But a loud, harsh voice cut in.
“Wait!” bellowed Barnacle Ben Danthorpe, lunging forward. “You’re out of order, Father Tide! You have no place here!”
Father Tide turned to meet him. “I ask your pardon,” he murmured, still polite, still calm. “It seemed to me that a vote needed to be taken.”
“Vote?” sneered Danthorpe. “Oh, sure. Why not? Take a vote. Decide to evacuate Krakatoa Dome! And then, for the next fifty years, not one single piece of property in the whole Dome will be worth a holed sea-penny, because every investor will be scared off. ‘The Dome they keep evacuating,’ they’ll think—and buy elsewhere.
“No, Father Tide. I don’t care who you are, you aren’t going to ruin my investments in Krakatoa Dome!
“As for you lubbers—go ahead and vote. Go ahead! But remember, every man who votes in favor of evacuation is going to have to answer to me!”
There was a moment’s silence.
Then, as though nothing had happened, Father Tide said softly: “All those in favor, please raise your hands.”
Two hands went slowly up—three—then one of them came down again, and another.
And then the third.
There was not one single vote for evacuating the Dome, in spite of everything.
Father Tide sighed.
He laid down the gavel, very quietly, before him. He bowed to the mayor.
He said:
“May God have mercy on your souls.”
The third quake hit us as we were almost back to Fleet Base.
“Force Four,” whispered Father Tide, clinging to a slidewalk rail with one hand and bracing Lieutenant Tsuya with the other.
The lieutenant pulled himself erect. His face was haunted. “Yes,” he said, “Force Four.
Always Force Four! Can’t they give us the final blow and get it over with?” His voice was thin and tight; he was on the ragged edge of hysteria.
“Calm yourself, my boy,” advised Father Tidesley. He stood up experimentally, and then released the railing.
“The worst is over,” he said. “And now I must leave you.”
“Leave us?”
Father Tidesley said wearily: “I’m afraid we’ve done everything we can do here in Krakatoa Dome, Lieu tenant. It’s time for me to board my sea-car and go out into the deeps. This is not the epicenter of the quake, you know. You’ve seen it on your own charts. I’ll go out, as close to the epicenter as I can, and make measurements—Make measurements…”
He said forcefully: “I only wish there was something I could do but make measurements!”
And then he passed a hand over his face. “Naturally,” he said, “I will take as many refugees with me as my sea-car will hold. But I fear it will be a long voyage to a safe harbor if the Dome fails.”
Lieutenant Tsuya stood up and saluted formally.“Cadet Danthorpe,” he rapped, “you will escort Father Tide to his sea-car. Good-by, sir.”
“Good-by,” echoed Father Tide. He shook Lt. Tsuya’s hand, then mine. He said one thing to me. It didn’t seem to mean anything to me at the time, but I know what it meant to Father Tide; it was a general injunction, a rule for action in every case. He said: “Have faith.”
And later it meant something very particular in this particular case, as well. Have faith. I should never have lost it.
As we were entering the Fleet Base approaches, Lt. Tsuya gripped my shoulder. “Look!” he cried.
We were at the Fleet landing basins. There were viewports in the Dome, and through them—
The Fleet was coming in.
In clouds and clusters, scores of sub-sea vessels of the Fleet were homing in on Krakatoa Dome. Whatever the mayor and city council might vote, the Fleet had its own orders, and was moving in to put them into force. We could see half a dozen squadrons, drawn in by radio and microsonar from their cruising ranges, vectoring in on the Dome. Not enough. Not nearly enough. I remembered the figures: More than half a million citizens would remain trapped in the Dome when the great quake struck, no matter what steps were taken toward evacuation in the time that remained. But oh, what a great sight that was, to see those lean, long, edenite-armored ships, shimmering in the pale light of their hulls, coming in toward the Fleet base!
But it was not enough, as I say.
Wearily, almost beyond hope, we went back to Station K to make more readings and more forecasts.
Canned dance music was on the Dome P.A. systemcanned dance music and reassuring statements from the City Council. In disgust, Lt. Tsuya finally turned it off.
We had completed another forecast, and what it showed was the same as always. The time varied slightly, the exact amplitude of the quake was off a few points—
But the big quake had yet to strike. All our forecasts agreed.
The shocks we had already suffered had damaged our instruments. There was no help for that; they had to be built to record the tiniest movements of the rock, and the severe jarring of even a Force Four shock was bound to knock them awry. Yeoman Harris, with a hastily gathered crew of instrument technicians, was busily checking and readjusting them while we made our forecasts.
When we were through, Lt. Tsuya demanded: “What about it, Harris? Is everything working right now?”
The yeoman scratched his head. “I’m not sure, Lieutenant,” he admitted. “Everything checks out, but—Well, see for yourself.”
Lt. Tsuya trotted over to the microseismograph. He took one look, then blazed:
“Ridiculous! You’ve got something wrong here. These readings—”
Then he paused.
He stared for a long time at the microseismograph trace, frowning. Then, in a different tone: “McKerrow. Eden. Come and see what you make of this.”
We hurried over to look.
The amplitude and distance trace was all wrong to begin with. It showed a small, steady, nearby vibration—too rapid and regular to be a rock movement, too strong and powerful to be any machine vibration. That was preposterous; no such vibration should exist. And then the direction shown—why, that was utterly out of the question! For the epicenter of this little disturbance was not down in the magma or at the plotted faults—it wasn’t down at all—it was, if anything, up higher than Station K itself!
McKerrow said bluntly: “The machine’s all wet. Get busy, Harris. You’ve messed it up.”
“No, wait,” said Lt. Tsuya. He scowled. “Watch the direction vector,” he commanded. “It isn’t constant. I’ve seen it change in the past few seconds.”
We watched.
And it was true! Whatever the cause of this small, steady disturbance was, it was not fixed in one place. It was moving, slowly but perceptibly; the readings changed under our eyes; while we watched the direction showed an azimuth change of three or four degrees, and an elevation change as well. The source of the disturbance dipped until it was level with the depth of Station K—then lower; and on the distance and amplitude trace it clearly showed that, whatever it was, it was coming closer.
“What in the world!” cried Lieutenant McKerrow. “Tsuya, have you got a pet earthquake coming to call on us?”
Tsuya shook his head.
He said solemnly: “Unless I’m crazy, I know what that is.
“It’s the MOLE! It has come back from the depths—and it’s cruising around right now, under Krakatoa Dome!”
For long minutes we stood there watching it—it was incredible! In spite of everything, I had hardly believed that any man-made machine could cruise through solid rock. I had seen our geosondes drop down into basalt, and hadn’t believed; I had seen the ship in the pit, and hadn’t believed; in spite of all reason and the evidence of my senses, the whole thing had just seemed too crazily ridiculous for belief.
But now—now I had to believe! For nothing else could explain what we were seeing. In the rock beneath us a machine, probably bearing my uncle and Bob Eskow, if not others, was swimming about as casually as a herring in the sea’s shallows!