He grinned. “Might as well see if we’re going to be able to pay for it,” he agreed.
This time my call went right through.
But the person who answered was not my uncle. It was a vision-phone, and the picture before my eyes swirled and cleared and took form. It was Gideon Park—my uncle’s most trusted helper, the man who had saved my life in the drains under Thetis Dome so long ago!
His black face looked surprised, then grinned, his teeth flashing white. “Young Jim! It’s good to see you, boy!” Then he looked oddly concerned. “I guess you want your uncle, eh? He’s—uh—he can’t be reached right now, Jim. Can I help you? You’re not in trouble at the Academy, are you?”
“No, nothing like that, Gideon. Where is my uncle?”
He hesitated. “Well, Jim—”
“Gideon! What’s the matter? Is anything wrong?”
He said, “Now, hold on, Jim. He’s going to be all right. But he’s—well, he’s sleeping right now. I’ve had the phone disconnected all day so as not to disturb him, and I don’t want to wake him up unless—”
“Gideon, tell me what’s wrong with my uncle!” He said soberly: “It isn’t too bad, I promise you that, Jim. But the truth is, he’s sick.”
“Sick!”
Gideon nodded, the black face worried and sympathetic. “He had some sort of an attack. Three days ago it was. He got a letter from an old acquaintance of his. He was reading it, right here at his desk, when suddenly he keeled over—”
“A heart attack?”
Gideon shook his head. He said in his soft, warm voice: “Nothing so simple, Jim. All the sea-medics say is that your uncle has been under too much pressure. He has lived too deep, too long.”
That was true enough, no doubt of it. I remembered my uncle’s long, exciting life in the Deeps. The time when he had been trapped—just a few months back—in a crippled ship at the bottom of the deepest trench in the southwest Pacific. His recovery had seemed complete, when Gideon and I found him and brought him back—but the human body was not evolved for the life of a deep-sea fish. High pressure and drugs can sometimes have unexpected effects.
“Can I speak to him?”
“Well—the sea-medics say he shouldn’t have too much excitement, Jim. Is it—is it anything I can help with?”
I only paused a second—I knew I could trust Gideon as much as my uncle himself. I began to pour out the whole mixed-up story of the pearly-eyed men and the Tonga pearls and David Craken—
“Craken? Did you say David Craken?”
I stopped, staring at Gideon through the viewscreen. “Why, yes, Gideon. His father’s name is Jason Craken— or that’s what he calls himself.”
“A queer thing! Craken, Jim—that’s the letter that came! The letter your uncle was reading when he had the attack—from Jason Craken!” He hesitated a second.
Then: “Hold on, Jim,” he ordered. “Sink the sea-medics—I’ll wake him up!”
There was a moment’s pause, then a quick shadowy flicker as Gideon transferred the call at his end to an extension in my uncle’s bedroom.
I saw my uncle Stewart sitting, propped up, in a narrow bed. His face looked hollow and thin, but he smiled to see me. Evidently he had been lying there awake, for there was no trace of sleepiness in his manner.
“Jim!” His voice seemed hoarse and weary, but strong. What’s this stuff Gideon is telling me?”
Quickly I told him what I had told Gideon—and more, from the moment I had met David Craken on the gym ship until the actual filling out of the bid for purchase of the Killer Whale. “And he said to call you, Uncle Stewart,” I finished. “And—and so I did.”
“I’m glad you did, Jim!” My uncle closed his eyes for a second, thinking, “We’ve got to help him, Jim,” he said at last. “It’s a debt of honor.”
“A debt?” I stared at the viewscreen. “But I didn’t know you ever heard of Jason Craken—”
He nodded. “It’s something I never told you, Jim. Years ago, when your father and I were young. We were exploring the rim of the Tonga Trench—as far down as we could go in the diving gear we had then. We were looking for pearls. Tonga pearls.”
He nodded. “Tonga pearls,” he said again.” Well, we found them. But we couldn’t keep them, Jim, because while your father and I were out in pressure suits—right at the bottom of the safe limit—we were attacked. I—I can’t tell you what attacked us, Jim, because I gave my word. Perhaps the Crakens themselves will tell you sometime. But we were hauled farther and farther down into the deep—far past the rated limits of our armor. It began to fail.”
He paused, remembering that far-off day. Oddly, he smiled. “I thought we were done then, Jim,” he said. “But we were rescued. The man who rescued us was—Jason Craken.
“Jason Craken!” My uncle was sitting up now, and for a moment his voice was strong. “A strange name—for a strange man! He was short-spoken, almost rude, a little odd. He wore a beard. He dressed like a dandy. He had a taste for luxuries, a lavish spender, a generous host. And a very shrewd man, Jim. He sold Tonga pearls—no one else could compete with him, because no one else knew where they came from. It was worth a fortune to him to keep that monopoly secret, Jim.
“And your father and I—we knew the secret. And he saved our lives.
“He risked his own life to save us—and he endangered the secret of the pearls. But he trusted us. We promised never to come back to the Tonga Trench. We gave our word never to say where the pearls came from.
“And if he needs help now, Jim—it’s up to you and me to see that he gets it.”
He frowned. “I—I can’t do much myself, Jim—I’m laid up for a while. I suppose it was the shock of Jason Craken’s letter. But he mentioned that he might need money for a fighting ship, and I’ve been able to raise some. Not a fortune. But—enough, I think. I’ll see that you get it as fast as I can get it to you. Buy the Killer Whale for him. Help him any way you can.”
He slumped back against the bed and grinned at me. “That’s all, Jim. Better sign off now—this call must be costing a fortune! But remember—we owe a lot to Jason Craken, because if it hadn’t been for him neither you nor I would be here now.”
And that was all.
I turned, a little shaken, to where David was waiting outside the booth.
“It’s all right, David,” I told him, glancing around the room. “He’s going to help. We’ll get some money from him—enough, he says. And—”
I broke off. “David!” I cried. “Look—over there, where we were filling out the application forms!”
He whirled. He had left the forms on a little desk to come over while I called my uncle. They were still there—and over them was bending the figure of a man.
Or was it man? For the figure turned and saw us looking at him—saw us with pearly eyes, that contracted and glared. It was the person from the sea who called himself “Joe Trencher”!
He turned and ran—through the door, out into the crowded passages beyond. “Come on!” cried David. “Let’s catch him—maybe he’s still got the pearls!”
10
Tencha of Tonga Trench
We scoured Sargasso City that day—but we never found Joe Trencher.
At the end, David stopped, panting.
“We’ve lost him,” he said. “Once he got out of sight, he was gone.”
“But he’s got to be in the city somewhere! We can search level by level—”
“No.” David shook his head. “He doesn’t have to be in the city, Jim. He—isn’t like you and me, Jim. He might calmly walk into an escape lock and disappear into the sea, and we’d be spending our next month searching in here while he was a hundred miles away.”