfane rang Dead Slow Ahead on the engine telegraph.
And our ship moved out into the punishing sea.
I suppose it was luck that kept us alive.
Gideon came pounding up from the engine room. “Set course for the surface!” he cried. “She’s an old ship, Roger, and the edenite field isn’t what it should be.
Bring her up boy, bring her up! She’s taking water!” Roger flushed and seemed about to challenge Gideon—after all, Roger was the captain! But there was no arguing with the pressure of the deeps. He flipped the fore and aft diving fanes into full climb, rang Flank Speed on the telegraph.
