Undersea City

4 Seaquake City

We were gaining on the sun.

It was less than an hour above the horizon as the last plane of our journey slowed the thunder of its jets, dumped its flaps and came swooping in to the crossed buoyed “runways” of the sea over Krakatoa Dome.

The plane slapped hard against the waves, small though they were—electrostatic “pacifiers” had smoothed out the highest wavecrests between the buoys that marked our landing lane. But our pilot had placed the first contact just right. We skipped once and settled. In a moment we were moored to the bright X-shaped structure that floated over the Dome, the edenite-shielded city that lay three miles beneath us.

“All right, you men! Let’s get ready to debark!”

Eskow looked at me and scowled, but I shook my head. Because Danthorpe’s name came ahead of ours alphabetically, it had appeared first on the orders—and he had elected to assume that that put him in charge of the detail. It graveled Bob; but, after all, one of us might as well be in charge, and at least it made sure that Danthorpe was the one who had to worry about making connections, clearing customs and so on. We stood up, picked up our gear, and filed out of the overseas jet on to the X-shaped landing platform.

Colossal floating dock! It was nearly a thousand feet along each leg—big enough for aircraft to land in an emergency, when the sea was too rough for even the pacifiers. It towered two hundred feet above the waterline; the keel of its floats lay two hundred feet below; it was a small city in itself.

And yet, it was only a sort of combination front door and breathing tube for the sub-sea city itself. The platform was a snorkel, with special flexible conduits, edenitearmored, to inhale pure air and exhale what came out. Older cities had made do with air-regeneration apparatus; Krakatoa Dome pumped fresh air from the surface. We clambered past the vents that exhaled the air from fifteen thousand feet below and felt the cold damp reek of busy industry, oozing salt water and crowded humanity from far below. It was a familiar smell. All of us looked at each other.

“Hup, two!” cried Harley Danthorpe, and marched us out of the crowded terminal into the three-mile magnetic elevators. The door closed; there was a whoosh; and abruptly the bottom of the elevator car dropped out from Tinder our feet. Or so it felt.

Eskow and I instinctively grabbed out for something to support ourselves. Harley Danthorpe roared with laughter. “Lubbers!” he sneered. Don’t you think you ought to keep on your toes? If an elevator scares you that much, what’s going to happen when there’s a seaquake?”

Eskow, pale but game, snapped: “We’ll see what happens. I guarantee one thing, Danthorpe. If you can stand it, Jim Eden and I can.”

We stepped out of the elevator, wobbly-kneed, and at once we were in another world.

We lay three miles under the surface of the ocean! The blue sky and the sea breeze were gone; fifteen thousand feet of the Indian Ocean rolled over our heads; and the position of the sun no longer mattered.

“Hup, two!” chanted Danthorpe, and marched us from the elevator station at the crown of the dome to the exits. By slidewalk. elevator and passage he escorted us through the teeming, busy heart of Krakatoa Dome. Fleet Base lay down on dock level, at the dome’s lower rim; to reach it, we had the whole depth of the dome to pass through. Harley led us through what must have been the longest way.

We saw the great terraced levels where actual trees and grass grew—spindly and pale in the Troyon lights of the sub-sea cities, but a symbol of wealth and luxury for the rich Krakatoans who made their homes there. We peered through dense portholes out at the brightly lit sea-bottom surrounding the dome, where the pale waving stems of the sub-sea vegetation rippled in the stirrings of the current. We passed through the financial level, where frantic trading was going on in the ores and products of the sea bottom, and in stocks and securities that financed the corporations that made their business there. “See that?” barked Harley Danthorpe. “My dad’s ideal”

We looked. It was the entrance to the Krakatoa Exchange—columned with massive pillars shaped like upended sub-sea ships, the tall hulls aglow with a fire that looked like edenite.

“My dad was one of the founding members,” Harley informed us proudly. “He designed the Exchange.”

“That’s nice,” said Bob, but I doubt that he meant it.

Harley paused and looked at him narrowly. “Eskow,” he said, “you’re looking pretty solemn. Don’t you like Krakatoa?”

Bob said: “I was thinking about the landing platform up at surface level. I’d never seen anything like that in the other sub-sea cities.”

Harley laughed. “Other cities!” he sneered. “What have they got? Krakatoa’s the place, and don’t you forget it! That platform—it cost half a billion dollars! It took three years to build. But it’s a solid investment.” He winked and lowered his voice. “My dad bought a piece of it. He had the inside drift, all right. He says the franchise alone is worth the whole investment, because,.you see, those air conduits are the city’s windpipe, and—”

“That’s what I was thinking about,” Bob interrupted. “Suppose they get broken?”

“What could break them?”

“A storm, perhaps.”

Harley grinned like a man who’d just found a million dollars. “I can show you a section of the cables. No storm could break them. Besides, the waves can roll right through the piers between the platform and the floats without doing any damage. No. Try again.”

“This is seaquake territory,” Bob reminded him. “There could be a tidal wave.”

“You mean a tsunami” Harley Danthorpe corrected him smugly. “That’s the right name for a seismic sea wave. Man, you’re really a lubber! Tsunamis are .dangerous along a coast, all right, where they have a chance to build up speed and power. But not out in the open ocean! We wouldn’t even notice one going by, except for the readings on the instruments.”

Bob shrugged. But he didn’t look convinced.

“I hope you aren’t scared of quakes,” Harley said politely—too politely; it was like a sneer. “After all, even a lubber ought to get over being afraid of things like that. Just stick around, Bob. We aren’t afraid of quakes in Krakatoa Dome. Why, we call it ‘Seaquake City’! We built it to stand through a Force Nine quake—and they don’t come that strong very often. We’re riding the inside drift, and my dad has got rich on all the tin and uranium and oil that everybody else was afraid to touch.”

Well, that was about all the “inside drift” I could take. It bothered Bob even more than it did me. This Harley Danthorpe, he might be a real expert on seaquakes and life in Krakatoa Dome, but he didn’t know a thing about how to get along with his fellow man. I could see Bob’s face tightening in resentment.

Fortunately, that was about the end of that little discussion, because we had come to the gate of the Fleet Base.

“Halt!” rapped out a Sub-Sea Fleet guard, bright in seascarlet tunic, presenting arms. “Advance and identify yourselves!”

Harley Danthorpe snapped to. He marched three paces forward as though it was the drill field at the Academy. “Cadet Danthorpe, Harley!” he snapped. “With a detachment of two cadets, reporting to the commanding officer!”

The guard passed us in without another word…but as we entered I caught the ghost of a wink from him. Evidently he’d seen cadets as raw and fresh as Harley Danthorpe before!

We reported to a smooth-faced executive officer, who looked as though he’d been out of the Academy about three hours himself. He read our orders, frowned and finally said:

“You will be quartered here on the base. Yeoman Harris will show you to your quarters. You will report for duty to Lieutenant Tsuya.” He glanced at some memo on his desk. “You will find him down at Station K, at sixteen hundred hours.”

“Station K?” Harley Danthorpe repeated it uneasily, and glanced at us. We shook our heads. “Uh, beg pardon, sir,” he said. “Where is Station K?”

“Ten thousand feet down,” barked the young ensign.

“Ten—?” Harley couldn’t finish. Evidently this was one thing that the insider drift didn’t cover, because he was as much at sea as we were. Ten thousand feet down? But that was bedrock!

We didn’t have a chance to ask questions. The exec said irritably: “Yeoman Harris will show you the way. Anything else you need to know, you’ll learn from Lieutenant Tsuya. Dis—”

He didn’t get a chance to finish the word “dismissed.” Harley Danthorpe gulped and took a fresh grip on the inside drift.

“Sir!” he cried anxiously. “Please, Ensign. My family lives here in the Dome. I guess you’ve heard of my father. Mr. Benford Danthorpe, that is—he’s on the board of the Stock Exchange. May I have a pass to visit my family?”

The officer stared at him for a long second.

Then Harley gulped. “Oh,” he said, and added the missing word: “Sir.”

“Very well,” said the exec. “Your request is refused.”

“Refused? But—”

“That’s enough!” barked the officer. “As I’ve told you, Lieutenant Tsuya will be your commanding officer. You may ask him about it. Still, I can inform you that the answer will be negative, Mr. Danthorpe. Cadets in training here at Krakatoa Base are not granted passes for the first two weeks.”

“Two weeks!” Harley flinched. “But, sir! My father is the most important man in Kra—”

“Quite possibly! You, however, are a cadet!”

“Yes, sir.” For the first time, Harley Danthorpe’s voice lost its brassy twang.

We saluted.

But Bob Eskow said suddenly: “Sir! One question, please.”

“What’s that?”

“Well, sir, we’ve never been informed of what our duties are. Can’t you tell us?”

The ensign pursed his lips. Then, abruptly, he shrugged, and at once seemed to become more human.

“I can tell you this,” he said, his voice a normal speaking voice now, without the assumed military rasp he had put into it. “I envy you.”

“Envy us?”

The exec nodded seriously. “Your duties,” he said, “are something brand new in the history of the Fleet.

“The three of you are assigned to training in maritime seismology—the science of seaquakes. You are going to investigate not only the sea itself—but the rock beneath it as well!”

We got out of there somehow—I don’t remember how. Under the sea bottom!

It was a startling, almost a terrifying thought.

Yeoman Harris took us over and began leading us

toward the section of the base where we would be quartered. I hardly noticed the wonderful sights and sounds we passed—the clangorous shops where repairs were under way, the briskly marching squadrons of Sub-Sea Fleet men, all the feel of an operational base of the Fleet.

I looked at Bob, beside me.

Ten thousand feet down into rock! Would Bob be able to take it? He had always had difficulty—it was only raw courage that had got him through the Academy so far—what would happen now? If the icy miles of the sea were deadly, with a black pressure that could crush the mind as easily as the body, the solid crust of the earth would be many times worse.

Ten thousand feet down!

It was worse than anything the sea itself might bring to bear against us, I decided. Long years of research had perfected ways to hold back the deadly thrust of the sea—my uncle Stewart’s edenite armor was absolutely reliable, given the current to power it and the skill to use it properly.

But the Mole was still an untried experiment!

There would be a thousand problems to solve. Problems of survival. Refrigeration—as Bob had mentioned, back in Dixon Hall, when it was only a matter of casual discussion for us. Pressure! Edenite was powerful indeed…but could it hold up the crust of the earth? There would be a shielding problem—I remembered that the first atomic ortholytic drill had contaminated a whole Nevada mountain, so that it had to be fenced and abandoned for a hundred years, they said.

I took my mind off those worries as best I could.

Bob—I knew Bob. He could learn to take whatever might come up. I had the feeling that I was diving a little too deep, worrying about problems that might never come up.

But I didn’t know…

And, at that, Bob’s taut, pale face was not the most disturbed of the three of us; for behind Bob and me Harley Danthorpe limped along, as though his gear had suddenly become too heavy for him. He was muttering under his breath, about the importance of his father and the indignity of being ordered ten thousand feet down.

The inside drift had failed him, and I couldn’t help feeling a little sorry for him.