Undersea Fleet (12 page)

But time passed.

David went back to the little apartment over the boat shed, to wait. Roger and Bob and I went on with our classes.

The next day there was not much time for thinking. It was only a week until Graduation Week, and there were the last of our examinations to get through. Hard to focus our minds on Mahan’s theories and the physics of liquid masses, with high adventure in the background! But we had to do it.

And after the final day of examinations, no break. For there was close-order drill, parade formation. We struggled into our dress-scarlet uniforms and fell out for unending hours of countermarching and
wheeling. It
wasn’t our own graduation we would
be marching
for—but every one of us looked forward to the time when we would be sworn in before the assembled ranks of the Academy, and every one of us clipped off the maneuvers with every ounce of precision we could manage. It was blistering hot in the Bermuda sun as we practiced, hour after hour, for the final review. Then, just before the sunset gun, there came a welcome change. The cumulus masses had been building and towering over the sea; they came lowering in on us, split with lightning flashes. The clouds opened up, and pelting rain drenched us all.

We raced for shelter, any shelter we could find.

I found myself in the lee of an upended whaleboat, and crouched beside me was another cadet, as wet as I. He brushed rivulets of rain from his flat-visored dress-scarlet cap and turned to me, grinning.

It was Eladio Angel.

“Jim!” he cried. “Jim Eden! So long since I have seen you!”

I took his hand as he held it out to shake, and I suppose I must have said something. But I don’t know what.

Eladio Angel—David Craken’s old roommate, his close friend, the only cadet in all the Academy, save Bob Eskow and myself, who thought enough of David to feel the loss when he was gone.

And what could I say to Laddy Angel now?

He was going on and on. “—since you wrote your letter to Jason Craken, the father of David. Ah, David—even now, Jim, I think sometimes of him. So great a loss, so good a friend! I can scarcely believe that he is gone. And truly, Jim, even to this day I cannot believe it. No, in my heart I believe he is alive somewhere—somehow he escaped, somehow he did not drown. But—enough!” He grinned again. “Tell me, Jim, how are you? I have seen you only a time or two, leaving a class or crossing the quadrangle—we have not had time to speak. Convenient, this rain—it causes us to meet again!”

I cleared my throat. “Why—why, yes, Laddy,” I said, uncomfortably. “Yes, it—it certainly is good to see you again. I, uh—” I pretended to look out at the teeming rain and to be surprised. “Why, look, Laddy!” I cried. “I believe it’s letting up! Well, I’ve got to get back to dorm—I’ll be seeing you!”

And I fled, through the unrelenting downpour.

I could feel his eyes on my back as I went—not angry, but hurt. Undoubtedly hurt. I had been rude to him—but what could I do? David had said, over and over, that we must keep this matter secret—and I am no accomplished liar, that I could talk to his close friend and not give away the secret that he was not dead!

But I didn’t have much time to brood about it. As I was racing across the quadrangle, drenched to the skin, someone hailed me. “Eden! Cadet Eden, report!”

I skidded to a halt and saluted.

It was an upperclassman, on temporary duty with the Commandant’s office. He was outfitted in bad-weather oilskins, only his face peeping out into the downpour. He returned my salute uncomfortably, rain pouring into his sleeve as he lifted his arm.

“Cadet Eden,” he rapped, “report to the Commandant’s office immediately! Someone to see you!”

Someone to see me?

The standing orders of the Academy are:
Cadets reporting to the Commandant will do so on the double!
But I didn’t need the spur of the standing orders to make me move. I could hardly wait to get there—for I could not imagine who might want me. If it was David, or anyone connected with David, it could only mean trouble. Bad trouble, bad enough to make him give up his secrecy…

But it wasn’t trouble at all.

I ran panting into the Commandant’s outer office and braked to stiff attention. Even while I was saluting I gasped: “Cadet Eden, sir, reporting as ordered by—”

I stopped, astonished.

A tall, black figure was getting up out of a chair in the reception room—a figure I knew well, the figure of someone I had thought to be half a world away. Gideon Park!

He grinned at me, his white teeth flashing. “Jim,” he said, in his soft, mild voice. “Your uncle said you needed help. Here I am!”

Gideon Park! Tall, black, loyal—just to see him there waiting for me in the Commandant’s office took an enormous weight off my shoulders. Gideon and I had been in plenty of tight spots together, and I had a lot of respect for the man.

Maybe we had a chance to carry through our plans after all!

Gideon and I had only a moment to talk together, that first afternoon. I whispered to him where he could find David Craken—in the boathouse on the estate of Trident’s Atlantic manager. He nodded and winked and left.

And I went back to dorm to get ready for evening mess, feeling better than I had in days.

I couldn’t get off Academy grounds that evening, but Bob hadn’t used all his passes. Right after evening chow he took off for the boathouse, to talk things over with Gideon and David Craken.

He returned seconds before Lights Out. He had been gone nearly four hours.

“It’s all right,” he whispered to me, hastily getting ready for bed. “Gideon brought the money with him.”

“How much?” I asked, keeping my own voice down—if the duty officer heard us, it was a demerit. And it was too close to the end of the school year to want demerits.

“Enough. Ninety-seven thousand dollars, Jim! He had it with him in cash. That’s the most money I ever saw in one place.”

I nodded in the darkness. “Ninety-seven thousand,” I repeated. “Funny amount—I suppose it was every penny he could raise.” It was a grim thought. I whispered urgently: “Bob, we’ve got to come through on this! If I know my uncle, he’s gone in debt for this—he’s repaying an obligation to Jason Craken. If anything goes wrong—if we can’t help Craken, can’t get this money back for my uncle—it’ll mean trouble for him.”

“Of course, Jim.” Bob was in bed already. “Gideon’s going to Sargasso Dome tomorrow,” he whispered. “To put up the bond so that our bid will be counted. There isn’t much time left.”

“Did you tell David that I’d seen Laddy Angel?” There was a pause for a second. “I—I forgot, Jim. I didn’t have much time, anyway. I was only there for a few minutes—”

I sat straight up in bed. “Only a few minutes! But, Bob—you were gone for hours!”

His voice was apologetic—and strained. “I was, well, delayed, Jim. I, uh—”

We both heard the rapping of the duty officer’s heels in the corridor outside.

That put an end to the conversation. But I couldn’t help wondering fuzzily, as I went to sleep—if Bob was gone four hours, and had only a few minutes in the beach house…what had he done with the rest of his time?

“Atten-HUT!” The voice of the Commandant roared through the loudhailers, and the whole student body of the Academy snapped to.

“By squadrons! Forward MARCH!”

The sea band struck up the Academy anthem, and the classes passed in review.

It was the end of Graduation Week. We wheeled briskly off the Quadrangle, past the reviewing stands, down the crushed coral of the Ramp, to the dispersal areas.

The school year was at an end.

Bob Eskow and I were now upperclassmen, with the whole summer ahead of us.

And today was the day when the sealed bids of the condemned Fleet cruisers would be opened—and we would know if we owned the
Killer Whale
or not.

Bob and I raced back to barracks. Discipline was at an end! The halls were full of milling cadets, talking, laughing, making plans for the summer. Even the duty officers, for once relaxed and smiling, were walking around, shaking hands with the cadets they had been dressing down or putting on report a few hours before.

We quickly changed into off-duty whites and headed toward the gate. The guards were still stiffly formal, at ramrod attention; but as we automatically braked to a halt in front of the guardbox and reached instinctively for the passes that we didn’t have, one of them unbent and grinned. “You’re on your own time now, cadets!” he murmured. “Have a good time!”

We nodded and walked past—

But not very far.

“Bob Eskow! Jim!”

A voice crying our names, behind us. We turned, but even before I looked I knew who it was.

Eladio Angel! His face was serious and determined. He was trotting to catch up with us.

Bob and I looked at each other as he came toward us, his dark eyes serious, his mouth grim. In all these months we had hardly spoken to him, barring the one time I had met him under the boat hull and had left him so abruptly.

And now—just when we could least afford to have him with us, here he was!

He stopped in front of us, panting slightly.

“Jim,” he said sharply. “Come, I am going with you.”

“With us? But—but, Laddy—”

He shook his head. “No, Jim. It is no use to argue with me. I have thought, and I am not wrong.” He smiled faintly, seriously. “I ask myself, why should Jim Eden be rude? There is no answer, for you are not the sort who does this. No answer—unless there is something you do not wish to tell me. So I wait there, Jim,” he said earnestly, looking into my eyes. “I wait there under the boat, where you have left me. And I look at the rain which is coming down by torrents and buckets, Jim, the rain which you have said is almost over. And I say: ‘Jim Eden has one secret.’ What can this secret be? Ah, there is only one answer, for I have noticed the look on your face when I mention a certain name. So I ask questions, and I find you have been going off grounds much of the time. Many times. And always to the same place—and there is someone there you visit, someone no one sees.

“So—the secret is no secret, Jim, for I have figured it out.” He grinned openly, with friendly warmth. “So let us go then, Jim,” he said, “all three of us—let us go to see my friend who is not lost, my friend you have been visiting by stealth—David Craken!”

The electronic beam leaped out, coral-pink in the afternoon daylight, and scanned my face. “You may enter,” rapped out the voice from the watchman-machine, and the doors wavered slightly and relaxed.

We walked through the fairy garden, following the palely glimmering Troyon lights that marked the path we were permitted to take. Since the watchman had been repaired there had been no other trouble. But of course, the one time was enough.

We came to a crossing and Laddy absentmindedly started to take a wrong turning, down a shell-pink lane toward a fountain that began to play as we came near it. At once the coral scanning ray leaped from a hidden viewport, and the mechanical voice squawked: “Go back, go back! You are not permitted! Go back!”

I caught Laddy Angel by the shoulder and steered him onto the right path. It wasn’t entirely safe to disobey the orders of the electronic watchman. It had its weapons against intruders—true, it was not likely to shoot Laddy down, merely for stepping on the wrong path; but there was the chance it might transmit an alarm to the Police headquarters in Hamilton if its electronic brain thought there was danger to its master’s property. And we still didn’t want the publicity the police might bring.

“Funny,” said Bob Eskow from behind me.

“What’s funny?”

“Well—” he hesitated. “Roger Fairfane. He talks so much about how important his father is, and how he has the run of Trident Lines. And yet here he’s restricted to the boathouse. Doesn’t it seem funny to you, Jim? I mean, if his father is such a hot-shot, wouldn’t the Atlantic manager of his father’s line let Roger have the run of the whole place?”

I shrugged. “Let’s not worry about it,” I said. “Laddy, here we are. David is waiting in the apartment there, above the boat basin.”

I had been a little worried—worried that David would be angry because we’d brought Laddy along.

But I needn’t have worried. It took two or three words of explanation, and then he was grinning. He shrugged. “You’re quite a detective, Laddy,” he conceded. “To tell you the truth—I’m glad you figured it out. It’s good to see you!”

Gideon hadn’t returned from Sargasso City yet, and there wasn’t much to do until he did. So the four of us—five when Roger showed up, half an hour or so later—spent the next couple of hours talking over old times. David had food ready in the automatic kitchen; we ate a good meal, watched a baseball game on the stereovision set in the living room, and just loafed.

It was the most relaxing afternoon I had spent in a long time.

Unfortunately, it didn’t last.

It was getting late when we heard the distant rattle of the gate loudspeaker challenging someone and, a moment later, I saw from the window the tiny violet sparks of the Troyon lights marking the pathway for the visitor.

“Must be Gideon,” I cried. “He’s coming this way. I hope he’s got good news!”

It was Gideon, all right. He came in; but he didn’t get any farther than the door before all five of us were leaping at him, firing questions. “Did we get it? Come on, Gideon—don’t keep us waiting! What’s the story? Did we get the
Killer Whale?
”

He looked at us all silently for a moment.

The questions stopped. Every one of us realized that something was wrong in the same second. We stood there, frozen, waiting for him to speak.

He said at last: “Jim, did you say you saw this Joe Trencher in Sargasso City when you put in the bid?”

“Why—why, yes, Gideon. He was poking around the papers, but I don’t think he—”

“You think wrong, Jim.” Gideon’s black, strong face was bleak. His soft voice had a touch of anger to it that I had seldom heard. “Do you remember anything else about that day?”

“Well—let me think.” I tried to think back. “We went down to the Fleet basin. There were the ships that were up for surplus—the
Killer
and that other one, the heap of rust. The
Dolphin.
We looked the
Killer
over and filled out the forms. Then, while I was calling my uncle, Joe Trencher started poking around the papers. And—well, we couldn’t catch him. So we just filed the bid applications and caught the sub-sea shuttle back here.”