Undersea Quest (14 page)

There was a sudden animal flare in his eyes; for a moment I caught a glimpse of the real Hallam Sperry, the wolfman who would destroy anything for ultimate power; then it died away.

Hallam Sperry sighed heavily and turned away. ‘Take care of these two, Brooks,” he said over his shoulder. “I’ll want to talk to them again in a little while.”

He was gone, the door closing behind him.

It was a bad spot. Trouble had piled on trouble; it seemed we had reached the bottom. But the worst was yet to come.

The worst was—Gideon.

When Hallam Sperry walked out, leaving us under the watchful eyes of the squat toad named Brooks, Gideon was sitting motionless against the wall. He sat, still and rigid, for long moments, until I began to worry and said tentatively, “Gideon?”

He didn’t answer. He sat staring, his face lined and fearful. I could almost see him shaking.

It was the worst shock of all to me: Gideon seemed to have lost his nerve entirely. I began to realize just how much I had depended on his strength and wisdom and patience—just then, when he was trembling on the point of collapse.

Things began to look very dark.

The “butler” noticed it and grinned. “They’re all alike,” he said contemptuously. “There won’t be any trouble out of
him.
Or you either,” he added, looking at me coolly.

I said, “The only trouble is what you make for yourself. You can’t get away with this.”

He said, “We can’t?” He shook his head in mock worry. “Now you tell me,” he said. “If you’d only mentioned it before ” I didn’t laugh. I suppose I should have; because his imitation good humor vanished and, before I could dodge, I caught his clublike hand across the side of my head. I went reeling.

I barely heard him say, “That’s for nothing. Now don’t do anything!”

I shook my head and got up on hands and knees. At the Academy we had had, of course, plenty of training in hand-to-hand combat; if I could only have counted on Gideon to distract the man for a moment, I would have jumped him and taken my chances—even though he outweighed me two to one, and the weight was all animal muscle. But Gideon was still sitting frozen behind me, not even noticing what was going on. I said thickly:

“Brooks, you’ll pay. You’ve got us, but sooner or later somebody’s going to catch up with you, and you won’t be carrying a gun.’”

“Gun?” he demanded contemptuously. “Who needs a gun?” He patted his pocket. “There it is and there it stays; if I can’t take care of two miserable specimens like you with my bare hands. I’ll go back to Alcatraz and pound rocks to toughen up.” He came closer and stood over me menacingly. “On your feet, little man,” he ordered. “I haven’t had my workout this morning, and I’ll be glad to accommodate you if you want exercise. Sperry won’t mind—it’ll just soften you up for the brainpump later on.”

The brainpump! So that was what was in store for us…

“Come on,” he said thickly, his eyes glowing. He was an animal from skull to thick-booted feet, a creature of violence who loved his way of life. It looked like hard times for me; my only hope was to get up and take it, and pray for a quick knockout—

I pushed myself to my feet and leaped at him. It was like jumping a Tiger tank—I went spinning away at the end of one of his giant fists. He laughed and came after me; I bounced off the wall and came in…

And then Gideon moved.

Like a bolt of dark lightning he leaped from his seat and landed on the big man’s back. I came in again, but I caught a random blow from Brooks’ fist that sent me to the floor, dazed; I could only watch the two of them for a moment, while my muscles would not obey me. They were an uneven match—Gideon a little taller than the apeman, but at least fifty pounds lighter. After the first surprise, Brooks simply grunted and heaved and Gideon went flying; the butler lumbered after him and caught him around the throat. Those enormous muscles were choking the life out of Gideon; I crouched there, paralyzed, fighting with my own body to get up, to help Gideon…

But Gideon needed no help. The hard days in Kelly’s Kingdom had taught him more tricks than ever we learned at the Academy. I couldn’t even see just what happened; all I saw was Gideon slumping, bringing his knees up under him; then an enormous surge of strength, and the squat man flying, Gideon after him and on him; a brief and savage scramble as the butler went for his gun…

And then Gideon, bleeding and breathless, standing over him, holding the gun.

“Get up now, Jim,” Gideon panted. “We’re going to take a little walk.”

We got out of there—somehow.

I was only conscious of Gideon leading the way, the butler sullenly coming along, unlocking doors, keeping an eye open for other members of Sperry’s staff. We were lucky; no one intercepted us. The butler, of course, was even luckier, for Qideon was right there with the gun.

We took the butler along for company as far as the express elevator banks, then we plunged in and left him standing there, just as the elevator doors closed.

We were in a hurry.

Gideon gripped my arm warningly; there were other passengers in the car; this was not the place to discuss our plans. We went down and down, to die bottom level of warehouses, before Gideon tugged at me and led me out of the elevators. Down a long, damp corridor, through a side passage, and I began to hear the rushing sounds of water.

We were back in Gideon’s hermit-hideaway, on the ledge that overlooked the rushing drains. “All right, boy,” said Gideon exultantiy, “let them try to find us here!”

All the comforts of home. Even Gideon’s little store of supplies and firewood still was intact; he busied himself starting a fire and setting a pot of water on it for his favorite steaming tea, while I tried to sort things out in my mind.

I said, “I don’t understand it, Gideon. Brand Sperry shouldn’t be here. He should be at the Academy.”

“The old man must have called him home,” said Gideon.

“But he can’t! I mean, if Sperry left in the middle of a year, that would wreck his chances of graduating. And—”

“And maybe he doesn’t care, boy.” Gideon solemnly handed me a tin cup of tea; I set it down hastily and blew on my fingers.

“Maybe the Academy looks like mighty small potatoes to the Sperrys right now. Something big is up, mark my words.” He looked at me thoughtfully over the top of his own can of tea as he sipped it—he must have had asbestos lips! “Figure it out,” he said.

“One, you were followed all the way from the United States to Marinia. Those were Sperry’s men—do you think they were doing it for fun? Two, one of those same men tried to kill you. Do you think that was just a joke? Three, somebody went to the trouble of trying to impersonate you here—nearly killing you in the process. That’s getting to be a pretty bad joke by now, Jim!”

“But why?”

Gideon set down his tea and rubbed his chin thoughtfully, looking at me. “What was your uncle looking for in Eden Deep, Jim?” he inquired.

“Why—uranium.”

“Uranium.” He nodded, his soft eyes sober. “Uranium. And what is it that the whole world is short of now? So short that they have to cut down on power consumption everywhere—so short that the man who had control of a big new uranium lode would pretty near be able to write his own ticket? Uranium! Uranium’s power—and power is what Hallam Sperry loves most of anything in the world.”

I said, “But, Gideon, a man like Hallam Sperry doesn’t have to do that! He’s powerful now—rich, influential. He’s the mayor of Marinia, he has shipping lines and submarine mines and all kinds of properties, more than any man needs.”

“Why?” Gideon pursed his lips. “I don’t know if I can tell you, Jim. You’d have to look inside Hallam Sperry’s mind to know the answer, and to tell the truth that’s not a job I’d much like—not without a brainpump, anyhow. Power’s a disease; the more you get, the sicker you are; and Hallam Sperry’s about as sick as he can be. Marinia? That’s nothing to him, Jim!”

“But— ”

“But nothing, Jim.” He got up and rummaged in the crevices of the wall for the blankets he had neatiy and methodically stowed away. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed it, but it’s pretty late and we’ve had a hard day. Let’s get a night’s sleep. Maybe we can find out some of the answers in the morning.”

I slept, all right—but not easily. All night long I tossed and turned, dreaming of the Sperrys and my uncle and the man in the white suit and, most of all, that room with the brainpump and the body of Catroni.

I woke up, and Gideon was gone.

I searched the tunnel ledge all up and down its length without finding him; it was a bad twenty minutes. Then I heard cautious footsteps approaching; I got out of sight until the man coming toward me appeared… and it was Gideon.

He grinned at me. “Up so early, Jim?” he greeted me. “Thought you’d be sleeping for an hour yet.”

“Where have you been?” I demanded. “I thought——”

“You thought old Hallam Sperry had come down here personally and snatched me away, did you? No, not this time, Jim. I just had a little business to attend to, that’s all.” He put down a knapsack and said: “Breakfast. We’ll cook it up and eat, and then we’ll pay a call on a friend of mine. Maybe he’ll have some information for us.”

We ate quickly enough, but then Gideon insisted on sitting and resting for a while, to my irritation. He calmed me down quickly enough, though—”Trust in Gideon,” he said. “I’ve got a friend of mine out digging up information; give him time to get it done. We’re safer here than we will be out there, anyhow. And more comfortable, too.”

“More comfortable” was right. When finally Gideon decided it was time to move, he led me through byways and passages that I hadn’t dreamed existed, to parts of Thetis I had never seen. We came out in a broad, high-ceilinged chamber, where the floor was a slimy trickle of greenish liquid and the air smelled of sour seaweed and iodine. Gideon stopped at the entrance and murmured, “Ever wonder what a place like Thetis is good for, Jim? Here’s the answer, right in front of your eyes!”

All across the floor were stacks of sodden kelp and other marine vegetable growths. They were on raised platforms, a few inches above the floor of the chamber; from them liquid trickled and ran off, contributing to the dampness underfoot. “This is the draining chamber,” Gideon whispered. “What they harvest in the farms outside comes in here; it’s stacked and drained, and baled and sent to the processing chambers.”

“It smells pretty fierce,” I said.

Gideon chuckled. “Try and stand it for a few minutes,” he advised. “I’ll be back.”

He left me standing there while he walked cautiously across the wide chamber and out of sight. No one else was around; I heard distant voices, but evidently the draining room didn’t require much in the way of workmen.

I didn’t have long to wait. I heard someone coming—fast. It was Gideon. As he drew near he panted, “Come on, Jim. We’ve got to get out of here! Sperry’s got the whole city looking for us—we’ve got to leave fast!”

I followed almost without thinking, back the way we had come, through the back ways and secret passages Gideon knew so well. As we trotted along he filled me in: “Had a friend of mine checking up on what was going on,” he panted. “Trouble, Jim! Sperry’s captive police force—they’re after us. Shoot on sight are the orders!”

“But he can’t!”

“Jim, he can do anything! He’s the mayor—he’s the law in Thetis. You and me, we’re just nobodies. We’ve got to get out of Thetis right away.”

“But where can we go?”

“The ocean, boy! Where else? Where would your uncle go when he was in trouble? The Deeps!”

I said stumblingly, “But surely, Gideon, surely we can go to the officials here and straighten everything out. Sperry can’t tear up the law!”

“He can sure try,” Gideon panted grimly. “Boy, don’t you understand yet? Sperry
is
the law in Thetis. We’ve got to fight him sooner or later, yes, but not this way. Our word against his—we’d be laughed out of court. You don’t even have a passport, remember! You’d be picked up the minute you walked into a police station—if you lived to get that far!”

I shook my head. I said stubbornly, “What’s the use of trying to get away? We’d get about as far as the gangway of one of Sperry’s liners, and—”

Gideon grinned. “Who said anything about a liner?” he demanded. “Come on!”

He led the way. I followed, doubting—but what else was there to do? Twice we dodged into alleyways as the scarlet uniforms of the sea-police came into sight. It was unlikely that they were looking for us—but we couldn’t take chances.

At last we came to a desolate tangle of grimy tunnels, where the sub-sonic pounding of mighty engines throbbed. It was the main pumping station for Thetis’ drains—the point, perhaps, where I would have been caught in the suction and cast out into the crushing deep if Gideon hadn’t plucked me from the stream.

He said: “Quiet, now. We’re about to break a few laws.”

He led the way through a narrow tunnel to a chamber lit by a single flickering Troyon tube. It was occupied by an elderly man, half asleep, his head bobbing on his breast; the room was lined with what seemed to be racks of diving gear. We paused at the entrance, Gideon silent as a wandering ghost, as he stared thoughtfully at the old man. Then, still silent, he shook his head and drew me back along the passage.

“Can’t take a chance,” he whispered. “The watchman would have the police on us in two minutes; we’ll have to try the other port.”

“To do what?” I demanded.

“To steal a pressure suit, Jim,” he said. “What did you think? We’re going out into the ocean.”

I said, “Gideon, that’s crazy. Where can we go? We can’t get to another city in a pressure suit—we’d be picked up there just as easily as here if we did. Let’s go back to the upper levels and—”

“And turn ourselves right over to Sperry, is that it? Jim, sometimes I wonder what they taught you in the Sub-Sea Academy! Just leave it to me, Jim. We’ll get ourselves a couple of suits, and we’ll sneak out to the farm belt. Chances are we’ll be able to borrow a seacar there; if we do, we’ll head for Seven Dome. Don’t worry about us being picked up in Seven Dome—we’ll take our chances. All clear? Now let’s go get the suits. We can’t get them here, with that watchman; we’ll have to try the other port.”