Undersea City (17 page)

“And he was determined, for reasons we all know, to prevent any more loss of life through the destruction of an underwater city.” My uncle glanced sympathetically at Dr. Koyetsu. “Can you blame him?”

“But why did he come to you?” demanded Lt. Tsuya. “Why not go to someone here in the Dome?”

“Ah, but he did,” said my uncle softly. “He went first to see Mr. Danthorpe. I imagine you can guess what Mr. Danthorpe said. We don’t want to wreck the prosperity of the dome with crack-brained nonsense, he said, and how did Koyetsu know the thing would work—and lots more.

“And he didn’t forget to remind Doctor Koyetsu about what had happened at Nansei Shoto. So he turned him down cold. Refused to let him try out his scheme, and in fact threatened him with arrest if he ever appeared in Krakatoa Dome again.”

“He did offer to let me stay on one consideration, Stewart,” reminded Dr. Koyetsu.

My uncle nodded. “Oh, yes. He offered Doctor Koyetsu a job—forecasting quakes, to give him the inside drift on quakes that might affect the stock market. Koyetsu took it as an insult at the time. But I don’t mind telling you that the idea turned out to be useful to us later.

“Because then John Koyetsu came to see me. He told me his fears about Krakatoa, and his hopes that the quake might be averted—not only here, but everywhere—by the application of his technique.

“At first I was skeptical. Don’t blame me too much for that; remember that even Father Tide had been skeptical at first. But Doctor Koyetsu convinced me, and I took a chance. After all, that’s been my life—taking chances, for the sake of developing the riches of the deep water.

“The question was, How could I help?

“My health was not too good. It still isn’t, I admit, though I think the worst is over! I didn’t have much money at the time—and money was needed, great quantities of money; the MOLE cost nearly ten million dollars. And I didn’t have the nuclear explosives we needed.

“But I got them!” he cried.

“I got the money, as you know—by speculating on the stock exchange, on the basis of John’s forecasts.

“And for the nuclear explosives—why, I remembered the wreck of the
Hamilcar Barca.
”

“
Hamilcar Barca?
” Lt. Tsuya looked puzzled. Then he said, doubtfully: “Oh, was that the one—It was a long time ago, when I was only a baby. But wasn’t that the ship that sank in the early days, before you invented edenite armor? And it carried a cargo of—”

“Nuclear fuses!” said my uncle triumphantly. “You’ve got a good memory, Lieutenant!
Hamilcar Barca
went down near Mount Calcutta thirty-one years ago. And after twenty-eight years, the cargo of any foundered vessel belongs to the man who salvages it. That’s the law!

“So I decided that that man was me. What was more, there was work to be done around Mount Calcutta. John had predicted a severe quake there, and he was anxious to test his theories. Well, I got the cargo—and John’s theories tested out beautifully—but we ran into trouble.” He grinned. “But we escaped, though my old sea-car was a total wreck.”

My uncle sobered. “Then Doctor Koyetsu rescued us in the MOLE, with the cargo. And we came here to Krakatoa Dome. We hid the reactors in the drainage sump, along with the MOLE itself, until the time was right to put John’s theories into practice.

“That time came four days ago. And the rest of the story you know.”

John Koyetsu called urgently: “Stewart! The time—”

My uncle hesitated and looked at the station clock. He nodded gravely.

“Brace yourselves, gentlemen,” he said.

There was a silence. Seconds passed—a minute. Lt. Tsuya started to speak: “What are we waiting for? Is it—”

“Wait!” commanded my uncle. And then, almost on cue, we felt it.

The rock shuddered beneath us. A distant awful howl of quaking seismic masses sang in the air. Even in the station we felt it, and clutched, every one of us, for whatever would help us stand.

“The third quake!” cried my uncle over the din. “And there are five more to go!”

Beneath us, the tormented rock was still moaning.

The floor of the station pitched and shuddered. The ortholytic elements on the nose of the MOLE quivered and spun slowly, twisted by the racking movements of the earth, looking queerly as though the MOLE itself were protesting against the effects of the quake it had itself caused. Rock exploded out of the roof.

And from widening fissures a cold salt flood poured into the station.

There was a sudden thumping roar from the tunnels outside. For a moment I was startled—could it be a fresh quake, so soon on the heels of the last? But it was not. It was the drainage pumps, automatically springing into action to suck away the brine flooding into the station.

They were big enough to handle the job; the station would not drown, not yet, though the quake had cost us half our remaining seismographs and split a long crack down the wall of the main tunnel. Dark water trickled out of the splintered stone.

Lt. Tsuya demanded harsly: “Was that one of your artificial quakes?”

My uncle nodded. “Dr. Koyetsu’s program calls for eight triggered quakes, in a diagonal line downward against the fault plane. We set four of them. That was the fourth.”

“And the other four?”

My uncle said quietly: “Those still have to be set.”

There was a silence in the station, broken only by the thumping of the pumps outside and the trickle of water across the floor.

Dr. Koyetsu stood up. “The nucleonic explosives from the wreck,” he said, “were under water a long time. Some of them are damaged.

“We used all the active ones we had aboard the MOLE. Then we had to come back for more. We went to the sump—Gideon and Bob Eskow went up to your uncle’s office—but the store in his safe had been removed. We found out from the superintendent of the building what had happened. The Fleet had removed them.

“And so we had to come here, to get them. We need them!” he cried strongly. “Without them, all that we’ve done so far is wasted! The big quake will be delayed, yes—perhaps it will be one or two degrees less powerful—but it will come.

“And Krakatoa will be destroyed.”

Lt. Tsuya took no time at all to make his decision. He was trained as an officer of the Sub-Sea Fleet, and the training wouldn’t let him waste a second in trying to explain or justify his previous actions. He had been wrong; very well, now he was right; get on with the job!

He said: “That won’t happen, Dr. Koyetsu. The nuclear fuses are right here, in one of the storage rooms. We’ll help you load them!”

It didn’t take much time. Two of us at a time wrapped slings around the gleaming golden spheres, lugged them down the rocky tunnel to the station, handed them up to Gideon, atop the MOLE. “Keep them coming!” Gideon cried, grinning, and hefted the heavy balls into the hatch, where Lt. Tsuya and Harley Danthorpe, under my uncle’s directions, stowed them away. Dr. Koyetsu and Lt. McKerrow made one hauling team, Bob Eskow and I the other.

When all the fuses were stowed away Bob and I stood panting for a second, looking at each other. It was an embarrassing moment, in a way—the first time we had faced each other since the whole mysterious affair had started. And both of us were remembering the harsh and mistrustful thoughts I had had of Bob—remembering them, and wishing they could be put out of the way. But at last Bob grinned and stuck out his hand.

“You’re a great detective,” he complimented me. “Congratulations! I should have been more careful about being followed—but I honestly didn’t think you were that good!”

I said seriously: “I’m sorry, Bob.” He grinned. I said: “No, don’t laugh it off. I should have trusted you—and I should have trusted Gideon and my uncle too. But—”

I hesitated. “Well,” I confessed at last, “there was one thing I couldn’t understand. For that matter, I still can’t! I understand that this whole thing had to be kept secret. But why from
me?
If my uncle had to have help in the station here, why couldn’t I have been the one he came to instead of you?”

Bob said immediately: “Because the trail would have led directly to him! Don’t you see that, Jim. The best way for him to conceal his own activities was to involve me in them, and not you. When he came to me, just after we arrived here, he explained the whole thing to me. He told me that you would feel left out, and rightly so—but that he counted on you to understand at the end, when everything was explained. And you do, Jim!”

“I guess I do,” I said at last—but I wasn’t so very sure! In spite of everything, I wished that I had been able to take part of the work and worry on myself!

But Lt. Tsuya, climbing down the boarding ladder, interrupted:

“I have one more question too,” he said. “You made that successful quake forecast because you
knew
what was going to happen—knew that Stewart Eden would cause it. Right?”

Bob nodded. “I guess I should have faked it,” he admitted. “But—well, it looked like a good chance for me to show how smart I was! And that wasn’t very smart…”

“That’s not my question,” said the lieutenant, shaking his head. “It was after that. The thing I’m talking about is the geosonde that was stolen from the station.”

Bob peered at him blankly.

“That sonde cost the Fleet thousands of dollars,” said Lt. Tsuya. “And I want to know what happened to it! I’m responsible, you know.”

But Bob shook his head. “Sir,” he said honestly, “I can’t help you. That’s something I don’t know anything about.”

Harley Danthorpe popped his head out of the hatch of the MOLE.

“All stowed away!” he called. “You’re all ready to take off!”

And that’s when the fifth quake struck.

I suppose it wasn’t any bigger or worse than the others. The wave amplitude was no greater, on the seismographs we still had working. But the sound of it seemed louder, when it came moaning up through the rock to shatter the damp, icy stillness of the tunnels. The vibration seemed more painful.

And most of all—this one wasn’t part of Dr. Koyetsu’s plan!

My uncle turned white-faced to us and cried: “We’ve got to get those other bombs planted! We’ve started something and we have to finish it!”

Rock sprayed out of the cracks in the ceiling and caught him as he spoke. My uncle was thrown to the ground, bleeding from the head and shoulder. Rock rattled against the edenite hull of the MOLE like machinegun fire. I was hit; Dr. Koyetsu was hit; Gideon was knocked flat, but only a glancing blow that pounded the wind out of him but did no more damage than that.

But Koyetsu and my uncle, they were in no shape to withstand that sort of treatment! Neither of them was young—both had been under immense strain—and now, in a fraction of a second, both were smashed down by falling rock, in a quake that signaled enormous danger for all of us.

Lt. Tsuya gave swift orders, and Bob and I helped get the injured ones to a dry and level place on the chart tables. Bob glanced at me and said sharply: “Jim, you’re bleeding yourself!” It was true, but no more than a scratch. A sharp-edged flint had raked across my neck and shoulder; the skin was gouged, but not deeply.

We ministered to the injured ones, while Lt. Tsuya computed hastily. Soundings we had none; seismograph traces were scanty, most of the machines being out of commission from the repeated shocks; but the art of forecasting is more in the mind of the man who does it than in the data he has to work with. Lt. Tsuya threw his pencil across the station.

“Here!” he cried. “Look at this!” He scrabbled up another pencil and quickly charted the position of the focuspoints of the five quakes, the four that had been triggered and the fifth that nature itself had brought upon us. “Look!” Red crosses marked the position of each focus; a dotted red line lay between them. “That fifth quake isn’t all bad,” he said hurriedly. “It will help relieve the tension—provided the remaining triggerexplosions are set off on schedule. The MOLE must go out again at once! There’s less than an hour to get the next blast off—and it will take all of that to get in position!”

My uncle pushed himself off the table. “I’m ready,” he said hoarsely, clutching at a chair for support. “John—Gideon. Come on!”

But Lt. Tsuya was pushing him back into a chair. “You’re going nowhere, ” he said forcefully. “Well take over now!”

“You?” My uncle blinked at him dizzily. “But—but what do you know about it? John and I are experienced at this by now. It’s too dangerous for anyone else to go!”

“And it’s plain murder for you!” cried the lieutenant. He stabbed at the chart before him. “Here—and here—and here! That’s where the next three shots have to go. What else do we need to know? We’ll take Bob with us, if he’ll go, and Gideon. And we’ll need one more person.”

“Me!” I cried immediately. But I was not alone; at the same instant, beside me, Harley Danthorpe stepped forward.

“Me!” he shouted. Then he turned to look at me. “I
have
to go, Jim!” he said tautly.

For a moment the station was almost silent, except for the pumps and the splash of water where the sea was running through widening fractures in the rock. All of us were thinking of the voyage that lay before the MOLE, boring through the earth’s crust, miles beneath us, under increasing heat and pressure. Five quakes had gone off, but three remained.

And those three must be placed deeper, where the MOLE would be in greater danger of being crushed by slipping rock, or drowned in molten magma. I remembered how many of our sondes had imploded at seventy thousand feet or less—and now we would have to go far deeper than that!

But it had to be done.

And Lt. Tsuya said at last: “Very well. We’ll take you both! Lieutenant McKerrow, I’m leaving you in charge of the station and these two gentlemen. See that they’re taken care of.”

“Thanks,” grumbled McKerrow. Then, eagerly: “Listen, why not take six? I’m sure Eden and Koyetsu can get along by themselves.”

“That’s an order,” rapped Lt. Tsuya. “There’ll be plenty of work here. Now—” he glanced behind him, at the gleaming armor of the MOLE and the spiral ortholytic elements that wound around it—”now, let’s get going!”

While we were completing the loading and getting aboard ourselves, the emergency speakers, long silent, began to rattle again with quake messages and warnings. It sounded bad, even with the limited knowledge the announcer had been given. He spoke of new cracks opened in the drainage tubes, sumps filling faster than the overloaded pumps could empty them. Plans were being made to evacuate all of the dome outside the edenite safety armor. But there was a grave, worried note in his voice as he said it, and I knew why. Edenite was mighty against the thrust of the ocean’s pressure, but without power it might as well have been tissue paper. And there was always the chance of a power failure. A mob in the upper northeast octant had tried to fight their way into the platform elevators and there had been trouble—and fighting meant guns; and with guns the power generators themselves might be endangered.