Undersea Quest (12 page)

“And you’ll have that in two weeks?” I asked. “Thank you very much, sir.”

He escorted me to the door. “Not at all,” he said. “It’s part of our job to help out when someone loses an important document.” He looked at me levelly. “Always assuming,” he added, “that the document is really theirs to begin with.”

The door closed on his last words.

So we had to wait—wait until the mixup on my papers could be straightened out, wait until we could have a showdown with Faulkner, wait until I could learn the answers to many questions.

We had time to kill, Gideon and I. We spent it looking around the dome-city of Thetis. Gideon knew it well, from the high administrative levels to the sub-cellars below the very sea floor. And he showed me everything there was.

He took me to the great submarine quays, not the liner terminals where I had docked in the
Isle of Spain,
but the freight ports where the commerce of the sub-sea world was carried on. Through the view ports in the side of the dome we could see, floodlighted, a busy hustle of ungainly freighters and tiny, porpoiselike sea cars, nuzzling down to the discharge ports, slipping up and away to the other cities of Marinia. We watched a lumbering tanker as it made five unsuccessful passes at the port—“Tough job for them,” Gideon chuckled; “they’re lighter than the water, and it’s hard to swim them in just right.” I nodded and stared, wide-eyed. Lighter than the water! Yet it was obvious—their cargoes of petroleum and its products needed more than the mere weight of the cargo hulk to equal an identical volume of sea water. Through the view ports one was hardly aware of the water outside: it looked like some curious scene of interplanetary space, with the sub-sea ships taking the parts of rockets. The muck in suspension in the water around Thetis made it cloudy, but it was more like a land fog than an undersea view. I could even see, dimly, the face of the tanker-pilot as he raged at his engineer through the intercom as they made their fruitless passes—and then his smile of triumph as the grapples locked, and they were moored. He was not alone in die bridgehouse; beside him were men in the uniform of the Maritime Service—

And one of them was no stranger! “Bob!” I gasped. “Bob Eskow!”

Gideon looked at me curiously. “An acquaintance of yours?” he asked.

“Just the best friend I have in the world, that’s all! Gideon, this is wonderful luck! How can we get to that tanker?”

He scratched his head doubtfully. “I don’t know if it’s a good idea,” he objected mildly. “You know, Jim, we still haven’t figured out what Kelly was up to when he mugged you. And that’s Kelly’s Kingdom down there, where the freighters discharge.”

My expression must have convinced him. He grinned and surrendered. “All right. Come on,” he said.

We took a fast elevator down, but it seemed to take terribly long. At the discharge level we came out onto a badly lighted, poorly kept section of Thetis, much like the one I had come in at, but even worse in appearance if possible. There were the same long rows of warehouses, the same jostling, bustling crowds of dock workers. I stayed close by Gideon’s side as he struck out confidently.

But there was no trouble—not the sort of trouble I might have feared, at any rate. There was no sign of Kelly; no one even looked at us, much less tried to repeat Kelly’s attack. What actually happened was much, much worse.

We reached the tanker—5.5.
Warren F. Howard
was its name—and rode the little pneumatic lift to the entrance port. I stopped a crewman and asked directions to the bridge; with Gideon in tow, I raced along the narrow passageways and climbed through a hatchway to the bridgehouse.

Bob wasn’t there.

The pilot was talking casually to a deck officer; they turned to look at me with some irritation. I asked excitedly, “Is Bob Eskow here? I saw him from the dome—”

The pilot said something in a whisper. The deck man nodded thoughtfully. He said: “Who wants him?”

“My name,” I told him, “is—”

Gideon’s elbow caught me sharply in the ribs. He interrupted smoothly, “Just a couple of old friends of his, sir. Can you tell us where we can find him?”

The deck officer glowered. “How did you get aboard?” he demanded.

“Just walked, sir,” Gideon said with a wide-eyed look of innocence. “Was that wrong?”

The deck officer gave him a long look. Then, to me, he said:

“You’ll have to go ashore. Eskow’s in his quarters and can’t be disturbed.”

“But I just saw him!” I cried.

“You heard me.” The deck officer touched a bell, and a seaman popped through the hatch. “Show these men ashore,” the officer ordered.

Unwillingly I went. Back on the other side of the entrance port, I asked the seaman: “Can you take a message to Mr. Eskow for me?”

The seaman looked dubious, until he caught sight of my outstretched hand and the folded bill it contained. “Sure,” he said cheerfully. “What do you want me to tell him?”

I wrote a hasty note, signed it “Jim,” and handed it to the seaman, who disappeared into the entrance port with it. Gideon murmured:

“Don’t know if that was rightly smart, Jim. Know what ship this is?”

I shook my head. Gideon whispered: “Hallam Sperry’s tanker flagship. And that first officer is one of his personal pets, Jim; that’s why I didn’t want you telling him who you were.”

I said uncertainly, “But surely he wouldn’t have kept me from seeing an old friend!”

“Are you so very sure of that?” Gideon asked quietly. But I had no chance to answer, for the seaman was back. His face was extremely cold. He said:

“Mr. Eskow says he never heard of you.” And he disappeared again before I could collect my wits to answer.

Back in our hotel, I stared out the window at the bustling crowds of Marinians. Even Bob Eskow seemed to have turned against me! Except for Gideon, there seemed no one I could trust in all the world.

I never felt so lonesome in my life as at that moment.

I sat there, fruitlessly worrying, until Gideon came in. He had sent me on ahead while he ran some mysterious errand of his own, down in Kelly’s Kingdom; when he came into the room his face was grave. He said at once:

“Jim, something’s up. There’s talk down at the ’charge levels.

Sperry’s got something.”

“What has he got?”

Gideon looked worried. “That’s just it, I don’t know. Ever hear of a man named Catroni?”

“No.”

Gideon’s face was in harsh lines. “Fortunate for you,” he said. “Catroni. Kicked out of the States, kicked out of every country in Europe, on Hallam Sperry’s payroll here in Marinia. Payroll for what? Nobody knows—officially. But the man started out as a common hoodlum. Draw your own conclusions.”

“Sounds like someone you couldn’t trust very far,” I said.

Gideon nodded soberly. “That is the trouble, Jim. Somebody trusted him a little too far. He was with your uncle when the seacar was lost. And they say—” He hesitated, looking at me almost beseechingly. “They say—don’t draw too much hope from this, Jim, but they say that Catroni was seen going into Sperry’s quarters yesterday.”

I leaped up. “Gideon! That means—”

He said fretfully, “I know what it means.
If
it’s true that Catroni is here—and
if
he really was with Stewart Eden—then
maybe
there’s a chance. A chance of heaven knows what, Jim—for if Catroni came back secretly, there must be dirty work somewhere that he is covering up. But still—”

“Gideon,” I said tensely, “let’s go see Hallam Sperry!”

He stared. “You are out of your mind!”

“No, Gideon. I can see him. I have his invitation, after all—on the
Isle of Spain
he made me an offer. I can tell him I want to discuss it; and perhaps I can find something out.” Gideon was shaking his head somberly, but I rushed on. “Don’t you see, Gideon, I have to try it. Sperry won’t dare do anything openly—he has too much at stake. And besides—well, I’ll lay it on the line, Gideon: Suppose you’re wrong? Suppose Sperry isn’t quite as bad as you’ve painted him?”

He stopped me, mercifully, then. There was fierce pride and hurt in his eyes. He said carefully: “All right, Jim. I can’t blame you for wanting to see for yourself.” He slumped wearily into a chair, not looking at me. “I only hope,” he said, “that what you see doesn’t hurt you.”

“SIT, SIT,” Hallam Sperry rumbled impatiently.

I sat down. I started to say, “Mr. Sperry, I—”

He interrupted before I got started. “My son is here,” he said suddenly. “Brand. You remember Brand, eh? Told me a great deal about you. Maybe I should say about James Eden. Eh?”

The question seemed half-humorous, but his cold eyes were not humorous at all. “What do you mean?” I asked.

He shrugged ponderously. “What do you want?” he asked.

He had me somewhat confused. I said, “Well, back on the
Isle of Spain
you made a proposition, Mr. Sperry.”

I stopped. He was shaking his huge head. “Forget that,” he said.

“I’m an old man. I bear no grudge for you trying to take me in, but it didn’t work.” He stared at me out of his sea-cold eyes. “You’re no more James Eden than I am,” he said. “You know it, I know it, what’s the use of trying to pull the wool over an old man’s eyes?”

I said, trying to control my temper, “Mr. Sperry, I
am
James Eden! I was knocked out and robbed—my papers were stolen—but I’m getting new ones from ‘Frisco.”

He laughed shortly. “That’s it, boy,” he applauded. “Stick to it!”

“Please, Mr. Sperry! Look, you say your son is here—ask him to identify me.”

Hallam Sperry looked at me for a long, opaque moment. Then he rose ponderously and turned his back while he poured himself some sort of drink. Without turning he said: ‘Brand?”

A voice came promptly from a speaker-diaphragm over Hallam Sperry’s desk. “Yes, sir?”

Hallam Sperry said: “Brand, have you been watching us on the scanner?”

“Yes, father,” came the metallic voice strongly. “He’s an impostor, sir. I never saw him before.”

“Thank you, Brand,” the old man said mildiy. He clicked a switch on his desk and sat down, sipping his drink. He looked at me with his cold, inquiring eyes. “Eh?” He asked. “Still want to argue?”

All at once the world looked tremendously black. I could only sit there, staring at him. Had everyone gone insane? How could Brand Sperry deny that I was James Eden?

And then I remembered the words that had helped me once before, the words the instructors had dinned, dinned, dinned into me at the Academy, the most urgent lesson the Academy’s four hard years could teach:

Panic is the enemy.

Start with one fact: I knew I was sane.

Look at all the other facts in the light of that one:
If
I am sane, then I really am James Eden;
if
I am James Eden, then these people, all of them, the Sperrys and their helpers, are trying to get me out of the way.

And if they are trying to get me out of the way—then certainly there is something they must fear! Something that I can do—something that they want to prevent—something that I must find out about and accomplish!

It takes a long time to tell what passed through my mind in that one frozen moment; but it took no time at all for me to decide what to do next.

I said, “Where’s Catroni?"

Crash.

Hallam Sperry unfroze slowly, like a giant berg of the The bottle of sea-green liqueur splintered against the floor. Hallam Sperry sat icily calm, ignoring the bottle he had knocked over. He said in a colorless voice, “Would you mind repeating that?”

I stood up and moved closer
to Hallam Sperry. “Catroni was with my uncle Stewart, Mr. Sperry. If Catroni survived, maybe my uncle did too. He’s here somewhere; I know that. I want to talk to him,” I said boldly.

“Southern Ocean,” he said quietly, “Catroni is dead.”

“No, sir,” I said obstinately. “He’s alive. I know that.”

“You know wrong, young man. Catroni is dead.” There was a flicker of something I could not recognize in those sea-cold eyes. Triumph, perhaps, or hidden laughter. He said, “Perhaps you don’t believe me.”

“I do not,” I said sharply.

“Of course not,” he nodded. “We never believe news we don’t like. Well, young man, let me convince you.” He clicked the switch again. “Brooks,” he said without raising his voice, “this young gentleman would like to know if Catroni is dead or alive. Will you show him?”

“Yes, sir,” said a man’s voice over the speaker. There was a pause; then the door opened, and a short, squat wrestler-type stood there, blinking at us. He was dressed in outlandishly unsuitable clothing, considering his hulking build and anthropoid brow; he wore the livery of an old-fashioned butier. “Sir?” he asked.

“This one, Brooks,” rumbled Hallam Sperry. “Take him and convince him that Catroni is dead. Let him see the—evidence.”

I should have been suspicious. Well, I
was
suspicious—but not sure. And even if I had been sure, if I had known as certainly as I knew the Sub-sea Oath, word by word and line by line, that Hallam plotted treachery—what could I have done?

Nothing. Nothing more than I did. I followed the brute in butler’s garb down a tapestry-hung corridor, through an inconspicuous door, into a tiny, white-walled room.

There was a dead man in the room—a short, dark-complected man who lay on a narrow table, a curious metallic affair on his head, wires leading from it to a clicking, purring machine that loomed along the sides of the room.

I recognized the machine; I had seen it once, or one like it—at the Academy. They called it a brainpump; an electronic apparatus that could seize the thoughts from a man’s mind, tear secrets from a living brain. It was a giant, ugly machine, and in my mind’s eye I could see the placard that had been on the one in the Academy’s museum:

THE USE OF THIS MACHINE HAS BEEN OUTLAWED BY INTERNATIONAL COVENANT. EVEN IN SMALL DOSES, EXPOSURE TO IT PRODUCES BRAIN DAMAGE. PROLONGED EXPOSURE INVARIABLY CAUSES DEATH.

The apelike “butler” said thickly, “You wanted to see Catroni? That’s him. Dead all right, ain’t he?”

I said sharply, “You’ve killed him! He wasn’t drowned with my uncle—perhaps my uncle wasn’t drowned at all! I’m going to report this to—”