Bob shrugged. But he didn’t look convinced.
“I hope you aren’t scared of quakes,” Harley said politely—too politely; it was like a sneer. “After all, even a lubber ought to get over being afraid of things like that. Just stick around, Bob. We aren’t afraid of quakes in Krakatoa Dome. Why, we call it ‘Seaquake City’! We built it to stand through a Force Nine quake—and they don’t come that strong very often. We’re riding the inside drift, and my dad has got rich on all the tin and uranium and oil that everybody else was afraid to touch.”
Well, that was about all the “inside drift” I could take. It bothered Bob even more than it did me. This Harley Danthorpe, he might be a real expert on seaquakes and life in Krakatoa Dome, but he didn’t know a thing about how to get along with his fellow man. I could see Bob’s face tightening in resentment.
Fortunately, that was about the end of that little discussion, because we had come to the gate of the Fleet Base.
“Halt!” rapped out a Sub-Sea Fleet guard, bright in seascarlet tunic, presenting arms. “Advance and identify yourselves!”
Harley Danthorpe snapped to. He marched three paces forward as though it was the drill field at the Academy. “Cadet Danthorpe, Harley!” he snapped. “With a detachment of two cadets, reporting to the commanding officer!”
The guard passed us in without another word…but as we entered I caught the ghost of a wink from him. Evidently he’d seen cadets as raw and fresh as Harley Danthorpe before!
We reported to a smooth-faced executive officer, who looked as though he’d been out of the Academy about three hours himself. He read our orders, frowned and finally said:
“You will be quartered here on the base. Yeoman Harris will show you to your quarters. You will report for duty to Lieutenant Tsuya.” He glanced at some memo on his desk. “You will find him down at Station K, at sixteen hundred hours.”
“Station K?” Harley Danthorpe repeated it uneasily, and glanced at us. We shook our heads. “Uh, beg pardon, sir,” he said. “Where is Station K?”
“Ten thousand feet down,” barked the young ensign.
“Ten—?” Harley couldn’t finish. Evidently this was one thing that the insider drift didn’t cover, because he was as much at sea as we were. Ten thousand feet down? But that was bedrock!
We didn’t have a chance to ask questions. The exec said irritably: “Yeoman Harris will show you the way. Anything else you need to know, you’ll learn from Lieutenant Tsuya. Dis—”
He didn’t get a chance to finish the word “dismissed.” Harley Danthorpe gulped and took a fresh grip on the inside drift.
“Sir!” he cried anxiously. “Please, Ensign. My family lives here in the Dome. I guess you’ve heard of my father. Mr. Benford Danthorpe, that is—he’s on the board of the Stock Exchange. May I have a pass to visit my family?”
The officer stared at him for a long second.
Then Harley gulped. “Oh,” he said, and added the missing word: “Sir.”
“Very well,” said the exec. “Your request is refused.”
“Refused? But—”
“That’s enough!” barked the officer. “As I’ve told you, Lieutenant Tsuya will be your commanding officer. You may ask him about it. Still, I can inform you that the answer will be negative, Mr. Danthorpe. Cadets in training here at Krakatoa Base are not granted passes for the first two weeks.”
“Two weeks!” Harley flinched. “But, sir! My father is the most important man in Kra—”
“Quite possibly! You, however, are a cadet!”
“Yes, sir.” For the first time, Harley Danthorpe’s voice lost its brassy twang.
We saluted.
But Bob Eskow said suddenly: “Sir! One question, please.”
“What’s that?”
“Well, sir, we’ve never been informed of what our duties are. Can’t you tell us?”
The ensign pursed his lips. Then, abruptly, he shrugged, and at once seemed to become more human.
“I can tell you this,” he said, his voice a normal speaking voice now, without the assumed military rasp he had put into it. “I envy you.”
“Envy us?”
The exec nodded seriously. “Your duties,” he said, “are something brand new in the history of the Fleet.
“The three of you are assigned to training in maritime seismology—the science of seaquakes. You are going to investigate not only the sea itself—but the rock beneath it as well!”
We got out of there somehow—I don’t remember how. Under the sea bottom!
It was a startling, almost a terrifying thought.
Yeoman Harris took us over and began leading us
toward the section of the base where we would be quartered. I hardly noticed the wonderful sights and sounds we passed—the clangorous shops where repairs were under way, the briskly marching squadrons of Sub-Sea Fleet men, all the feel of an operational base of the Fleet.
I looked at Bob, beside me.
Ten thousand feet down into rock! Would Bob be able to take it? He had always had difficulty—it was only raw courage that had got him through the Academy so far—what would happen now? If the icy miles of the sea were deadly, with a black pressure that could crush the mind as easily as the body, the solid crust of the earth would be many times worse.
Ten thousand feet down!
It was worse than anything the sea itself might bring to bear against us, I decided. Long years of research had perfected ways to hold back the deadly thrust of the sea—my uncle Stewart’s edenite armor was absolutely reliable, given the current to power it and the skill to use it properly.
But the Mole was still an untried experiment!
There would be a thousand problems to solve. Problems of survival. Refrigeration—as Bob had mentioned, back in Dixon Hall, when it was only a matter of casual discussion for us. Pressure! Edenite was powerful indeed…but could it hold up the crust of the earth? There would be a shielding problem—I remembered that the first atomic ortholytic drill had contaminated a whole Nevada mountain, so that it had to be fenced and abandoned for a hundred years, they said.
I took my mind off those worries as best I could.
Bob—I knew Bob. He could learn to take whatever might come up. I had the feeling that I was diving a little too deep, worrying about problems that might never come up.
But I didn’t know…
And, at that, Bob’s taut, pale face was not the most disturbed of the three of us; for behind Bob and me Harley Danthorpe limped along, as though his gear had suddenly become too heavy for him. He was muttering under his breath, about the importance of his father and the indignity of being ordered ten thousand feet down.
The inside drift had failed him, and I couldn’t help feeling a little sorry for him.
5
Quake Forecast!
Down deep there are no natural days.
Black night has been there since the rolling oceans first were filled. Life down deep doesn’t need the sun for a clock; it doesn’t have a clock; there is no time. Sub-Sea Time—set by the Fleet Observatory at Bermuda—is everywhere the same.
At 15:15 hours, Yeoman Harris appeared at our quarters to escort us down to Station K.
We dropped in an elevator down to the very base of the city—below dock level, even, but not anywhere near down as far as we were to go. Here we passed through gloomy storage spaces, with glimpses of dark tunnels choked with air conduits and the coiled piping that served the city above. We could hear the bass throbbing of the pumps that sucked the trickling waste water from all the myriad drains and catch basins of the city, collected it in sumps and forced it, under fantastic pressure, out into the hungrily thrusting sea outside. We walked out into an arched tunnel whose dripping roof was black basaltic rock, still marked with the ragged bite of the drills that had cut it out of the sea’s bottom when the Dome was built.