“Perhaps you should,” said David Craken.
“Wake up, boy!” cried Bob. “I’m telling you I’ve been in the Deeps—don’t try to tell me about them. The only time either Jim or I ever heard the words ‘sea-serpent’ used, the whole time we were in Marinia, was by silly old yarn-spinners, trying to cadge drinks by telling lies. Where do you hear stories like that, Craken? Out in Iowa or Kansas, where you came from?”
“No,” said David Craken. “That isn’t where I came from.” He hesitated, looking at us queerly. “I—I was born in Marinia,” he told us. “I’ve lived there all my life, nearly four miles down.”
2
The Looters of the Sea
At the bow, the stubby little sub-sea tugs were puffing and straining at the cables, towing us at a slow and powerful nine knots toward the off-shore submarine slopes. It was full daybreak now, and the sky was a wash of color, the golden sun looming huge ahead of us, wreathed in the film of cloud at the horizon.
Bob Eskow said: “Marinia? You? You’re from—But what are you doing here?”
David Craken said gravely: “I was born near Kermadec Dome, in the South Pacific. I came to the Academy as an exchange student, you see. There are a few of us here—from Europe, from Asia, from South America. And even me, from Marinia.”
“I know that. But—”
Craken said, with a flash of humor: “But you thought I was a lubber who’d never seen the sea. Well, the fact of the matter is that until two months ago I’d never seen anything else. I was born four miles down. That’s why the sky and the sun and the stars seem—well, just as fantastic to me as sea serpents apparently are to you.”
“Don’t kid me!” Bob flashed. “The sea-bottoms have been well explored—”
“No.” He looked at us almost imploringly, praying us to believe him. “They have not. There are a handful of cities, tied together with the tubes. There are explorers and prospectors in all the Deeps, an occasional deep-sea farm, a few miles away from the dome cities. But the floor of the sea, Bob, is three times larger than the whole Earth’s dry-land area. Microsonar can find some things; visual observation can find a few more. But the rest of the sea-bottom is as scarcely populated and as unknown as Antarctica…”
The warning klaxon sounded, and that was the end of our chat.
We raced across the deck toward the hatchways, even while the voice of sea coach Blighman rattled out of the loudspeaker:
“Clear the deck. Clear the deck. All cadets report for depth shots. We dive in ten minutes.”
A dark, lean cadet joined us as we ran. “David,” he called, “I lost you! We must go for the injections now!”
David said: “Meet my friend, Eladio Angel.”
“Hi,” Bob panted as we trotted along, and I nodded.
“Laddy’s an exchange student, like me.”
“From Marinia too?” I asked.
“No, no!” he cried, grinning. His teeth flashed very white. “From Peru. As far from Marinia as from here is my home. I—”
He stopped, queuing up at happening. The working crew was yelling for Sea Coach Blighman.
We turned to look toward the stern. Lieutenant Blighman, his shark’s eyes flashing, came boiling up out of the hatchway. We scattered out of his way as he raced toward the stern.
One of the fathometers was missing.
We could hear the excited cries of the working crew. They had been securing the first of the fathometers on deck, where it would provide a constant record of our dives. The second, still on the landing staring toward the stern. We were the hatchways, but something was stage—was gone. Gone, when no one was looking. Nearly a hundred pounds of sea-tight casing and instruments; and it was gone.
We lined up to get our shots. Everyone was talking about the missing fathometer. “The working crew,” Captain Fairfane said wisely. “They didn’t lash it. A swell came along and—”
“There was no swell,” said David Craken, almost to himself.
Fairfane glowered. “Ten-hut!” he barked. “There’s too much noise in this line!”
We quieted down; but David Craken was right. There had been no swell, no way for the hundred-pound instrument to fall over the side of the landing stage. It was just—gone. And it wasn’t the first such incident, I remembered. The week before, a sub-sea dory, pneumatic powered, big enough for one man, had astonishingly disappeared from the recreation beach. Possibly, I thought excitedly, the two disappearances were connected! Someone in a sub-sea dory could have slipped up behind the gym ship, surfaced while the work crew was busy on deck, stolen the fathometer—
No. It was impossible. For one thing, the dory was not fast enough to catch even the waddling raft we were on; for another, the microsonars would have spotted it. Possibly a very fast skin-diver, lying in wait in our path and vectoring in to our course in the microsonar’s blind spot, could have done it, but it was ridiculous to think of a skin-diver out that far on the Atlantic.
I thought for a moment of the fantastic remark David Craken had made—the sea serpent.…
But that was ridiculous.
The diving bells jangled, and the ungainly sub-sea raft tipped and wallowed down under the surface. Above us, the sub-sea tugs would be cruising about, one of the surface, one at our own level, to guard against wandering vessels and, if necessary, to render emergency rescue service.
We were ready for our qualifying dives.
The injections were a mild sting, a painful rubbing, and that was all. I didn’t feel any different after they were over. Bob was wincing and trying not to show it; but he was cheerful enough as we raced from the sickbay to our diving-gear lockers.
The gym ship was throbbing underfoot as its little auxiliary engines, too small to make it a sea-going craft under its own power, took over the job of maintaining depth and station. I could smell the faint, sharp odor of the ship itself, now that the fresh air from the surface was cut off. I could almost see, in my mind’s eye, the green waves foaming over the deck, and I could feel all the mystery and vastness of the sub-sea world we were entering.
Bob nudged me, grinning. He didn’t have to speak; I knew what he was feeling. The sea!
Cadet Captain Fairfane broke in on us. I had seen him talking excitedly to Sea Coach Blighman, but I hadn’t paid much attention; I thought it might have been about the missing fathometer.
But it was not. Fairfane came aggressively up to me, his good-looking face angry, his eyes blazing. “Eden! I want to talk to you.”
“Yessir!” I rapped out.
“Never mind the sir. This is man-to-man.”
I was surprised. Roger Fairfane and I were not particularly close friends. He had been quite friendly when Bob and I first came back to his class—then, without warning, cold. Bob’s notion was that he was afraid I would go after his place as cadet captain, though that didn’t seem likely; the post came as a result of class standings and athletic attainment, and Fairfane had an impressive record. But Bob didn’t like him anyhow—perhaps because he thought Roger Fairfane had too much money. His father was with one of the huge sub-sea shipping companies—Roger never said exactly what his position was, but he made it sound important.
“What do you want, Roger?” I hung my sea jacket in the locker and turned to talk to him.
“Eden,” he said sharply, “we’re being cheated, you and I!”
“Cheated?” I stared at him.
“That’s right! This Craken kid, he swims like a devilfish! With him against us, we haven’t got a chance.”
I said: “Look, Roger, this isn’t a race. It doesn’t matter if David Craken can take the pressure a few fathoms deeper than you and—”