Suddenly something registered in my mind. “Your dad?” I repeated. “Danthorpe? Then your father must be—”
He nodded. “You’ve heard of him,” he said proudly, “Sure you have! He bought in at the bottom level at Krakatoa Dome, when it wasn’t anything but six edenite bubbles linked together and a hope for the future. And he’s traded his way to the top! Every time there’s a quake, prices go down—he buys—and he gets richer! He’s got a seat on the Stock Exchange, and he’s on the Dome Council. He’s lived down deep so long that people call him Barnacle Ben—”
Bob was getting more and more annoyed. He interrupted: “Barnacle Ben! If you ask me, that’s a good name—he sounds like a parasite! If you want to talk about real pioneers—the inventors and explorers who really opened up the floor of the sea when the dry land got overcrowded—you ought to ask Jim about his uncle Stewart. Stewart Eden—the man who invented Edenite!”
Danthorpe stopped short.
He squinted at me sharply. “Old Stewart Eden is your uncle?”
“That’s right,” I told him shortly. I don’t like to boast about it—Uncle Stewart says that family is only important for the inspiration and help it gives you, not for what effect a famous relative may have on somebody else. But I won’t deny that I am proud to be related to the man who made the whole sub-sea empire possible.
There was a pause.
Then, “My Dad could buy him out,” Danthorpe said challengingly, “and never miss the change.” I didn’t say a word, though he waited—that was part of what I had learned from my Uncle Stewart. Danthorpe squinted at Bob. “All right, Eskow,” he said. “What about your folks?”
Bob’s face hardened. ‘Well, what about them?”
“Haven’t you got a family? Give me the inside drift. Who are they? What do they amount to? Where do they live? What does your old man do?”
“They’re just—people,” Bob said slowly. “My father makes a living.”
“Down deep?” challenged Danthorpe. “Or is he a lubber?”
That was too much. I cut in. “Leave him alone, Danthorpe,” I said. “Look. If there’s any truth to this inside drift you came buzzing around with, the three of us are going to have to get along together. Let’s start even! Forget about families—let’s just concentrate on our job, whatever it’s going to be.”
Danthorpe shrugged lazily. He pointed at Bob, who was staring out at the tiny white fin of a catboat, miles out on the smiling surface of the sea. “Better get him started on concentrating,” Danthorpe advised. “Because, to tell you the truth, it looks to me as though he’s the wrong man for Krakatoa! It isn’t a place for anybody who’s afraid of quakes!”
Bob and I walked back to the barracks after Danthorpe had left. I could see that he was feeling low, and I tried to cheer him up.
“After all,” I told him, “we haven’t got any special orders yet. Maybe we’ll start the fall term with everybody else.”
He shook his head glumly. “I don’t think so. What’s that on the bulletin board?”
A fourth-year orderly was smoothing an order slip on the adhesive board just inside our barracks. We read over his shoulder.
It was for us, all right:
The cadets named herein will report to the Commandant’s Office at 1700 hours this date:
Cadet Danthorpe, Harley
Cadet Eden, James
Cadet Eskow, Robert
We looked at each other,
A thought struck me.
“I wonder if—But the O.O.D. said thirteen hundred hours. Remember? When he spotted me at the deepwater pool?” Bob shook his head.
“I didn’t hear him. I must’ve been underwater at the time.”
But the orderly turned sharply, saluted, and said in a brisk tone: “Sir! Cadet Tilden, Walter S., requests permission to address an upperclassman.”
It was a good example of proper form; I couldn’t help admiring him—far better than I had been able to do when I first came to the Academy. I said: “Proceed, Cadet Tilden!”
Staring into space, at full attention, his chin tucked so far back into his collar that he could hardly move his jaw to speak, he said: “Sir, Cadet Eden has two appointments. The one at thirteen hundred hours concerns the possible death of his uncle, Stewart Eden!”
2
The Man Called Father Tide
Etched in silver over the sea-coral portals of the Administration Building was the motto of the Academy:
The Tides Don’t Wait!
But I did.
I was ten minutes early for my appointment with the Commandant; but to the Commandant, 1300 hours meant exactly that, and not a minute before or after. I sat at attention in his anteroom, and wondered, without joy, just how nearly right the orderly had been in his guess about why the Commandant wanted to see me.
My uncle Stewart Eden was my only near relative. His home was ten thousand miles away and three miles straight down, in the undersea nation of Marinia. He had been in ill health, that I knew. Perhaps his illness had grown worse, and—No. I closed my mind to that thought. In any case, the orderly had said “possible death,” and that didn’t sound like illness.
I put aside the attempt to think and concentrated only on sitting there and waiting.
Precisely at 1300 the Commandant appeared.
He approached from the officers’ mess, a towering, frowning giant of a man, powerful as the sea itself. Beside him was a neat little man in clerical black, trotting to keep up with the Commandant’s great strides, talking very urgently.
“Ten-hut!” barked the cadet sentry, presenting arms. I sprang to attention.
The Commandant paused on his way into his private office, the tiny stranger behind him.
“Cadet Eden,” said the Commandant gravely. “You have a visitor. This is Father Jonah Tidesley, of the Society of Jesus. He has come a long way to see you.”
I remember shaking the little man’s hand, but I don’t remember much else except that I found myself with the Commandant and Father Tidesley, in the Commandant’s private office. I remember noticing that the Commandant was full of a quiet respect for the priest; I remember him looking at me with a look that was disturbingly keen. They said that the Commandant was able to read the minds of cadets, and for a moment I thought it was true—
Then I concentrated on what Father Tidesley was saying.
“I knew your uncle, Jim,” he said in a clear, warm voice. “Perhaps you’ve heard him speak of me. He usually called me Father Tide—everybody does.”
“I don’t remember, sir,” I said. “But I seldom see my uncle.”
He nodded cheerfully. He was an amiable little man, but his sea-blue eyes were as sharp as the Commandant’s. He wasn’t young. His face was round and plump, but his red cheeks were seamed like sea-coral. I couldn’t guess his age—or his connection with my uncle, or what he wanted with me, for that matter.
“Sit down, Jim,” he beamed, “sit down.” I glanced at the Commandant, who nodded. “I’ve heard about your adventure with the sea serpents, Jim,” he went on. “Ah, that must have been quite an adventure! I’ve always longed to see the Tonga Trench. But it hasn’t been possible, though perhaps some day—But you’ve done more than that, Jim. Oh, I know a great deal about you, boy, though we’ve never met.” He went on and on. It was true; he surprised me. Not only because he knew so much of my own life—Uncle Stewart might well have told him that—but because he knew that other world so well, that world “down deep” which is stranger to most lubbers than the mountains of the moon.