“But it is my father they still respect, even though they are fighting him. If he would try to make peace—yes, that might work. But he never will. He can’t. His mind simply cannot accept it.”
I said, suddenly struck by a thought: “David! This must have happened before, hasn’t it? I don’t mean the rebellion of the amphibians, but the breeding season of the saurians. What did you do other years, when they made their procession up to the caves in the sea mount? How did you keep them from damaging the dome?”
David shrugged wretchedly. “The amphibians herded them” he said. “We would station a dozen of them outside the dome with floodlights and gongs. Sound carries under water, you know—and the sound of the gongs and the light from the floods would keep them away from the dome. Oh, we had a good many narrow escapes—my father never should have built his dome right here, in their track. But he is a willful man.
“But without the amphibians to help us—with them attacking at the same time—it’s hopeless.”
There was no more time for discussion.
We heard a dull crunch of another jet missile from the Killer Whale—and then another, and a third, almost at once.
And simultaneously, the light, staccato rattle of our own turret missile-gun, as Gideon, high above us, fired in return.
We all turned to stare at the mosaic of the sea-mount below us.
The herd of saurians were milling purposelessly no longer. Two, three, four of them had started coming up toward us—more were following.
And the glittering hull of the Killer Whale was coming in with them, firing as it came.
19
Sub-Sea Stampede!
The dome was thundering and quivering under the almost incessant fire from the Killer Whale.
Gideon was returning their fire—coolly, desperately…and in the end, hopelessly. But he was managing to keep the saurians in a state of confusion. He had beaten back the first surge of a handful of the enormous beasts. The main herd had milled a bit more, than another batch had made the dash for their breeding trail past the dome. The explosions of our little missile-gun had demoralized and confused them.
There had been a third attempt, and a fourth.
And each time Gideon had managed to rout the monsters. But I had kept a rough count, and I knew what Gideon knew: We were nearly out of missiles. I thought of Gideon, clinging desperately to his missile-gun high above, and felt regret. This wasn’t his fight; I had got myself into it, but I blamed myself for involving Gideon.
But I didn’t have much time for such thoughts, for we were busy.
David had had one desperate idea: We would recharge the little oxygen flasks in our pressure suits, feed as much charge into the batteries as they would take, and try at the last to go out into the deep with the lights and the gongs, to see if we could herd the saurians away from the dome.
The idea was desperation itself—for surely the amphibians, stronger and better-equipped, would be driving the frantic monsters in upon us, and there was little doubt that it was going to be a harrowingly unsafe place to be, out at the base of the dome, under four miles of water, with thirty-ton saurians milling and raving about in frenzy.
But it was the only chance we had.
Jason Craken was mooning about by himself, talking excitedly in gibberish; Gideon and Roger were fully occupied in the turret. It left only Laddy, David, the sea-girl Maeva, and myself to try to get the suits ready for us.
For Bob Eskow was nowhere to be seen.
It took us interminable minutes, while the dome rocked and quivered under our feet. Then David threw down the last oxygen cylinder angrily. “No more gas in the tank!” he cried. “We’ll have to make do with what we have. How do we stand, Laddy?”
Laddy Angel, fitting cylinders into the suits, counted rapidly and shrugged.
“It is not good, my friend David,” he said softly. “There is not much oxygen—”
“I know that! How much?”
Laddy frowned and squinted thoughtfully. “Perhaps—perhaps twenty minutes for each suit. Four suits. We have enough oxygen for four of us to put on suits and go out into the abyss, to try to frighten away your saurians.
Only—” he shrugged. “It is what they teach at the Academy,” he confessed, “but I am not sure it is true here. So many cubic centimeters of oxygen, so many seconds of safe breathing time. But I cannot be sure, David, if the instructors in my classroom were thinking of such a use of breath as we shall be making! We must leap and pound gongs and jump about like cheerleaders at a football game, and I have some doubt that the air that would last twenty minutes of quiet walking about will last as long while we cavort like acrobats.”
David demanded feverishly: “Power?”
That was my department. I had hooked the leyden-type batteries onto the dome’s own power reactor, watched the gauges that recorded the time.
“Not much power,” I admitted. “But if we only have twenty minutes of breathing time, it doesn’t matter. The power will hold the edenite armor on the suits for at least twice that.”
David stood thoughtfully silent for a moment.
Then he shrugged. “Well,” he said, “it’s the best we can do. If it isn’t good enough—”
He didn’t finish the sentence.
He didn’t have to, because we all knew what it meant if we failed.
Lacking oxygen and power, we could be out on the floor of the sea for only a few minutes—so we had to wait there in the conn room until the stampede was raging upon us. We watched the mosaic screens for the sign of the big rush, the rush that Gideon with his missile-gun would not be able to stem.
We didn’t speak much; there wasn’t much left to say.
And I remembered again: Bob Eskow was missing.
Where had he got to? I said: “David—Bob’s been gone a long time. We’ll need him—when we go outside.” David frowned, his eyes intent on the screen. “He was rummaging through the storerooms—looking for more oxygen cylinders, I think, though I told him there weren’t any. Perhaps one of us should look for him.” He turned to the sea-girl, Maeva, who stood silently by, watching us with wide, calm eyes. I envied her! If the saurians blundered through our weak defenses and the dome came pounding down—she at least would live!
And then I remembered Joe Trencher and his blazing anger against everything connected with the Crakens, and I wasn’t so sure that she would live, after all. For surely Joe Trencher would not spare a traitor to the amphibian people, one who took the side of the Crakens against them.
“Maeva,” he told her, “see if you can find him.”
She nodded, gasping for breath, and started soundlessly out of the conn room. But she didn’t have to go far, for as she reached the door Bob appeared on the other side.
We all stared at him. He was lugging a huge, yellow-painted metal cylinder, a foot thick and as long as Bob himself. Black letters were stenciled on the yellow:
DEEP SEA SURVIVAL KIT
Contents: Four-place raft, with emergency survival and signal equipment. Edenite shield tested to twenty thousand feet.