Undersea City (10 page)

“Neither do I,” he said in a voice crushed as flat as the sea-bottoms outside the Dome.

An hour later I was back in the civilian areas of Krakatoa Dome—and so was Bob Eskow.

And Bob was not alone.

It had been childishly easy to follow him. I had waited outside the main gate of the Base, partly concealed and wearing a weather-cloak to conceal my uniform. But no concealment was needed. Bob came out like a missile from a torp tube, headed straight for the up-chutes. I followed…and saw him meet someone. The someone was that same old Chinese.

There was no doubt now; for the Chinese no longer carried the parcel he had seen. Somewhere he had disposed of it. And I could think of only one place…my uncle’s safe.

The deck where they met was Minus One, just above the main gate of the Fleet Base. Then they went down again—to base level and below—way down to the Drainage Deck.

They were just walking off the landing when I followed a handful of drainage detail pump-monkeys out of the elevator.

We came to a cross-tunnel marked with a bright-lettered sign:
Booster Station
Four.
I could feel the powerful pumps that sucked at the drainage from Krakatoa Dome, forcing it out against the mighty pressure from three miles of water overhead; but I had no time to think about that, for Bob and the old man were walking on.

I waited a moment to let them get farther ahead, and followed again.

This was a service tunnel. Its floor was level, with little drainage gutters along the walls. It was lined with concrete, lighted with sparse and widely spaced Troyon tubes. Except for a trickle of sluggish water in the gutters, it was fairly dry.

Abruptly Bob and the other man disappeared ahead of me.

I halted for an uneasy second, then went on more slowly…until I saw that they had entered a drainage sump.

Then I paused for more than one second, I confess.

For that made me realize what I had previously been overlooking. I was no longer under the dome. I was out past it—out beneath the floor of the sea itself. Above me was a few hundred feet of quake-fractured rock—

And above that, nothing but three straight vertical miles of salt water.

The drainage tunnels were not reinforced or sealed, except at a few necessary points. They were noisy with the drip and splash and murmur of the invading sea; they were chilled close to the freezing-point temperature of the deeps; hardly half ventilated, they had a damp salt reek.

But there I was—and my quarry getting farther out of sight every second.

There was a three-foot drop at the end of the service tunnel, into the outer drainage ring. It curved away on either side; it had been driven by automatic excavators, and its black rock walls still showed the tooth-marks of multiple drills.

They were oozing and showering water, and the floor of the tunnel was covered in water inches deep, running sleek and black beneath the pale gleam of a distant Troyon light.

I almost turned back then.

But I had to know where they had gone. I listened. But all I could hear was the echoing trickle of water sluicing out of the fissures in the walls.

A moment passed.

Then, my eyes becoming used to the deeper darkness, I began to see a wavering gleam on the black water to the right.

It was the glow of an isotopic flashlight, already almost out of view.

I decided to follow.

I scrambled as silently as I could down into the ankledeep water. The numbing cold of it stopped me for a second; but then I got my breath and followed the flash light, until it vanished behind a noisy sheet of water pouring out of the fractured rock.

The situation was beginning to get difficult.

I was already half drenched. My feet were numb. I was shivering with cold. And I was unarmed.

If—let us say—
if
they were waiting beyond the water fall, what could I accomplish? I would be an easy victim. But I couldn’t believe that of Bob Eskow.

The distant Troyon tube was only a faint reflection on the wet black curve of the tunnel wall. I peered into the darkness, took a few splashing steps…

And then I caught my breath and waded forward, plunging through the splashing curtain of icy brine.

The tunnel beyond was now completely dark.

The icy water was deeper, and it was running faster. I stumbled blindly ahead, through it, for perhaps fifty yards.

Then I saw a faint glitter ahead.

I stopped and waited, but it didn’t move. In a moment I saw that it was light shining on wet rock. The light came out of one of the radial tubes that sloped down from the circular tunnel, like the spokes of a deeply dished wheel, to carry the seepage to the pumps.

And far down the radial I saw two figures—Bob Eskow and the Oriental.

The radial was a straight line. I could see them in black silhouette against the moving glow of the isotopic flashlight.

I stepped into the radial tunnel.

It was steep—so steep that I almost fell. The water ran fast, tugging at my numbed feet. But in a moment I caught my footing. I found that the floor sloped queerly down to the walls, leaving the center barely submerged. I kept to that flooded ford as well as I could in the dark

The two men were a long way ahead.

And suddenly they disappeared. For a moment the tunnel seemed completely dark and empty. Then I could see a faint flicker of light on a surface of black water.

I went on down the tunnel, guiding myself mostly by what little feeling was left in my wet and frozen feet. Water was rushing fast down the unseen gutters on either side of me, but now, part of the time, the center was—well, not dry; but at least not covered with flowing water, so that the footing was easier. But icy water dripped and showered on me from the rock roof overhead. I was soaked and shivering; my uniform was a sopping rag.

But at last I reached the bottom of the radial.

Its water poured into a sump, one of the cavernous tanks that had been excavated to give the city a margin of safety, in case of real trouble with the drainage pumps. This enormous chamber, more than a hundred feet across, was roofed with reinforced concrete; but the walls were black and drill-scarred basalt.

Water was spilling into it from half a dozen radial drains. The rock beneath my feet shook with the vibration of the hidden pumps that sucked the, water out and forced it into the crushing deeps outside.

The pale light that showed me what few details I could make out of the flooded pit came from somewhere below the outlet of the tunnel that I had followed.

Searching for the source of it, I stepped closer to the pit. The seepage water was running fast here, foaming around my feet even when I kept on the narrow ridge between the two gutters. It was nearly strong enough to carry me over the edge; I dropped to my hands and knees to look over the brink of the pit.

And I found the source of the glowing pale light.

It was a shimmering edenite film—the armor of a long subsea ship, floating awash in the pit!

It was the most astonishing sight I ever saw in my life.

I lay there, clutching the jagged rock spillway rim, staring, hardly conscious of the icy water that ripped at me. A sea-car! And a big one at that—in this drainage sump, without a lock, without any way of getting in or out!

It was almost impossible to believe. And yet, there I saw it.

I couldn’t even guess the total depth of the pit, but the surface of the dark water was a dozen feet below me; the rushing drainage water made a waterfall as it plunged into the pit. The noise drowned out sounds; and there was so little light that, nearly hidden by the lip of the radial drain, there was small danger of my being seen.

The long bright hull was just awash. A stubby conning tower projected a few feet above the water. The old Oriental was climbing down into that conning tower; someone else was just outside it, on the tiny surfacing platform. He was holding a handrail, leaning out to look down into the black water.

He waited—and, a few yards above him, I waited too—until a diver’s head burst out of the water. A diver! It was almost as fantastic to find a diver in that pit as to find the ship itself. The diver was wearing a bulky thermosuit—without it, he could hardly have lived a minute in that water. The goggled helmet hid his face.

He held up his arm, holding the end of a line.

“Ready?” His voice was muffled and distorted in the helmet, making a strange rumbling echo under the dark concrete dome. “Hoist away!”

He slipped back into the water. The man on deck hauled in the line. Evidently it was heavy, because he was soon breathing hard. He paused for a second, and glanced up, wiping his brow.

He didn’t see me—but I saw him. There had been no error. I had been following the right man.

It was Bob Eskow.

Suddenly I was conscious of the numbing cold and wet again. The whole world was cold. I had hoped that, by some fantastic accident, this whole thing had been a mistake—but now there was no doubt.

I watched numbly while the diver came up again, guiding the object that Bob was hauling so painfully to the deck of the sea-car. The diver took great care of it; he got between it and the ship, fending it off.

I leaned out as far as I could, trying to see what it was.

The whole thing was fantastic. How could this ship be here—in a drainage sump, far beneath the city? There could be no passage to the sea—no possibility of it, for the whole ocean would be roaring and crashing in, driven by the mighty pressure of three miles of salt water.

And locks were just as impossible. Why, an edenite lock system was a fantastically complicated engineering project! It would be easier to build a new sea-car on the base of the sea itself than to construct a secret lock system.

But even without considering all those fantasies, one question remained.

Why?

What could be the purpose of it all? Who could find it worth his while to smuggle an edenite armored sea-car in here? Smuggle—why, that word suggested an explanation: smugglers. But that was ridiculous, too; no sooner had I thought it than I realized it could hardly be an answer; there simply was nothing that could be smuggled so valuable as to justify this order of effort.

And then I saw what was being hoisted aboard the sea-car.

My wondering speculations froze in my mind, for what Bob Eskow and the diver were so cautiously, so arduously bringing aboard had a fearfully familiar appearance.

It was a polished ball of bright gold, about six inches in diameter. And heavy—by the way they carried it, remarkably heavy for its size.

A stainless steel handling band was clamped around it, bearing a ring; the hauling line was made fast to the ring.

I knew what it was at that first glance, for at the Academy I had worked with such a device in the Thermonuclear Weapons Lab.

It was the primary reactor for a thermonuclear device.

In other words…it was an H-bomb fuse!

I didn’t have to be told that the private use of thermonuclear weapons was a very serious affair.

What was this? Was this ship being armed for some kind of piratical voyage of looting and destruction? That was my first thought—but Bob Eskow didn’t fit my idea of a pirate. Not even a thermonuclear pirate!

I almost forgot to be cold, waiting to see what might come next. Bob lowered the deadly little golden ball through a hatchway. The old Oriental, below, must have been stowing it away.

And Bob tossed the end of the line back to the diver—who went down again.

More of them!

Not just one H-bomb fuse, but several. Many! They were soon hauling another out of where they had been hidden beneath the water—then another—another…

There were eight of the deadly little things.

Eight thermonuclear fuses! Each one of them capable of starting a fusion blast that could annihilate a city!

This was no mere voyage of piracy—no—this was something far more deadly and more serious.

I watched, half dazed, while the diver, his frightful chores completed, hauled himself out of the water and unzipped his bulky thermosuit.

When he slipped off his helmet, I nearly fell into the pit. The face that looked out from under that helmet was the honest and friendly Negro face of my uncle’s right-hand man, Gideon Park!

It was enough to brihg a crashing finish to one of the worst days of my life; but it was not the end, there was more to come, and worse.

The job of loading was done.

While I watched, Gideon quickly folded the thermosuit, coiled the line, stowed away the loose gear on the little surfacing platform. He said something to Bob, too low for me to hear above the rush of the water.

Then both of them climbed down the hatch.

Motors began to hum inside the little ship.

The hatchways slid shut.

The conning tower telescoped in, until the top of it was flush with the shining hull. The edenite armor film pulsed and shimmered and grew brighter—

And then abruptly I understood at least one of the queerly puzzling things.

Locks? No. There were no locks.

This ship didn’t need any locks!

It wasn’t a mere sub-sea ship that needed open ways to the deeps; it was something more than that, more powerful and more ominous.

It was a MOLE!

It was a sub-sea cruiser equipped with the ortholytic drills that would permit it to burrow through the solid rock itself. Now, with the conning tower out of the way, I could see the nested spiral elements of the ortholytic drill itself.

It could mean only one thing: Someone had betrayed one of the most closely guarded secrets of the Sub-Sea Fleet.

Already it was diving. The black water washed over it. The edenite film on the hull shimmered and brightened again, responding to the pressure change.

Still it slid down, while the water dimmed and shattered its image—and then it was gone.

It had entered the rock itself.

A smothering darkness filled the drainage pit.

Shivering from shock as much as from cold, I got stiffly to my feet and stumbled up the radial drain, on the long return trip through the dripping seepage and the suffocating dark. I could feel the rock shivering under my feet—the pumps? Or the whirling spiral ortholytic drills of the MOLE?