Undersea Fleet (22 page)

Bob whispered: “It may be a trick! Can we trust him?”

I looked at Joe Trencher, and I made my decision. “Go ahead!” I ordered. “See if you can help her—we owe her that!”

The opaque eyes glanced at me for only a second; then Joe Trencher flashed past me, toward the lock.

He paused, while the inner door of the lock was opening. He gasped: “You’ve won, air-breather.” He hesitated. “I—I’m glad you won.”

And then he was gone. In a moment we heard the thud of water coming into the lock.

I ordered: “Bob! Get on the sonarphone to the Fleet. Tell them to hold their fire. It’s all over—we’ve won!”

And that was the end of the adventure of the Tonga Trench.

We found our friends, in that little sealed cubicle that was all that was left of Jason Craken’s castle beneath the sea. They were battered and weary—but they were alive. The sea-medics of the Fleet came in and took charge of them. It was easy enough to heal the bruises and scars of Gideon and Roger and Laddy and David Craken. When it came to old Jason, the medics could do little. It was not the flesh that was sick, it was the mind. They took him away as gently as they could.

He didn’t object. In his clouded brain, he was still the emperor of the Tonga Trench, and they were his subjects.

Maeva came to see us off. She held David’s hand and turned to me. “Thank you,” she said, “for giving Joe Trencher his chance to save me. If he hadn’t come to get me—”

I shook my head. “You deserve all the thanks that are going,” I told her. “If it hadn’t been for you and Old Faithful ramming us just then, Bob and I never would have been able to take over the
Killer Whale.
And Trencher himself helped. He wouldn’t let the other amphibians shoot you—I don’t know why.”

She looked at me, astonished. She and David turned to each other, and then David looked back at me and smiled.

“You didn’t know?” he asked. “It isn’t surprising that Joe wouldn’t let them shoot Maeva…since she is, after all, his daughter…”

The last we saw of Maeva she was swimming beside the ship that bore David and Bob and me, waving farewell to the microsonar scanners.

All about us in the screens were the long, bright of men-of-war of the Sub-Sea Fleet, returning to station after ending the struggle of the Tonga Trench. She looked oddly tiny and alone against the background of those dreadnaughts of the deep.

She could not see us, but we waved back. “Good-by,” said Bob, under his breath.

But David slapped him on the back and grinned. “Don’t say ‘good-by,’” he ordered. “Say
au revoir.’
We’re coming back!”