“Lucky lubber!” exclaimed Harley. “What’ve you got on Lieutenant Tsuya, anyway? That’s the second pass!”
But Bob only said quietly: “The Lieutenant wants you to report to him at Station K.”
I hurried down the remaining few levels gratefully—for I did not want to stay and talk to Bob Eskow just then.
I found Lt. Tsuya busy at his desk in the damp, dead silence of the station, inking in the isobars and isogeotherms and isogals on a deep-level plutonic chart.
“Well, Eden?” Fatigue and strain showed in his voice. “Do you have anything to report?”
I hesitated only a second. “Nothing, sir!” For it was true that I had no facts…and whatever my uncle might be doing, I was not going to go to this lieutenant with mere suspicions.
Lt. Tsuya hesitated, his pumpkin face worried. “It is,” he said, “about what I expected.”
Absently he picked up a red pencil and mechanically began to shade in the zone of stress he had outlined on his plutonic chart. I noticed that the potential fracture-plane was almost directly beneath the site of Krakatoa Dome.
He looked up at me, blinking his swollen eyes. “I’ve given Cadet Eskow a pass,” he said abruptly. “He requested it, and I decided he should have it.”
It caught me off balance. “But I just saw him in the barracks,” I protested.
“That’s right. I held it up in Yeoman Harris’s office until you got back, Eden, because I want you to follow him.”
“Follow him?” I blazed. “But I can’t do that! He’s my best friend. Why, I wouldn’t—”
“At ease, Eden! the lieutenant barked. I stiffened and was quiet. More gently, he said: “I know he is your friend. That is the very reason why I want you to be the one to investigate. Do you know what the alternative is?”
“Why—why, no, sir. I mean, I haven’t given it much thought.”
“The alternative,” said Lt. Tsuya quietly, “is to turn the whole matter over to the Security Division of the Sub-Sea Fleet.”
He paused.
“Once I do that,” he reminded me, “the whole thing is out of my hands. If Cadet Eskow is guilty of a severe breach of regulations, of course, that is the place for it! For I can’t condone disobedience of orders, when the orders are as important as they are in this case.
“But if Cadet Eskow is guilty only of—shall we say—some error in judgment, then to turn the matter over to Security might be to do him a grave injustice.
“It’s up to you, Eden.”
The lieutenant looked at me silently, waiting for me to answer.
“I don’t see that I have any choice, sir,” I said at last.
He nodded heavily.
“Neither do I,” he said in a voice crushed as flat as the sea-bottoms outside the Dome.
11
The Ship in the Pit
An hour later I was back in the civilian areas of Krakatoa Dome—and so was Bob Eskow.
And Bob was not alone.
It had been childishly easy to follow him. I had waited outside the main gate of the Base, partly concealed and wearing a weather-cloak to conceal my uniform. But no concealment was needed. Bob came out like a missile from a torp tube, headed straight for the up-chutes. I followed…and saw him meet someone. The someone was that same old Chinese.
There was no doubt now; for the Chinese no longer carried the parcel he had seen. Somewhere he had disposed of it. And I could think of only one place…my uncle’s safe.
The deck where they met was Minus One, just above the main gate of the Fleet Base. Then they went down again—to base level and below—way down to the Drainage Deck.
They were just walking off the landing when I followed a handful of drainage detail pump-monkeys out of the elevator.
We came to a cross-tunnel marked with a bright-lettered sign: Booster Station Four. I could feel the powerful pumps that sucked at the drainage from Krakatoa Dome, forcing it out against the mighty pressure from three miles of water overhead; but I had no time to think about that, for Bob and the old man were walking on.
I waited a moment to let them get farther ahead, and followed again.
This was a service tunnel. Its floor was level, with little drainage gutters along the walls. It was lined with concrete, lighted with sparse and widely spaced Troyon tubes. Except for a trickle of sluggish water in the gutters, it was fairly dry.
Abruptly Bob and the other man disappeared ahead of me.
I halted for an uneasy second, then went on more slowly…until I saw that they had entered a drainage sump.
Then I paused for more than one second, I confess.
For that made me realize what I had previously been overlooking. I was no longer under the dome. I was out past it—out beneath the floor of the sea itself. Above me was a few hundred feet of quake-fractured rock—
And above that, nothing but three straight vertical miles of salt water.
The drainage tunnels were not reinforced or sealed, except at a few necessary points. They were noisy with the drip and splash and murmur of the invading sea; they were chilled close to the freezing-point temperature of the deeps; hardly half ventilated, they had a damp salt reek.
But there I was—and my quarry getting farther out of sight every second.
There was a three-foot drop at the end of the service tunnel, into the outer drainage ring. It curved away on either side; it had been driven by automatic excavators, and its black rock walls still showed the tooth-marks of multiple drills.
They were oozing and showering water, and the floor of the tunnel was covered in water inches deep, running sleek and black beneath the pale gleam of a distant Troyon light.
I almost turned back then.
But I had to know where they had gone. I listened. But all I could hear was the echoing trickle of water sluicing out of the fissures in the walls.
A moment passed.
Then, my eyes becoming used to the deeper darkness, I began to see a wavering gleam on the black water to the right.
It was the glow of an isotopic flashlight, already almost out of view.
I decided to follow.
I scrambled as silently as I could down into the ankle-deep water. The numbing cold of it stopped me for a second; but then I got my breath and followed the flash light, until it vanished behind a noisy sheet of water pouring out of the fractured rock.
The situation was beginning to get difficult.
I was already half drenched. My feet were numb. I was shivering with cold. And I was unarmed.
If—let us say—if they were waiting beyond the water fall, what could I accomplish? I would be an easy victim. But I couldn’t believe that of Bob Eskow.
The distant Troyon tube was only a faint reflection on the wet black curve of the tunnel wall. I peered into the darkness, took a few splashing steps…
And then I caught my breath and waded forward, plunging through the splashing curtain of icy brine.
The tunnel beyond was now completely dark.
The icy water was deeper, and it was running faster. I stumbled blindly ahead, through it, for perhaps fifty yards.
Then I saw a faint glitter ahead.
I stopped and waited, but it didn’t move. In a moment I saw that it was light shining on wet rock. The light came out of one of the radial tubes that sloped down from the circular tunnel, like the spokes of a deeply dished wheel, to carry the seepage to the pumps.
And far down the radial I saw two figures—Bob Eskow and the Oriental.
The radial was a straight line. I could see them in black silhouette against the moving glow of the isotopic flashlight.