Undersea City by Frederik & Williamson Pohl & Frederik & Williamson Pohl

Author:Frederik & Williamson Pohl & Frederik & Williamson Pohl [Pohl, Frederik & Williamson, Jack]
Language: eng
Format: epub

12

Forecast: Trouble!

It was after 2400 hours when I got bade to the base. I wanted a hot bath and a dry uniform—and more than either of those, I wanted someone to tell me that my eyes were liars, that what I had just seen wasn’t true.

Instead, I called Station K.

Lieutenant Tsuya was already back on duty. He ordered me sharply to report to him at once.

When I came in he was sitting at his wide forecasting desk, scowling at a 200-kilometer seismic stress chart. He swung around on his tall stool to look at me. Framed in the Troyon tubes that lit the charts over his desk he looked pinched and grim with worry, even before I told him what I had seen.

And when I had finished, he sat silent for a long moment, staring at an isentropic analysis graph without seeing a line of it.

He said fretfully: “I wish the computer section would hurry up.”

“Sir?” I was startled; he seemed absent-minded—absent-minded, when I had been telling him about the deadly events I had seen in the drainage sump!

He shook his head and seemed to remember that I was there. “Oh, yes, he said. “Eden. You were telling me about—ah—”

I said urgently, “Sir, maybe I didn’t make myself clear. They’ve got a MOLE! And what’s more, it’s loaded awash with hydrogen fusion devices.”

“I see.” He nodded gravely. But there was something very strange about his behavior.

Either he didn’t believe me, or—well, what else could it be?

He said, his voice more irritable than I had ever known it: “Eden, you come in here with the most fantastic story I have ever heard, and you expect me to pay attention to it. Ridiculous, man! There aren’t six MOLEs in the world—and I guarantee you, nobody but a top-ranking seismographer is going to get his hands on one. Nobody! If you’d said Father Tide was involved—why, yes, there might be some chance of that. A very faint chance, Eden! But Bob Eskow? Nonsense!”

He shook his head, and then his tone changed. “Eden,” he said formally, “I want you to think carefully before you answer this next question. Have you any evidence to prove what you have just told me?”

It caught me flat-footed.

I had been prepared for anything but this. If he had called out the Security section—if he had demanded that Eskow be shot on sight—if he had, even, raced out of the station, taking me with him, to investigate that sump himself…why, any of these things might have made some sense.

But he was acting as though he both doubted what I had to say—and, in the second place, didn’t much care!

I said, clutching at the first words that came into mind: “Sir, surely there’s some evidence! I mean—well, look!” I pointed to my wrecked uniform. Icy sea water was still sloshing out of my shoes. He looked, and shook his head.

“You’re wet, Cadet Eden,” he rapped out. His sleepy eyes narrowed. “Can’t you think of some better proof?”

I said hopelessly: “No, sir.

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