03 Underwater Adventure (2 page)

The battlements seemed to be moss-grown and ivy-covered. Roger knew that most of these graceful swaying things that looked like flowers and ferns were really animals.

No real castle walls ever had such a colourful covering. Many of the colours were new, colours seldom if ever seen in the land world, colours that you couldn’t name.

Now his magic carpet took him over trees of a staghorn coral. At least they looked like trees. But he knew that their trunks and branches had been built by millions of busy little coral polyps. And there was a huge round thing that he took to be a brain coral. The folds on its surface looked just like the convolutions of the human brain.

He had seen these things in his brother’s books on sea life. But for every one thing that he could name there were twenty that were a complete mystery to him. He made up his mind that he would learn all about them.

He did know the sea urchin and the sea porcupine and he was glad that he was floating above them rather than forced to walk among them where they lay thickly scattered on the lagoon floor. The sea urchin’s dozens of long black spines and the sea porcupine’s short white ones stood up like needles and if your foot or your hand touched them you would be in trouble for weeks. The spines would pierce the flesh and break off and would have to be dug out. They would leave poison behind them that would fester and hurt.

He passed close over a high minaret of coral with a gorgeous purple-and-gold flower on its peak. Surely this really was a flower. It had dozens of softly curling petals. He reached out his hand to take it and the petals all sank back and disappeared. He realized it was a sea anemone and the ‘petals’ were the tentacles that catch food and shovel it into the always hungry mouth.

He was dazzled by the giddy colours of the angelfish, butterflyfish, parrotfish, and a dozen other kinds that he did not recognize - pink fish, blue fish, brown fish, and swarms of brilliant tiny yellow fish that swam fearlessly close to his mask and seemed just as curious about him as he was about them. One pressed its face up against the window of his mask to get a better look.

Roger saw a big fish swimming towards him. A chill ran along his spine. He could not see the thing plainly yet. It might be a shark or one of those giant barracudas.

Then he saw that the monster was only his brother.

Hal was wearing mask, snorkel, and fins, but carried one additional item that made Roger turn green with envy. It was a sea rifle. Dr Blake had shown it to them and had impressed upon them how expensive and valuable it was. This big-game underwater gun was powered by a COa gas tank and would shoot sixty times with one loading. It had a pistol-grip rear handle and a forward handle of the machine-gun type. Its long tube discharged a barbed arrow connected with the gun by a fifteen-foot wire so that the fish could not swim off with the arrow so long as you held on to the gun.

Hal was cruising along slowly, watching for game. Presently he spotted a large grey snapper swimming among the coral branches. He took aim and fired.

It was a good shot. The arrow went straight through the fish and projected on the other side. The barbs would prevent it from being withdrawn.

The startled fish shot away but was brought up short by the fifteen-foot wire. Hal could feel the strong tug on the gun but he grimly held on.

The gun was whisked this way and that as the fish at the end of the wire shot up and down, in and out, struggling to escape. The rifle bumped against Hal’s mask and knocked it from his head. The mask sank out of sight below some coral branches.

Without the mask, Hal could not see clearly. He could not breathe either, since he had now been pulled under the surface by the fighting fish. To prevent the powerful fish from towing him away through the lagoon, he went to the bottom, got a grip on a coral head, and held on.

Roger was swimming over to help him. He thought he heard a muffled roar somewhere but did not stop to think that it might be an approaching motorboat. His mind had no room for anything but this undersea drama.

He did not hear the shouts of Dr Blake who was hopping up and down like a madman on the deck of the Lively Lady and yelling at the top of his lungs. Shouts above water do not go under water. If just one of Roger’s ears had been above the surface he would have heard the warning, but his head was submerged.

The brown men in the motorized fishing-boat stopped their laughing and singing to listen to the shouts of the man on the schooner’s deck. But, knowing no English, they did not understand him. A split second too late one of them saw the end of Roger’s snorkel projecting above the surface.

Hal, occupied though he was in his fight with the big

snapper, noticed the black shadow sweeping towards

Roger and heard the churn of the screw. Roger, swim

ming towards Hal, was coming straight into the path of

the deadly hull.

Hal swam up towards his brother, but he could make little headway because of the pull of the fish on his gun. It was a choice between saving the gun or saving Roger. He let go of the gun and the big grey snapper promptly swam away towing the precious sea rifle behind him.

Hal crashed into Roger, violently pushing him out of the path of the oncoming boat. Then he ducked, but not in time to escape the boat’s iron-ribbed keel. It struck him squarely on the head and then scraped over him as it sped on. His last thought before he faded out was that the blades of the propeller would chop him into mince meat. Fortunately the men had already cut the motor and the quiet blades did no more than give him a good scrape.

Roger swam to his unconscious brother and held his head out of water. Dr Blake was already swimming out and the fishermen had plunged in to help. Blake and Roger, with the assistance of the natives, got the inert body to the schooner and hoisted it on deck.

Blake felt Hal’s pulse.

‘Just knocked silly. He’ll come out of it all right.’

He went below to get medicine and bandages for the cuts and bruises. Roger and the natives turned Hal over a capstan and got some of the water out of him. Hal began to breathe in gasps. He opened his eyes to find Dr Blake looming over him. A look of complete disgust was on the doctor’s face.

‘Sorry,’ Hal said, but Blake did not answer. He stooped and began patching up the battered body.

Hal felt as if he could sink through the deck for shame. He had lost a costly gun, lost his mask, lost his fish, failed to watch out for surface boats. He and Roger were morons. They had been so anxious to prove their ability to the head of the expedition. They had botched their chance.

Hal expected that at any moment the scientist would explode and tell them what he thought of them. He almost wished he would. That would be better than keeping it bottled up and boiling around in his brain.

Blake looked daggers but said nothing. He barely spoke the rest of the day.

After they were all in their bunks that night, he said, ‘Hal, you’d better get over to the airport tomorrow morning and meet the seven o’clock plane. Inkham will be coming in.’

‘Inkham?’

‘Didn’t I tell you? I arranged for him before I left Honolulu. About your age - but he’s really had experience in undersea work. I’ve seen him dive. He’s good.’

Blake was silent a moment, then he added, ‘It’ll be good to have somebody around who knows which end his head is screwed on to.’

With which bitter reflection he turned over and went to sleep.

Hal lay awake all night.

Shortly after sunrise, Hal had the dinghy lowered. An outboard motor had been clamped to the stern of the little boat. Hal jumped in, gave the motor a twirl, and sped away across the lagoon.

It was a morning to make anyone happy. The sun shone gloriously. The water was as smooth and clear as a sheet of plate glass. The coral gardens at the bottom blazed with colour. The green islands towered a thousand feet high. Far away the surf broke white on the reef that encircled the great lagoon.

Anyone should be happy, but Hal was not. He still smarted from the humiliation of the day before. He had expected to be Dr Blake’s right-hand man. But Blake thought he was a fool. Hal was inclined to agree with him. He had certainly made a brilliant donkey of himself. Now a new man was coming - a man Blake could trust.

Hal puzzled over the name - Inkham. Where had he heard that name before? It was an odd name, not one you hear every day. He searched his school memories, but in vain. All he could remember was that there had been something unpleasant connected with that name.

It was eleven miles to the airfield on the big island of Moen. The boat sped through a maze of small islands, passed large Tarik, Param, and Fefan, then skirted the shore of Dublon littered with the ruins of the Japanese city destroyed by the bombing planes of the Allies during World War II. All these west Pacific islands had previously been ruled by the Japanese and were now a Trust Territory of the United Nations, administered by the United States. On Moen was a U.S. Naval Base and airfield.

A plane droned in from the east and circled the airfield just as Hal pulled up to the dock and climbed out. He was on the field before the plane taxied to a stop.

Several men in naval uniform stepped out, then a young fellow in civvies.

Hal disliked his face the moment he saw it. And he was sure he had seen it before. That smart, sly, crafty look was hard to forget.

The new-comer stopped and looked around. Hal stepped up to him.

‘Is your name Inkham?’

‘S. K. Inkham, at your service.’

Then Hal remembered. ‘Why, of course - I thought I knew you - you’re Skink.’ He thrust out his hand.

Skink took it, but without enthusiasm. ‘And you’re Hal Hunt,’ he said sourly. He did not seem at all pleased to meet an old acquaintance.

To relieve the strain between them Hal said, ‘Well, come along. FI1 give you a hand with your bags. The boat is over here.’

As they walked across the field Hal’s mind worked fast, digging up memories. He and Skink had gone to rival high schools. Skink’s first name was Sylvester, but he didn’t like it, so he always called himself S. K. Inkham. His fellow students couldn’t swallow that, so they simply put together his two initials with the first three letters of his last name and nicknamed him Skink.

Hal could understand why Skink was not pleased to meet anyone who knew his school record. It had not been so good. He had been dropped from the football team for dirty work and suspended from his classes for cheating in exams. Then he had almost killed the biology teacher. The incident had created quite a sensation hi the town.

The teacher had severely reprimanded Skink for the theft of a microscope. In revenge, Skink had dropped a sidewinder into the teacher’s pocket. The adult sidewinder is only a foot long but it is a true rattlesnake and can inflict a deadly bite. The teacher put his hand in his pocket and was bitten. He spent three days in the hospital, close to death.

Skink was expelled from school. The Inkham family moved to another town where their past was not known.

No wonder Skink was not tickled to bump into someone who knew him then.

Hal tried to make conversation. ‘Well, how do you like our lagoon?’ The boat spun a winding path between islands that looked like green towers spilling blossoms and fruit from all their balconies.

Skink looked around, and grunted.

Hal could guess what was on Skink’s mind. He was afraid Hal would tell what he knew of him.

Should I tell? Hal wondered. The doctor has a right to know what sort of man he has on board. This fellow will cause trouble sooner or later. He might even wreck the expedition. I could prevent that by putting Dr Blake wise now. If Blake knows, he will drop Skink from his staff. At least he won’t put him above me. I don’t think I could stand having him lord it over me.

But he knew he wouldn’t tell. Not even to Roger. Roger wouldn’t remember Skink - he had been too young at the time.

Perhaps Skink had reformed. Perhaps he was really a good egg now. He should be given a chance to prove it. ‘Look, Skink,’ Hal said. T don’t quite know how to say this -1 think you and I ought to have an understanding.’

Skink looked at him suspiciously. ‘What sort of understanding?’

‘You had some bad luck in school. But you needn’t think I’m going to blab about it’ 1 didn’t get a fair deal in school.’ Hal thought about his. ‘Seems to me you got more than a fair deal, Skink. You might have been tried for attempted murder. But your teacher refused to prefer charges. He even paid his own hospital bill. He insisted that what you had done was only a practical joke.’ ‘That’s all it was,’ maintained Skink. ‘Just a joke.’ Hal could not answer. He could only look unbelievingly at this rascal who considered killing or near-killing only a joke. He thought of the days ahead - of the work under water. There were enough dangers down below without having this kind of joker in the game. But that was a chance that would have to be taken.

‘All I want you to know,’ he said, ‘is that you’re going to have a fair deal now.’

‘Hunt,’ exclaimed Skink, ‘come down off your high horse. Who do you think you are, talking to me like a father? I can run my own affairs. Pretty soon 111 be running yours too. I know more about this undersea stuff than you and your Blake put together. Within a month I’m going to be boss of this expedition. Never mind my deal - start worrying about what kind of a deal you’re going to have. If you were smart you’d get out now. Jf you don’t, you can expect to take orders from me, and they won’t always be nice. Now do we understand each other?’

‘I think we do,’ Hal said. His steady gaze bored into the shifty eyes of his companion. ‘You want it to be you against me. All right, if that’s the way you want it, that’s the way it will be.’

They came alongside the Lively Lady and went aboard. Blake was at the rail.

‘Good morning, Inkham,’ Blake said heartily.

Skink was all smiles now. ‘Nice to see you again, Blake.’

They shook hands. Dr Blake’s eyes ran admiringly over the strong, supple figure of the new man.