Undersea City (8 page)

And that was all he would say.

I went back to our quarters, very much disturbed in mind.

What Lieutenant Tsuya was suggesting was too horrible to believe! Clearly, he knew about Bob Eskow’s absence last night—knew even that I had been following him—and suspected, as I had come to suspect myself, that Bob’s forecast of the surprise quake was by no means an accident.

It was more than I could take in at once.

I couldn’t help thinking of the time when I had come on Bob in the barracks, giving something to that wizened old Chinese—just before we had discovered that the geosonde was missing!

I couldn’t help thinking of what Harley Danthorpe had said about my Uncle Stewart’s broker—and what Father Tide had told me, back at the Academy, concerning the wreck of the sea-car that was trapped in the eruption under the Indian Ocean.

Yet—these were the two who meant the most to me of anyone alive in the world! How could I doubt them?

Firmly I resolved to put the whole thing out of my mind. I would not accept the lieutenant’s offer of a pass—I would not become a spy! Surely Bob had some explanation to make. I would wait for it. And as for my uncle—why, probably he was not within a thousand miles of Krakatoa Dome! The whole thing was a misunderstanding, at the worst.

I found Bob and Harley Danthorpe getting their gear ready for inspection, and hurried to join them. There wasn’t much time.

I didn’t bring up the subject of the forecast, or of my uncle; I was going to wait.

Until the moment when I opened my locker, and my uncle’s picture fluttered out.

Harley Danthorpe picked it up and handed it to me, then he caught sight of the signature. “Oh,” he said. “So that’s him. Jim, I wish you’d change your mind and bring him around to meet Dad.”

I said, “But I don’t even know where he is, Harley. For all I know, he might be in the Antarctic or the Gulf of California.”

“He’s here,” said Bob, absent-mindedly. “I thought—” Then he caught himself sharply

“What did you say?”

Bob looked confused, as though he had spoken without thinking. “Why, uh—” he squirmed uncomfortably. “I mean, I saw him. Or anyway, I
thought
I saw him. Somebody that looked like him, at any rate. Probably that’s what it was, Jim—just someone who looked like him. I, uh, didn’t have time to speak to him—”

I looked at him for a moment.

Then I said, “I see,” and I let it drop there.

But there was no doubt in my mind, now, that Bob was keeping something from me that concerned my uncle.

And there was no doubt in my mind, now, that—no matter what it meant—I was going to change my mind about taking that pass from Lieutenant Tsuya.

I straightened my sea-cap, made sure my uniform was properly buttoned, and entered the huge doorway between the vaulting pillars shaped like sea-cars. They stretched forty feet up to the top of the deck, sea-basalt, as impressive as the entrance to the Taj Mahal; in actuality, they were the entrance to the offices of Barnacle Ben Danthorpe.

A blonde iceberg at the reception desk inside inspected me. She showed no visible signs of thawing.

I said, “I’d like to see Mr. Ben Danthorpe.” Silence. “I’m a close friend of Harley Danthorpe’s.” More silence. “Harley is Mr. Danthorpe’s son.”

Still more silence, while she looked me up and down.

Then, reluctantly, she shrugged. “One moment, sir,” she said, and picked up a telephone.

I stood waiting.

I felt out of place there, but it was the only clue I had to follow.

If my uncle was really in Krakatoa Dome, he had beaten my poor skills at trying to find him. I had tried the phone directory, the business associations, the hotels. No one had ever heard of him.

So all that was left was to talk to Barnacle Ben Danthorpe. He had told his son that he had heard a rumor about Uncle Stewart; perhaps I could track the rumor down.

I saw the snow-blonde eyebrows on the girl lift slightly. “You will?” she said, incredulous. Then she looked at me with a curiously unbelieving expression. “You may go in, Mr. Eden,” she said coolly, nodding toward the office elevator. “Mr. Danthorpe is at Sub-Level A.”

When I stepped out of the little elevator at the top of its track, Barnacle Ben Danthorpe was waiting for me.

He shook my hand cordially—like a salesman, in fact. “Jim Eden!” he cried. “Harley has told me a great deal about you! And your uncle—why, Stewart Eden and I—many years, my boy! Many years!” He didn’t exactly say what was supposed to have been happening those many years, of course. I didn’t expect him to. I knew that he and my uncle had not been exactly close friends. “Enemies” was a better word, in fact.

But still, he was the only lead I had.

He conveyed me into a big, sound-proofed office, paneled with sea-wood from salvaged wrecks. “What is it, Jim?” His squint was just like his son’s. “What can I do for you?”

“You can help me find my uncle,” I said bluntly.

“Ah.” He squinted thoughtfully at me for a moment. “You don’t know where he is?”

I told him the truth: “No, sir I’ve heard that he’s in Krakatoa Dome. I hope you can tell me where.”

He shook his head. “No, Jim, I can’t do that. But perhaps—”

His voice drifted off. He stood up and began to roam around his office. “I’ve heard strange things about your uncle, Jim,” he mused. “I knew that he was foundering, eh? Made one foolish investment too many?” He shook his head. “It never pays, Jim, never pays to put your money where your heart is. Your uncle was always a great one for backing risky ventures—because, he said, they were ‘good for the people of the sea.’ Foolish. I told him so, many times.

“But it looks as if he learned his lesson at last.”

“I don’t know what you mean, sir.”

“Ah, Jim!” He grinned shrewdly. “He has the inside drift now, boy! Everybody knows it. His brokers cleaned up millions for him on the quake last night. Millions! I know—he caught me for a nice slice of it!” He made a little face, but his keen eyes never left me. “Harley told me that a friend of yours knew that quake was coming. Would that have anything to do with your uncle, Jim?”

I said stiffly: “I’m not allowed to discuss quake forecasting sir.” And I almost added: “And neither is Harley.”

“I see. Well, Jim,” Danthorpe said, “I sympathize with that. I really do. But when you see your friend again, give him the inside drift. Tell him to come to see me.” He nodded wisely. “If he can really call his shots, I’ll make him as rich as Davy Jones!”

I said urgently, “Mr. Danthorpe, I really
must
find my uncle. Can you help me?”

Ben Danthorpe squinted at me sharply, as though he were wondering if he had said too much.

“Perhaps I can, Jim. At least, I know your uncle’s broker.”

He excused himself and picked up a telephone. It had a hush mouthpiece; I could hear only a faint whisper. After a moment he put it down and frowned at me.

“I’ve got your uncle’s broker’s address,” he said. Queerly, something had cooled his voice. He wasn’t quite as friendly. It’s down on Deck Four Plus, Radial Seven, Number Eighty-Eight. And if you’ll excuse me now, I had better get back to business.”

And he hurried me out the door.

When I got down to Deck Four Plus I soon guessed why he had rushed me out so coolly.

Deck Four Plus was on the borderline between the financial district and the commercial sub-sea vessel docks. Most of the buildings were warehouses and shipping offices.

For a broker’s office, it was definitely not impressive.

But it meant something more than that to me. There were no pedestrian slidewalks, and the streets were crowded with rumbling cargo haulers. The air was rich with the fragrance of sea-coffee beans and the sour reek of sea-copra and the musty sharpness of baled sea-flax. Perhaps it didn’t smell like high finance, but it was all a rare perfume for me.

It was the odor of the sea.

Dodging the trucks, I walked to Number 88.

It was a door between two warehouses, with a dark flight of stairs leading up inside. I climbed into a long empty corridor in the loft above the warehouses, which had been partitioned into office space. The only person I saw was a man in paint-spattered overalls, lettering a sign on the metal door at the end of the corridor.

The sign read:

EDEN ENTERPRISES, UNLIMITED

I hurried down the dim hall toward him. Every door had a sign like it—signs that announced dubious and enigmatic enterprises:
A.
Yelverton, Consulting Benthologist and Siminski Submarine Engineering,
next to
The Sunda Salvage Company
and
Hong Lee, Oriental Importer.
None of them looked very prosperous.

But I didn’t care about that. Eagerly I spoke to the back of the painter’s head. “Excuse me. Is Mr. Eden here?”

The painter turned around, fast, almost upsetting a paint can.

“Jim,” he cried. “Jim, it’s good to see you!”

It was Gideon Park!

“Gideon!” I shouted and grabbed his hand. Gideon Park–my uncle’s faithful friend and associate—the man who had saved my life back in Marinia—the man who had been with us in our great adventures under the sea!

He grinned at me out of his jet-black face, smudged with sea-green from the paint can. “Jim, boy,” he whooped. “I thought you were back at Bermuda!” He pulled his hand away from mine, looked at it and grinned again. “Here you are, Jim,” he said, offering me a rag while he scrubbed at the smears of paint on his own hands with another. “I’m afraid I’m not a very neat painter!”

“That doesn’t matter, Gideon,” I said. “But what are you doing here? Why—it isn’t two months since the two of us were down in the Tonga Trench, fighting those giant saurians! I thought you were back in Marinia.”

“Looks like we were both wrong,” he observed. “But come in, Jim. Come in! It’s not much of an office, but we might as well use it!”

“All right, Gideon. But first—what about my uncle?” He stopped and looked at me gravely. “I thought you’d ask me that, Jim,” he said after a moment, in his warm, chuckling voice. “He’s not too well. I guess you know that. But he isn’t capsized yet! You can’t sink Stewart Eden, no, no matter who tries!”

I hesitated, then said, remembering Father Tide: “Gide on, I heard something about my uncle’s sea-car being wrecked—out under the Indian Ocean, a few weeks ago. Was it true?”

The question made him look very grave.

He turned away from me, fussing with his brushes and cans of paint. Then he nodded toward the office door.

“Come inside, Jim,” he said heavily. “Tell me what you know about that.”

The offices of Eden Enterprises, Unlimited, consisted of two small bare rooms.

They had been freshly painted, in the same sea-green that was smudged on Gideon’s black face; but the paint was the only thing about them that was fresh. The furni ture was a ramshackle desk and a couple of broken chairs—left by the previous tenants, I guessed, not worth the trouble to haul away. There was only one new item: a heavy steel safe. And on it the name of the firm, Eden Enterprises, Unlimited, had been painted by a hand more professional than Gideon’s.

Gideon sat down and gestured me to the other chair; he listened while I told him about Father Tide’s visit. He said at last: “It’s true that we had a little accident. But we didn’t want the world to know about it. Your uncle minds his own business.”

He leaned forward and scrubbed at a spot of paint on the floor.

“Naturally Father Tide found out about it!” he said abruptly, grinning with obvious admiration. “That man, Jim, he’s always there! Whenever there’s trouble, you’ll find Father Tide—armored in his faith, and in the very best edenite.”

Then he turned grave again. “But he worries me some times, Jim. You say he told you that someone had been causing artificial seaquakes?”

I nodded.

“And he thought that that someone might be your uncle?”

“That’s right, Gideon.”

He shook his head slowly.

“But it can’t be true, Gideon!” I burst out. “Uncle Stewart simply isn’t capable of that sort of thing!”

“Of course not, Jim! But still—”

He got up and began pacing around.

“Jim,” he said, “your uncle isn’t well. We were caught in that quake, all right, back in the Indian Ocean. The sea-car was damaged too badly to fix. We abandoned it. But we spent sixty hours in our survival gear, Jim, before a sub-sea freighter picked up our sonar distress signals. Sixty hours! Even a boy like yourself would take a little time to get over something like that—and your uncle isn’t a boy any more. He hadn’t really recovered.

“But he’s here, in Krakatoa Dome. I left him resting this morning, back at our hotel.”

“I want to see him, Gideon!”

“Of course you do, Jim,” he said warmly. “And you shall. But wait until he comes in.”

He sat down again, frowning worriedly at the freshly painted wall.

“You know your uncle,” he said. “He has spent all of his long life taming the sea. I don’t have to tell you that. He invented edenite—oh, that, and a hundred other things, too; he’s a very great inventor, Jim. And not just a laboratory man. He has climbed the sea-mounts and explored the deeps. He has staked out mining claims on the floor of the sea, and launched floating sea-farms at the surface. And always, no matter what, he has helped others. Why, I can’t count the thousands of sea-prospectors he’s grubstaked! Or the men who came to him with a new invention, or a wild story they wanted to track down—thousands, Jim! There’s no limit to his interest in the sea.”

I couldn’t help glancing at the shabby furniture.

Gideon said quickly: “Oh, I know that your uncle has been in shoal waters lately. Maybe he has been a little too generous. All I know is that he has been paying out a little more than he has been taking in—for a long time, Jim.”

I said quickly: “But what about last night? Didn’t you handle the stock speculations for him? And weren’t there millions of dollars—”

I broke off. Gideon was looking somberly at the floor.

“Your uncle will have to answer that for himself, Jim,” he said in a muffled voice.

I changed the subject.