Back from the Deeps           

Bob's voice was filled with astonishment and awe. Even Roger Fairfane stood gawking. No wonder! I could hard-ly believe it myself. When a man is lost on a lung dive at thirteen hundred feet, you don't expect him to be found drifting off shore months later—and still alive!

 "Don't stand there!" I cried. "Help me, Bob! We'll give him artificial respiration. Roger, you stand by to take over!"        We dragged him up to the firm, dry sand and flipped him over. Bob knelt beside his head, taking care that his tongue did not choke him, while I spread his arms and moved them, wing fashion, up and down, up and down ----

            It was hardly necessary. We had barely begun when Davd rolled over suddenly, coughing. He tried to sit up.
 "He's alive!" cried Roger Fairfane. "Jim, you keep an eye on him. I'm going after an ambulance and a sea medic. I'll report to the Commandant and ----"
 "Wait!" cried David Craken weakly. He propped him-self on one arm, gasping for breath. "Please. Please don't report anything—not yet."
 He gripped my arm with surprising strength and lifted himself up. Roger glanced at him worriedly, then, uneas-ily, out toward the dark sea, where that peculiar person who had said his name was Trencher had vanished with the pearls. "But we have to report this," he said, without conviction. It was, in fact, an open question—there was nothing in the regulations to cover anything like this.
 "Please," said David again. He was shivering from the chill of the deep water, and exhausted as if from a long swim, but he was very much alive. The straps at his shoulders showed where his electrolung had been seated— lost, apparently, after he had surfaced. He said: "Don't report anything. I—I'm lost, according to the Academy's roster. Leave it that way." Bob demanded: "What happened, David? Where have you been?"
 David shook his head, watching Roger. Roger stood irresolutely for a moment, staring at David, then at the
 lights of the Academy. At last he said: "All right, Craken. Have it your way. But I ought to get a sea medic ----"
 David choked, but managed a grin. "I don't need a sea medic," he said. "I'm not coming back as a cadet, you see. I'm here on business—for my father. I was in a sea car and I was attacked, down there." He nodded toward the black water. "Subsea pirates," he cried angrily. "They jumped my sea car and robbed me. I was lucky to get away with my life."
 "Pirates!" Roger was staring at him. "In the front yard
 of the Academy! Craken, we've got to do something
 about this. What did they look like? How many were
 there? What kind of sea car were they using? Give me the facts, Cracken—I'll get a report to the Fleet, and
 we'll ---"
 "Wait, Roger. Wait!" David protested desperately. "I don't want the Fleet. There's nothing they can do to help me now. And I—I can't let anyone know I'm here."
 Roger looked at him suspiciously. Then he stared at Bob and me. I could see his brain working, could see the conclusion he was coming to.
 "You don't want the Fleet," he said slowly. "You
 can't
 let anyone know you're here. Could that be -- " he
 leaned down, staring into David's eyes angrily—"could that be because of what you lost when you were robbed?"
 David said weakly, "I—I don't know what you're talk-ing about."
 "But you do, Craken! I'd bet a summer's leave you do! Was it pearls you lost when they robbed you, Craken? Thirteen pearls, Tonga pearls, in an edenite tube?"

 There was a moment's silence.             Then David got to his feet, his face blank. He said in a cold, changed voice:
 "They're mine. Where are they?"
 "I thought so!" cried Roger. "What do you think

 of that, Eden? I knew it was just too much of a coincidence  for Craken to turn up right now. He's connected with that Joe Trencher, that stole my pearls P'            David stood up straight. For a moment I thought he was angry, but the expression in his eyes was not rage. He said: "Trencher? Did you say—Trencher?"

            "That's the name! As if you didn't know. A queer little white-skinned man, with a case of asthma, I think. Tren-cher. Don't try to tell us you never heard of him!"

            David laughed sharply. "If only I could, Roger," he said soberly. "If only I could! But I must admit that I've heard of him—of them, at any rate. Trencher isn't a name, you see. Trencher is—from the Trench. The Tonga Trench!"

            He shook his head. "Joe Trencher. Yes, he would give a name like that. And you met him?"
 I cut in. "We not only met him, David, but I'm afraid we let him get away with the pearls." I gave him a quick outline of what had happened, from the moment Bob Eskow felt the edenite cylinder wash against his foot until the stranger clipped me, grabbed it and dived into the sea. "He never came up," I told David Craken. "No electrolung, no thermosuit—but he never came up. I sup-pose he must be drowned out there now.. . ."
 "Drowned? Him?" David Craken looked at me queer-ly, but then he shook his head again. "No, he isn't drowned, Jim. Trust him for that. I'll explain sometime— but the likes of Joe Trencher will never drown." He looked soberly out to sea. "I thought I'd got away from them," he said. "All this long way from Kermadec Dome. But they caught up with me. I suppose it was inevitable that they would. The first thing I knew was when the microsonar showed something approaching—fast and close. A projectile exploded, I suppose—anyway, the next thing that happened was that my sea car was out of control and taking in water. Those devils came in through the emergency hatches. I got away—but they got the pearls." He sighed. "I needed those pearls," he said. "It isn't just money. I was going to sell them to—to buy something for my father. Something that he has to have."
 Roger demanded: "Where did you get the pearls? You've got to tell us that. Otherwise, Craken, I'm warning you—I'm going to report this whole thing!"

 "Hold on a minute, Roger!" I interrupted. "There's no sense blackmailing David!"
 David CraVen smiled at me, then looked at Roger Fairfane. "Blackmail is the word," he said. "But bear this in mind. Roger. I'll never tell you where the Tonga pearls come from. Men have died trying to find that out—I won't tell. Is that perfectly clear?"
 "Lister? " Roger blustered, "you needn't think you can
 scare me! Mv father is an important man! You've heard
 of Trident Lines, haven't you? My father is one of the
 biggest executives of the line! And if I tell mv father
 ---------------------------------------------------------------------"
 "Wait a minute," said David Craken. His tone was oddly placating. He suddenly seemed struck with a thought. "Trident Lines, you say?"
 "That's right!" sneered Roger. "I thought that would straighten you out! You can't buck Trident Lines!"
 "No, no," David said impatiently. "But—Trident Lines. They're one of the big subsea shippers, aren't they?"
 "The third biggest line in the world," said Roger Fair-fane with pride.
 David Craken took a deep breath. "Roger," he said, "if you're interested in the Tonga pearls, perhaps we can work something out. I—I need help." He turned to us, imploringly. "But not from the Fleet! I don't want any-thing reported!"
 Roger said, puffed with pride now that things seemed to be going his way: "Perhaps that won't be necessary, Craken. What do you want?"
 David hesitated. "I—I want to think it over. I came here to do something for my father, and without the pearls, I can't do it—unless I have some help. But first we'd better get out of sight. Is there any place we can go to talk this over?"
 Roger said: "There's a beach house about a mile below here—the Atlantic manager of Trident Lines maintains it. He isn't there, but he told me I could use it any time." He said it proudly.
 "That will do," said David. "Can you take me
 there?"
 "Well—I suppose so," said Roger, somewhat un-willingly. "Do you think it's necessary? I mean, are you that worried about someone from the Academy seeing you?"
 David looked worriedly out to sea, then at Roger.
 "It isn't anyone from the Academy that I'm worried about," he told Roger Fairfane.

            We made our arrangements. We left David waiting for us in a boathouse on the beach, and Roger, Bob and I hurried back to the Academy to sign in. Every swimmer who completed the marathon was entitled to an overnight pass as a reward, so there was no difficulty getting off the reservation. The cadet on guard, stiffly at attention in his sea-red dress uniform, gave our passes only a glance, but he examined the little bag Roger was carrying very care-fully. "Civilian clothes?" he demanded. "What are you going to do with those?"

            "They—ah—they need cleaning," Roger said, not un-truthfully. "There's a good cleaner in Hamilton."
 The guard winked. "Pass, cadets," he said, and re-turned to stiff attention. Still and all, I didn't feel safe until we were out of sight of the gates. Roger hadn't actually said we were gong to Hamilton—but he had cer-tainly said enough to make the guard at the gate start asking questions if he saw us duck off the road in another direction.
 We got back to the beach easily enough, and found David waiting. I was almost surprised to see him there— it would have been so easy to believe the whole thing was a dream if he had been gone. But he was there, big as life, and we waited while he got into Roger's dry clothes.
 And then the four of us headed down the beach toward the ornate beach house that belonged to the Atlantic manager of Trident Lines.
 Overhead there was a ripping, screaming sound—the night passenger jet for the mainland. It was a common enough sound; Bob and Roger and I hardly noticed it. But David stopped still in his tracks, frozen, his face drawn.
 He looked at me and grinned, shamefaced. "It's only an airliner, isn't it? But I just can't get used to them. We don't have them in Marinia, you see."
 Roger muttered something—I suppose it was a
 con temptuous reference to David Craken's momentary ner
 vousness—and stalked down the beach ahead of us. He
 seemed nervous himself about something, I thought. I
 said: "David, don't mind him. We're glad to see you back.
 Even Roger. It's just his—his -----"

            "His desire to get hands on the Tonga pearls?" David finished for me, and grinned. He seemed more relaxed, though I couldn't help noticing that his eyes never went far from the cold black sea. "I can't blame him for that. They're fabulously valuable, of course. Even somebody whose father is a high executive of Trident Lines might want to get a couple of Tonga pearls to put away against a rainy day."

            I said, trying to be fair: "I don't think it's only that,
 David. Roger always wants to—to win, I guess. It's im
 portant to him. Remember the diving tests, when he carried
 on so? Remember ----- "

 I stopped, staring at him.          "That reminds me," I said. "Don't you have some explaining to do about that?"
 He said seriously, "Jim, believe me, I'll answer every question I can—even that one. But not now." He hesi-tated, and lowered his voice. "I was kidnaped from the gym ship, Jim. Kidnaped by the same person who called himself 'Joe Trencher.'"
 I stared at him. "Kidnaped? At a depth of thirteen hundred feet? But that's impossible, David! How could any human being do it—why, it would take a sea car and heaven knows what else to do a thing like that!"
 David Craken looked at me, his eyes bright and serious in the moonlight.
 "Jim," he said, "what makes you think that Joe Tren-cher is human?"

  

 The Half Men          

Roger called it a "beach house'*—but it was two stories tall, a sprawling mansion with ten acres of sub-tropical gardens and a dozen outbuildings.

            The whole estate was surrounded by a twenty-foot hedge of prickly thorns and tiny red flowers. A land crab might have been able to squirm through the hedge, but no human being could. Roger led us to a gate in the hedge, ten feet high, with carved metal doors, the hedge growing together solidly above it. The doors were wide open, and no on was in sight.

            But it was not unguarded.
 "Halt!" rattled a peremptory mechanical voice. "Halt! You, there! Where are you going and what do you want?" The doors moved uneasily, though there was no wind. It was as though they were anxious to crash shut on the intruders.

            "It's the automatic watchman," Roger explained, a lit-tle nervously. He cried: "I am Roger Fairfane. I have permission to come in."

            The mechanical voice crackled: "Roger Fairfane. Step forward!" There was a momentary hiss and a rustle of static, as though the invisible electronic brain were scan-ning its library of facts to find out if the name Roger Fairfane was on the list of permitted visitors.

            Roger took a step forward and a beam of sizzling red light leaped down at him from a projector on the side of the gate. In its light he looked changed and ghastly, and a little scared.

            The mechanical voice rattled: "Roger Fairfane, you have permission to go to the boathouse. Follow the indi-cated path." It clicked, and the faint hum from the loud-speaker died. The doors shuddered one more time, as if regretful that they could not close, and then were still.

 A line of violet Troyon lights, rice-grain sized, lit up  along the ground, outlining a path that led through palms and clumps of hibiscus toward the water. "Come along, come along," said Roger hurriedly. "Stay on the path!"             We followed the curving coral walk outlined by the flecks of violet light. The boathouse turned out to be as big as an average-sized dwelling. There was a basin for a private sub-sea cruiser, and with a house built around it, an apartment on the upper floor. Another beam of reddish light leaped out at us from over the entrance as we approached. It singled out Roger Fairfane, and in a mo-ment the door opened.

 We walked in, the door closing behind us. It was uncomfortably like a trap.      The first thing to do was get something to eat—not only for David, but for all of us; we hadn't eaten since the marathon swim. Roger disappeared into the kitchen of the little apartment and we could hear him struggling with the controls of the electronic housekeeper. He came out after a moment with a tray of milk and sandwiches. "The best I can do," he said, a little grumpily. "This apartment belongs to the pilot of the sea-car, and it isn't too well stocked."

            It was good enough for all of us, though. We demol-ished the sandwiches and then sat before a roaring fire in the fireplace, which had kindled itself as we came into the room. If this was the pilot's apartment, what would the master's home be like! We all were impressed with the comfort and luxury that surrounded us—even Roger.

 Then we talked.           David put down the last of his sandwich and sat staring at us for a moment.
 "It's hard to know where to begin," he said at last.
 "Start with the Tonga pearls," Roger suggested
 shortly.
 David looked at him, and then at Bob and me, with his eyes dark with trouble.
 "Before I tell you anything," he said at last, "you must promise me something. Promise you won't repeat what I'm going to tell permission. Especially, anything to the Fleet." you to anyone, without my promise you won't report  Roger said promptly: "Agreed!"
 David looked at me. I hesitated. "I'm not sure we should promise," I told him slowly. "After all, we're cadets, in training for Fleet commissions...."   "But we haven't got them yet!" objected Roger. "We haven't taken the oath."
 Bob Eskow was frowning over some private thought. He seemed about to say something, then changed his mind.
 David Craken looked hard at me. His voice was very clear and firm. "Jim, if you can't promise to keep your mouth shut, I'll have to ask you to leave. There's too much depending on me. I need help badly—but I can't afford to take a chance on word getting out." He hesi-tated. "It—it's a matter of life and death, Jim. My father's life."
 Roger snapped. "Listen, Jim, there's no problem here. David isn't asking you to violate an oath—you haven't even taken it! Why can't you just go along and promise?"
 David Craken held up his hand. "Wait a minute, Rog-er." He turned to me again. "Suppose I ask you," he said, "to promise to keep this conversation secret as long as it does not conflict with your duty to the Fleet. And to promise if you report anything I say, that you'll talk it over with me beforehand."
 I thought it over, and that seemed reasonable enough. But before I could speak Bob Eskow stood up. His expression had cleared myself," he said, "that's around!"
 Solemnly we all clasped hands.
 Roger demanded: "Now, where did you get the
 pearls?"
 David grinned suddenly. He said: "Don't be impatient. Do you know, Roger, I could tell you exactly where they came from. I could pinpoint the location of a subsea chart and give you an exact route to get there. And believe me, it would be useless to you. Worse than useless." The grin vanished. "You see, Roger," he went on, "you would never come back alive."
 He leaned back and looked into the flames. "My father is an expert benthologist. A scientist of the deeps. He made his reputation many years ago, before I was born, and under another name. As a magically. "Speaking for fine. Let's shake on it all benthologist, he went on many sub-sea exploring missions—and on one of them discovered the oyster beds that produce the Tonga pearls." He paused, and, in a different tone, added: "I wish he never had. The pearls are—dangerous."

            Roger said aggressively: "You're talking about those silly legends? Rot! Just superstition. There have been stories about gems being unlucky for thousands of years— but the only bad luck is not having them!"

            David Craken shook his head. "The Tonga pearls have caused a lot of trouble," he said. "Perhaps some of it was merely because they were so valuable and so—so lovely. But believe me, there is more to it than that. They caused the death of every man on that expedition except one, my father."

            n^h cut in: "Do you mean they killed each other for the pearls?"
 "Oh, no! They were all good men—scientists, explorers, sub-sea experts. But the pearl beds are well guarded. That's why no one else has ever got back from the Ton-ga beds to report their location."
 "Wait a minute," I interrupted. "Guarded? Guarded by what?"
 David looked at me, frowning doubtfully.
 "Jim, you've got to remember that most of the ocean is still as strange as another planet. There's three times as much of the ocean bottom as all the dry land on Earth put together. And it's harder to explore. We can travel about, we can search with fathometers and microsonar— but what is the extreme range of our search? It's like trying to map Bermuda from an airplane, during a thun-derstorm. We can see patches, we can penetrate through the clouds with radar—but only big, broad outlines come through. There are things under the sea that—that you wouldn't believe."
 I wanted to interrupt again, to ask him if he meant that terrible saurian head I had seen at the railing of the gym ship—or the mystery of his own disappearance and return —or the strange eyes of the being who called himself Joe Trencher. But something held me silent as he went on.
 "The ship was lost," David said. "My father got away in his diving gear, with the first batch of pearls. I think— I think he should properly have reported what happened to the expedition. But he didn't." He frowned, as though trying to apologize for his father. "You see, times were different then. The conquest of the sub-sea world was just beginning. There was no Sub-sea Fleet; piracy was com-mon. He knew that he would lose his right of discovery— might even have lost his life—if the secret of the pearls got out.

 "So—he didn't report.
 "He changed his name, to Jason Craken. The   Kraken— spelled wifh a K—is the old name for the fabulous monsters of the deep. It was very appropriate, as you will see. He took the pearls he had managed to save, and sold them, a few at a time, very carefully, in ways that were not entirely legal. But he had no choice, you see."

            David sat up straighter, his eyes beginning to flash, his
 voice growing stronger. "Then—well, I told you he was
 an expert benthologist. He invented a new technique—a way of harvesting more pearls, without being killed. Believe me, it wasn't easy. All these years he has been harvesting the Tonga pearl beds ----"

            "All alone!" cried Roger Fairfane. He pushed back his chair and leaped up, striding back and forth. "One man harvesting all the Tonga pearls! What an opportunity!"

            David looked at him. "An opportunity—more than that, Roger," he said. "For he was not quite alone. He had—well, call them employees—-to protect him and help him harvest the pearls."

            Bob Eskow was standing up. "Wait a minute! I thought you said your uncle was the only man who knew the secret of the Tonga beds."

            David nodded. For a moment he was silent. Then he said:
 "The employees were not men."
 "Not men! But ----- "
 "Please, Bob. Let me tell this my way." Bob shrugged and sat down; David went on. "My father built himself a home near the pearl beds—a sub-sea fort, really armored with edenite. He gathered a lot of pearls. They were fabulously valuable, and they were all his. He built a new identity for himself in the sub-sea cities so that he could sell the pearls. He made a lot of money."
 David's eyes looked reminiscent and faintly  sad.

  "While my mother was alive, we lived luxuriously. It was a wonderful, fantastic life, half in the undersea cities, half in our own secret dome. But—my mother died. And now everything has changed."

            His voice had a husky catch, and his thin face turned very white. I noticed that his hands were trembling just a little, but he went on.

            "Everything has changed. My father is an old man now—and sick, besides. He can't rule his—his employees the way he used to. His undersea empire is slipping out of his hands. The people he used to trust have turned against him. He has no one else. That's why we must have help!"

            Excitement was shining in Bob's eyes and Roger's, and I could feel fortress guarding pearls, glow-ing like moons in the dark! The challenge of unknown dangers under the sea! It was like a wonderful adventure story, and it was happening to us, here in this little apart-ment over the empty boathouse!

            I said: "David, what kind of help do you need?" my own pulse racing. A secret a hidden undersea empire! Tonga He met my eyes squarely. "Fighting help, Jim! There

            is danger—my father's life isn't worth a scrap of Tonga
 oystershell unless I can bring him help. We need -----" he
 hesitated before saying it—"we need a fighting ship, Jim. An armed subsea cruiser!"

            That stopped us all.
 We stared at him as though he were a lunatic. I said: "A cruiser? But—but, David, private citizens can't use a Fleet cruiser! Why not just call on the Fleet? If it's that
 serious ----- "

            "No! My father doesn't want the Fleet!"
 We looked at him helplessly.
 David grinned tightly. "I'm not crazy. He doesn't want

            to give away the location of the pearl beds. He would lose everything he has. And besides—there are the—the crea-tures in that part of the sea. They would have to be killed if the Fleet comes in. And my father doesn't want to kill them."

            "Creatures? What creatures?" I asked it, but I think I knew the answer before hand. For I could not forget the enormous scaled head I had seen over the rail of the gym

 ship.
 David waved the question aside. "I'll explain," he said, "when I know if you can help me. For I haven't much time. My father's—call them employees—have turned against him. They've cut him off and surrounded him, down in his sub-sea fort. We must have a fighting ship and fighting men to rescue him. And there isn't much time."

            He stood up, staring at us intently. "But not the Fleet!"
 "What then?" asked Roger Fairfane, puzzled. David said, "Have you ever heard of the subsea cruiser

            Killer Whale?"
 We looked at each other. The name sounded a tiny echo for all of us—somewhere we had heard it, some-where recently.

            I got it first. "Of course," I cried. "The Fleet surplus sale! Down in Sargasso City—there are two of them, aren't there? Two obsolete subsea cruisers, and they're going to be sold for salvage. . .."

            David nodded, then checked himself and shook his
 head. "Almost right, Jim," he said. "But there is really
 only one ship. The other one—the Dolphin—it's only a heap of rust. The Killer Whale is the ship I want. True, I would have to find armament for it somewhere. The Fleet
 would sell it stripped. But it's a serviceable vessel. My father knows it well; it was based in Kermadec Dome a few years ago. If I could arm it—and man it with three or four good men ---"

            Bob said excitedly: "We could help you, David! We've completed enough courses in subsea tactics and battle maneuvers—we've all of us had training in simulated combat! But the price, David! Those things, even scrapped, would cost a fortune!"

            David nodded. He said somberly, "We figured it out, my father and I. They would cost just about as much as a handful of Tonga pearls."

            We were all silent for a moment. Then Roger Fairfane raised his head and laughed sharply.
 "So you've been wasting our time," he said. "You've lost the pearls. There's no way of getting the money without them."
 David looked at him thoughtfully. "No way?"
 He paused, trying to find the right words. "You said you would help, Roger. And your father—a wealthy man, an important man in Trident Lines. ..."

            Roger flushed angrily. "Leave my father out of this!** he ordered.
 David nodded, unsurprised. "I rather thought it would be like that," he said calmly. He didn't explain that remark, but Roger seemed to understand. He turned bright red, then pale with anger, but he kept quiet. David said:
 "I knew there was some danger. Joe Trencher was once my father's foreman, and now that he is leading the revolt against my father, we knew what to expect. My father told me there was a good chance that Trencher would find some way of getting the pearls away from me."
 "And did he tell you what to do in that case?" Roger sneered.
 David nodded. He looked at me. "He said, 'Ask for help. Go to see Jim Eden, and ask his uncle for help.' "
 I couldn't have been more surprised if he had turned into one of these strange sub-sea saurians before my eyes.
 "My uncle Stewart? But—but ---"
 David said: "That's all I know, Jim. My father's sick, as I said. And perhaps he was a little delirious. But that is what he said."
 I shook my head, thinking hard. "But—but ------
 " I
 said again. "But—my uncle is in Marinia. More than ten thousand miles from here. And he isn't too well himself.'
 David shrugged, looking suddenly tired. "That's all I know, Jim," he repeated. "The only thing ----"
 He broke off, listening. "What's that?"
 We all stopped and listened. Yes, there had been some-thing—some faint mechanical whisper. It sounded like powerful muffled motors, not too far away.
 Bob jumped up. "The sea-car basin! It's coming from there!"
 It was hard to believe—but it did sound that way. All four of us leaped up and raced out of the little apartment, down the steps, onto the platform that surrounded the little basin where the Atlantic manager's subsea vessel was moored when he was present.

  There was nothing there. We looked around in the glow of the violet Troyon lights. There was the little railed landing, the white walls, the face of the water itself. Nothing else, But—the sea doors stood wide open.

            We stared out through the open doors, to where the waters inside the basin joined the straight, narrow canal that led to the open sea. There were waves, shrunken imitations of the breakers outside; there were ripples bouncing off the sides.

 There was no sign of a sea car.
 David Craken said wearily: "I wonder --No, it
 couldn't be."
 "What couldn't be?" I asked.    He shrugged. "I guess I'm hearing ghosts. For a mo-ment I thought, just possibly, Joe Trencher had followed us here—come into the basin, listened to what we were saying. But it can't be true." He pointed to the silent scanning ports of the electronic watchman. "Anything that came in or out would trip the search circuits," he reminded us. "The electronic watchman didn't sound an alarm—so it couldn't have been that."

 Bob Eskow said stubbornly: "I'm sure I heard motors.'*           David said: "I was sure too—but don't you see it's impossible? I suppose we heard some strange echo from the surf—or perhaps a surface boat passing, well out to
 sea ---"

            Bob Eskow glowered. "I'm no lubber, David! I know the sound of sea-car motors when I hear them!" But then he hesitated and looked confused. "But you're right," he admitted. "It couldn't have been that. The electronic watchman would have spotted it at once."

            We trudged back upstairs, but somehow the mood of excitement that had possessed us was gone. We were all looking a little thoughtful, almost worried.

            It was getting late, anyhow. We quickly made plans for
 what we had to do. "I'll try to call my uncle," I said. "—I
 don't know what good it will do. But I'll try. Meanwhile, David, I suppose you might as well stay here and keep
 out of sight. We've got to get back to the Academy, but tomorrow we'll come back and then ----"

 "Then we'll get to work," Bob promised.
 And that was all for that strange, exciting day
 •.. except for one thing.
 We left David there and walked slowly back through the fairy garden to the gate. We were all feeling tired by then—bone-tired, exhausted, not only from the strenuous activity of the marathon swim but from the letdown after our strange meeting with David Craken and with Joe Trencher, whoever he was.
 Maybe that was why we were out of the garden and a hundred yards down the road before I noticed something.
 I stopped still in the coral road. "You closed the gate!" I said sharply to Bob.
 He looked around. "Why—yes, I did. I pushed it
 closed as we came through. After all, I didn't want to
 leave it open in case some ----- "
 "No, no!" I cried. "You closed it! Remember? It was standing half ajar. Don't you see what I mean? Come on—follow me!"
 Tired as I was, I trotted back to the gate. It was closed, all right, just as Bob had left it. There was the twenty-foot high hedge, thorny and impenetrable. There was the gate, with the monitoring turret of the electronic watchman at the side.
 We stopped in front of the gate, panting.
 Nothing happened.
 "You see?" I cried. They blinked at me.
 "Don't you understand yet? Watch me " I pushed the gate open. It swung wide.
 Nothing else happened.
 Roger Fairfane got it then—and a moment later, Bob Eskow caught on.
 "The electronic watchman!" Bob "It—it isn't on! That's an automatic whispered. gate—you shouldn't be able to move it, unless the red scanning ray identifies you...."
 I nodded.
 "Now you see," I told them. "The watchmen's been turned off—somehow. It isn't working. Wires cut, I sup-pose."
 Roger looked at me worriedly.
 "So—so those motors we thought we heard down be
 low ---"

  I nodded. "It wasn't imagination," I said. "They were real. They disconnected the watchman and came in. And every word we said, they overheard."

 

Sargasso Dome         

 

Eastward and down. Our destination was Sargasso City.
 Neither Bob nor Roger Fairfane could get a pass; it was up to David and me to go to Sargasso City and look over the Killer Whale. We argued for a long time whether it was safe for David to come along—if a cadet should see him and recognize him, there would be questions asked! But it seemed that there should be two of us, and that left us no choice.
 We booked passage from Hamilton on the regular sub-sea shuttle to Sargasso City, a hundred and fifty miles east of Bermuda and more than two miles straight down. In the short time before our subsea ship left I found a phone booth and placed a long-distance call to my uncle Stewart in far-off Thetis Dome.
 There was no answer.
 I told the operator: "Please, it's very important. Can you keep trying?"
 "Certainly, sir!" She was all professional competence. "Give me your number, please. I'll call you back."
 I thought rapidly. That was impossible, of course—I wouldn't be there for more than a few more minutes. Yet I didn't want to have my uncle phone me at the Acade-my, since there was the chance that someone might over-hear. I said: call you from
 Sargasso Dome in ---" I about
 two hours."
 David was gesticulating frantically from outside the booth. I hung up and the two of us raced down the long gloomy shed that was the Pan-Carib Line's dock. We just reached the ship as the gangways were about to come down.
 "Keep trying, operator. I'll

 glanced at my watch—"in I couldn't help feeling a little worried for no good reason—naturally, my uncle had plenty to do with his time! There was nothing much to worry about if he wasn't at home at any particular moment. Still, it was halfway around the world and rather late at night in Thetis Dome; I felt a nagging doubt in the back of my mind that everything was well with him....

            But the joy of cruising the deeps again put it out of my mind in a matter of moments.
 We slid away from Hamilton port on the surface. As soon as we were safely past the shallows of the shelf we dived cleanly beneath the waves and leveled on course for Sargasso Dome.
 The little shuttle vessel was a midget beside the giant Pacific liners in which I had traveled to Thetis Dome long before, but it was two hundred feet long for all of that. Because it was small, discipline was free and easy, and David and I were able to roam the crew spaces and the enginerooms without much trouble. It made the time pass quickly. At seventy knots the entire voyage took a little less than two hours; the time was gone before we knew it.
 We disembarked at Sargasso City through edenite cou-pler tubes and immediately looked for a phone booth.
 I poured coins into it, and got the same operator once more by dialing her code number.
 There was still no answer.
 I left the call in, and David and I asked directions to the Fleet basin where the surplus ships lay idle, waiting to be sold at public auction.
 The Killer Whale lay side by side with the old Dolphin in the graving docks at the bottom of Sargasso Dome.
 Neither was particularly big—they'd both been small enough to fit in the ship lock that let them into the city from the cold deeps outside. But the Dolphin seemed like a skiff next to the Killer Whale. We didn't waste time looking at her; we quickly boarded the Killer through the main hatch and examined her from stem to stern.
 David looked up at me, his eyes glistening. "She's a beauty," he whispered.
 I nodded. The Killer Whale was one of the last Class-K subsea cruisers built. There was nothing wrong with her, nothing at all, except that in the past ten years there had been so many improvements in subsea weapons— requiring different mounts, different design from stem to stern—that the Fleet had condemned every vessel more than a decade old. The process of conversion was nearly complete, and only a few old-timers like the Dolphin and the Killer Whale still remained to be replaced.

            There were crew quarters for sixteen men. "We'll rattle around in her," I told David. "But we can handle her. One of us on the engines and one at the controls; we can split up and take twelve-hour shifts. She'll run like a dream, you'll see."

            He put his hand on the master's wheel as though he were touching a holy object. "She's a beauty," he said again. "Well, let's go up and see about putting in a bid."

            That took a little bit of the spell off the moment for both of us. Putting in a bid—but what did we have to bid with? Unless my uncle Stewart could help—and he was very far from being a rich man—we couldn't raise the price of the little escape capsule the Whale carried in her bilges, much less the cost of the whole cruiser.

            In the office of the lieutenant-commander in charge of disposing of the two vessels we were informed that the rock-bottom bid that would be accepted was fifty thousand dollars. The officer looked us over and grinned. "Pretty expensive to buy out of your allowances, boys," he said. "Why don't you settle for something a little smaller—say, a toy sailboat?"

            For the first time in my life I regretted wearing the dress scarlet uniform of an Academy cadet—in civilian clothes, I would have felt a lot freer to tell him what I thought! David stepped in front of me to avert the ex-plosion.

 "How do we go about putting in a bid?" he asked.        The officer lost a little of his amused look. "Why," the said, "if you're serious about this, all you have to do is take one of these application forms and fill it in. Put down your name and address and the amount you're prepared to bid. You'll have to post a bond of one-third of the amount you're bidding before the bids are opened, otherwise your bid won't even be considered. That's all there is to it."

 
 "May I have a form for the Killer Whale then, sir?'*     The lieutenant commander looked at him, then shrugged. "Killer, eh?" he said, scrabbling through the pile of forms on his desk. "You're smart there, anyway. The Dolphin's nothing but a heap of rust. I ought to know—I served in her myself, as an ensign. But what in the world do you want a cruiser for, young man—even if you had the money to pay for it?"

            David coughed. "I—I want it for my father," he said, and quickly took the forms from the officer's hand.

            We retired to the outer office, clutching the forms. It was a big, public room, full of people, some of whom looked at us curiously. We found a corner where we could go over the papers.
 I looked over David's shoulder. The forms were headed Application for Purchase of Surplus Subsea Vessel, and on the first page was a space where the names of the Killer Whale and the Dolphin had been filled in for us. David promptly put a big check mark next to the Killer Whale. He filled in my name and address and hesitated over the space marked: Amount offered.
 I stopped him.
 "Hold on a second," I said. "Let me try calling my uncle again. There's phone booth right across the room."
 He grinned. "Might as well see if we're going to be able to pay for it," he agreed.

            This time my call went right through.
 But the person who answered was not my uncle. It was a vision-phone, and the picture before my eyes

            swirled and cleared and took form. It was Gideon Park— my uncle's most trusted helper, the man who had saved my life in the drains under Thetis Dome so long ago!

            His black face looked surprised, then grinned, his teeth flashing white. "Young Jim! It's good to see you, boy!" Then he looked oddly concerned. "I guess you want your uncle, eh? He's—uh—he can't be reached right now, Jim. Can I help you? You're not in trouble at the Academy, are you?"

            "No, nothing like that, Gideon. Where is my uncle?" He hesitated. "Well, Jim ----- "
 "Gideon! What's the matter? Is anything wrong?"

 He said, "Now, hold on, Jim. He's going to be all right. But he's—well, he's sleeping right now. I've had the phone
 disconnected all day so as not to disturb him, and I don't
 want to wake him up unless ----- "

 "Gideon, tell me what's wrong with my uncle!" He said soberly: "It isn't too bad, I promise you that, Jim. But the truth is, he's sick."
 "Sick!"
 Gideon nodded, the black face worried and

            sympathe-tic. "He had some sort of an attack. Three days ago it was. He got a letter from an old acquaintance of his. He was reading it, right here at his desk, when suddenly he keeled
 over ---"

 "A heart attack?"         Gideon shook his head. He said in his soft, warm voice: "Nothing so simple, Jim. All the sea-medics say is that your uncle has been under too much pressure. He has lived too deep, too long."

            That was true enough, no doubt of it. I remembered my uncle's long, exciting life in the Deeps. The time when he had been trapped—just a few months back—in a crippled ship at the bottom of the deepest trench in the southwest Pacific. His recovery had seemed complete, when Gideon and I found him and brought him back— but the human body was not evolved for the life of a deep-sea fish. High pressure and drugs can sometimes have unexpected effects.

            "Can I speak to him?"
 "Well—the sea-medics say he shouldn't have too much excitement, Jim. Is it—is it anything I can help with?"
 I only paused a second—I knew I could trust Gideon
 as much as my uncle himself. I began to pour out the whole mixed-up story of the pearly-eyed men and the
 Tonga pearls and David Craken -----
 "Craken? Did you say David Craken?"
 I stopped, staring at Gideon through the viewscreen. "Why, yes, Gideon. His father's name is Jason Craken—" or that's what he calls himself."
 "A queer thing! Craken, Jim—that's the letter that came! The letter your uncle was reading when he had the attack—from Jason Craken!" He hesitated a second.

 
 Then: "Hold on, Jim," he ordered. "Sink the sea-medics— I'll wake him up!"     There was a moment's pause, then a quick shadowy flicker as Gideon transferred the call at his end to an extension in my uncle's bedroom.

            I saw my uncle Stewart sitting, propped up, in a nar-row bed. His face looked hollow and thin, but he smiled to see me. Evidently he had been lying there awake, for there was no trace of sleepiness in his manner.

 cc
 Jim!" His voice seemed hoarse and weary, but strong. What's this stuff Gideon is telling me?"    Quickly I told him what I had told Gideon—and more, from the moment I had met David Craken on the gym ship until the actual filling out of the bid for pur-chase of the Killer Whale. "And he said to call you, Uncle Stewart," I finished. "And—and so I did."

            "I'm glad you did, Jim!" My uncle closed his eyes for a second, thinking, "We've got to help him, Jim," he said at last. "It's a debt of honor."

            "A debt?" I stared at the viewscreen. "But I didn't know you ever heard of Jason Craken ----- "
 He nodded. "It's something I never told you, Jim. Years ago, when your father and I were young. We were exploring the rim of the Tonga Trench—as far down as we could go in the diving gear we had then. We were looking for pearls. Tonga pearls."
 He nodded. "Tonga pearls," he said again." Well, we found them. But we couldn't keep them, Jim, because while your father and I were out in pressure suits—right at the bottom of the safe limit—we were attacked. I—I can't tell you what attacked us, Jim, because I gave my word. Perhaps the Crakens themselves will tell you some-time. But we were hauled farther and farther down into the deep—far past the rated limits of our armor. It began to fail."
 He paused, remembering that far-off day. Oddly, he smiled. "I thought we were done then, Jim," he said. "But we were rescued. The man who rescued us was—Jason Craken.
 "Jason Craken!" My uncle was sitting up now, and for a moment his voice was strong. "A strange name—for a strange man! He was short-spoken, almost rude, a little odd. He wore a beard. He dressed like a dandy. He had a taste for luxuries, a lavish spender, a generous host. And a very shrewd man, Jim. He sold Tonga pearls—no one else could compete with him, because no one else knew where they came from. It was worth a fortune to him to keep that monopoly secret, Jim.

            "And your father and I—we knew the secret. And he saved our lives.
 "He risked his own life to save us—and he endangered the secret of the pearls. But he trusted us. We promised never to come back to the Tonga Trench. We gave our word never to say where the pearls came from.
 "And if he needs help now, Jim—it's up to you and me to see that he gets it."
 He frowned. "I—I can't do much myself, Jim—I'm laid up for a while. I suppose it was the shock of Jason Craken's letter. But he mentioned that he might need money for a fighting ship, and I've been able to raise some. Not a fortune. But—enough, I think. I'll see that you get it as fast as I can get it to you. Buy the Killer Whale for him. Help him any way you can."
 He slumped back against the bed and grinned at me. "That's all, Jim. Better sign off now—this call must be costing a fortune! But remember—we owe a lot to Jason Craken, because if it hadn't been for him neither you nor I would be here now."
 And that was all.
 I turned, a little shaken, to where David was waiting outside the booth.
 "It's all right, David," I told him, glancing around the room. "He's going to help. We'll get some money from
 him—enough, he says. And ----- "
 I broke off. "David!" I cried. "Look—over there, where we were filling out the application forms!"
 He whirled. He had left the forms on a little desk to come over while I called my uncle. They weje still there— and over them was bending the figure of a man.
 Or was it man? For the figure turned and saw us looking at him—saw us with pearly eyes, that contracted and glared. It was the person from the sea who called himself "Joe Trencher"!

  He turned and ran—through the door, out into the crowded passages beyond. "Come on!" cried David. "Let's catch him—maybe he's still got the pearls!"

 
 Tencha of Tonga Trench     

We scoured Sargasso City that day—but we never found Joe Trencher.
 At the end, David stopped, panting.
 "We've lost him," he said. "Once he got out of sight, he was gone."
 "But he's got to be in the city somewhere! We can
 search level by level ---"
 "No." David shook his head. "He doesn't have to be in the city, Jim. He—isn't like you and me, Jim. He might calmly walk into an escape lock and disappear into the sea, and we'd be spending our next month searching in here while he was a hundred miles away."
 "Into the sea? Nearly three miles down? It isn't hu-manly possible!"
 David only said: "Sign the bid form, Jim. We have to get it in."
 That was all he would say.
 We returned to the lieutenant commander's office. I signed my name to the application form with hardly a glance at it; we put down the minimum bid—fifty thou-sand dollars. Fifty thousand dollars! But of course the ship had cost many times that, new.
 We barely made it back to the subsea shuttle for the return trip to Bermuda.
 We were both quiet, and I suppose thinking the same thoughts. Curious, that Joe Trencher should have been able to find us in Sargasso Dome! It made it almost certain that the sound of motors we had heard in the boat basin was indeed Trencher, or someone close to him, listening in on our discussion. So they knew everything we had planned....

 
 But there was no help for it; we couldn't change our plans. There simply was nothing else for us to do.   We sat in silence, in the main passenger lounge, for half an hour or so. We were nearly alone. There was a faint whisper of music from the loud speakers, and a few couples on holiday at the far end of the lounge; and that was all. Business was not brisk between Bermuda and Sargasso City at that particular season.

            Finally I could stand it no longer.
 I burst out: "David! This has gone far enough. Don't you see, I have to know what we're up against! Who is this Joe Trencher? What's his connection with your father and the Tonga pearls?"
 David looked at me with troubled eyes.
 Then he glanced around the lounge. No one was near by, no one could hear.
 He said at last: "All right, Jim. I suppose it's the
 best
 way. I did promise my father ---- But he's a sick man,
 and a long way off. I think I'U have to use my own judgment now."
 "You'll tell me about Trencher and—and those sea serpents, or whatever they were?"
 He nodded.
 "Trencher," he said. "Joe Trencher. He was once my father's foreman. His most trusted employee—and now he is leading the mutineers."
 "Mutineers against what, David?" I was more than a little exasperated. So many things I didn't understand—so much mystery that I could not penetrate!
 "Mutineers against my father, of course. I told you about my father's dome—about the undersea empire he built out of the Tonga pearls. Well, it's slipping out of his hands now. The helpers he used to trust have turned against him. Trencher is only one."
 I couldn't help wondering once more about that "em-pire" beneath the sea. It didn't seem that David's father could have built it by strictly legal and honest methods— but that was a long time ago, of course....
 "It began with the sea serpents," David was saying. "They have lived in the Tonga Trench, made their lairs in the very sea mount where my father built his dome, for millions of years, Jim. Maybe hundreds of millions. You see reconstructions of beasts like them in the museums, and they go back to a time long, long before there were any humans on earth. They're unbelievably ancient, and they haven't changed a bit in all those hundreds of mil-lions of years. Until my father came along. And he—he is trying to do something with them, Jim. Something that's hard to believe. He's trying to train them as horses and dogs are trained—to help him, to work for him. He's trying to domesticate saurians that date back to the age of dinosaurs!"

            I stared at him, hardly believing. I remembered that giant, dimly seen head that loomed over the rail of the gym ship. Domesticate that? It would be as easy to teach a rattlesnake to carry a newspaper!

            But he was still talking.
 "Naturally, Dad couldn't do it alone," he said. "But he had help—a curious kind of help, almost as unbelievable as the sea serpents themselves.
 "Joe Trencher. And a few hundred others like him. Not very many—but enough. Without them my father couldn't have got to first base with the saurians. Trench-er's people were a great help."
 "They're ugly enough looking, if Trencher is any sample," I told him. "Those white, pearly eyes—that pale skin. The funny way they breathe. They don't even seem human!"
 David nodded calmly. "They aren't," he said. "Not any more, at any rate. They're descended from humans— Polynesians, somehow trapped in a subsidence of land. You've heard of the sea-mounts of the Pacific?"
 We nodded, all of us. Those flat-topped submarine mountains, planed level by wave action—yet far below the surface, below any waves.
 "Once they were islands," David went on. "And Tren-cher's ancestors lived on one of them. I suppose they were divers—so far back, it is impossible to tell. But they had Polynesian names, so it couldn't have been too far back. Trencher's own father's name was Tencha—and Trencher took the new name on a whim of Dad's. Trencher. A being from the Tonga Trench. "And when their island submerged, they somehow managed to live. They reverted to the past, the far-distant past when every living thing lived in the water." "You mean ----- " I hesitated, fumbling for
 words,
 hardly able to believe I was hearing right. "You mean Joe Trencher is some sort of—of merman?"
 "Dad calls them 'amphibians.' They are mutations. Their lungs are changed to work like gills. They're more at home in the water now, actually, than they are on dry land."
 I nodded, remembered all too clearly the panting, wheezing difficulty Joe Trencher had had with breathing air. I began to understand it now.

            Trencher used to be my friend," said David somberly. When I was at home, I used to put on a lung and dive with him—not down in the Trench, but at a thousand feet or so. I watched him training the—the creatures. He showed me things on the floor of the sea that the Fleet has

 never seen.      But then he changed. Dad blames himself. He says the mutation made the amphibians somehow tem-peramentally unstable, and then, as they learned some-thing about But what-ever it the outside world—they—changed. was, now he hates Dad—and all humans. He's the one who kidnaped me from the gym ship. He'd been waiting for his chance—do you remember how many strange little things had been happening, pieces of equip-ment mysteriously missing, that sort of thing? That was Joe Trencher.

            "He turned up, down there at thirteen hundred feet. I—I didn't suspect anything, Jim. I was glad to see him. But I didn't know what had been happening back in my father's dome. I don't know what Trencher did to me— clubbed me, I suppose. I woke up in his sea car, on the way back to Tonga Trench.

            "He threatened to kill me, you see. I was his hostage. He used me to threaten my father. But my father's a stubborn man. He has ruled his subsea empire a long time, and he didn't give in."

            "Then how did you get away?"
 For the first time, David Craken smiled.
 "Maeva," he said. "Maeva—my friend. She's just an

 amphibian girl, but she was loyal. I'd known her since we were both very small. We grew up together. We both watched Joe Trenchor breaking the saurians. Then Maeva and I would go exploring, after—me in my edenite suit, she breathing the water itself. We'd go through the caves in the seamount. I suppose it was dangerous, in a way— those caves belonged to the saurians; they laid their eggs there, and raised their young. We were careful not to go near them in the summer, of course—that's the breeding season. And there is another mystery—for there are no seasons under the sea. But the saurians remembered....

 It was dangerous.        "But not as dangerous as what Maeva did for me two months ago.
 "She found me in Joe Trencher's sea car. She brought the edenite cylinder from my father, along with a mes-sage. And she helped me get away in the sea car.
 "Trencher followed—naturally. I don't know if he sus-pected her or not. I hope not." David's face looked pinched and drawn as he said it.
 "Anyway," he went on, "Joe Trencher followed me— not in a sea car, but swimming free, and riding one of the saurians. They can make a fabulous rate of speed in the open sea—they kept right after me. And then they caught me."
 David looked up.
 "And the rest you know," he said. "Now—it's up to all of us. And we don't have much time."

            We didn't have much time.
 But time passed.
 David went back to the little apartment over the

 boat shed, to wait. Roger and Bob and I went on with our classes.       The next day there was not much time for thinking. It was only a week until Graduation Week, and there were the last of our examinations to get through. Hard to focus our minds on Mahan's theories and the physics of liquid masses, with high adventure in the background! But we had to do it.

            And after the final day of examinations, no break. For there was close-order drill, parade formation. We strug-gled into our dress-scarlet uniforms and fell out for unending hours of countermarching and wasn't our own graduation we would for—but ev-ery one of us looked forward to the time when we would be sworn in before the assembled ranks of the Academy, and every one of us clipped off the maneuvers with every ounce of precision we could manage. It was blistering hot in the Bermuda sun as we practiced, hour after hour, for the final review. Then, just before the sunset gun, there came a welcome change. The cumulus masses had been building and towering over the sea; they came lowering in on us, split with lightning flashes. The clouds opened up, and pelting rain drenched us all.

            We raced for shelter, any shelter we could find. I found myself in the lee of an upended whaleboat, and crouched beside me was another cadet, as wet as I. He brushed rivulets of rain from his flat-visored dress-scarlet cap and turned to me, grinning.
 It was Eladio Angel.
 "Jim!" he cried. "Jim Eden! So long since I have seen you!"
 I took his hand as he held it out to shake, and I wheeling. It be marching suppose I must have said something. But I don't know what.
 Eladio Angel—David Craken's old roommate, his close friend, the only cadet in all the Academy, save Bob Eskow and myself, who thought enough of David to feel the loss when he was gone.
 And what could I say to Laddy Angel now?
 He was going on and on. "—since you wrote your letter to Jason Craken, the father of David. Ah, David— even now, Jim, I think sometimes of him. So great a loss, so good a friend! I can scarcely believe that he is gone. And truly, Jim, even to this day I cannot believe it. No, in my heart I believe he is alive somewhere—somehow he escaped, somehow he did not drown. But—enough!" He grinned again. "Tell me, Jim, how are you? I have seen you only a time or two, leaving a class or crossing the quadrangle—we have not had time to speak. Convenient, this rain—it causes us to meet again!"
 I cleared my throat. "Why—why, yes, Laddy," I said, uncomfortably. "Yes, it—it certainly is good to see you again. I, uh ----" I pretended to look out at the teeming rain and to be surprised. "Why, look, Laddy!" I cried. "I believe it's letting up! Well, I've got to get back to dorm— I'll be seeing you!"

            And I fled, through the unrelenting downpour. I could feel his eyes on my back as I went—not angry, but hurt. Undoubtedly hurt. I had been rude to him—but what could I do? David had said, over and over, that we must keep this matter secret—and I am no accomplished liar, that I could talk to his close friend and not give away the secret that he was not dead!

            But I didn't have much time to brood about it. As I was racing across the quadrangle, drenched to the skin, someone hailed me. "Eden! Cadet Eden, report!"

            I skidded to a halt and saluted.
 It was an upperclassman, on temporary duty with the Commandant's office. He was outfitted in bad-weather oilskins, only his face peeping out into the downpour. He returned my salute uncomfortably, rain pouring into his sleeve as he lifted his arm.
 "Cadet Eden," he rapped, "report to the Comman-dant's office immediately! Someone to see you!"
 Someone to see me?
 The standing orders of the Academy are: Cadets report-ing to the Commandant will do so on the double! But I didn't need the spur of the standing orders to make me move. I could hardly wait to get there—for I could not imagine who might want me. If it was David, or anyone connected with David, it could only mean trouble. Bad trouble, bad enough to make him give up his secrecy....
 But it wasn't trouble at all.
 I ran panting into the Commandant's outer office and braked to stiff attention. Even while I was saluting I
 gasped: "Cadet Eden, sir, reporting as ordered by ----"
 I stopped, astonished.
 A tall, black figure was getting up out of a chair in the reception room—a figure I knew well, the figure of some-one I had thought to be half a world away. Gideon Park!
 He grinned at me, his white teeth flashing. "Jim," he said, in his soft, mild voice. "Your uncle said you needed help. Here I am!"

 
  Graduation Week   

Gideon Park! Tall, black, loyal—just to see him there waiting for me in the Commandant's office took an enor-mous weight off my shoulders. Gideon and I had been in plenty of tight spots together, and I had a lot of respect for the man.

            Maybe we had a chance to carry through our plans after all!
 Gideon and I had only a moment to talk together, that first afternoon. I whispered to him where he could find David Craken—in the boathouse on the estate of Trident's Atlantic manager. He nodded and winked and left.
 And I went back to dorm to get ready for evening mess, feeling better than I had in days.
 I couldn't get off Academy grounds that evening, but Bob hadn't used all his passes. Right after evening chow he took off for the boathouse, to talk things over with Gideon and David Craken.
 He returned seconds before Lights Out. He had been gone nearly four hours.
 "It's all right," he whispered to me, hastily getting ready for bed.. "Gideon brought the money with him."
 "How much?" I asked, keeping my own voice down— if the duty officer heard us, it was a demerit. And it was too close to th$ end of the school year to want demerits.
 "Enough. Ninety-seven thousand dollars, Jim! He had it with him in cash. That's the most money I ever saw in one place."
 I nodded in the darkness. "Ninety-seven thousand," I repeated. "Funny amount—I suppose it was every penny he could raise." It was a grim thought. I whispered ur-gently: "Bob, we've got to come through on this! If I know my uncle, he's gone in debt for this—he's repaying an obligation to Jason Craken. If anything goes wrong—if we can't help Craken, can't get this money back for my uncle—it'll mean trouble for him."

  "Of course, Jim." Bob was in bed already. "Gideon's going to Sargasso Dome tomorrow," he whispered. "To put up the bond so that our bid will be counted. There isn't much time left."

 "Did you tell David that I'd seen Laddy Angel?"            There was a pause for a second. "I—I forgot, Jim. I
 didn't have much time, anyway. I was only there for a
 few minutes ----"

            I sat straight up in bed. "Only a few minutes! But, Bob—you were gone for hours!"
 His voice was apologetic—and strained. "I was, well, delayed, Jim. I, uh ----- "
 We both heard the rapping of the duty officer's heels in the corridor outside.
 That put an end to the conversation. But I couldn't help wondering fuzzily, as I went to sleep—if Bob was gone four hours, and had only a few minutes in the beach house ... what had he done with the rest of his time?

 "Atten-HUT!" The voice of the Commandant roared through the loudhailers, and the whole student body of the Academy snapped to.

 "By squadrons! Forward MARCH!"    The sea band struck up the Academy anthem, and the classes passed in review.
 It was the end of Graduation Week. We wheeled brisk-ly off the Quadrangle, past the reviewing stands, down the crushed coral of the Ramp, to the dispersal areas.
 The school year was at an end.
 Bob Eskow and I were now upperclassmen, with the whole summer ahead of us.
 And today was the day when the sealed bids of the condemned Fleet cruisers would be opened—and we would know if we owned the Killer Whale or not.
 Bob and I raced back to barracks. Discipline was at an end! The halls were full of milling cadets, talking, laugh-ing, making plans for the summer. Even the duty officers, for once relaxed and smiling, were walking around, shak-ing hands with the cadets they had been dressing down or putting on report a few hours before.
 We quickly changed into off-duty whites and
 headed toward the gate. The guards were still stiffly formal, at ramrod attention; but as we automatically braked to a halt in front of the guardbox and reached instinctively for the passes that we didn't have, one of them unbent and grinned. "You're on your own time now, cadets!" he murmured. "Have a good time!"

            We nodded and walked past ---
 But not very far.
 "Bob Eskow! Jim!"
 A voice crying our names, behind us. We turned, but

 even before I looked I knew who it was.
 Eladio Angel! His face was serious and determined. He was trotting to catch up with us.           Bob and I looked at each other as he came toward us, his dark eyes serious, his mouth grim. In all these months we had hardly spoken to him, barring the one time I had met him under the boat hull and had left him so abruptly.

            And now—just when we could least afford to have him with us, here he was!
 He stopped in front of us, panting slightly.
 "Jim," he said sharply. "Come, I am going with you."
 "With us? But—but, Laddy ----- "
 He shook his head. "No, Jim. It is no use to argue with me. I have thought, and I am not wrong." He smiled faintly, seriously. "I ask myself, why should Jim Eden be rude? There is no answer, for you are not the sort who does this. No answer—unless there is something you do not wish to tell me. So I wait there, Jim," he said earnest-ly, looking into my eyes. "I wait there under the boat, where you have left me. And I look at the rain which is coming down by torrents and buckets, Jim, the rain which you have said is almost over. And I say: 'Jim Eden has one secret.' What can this secret be? Ah, there is only one answer, for I have noticed the look on your face when I mention a certain name. So I ask questions, and I find you have been going off grounds much of the time. Many times. And always to the same place—and there is some-one there you visit, someone no one sees.
 "So—the secret is no secret, Jim, for I have figured it out." He grinned openly, with friendly warmth. "So let us go then, Jim," he said, "all three of us—let us go to see  my friend who is not lost, my friend you have been visiting by stealth—David Craken!"          The electronic beam leaped out, coral-pink in the after-noon daylight, and scanned my face. "You may enter," rapped out the voice from the watchman-machine, and the doors wavered slightly and relaxed.

            We walked through the fairy garden, following the palely glimmering Troyon lights that marked the path we were permitted to take. Since the watchman had been repaired there had been no other trouble. But of course, the one time was enough.

            We came to a crossing and Laddy absentmindedly started to take a wrong turning, down a shell-pink lane toward a fountain that began to play as we came near it. At once the coral scanning ray leaped from a hidden viewport, and the mechanical voice squawked: "Go back, go back! You are not permitted! Go back!"

            I caught Laddy Angel by the shoulder and steered him onto the right path. It wasn't entirely safe to disobey the orders of the electronic watchman. It had its weapons against intruders—true, it was not likely to shoot Laddy down, merely for stepping on the wrong path; but there was the chance it might transmit an alarm to the Police headquarters in Hamilton if its electronic brain thought there was danger to its master's property. And we still didn't want the publicity the police might bring.

            "Funny," said Bob Eskow from behind me.
 "What's funny?"
 "Well ---" he hesitated. "Roger Fairfane. He talks so

            much about how important his father is, and how he has the run of Trident Lines. And yet here he's restricted to the boathouse. Doesn't it seem funny to you, Jim? I mean, if his father is such a hot-shot, wouldn't the Atlan-tic manager of his father's line let Roger have the run of the whole place?"

 I shrugged. "Let's not worry about it," I said. "Laddy, here we are. David is waiting in the apartment there, above the boat basin." I had been a little worried—worried that David would be angry because we'd brought Laddy along.
 But I needn't have worried. It took two or three words of explanation, and then he was grinning. He shrugged. "You're quite a detective, Laddy," he conceded. "To tell you the truth—I'm glad you figured it out. It's good to see you!"

            Gideon hadn't returned from Sargasso City yet, and there wasn't much to do until he did. So the four of us—five when Roger showed up, half an hour or so later—spent the next couple of hours talking over old times. David had food ready in the automatic kitchen; we ate a good meal, watched a baseball game on the stereovi-sion set in the living room, and just loafed.

            It was the most relaxing afternoon I had spent in a long time.
 Unfortunately, it didn't last.
 It was getting late when we heard the distant rattle of the gate loudspeaker challenging someone and, a moment later, I saw from the window the tiny violet sparks of the Troyon lights marking the pathway for the visitor.
 "Must be Gideon," I cried. "He's coming this way. I hope he's got good news!"
 It was Gideon, all right. He came in; but he didn't get any farther than the door before all five of us were leaping at him, firing questions. "Did we get it? Come on, Gideon—don't keep us waiting! What's the story? Did we get the Killer Whale?"
 He looked at us all silently for a moment.
 The questions stopped. Every one of us realized that something was wrong in the same second. We stood there, frozen, waiting for him to speak.
 He said at last: "Jim, did you say you saw this Joe Trencher in Sargasso City when you put in the bid?"
 "Why—why, yes, Gideon. He was poking around the papers, but I don't think he ----"
 "You think wrong, Jim." Gideon's black, strong face was bleak. His soft voice had a touch of anger to it that I had seldom heard. "Do you remember anything else about that day?"
 "Well—let me think." I tried to think back. "We went down to the Fleet basin. There were the ships that were up for surplus—the Killer and that other one, the heap of rust. The Dolphin. We looked the Killer over and filled out the forms. Then, while I was calling my uncle, Joe Trencher started poking around the papers. And—well, we couldn't catch him. So we just filed the bid applica-tions and caught the sub-sea shuttle back here."

            Gideon nodded somberly.
 David cried: "Gideon, what's wrong? I've got to have that cruiser! It's—it's my father's life that's at stake. If we didn't bid enough—well, then maybe we can raise some more money, somehow. But I must have it!"
 "Oh, the bid was enough," said Gideon. "But ----"
 "But what, Gideon?"
 He sighed. "I guess Joe Trencher knew what he was doing," he said, in that soft, chuckling voice, now sound-ing worried. "He put in a bid himself, you see."

            It was bad news.
 We looked at each other. David said at last, his voice hoarse and ragged: "Joe Trencher. With the pearls he stole
 from me, he bought the ship I need to save my father's
 life. And there's no time now to go back and try something else. It's almost time ---"
 Time for what, I wondered—but Roger Fairfane interrupted him. "Is that it, Gideon?" he demanded. "Did Trencher make a higher bid, so that we don't have a ship?"
 Gideon shook his head.
 "Not exactly," he said. "Trencher owns the Killer Whale now, but he got it for fifty thousand dollars—the same as you bid."
 "But—but then what——"
 "You see," said Gideon gently, "Trencher wasn't just looking at those papers. He—changed them. Changed them his way. I made the Fleet commander show them to me, and it was obvious that they'd been changed—but of course I couldn't prove anything." He looked at us som-berly. "The ship you bid on wasn't the Killer Whale," he said. "Not after Trencher got through with the papers. What you bid on—and what you now own—is the other one. The heap of rust, as you called it, Jim. The Dolphin."

  
 Rustbucket Navy     

The next day David Craken and I went to Sargasso City to pick up our prize.
 The Killer Whale still lay in the slip beside it. Obsoles-cent, no doubt—but sleek and deadly as the sea beast for which she was named. She lay low in the water, her edenite hull rippling with pale light where the wavelets washed against it.
 Next to the Killer, our Dolphin looked like the wreck she was.
 Naturally, there was no sign of Joe Trencher. For a moment I had the wild notion of waiting there—keeping a watch on the Killer Whale, laying in wait until Trencher came to claim the ship he had cheated us out of and then confronting him....
 But what good would it have done? And besides, there was no time. David had said several times that we had only a few weeks. In July something was going to hap-pen—something that he was mysterious about, but some-thing that was dangerous.
 It was now the beginning of June. We had at the most four weeks to refit the Dolphin, get under weigh, make the long voyage down under the Americas, around the Horn (for we had to avoid the Fleet inspection that would come if we went through the Canal)—and help David's father.
 It was a big job _
 And the Dolphin was a very small ship.
 David looked at me and grinned wryly. "Well," he said, "let's go aboard."
 The Dolphin had been a fine and famous ship—thirty years before.
 We picked our way through a tangle of discarded gear—evidently her last crew had been so happy to get off her that they hadn't waited to pack!
 We found ourselves in her wardroom. The
 tarnished brass tablets welded to the bulkhead recorded the high moments of her history. We paused to read them. In spite of everything, I couldn't help feeling a thrill.
 She had held the speed and depth records for her class for three solid years.
 She had been the flagship of Admiral Kane—back before I was born, on his Polar expeditions, when he sonargraphed the sea floor under the ice.
 She had hunted down and sunk the subsea pirate who used the name Davy Jones.
 And later—still seaworthy, but too old for regular serv-ice with the Fleet—she had become a training ship at the Academy. She'd been salvaged two or three years back, just before any of us had come to the Academy, and finally put up for auction.
 And now she was ours.
 We took a room for the night in one of Sargasso Dome's hotels. It was a luxurious place, full of pleasures for vacationers and tourists anxious to sample the imitation mysteries of the fabled Sargasso Sea. But we were in
 no mood to enjoy it. We went to bed and lay awake for a long time, both of us, wondering if the Dolphin's ancient
 armor would survive the crushing pressures of the Deeps _
 Roger Fairfane shook us awake.
 I sat up, blinking, and glanced at my wristchronometer.
 It was only about five o'clock in the morning. I said blurrily, "Roger! What—what are you doing here? I thought you were still in Bermuda."
 "I was." He was scowling worriedly. "We had to come right away—all of us. Laddy's with me, and Bob and Gideon. We took the night shuttle from Bermuda."
 David was out of his bed, standing beside us. "What's the matter, Roger?"
 "Plenty! It's that Joe Trencher again! The bid he made on the Dolphin—it was in the name of something called the Sub-Sea Salvage Corporation. Well, somebody checked into the sale of surplus ships—and they found that no such firm existed. Gideon found out that an order is going to be issued at nine o'clock this morning, canceling all sales.

 
 "So—if we want to use the Dolphin to help your father, David, we've got to get under weigh before the order comes through at nine!"            It didn't give us much time!
 David and I had looked forward to at least a full day's testing of the Dolphin's old propulsion and pressure equipment. Even then, it would have been dangerous enough, taking the old ship out into the crushing pres-sures that surrounded Sargasso Dome.
 But now we had only hours!
 "Well—thank heaven we've got help," muttered David as we dressed hurriedly and checked out of the hotel. "I'm glad Gideon flew in from Marinia! And Laddy. We'll need every one of us, to keep that old tub of rust afloat!"
 "I only hope that's enough to do it," I grumbled. We raced after Roger Fairfane, down the corridors, through the passenger elevators, to the sea-floor levels where the Dolphin and the Killer Whale floated quietly....
 "It's gone!" cried Dave as we came onto the catwalk over the basin. "The Killer's gone!"
 "Sure it is," said Roger. "Didn't I tell you? Trencher must have heard too—the Killer was already gone when we got here. Isn't that the payoff?" he went on disgusted-ly. "Trencher's the one that caused all this trouble—but he's got away already with the Killer "
 Gideon was already at work, checking the edenite ar-mor film, his face worried. He looked up as we trotted up the gangplank to the above-decks hatch.
 "Think she'll stand pressure, Gideon?" I asked him.
 He pushed back his hat and stared at the rippling line of light where the little wavelets licked the Dolphin's side.
 "Think so?" he repeated. "No, Jim. I'll tell you the truth. I don't think so. Not from anything I can see. She ought to be towed out and scuttled, from what I see. Her edenite film's defective—it'll need a hundred-hour job of repair on the generators before I can really trust it. Her power plant is ten years overdue for salvage. One of her pumps is broken down. And the whole power plant, pumps and all, is hot with leaded radiation. If I had my way, I'd scrap the whole plant down to. the bedplates."

 I stared at him. "But—but, Gideon
 He held up his hand. "All the same, Jim," he went on, in his soft voice, "she floats. And I've talked to the salvage officer here—got him out of bed to do it—and she came in on her own power, with her own armor keeping the sea out. Well, that was only a month ago. If she could do it then, she can do it now."
 He grinned. "These subsea vessels," he said, "they aren't just piles of machinery. They live! This one looks like it's fit for the junkyard and nothing else—but it's still running, and as long as she's running, I'll take my chances in her!"
 'That's good enough for me!" David said promptly.

 
 Til go along with that," I told them. "How about Laddy and Bob?"        "They're belowdecks already," Gideon said. "Trying to get the engines turning over. Hear that?"
 We all listened.
 No, we didn't hear anything—at least I didn't. But I could feel something. Down in the soles of my feet, where they touched the rounded upper hump of the Dolphin's armor, I could feel a faint, low vibration.
 The ship was alive! That vibration was the old engines, turning over at last!
 Gideon said, "That's it, Jim. We can push off as soon as they'll open the sea-gates for us." He turned to Roger Fairfane. "You're the only one who hasn't expressed him-self. What about it? You want to come along—or do you think it's too dangerous?"
 Roger scowled nervously. "I—I ----- " he began.
 Then he grinned. "I'm coming!" he told us. "Not only that—but remember our ranks! I'm the senior cadet officer of the whole lot of us—and Gideon and David aren't even cadets, much less officers. So I'm the captain, remember!"

            The captain nearly had a mutiny on his hands in the first five minutes.
 But Gideon calmed us down.
 "What's the difference?" he asked us, in his soft, serious voice. "Let him be captain. We've got to have one, don't we? And we're all pulling together...."

 "I don't know if  he is," grumbled Bob. We were in the old wardroom, stowing our navigation charts away, wait-ing for the Fleet officer to give us clearance to go through the shiplocks into the open sea. "But—I guess you're right. He's the captain, if he wants it that way. / don't
 care. ..."

            There was a rattle and blare from abovedecks. We leaped out of the wardroom to listen.
 "Ahoy, vessel Dolphin!" a voice came roaring through the loudhailers of the Fleet office. "You are cleared for Lock Baker. Good voyage!"
 "Thank you!" cried Roger Fairfane's voice, through the loudspeakers from the bridge. We heard the rattle of the warning system, and the creaking, moaning sound of the engines dogging down the hatch.
 We all ran to our stations—doublemanning them for this first venture into the depths.
 My station was at the bridge, by Roger Fairfane's side. He signaled to Laddy Angel and Bob Eskow, down at the engines, for dead slow speed ahead.
 Inch by inch, on the microsonar charts before us, we saw the little green pip that marked the Dolphin crawl in to Lock Baker.
 We stopped engines as the nose of the ship nuzzled into the cradle of rope bumpers.
 The lock gates closed behind us.
 The Dolphin pitched sharply and rolled as highpressure sea water jetted into the lock from the deep sea outside.
 I could hear the whine of the edenite field generator rise a whole octave as it took the force of all that enor-mous pressure and turned it back upon itself, guarding us against the frightful squeeze.
 The hull of the old ship sparkled and coruscated with green fire as the pressure hit it.
 The lock door opened before us.
 Roger Fairfane rang Dead Slow Ahead on the engine telegraph.
 And our ship moved out into the punishing sea.

 I suppose it was luck that kept us alive.
 Gideon came pounding up from the engine room. "Set course for the surface!" he cried. "She's an old ship, Roger, and the edenite field isn't what it should be.
 Bring her up boy, bring her up! She's taking water!" Roger flushed and seemed about to challenge
 Gideon— after all, Roger was the captain! But there was
 no arguing with the pressure of the deeps. He flipped the
 fore and aft diving fanes into full climb, rang Flank
 Speed on the telegraph.
 The old Dolphin twisted and surged ahead.
 I raced down the companionways with Gideon to
 check the leaks.
 They weren't too bad—but any leak is bad, when two
 miles of water lie over your head. There was just a
 feather
 of spray, leaping out where two plates joined and the
 edenite field didn't quite fill the gap between. "I can fix them, Jim," Gideon said, half to himself. "We'll cruise on
 the surface, and I'll strip down the edenite generator and the hull will hold --Only let's get up topside now!" It was two miles to go.
 But the old Dolphin made it.
 We porpoised to the surface—bad seamanship, that was, but we were in a hurry. And then we set course, south by east, for the long, long swing around the Cape into the South Pacific. On the surface we couldn't make our full rated speed—unlike the old submarines,
 underwater;
 the Dol-phin was designed to stay
 its plump, stubby silhouette was for underwater performance, and cruising on the surface was actually harder for it. But we could make pretty good time all the same.
 And Gideon set to work at once to strip down the old generators. We could get by with the steel plates that underlay the edenite field—as long as we stayed on the surface. And once Gideon had finished his job, we could get back into the deeps where we belonged. There we would churn off the long miles to Tonga Deep. It was halfway around the world, and a bit more—for the long detour around South America added thousands of miles to our trip. At forty knots—and Gideon promised us forty knots—we would be over Tonga Trench in just about two weeks.
 David Craken and I checked our position with a solar
 fix and laid out our course on the navigator's charts. "Two weeks," I said, and he nodded.         "Two weeks." He stared bleakly into space. "I only
 hope we're in time ----- "

 "Craken! Eden!"          Roger's voice came, shrill with excitement, from the bridge. We jumped out of the navigator's cubbyhole to join him.

            "Look at that!" he commanded, pointing to the micro-sonar. "What do you make of it?"
 I stared at the screen. There was a tiny blob of light— behind us and well below. At least a hundred fathoms down.
 I tried to get a closer scan by narrowing the field. It made the tiny blob a shade brighter, a fraction clearer....
 "There it is!" cried Roger Fairfane, and there was an edge of panic in his voice now.
 I couldn't blame him.
 For the image in the microsonar was, for a split sec-ond, clear and bright.
 Then it became a blob again and dwindled; but in that moment I had seen a strange silhouette. A ship?
 Maybe. But if it was a ship, it was a queer one. A fantastic one—for it had a strange conning tower, shaped like a great triangular head, on a long, twisting neck!
 I turned to David Craken, a question on my lips.
 I didn't have to ask it.
 His face was pale as he nodded. "That's right, Jim," he said. "It's a saurian. A—sea serpent. And it's on our trail."

 
 The Followers of the Deeps            

It dogged us endlessly—for hour after unending hour, day after day.
 By and by we became used to it, and we could even joke; but it was a joke with a current of worry running close beneath. For there was no doubt that the saurian that followed was in some way closely related to Joe Trencher—to the Killer Whale—and to the amphibian revolt against David Craken's father.

            We crossed the Equator—and had a little ceremony, like the sailing men of old, initiating the lubbers into the mysteries of Davy Jones. But there was only one lubber among us. Gideon and David Craken had crossed the Equator many times beyond counting—Laddy Angel's home, after all, was in Peru—and even Bob and I had made the long trip to Marinia one time before.

            Roger was our lubber—and, surprisingly, he took the nonsense initiation in good part. Drenched with a ship's bucket of icy salt water from the pressure lock (for we were running submerged once more, the edenite film glis-tening quietly on our plates), choking with laughter, he cried: "Have your fun, boys! Once this is over, I'll be the captain again—and I have a long memory!"

            But it was a joke, not a threat—and I found myself liking Roger Fairfane for almost the first time since we had met.

 But once the initiation was over, and he had come out of his cabin in dry clothes, he was withdrawn and re-served again.             We put in at a little port on the bulge of Brazil for the stores we had been unable to load in Sargasso Dome. There was money to spare for everything we needed—for everything but one thing. Gideon went ashore and stayed for hours, and came back looking drawn and worried. "Nothing doing," he reported. "I tried, Jim, believe me I tried. I even went down to the dives along the waterfront and tried to make a contact. But there's no armament to be had. We've got a fighting ship, but we've nothing to fight with. And there's no chance now that we'll get guns for it."

            David Craken listened and nodded soberly. "It's all
 right," he told us. "I knew we'd have trouble getting guns—the Fleet doesn't sell its vessels with armaments, and
 they make it pretty hard for anyone to get them. But my father—he has weapons, in his dome. If we can get there ---"

 He left it unfinished.
 We drove along through waters that began to show the traces of the melted glaciers of Antarctica. A fraction denser, a part of a degree cooler, a few parts less per mil-lion of salt—we were nearing the tip of the South Ameri-can continent.

            We slipped through the Straits one dark night, running submerged, feeling our way by sonar and by chart. It was a tricky passage—but there was a Fleet base on Terra del Fueeo, and we wanted to avoid attention.

            Once we were in the Pacific all of us, by common impulse, leaped for the microsonar to see if our implac-able follower had navigated the Straits right after us.

            It had.
 The tiny blob that sometimes drew close enough to show a three-cornered head and a ropy neck—it was still following, still there.
 It was still there as we breasted the Peru Current and struck out into the Pacific itself.
 Laddy Angel looked at the sounding instruments with a wry expression. "Cold and fast—it is the Peru Current. Odd, but it causes me to feel almost homesick!"
 Roger Fairfane, off duty but lounging around the bridge laughed sharply. "Homesick? For a current in the ocean?"
 Laddy drew up his eyebrows. "Ah, you laugh, my captain. But trust me, the Peru Current is indeed Peru. Some years it fails—it is a fickle current, and perhaps it wanders out to sea for a few months, to try if it likes the deep sea better than the land. Those years are bad years for my country. For the Current brings food; the food brings little creatures for the sea-birds to feed upon; the sea-birds make guano and themselves make food for big-ger fish. And on these things my country must depend." He nodded soberly. "Laugh at a current in the ocean if you wish to_rbut to my country it is life."

            The  Dolphin pounded on. Past the longitude of the Galapagos, past strange old Easter Island. We stayed clear of land; actually we were not close to anything but the sea bottom, but each time we passed the longitude of an island or island group, David Craken marked it off with his neat pencil tick, and checked the calendar, and sighed. Time was passing.
 And the saurian hung on behind.
 Sometimes it seemed as though there were two of them. Sometimes the little blob behind us seemed to be joined by another, smaller. I asked David: "Can it be two sea serpents? Do they travel in pairs?"
 He shrugged, but there was an expression of worry in his eyes. "They travel sometimes in huge herds, Jim. But that other thing—I don't think it is a saurian."
 "What then?"
 He shook his head. "If it is what I think," he said soberly, "we'll find out soon enough. If not, there is no point in worrying."
 Gideon, head deep in the complex entrails of the old fire-control monitor, looked up from his job of repair. It was a low-priority job, because we had no armament to fire; but Gideon had made it his business to get every-thing in readiness for the moment when we might reach Jason Craken's sub-sea dome. If we could ship arms there, we would have the fire-control monitor in working shape to handle them. He had checked everything—from the escape capsule in the keelson to the microsonars at the bridge.
 He said softly: "David. We've less than a thousand miles to go. Don't you think it's time you took us all the way into your confidence?"
 "About what?"
 "Why, David, about those saurians, as you call them. Jim says you've told him something about them, but I must say there are things I don't understand."
 David hesitated. He had the conn, but there was in truth little for him to do. The Dolphin was cruising at 5500 feet on the robot pilot—the proper level for west-bound traffic in that part of the Pacific. The indicators showed that the edenite pressure system was working perfectly; there was no water sloshing about the bilge, no warning blare of horns to show a hull failure, or fission products leaking from the old engines. We were cruising fast and dry.
 David glanced at the microsonar, where the tiny, re-morseless pip hung on behind.

 Then he took a folded chart from his locker and spread it before us.
 All of us gathered around—Gideon and Bob and Lad-dy and Roger and I. The chart was marked Tonga Trench—a standard Fleet survey chart, but with many details penciled in where the Fleet's survey ships had left white banks. There was the long, bare furrow of the Trench itself—more than a thousand miles, end to end.
 And someone—David or his father, I supposed—had penciled in a cluster of sea-mounts and chasms, with current arrows and soundings.
 David placed his finger on one of the sea-mounts.
 "There," he said. "There's something that many men would give a million dollars to know. That's where the Tonga pearls come from."
 I heard Roger make a strange, excited gasping sound beside me.
 "And there," David went on, "is the birthplace of the saurians. Great sea reptiles! My father says they are the descendants of the creatures that ruled the seas a hundred million years ago and more. Plesiosaurs, he says. They disappeared from the face of the deep, millions and mil-lions of years before Man came along.
 "But not all of them. Down in the Tonga Trench, some of them lived on."
 He folded the chart again jealously, as though he was afraid we would memorize it. "They attacked my father's sea-car, forty years ago, when he first tried to dive into the Tonga Trench. He beat them off and got away with the first Tonga pearls that ever saw the light of day—but he never forgot them. Since then, he's been studying them. Trying to domesticate them, even—with the help of the amphibians, partly, and partly by raising some of them from captured eggs. But they aren't very intelligent, really, and they are very hard to train.
 "You've heard sea-serpents? My the old mariners' stories about father says these saurians are behind the stories. Once or twice a century, he says, a young male would be driven out of the herds, and roam about the world, looking for mates. They avoid the surfaces most of the time—the lack of pressure is painful to them—but a few of them have been seen. And they have never been forgotten. Big as whales, scaled, with long necks. They swim with enormous paddle-limbs. They must have ter-rified the windjammers—they were bigger than some of the ships!"

            Bob Eskow frowned. "I've heard of the Plesiosaurs," he said. "They're descended from reptiles that once lived on dry land—like all the big sea saurians. And that thing that's following us, is that one of them?"

            David nodded. "One of the tamed ones. The amphibi-ans work them. Joe Trencher is using them in his rebel-lion against my father."

            The Dolphin  pounded on, through the deep, dark seas.
 David Craken looked up finally from his charts.

            His face was clouded. He said "We're a long way off the main sea routes. It's been a long time since we passed a sonar beacon for a fix. But—I think we are .. . here."

            His finger stabbed a tiny penciled cross on the chart. The Tonga Trench!
 His expression cleared and he grinned at Roger.

            "Cap-tain Fairfane," he reported formally, "I have a course correction for you. Azimuth, steady on two twenty-five He grinned down!"

            Gideon said soberly: "Just a few more hours then, David. Are we in time?"
 David Craken shrugged. "I hope so. I think so."
 He looked at the sonarscope, where the tiny little blob that was the pursuing saurian hung on. He said: "You see, it is almost July—and July is the month of breeding for them. My father—he's a willful man, Gideon. He chose to build his dome on a little mound on the slope of a sea-mount, and he must have known long before the work was finished that it was a bad place. Because it is there that the saurians go to lay their eggs. They come up out of the degrees. Elevation, negative five degrees." and translated. "Straight ahead and Trench—Dad says it is a pattern of behavior that dates back hundreds of millions of years, perhaps to the time when they still went to the beaches on dry land, as turtles sometimes do today.
 "Anyway—Dad's dome is directly in their path." Da-vid shook his head broodingly. "While he was well, while he had the amphibians to help him—he managed to fight them off, and I believe he enjoyed it. But now he's sick, and alone, and the amphibians are bound to try some-thing at the same time. ..."

            He glanced again at the scope of the microsonar. "Gideon!" he cried. "Jim!"
 We clustered around, staring.
 There was another blob of light there once more—the

            featured little speck that was the saurian, and the other tiny one that hung around it.
 But it was larger than ever before.
 Even as we watched it grew larger and larger.
 Gideon said, frowning, "Something's coming mighty fast. Another saurian? But it's- faster than the other one has ever gone. It's gaining on us as though we were floating still...."
 David's face was drained of color.
 He said lifelessly: "It isn't a saurian, Gideon."
 Roger and Laddy and Bob were talking, all at once. I elbowed my way past them to get to the rangmg dials of the microsonar. The little blips grew fuzzy, then sharper, then fuzzy once more. I cried: "Please! Give me room!"
 I turned again to the dials and gently coaxed the images back. They grew brighter, sharper. ...
 "You're right, David!" Gideon's voice was soft and worried behind me. "That's no saurian!"
 It was a sea-car—a big one. Bigger than ours.
 I cracked the range dial a hairs-breadth.
 The image leaped into clear focus.
 The shape in the microsonar was the sleek and deadly outline of the Killer Whale!