Undersea Fleet (7 page)

Bob stared at them, unbelieving. “Tonga pearls,” he echoed. “Imagine—”

Everyone had heard of Tonga pearls—but very few had ever seen one. And here were thirteen of them, enormous and perfect! They were the most precious pearls in the sea—and the most mysterious. For the light that seemed to come from them was no illusion. They actually glowed with a life of their own, a silvery, ghost-like beauty that had never been explained by science. Not even the beds they came from had ever been located. I remembered hearing a submariner talking about them once. “They call them Tonga pearls,” he had said, “because the legend is that they come from the Tonga Trench, six miles down. Nonsense, Jim! Oysters don’t live below five thousand feet—not big ones, anyway. I’ve been on the rim of the Tonga Trench—as far down as ordinary edenite could take me—and there’s nothing there, Jim, nothing but cold water and dead black mud.”

But they came from somewhere, obviously enough—for here were thirteen of them in my hand!

“I’m rich!” crowed Roger Fairfane, half dazed with excitement. “Rich! Each one of them—worth thousands, believe me! And I have thirteen of them!”

“Hold on,” I said sharply. The dazed look faded from his eyes. He blinked, then made a sudden grab for my hand. I snatched it away from him.

“They’re mine!” he roared. “Blast you, Eden, give them to me! I saw them—never mind that cock-and-bull story of Eskow’s! If you won’t give them up, my father’s lawyers will—”

“Hold on,” I said again. “They may not even be real.”

Bob Eskow took a deep breath. “They’re real,” he said. “There’s no mistaking that glow. Well, Roger—my father doesn’t have any lawyers, but I think all three of us found them. And I think all three of us should share.”

“Eskow, you stinking little— “

I stopped Roger quickly, before we all got involved with sea-knives. “Wait! You both forget something—we don’t own these. Now yet, anyhow. Somebody lost them; somebody will probably want them back. Maybe we have some sort of salvage rights, but right now the thing for us to do is to turn the whole thing over to the Commandant. He can decide what to do next. Then, if we decide—”

“Hush!”

It was Bob, stopping me almost in the middle of a word.

He was staring over my shoulder, down the beach; his eyes were narrowed and wary.

He whispered: “I’m afraid you’re right, Jim. Somebody did lose them! And—somebody’s coming to take them back!”

Bob stood pointing toward the sea. The Atlantic lay dark under the thickening dusk, the light of the full moon shimmering on it.

For a moment that was all I saw. Then Bob pointed, and I saw a man wading out of the black water.

Roger said sharply: “Who’s that? One of the cadets?”

“No.” I knew that was impossible.

The same thought had crossed my own mind—a cadet like ourselves, a straggler from the sub-sea marathon. No one else had any business there, of course.

But he was no cadet.

He wore no sub-sea gear—nothing but swim trunks that had an odd, brightly metallic color. He came striding toward us over the wet sand, and the closer he got the stranger he seemed. Something about him was—strange. There was no other word to describe it.

Moonlight is a thief of color; the polarized light steals reds and greens and washes out all the hues but grays. Perhaps it was only that. But his skin seemed much, much too white, pallid, fishbelly white. The way he walked was somehow odd. It was his flipper-shoes, I thought at first—and then as he came closer, I saw that he wore none. Or if there were any, they were much smaller than ours.

And most of all, there was something quite odd about his eyes. They glowed milky white in the moonlight—like cold pearls, with a velvet black dot of pupil in the center.

Quickly I poured the pearls back into the velvet bag and dropped them back cylinder. I screwed the cap back on and the edenite film flickered into bluish light. The stranger stopped a foot away from me. His queer eyes were fixed on the edenite cylinder. I saw that he wore a long sea knife hung from the belt of his trunks.

He said, breathing hard, almost gasping: “Hello. You have—recovered something that I lost, I see.” His voice was oddly harsh and flat. There was no accent, exactly, but he clearly had difficulty with his breathing. That was not surprising, in a man just up out of the water—a long swim can put a hitch in anyone’s breathing—but together with those eyes, that colorless skin, he seemed like someone I’d have preferred to meet in broad daylight, with more people around.

Roger said challengingly: “They’re ours! You’ll have to do better than that if you want the p—”

I stopped him before he could say the word. “If you lost something,” I cut in, “no doubt you can describe it.”

For a moment his face flashed with strange rage in the moonlight. But then he smiled disarmingly, and I noticed that his teeth looked remarkably fine and white.

“Naturally,” he agreed. “Why should I not?” He pointed with a hand that seemed oddly shaped. “But I need not describe my missing property very clearly, since you hold it in your hand. It is that edenite tube.”

“Don’t give to him,” Roger said sharply. “Make him identify himself. Make him prove it’s his.”

The stranger’s clawed hand hesitated near the butt of his sea knife, and the sound of his rasping breath came clear in the. night. Curious that he should seem to be shorter of breath now than when he first came to us! But he was gasping and panting as though he had just completed a twenty-mile swim…

“I can identify myself,” said the stranger. “My name—my name is Joe Trencher.”

“Where are you from?”

“It’s a long way from here,” he said, and paused to get his breath, looking at us. “I come from Kermadec.”

Kermadec! That was where Jason Craken had lived—halfway around the world, four miles under the sea, on a flat-topped sea-mount between New Zealand and the Kermadec Deep. “You’re a long way from home, Mr. Trencher,” I said.

“Too long,” He made a breathless little chuckle. “I’m not used to this dry land! It is not like Kermadec.”

Strange how he called it “Kermadec” instead of “Kermadec Dome,” I thought. But perhaps it was a local question; and, anyway, there were more important things to think about. “Would you mind explaining what you were doing here?”

“Not at all,” he wheezed. “I left Kermadec—” again he called it that—“on a business trip, traveling in my own sea car. You can understand that I am not familiar with these waters. Evidently my sonar gear was defective. At any rate—an hour ago I was cruising on autopilot, toward Sargasso City at five hundred fathoms. The next thing I knew, I was swimming for my life.” He looked at us soberly. “I suppose I ran aground, somewhere down there.” He nodded toward the moonlit sea. “The edenite tube must have floated to the surface. I’ll gladly reward the three of you for helping me recover it, of course. Now, if you’ll hand it over—”

He was reaching for it. I stepped back.

Roger Fairfane came between us. “That isn’t up to you!” he said sharply. “If you own it, we’ll get a reward—from the salvage courts. But you’ll have to prove your title to it!”

“I can do that, certainly,” wheezed the man who called himself Joe Trencher. “But you can see that I have lost everything except the tube itself in the wreck of my sea car. What sort of proof do you want?”

Bob Eskow had been silent and thoughtful, but now he spoke up.

“For one thing,” he said, “you might explain something to us, Mr. Trencher. What happened to your thermo-suit, if you had one?”

“Had one? Of course I had one!” But the stranger was off balance, glowering at us. “I had a thermo-suit and an electrolung—how else could I have survived the crash?”

“Then what did you do with it?”

Trencher convulsed with a sudden fit of coughing. I wondered how much of it was an attempt to cover up. “It—it was defective,” he wheezed at last. “I couldn’t open the face lens after I reached the surface. I—I was suffocating, so I had to cut it loose and abandon it.”

Roger said brutally: “That’s a lie, Trencher!”

For a moment I thought the stranger was going to spring at us—all three of us.

He tensed and half-crouched, and his hand was on the butt of his sea-knife again. His breath came in whistling gasps, and the milky, pearly eyes were half-slitted, gleaming evilly in the moonlight.

Then he stood straighter and showed those fine white teeth in a cold smile. He shook his head.

“Your manners, young man,” he wheezed, “they need improving. I do not like to be called a liar.”

Roger gulped and backed away. “All right,” he said placatingly. “I only meant—that is, you have to admit your story isn’t very convincing. This tube is very valuable, you know.”

“I know,” agreed the stranger breathlessly.

I cut in: “If you are really who you say you are, isn’t there someone who can identify you?”

He shook his head. Again I noticed the strange dead whiteness of his skin in the moonlight. “I am not known here.”

“Well, who were you going to see in Sargasso City? Perhaps we could call there.”

His queer eyes narrowed. “I cannot discuss my business there. Still, that is a reasonable request. Suppose you check with Kermadec Dome. I can give you some names there—perhaps the name of my attorney, Morgan Wensley…”

“Morgan Wensley!” I nearly shouted the name. “But that’s the same name! That’s the name of the man who answered Jason Craken’s letter!”

“Craken?”

The stranger from the sea jumped back a step, as though the name had been a kind of threat. “Craken?” he repeated again, crouching as though he thought I would lunge at him, his hand on the sea knife. “What do you—” he whispered hoarsely, and had to stop for breath. “What do you know of Jason Craken?” He was gasping for air and his slitted eyes were blazing milkily.

I explained, “His son, David, was a cadet here. A friend of mine, in fact—before he was lost. Do you know Mr. Craken?”

The stranger called Joe Trencher shivered, as though the water had chilled him—or as though he had been afraid of the name “Craken.” He was frightened—and somehow, his fright made him seem more strange and dangerous than ever.

“I’ve heard the name,” he muttered. His strange eyes were fixed hungrily on the edenite cylinder at my side. “I’ve no more time to waste. I want my property!”

I said: “If it’s yours, tell us what is in it.” Trencher’s white face looked ugly for an instant, before he smoothed the anger from it. “The tube contains—a—money—” He hesitated, choking and coughing, looking at us searchingly. “Yes, money. And—and legal papers.” He had another coughing spasm. “And—pearls.”

“Look at him!” cried Roger. “Can’t you see he’s just guessing?”

It was true that he did seem to be doubtful, I thought. Still, he had been right enough as far as he went.

I asked: “What kind of pearls?”

“Tonga pearls!” Well, that was easy enough to guess, for a man from Kermadec.

“How many of them?”

The pale face was contorted in an expression of rage and fear. The ragged breathing was the only sound we heard for a moment, while Joe Trencher stared at us.

At last he admitted: “I don’t know. I’m acting only as an agent, you see. An agent for Morgan Wensley. He asked me to undertake this trip, and he gave me the tube. I can’t give you an itemized list of of its contents, because they belong to him.”

“Then it isn’t yours!” cried Roger triumphantly.

“I’m responsible for it,” Trencher gasped. “I must recover it. Here, you!” He reached toward me. “Give me that!”

For a moment I thought we had come to violence—violence had been in the air all those long minutes. But Bob Eskow jumped between us. He said: “Listen, Trencher, we’re going to the Commandant. He’ll settle this whole thing. If they belong to you, he’ll see that you get them. He will make sure that no one is cheated.”

Roger Fairfane grumbled: “I’m not so sure. I’d rather keep them until my Dad’s lawyer can tell me what to do.” Then he glanced at Trencher’s long sea knife. “Oh, all right,” he agreed uncomfortably. “Let’s go to the commandant.”

I turned to Mr. Trencher. He was having trouble with his breathing, but he nodded. “An expedient solution,” he gasped. “You needn’t think I fear the law. I am willing to trust your Commandant to recognize my rights and see that justice is done…”

He stopped suddenly, staring out to the dark sea.

“Look!” he cried.

We all turned to stare. I heard Bob’s voice, as hoarse and breathless as Trencher’s own. “What in the sea is that?”

It was hard to tell what we saw. A mile out, perhaps, there was something. Something in the water. I couldn’t see it clearly, even in the moonlight. But it was enormous.

For a moment I thought I saw a thick neck lifted out of the water, and a head—that same, immense, reptilian head that I had thought I had seen at the rail of the gym ship…

Something struck me just under the ear, and the world fell away from me.

It didn’t really hurt, but for a moment I was paralyzed and I could see and feel nothing.

I wasn’t knocked out. I knew that I was falling, but I couldn’t move a muscle to catch myself. Some judo blow, I suppose, some clever thrust at a nerve center.

Then the world came back into focus. I heard feet pounding on the hard sand, and the splash of water.

“Stop him, Eskow!” Roger was crying shrilly. “He’s got the pearls!”

But Bob was bending over me worriedly. The numbness was beginning to leave my body, and I could feel Bob’s exploring fingers moving gently over the side of my head.

“No bones broken,” he muttered to himself. “But that shark really clipped you one, while you weren’t looking. Hit you with the edge of his hand, I think. You’re lucky, Jim; there doesn’t seem to be any permanent damage.”

In a minute or two I was able to get up, Bob helping me. My neck was stiff and sore as I moved it, but there were no bones grating.

By the edge of the water Roger stood hungrily staring out at the waves. The stranger who called himself Joe Trencher was gone. Bob said: “He hit you, grabbed the edenite tube and dived for the water. Roger ran after him to tackle him—but when he waved that sea knife Roger stopped cold. Then he dived under the water—and that’s the last we saw of him.”