Undersea Quest

12 In Thetis Dome

At last we docked at Thetis.

The Isle of Spain dropped out of the darkness that had surrounded her to a flat, slightly luminous plain of blue clay. We anchored at the usual flat metal platform.

To our west was Thetis itself. Its shimmering dome bulged high into the black water. Eastward and northward were rugged black hills. South lay a Deep, and on the lip of it, a phosphorescent valley, covered with weird, tangled streamers that looked like vines, and thick growths that stood tall and erect like trees on land. They looked like vines and trees—but, I was to find, they were not. No vegetation grows so far beneath the sea’s surface; all the dainty blossoms and ropy growths were animal, not plants.

I disembarked from Isle of Spain, checked my baggage and went directly to Faulkner’s office.

W-17, S-469, Level 9—the address was well fixed in my mind. It had been on the long blue envelopes in which the checks from my uncle had come.

From the elevator I stepped into the big waiting room beneath the docks, carved out of the living rock beneath the ocean floor. It was brilliant with the cold, violet Troyon light, crowded with the passengers of the Isle of Spain, customs officials and hundreds of others. It seemed incredible, in that giant chamber, that four miles of sea towered over our heads.

But it was true! I was in Marinia!

I found a passenger belt headed in the right direction, and on it I was swept swiftly down a long tunnel; I found the elevator bank I was seeking and in a matter of short minutes’I was at Level 9.

I stepped out onto a rather wide street.

It was flooded with the violet Troyon light, crowded with hurrying Marinians. It was my first glimpse of the life of a city of Marinia, and, truthfully, I was less than delighted. The people seemed dingy, roughly clad; I saw a number of scarlet-clothed sea-police moving purposefully through the crowd; the voices seemed coarse and loud. And the buildings which rose a few dozen feet to support the next level above were shabbier than I had imagined.

Of course, it was not Marinia itself which was at fault. Even then, before I had seen any of the broad, beautiful residential levels, or the sweeping concourses of the administration section, I realized that this could not be typical. Level 9 was at the no-man’s-land between the factory and shipping levels beneath, and the office and residential levels above; it had all the worst features of its neighbors above and below.

It seemed to me that Faulkner’s office was located in an unsavory neighborhood.

Still—Faulkner was my uncle’s lawyer. I stopped a red-tunic policeman and got directions to W-17, S-149.

It turned out to be a door in a dingy office building, with a long flight of steps leading up.

At the head of the steps, I emerged into a dark, low- ceilinged room, smelling of dust and stale air. Beneath the single Troyon tube, two grimy chairs and a battered desk were all the room held.

A huge man leaned back in a chair behind the desk.

His feet were propped on the desk, his gnarled hands clasped behind his shaggy head. His mouth hung open, showing yellowed teeth; the dark face was scarred and pocked.

He was snoring loudly.

I coughed. “Good afternoon,” I said.

The man in the chair snorted, dropped his feet to the floor and blinked at me. “Eh?” he said thickly. Then his eyes cleared; he looked at me with more comprehension.

“What do you want?” he said sullenly.

“I’d like to see Mr. Wallace Faulkner,” I told him.

The big man shook his head. “Ain’t in.”

“When do you expect him?”

“Dunno. Won’t be back today.”

I hesitated. I could do nothing until I saw this Faulkner, that was certain; and I most urgently wanted to ask him about what Hallam Sperry had told me on the Isle of Spain. I said:

“It’s very important that I see him. Where can I find him now?”

The big man glowered at me. “Come back tomorrow,” he said. “Who are you?”

“James Eden,” I said.

I thought the big man’s eyes widened. But all he said was, “I’ll tell him.”

I started to leave. I was beginning to dislike all of this: the man, the filthy, miserable office, my impression of Faulkner formed from his letters and radios.

But I had to face the affair sooner or later. I tried once more: “Sir, I must see Mr. Faulkner. Isn’t there any possible way I can reach him today?”

The big man snarled, “I told you no. Come back tomorrow. First thing in the morning—you hear me?”

There was nothing to do but leave—especially since he slammed his feet down on the desk again, tilted back and seemed ready to get back to his interrupted sleep.

I let myself out the office door and started down the stairs.

Halfway down I stopped. I thought I heard the big man calling my name.

I stood there for a moment, listening. It came again, clearly, not so much as though I were being called as though the man were saying it emphatically to someone else; my name, clearly enough to recognize unmistakably, then a pause and a mumble of other words.

I went back up the stairs.

At the door I heard a final mumble: “—Eden. See you in the morning.” And then the sound of a telephone handpiece being slammed down on its cradle. I waited, but there was no other sound, until a moment later I began to hear the big man’s regular breathing.

He had gone to sleep—but he had phoned someone first. About me.

No, I didn’t like this at all…

Still, I told myself, things could be worse.

If I couldn’t see Faulkner until the next morning, that meant I had almost a whole day to spend at whatever I wished. I could, for instance, look around Thetis, see all the wonders of the capital of Marinia at first hand.

My mood of depression began to lift. I stopped a scarlet-clad sea-policeman and asked him to recommend a hotel. He mentioned several, told me how to reach them, where to find a phone to make reservations.

The phone was in a drinking place, it turned out; the customers seemed mostly to be the same rough characters that were shouldering their way along the street. I didn’t have to drink with them, though, after all: I found the pay telephone, located a coin and called the first hotel the policeman had suggested.

The clerk was brisk and polite. They had a room; they would hold it for me; they would expect me in an hour, as soon as I had picked up my bags.

Things were beginning to look up as I put down the phone and started back to the street. I could get my bags without trouble—the customs men would have had a chance to examine them by now if they wished—and then I had the rest of the day to myself.

As I headed for the door, a tall, lean man turned away from the bar right in front of me. I stopped, but not quite quickly enough; I jarred him slightly, and a few drops spilled from his drink.

He whirled on me. “Watch it, Mac!” he growled.

“Sorry,” I said, and waited for him to step aside. But he wasn’t stepping. He carefully set his drink down on the bar and moved even closer to me.

“Think you own the place?” he demanded. “Come in here looking for trouble, is that it?”

It hardly seemed reasonable—but he gave every indication of looking for a fight. I’m not afraid of a fight if I must have one; at the Academy, there had been plenty of man-to-man boxing and sometimes it was done less for exercise than to work out differences of opinion. I had carried a shiner around with me for a week after one such bout. And, though the man was inches taller than I, he weighed little more; I wasn’t afraid of him.

Still—a bar-room brawl was not my idea of the best way to spend my first day in Thetis. I said, “Excuse me. I didn’t mean to bump into you. Will you let me pass?”

He seemed to take that as a personal insult. “Let you pass?” he demanded. “Sure, I'll let you pass. You lubbers think you can trample all over us, don’t you? Well, you’re wrong!” He was actually touching me, he stood so close; I could feel his hot breath fanning me as he talked.

It looked like a fight, all right. I stepped back a bit to give myself space…

Then a rumbling bass said: “What’s the matter, Kelly? This kid threatening your life and limb?”

It was the sea-police. Tall and square in his scarlet tunic, he stood in the doorway. His tone was heavily humorous, but the look he gave the thin man was not humorous at all.

The thin man made a quick estimate of the situation. “Ah,” he snarled, “you cops give me a pain. Why don’t you mind your business?”

The policeman’s eyes sparkled dangerously, but all he said was, “All right, son. If you’re coming out of here, come on.”

I walked past Kelly without looking at him. The policeman closed the door behind us.

“Thought you might get into trouble there,” he rambled. “As soon as I sent you in to phone, I says to myself, ‘Shaughnessy, a kid like that don’t belong in a place like Mother Sea-Cow’s.’ So I just walked over to see what might be happening.”

I said, “Thanks, officer. I don’t think there would have been any trouble, though.”

He gave me a quizzical look. “Lubber, aren’t you?” he said. “Well, never mind. Get along with you.” And he stood watching while I headed for the elevator banks.

It took me only a few minutes to reclaim my baggage. Loaded with it, I studied the street and level markers, trying to find the best way to the hotel.

I suppose I should have asked someone; but I have always disliked seeming ignorant. Many’s the wasted hour I have spent wandering around a strange city, stubbornly trying to find a street number by myself, when any passerby could have pointed the way in a matter of moments.

After racking my brains, I came to the conclusion that the best way to get to the hotel was to walk through a narrow connecting passage to another bank of express elevators. They would whisk me to Level 18, where the hotel was located, without stops.

Staggering under the weight of the bags, I started off. The way led through an alley of warehouses. It was the middle of the morning, but few persons were about; I suppose that, as in the cities on the earth’s surface, the warehouses and markets are busiest during the pre-dawn hours, getting ready for the day’s trade. Of course, under four miles of sea, the time of day made little difference; the lights were the same blue-violet Troyon tubes, though it seemed to me that these flickered more weakly than most. The warehouse fronts cast curious shadows; some of them seemed almost to be lurking human figures.

And some of them were.

I found it out to my cost. I set the bags down where another passage crossed the one I was traversing, a little doubtful as to which turn I should take. I heard footsteps behind me; nothing of any importance, it seemed, until of a sudden the steps got closer, and speeded up, as though an assailant were closing in for the kill. I turned, less in alarm than in curiosity.

I turned too late. Something hard and large came swinging through the violet-lit shadows at me. It crunched against my temple; and that was the last I saw for some time.

I awoke.

I was lying on the cold, smooth metal floor of a totally dark room.

My ankles were trussed together. A cord was about my waist; my wrists were fastened to it at my sides. The knots were so tight that the circulation was stopped, and my hands and feet were numb.

I could see nothing, feel nothing, hear nothing. My only knowledge of the room I was in came through my nose—and that was a puzzler. The room smelled stale and musty, like a damp cellar underground. Where in Thetis could such a room be?

Since I could not guess, I gave up trying. I struggled uselessly for a while; then I lay there, trying to make an estimate of the situation as coolly and dispassionately as the instructors had demanded at the Academy. I remember the lectures: “Panic is your worst enemy. No matter how bad the situation is, giving in to it will make it worse.”

It had all seemed so logical and lucid, back in the warm Caribbean sunshine!

But they had never told us exactly what to do when tied up by person or persons unknown, in what seemed to be the subcellar of an undersea city. The whole thing seemed ridiculous to me. Why would anyone attack me in the first place? I had harmed no one…

However, the important question at the moment was not “why,” but “how”—how to get out of this. There seemed very little to do in that direction. I could scarcely move a muscle. Whoever tied me had taken lessons from a master at the art.

Still…I found that I could wriggle one arm slightly. If I could find something to rub the ropes against, there was always the chance I could fray them through. Fumbling about on the floor for a sharp projection was like trying to recognize the denomination of a coin through heavy mittens; my numbed fingers had scarcely any tactile sensation left. But I kept on trying.

Fruitlessly. The floor was flat and bare.

And I could not reach any of the knots, however much I strained.

I think I gave in to desperation there for a moment. Perhaps it helped; I don’t know. But I flung myself violently back against the floor…

And I felt the bonds around my waist slip a little. Ever so little.

They were not coming off, of course—that was too much to hope for. But they slipped around a couple of degrees; my right hand was a little behind me now, my left hand a little in front. I wrenched at the rope again, and it slipped a fraction more.

It must have taken me half an hour to do it, but at last my left hand was within range of my belt buckle. Thanks be to the sea sprites, the Kelpies who watch over the submariners! I still wore my Academy belt, with the fouled anchors sharp on the buckle.

It was not much in the way of hope, but it was the best I had. I strained my wrist cords against that buckle, back and forth, back and forth. I kept it up until I thought my arm muscles would knot and freeze… and then I kept it up some more.

I began to feel as though, given time, I might get free.

But time ran out for me right then.

There was a sudden, soft clicking sound behind me. Dim light entered the room. I could see only what was directly before my eyes—smooth metal walls, glistening with a thin film of moisture; nothing more. But someone had, behind me, opened a door.

I lay perfectly still.

Sound of soft footsteps. A pause; and then the footsteps retreating.

There was another faint click as the door closed again—and darkness.

Someone had come into the room, looked at me, gone away again.

What did it mean? I could not guess. All I could imagine was that it meant someone wanted to know if I were conscious or not; I hoped I had deceived them.

I went back to my rubbing, but for only a few moments. Then the door opened again; but the footsteps were not soft.

There were several men behind me. They were talking to each other as they came in; there was no attempt at concealment, no sense of trying to disguise their voices, no seeming awareness that I was alive. That could mean only one thing:

As far as they were concerned, the time in which I would remain alive was very short.

“Sure he’s awake,” said one of the men belligerently. “Go on, Jack—give him a kick and see.”

Jack did. His foot connected with my right shoulder blade. Somehow no bones were broken; but I have never been hit harder in my life. The impact spun me around, lying on the floor as I was; I came to rest on my other side, facing the men.

The man who had kicked me was a hulking, stubby toad of a man; I had never seen him before. One of the others was equally strange. But the third I recognized.

Kelly was his name. He had tried to pick a fight with me, back on the Ninth Level.

I said, through a haze of pain, “What’s all this about? What do you—-”

“Shut up,” said Kelly contemptuously. “If he opens his mouth again, Jack, kick his teeth in. Come on, give me a hand.”

Kelly stood back, staring expressionlessly, as Jack and the other man picked me up, head and foot. They carried me out of the room, down a short, dimly-lit corridor.

The man at my feet grunted, “Kelly, I don’t like this. Suppose the sea-cops wander by?”

“Suppose the moon falls on us?” Kelly said sardonically. “You’re not paid to think. Jack scouted for the cops; he said there wasn’t a patrol-jeep on the whole level. Right?”

Jack growled, “Right.” A man of few words, this Jack, I thought. I opened my mouth to say something, but the sudden gleam of interest in his eyes stopped me. We bumped along for a few yards, then my bearers dropped me.

“Okay,” growled Kelly. “Take off, boys. I won’t need you any more.”

The other two left—hurriedly. Kelly came closer, and bent down beside me. He fumbled with something on the floor, out of my range of vision: I heard a heavy clanking sound.

“So long,” he said, grinning at me. A sudden seepage of cold wet air came up alongside me; as Kelly raised his foot to thrust at me, I realized what he had done. He had opened a trap—beneath lay the drainage tunnels of Thetis!

As his foot came down I made a desperate lunge, and felt the cord that bound my left wrist part. But it was too late, far too late; his foot caught me in the side and thrust me over a metallic lip. I scrambled and half-caught myself; but one numbed hand was not enough.

I plunged into icy, quick-flowing water. The shock of striking it paralyzed me for a moment; I sank far down before I somehow, with one hand, began struggling upward again.

Somehow, somehow—I reached the surface. Somehow I kept myself afloat, coughing and strangling, gasping cold, dank air into my lungs, surging along through a giant metal conduit at a rate of knots, as helpless as a jellyfish in a tidal bore.

Almost I gave up; but something would not let me give up. Perhaps it was the voice of my instructors at the Academy: Panic is the enemy. Perhaps it was a Voice more authoritative still—but something kept me kicking and struggling, though the best I could hope for was to stay alive until I reached the vent pumps…

And, in the fiercely driven pistons of the pumps, foreing the waste seepage out against a pressure of many atmospheres, the struggle would surely end.

But I kept on struggling.

And—I saw a light.

Only a dim glow, but it was a light. I saw it, far off, through a mist of salt water. I blinked and looked again, and it was closer; a dim flicker on a sort of shelf beside the surging flow.

It was a portable Troyon light. And beside it a man stood, staring at the water.

I tried to call to him, but only a splutter came out. Perhaps he heard me; perhaps it was only fortune that made him look at where I struggled. But I heard his wordless shout, and I found breath to cough a reply.

He acted like the lightning itself. Almost as soon as he had seen me I was driven to the ledge where he stood; in a moment I would have been irrecoverably gone. But just as I slid beneath him he lunged at me with what looked like a long pole.

Something sharp and painful caught my shoulder. I felt the skin break and tear as the boathook slid along my upper arm and back.

The cloth of my tunic ripped, held, ripped again—

And held.

He dragged me, feebly spluttering, to his ledge and helped me up.

I slumped breathlessly against the wall. He grinned at me.

“Man,” he said, “you must have wanted to go swimming awful bad!”