Undersea Fleet (9 page)

I stared at him. “Kidnaped? At a depth of thirteen hundred feet? But that’s impossible, David! How could any human being do it—why, it would take a sea car and heaven knows what else to do a thing like that!”

David Craken looked at me, his eyes bright and serious in the moonlight.

“Jim,” he said, “what makes you think that Joe Trencher is human?”

Roger called it a “beach house”—but it was two stories tall, a sprawling mansion with ten acres of sub-tropical gardens and a dozen outbuildings.

The whole estate was surrounded by a twenty-foot hedge of prickly thorns and tiny red flowers. A land crab might have been able to squirm through the hedge, but no human being could. Roger led us to a gate in the hedge, ten feet high, with carved metal doors, the hedge growing together solidly above it. The doors were wide open, and no on was in sight.

But it was not unguarded.

“Halt!” rattled a peremptory mechanical voice. “Halt! You, there! Where are you going and what do you want?” The doors moved uneasily, though there was no wind. It was as though they were anxious to crash shut on the intruders.

“It’s the automatic watchman,” Roger explained, a little nervously. He cried: “I am Roger Fairfane. I have permission to come in.”

The mechanical voice crackled: “Roger Fairfane. Step forward!” There was a momentary hiss and a rustle of static, as though the invisible electronic brain were scanning its library of facts to find out if the name Roger Fairfane was on the list of permitted visitors.

Roger took a step forward and a beam of sizzling red light leaped down at him from a projector on the side of the gate. In its light he looked changed and ghastly, and a little scared.

The mechanical voice rattled: “Roger Fairfane, you have permission to go to the boathouse. Follow the indicated path.” It clicked, and the faint hum from the loud-speaker died. The doors shuddered one more time, as if regretful that they could not close, and then were still.

A line of violet Troyon lights, rice-grain sized, lit up along the ground, outlining a path that led through palms and clumps of hibiscus toward the water.

“Come along, come along,” said Roger hurriedly. “Stay on the path!”

We followed the curving coral walk outlined by the flecks of violet light. The boathouse turned out to be as big as an average-sized dwelling. There was a basin for a private sub-sea cruiser, and with a house built around it, an apartment on the upper floor. Another beam of reddish light leaped out at us from over the entrance as we approached. It singled out Roger Fairfane, and in a moment the door opened.

We walked in, the door closing behind us. It was uncomfortably like a trap.

The first thing to do was get something to eat—not only for David, but for all of us; we hadn’t eaten since the marathon swim. Roger disappeared into the kitchen of the little apartment and we could hear him struggling with the controls of the electronic housekeeper. He came out after a moment with a tray of milk and sandwiches. “The best I can do,” he said, a little grumpily. “This apartment belongs to the pilot of the sea-car, and it isn’t too well stocked.”

It was good enough for all of us, though. We demolished the sandwiches and then sat before a roaring fire in the fireplace, which had kindled itself as we came into the room. If this was the pilot’s apartment, what would the master’s home be like! We all were impressed with the comfort and luxury that surrounded us—even Roger.

Then we talked.

David put down the last of his sandwich and sat staring at us for a moment.

“It’s hard to know where to begin,” he said at last.

“Start with the Tonga pearls,” Roger suggested shortly.

David looked at him, and then at Bob and me, with his eyes dark with trouble.

“Before I tell you anything,” he said at last, “you must promise me something. Promise you won’t repeat what I’m going to tell
you to anyone, without my
permission. Especially, promise you won’t report anything to the Fleet.”

Roger said promptly: “Agreed!”

David looked at me. I hesitated. “I’m not sure we should promise,” I told him slowly. “After all, we’re cadets, in training for Fleet commissions…”

“But we haven’t got them yet!” objected Roger. “We haven’t taken the oath.”

Bob Eskow was frowning over some private thought. He seemed about to say something, then changed his mind.

David Craken looked hard at me. His voice was very clear and firm. “Jim, if you can’t promise to keep your mouth shut, I’ll have to ask you to leave. There’s too much depending on me. I need help badly—but I can’t afford to take a chance on word getting out.” He hesitated. “It—it’s a matter of life and death, Jim. My father’s life.”

Roger snapped. “Listen, Jim, there’s no problem here. David isn’t asking you to violate an oath—you haven’t even taken it! Why can’t you just go along and promise?”

David Craken held up his hand. “Wait a minute, Roger.” He turned to me again. “Suppose I ask you,” he said, “to promise to keep this conversation secret
as long as it does not conflict with your duty to the Fleet.
And to promise if you report anything I say, that you’ll talk it over with me beforehand.”

I thought it over, and that seemed reasonable enough. But before I could speak Bob Eskow stood up. His expression had cleared magically. “Speaking for myself,” he said, “that’s fine. Let’s shake on it all around!”

Solemnly we all clasped hands.

Roger demanded: “Now, where did you get the pearls?”

David grinned suddenly. He said: “Don’t be impatient. Do you know, Roger, I could tell you exactly where they came from. I could pinpoint the location of a subsea chart and give you an exact route to get there. And believe me, it would be useless to you. Worse than useless.” The grin vanished. “You see, Roger,” he went on, “you would never come back alive.”

He leaned back and looked into the flames. “My father is an expert benthologist. A scientist of the deeps. He made his reputation many years ago, before I was born, and under another name. As a benthologist, he went on many sub-sea exploring missions—and on one of them discovered the oyster beds that produce the Tonga pearls.” He paused, and, in a different tone, added: “I wish he never had. The pearls are—dangerous.”

Roger said aggressively: “You’re talking about those silly legends? Rot! Just superstition. There have been stories about gems being unlucky for thousands of years—but the only bad luck is not having them!”

David Craken shook his head. “The Tonga pearls have caused a lot of trouble,” he said. “Perhaps some of it was merely because they were so valuable and so—so lovely. But believe me, there is more to it than that. They caused the death of every man on that expedition except one, my father.”

Bob cut in: “Do you mean they killed each other for the pearls?”

“Oh, no! They were all good men—scientists, explorers, sub-sea experts. But the pearl beds are well guarded. That’s why no one else has ever got back from the Tonga beds to report their location.”

“Wait a minute,” I interrupted. “Guarded? Guarded by what?”

David looked at me, frowning doubtfully.

“Jim, you’ve got to remember that most of the ocean is still as strange as another planet. There’s three times as much of the ocean bottom as all the dry land on Earth put together. And it’s harder to explore. We can travel about, we can search with fathometers and microsonar—but what is the extreme range of our search? It’s like trying to map Bermuda from an airplane, during a thunderstorm. We can see patches, we can penetrate through the clouds with radar—but only big, broad outlines come through. There are things under the sea that—that you wouldn’t believe.”

I wanted to interrupt again, to ask him if he meant that terrible saurian head I had seen at the railing of the gym ship—or the mystery of his own disappearance and return—or the strange eyes of the being who called himself Joe Trencher. But something held me silent as he went on.

“The ship was lost,” David said. “My father got away in his diving gear, with the first batch of pearls. I think—I think he should properly have reported what happened to the expedition. But he didn’t.” He frowned, as though trying to apologize for his father. “You see, times were different then. The conquest of the sub-sea world was just beginning. There was no Sub-sea Fleet; piracy was common. He knew that he would lose his right of discovery—might even have lost his life—if the secret of the pearls got out.

“So—he didn’t report.

“He changed his name, to Jason Craken. The Kraken—spelled with a K—is the old name for the fabulous monsters of the deep. It was very appropriate, as you will see. He took the pearls he had managed to save, and sold them, a few at a time, very carefully, in ways that were not entirely legal. But he had no choice, you see.”

David sat up straighter, his eyes beginning to flash, his voice growing stronger. “Then—well, I told you he was an expert benthologist. He invented a new technique—a way of harvesting more pearls, without being killed. Believe me, it wasn’t easy. All these years he has been harvesting the Tonga pearl beds—”

“All alone!” cried Roger Fairfane. He pushed back his chair and leaped up, striding back and forth. “One man harvesting all the Tonga pearls! What an opportunity!”

David looked at him. “An opportunity—more than that, Roger,” he said. “For he was not quite alone. He had—well, call them employees—to protect him and help him harvest the pearls.”

Bob Eskow was standing up. “Wait a minute! I thought you said your uncle was the only man who knew the secret of the Tonga beds.”

David nodded. For a moment he was silent. Then he said:

“The employees were not men.”

“Not men! But—”

“Please, Bob. Let me tell this my way.” Bob shrugged and sat down; David went on. “My father built himself a home near the pearl beds—a sub-sea fort, really armored with edenite. He gathered a lot of pearls. They were fabulously valuable, and they were all his. He built a new identity for himself in the sub-sea cities so that he could sell the pearls. He made a lot of money.”

David’s eyes looked reminiscent and faintly sad. “While my mother was alive, we lived luxuriously. It was a wonderful, fantastic life, half in the undersea cities, half in our own secret dome. But—my mother died. And now everything has changed.”

His voice had a husky catch, and his thin face turned very white. I noticed that his hands were trembling just a little, but he went on.

“Everything has changed. My father is an old man now—and sick, besides. He can’t rule his—his employees the way he used to. His undersea empire is slipping out of his hands. The people he used to trust have turned against him. He has no one else. That’s why we must have help!”

Excitement was shining in Bob’s eyes and Roger’s, and I could feel my own pulse racing. A secret a hidden undersea empire! Tongafortress guarding pearls, glowing like moons in the dark! The challenge of unknown dangers under the sea! It was like a wonderful adventure story, and it was happening to us, here in this little apartment over the empty boathouse!

I said: “David, what kind of help do you need?”

He met my eyes squarely. “Fighting help, Jim! There is danger—my father’s life isn’t worth a scrap of Tonga oyster-shell unless I can bring him help. We need—” he hesitated before saying it—“we need a fighting ship, Jim. An armed subsea cruiser!”

That stopped us all.

We stared at him as though he were a lunatic. I said: “A
cruiser?
But—but, David, private citizens can’t use a Fleet cruiser! Why not just call on the Fleet? If it’s that serious—”

“No! My father doesn’t want the Fleet!”

We looked at him helplessly.

David grinned tightly. “I’m not crazy. He doesn’t want to give away the location of the pearl beds. He would lose everything he has. And besides—there are the—the creatures in that part of the sea. They would have to be killed if the Fleet comes in. And my father doesn’t want to kill them.”

“Creatures? What creatures?” I asked it, but I think I knew the answer before hand. For I could not forget the enormous scaled head I had seen over the rail of the gym ship.

David waved the question aside. “I’ll explain,” he said, “when I know if you can help me. For I haven’t much time. My father’s—call them employees—have turned against him. They’ve cut him off and surrounded him, down in his sub-sea fort. We must have a fighting ship and fighting men to rescue him. And there isn’t much time.”

He stood up, staring at us intently. “But not the Fleet!”

“What then?” asked Roger Fairfane, puzzled. David said, “Have you ever heard of the subsea cruiser “Killer Whale?”

We looked at each other. The name sounded a tiny echo for all of us—somewhere we had heard it, somewhere recently.

I got it first. “Of course,” I cried. “The Fleet surplus sale! Down in Sargasso City—there are two of them, aren’t there? Two obsolete subsea cruisers, and they’re going to be sold for salvage…”

David nodded, then checked himself and shook his head. “Almost right, Jim,” he said. “But there is really only one ship. The other one—the
Dolphin
—it’s only a heap of rust. The
Killer Whale
is the ship I want. True, I would have to find armament for it somewhere. The Fleet would sell it stripped. But it’s a serviceable vessel. My father knows it well; it was based in Kermadec Dome a few years ago. If I could arm it—and man it with three or four good men—”

Bob said excitedly: “We could help you, David! We’ve completed enough courses in subsea tactics and battle maneuvers—we’ve all of us had training in simulated combat! But the price, David! Those things, even scrapped, would cost a fortune!”

David nodded. He said somberly, “We figured it out, my father and I. They would cost just about as much as a handful of Tonga pearls.”

We were all silent for a moment. Then Roger Fairfane raised his head and laughed sharply.

“So you’ve been wasting our time,” he said. “You’ve lost the pearls. There’s no way of getting the money without them.”

David looked at him thoughtfully. “No way?” He paused, trying to find the right words. “You said you would help, Roger. And your father—a wealthy man, an important man in Trident Lines…”