Undersea Quest

9 Aboard the Isle of Spain

But when I boarded the Isle of Spain I forgot all my troubles.

The giant sub-sea liner, more than a thousand feet long, as thick through as a seven-story building, bobbed lightly in the Pacific swell. I boarded her through a covered ramp, but even so, through portholes in the ramp, I saw the gleaming Edenite armor that flanked her whole length, the mighty sweep of her lines, torpedo-shaped, forward and aft.

I was realizing one of the great ambitions of my life! Below this heaving, gray expanse lay the Pacific bottom, sloping off for miles in the shallow continental shelf, then plunging to the mighty Deeps where Marinia lay, three thousand miles away and fifteen hundred and more fathoms down.

In a matter of moments I would be slipping through the water, en route to the cities of the sea!

I almost forgot the Academy—my uncle’s death—the man in the red hat.

Almost… but not quite. I made a covert search of all the other passengers in sight. Vacationers, some of them, using the long sub-sea voyage as a pleasure cruise. Hardbitten sub-sea miners, their skin dark in the Troyon light. Keen-featured ship’s officers and crew, moving efficiently through the crowds, getting ready to get under weigh. Even a group of ensigns and sub-lieutenants—I felt a sharp stab of jealousy—in the dress scarlet of the Sub-Sea Service.

But no one who looked at all dangerous to me; certainly no one as striking as the man in the red hat.

I signed on the passenger list, and waited for the steward to have me shown to my stateroom. I sat looking around at the passengers.

Then it occurred to me. The man in the red hat had been a striking figure; so conspicuous that he might almost be invisible through sheer obviousness, if I hadn’t happened vaguely to recall seeing him.

Perhaps—perhaps whoever it was who was so interested in my doings would try the opposite tack. Perhaps someone so neutral and inconspicuous as to be even less visible would be next.

With new eyes I looked at the crowd in the saloon.

In a moment I had found him; I was sure of it.

He was slumped down, staring at the floor, in the midst of his luggage. A small man, thin, shrunken. His narrow face was expressionless; his pale eyes blank. His garments were a neutral gray, neither neat nor shabby.

He was the sort of individual who could enter a room without being noticed, who had no single characteristic that would stick in the memory.

Of course—I told myself—I might be seeing ghosts.

He might be a perfectly harmless passenger. Perhaps no one on the ship was interested in me at all. Still—the persons who had gone to such lengths to knock me out and search me on the deserted San Francisco streets would likely keep an eye on me still.

At any rate, I was going to keep an eye on him.

A white-clad steward came toward me; I handed my bags over to him, tipped him, and let him go to my stateroom without me. I accompanied him just as far as the entrance to the saloon; there I waited, out of sight, to see what the gray man would do.

In a few minutes he hailed a steward, handed over his bags, and moved off in the same direction as my own steward had gone. I let him get well ahead, then followed.

The steward led the thin little man past the elevator which communicated with the steerage quarters, past the moving stairs that went to the luxurious suites above. Good; his stateroom would be on the cabin deck, with mine.

The steward stopped to unlock a door; and he and the little man went in.

As soon as the steward had left and closed the door, I hurried past.

It was stateroom 335.

And my own stateroom was number 334.

I found a steward to make sure; he led me to the room next to the gray man’s. He was going to be my next-door neighbor!

I no longer thought of coincidences. I knew!

The steward entered the stateroom behind me. He showed me how to adjust the Troyon light, how to regulate the gentle breeze of artificial air, how to work the temperature controls, the ship’s radio, the washstands and equipment. Then he busied himself tidying the towels on their racks, in the ancient custom of his kind while waiting for a tip.

It might be an accident…but I knew it was not The man in the red hat, after all, had had plenty of chance to find out my stateroom number—in the line behind me when I confirmed my reservation; or, if by any chance he had blundered enough to miss it then, when he went through my pockets later on. There could be no question that the gray man—assuming they worked together—could easily have arranged to get the stateroom next to mine.

But why?

I dug deep in my pocket to tip the steward.

He gave me a soft salute and started to leave. I stopped him.

“Say,” I said carelessly, “do you know who’s in the next cabin? I thought I recognized him as I came in.”

He looked at me. “If you know him, sir, why not just——-”

I added to the tip, and he gave me a different kind of look. “Can you find his name for me?”

The steward pursed his lips. “Certainly,sir. The passenger list will have it.”

“Please do.” He nodded, half winking, and left. Five minutes later he was at the door again.

“The name is E.A. Smith, sir. No address.” He hesitated. “Purser says it was a last-minute reservation,” he added.

“Thanks,” I said, trying to be nonchalant. “Guess I was wrong. There are lots of Smiths in the world.”

“And a lot who aren’t named Smith.” He closed the door with a half smile.

When I came out of my cabin the next morning the ship was under weigh. I felt the slight roll of the vessel, not choppy like a surface ship, but gentle and soothing, as the ship slid through the strong undersea currents; that, and the almost imperceptible vibration of the screws, was the only signal that we were racing forward at sixty knots or better.

It was achingly familiar…

I struck up a friendship with a junior officer after breakfast, and he offered to show me around the ship. I was delighted to take him up on it.

First we went to the narrow promenade around the cabin deck, just inside the hull. He opened a metal shutter inside a port and we looked out.

It was the sight I had seen so many times before: Darkness, and an occasional dimly luminous shape flashing past.

“We’re a hundred fathoms down,” the officer volunteered. “That water’s ice-cold. Under a pressure close to a quarter-ton to the square inch.”

I nodded. “I know,” I said. I reached out and closed the port. He looked at me curiously, but said nothing.

We went below; he showed me the ballast tanks with their powerful pumps the battery deck with its rows of Vauclain cells in the unimaginable event of a failure of the power reactor. We skirted the giant bulk of the reactor itself, whispering songs of neutrons and fission in its gentle tones. We went through the engine rooms, clean and orderly, smelling slightly of lubricating oil. It was almost soundless, only the dull vibration of the screws and the windy sigh of the steam coming out of the turbines, at the end of the heat-exchanger chain.

We saw it all—cargo holds, forecastle, steerage, upper deck with its pool and conservatory, superstructure atop the hull with its pilot house, chart house, radio room, officer’s quarters.

It was as different from the battered, cramped old Pocatello as an emerald is from mud.

But I knew which I would have chosen, had I had the choice.

The day passed. We ate; the afternoon drifted by; we ate again; the evening came. And the Isle of Spain lunged on through the submarine blackness.

It was growing late and I retired to my cabin.

Something was awry.

I stood on the threshold, key still in the door, listening and looking and waiting.

Through no sense that the doctors admit exists, I knew something had happened. The stateroom was not just as it had been when I left. Something had changed.

I switched on the Troyon tubes and looked around.

If there had been a search of my luggage, it had been unbelievably skillful. I could detect nothing that had been disturbed. But the feeling persisted.

I decided on an inch-by-inch examination of the cabin.

And in the bath, behind the towel rack, I found what I was looking for.

There was plaster dust on the floor beneath. And behind the rack itself, hidden by the bar on which the towels hung unless you looked just so, was a small round hole. It wasn’t more than a quarter-inch in diameter, perhaps less; it had been drilled through the wall.

For what?

A fresh puzzle. I couldn’t guess at the answer. Certainly it was not for spying—you couldn’t see past the towel bar from the other side. For listening? Hardly; there were electronic devices that were much, much subtler and more reliable.

But certainly it was for something…

If I couldn’t figure out for what, at least I could take a sensible precaution. I called a steward, and told him I had decided to vacate the room.

If I had known what the consequences would be…

But I didn’t. How could I have guessed?

The steward looked dismayed when I told him what I wanted.

“Very irregular, sir!” he sputtered. “Is the room unsatisfactory?”

It was not the same steward of the morning. I said, as haughtily as I could: “Steward, I want another room! That’s all; get it for me, please. I understand that I shall have to pay for two rooms. I am quite prepared to do so.”

It was a silly role to cast myself in; but the alternative was to tell him about the hole that had been drilled in the wall, and I wasn’t quite ready to take anyone into my confidence.

He sputtered and sputtered some more; but I found a suitable bill in my pocket, and when it had been transferred to his he was much more co-operative. He shrugged. “This way, sir,” he said, with the resignation one expects in those whose careers make them deal with many people…

I slept like a baby that night. Soundly—

But by no means as soundly as I would have if I hadn’t moved.