I stopped and stared at him. “But—”
Eladio Angel held up his hand to interrupt me. “No, no,” he begged, “do not tell me he is lost. For I know this, Jeem, and also I know David. I cannot say why I think it, but think it I do.” He shrugged with a small smile. “But he ees declared missing and presumed to be drowned, that is true. And so no matter what Eladio thinks, Eladio must abide by what the Academy says. So I am packing his things now, Jeem, to send them back to his father near Kermadec Dome.” He hesitated, then asked: “Would you—would you care to see something, Jeem?”
I said, “Well, thanks. But it doesn’t seem right to pry.”
“No, no! No prying, Jeem. It is only something that you might like to see, Jeem. Nothing personal. A—a thing that David made. It is not only not private, it is hanging on the wall for all to see. Perhaps you should see it before I take it down.”
Well, why not? Although I hadn’t known David Craken well, I thought of him as a friend, and I was curious to see what Laddy Angel was talking about. We went to the room he had shared with David, and I saw it at once.
The spot over the head of a cadet’s bed is his own, to do with as he will. Half the cadets in the Academy have photos of their girl friends hanging there, most of the other half have their mothers’ pictures, or photos of sub-sea vessels, or once in a while a signed portrait of some famous submariner or athlete.
Over David Craken’s bed hung a small, unframed water color.
He had painted it himself; it was signed “DC” in the lower right-hand corner. And it showed—
It was a sub-sea scene. A great armored sub-sea creature was bursting out of a tangled forest of undersea plants.
There was very little about the scene that was familiar, or even believable. The vegetation was straftge to me—vast thick leaves, somehow looking luminous against the dark water. The armored thing itself was just as strange, with a very long neck, wicked fanged flippers—
But with the same head I had seen over the side of the gym ship—if I had seen anything—eleven hundred feet down.
And there was something that was odder stilclass="underline"
When I looked more closely at the picture, I saw that the monster was not alone. Seated on its back, jabbing at it with a long goad like a mahout on an elephant, was a human figure.
For a moment I had been shocked into believing fantastic things. Sea serpents!
But the human figure put a stop to it. I might have believed in the existence of sea serpents. I might have thought that his picture was some sort of corroboration of what I had thought I had seen and what the sonarmen thought they had picked up and what David had talked about.
But the man on the monster’s back—that made it pure fantasy, the whole thing, just something that a youth from Marinia had painted to idle away some time.
I thanked Eladio for letting me see the picture and left.
Bob still had not returned from the Commandant’s office.
I went to chow and returned; still no Bob. I began to worry. I had thought it was only to ask him for his report on David’s loss that he had been called in; but surely it couldn’t have taken that long. I began to fear that it was something worse. Lieutenant Blighman was there with the Commandant; could it be that the sea coach had called Bob in in order to disqualify him? Certainly he was now a borderline case. All of us were required to qualify in one sub-sea sport a year to retain our status in the Academy, and Bob had now washed out in three of the four possibles. The marathon sub-sea swim was still to come, and he would not usually wash out unless he failed in that one too—but what other explanation could there be?
There was no point in sitting around worrying. I had got an address from Eladio of David Craken’s father in Marinia. I sat down and began to write him a letter.
The address was:
Mr. J. Craken
Care of Morgan Wensley, Esq.
Kermadec Dome
Marinia
There wasn’t much I could say, but I was determined to say something. Of course, the Academy would notify the elder Mr. Craken; but I wanted to say something beyond the bare, official radiogram. But on the other hand, it would be foolish to stir up worry and questions by saying anything about sea serpents, or about the disagreement with Cadet Captain Roger Fairfane…
In the end, I merely wrote that, though I hadn’t known David long, I felt a deep sense of loss; that he was a brave and skillful swimmer; and that if there was anything I could do, his father had only to ask me.
As I was sealing the letter Bob came in.
He looked worn but—not worried, exactly; excited was a better word. I pounced on him with questions. What had happened? Had he been there all this time over David’s disappearance? Were there any developments?
He laughed, and I felt relieved. “Jim, you worry too much. No, there aren’t any developments. They asked me about David, all right. I just said I didn’t know anything, which was perfectly true.”
“And that took you all this time?”
His smile vanished. He looked suddenly—excited again. But he shook his head. “No, Jim,” he said, “that isn’t what took me all this time.”
And that was all he said.
I didn’t ask him any more questions. Evidently, I thought, Coach Blighman had given him a hard time after all. No doubt he had been put through a rough session, with both the Coach and the Commandant hammering at him, telling him that his record of sub-sea qualification was miserably unsatisfactory, reminding him that if he didn’t qualify in the one remaining sub-sea sport activity of the year he would wash out. It was no wonder, I thought, that he didn’t want to talk about it; it must have been an unpleasant experience.
The more I thought of it, the more sure I got that that was it.
And the more sure I got, the wronger I—much later—turned out to be.
5
Visitor From the Sea
That was in October.
Weeks passed. I got a curt note on the letterhead of Morgan Wensley, from Kermadec Dome. My letter had been received. It would be forwarded to Mr. Craken. The letter was signed by Morgan Wensley.
Not a word about the disappearance of David Craken. This Morgan Wensley, whoever he was, showed no regret and no interest.
As far as he was concerned, and as far as the Academy was concerned, David Craken might never have existed. David’s name was stricken from the rolls as “lost.” Laddy Angel and I met a few times and talked about him—but what was there to say, after all? And, since we weren’t in the same crew, weren’t even quartered in the same building, the times we met were fewer and fewer.
I almost began to forget David myself—for a while.
To tell the truth, none of us had much time for brooding over the past. Classes, formations, inspections, sports. We were kept busy, minute by minute, and whenever we had an hour’s free time we spent it, Bob Eskow and I, down by the shallows, practicing skin-diving. Bob was fiercely determined that when the big marathon underwater swim came up after the holidays he would be in the best shape he could manage. “Maybe I’ll wash out, Jim,” he told me grimly, sitting and panting on the raft between dives. “But it won’t be because I haven’t done the best I can!” And he was off again with his goggles in place, stretching his breathing limit as far as it would go. I was hard put to keep up with him. At first he could stay down only a matter of seconds. Then a minute, a minute and a half. Then he was making two-minute dives, and two and a half…