I stopped in the middle of the wish, and forgot what it was I was going to wish for.
Something fast and faintly glowing was brightening the swells beneath us. I pointed. “Look, Bob!”
It was a faint blue shimmer in the black water; it grew brighter, and shaped itself into the long hull of a sub-sea ship, strangely familiar, surfacing close to us.
“They’re here!” I cried. “Bob, they’re here!”
He stared at the gleaming hull, then at me.
He said dazedly, “I should have cut off the sonarphone. They heard me.”
“What are you talking about?” I demanded. “You wanted the Fleet, didn’t you?”
I stopped then, because all at once I knew I was wrong—badly wrong, terribly wrong.
I knew then why that long hull, shimmering blue under the gentle wash of the waves, had seemed familiar. I hardly heard Bob saying:
“That’s not the Fleet. It’s the Killer Whale! They heard my message on the sonarphone!”
21
Aboard the Killer Whale
The amphibians had us aboard their sub-sea cruiser and hatches closed. I don’t think it took more than a minute. We were too startled, too shocked to put up much of a fight.
And there was no point to a fight, not any more. If there was any hope for us anywhere, it was as likely to be aboard the Killer as waiting hopelessly on the raft.
The Killer stank. The fetid air reeked with the strange, sharp odor of the gleaming plants of the Trench, the aroma I associated with the amphibians. The whole ship was drenched with fog and trickling, condensed moisture. Everything we touched was wet, and clammy, and dappled with rust and mold.
There must have been twenty amphibians aboard the Killer. They manhandled us down the gangways, with hardly a word. I don’t know if most of them spoke English or not; when they talked among themselves it was with such a slurring of the consonants and a singing of the vowels that I couldn’t understand them.
But they took us to Joe Trencher.
The pearl-eyed leader of the amphibians was in the conn room, captain of the ship. He was naked to the waist and he had rigged up a spray nozzle on a water coupling that kept him continually drenched with salt water.
He stood scowling at us while he sprayed his fishbelly skin. He looked like some monster from an old legend, but I didn’t miss the fact that he had conned the ship into a steep, circling dive as briskly as any Fleet officer.
“Why do you interfere against us?” he demanded.
I spoke for both of us. “The Crakens are our friends. And the Fleet has jurisdiction over the whole sea bottom.”
He scowled without speaking for a moment. He broke into a fit of coughing and wheezing under his spray.
“I’ve caught a cold,” he muttered accusingly, glowering at us. “I can’t stand this dry air!”
Bob said sharply: “It isn’t dry. In fact, you’re ruining this ship! Don’t you know this moisture will rot it out?”
Trencher said angrily: “It is my ship! Anyway—” he shrugged—”it will last long enough. Already we have defeated the Crakens and once they are gone we shall no longer need this ship.”
I took a deep breath. Defeated the Crakens! I asked: “Are they—are they—”
He finished for me. “Dead, you mean?” He shrugged again. “If they are not, it will be only a short time. They are defeated, do you hear me?” He hurled the spray nozzle away from him as though the mere thought of them had infuriated him. At least there was still some hope, I thought If they could only hold out a little longer…
Trencher was wheezing: “Explain! We saw you flee to the surface, and we heard your message. But I do not understand it! Who is diatom? Who is radiolarian? What do you mean about the molluscans?”
Bob glanced at me, then moved a step toward him.
“I am diatom,” he said. “Radiolarian is my superior officer, Trencher—a commander of the Sub-Sea Fleet! As diatom, I was on a special mission—concerning the Tonga pearls and you and your people. I needed information, and I got it; and my message will bring the whole Fleet here, if necessary, to put down any resistance and take over this entire area!” He sounded absolutely self-assured, absolutely confident. I hardly recognized him!
He went on, with a poise that an admiral might envy: “This is your last chance, Trencher. I advise you to give up. I’m willing to accept your surrender now!”
It was a brave attempt.
But the amphibian leader had courage of his own. For a moment he was shaken; he stood there, blinking and wheezing, with a doubt in his eye. But then he exploded into raucous, gasping laughter. He caught up his spray again and wet himself down, still laughing.
“Ridiculous,” he hissed, wheezing. “You are fantastic, young man. I have you here aboard my ship, and you live only as long as I wish to let you live. And you ask me to surrender!”
Bob said quickly: “It’s your only chance. I—”
“Silence!” Trencher bellowed. He stood there, panting and scowling for a moment, while he made up his mind. “Enough. Perhaps you are a spy—I don’t know. But I heard your message, and I did not hear a reply. Did it reach the Fleet? I think not, my young air-breather. And you will not have another chance, for we are now diving toward the Trench.”
He played the spray nozzle on his face, staring at us through the tiny slits that half-covered his pearly eyes. “You will not see the sky again, young man. I cannot let you live.”
Joe Trencher shrugged and spread his webbed fingers in a gesture that disclaimed responsibility. It was a sentence of death, and both Bob and I knew it.
Yet—even in that moment, I saw something in the amphibian’s cold, pearly eyes that might almost have been sadness—compassion—regret.
He said heavily: “It is not that I wish to destroy you. It is only that you have left us no choice. We must keep the secret of the Tonga Trench to ourselves, and you wish to tell it to the world. We cannot allow that! We must keep you in the Trench. It is too bad that you cannot breathe salt water—but it is your misfortune, not ours, that this air will not last forever.”
I was sweating, even in the cold and damp, but I tried to reason with him. “You can’t keep your secret, Trencher. The exploration of the sea is moving too fast. If we don’t come back, other men will be here to find the saurians and the shining weed and the Tonga pearls.”
“They may come.” He nodded heavily. “But we can’t let them go back to the surface.”
I demanded: “Why?”
“Because we are different, air-breather!” Trencher blinked, like a sad-faced idol in some queer temple, with Tonga pearls for eyes. “We learned our lesson many generations ago! We are mutations, as Jason Craken calls us—but once we were human. Our ancestors lived on the islands. And when some of us tried to go back, the islanders tried to kill us! They drove us into the sea. We found the Trench—and it is a kind world for us, young man, a world where we can live at peace.
“At peace—as long as we are left alone!”
He was wheezing and panting and struggling for breath—and it seemed to me that part of his distress was in his feelings and his mind. He sounded earnest and tragic. Even though he was saying that, in cold blood, he was going to take our lives—I couldn’t help thinking that I almost understood how he felt.
Perhaps he had good reasons to hate and fear the breathers of air!
I said slowly: “Trencher, it seems there have been mistakes on both sides. But don’t you see, we must make a peace that is fair to your people and to men! Men need you—but you need men, as well. You amphibians can be of great help in carrying out the conquest of the sea bottoms. But our society has many things you must have as well. Medicine. Scientific discoveries. Help of a thousand kinds—”