“Oh, the bid was enough,” said Gideon. “But—”
“But what, Gideon?”
He sighed. “I guess Joe Trencher knew what he was doing,” he said, in that soft, chuckling voice, now sounding worried. “He put in a bid himself, you see.”
It was bad news.
We looked at each other. David said at last, his voice hoarse and ragged: “Joe Trencher. With the pearls he stole from me, he bought the ship I need to save my father’s life. And there’s no time now to go back and try something else. It’s almost time—”
Time for what, I wondered—but Roger Fairfane interrupted him. “Is that it, Gideon?” he demanded. “Did Trencher make a higher bid, so that we don’t have a ship?”
Gideon shook his head.
“Not exactly,” he said. “Trencher owns the Killer Whale now, but he got it for fifty thousand dollars—the same as you bid.”
“But—but then what—”
“You see,” said Gideon gently, “Trencher wasn’t just looking at those papers. He—changed them. Changed them his way. I made the Fleet commander show them to me, and it was obvious that they’d been changed—but of course I couldn’t prove anything.” He looked at us somberly. “The ship you bid on wasn’t the Killer Whale,” he said. “Not after Trencher got through with the papers. What you bid on—and what you now own—is the other one. The heap of rust, as you called it, Jim. The Dolphin.”
12
Rustbucket Navy
The next day David Craken and I went to Sargasso City to pick up our prize.
The Killer Whale still lay in the slip beside it. Obsolescent, no doubt—but sleek and deadly as the sea beast for which she was named. She lay low in the water, her edenite hull rippling with pale light where the wavelets washed against it.
Next to the Killer, our Dolphin looked like the wreck she was.
Naturally, there was no sign of Joe Trencher. For a moment I had the wild notion of waiting there—keeping a watch on the Killer Whale, laying in wait until Trencher came to claim the ship he had cheated us out of and then confronting him…
But what good would it have done? And besides, there was no time. David had said several times that we had only a few weeks. In July something was going to happen—something that he was mysterious about, but something that was dangerous.
It was now the beginning of June. We had at the most four weeks to refit the Dolphin, get under weigh, make the long voyage down under the Americas, around the Horn (for we had to avoid the Fleet inspection that would come if we went through the Canal)—and help David’s father.
It was a big job…
And the Dolphin was a very small ship.
David looked at me and grinned wryly. “Well,” he said, “let’s go aboard.”
The Dolphin had been a fine and famous ship—thirty years before.
We picked our way through a tangle of discarded gear—evidently her last crew had been so happy to get off her that they hadn’t waited to pack!
We found ourselves in her wardroom. The tarnished brass tablets welded to the bulkhead recorded the high moments of her history. We paused to read them.
In spite of everything, I couldn’t help feeling a thrill.
She had held the speed and depth records for her class for three solid years.
She had been the flagship of Admiral Kane—back before I was born, on his Polar expeditions, when he sonargraphed the sea floor under the ice.
She had hunted down and sunk the subsea pirate who used the name Davy Jones.
And later—still seaworthy, but too old for regular service with the Fleet—she had become a training ship at the Academy. She’d been salvaged two or three years back, just before any of us had come to the Academy, and finally put up for auction.
And now she was ours.
We took a room for the night in one of Sargasso Dome’s hotels. It was a luxurious place, full of pleasures for vacationers and tourists anxious to sample the imitation mysteries of the fabled Sargasso Sea. But we were in no mood to enjoy it. We went to bed and lay awake for a long time, both of us, wondering if the Dolphin’s ancient armor would survive the crushing pressures of the Deeps…
Roger Fairfane shook us awake.
I sat up, blinking, and glanced at my wristchronometer.
It was only about five o’clock in the morning. I said blurrily, “Roger! What—what are you doing here? I thought you were still in Bermuda.”
“I was.” He was scowling worriedly. “We had to come right away—all of us. Laddy’s with me, and Bob and Gideon. We took the night shuttle from Bermuda.”
David was out of his bed, standing beside us. “What’s the matter, Roger?”
“Plenty! It’s that Joe Trencher again! The bid he made on the Dolphin—it was in the name of something called the Sub-Sea Salvage Corporation. Well, somebody checked into the sale of surplus ships—and they found that no such firm existed. Gideon found out that an order is going to be issued at nine o’clock this morning, canceling all sales.
“So—if we want to use the Dolphin to help your father, David, we’ve got to get under weigh before the order comes through at nine!”
It didn’t give us much time!
David and I had looked forward to at least a full day’s testing of the Dolphin’s old propulsion and pressure equipment. Even then, it would have been dangerous enough, taking the old ship out into the crushing pressures that surrounded Sargasso Dome.
But now we had only hours!
“Well—thank heaven we’ve got help,” muttered David as we dressed hurriedly and checked out of the hotel. “I’m glad Gideon flew in from Marinia! And Laddy. We’ll need every one of us, to keep that old tub of rust afloat!”
“I only hope that’s enough to do it,” I grumbled. We raced after Roger Fairfane, down the corridors, through the passenger elevators, to the sea-floor levels where the Dolphin and the Killer Whale floated quietly…
“It’s gone!” cried Dave as we came onto the catwalk over the basin. “The Killer’s gone!”
“Sure it is,” said Roger. “Didn’t I tell you? Trencher must have heard too—the Killer was already gone when we got here. Isn’t that the payoff?” he went on disgustedly. “Trencher’s the one that caused all this trouble—but he’s got away already with the Killer “
Gideon was already at work, checking the edenite armor film, his face worried. He looked up as we trotted up the gangplank to the above-decks hatch.
“Think she’ll stand pressure, Gideon?” I asked him.
He pushed back his hat and stared at the rippling line of light where the little wavelets licked the Dolphin’s side.
“Think so?” he repeated. “No, Jim. I’ll tell you the truth. I don’t think so. Not from anything I can see. She ought to be towed out and scuttled, from what I see. Her edenite film’s defective—it’ll need a hundred-hour job of repair on the generators before I can really trust it. Her power plant is ten years overdue for salvage. One of her pumps is broken down. And the whole power plant, pumps and all, is hot with leaded radiation. If I had my way, I’d scrap the whole plant down to. the bedplates.”
I stared at him. “But—but, Gideon
He held up his hand. “All the same, Jim,” he went on, in his soft voice, “she floats. And I’ve talked to the salvage officer here—got him out of bed to do it—and she came in on her own power, with her own armor keeping the sea out. Well, that was only a month ago. If she could do it then, she can do it now.”