Undersea Fleet (21 page)

Perhaps he had good reasons to hate and fear the breathers of air!

I said slowly: “Trencher, it seems there have been mistakes on both sides. But don’t you see, we must make a peace that is fair to your people and to men! Men need you—but you need men, as well. You amphibians can be of great help in carrying out the conquest of the sea bottoms. But our society has many things you must have as well. Medicine. Scientific discoveries. Help of a thousand kinds—”

“And more than that,” Bob put in, “you need the protection of the Fleet!”

Trencher snorted, and paused to breathe his salt fog again.

“Jason Craken tried to tell us that,” he puffed contemptuously. “He tried to bribe us with the trinkets your civilization has to offer—and when we welcomed him, he tried to turn us to slaves! The gifts he gave us were weapons to conquer us!”

“But Craken is insane, Trencher!” I told him. “Don’t you see that? He has lived here alone so long that his mind is wandering; he needs medical care, attention. He needs to be placed in an institution where he can be helped. He needs a—”

“What he needs,” Trencher wheezed brutally, “is a tomb. For I do not think he is any longer alive.”

He paused again, thoughtfully, and once more it seemed there was a touch of regret in his milky eyes. “We thought he was our friend,” he said, “and perhaps it is true that his mind has deserted him. But it is too late now. There were other men once, too—other men we thought our friends, and we could have trusted them. But it is also too late for that. It is too late for anything now, air-breathers, for as I left the dome to follow you to the surface it could have been only a matter of minutes until it fell.”

I asked, on a sudden impulse: “These other men—what were their names?”

He glanced at me, wheezing, his opaque pearly eyes curious. “Why,” he said, “they were—”

There was an excited, screaming cry from one of the other amphibians. I couldn’t understand a word of it.

But Joe Trencher did! He dived for the microsonar screen the other amphibian had manned.

“The Fleet!” he wheezed, raging. “The Fleet!”

And it was true, for there in the screen were a dozen fat blips—undersea men-of-war, big ones, coming fast!

The
Killer Whale
went into a steep, twisting dive, and there was a rush and a commotion among its crew. Bob and I were manhandled, hurled aside, out of the way.

I felt the
Killer
shudder, and knew that jet missiles were streaking out toward the oncoming task force. We were in trouble now, no doubt about it! For if the Fleet won, it would be by blasting the
Killer
to atoms—and us with it; and if the Fleet, by any miraculous mischance should lose…then Joe Trencher would put us to breathing salt water, when the air ran out!

I said tensely to Bob: “At least they got your message! There’s still some hope!”

He shrugged, eyes fast to the bank of microsonars. We were nearing the bottom of the Trench now. I could pick out the dimly seen shape of the sea-mount, the valleys and cliffs about it. I said, out of a vagrant thought, “I wish—I wish the Fleet hadn’t turned up just then. I had an idea that—”

Bob looked at me “That what?”

I hesitated. “Well—that the men he spoke of were, well, someone we might know. But I couldn’t hear the names—”

“You couldn’t?” Bob asked, while the amphibians milled and shouted around us. “I could. And you’re right, Jim—the men he said he might have been able to trust were the only other men who have ever been down here. Stewart Eden and your father!”

I stared at him.

“Bob! But—but don’t you see? Then there’s a chance! If he would trust them, then perhaps he’ll listen to me! We’ve got to talk to him, stop this slaughter while there’s still some hope—”

“Hope?”

Bob laughed sharply, but not with humor. He gestured at the microsonar screens, where the bottom of the Trench now was etched sharp and bright. “Take a look,” he said in a tight, choked voice. “Take a look, and see what hope there is.”

I looked.

Hope? No—not for the Crakens, at any rate; not for Laddy Angel, or Roger Fairfane, or the man who had saved my life once before, Gideon Park.

There was the sea-mount, standing tall in its valley; and there was the dome Jason Craken had built.

But it no longer stood high above the slope of the sea-mount.

The saurians had done their frightful work.

The edenite shield was down—barely a glimmer from a few scattered edges of raw metal.

And the dome itself—it was smashed flat, crushed, utterly destroyed.

A dozen blossoming flares flashed in the microsonar screen at once.

It was the Fleet, replying to the
Killer’s
fire. There was a burst of flares to starboard, a burst to port, a burst above.

Joe Trencher wheezed triumphantly: “Missed us!”

“That was no miss!” I rapped out. “We’re bracketed, Trencher! That was a salvo from the Fleet unit to warn us to halt and cease offensive action—otherwise, the next salvo will be zeroed in on us!”

He choked and rasped: “Be quiet!” And he cried orders to the other amphibians, in the language I could not understand.

The
Killer Whale
leaped and swung, and darted around behind the wreck of the dome, into the patterned caverns and fissures where the saurians maintained their breeding place. The
Killer
swooped into a crevice near what had once been the base of the dome itself; in the microsonar screen I could see the looming walls of the crevice closing in behind us and below. I thought I could see things moving back there—big things. Big as saurians…

But at least the
Killer
was out of sight of the Fleet.

Gently it dropped to the rocky floor of the cut. There was a sharp, incomprehensible order from Trencher, and the whir of the motors, the pulse of the pile-generators, stopped.

We lay there, waiting.

The chorus of ragged breathing from the amphibians grew louder, harsher. No one spoke.

All of us were watching the microsonar screens.

The Fleet was out of sight now—hidden behind the rimrock and the shattered remains of the dome.

The dome itself lay just before us. So short a time before, when Bob and I had raced up to give the warning, it had stood proud and huge, commanding the entrances to the breeding caves of the saurians. Now—wreckage. A few odd bits and pieces of metal stuck jaggedly above the ruin. Here and there there was a section of a chamber, a few square yards of wall, that still seemed to keep a vestige of their original shape. Nothing else.

Joe Trencher had said that what the Crakens needed was a tomb. But this was their tomb, here before us—theirs, and the tomb of Roger and Laddy and my loyal, irreplaceable friend Gideon as well.

Joe Trencher broke into a ragged, violent fit of coughing.

I stared at him, watching closely.

Something was going on behind that broad, contorted face. There were traces of expression, moments of unguarded emotion—unless I missed my guess, the amphibian was beginning to regret what he had done—and to realize that there was no more hope for him than for us.

It was a moment when I might risk speaking.

I walked up to him. He glanced up, but not a man among the amphibians moved to stop me. I tried to read what was behind the glowing, pearly eyes; but it was hopeless.

I said: “Trencher, you said there were two other men you could trust. Were their names both—Eden?”

He scowled fiercely—but, I thought, without heart. “Eden? How do you know their names? Are they enemies too?”

I said: “Because my name is Eden too. One of those men was my father. The other—my uncle.” Trencher scowled in surprise, and hid behind his spray of salt water. I pressed on: “You said you could trust them, Trencher. You were right. My father has passed away, but my uncle still lives—and it was because he helped me that I was able to come here. Won’t you trust me? Let me talk to the Fleet commander on the sonarphone—see if we can work out truce terms?”

There was a long moment of silence, except for the wheezing and choking of the amphibians.

Then Joe Trencher put away his salt spray and looked at me. He said bleakly: “Too late!”

And he gestured at the microsonar screen, where the wreckage of Jason Craken’s dome lay strewn before us.

Too late.

We all looked, and I knew what he meant. Certainly it was too late for anyone who was crushed in those ruins, under the weight of the sea. And in another sense, it was too late for Joe Trencher and his people—for they had certainly put themselves outside the pale of human law by causing those deaths.

But—something was out of key, in those ruins. Something didn’t quite jibe.

I looked, and looked again.

One section of the ruins was intact. And—
it glowed with the foxfire of a working edenite shield.

And from it was coming an irregular twinkling light. It was faint, reflected from some halfhidden viewport; but it was no illusion. It was there, blinking in a complicated code.

Complicated? Yes—for it was the code of the Sub-Sea Fleet; it was a distress call!

They were still alive!

Somehow, they had managed to get into one section of the dome where a functioning edenite shield had survived the destruction of the rest of the structure!

I said to Joe Trencher: “This is your chance, Trencher. They’re still alive in there—now you can make your decision. Will you surrender to the Fleet?”

He hesitated.

I think he was about to agree.

But two things happened just then, that made his agreement to give up and submit to the laws of the Sub-Sea Fleet an academic matter.

There was a white rain of explosions patterning all over the microsonar screens—more than a dozen of them. The Fleet was moving in to destroy us!

And in the rear screen that peered down into the crevice in which we lay, something stirred and quivered and came racing toward us, huge and fast. One of the saurians was attacking!

That was a moment when time stopped.

We stood frozen, all of us, like chess pieces on a board, waiting for a player to make a move. Joe Trencher stared at the screen in a paralysis of indecision, and his amphibians waited on his signal. Bob and I—we watched. We watched, while the bright exploding fury of the Fleet’s missiles churned the deeps into cream around us and the
Killer Whale
shook and quivered under the force of the surrounding explosions. We watched, while the giant, hurtling figure of the saurian came arrowing in upon us—closer and closer, looming huge and frightful in the sonar screen.

Frightful—and not alone! For on its back was a slim figure, bent low along the monstrous back, driving it forward with an elephant-goad.

It was the sea-girl, Maeva!

Joe Trencher’s hand hovered over the firing control of his jet-missile gun.

I could not understand why he didn’t shoot.

One of the amphibians screamed something in a shrill, furious voice at Trencher—but Trencher only stared at the screen, his opaque pearly eyes filled with some emotion I could not read.

Crunch.

The speeding, raging figure of the saurian disappeared from the screen—and a moment later, the
Killer Whale
shook and vibrated as the plunging beast rammed us.

We all tumbled across the deck—it was that heavy a blow that the rampaging saurian had dealt the
Killer.
In the screen I caught a glimpse of the saurian bouncing away, wildly struggling to regain its balance, beating the water with its clumsy-seeming oars of limbs. It had been hurt—but it was still going, and its rider, the sea-girl, still had kept her seat. It had been hurt—but so were we.

The Troyon tube lights flickered, dimmed, and brightened again. Ominous warning! For if the power went—our edenite shield would go as well.

The amphibians were silent no longer. There was a chattering and screaming from them like a cage of maddened monkeys. One of them was scrambling across the tilted deck toward the missile-gun controls. Joe Trencher picked himself up and made a dive for the other amphibian. But Trencher was groggy, slow—he had been hurt; the other pearly eyed man turned to face him; they struggled for a second, and Trencher went flying.

The amphibian at the gun spun the controls as, in the screen, Maeva and her strange mount came plunging in for another attack.

There was scarcely time to think, in that moment of wild strife and confusion. But—Bob and I were cadets of the Sub-Sea Academy and we had learned, what generations of cadets before us had learned so well, that there is
always
time to think. “Panic is the enemy!” That motto is dinned into us, from the moment we arrive as lubbers until Graduation Day.

Never panic.

Think—then act!

I whispered to Bob: “It’s time for us to take a hand!”

Trencher and the other amphibian were locked in a struggle over the controls of the missile-gun; one shot had been fired, and it seemed Trencher was trying to prevent another. The remaining amphibians, half a dozen of them or more, were milling about in a state of confusion.

We hit them full amidships, with everything we had. It was a fierce, bloody struggle for a moment. But they were confused and we were not; we knew what we had to do. Some of them wore sidearms; we hit them first, and got their guns before the others could come to their senses.

And the fight was over almost before it got started. Bob and I had the guns.

We were masters of the
Killer Whale!

We stood there, breathing hard, guns drawn and leveled.

Joe Trencher cast one bright, maddened look at the microsonar screen and came toward us.

“Hold it!” I yelled. “I’ll—“

“No, no!” he cried. He skidded to a halt, gestured at the screen. “I want—I only want to go out there. To help Maeva! Don’t you see?”

I risked a glance at the screen.

It was true—she needed help. That one wild shot from the missile gun had struck her mount, Old Ironsides. It was beating the water to froth—aimlessly, agonizedly. The girl herself was gone from its back—stunned by the gun, perhaps, if not worse. Even as we watched, the monster began to weaken. It turned slowly over and over, beginning to sink…