Then—”Fuse away!” roared Gideon. Lt. Tsuya, white lines of strain showing around his mouth, came down hard on the port release valve. There was a sudden raucous whine of highspeed whirling ortholytic elements from inside the port, a clatter of metal against rock as the port thrust itself open—
And the first nuclear explosive was gone.
MOLE had laid her first egg with her new crew; two more remained.
We made tracks out of there.
Fourteen minutes later, exactly on schedule, there was a sudden shuddering moan that filled the little ship, almost drowning out for a second the noise of our frantic flight through the rock. The MOLE felt as if it were some burrowing animal indeed, caught in a ferret’s teeth, shaken and flung about as the rock shook in the throes of the quake we had triggered. The lights flickered, went out and came back on again—even dimmer than before. There was a heart-stopping falter in the noise of our drill—if it stopped, all stopped; without those whirling elements we were entombed beyond any chance of help. But it caught again; and the MOLE was strong enough to survive the shock.
“That was a close one!” yelled Gideon, grinning. “Next time, let’s leave a little more time on the fuse!”
“Impossible!” rapped Lt. Tsuya at once. “We can’t open those discharge ports again! The fuse settings will have to remain just as they are!”
And then he saw that Gideon was grinning at him. After a moment, the lieutenant returned his smile. “I thought you were serious for a moment,” he apologized.
The grin dried up on Gideon’s face. “It might get serious at that,” he said, suddenly cocking his ear to the sound of the drills. Bob Eskow, clutching the hand-brace beside me, said tautly:
“I hear it too! One of the drill elements must be working loose!”
I listened. Yes. There was something; but I wasn’t expert enough to know what. Above the banging and rasping there was an uneven note, something like an internal-combustion car with some of its cylinders misfiring; the MOLE seemed to stagger through the rock instead of cutting evenly.
I turned to Bob. He shrugged.
We let it go at that. There was nothing else to do…
The second egg went off on schedule. The second blast caught us and shook us just as hard as the first. But we survived—amazingly, when you stop to think that any one of those fuses contained atomic energy enough to trigger an H-blast big enough to slag a city. But even an H-bomb is tiny compared to the energies released in an earthquake; the bombs themselves, damped by miles of solid rock between us and them by the time they went off, were relatively weak; it was the quakes they triggered that endangered us.
But there was nothing to do about it.
Lt. Tsuya took a pencil and figured feverishly in the wan, flickering light; but he cast it away from him after a moment. “I hoped,” he muttered, “that that last quake might have been enough. But I’m not sure.”
Gideon called, calm and sure over the racket of the MOLE: “Trust John Koyetsu, Lieutenant! If he says we need eight quakes, then that’s what we need.”
The lieutenant nodded soberly. Then his pumpkin face twisted sharply. “To think,” he raged, “that all this could have been done on time—with extra crews and extra MOLEs to do it—if it hadn’t been for that city council! I’m a peaceful man—but I hope they get what they deserve!”
Above the infernal noise came the voice of Harley Danthorpe, and even in that moment we could all hear a note in it that explained all the tragedy and worry in his face:
“You get your wish, sir,” he said. “They did.”
Lt. Tsuya whirled to face him. “What are you talking about?” he demanded.
Harley Danthorpe’s face was entirely relaxed, entirely without emotion. He said, as though he were telling us the time by the ship’s clock: “Why, just what I say, sir. They got what they deserved.”
For a second his calm deserted him, and his face worked wildly. But he regained control of himself. “My father,” he said grimly, “and the mayor. And three or four of the council, too. They’re gone, Lieutenant.
“Do you remember sending me to the quays with Father Tide? While I was there I saw it. My father’s special sub-sea yacht was there—cost him half a million dollars! It was the pride of his life. He’d just had it overhauled, and for a minute, when I saw it, I thought that he’d given it to the people of Krakatoa, to help in the evacuation!
“But that was wrong. It wasn’t that way at all.”
Harley’s face was pale and stiff. He said, almost too low to hear above the clamoring din: “There were eight men boarding that yacht. Eight, when there was room for fifty! And all the rest of the space was taken up with papers. Stock certificates. Property deeds. Bonds—cash—everything my father owned in the way of wealth that he could bring with him. He was evacuating himself and a few friends, not the people of Krakatoa! I saw the mayor with him. And I saw them close the hatch and go into the locks.
“And I saw what happened, when the outer lock door opened.”
Harley gulped and shook his head.
“The edenite didn’t hold. When the sea pressure came into the lock, she caved flat. They—they were all killed, sir.”
For a moment we were silent.
Then Lt. Tsuya said, his voice oddly gentle: “I’m sorry, Danthorpe. Your father—”
“You don’t have to say anything,” Harley interrupted grimly. “I understand. But there’s one more thing I want to tell you. Remember that missing geosonde?”
Lt. Tsuya looked startled. “Of course.”
“Well, sir—I took it.” Harley swallowed, but doggedly went on. “My dad asked me to. I realized I broke regulations—by stealing it, and even by talking about it. I—” He stopped himself. He said abruptly: “I have no excuse, sir. But I did it. You see, he was going to have more made, using it as a model, in order to set up his own quake-forecasting service, privately. It was the same proposition he offered Doctor Koyetsu. He—he wanted to make money out of speculation.”
For a moment Harley’s face seemed as though he would lose control; but he hung on and said grimly: “I have no excuse, and I’ll face a board of investigation, if we ever get out of this. But I hope I’ll get another chance, Lieutenant.
“The inside drift—I never want to hear of it again! If I live through this—and if I get the chance—I only want one thing out of life. I want to be a good cadet of the Sub-Sea Fleet!”
Lt. Tsuya stood up to his full height. He said harshly: “Cadet Danthorpe! You’re that already! And now the subject is closed.”
It was a dramatic moment.
But it was broken by Gideon’s bellow from the controls: “Look at the time! Hurry it up, you down there—we’re in position! Get that last egg out of here so we can head for the barn!”
We had barely time to get out of the way of the quake this time. We were heading up at a steep slant, and making slow going of it as the worn old MOLE fought to keep itself alive. When the shock came we lost most of our lights, and they didn’t come back.
But the hull stayed in one piece, though it began to creak warningly.
It was a moment of high triumph. “We’ve done it!” whooped Bob, pounding me violently on the back. “I never thought we’d make it!”
“We haven’t made it yet!” bellowed Gideon. “Bob, come here on the double! Give me a hand with these controls!”
The pushbutton system was gone completely, shocked out of circuit by the last quake. Gideon was fighting to handle the stubby manual levers that were supposed to give emergency control of the ortholytic elements. But it was more than a one-man job; the whirling elements that could bite through solid rock were not to be deflected by a finger’s pressure; the best Bob and Gideon together could do was to inch it slowly over, and even then it could not be held.