Undersea Quest (10 page)

It hardly seemed reasonable—but he gave every indication of looking for a fight. I’m not afraid of a fight if I must have one; at the Academy, there had been plenty of man-to-man boxing and sometimes it was done less for exercise than to work out differences of opinion. I had carried a shiner around with me for a week after one such bout. And, though the man was inches taller than I, he weighed littie more; I wasn’t afraid of him.

Still—a bar-room brawl was not my idea of the best way to spend my first day in Thetis. I said, “Excuse me. I didn’t mean to bump into you. Will you let me pass?”

He seemed to take that as a personal insult. “Let you pass?” he demanded. “Sure, IH let you pass. You lubbers think you can trample all over us, don’t you? Well, you’re wrong!” He was actually touching me, he stood so close; I could feel his hot breath fanning me as he talked.

It looked like a fight, all right. I stepped back a bit to give myself space…

Then a rumbling bass said: “What’s the matter, Kelly? This kid threatening your life and limb?”

It was the sea-police. Tall and square in his scarlet tunic, he stood in the doorway. His tone was heavily humorous, but the look he gave the thin man was not humorous at all.

The thin man made a quick estimate of the situation. “Ah,” he snarled, “you cops give me a pain. Why don’t you mind your business?”

The policeman’s eyes sparkled dangerously, but all he said was, “All right, son. If you’re coming out of here, come on.”

I walked past Kelly without looking at him. The policeman closed the door behind us.

“Thought you might get into trouble there,” he rambled. “As soon as I sent you in to phone, I says to myself, ‘Shaughnessy, a kid like that don’t belong in a place like Mother Sea-Cow’s.’ So I just walked over to see what might be happening.”

I said, “Thanks, officer. I don’t think there would have been any trouble, though.”

He gave me a quizzical look. “Lubber, aren’t you?” he said. “Well, never mind. Get along with you.” And he stood watching while I headed for the elevator banks.

It took me only a few minutes to reclaim my baggage. Loaded with it, I studied the street and level markers, trying to find the best way to the hotel.

I suppose I should have asked someone; but I have always disliked seeming ignorant. Many’s the wasted hour I have spent wandering around a strange city, stubbornly trying to find a street number by myself, when any passerby could have pointed the way in a matter of moments.

After racking my brains, I came to the conclusion that the best way to get to the hotel was to walk through a narrow connecting passage to another bank of express elevators. They would whisk me to Level 18, where the hotel was located, without stops.

Staggering under the weight of the bags, I started off. The way led through an alley of warehouses. It was the middle of the morning, but few persons were about; I suppose that, as in the cities on the earth’s surface, the warehouses and markets are busiest during the pre-dawn hours, getting ready for the day’s trade. Of course, under four miles of sea, the time of day made little difference; the lights were the same blue-violet Troyon tubes, though it seemed to me that these flickered more weakly than most. The warehouse fronts cast curious shadows; some of them seemed almost to be lurking human figures.

And some of them were.

I found it out to my cost. I set the bags down where another passage crossed the one I was traversing, a little doubtful as to which turn I should take. I heard footsteps behind me; nothing of any importance, it seemed, until of a sudden the steps got closer, and speeded up, as though an assailant were closing in for the kill. I turned, less in alarm than in curiosity.

I turned too late. Something hard and large came swinging through the violet-lit shadows at me. It crunched against my temple; and that was the last I saw for some time.

I awoke.

I was lying on the cold, smooth metal floor of a totally dark room.

My ankles were trussed together. A cord was about my waist; my wrists were fastened to it at my sides. The knots were so tight that the circulation was stopped, and my hands and feet were numb.

I could see nothing, feel nothing, hear nothing. My only knowledge of the room I was in came through my nose—and that was a puzzler. The room smelled stale and musty, like a damp cellar underground. Where in Thetis could such a room be?

Since I could not guess, I gave up trying. I struggled uselessly for a while; then I lay there, trying to make an estimate of the situation as coolly and dispassionately as the instructors had demanded at the Academy. I remember the lectures: “Panic is your worst enemy. No matter how bad the situation is, giving in to it will make it worse.”

It had all seemed so logical and lucid, back in the warm Caribbean sunshine!

But they had never told us exactly what to do when tied up by person or persons unknown, in what seemed to be the subcellar of an undersea city. The whole thing seemed ridiculous to me. Why would anyone attack me in the first place? I had harmed no one…

However, the important question at the moment was not “why,” but “how”—how to get out of this. There seemed very little to do in that direction. I could scarcely move a muscle. Whoever tied me had taken lessons from a master at the art.

Still…I found that I could wriggle one arm slightly. If I could find something to rub the ropes against, there was always the chance I could fray them through. Fumbling about on the floor for a sharp projection was like trying to recognize the denomination of a coin through heavy mittens; my numbed fingers had scarcely any tactile sensation left. But I kept on trying.

Fruitlessly. The floor was flat and bare.

And I could not reach any of the knots, however much I strained.

I think I gave in to desperation there for a moment. Perhaps it helped; I don’t know. But I flung myself violently back against the floor…

And I felt the bonds around my waist slip a little. Ever so little.

They were not coming off, of course—that was too much to hope for. But they slipped around a couple of degrees; my right hand was a little behind me now, my left hand a little in front. I wrenched at the rope again, and it slipped a fraction more.

It must have taken me half an hour to do it, but at last my left hand was within range of my belt buckle. Thanks be to the sea sprites, the Kelpies who watch over the submariners! I still wore my Academy belt, with the fouled anchors sharp on the buckle.

It was not much in the way of hope, but it was the best I had. I strained my wrist cords against that buckle, back and forth, back and forth. I kept it up until I thought my arm muscles would knot and freeze… and then I kept it up some more.

I began to feel as though, given time, I might get free.

But time ran out for me right then.

There was a sudden, soft clicking sound behind me. Dim light entered the room. I could see only what was directly before my eyes—smooth metal walls, glistening with a thin film of moisture; nothing more. But someone had, behind me, opened a door.

I lay perfectly still.

Sound of soft footsteps. A pause; and then the footsteps retreating.

There was another faint click as the door closed again—and darkness.

Someone had come into the room, looked at me, gone away again.

What did it mean? I could not guess. All I could imagine was that it meant someone wanted to know if I were conscious or not; I hoped I had deceived them.

I went back to my rubbing, but for only a few moments. Then the door opened again; but the footsteps were not soft.

There were several men behind me. They were talking to each other as they came in; there was no attempt at concealment, no sense of trying to disguise their voices, no seeming awareness that I was alive. That could mean only one thing:

As far as they were concerned, the time in which I would remain alive was very short.

“Sure he’s awake,” said one of the men belligerendy. “Go on, Jack—give him a kick and see.”

Jack did. His foot connected with my right shoulder blade. Somehow no bones were broken; but I have never been hit harder in my life. The impact spun me around, lying on the floor as I was; I came to rest on my other side, facing the men.

The man who had kicked me was a hulking, stubby toad of a man; I had never seen him before. One of the others was equally strange. But the third I recognized.

Kelly was his name. He had tried to pick a fight with me, back on the Ninth Level.

I said, through a haze of pain, “What’s all this about? What do you—-”

“Shut up,” said Kelly contemptuously. “If he opens his mouth again, Jack, kick his teeth in. Come on, give me a hand.”

Kelly stood back, staring expressionlessly, as Jack and the other man picked me up, head and foot. They carried me out of the room, down a short, dimly-lit corridor.

The man at my feet grunted, “Kelly, I don’t like this. Suppose the sea-cops wander by?”

“Suppose the moon falls on us?” Kelly said sardonical ly. “You’re not paid to think. Jack scouted for the cops; he said there wasn’t a patrol-jeep on the whole level. Right?”

Jack growled, “Right.” A man of few words, this Jack, I thought. I opened my mouth to say something, but the sudden gleam of interest in his eyes stopped me. We bumped along for a few yards, then my bearers dropped me.

“Okay,” growled Kelly. “Take off, boys. I won’t need you any more.”

The other two left—hurriedly. Kelly came closer, and bent down beside me. He fumbled with something on the floor, out of my range of vision: I heard a heavy clanking sound.

“So long,” he said, grinning at me. A sudden seepage of cold wet air came up alongside me; as Kelly raised his foot to thrust at me, I realized what he had done. He had opened a trap—beneath lay the drainage tunnels of Thetis!

As his foot came down I made a desperate lunge, and felt the cord that bound my left wrist part. But it was too late, far too late; his foot caught me in the side and thrust me over a metallic lip. I scrambled and half-caught myself; but one numbed hand was not enough.

I plunged into icy, quick-flowing water. The shock of striking it paralyzed me for a moment; I sank far down before I somehow, with one hand, began struggling upward again.

Somehow, somehow—I reached the surface. Somehow I kept myself afloat, coughing and strangling, gasping cold, dank air into my lungs, surging along through a giant metal conduit at a rate of knots, as helpless as a jellyfish in a tidal bore.

Almost I gave up; but something would not let me give up. Perhaps it was the voice of my instructors at the Academy:
Panic
is the enemy.
Perhaps it was a Voice more authoritative still—but something kept me kicking and struggling, though the best I could hope for was to stay alive until I reached the vent pumps…

And, in the fiercely driven pistons of the pumps, foreing the waste seepage out against a pressure of many atmospheres, the struggle would surely end.

But I kept on struggling.

And—I saw a light.

Only a dim glow, but it was a light. I saw it, far off, through a mist of salt water. I blinked and looked again, and it was closer; a dim flicker on a sort of shelf beside the surging flow.

It was a portable Troyon light. And beside it a man stood, staring at the water.

I tried to call to him, but only a splutter came out. Perhaps he heard me; perhaps it was only fortune that made him look at where I struggled. But I heard his wordless shout, and I found breath to cough a reply.

He acted like the lightning itself. Almost as soon as he had seen me I was driven to the ledge where he stood; in a moment I would have been irrecoverably gone. But just as I slid beneath him he lunged at me with what looked like a long pole.

Something sharp and painful caught my shoulder. I felt the skin break and tear as the boathook slid along my upper arm and back.

The cloth of my tunic ripped, held, ripped again—

And held.

He dragged me, feebly spluttering, to his ledge and helped me up.

I slumped breathlessly against the wall. He grinned at me.

“Man,” he said, “you must have wanted to go swimming
awful
bad!”

“Thanks,” I said, for saving my life, for risking his own—if he had slipped into that raging water, we both would have died—all I could say was “thanks.”

“Sure,” my rescuer said off-handedly. He studied me while I caught my breath, and I returned the compliment. He was a tall, husky Negro, dark as any Gullah, with a clear, friendly eye. He shook his head as he saw the ropes on me. “Um,” he said. “Maybe you weren’t swimming for fun after all.” He thrust a hand far down into a trouser pocket, and drew out a clasp knife.

The pain in my fingers and toes as he cut the ropes and the blood surged back was worse than anything that had gone before. I never thought I would welcome pain! But at last I began to believe in my luck—I was alive!

“Thanks,” I said inadequately again. “You saved my life; I hope I can pay back the favor.”

He chuckled. “Why, I certainly hope you can’t, friend,” he said. “I don’t exactly want to need that kind of favor. Come on, let me give you a hand.” Leaning on him, I limped a few yards along the ledge to where the Troyon light lay. It was a small tube, flickering and feeble as though its luminous gas were nearly exhausted. But it was welcome light to me. By it I looked around.

There was a niche in the ledge. In the niche, barely head high and wide enough for a man to lie down, were a few tattered blankets, a rough platform of boards that appeared to serve as a bed, a few packing crates. “Welcome to my home,” said the man. “My name’s Park, Gideon Park. It isn’t a very fancy establishment, but you’re welcome to make use of it.”

I said earnestly, “Mr. Park, I never saw a place I liked better.”

He grinned. “I imagine so,” he said. “Call me Gideon, if you don’t mind; it’s a name I’m partial to. That’s why I made it up. My folks christened me Walter, but I guess they kind of ran out of good names after eleven of us… Unless you’d like to forget the whole thing, you might satisfy an old man’s curiosity. Who put the ropes on you?”