He leaned forward suddenly in his creaking old chair. “But what’s the use of talking about money, boy?” he boomed. “Let me look at you! Why, you’re a man now, Jim. Almost an officer!” He chuckled fondly, inspecting the fit of my sea-red dress uniform. “Ah, Jim. Your father would be a proud man if he had lived to see you now!”
He sat back, nodding, his eyes alive again, looking almost well, almost the man he had been back in those exciting days in Marinia. “Never fear, Jim,” he boomed, “you and I will both get what we want out of this world! You’ll be an officer of the Sub-Sea Fleet, and I’ll recover what I’ve lost. Both in money and in health, Jim! I’ve been afloat before, and I’ll be afloat again.”
He turned and stared thoughtfully at the big new safe lettered Eden Enterprises, Unlimited.
I could only guess at what was in his mind.
But the safe looked very heavy to float!
Gideon coughed gently. “Stewart,” he said in his sweet, warm voice, “you haven’t forgotten your appointment, have you?”
“Appointment?” My uncle sat up straight and glanced at his wrist-dial. “I had no idea it was so late. Why, Jim, I—”
He stopped, and stared at me thoughtfully. All of a sudden he looked worried and worn again. When he spoke his voice had lost some of its warmth and timber.
He said hurriedly, “Jim, I want to spend some time with you, but just now, there’s a matter I must attend to. I have an—an engagement. For lunch, with someone I don’t believe you know. So if you’ll excuse me—”
I stood up.
“Certainly, Uncle Stewart,” I said. “I’ll go back to the base. I’ll phone you next time I can get a pass, and we’ll have dinner.”
But there was an interruption, just as I was about to leave.
It was my uncle’s luncheon companion, come to keep (heir engagement. And my uncle was wrong; I did know the man; I knew him rather well, in fact.
The man my uncle was to have lunch with—the man he appeared not to want me to meet—was Father Tide.
The neat little man with the seamed sea-coral cheeks kept up a stream of conversation all the way to the restaurant.
“You’re looking well, Jim,” he said in his clear, warm voice, nodding like a cheery little monk out of an old German woodcut. “Very well! It’s a pleasure to have you with us, and an unexpected pleasure, eh, Stewart?” He chuckled. It had been his suggestion that I come along for lunch, not my uncle’s.
I couldn’t help wondering what my uncle Stewart was up to, that he wanted me kept out of so thoroughly.
But whatever it was, I wasn’t destined to learn it that afternoon. Perhaps because I was there, there wasn’t a word said at that luncheon that told me anything of importance. Most of the talk was about the food—all of it from the sea, all of it prepared in the wonderful Oriental ways that were a feature of life in Krakatoa Dome.
Only at the very end was there anything at all said—and that inconclusive. Father Tidesley had made a remark about his seismic research, and my uncle said: “I’m sorry, Father. I’m in no position to contribute any more to your project.”
“It isn’t only money that’s important, Stewart,” Father Tide reminded him gently. “And seismic research may yet pay off. If one knew how to predict sub-seaquakes, one might make a considerable profit. Or so I hear. Just by predicting them…or even, let us say, by creating them.”
Scalding sea-coffee sloshed out of the cup in my uncle’s hand.
He wiped at his scalded fingers with a napkin and glared across the little table at Father Tidesley.
He said reproachfully: “Your trouble, Father, is that your training puts too much emphasis on sin. It leads you to suspect the worst. It makes you a pessimist about human beings.”
It was almost meant as a sort of a mild joke, but Father Tidesley considered it seriously. He said in his clear voice: “Perhaps so, Stewart—about human frailties. But at least I am optimistic about the possibilities of redemption.”
He neatly finished the last of his coffee and leaned back. “All my life,” he said, “ever since I began my novitiate, volcanic and seismic disturbances have fascinated me. Why? Because they appeared to me to be the direct expressions of the will of God. Even a long lifetime devoted to the study of their secular causes has not decreased that first awe.
“You must not think,” he said earnestly, “that I doubt that man can intervene in this. Of course not. Nor do I think that man’s intervention would be improper—you may call me a sin-hunter, Stewart, but you cannot think that. Forecasting seaquakes is precisely as proper as forecasting the weather. There is nothing wrong with it.”
He glanced at me, and I felt a sudden chill. Did everyone in Krakatoa Dome know what Lt. Tsuya thought was a closely guarded secret?
But Father Tide was hurrying on: “There is another domain than forecasting—one in which meddling is likely to be far more dangerous. Hazardous to the lives of men, as well as to their souls. You know what I mean, Stewart. I mean that I have reason to believe that someone—I do not know that person’s name, not for sure—can create seaquakes at will.
“If this power exists it must be used to save life and property. Not—” he cried—“not to enrich sinful men!”
And that was all that was said.
Well, perhaps it was enough, for there was no doubt that what Father Jonas Tidesley said had its effect on my uncle. He finished his meal in silence, glumly.
It was a collision between two strong men, and it left me shaken, I must admit. My uncle seemed quite as steadfast in his faith in himself—in his own brain and seaskills, and even in his failing physical vigor—as Father Tide was in his religion.
I could not doubt my uncle’s honesty. It was absolutely impossible to believe that he could have had anything to do with causing harm to a human being.
And yet—why hadn’t he denied what Father Tide had implied?
For that matter, there was another question, on the other side of the fence, for why did Father Tide continue to associate with my uncle if he believed him capable of such an act? It was completely out of character—for both of them!
Father Tide remained cheerful to the very end. He talked about the fine flavor of the sea-steaks, and the succulence of the new sea-fruits that were our dessert; but my uncle Stewart hardly answered.
I was glad when the meal was over.
Father Tide left us, and I walked with my uncle back through the clattering, cluttered streets toward his shabby office. He was still very quiet, and he walked painfully, like an invalid.
But as we came to the entrance to Number 88 he abruptly stopped and seized my arm.
His voice was vigorous; he said: “I’m sorry, Jim! I’d hoped you could come up to the office with me, but—Well, I’ve got an appointment. It’s very important to me; I know you’ll understand.”
“Yes, Uncle Stewart,” I said, and I said good-by to him right there on the street.
For I did understand.
There was a man who had peeped out of the shabby entrance to Number 88 just as we approached it. It was that man whom my uncle had seen a split second before he stopped me and suddenly “remembered” his appointment.
And I knew that man. I had seen him before. I had seen him, in fact, under circumstances very like the present ones.
The man was the withered old Chinese I had seen with Bob Eskow, in the barracks and again wandering the radials of Krakatoa Dome. And he was holding a heavy little parcel wrapped in sea-pulp.
I couldn’t help thinking that it was just about the right size to be the missing model of the ortholytic sonde.
I found myself back at the Base, hardly knowing how I had got there.
Bob Eskow and Harley Danthorpe looked at me queerly, enviously on the part of Harley Danthorpe—and with an emotion that I could hardly recognize from Bob, an emotion that seemed almost like fear.