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In a moment the bolts clicked.

My uncle Stewart Eden got painfully to his feet and swung the door open.

I followed the lieutenant to look inside. What we saw hit me like an unexpected depth charge at pressure levels. It had been bad enough to find Bob Eskow and Gideon Park involved in this affair of contraband nuclear explosives and artificial quakes, but now—

The safe was lined with four inches of dull gray lead.

Thick lead bricks were laid inside the door to make a shielding wall.

But the wall was a few inches short of the top of the safe. Light streamed over it, and glittered on heavy golden balls, each one belted with bright straps of stainless steel.

“Contraband atomic fuses!” cried the lieutenant triumphantly. He swung on my uncle, his face furious. “Explain that, Mr. Eden! Atomic triggers—to set off thermonuclear bombs!”

15

The Crime of Stewart Eden

Lieutenant Tsuya closed the door of the lead-lined safe.

He stepped gingerly back from it, with a silent respect for the atomic death it contained. He swung upon my uncle, his face a strange blend of emotions—worry, shock, sadness—and over it all, triumph.

He rasped: “All right, Eden! What have you got to say for yourself?”

“I–I—” My uncle’s voice faltered. He stumbled from the safe to the cot and sat down on the edge of it. He shook his head as if to clear it. Then he leaned back weakly against the sea-green wall.

“Those are thermonuclear devices!” cried Lt. Tsuya, “They don’t belong in civilian hands, Eden—you know that. They must have been stolen from the Fleet. Why, even the government of Krakatoa has agreed to support the international laws that give the Fleet exclusive jurisdiction over the manufacture and use of nucleonic devices. They’re contraband—and you can’t deny that they were found in your possession!”

My uncle blinked at him. “I don’t deny it,” he whispered, so faintly that I could hardly hear.

“And I believe that you have been using them to cause seaquakes!” cried the lieutenant.

He pointed a long accusing finger at my uncle. “Do you deny that?”

Painfully my uncle shook his head.

The lieutenant was startled. He glanced at me, then back at my uncle; plainly, he had expected more difficulty. He said, half incredulous and half triumphant: “You admit all this? You admit that you are guilty of a crime so great that there is no name for it—the crime of causing death and destruction by triggering seaquakes?”

“Death?” whispered my uncle. “But there has been no death—no—”

He stopped.

He caught a long, gasping breath.

His sea-worn, sagging face turned very pale and, as though he had been stricken down by a blow, he abruptly slid down on the cot.

He lay with his head hanging limply over the side, breathing hard.

I cried, “Uncle Stewart!” and ran toward him. Simultaneously Gideon leaped to help him too.

But Lt. Tsuya halted us both. “Stop!” he roared. “Stand back! Don’t touch him! The man’s a confessed criminal!”

“But he’s a sick man,” Gideon protested gently. “He needs medicine. You’ll kill him if you keep me from him now!”

“That,” rasped the lieutenant harshly, “is my responsibility. He’s my prisoner.” He turned to face my uncle, lying unconscious on the cot. Formally Lt. Tsuya droned: “Stewart Eden, by my authority as a commissioned officer of the Sub-Sea Fleet, in the lawful discharge of my duty to prevent illicit manufacture or use of nucleonic weapons in the sea, I hereby place you under arrest!”

My uncle lay gasping, and if he heard the long legal formula or not I could not tell; but while I stood silent Gideon would not be denied. He leaped past the lieutenant to attend to my uncle. Quickly—showing the practice he had had—he put a pillow under Uncle Stewart’s head, raising it gently; lifted his feet to the cot; spread a blanket over him. “There,” he crooned. “You’ll be all right, Stewart. I’ll fix your injection now.”

“You’ll do nothing of the kind!” snapped Lt. Tsuya. “He’s my prisoner now!”

Gideon stood up and turned to face the lieutenant,

I do not recall that I have ever seen Gideon very angry; he isn’t a man to lose his temper. But just then, angry or not, I was glad that it was the lieutenant who had to face him and not me.

He stood like a giant warrior out of old Africa, and his dark eyes were black as the bottom of the Deeps themselves. He said in a low, deep voice that throbbed and roared: “Stewart Eden has a bad heart, Lieutenant. I intend to give him an injection. If you try to stop me, you’ll have to kill me!”

The lieutenant paused for a moment, listening to my uncle’s labored breathing, while Gideon brought a tiny hypodermic from the desk and began to roll up my uncle’s sleeve.

Then Lt. Tsuya said: “Very well. Give him the injection.” And he glared at me.

But by that time it was already done. With deft black fingers Gideon had stabbed the tiny needle into my uncle’s lean arm. He pushed the little piston gently home. He drew the needle out, and swabbed away one bright drop of blood.

It took time for it to have its effect.

We all stood there, ringed around my uncle, while he lay gasping under the blanket. Gideon knelt beside him, murmuring to him. My uncle’s face looked pinched and bloodless under a film of perspiration.

“You’d better keep him alive!” Lt. Tsuya snapped at Gideon. “We’ve got a lot of questions to ask him. Stolen reactors—making seaquakes for private profit—I can’t imagine more shocking crimes! And this from a man who has been held up to the world as a sort of hero! I want him alive, Park!”

Gideon looked up at him and said softly: “So do I.”

He stood up. “It’ll take a few minutes, Lieutenant,” he said, “but I believe he’ll be all right now. When he wakes up, I want you to listen to what he has to say.”

“I will!” barked the lieutenant grimly. “You can count on that. But I warn you, I’m not going to believe whatever lies he might cook up!”

“Suppose they aren’t lies?” Gideon asked gently.

The lieutenant shrugged.

I cut in at that point. My voice had a dry catch in it, but I couldn't help speaking—I had waited too long, too long, everything I knew told me that I had waited too long. This was my uncle, Stewart Eden, the greatest man in the world! Or so I had thought as a boy—and so I still believed, in a manner of speaking, now!

I said: “Lieutenant, give him a chance! You don’t know my uncle. I do! He couldn’t be guilty of any of these crimes! It simply isn’t possible. There is some explanation, I guarantee. There has to be. Don’t make your mind up now! Wait and hear what he has to say when he wakes up!”

The lieutenant looked at me for a moment before he spoke. I could see how worn out he was. Why, I’d had little enough rest, the past few days, but Lt. Tsuya had had none at all, barring a cat-nap on the quake station cot. Worried, worn—and more concerned about my uncle than I realized.

He said in a low, toneless voice: “Cadet Eden, you carry family loyalty a little too far. I know enough about your uncle to know that he was a great and respected man—once. But what does that have to do with the present situation?

“After all, Eden—you heard him admit his guilt!”

It was a crushing blow; I had no answer.

Perhaps Gideon did. At any rate, he started to speak—

But he never had a chance to finish what he was going to say. There as an interruption. I felt myself suddenly unsteady on my feet, flung out an arm in surprise to catch hold of a chair to steady myself, glanced around at the others…

And found identical expressions of surprise on every face. Each one was staggering slightly.