I said desperately: “Sir, can’t we do something?”
“Something?”
Lt. Tsuya looked at me for a moment. His gaze had that curious questioning quality that I had observed before. There was more on his mind, I knew, than the mere danger of the quake that lay before us all, great though that danger was. And, in a way, I could see his position. For here he was, conducting an experimental, untried station, and with a staff composed of two officers—and three cadets, each one of whom, in his own way, must have presented a huge problem to the Station Commander. There was Bob Eskow—behaving very queerly, by any standards! Myself—and, from Lt. Tsuya’s point of view, perhaps I was the biggest question mark of all; for it was on my testimony that all he knew of Bob’s behavior rested, and certainly he had to consider the possibility that I was somehow linked with my uncle in some evil and dangerous scheme. And finally there was Harley Danthorpe, the son of one of the men on whose good will the whole existence of the station depended.
No, it was no easy position!
Lt. Tsuya said reasonably: “Suppose we took matters into our own hands, Eden, and issued a forecast. Without the full co-operation of the Krakatoa Council and its police department, can you imagine what would happen? The panic would be incredible! There would be mob scenes such as you have never imagined!
“I doubt that that would save any lives, Eden.
“On the other hand—” and suddenly his quiet voice took on a new and harsher quality—“if it’s your own skin you’re worried about, then you can stop worrying. The Fleet has its own evacuation plan. And it has shipping enough to carry it out. I have communicated my forecast to the Base Commandant. The station here, of course, will be kept in operation until the last possible moment—but if you wish to ask a transfer from your present assignment so that you can be evacuated…”
“Sir!” I broke in sharply. “No, sir!”
He smiled faintly.
“Then,” he said, “I beg your pardon, Eden. Break out another geosonde. We’ll make a new forecast.”
The sonde blew up again at seventy thousand feet.
But there was no doubt of what it had to tell. Its transmissions showed that the negative gravity anomaly was still increasing under the city. Nothing had changed, not enough to matter.
When I had converted all the readings, and recomputed the equations of force and time, my answer was a force of eleven—probable error plus or minus one—and time thirty hours, probable error plus or minus twelve.
Lt. Tsuya compared my figures with his own and nodded.
“We agree again, Cadet Eden,” he said formally. “The only change is that the quake will probably be a little more severe, and will probably happen a little sooner.”
His voice was calm enough, but I could see white lines around his mouth. “I’m going to phone the mayor again,” he said.
Harley Danthorpe came into the station as Lt. Tsuya disappeared into his private office to phone. Harley was carrying thick white mugs of coffee from the mess hall.
“Here,” he said, handing me one. “Want a sandwich?” I looked at the plate he offered and shook my head. I didn’t have much of an appetite just then, though the station clock told me it was a long way past lunch. “Me too,” said Harley gloomily. “What’s the lieutenant doing?”
“Calling the mayor.”
“I wish,” said Harley Danthorpe irritably, “that he’d let me talk to my father! If I gave him the inside drift he’d have that council in session in ten minutes!”
Then he looked up. Tsuya’s office door was open, and the lieutenant was stepping calmly out.
“That,” he said, “won’t be necessary, Cadet Danthorpe. The council is in session now.”
“Hurray!” whooped Harley. “I tell you, now you’ll see some action! When my father gets—Excuse me, Lieutenant,” he finished, abashed.
The lieutenant nodded. “Lt. McKerrow,” he called, “I’m going topside to present the forecast to the council. I’ll leave you in charge of the statiorf.” McKerrow nodded wryly. “I expect a rough session with them,” Lt. Tsuya went on thoughtfully. “Some of the members are opposed to quake forecasting in any case. Now, of course, it will be worse.”
Harley said eagerly: “Sir, can I come along? I mean, if I’m there, my father will know that everything’s all right with the forecast—”
He stopped again, in confusion.
Lt. Tsuya said dryly: “Thank you, Cadet Danthorpe. I had already planned to take you with me—and Cadet Eden as well. However, your duties will be merely to help me display the charts.”
He nodded.
“I,” he said, “will do the talking. Remember that!”
The city hall of Krakatoa Dome was high in the northwest upper octant, between the financial district and the platform terminal deck.
The mayor and the council members were waiting for us in a big room walled with murals depicting scenes of undersea life—a kelp farm, a sub-sea uranium mine, undersea freighters loading cargo and so on. The murals were restful and lovely.
The gathering contained in the room, on the other hand, was nothing of the kind.
It was a noisy meeting, full of conflicting voices expressing their views in loud and quarrelsome terms; judged by Fleet standards, it was conducted in a most markedly sloppy fashion. The mayor called for order a dozen times before he got any order at all, and when he called on Lt. Tsuya to speak his piece there was still a quarrelsome undertone of voices nearly drowning him out.
But the lieutenant got their full attention in his very first words—when he told them dryly, without mincing words, that the chances were all in favor of a Force Eleven quake.
“Force Eleven?” demanded the mayor, startled.
“Possibly Force Twelve,” said Lt. Tsuya grimly.
Barnacle Ben Danthorpe broke in. “Possibly,” he sneered, “possibly Force Twelve. And possibly Force Eleven, right?”
“That’s what I said in the first place, Mr. Danthorpe,” said Lt. Tsuya.
“Or possibly Force Ten?” said Danthorpe.
“That’s possible too.”
“Or Force Nine, eh? Or maybe even Force Eight or Seven?”
“The chances of that, Mr. Danthorpe, are so small—”
“Small? Oh, maybe so, Lieutenant. Maybe so. But not impossible, eh?”
“Not quite impossible,” admitted Lt. Tsuya. “It’s all a matter of relative probabilities.”
“I see.” Ben Danthorpe grinned. “And on the basis of probabilities,” he said, “you want us to evacuate the city. Any idea of what that would cost, Lieutenant?”
Lt. Tsuya’s brown eyes glowed angrily. “Money is not the only consideration, Mr. Danthorpe!”
“But it is a consideration. Oh, yes. It is to us, Lieutenant, because we have to make it. We don’t live off the taxpayers, you see.”
Tsuya fumed silently; I could see the strain lines showing on his lean pumpkin face. Danthorpe went on easily: “I don’t deny that you scientists can give us a lot of useful information. After all, don’t you have my own son working with you? And he’s a smart boy, Lieutenant. A very smart boy!” I could feel Harley Danthorpe stiffen with pride beside me. “But Jie’s only a boy!” barked his father suddenly, “and we can’t let boys tell us how to run Krakatoa Dome! You tell us we’re sitting on a seaquake fault. All right. We know that. What do you expect us to do about it?”