"The Hydronauts"

THE HYDRONAUTS

by Carl L. Biemiller

Published by Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, New York.

Part Three

The Rovers

The Sea Warden Service administered by the International Marine Council had its rituals of formality. The Marine Base at Baja in what was once Lower California before the nuclear war and succeeding centuries altered the earth, knew all about them.

“Did we get any? No, we did not,” grunted Kim Rockwell, Warden Second Class now attached to temporary Rover duty. “What did we get? I’ll tell you what we got. Toby Lee kissed by Commander Tod Torrance and Executive Officer Jiggs Jensen. Warden Third Tuktu Barnes and his in-sea buddy Genright Selsor of the same rank got handshakes and a hug around the shoulders. I got handshakes and a couple of jabs in the stomach. Some big formal transfer of duty routine, I’d say.”

“Somebody wished us luck, didn’t they?” asked Toby Lee.

“That was me,” said Tuktu.

“What kind?” asked Genright suspiciously.

“I did the wishing. You have no choice.”

“I also got pinched,” added Toby Lee thoughtfully.

“Twice.”

“Only once was me,” grinned Genright.

Kim laughed, then sobered thoughtfully.

“I think we’re a little nervous,” he said, “and maybe we ought to be.”

They were skimming north in a high-speed coast patrol combo-flight hovercraft whose hull, sprouting retractable lift-wing surfaces, whispered through the still air as it consumed great bites of distance.

The variable glare, topside of the trim, weld-glass craft, sprayed an even light upon them as they sat relaxed. It made their deep-green coverall uniforms seem darker, rippled highlights on their polished shark-leather half boots.

“Are you asleep?” asked Genright.

“Why” queried Kim.

“Your eyes were open,” said Tuktu.

“I was thinking,” Kim muttered.

“I think with my eyes closed,” Tuktu said loftily, “that way I can catch a nap.”

“Okay, let me drop off for a short think,” snapped Kim.

Anything could happen on an in-sea assignment, and none of them had worked the wide water infinities of the pelagic range. That range belonged to Rovers or Rover Herdsmen—not Wardens, and not usually to those without long seasoning and more than a few years in the Service.

“We can thank the Cryo,” said Toby Lee.

Kim started. It was uncanny how often her thoughts paced his own, marching gently , if unbidden, into his mind. But it never failed to surprise him. He knew that Genright and Tuktu shared a similar closeness of perception about each other. And he was beginning to suspect a deep awareness among all four of them, which did not need expression, deepened, perhaps, by shared danger in both the kelp forests and the shark pens.

“For this nice patrol buggy ride,” mused Tuktu.

“For Rover assignment years ahead of making it the hard way,” grunted Genright.

“I wonder what it’s like being a Cryo,” muttered Toby Lee.

Kim remembered the first time he had met Cryo Ury Kaane in Commander Torrance’s office, and that brief, unguarded revelation in the man’s eyes which cried of pain, loneliness, and some secret knowledge of the long, black reaches of endless time.

“It isn’t easy,” he said.

“I think you’re right,” said Tuktu. “For instance, I can’t remember whether or not I put socks on this morning. How about if I had memories maybe fifteen hundred years long to worry me?”

“It was one of those memories that he didn’t really know he had that got us this assignment,” reminded Toby Lee.

Kim nodded uneasily. In his mind was a vivid picture of the night at Baja when the earthquake rocked the Base shocking the Cryo into a dazed recall of a hidden hive city by a son he thought was Kim, and a long-gone wife left somewhere beneath two vaguely remembered mountains. And then Mr. Brent had taken over.

Mr. Brent had been a mystery man on the Baja Base. All Kim and Toby and Genright and Tuktu knew about him was that he was a stern and formal representative of the all- powerful Council of Cities on special duty. They now knew that Mr. Brent’s special duty was the Cryo. The psychos of the cities knew that Ury Kaane’s great mind had not yielded all it held from the years before the Long Sleep. Mr. Brent’s job was to watch, wait, and protect the Cryo until it did.

Mr. Brent’s job was many jobs, and all of them important, thought Kim. He was command type, and big command, too, big enough to have four unimportant wardens designated to highly special duty on his own request and the Cryo’s wish for their company.

“I’m hungry,” said Tuktu.

A voice from the control center beyond the bulkhead, which divided center from the passenger compartment, said, “I heard that.”

“Snoop us some food then, “ flipped Genright, “you snooper.”

“The food lockers under your seats are heating now,” said the voice. “chow ready in five minutes.”

“Something tasty for us important people, no doubt,” ventured Tuktu.

“Ha,” said the voice.

“Which means?” asked Toby Lee, wrinkling her nose.

“Standard awful,” replied the voice.

It was abalone steak and delicious. They ate while the patrol craft fled north, and the sea was a thousand seas below them as each cloud shadow, each quarreling breeze, and each current set printed varying colors and patterns on the waters.

They were following the coast, and the long-changed seas, fed by polar and Antarctic melt, washed and broke against the scarps of low mountains. There was nothing human on the landscape, but along the scattered miles ridges of green, growing vegetation fought for life against the still tainted soil. Seals played on the rock islands that once marked hills called San Francisco on the old maps, and still they moved northward.

It was nearly dusk when they splashed to a landing at Olympia Base. Kim had an impression of many vast docks, buildings, winking lights, and the murmur of much activity as they eased into a dockside berth among a line of similar craft.

Their pilot slid back a section of bulkhead and stuck a grin-crinkled head at them.

“Out cargo,” he said. “Take your hand gear with you. I would be dead wrong to assume that somebody we’ll meet you, especially if somebody’s supposed to stow you away. But who knows? Maybe you’re planned to be permanent dock standers, ornaments loitering around until the end of time.”

“I will think about the cute one among you,” leered the pilot.

“I will think of you too,” said Genright solemnly.

“Okay, clown it out of here,” said Kim briskly.

Toby Lee waved a pert good-bye.

They were met. Ury Kaane met them, small, compact, and trim in a Service uniform without insignia. He ran a hand through his close-cropped black hair, and the smile in his violet eyes lighted his face. He looked bouncy for a man apparently in his middle forties, somehow eager, and not at all like a famous marine biologist past and present. His smile embraced them as a unit, and if it were a trifle warmer for Kim, he didn’t attempt to hide the fact.

“Well, staff members,” he said, “welcome to Olympia and great work in progress.”

There was a uniformed Service commander with him, his rank showing on his shoulders and a pair of dolphins bright woven into his blouse over his left breast.

Dolphins, the ancient, generation-haunted, tradition-proud sign of the submarine service.

“This is Commander Cassius,” said the Cryo.

In a single formal motion, Kim, Toby Lee, Tuktu, and Genright snapped to a rigid second of salute.

It was formally returned.

“Easy, youngsters,” drawled the commander.

He was a tall man with a craggy face and a wide, generous mouth. His nose was pug and his eyebrows flared like two black wings above alert, blue eyes. A shock of snow-white hair escaped from the rim of a pushed-back uniform cap.

“Easy,” he repeated. “I’m only taking the air with Ury. He wanted to meet you, and I figured I might as well take a look at some new crew at the same time.”

“New crew, sir?” asked Kim.

“We are assigned to the Service Laboratory Submarine Polaris,” said the Cryo quietly. “You know the mission is Hawaii Search, and those detailed to it are now quartered aboard. Commander Cassius is the skipper of Polaris. Mr. Brent is the overall command coordinator for the expedition. I am his assistant. As you know, Mr. Brent has assigned you four as my aides at my request back at Baja. I assume you’ll also have other duties and disciplines according to routine Service regulations.”

“Before everything gets explained to the point of utter confusion,” said the commander gently, “just remember that this mission is not a routine one in any sense. Your presence is hardly routine as far as the Service goes, as all of you know.” He paused and smiled. “I suggest, however, that you run whenever you are told to run by almost anybody aboard with the possible exception of some of the civilian science people who probably won’t notice you anyhow. All clear?”

“No, sir,” said Kim, “but we’ll do our best to be useful.”

“The record indicates as much,” nodded the commander.

He looked at Toby Lee thoughtfully. “There are female technicians all over the place, Warden Lee. You will be quartered with some of them.”

“Shall we go,” suggested Ury Kaane.

The commander led the way off the dock to a waiting yard vehicle, which took them nearly a mile through Olympia Base roadways to the berth of the Polaris.

She was long, sleekly humped and tuna-shaped, with a dull gray iridescence rippling along her hull. Nothing marred her topside, but an entrance hatch poked an invitation to the dock from the upper portion of her shoulder curve.

“Wow!” breathed Kim.

The commander smiled appreciatively.

“Gets you, eh? I’m glad. She’s the latest type for her job. Five hundred feet. Radial filament, balanced stress, weld-glass pressure hull tested to more than 250,000 pounds per square inch. Nuclear powered all the way with in-hull sea engines, induction coils driving her on water jets, and the newest anti-gravity keel running her full length.”

He chuckled at Toby Lee’s puzzled face.

“Not really anti-gravity. We’re not that far advanced. The keel’s one of the new, stabilized metals with the amazing property of changing molecular densities when we apply energy. Its general mass stays the same, but its weight can be changed in any section along its length at a given time, or its total weight can be altered enough to bottom us at any depth or change total boat weight so we can surface or hold or hover. No more of those old-time ballast tanks, and no more depending upon propulsion to keep us at depth.”

“How about speed, sir?” asked Kim.

“Very ample,” grinned Commander Cassius, “or none. We call the shots. Further, it has a fully controlled environment below with all the acoustical and vision devices, constant video recording, and biological snoopers our science divisions can handle.”

“You’re all divers so there are in-hull pressure bubbles for any depth exits and entrances. Oh, she’s a beauty.”

“How’s the food?” asked Tuktu.

Kim jabbed him in the ribs.

“Let’s get aboard,” said the Cryo firmly. “You’ll be assigned quarters and food times. We leave tonight, and Mr. Brent has scheduled an all-boat briefing session for right after general mess.”

Commander Cassius led the way.

Kim, Tuktu, and Genright found themselves located in a compartment about mid-ship in a section designated for biologists with the Cryo Ury Kaane bunked alone beyond the adjoining bulkhead. Toby Lee joined two girl technicians, nutrient specialists about her own age, in a compartment across the passageway from them.

“More space than I thought,” said Kim, throwing his gear in a locker.

“Pure luxury,” grinned Tuktu.

“Compared to what?” asked Genright.

“A sea-floor bubble, that’s what,” said Tuktu.

They changed into static-free coveralls at Ury Kaane’s orders. The Cryo led them to mess in a forward compartment, which seated about twenty people, most of them civilian scientists, who, from that time onward, they seldom saw except at meals.

They were still at the seat benches when the end wall of the compartment flickered into light and the face and figure of Commander Brent appeared. He too was clad in sea-green coveralls. He spoke crisply and without ceremony.

“As all of you know, this mission is called Hawaii Search, a hunt for a hive city long lost to us in an area which, frankly, we knew little about until recently. It may be something more.

“For more than a year now the Council of Cities has had reports of unusual events from the area we intend to explore. Rover Herdsmen have recorded odd temperature changes and sonic phenomena, which have diverted whale migrations from normal patterns. Two manned weather and biological buoys vanished from approximately the same region. Three cybernetic barges seeding currents with new plankter species never homed back to the mother laboratory from that area. Worse, we have had the unpleasant duty of listing an unusual number of veteran Rovers as missing while last reported in what we believe was this part of the Pacific.

“In short, we have long suspected that there might be directed activities in a vast sector which we were not supervising.

“It may not be likely, but it is possible that such direction comes from a hive city long lost to our knowledge until Cryo Ury Kaane recalled it into being.

“It is our clear duty to investigate. At this moment Commander Cassius is giving sailing orders. That is all.”

“It’s plenty,” muttered Kim. He lifted his glance and caught a shadow of some haunting pain in the Cryo’s eyes as the man shifted uneasily in the seat opposite him. Those violet eyes were amazing, he thought. They must be the only such eyes in the world.

For the next day or so the Polaris cruised unhurriedly as an oceanic loafer, mostly at depths ranging from fifty to two hundred feet. Occasionally it surfaced to sprout sensory gear for a variety of readings. Now and then it laid a clutch of current and drift data bottles, each of which would emit recordable signals until timers ordered them to self-destruct.

The civilian members of the expedition kept to themselves in their own work divisions. The Service crew, relatively few in number, appeared occasionally and then vanished into hatches and companionways. Commanders Brent and Cassius were like genial ghosts, their presences felt, but invisible.

Kim, Tuktu, Genright, and Toby Lee spent most of their waking hours with Ury Kaane and an assortment of old maps and reference spools.

“We’re back in school,” said Genright, and in a sense they were. The Cryo was an enthusiastic teacher.

“Nobody knows for certain what today’s Pacific floor looks like,” said Ury Kaane. “The old charts give us an idea of what they knew about it when Hawaii city was dug shortly before my interment.”

He pointed out that the Pacific contained earth’s greatest heights and depths, most of them covered with a heaving mantle of sea. The Mariana Trench, as mapped on the old charts, was a depth of 35,800 feet. The big island of Hawaii itself was really a monstrous peak rising 32,024 feet from the ocean floor.

“And between two volcanic peaks on the great single peak,” he added, “they dug and shaped the lost burrow city.”

The Cryo explained that the Pacific floor held hundreds of mountain ranges, thousands of seamounts and major faults, which were really fractures in the earth itself. Using the old charts, he pointed out many of the extinct, flat-topped volcanoes called guyots.

“Some may even have become reactivated,” he said. “Among other oddities in the exploration area there have also been unexplained fish kills. Some of the Rovers have reported schools of dead fish covering miles of sea surface.” When Kim, Tuktu, Genright, and Toby were not with Ury Kaane, they asked for and were given permission to explore the submarine.

Diver crewmen showed them different-sized pressure bubbles in various areas of the boat’s inner skin.

“All gear for any kind of dive is stowed within them,” explained a young ensign. “As you know, when the in-boat pressure is adjusted to that of the outside sea, and you two are ready, an outer hatch opens right through all hull skins. It stays open until you come back just in case you want to come back in a hurry and don’t have time to knock at the door….”

“I holler all the time,” interrupted Tuktu.

“To get in,” finished the ensign with a grin.

Commander Cassius himself took them about the boat one day.

He showed them the con area with its banks of instruments along the upper swell of the boat’s nose.

“Everything computer controlled and automated from navigation to cooking,” he said. “You may have noticed in historic pictures that submarines once carried big upper deck structures called ‘sails’ We don’t need that dorsal fin effect. We don’t even need all the room they once needed within the boat. The anti-gravity keel effect takes care of all stabilization including lateral roll. Equipment miniaturization takes care of inner space problems.”

Commander Cassius showed them the boat’s magazine.

“All standard sea arms,” he said. “Lasers, nerve gases, pulsar tubes, animal anesthetics, small explosives for certain types of bottom work.” He paused. “And there are two forms from the archives and the history of earth’s destruction.” He pointed to two torpedoes some twenty-five feet in length. “They can swim or they can fly. They carry nuclear warheads with enough bang to move mountains.”

“Are they ever used, sir?” asked Kim.

“Well, to my knowledge similar ones have been used twice in my lifetime, and both for the same objective. They boomed away at the polar ice cap to dislodge bergs, which could be towed southward as water supply for one of the cities during a breakdown in the burrow water system.

“They are,” continued the commander, his eyebrows flaring wing-shaped above his pug nose, “an outlawed weapon, and forever so, I hope.”

“Do all boats carry them sir?” asked Toby Lee.

“No,” said Commander Cassius.

“Why us then?” queried Kim.

“The answer to that, my boy, lies in the fertile mind of Coordinator Commander Brent and the equally fertile minds of the Council of Cities. Don’t you kids have some place to go?”

“Not recently,” mused Genright.

“We do now,” said Kim.

A speaker from a wall panel was working as he spoke.

“Rockwell, Lee, Barnes, and Selsor report to Mr. Kaane.”

They found the Cryo in a small wardroom with Commander Brent who greeted them with a small, measured smile.

“We are within some fifty miles of the island chain once designated as Hawaii,” said Ury Kaane, “although, as expected, the scanners show only open sea. Commander Brent thinks a series of out-sea dives may be of some use, and all four of you are scheduled for this afternoon. I’d suggest the shield suits with tanks until we know more about water conditions from actual entry.”

Commander Brent tapped his fingers on the tabletop. His voice was soft. “Rockwell, you’ll command the group, of course. But I think what we want more than actual observation and normal analysis is—ha, hmmm—if I might say, is sort of a feel of the sea itself. I may be explaining this badly, but one of the reasons I was persuaded to allow you to join this venture was the simple fact of your youth and the sensitivity to new surroundings, which goes with it. I won’t care if you come back with a vague report, but I will care if you miss anything, however silly it may seem at the time. Am I clear?”

Toby Lee frowned and unconsciously felt for Kim’s arm on the chair beside her.

“Weapons?” asked Kim.

“Laser tubes, I think,” said Commander Brent. “Doubt if you find animal life to any degree. We’re over the Hawaiian Deep and this part of the ocean is supposed to be pretty much of a sea desert, but what you see report at once. We’ll monitor you in all ways. Good luck.”

“Monitor us in all ways,” mused Tuktu as they suited up in a starboard bubble. “So I’ll sing to the boat. When they get an idea of my fine voice I may become a star in one of the entertainment complexes in some great city.”

“You know a song called ‘Amoeba Though I Am, Nothin’ Can Divide me?” asked Genright.

“No, but there’s a dandy called ‘Clam Upon My Knee but Don’t Scratch While Climbing,’” said Tuktu.

“A love song?” asked Toby Lee.

“Gets you, eh?”

“Right in the head,” snapped Kim. “Let’s go.”

They popped into the sea at one hundred feet below surface, tested communications and finned away from the hovering submarine. The water was heavy with an unfamiliar density, and Kim reported the fact as he waved the team toward the surface. It was warm too and surprisingly clear. The sunlight above gave them good visibility.

“Seems to be a strong current set,” said Toby.

“Stay in the vicinity as best we can,” said Kim. “I don’t want to get too far away from the boat on this trip.”

They surfaced and snapped off their masks in a topside calm as a lake.

“Who’s wearing perfume?” asked Tuktu.

“That’s air,” said Toby. “Old-fashioned kind.”

At head-level height there was no horizon, only a merger of green-gray sea with a white sky as they finned in a circle looking along the surface in silence.

Kim felt uneasy although he didn’t know why.

“Ho,” said Genright. “There’s company.”

Tuktu’s eyes followed the sweep of Genright’s up flung arm. Kim and Toby turned in the same direction. Some fifty yards from them were some twenty floating jellyfish masses.

“That’s a lot of Portuguese men-of-war in one location,” said Kim. “But if we don’t mess with them, they won’t mess with us.”

Toby Lee’s voice was small. “I have the funny feeling that something is watching us.”

“So do I,” added Tuktu soberly.

“Stay on the surface but split up and swim about two hundred yards apart,” ordered Kim. “I want to check something.”

They did. As they did so the Portuguese men-of-war drifted apart, several moving in the direction of each swimmer.

A small chill rippled down Kim’s spine. He snapped back his mask and spoke into his warbler. “Take it down, people, and all the way.”

Commander Brent and Kaane as well as Commander Cassius were waiting for them as they shucked the shield suits and got back into coveralls.

“All right,” said Commander Brent as they assembled once again in the small wardroom. “What was that all about You certainly weren’t out long.”

“You asked for a report on the unusual,” said Kim. “I thought it best to return with it immediately. First, that water out there has an extremely odd feel, which in itself isn’t too bothersome. All of us have found funny water before in places. But as we surfaced both Toby Lee and Tuktu had the notion that they were being watched. There was nothing up there except a group of jellyfish, the complexes known as Portuguese men-of –war. But when we split into individual swimmers going different directions so did the men-of-war.”

“So?” asked Commander Brent frostily.

Ury Kaane snapped his knuckles and nodded.

“So, whether you remember or not, sir,” said Kim, “Portuguese men-of-war are plankters, drifters, not swimmers like the nekton. They move with currents or, perhaps, with winds.

“They have no motive power as fish do,” continued Kim. “Further, the surface was absolutely calm. There was no breeze. In addition, there was a strong current set which we noticed going up and equally noticeable on the surface.

“Those king-sized members of the jellyfish family moved against it. That’s all, sir.”

“Kim,” said the Cryo, “the Portuguese man-of-war is a complex, a composite of animal life. As you know, one animal forms the ballooning float, another makes up the tentacles, which gather food, still another digests that food for the total creature, and a forth handles the reproductive process.

“Are you suggesting that this biological mishmash is suddenly one capable of spying?”

“I thought it best to return and report, sir.”

“Hunch, Kim?” asked Commander Cassius softly.

“Yes, sir.”

“Gentlemen, I suggest we move another twenty-five miles west and try another diver team tomorrow,” Kim continued.

Commander Brent shook his head and came to a decision.

“Move,” he said. He looked at the young hydronauts.

“You too as well as the boat.”

“Monitor us in all ways,” said Tuktu. He addressed a query to the four walls. “Would you think that this tub had sensing equipment capable of spotting even an invisible diatom? Yes, it does, sir. Yes, sir, it does.

“And how big is a big jellyfish? About he size of a big barrel, sir. Right, son. And did anybody spot the big jellyfish? Well, sir, maybe the civilian scientists did. Ah, ha! But are they speaking to members of the Service?”

“Shut up, Tuktu,” said Kim firmly. “Maybe we should have stayed out later and experimented more.”

“No,” said Toby Lee. “Just no.”

“What time is dinner?” asked Genright.

“We been bad,” said Tuktu inelegantly. “We don’t get none.”

Kim looked thoughtful.

The Polaris loafed forward.

The divers who left the submarine the next day were crewmembers, veterans of many Service explorations, and they were casual as they sat through their briefing while Kim, Toby, Genright, and Tuktu listened. They took Kim’s description of the Portuguese men-of-war with interest, and the admonitions of Commanders Cassius and Brent about detailed reconnaissance as though they were taking notes on a lecture.

“Use the lasers or the pulsar tubes to test whatever you see,” warned Brent, “and make certain that you really see whatever you find. We’ll be in the bio-observation room watching you and monitoring.”

Tuktu cleared his throat and throttled a small noise.

“We’re going up and you’ll take off at the surface,” said Commander Cassius. “Communicate. Speak up at all times. Make no descent greater than two hundred feet, and we’ll sink to meet you.”

It was Toby Lee who first spotted the jellyfish, again in a gathering of some twenty or thirty forms. “There they are,” she said with restrained excitement.

“Don’t tell me they moved twenty-five miles since yesterday,” snapped Commander Brent. “Not drifting.”

“Not necessarily the same group, sir,” said Kim.

“Enlarge ‘em,” ordered Ury Kaane to one of the video control operators. “Let’s take a close look.”

“Nothing biologically different about them that I can see,” said one of the civilian experts.

But as the divers’ heads cleared water, the men-of-war separated, clots of them going in different directions.

“That’s different,” said Ury Kaane.

As he spoke one of the divers reported. “There are the blobs. Shall I tickle one of them?”

“Report on water conditions first,” ordered Commander Brent.

“Unusual, sir,” interrupted another diver voice. “High temperature, high density, and we seem to be over an upwelling of some sort, a core of even warmer water rising and loaded with nutrients.”

“Can’t be,” said another civilian. “There’s twenty thousand feet of sea beneath us, and no upwelling comes that far off a bottom without dispersing.”

“I’m tickling,” warbled one of the divers, “then we’ll go down a hundred and see if anything happens.”

Kim could see the forms descend, and the boat sunk gently with them.

Suddenly there was a burbling roar in the sound system, a noise like a liquid avalanche, and streaking from somewhere beneath the sub’s currently blind side came a school of fish.

It looked like an army of ten-pound bluefish swimming by the thousands, but its units acted like maddened piranhas. It swirled over two divers in a bubbling mass. And, although lasers winked the water into steaming blood, the horrified watchers on the Polaris saw the crewmen shredded.

The assault was over in minutes.

“Take it down,” said Commander Cassius calmly. He looked steadily at Kim and spoke once more softly. “Hunch?”

Toby Lee shuddered and grasped Kim’s hand. Tuktu and Genright gazed steadily at each other.

There was no time for reflection. The observation screens bloomed with a gigantic figure boiling head on for the bow of the Polaris. The boat’s speakers brayed. “Whale on collision course! My God, what a whale! It’s attacking.”

Commander Cassius thumbed a switch.

“Fry it now,” he said steadily.

White laser light from a battery of synthetic crystals streamed from the Polaris. The oncoming monster shook as it touched its humped head and back. It split wide open into two massive sections and twisted away into the abyss.

“Take her down as ordered,” said Commander Cassius.

They held an all-boat conference, all communicators linked, at five thousand feet. Commander Brent impassively demanded a navigational fix and sent a report to the Council of Cities. Then he spoke to the boat, dryly and impassively.

“This is what we know,” he said. “We are very close, and perhaps closer than we think, to the site of the vanished Hawaii burrow city if all the charts from the archives are correct.

“We are under both surveillance and attack. “That attack involves no mechanical or science weapons. “It occurred in waters of high temperatures distinguished by warm nutrient-filled upwellings. “It was made by either self-directed or outer-directed animal life which, while normal forms of sea creatures, act in a completely abnormal fashion.

“I ask speculation, gentlemen, and your best scientific assumptions.”

One of the civilian scientists spoke. “I don’t agree with your statement of normal forms of sea life. Those fish were completely alien to me. I do not think they were a Pacific species.”

Cryo Ury Kaane’s violet eyes were somber.

“The clue is biological,” he said. “Attack, yes, but with creatures, perhaps, merely trained or conditioned to react. Water conditions? Perhaps abnormal, maybe not for this area.”

Kim shifted uneasily in his seat and the motion caught Commander Brent’s eye. The coordinator stared at him thoughtfully.

“I am not unaware of your apparently correct action of yesterday, young man,” he said. “Were you about to add something to this meeting?”

“Only a wild guess, sir,” said Kim. “There is much wider knowledge here than mine.”

“Guess then,” said Brent.

Instead Kim turned to Toby Lee. “Do you remember what Commander Tod Torrance once told us about the nursery waters at the shark pens?” he asked.

“You’re right,” she said.

Commander Cassius pointed a finger. “Do you mind sharing what it is you’re so right about, Warden?”

“Again, a guess, sir,” said Kim. “But Commander Torrance said that a combination of high nutrient, proper saline content, and warm temperatures in sea water formed an exact duplicate of…”

Ury Kaane snapped his fingers.

“Amniotic fluid, the same sort that sustains an embryo in its mother’s womb, mankind’s birth liquid! But spread over so many square miles of sea…” His face grew grim. “What sort of a hatch, a birthing would demand sea animal protection unless for another, very special form of sea life, a very precious form of life?”

As Kim watched, Ury Kaane’s violet eyes changed to that look he had seen before, that black stare down the corridor of the centuries. The Cryo fainted.

“I can guess,” said the imperturbable Commander Brent, his jaw rock muscled and his lips a thin line, “the inhabitants of a sea-covered, pioneer burrow city.”

The submarine’s medical ESPERS helped the Cryo to his quarters.

Commander Brent closed the meeting.

“I hope all of you experts in your respective fields will consider my assumption seriously, however wild it may be. I remind you that the mission is still Hawaii Search.”

He flicked a hand at Kim. “I’ll want you to attend a small session later with the Cryo, Commander Cassius, the boat’s senior biologist, and myself.” He grimaced. “Hunches and guesses. Guesses and hunches, bah!”

“I guess and I hunch,” said Tuktu back in their compartment. “Do I get asked to special meetings? No.”

“You guess wrong and you hunch up all scroogie,” explained Genright.

“I guess right,” said Toby Lee pertly, “and I…” “Hunch up mighty pretty,” grinned Kim.

“It’s because I’m a girl type,” she pouted.

“I noticed,” said Kim, “but I’m invited because I out-rank you all.”

Toby Lee patted his cheek. “Order me to do something,” she said sweetly.

“Like what?” asked Genright.

“I’d only guess wrong and hunch up all scroogie,” beamed Tuktu.

“Well, if I’m going to act smart later, I want a few eyeballs of sack time right now,” said Kim suddenly serious.

“Told you I’d guess wrong and hunch scroogie,” flipped Tuktu.

“Off I go to find better company and girl talk,” said Toby Lee.

The faces in the con chamber were intent as Cryo Ury Kaane talked softly. Commander Brent’s was a study in marble.

“The basic assumption is valid,” said the Cryo. “When Hawaii burrow was originally stocked, when I left my wife and child there, among the most prominent of its collection for the future were its geneticists. There was Dr. Halver of the New England Institute for Medical Research, Dr. Hindheimer of California Tech, Dr. Prince from the University of Pennsylvania, and many others.

“All of them had carried on the work begun in evolution control started long before them with the discovery of DNA, the deoxyribonucleic acid which is the main pattern holder in all heredity, and RNA, the ribonucleic acid which is the message-carrying chemical that tells life cells how best to do what DNA determines for them.

“They were masters of what was then called chemical genesis. Simply enough, they were creators of so-called artificial life who could make new humans, if necessary, in a laboratory. Ostensibly they could build a Homo superior out of old Homo sapiens….”

“Until old homo sap blew the lid off the world,” said Commander Cassius softly.

“Exactly, but those men went into the city. I often wondered why,” continued the Cryo, “unless it was to continue their work which was to assure some continuity of man stock for a world utterly unsuited to man.” His voice was but a whisper. “I also wondered why the selection of Hawaii itself, really only a vast mountain chain subject to volcanic action. Unless,” he said, “the planners knew that the scientists of the city would speed their work under the drastic time limits set by both natural and man-made disasters.”

“Sir, why did you go Cryo?” asked Kim, then flushed at the impulse, which made him interrupt.

“Ask your body-bank specialists and the ESPERS, but I was a person of promise with an incurable disease at the time. That was long, long ago.”

“The Hawaii archives and charts we are now using date back nine centuries,” said Commander Brent. “It is possible that the city vanished sometime during the first five of those centuries. The other burrows did not really begin to utilize the sea as we use it now until approximately four centuries ago. It was simple too hot, too radioactive for humans. The cities lived on stockpiled chemicals, synthetic inventions, and forcefully controlled populations.

“But assuming success for any genetic program designed to rebuild humans for indigenous sea life, how many man-stock creatures could be made in one to X-number of years of existence?” asked Brent.

“Comparatively few,” answered Commander Cassius.

“Millions,” said the senior biologist.

“One of you at a time,” snapped Commander Brent.

“With our extensive work in the Service over four hundred years some one or more of our people would have spotted them,” said Cassius.

“A moment please,” added Ury Kaane. “Knowing a bit about the psychology of men more contemporary to me than any of you, I go along with Commander Cassius. It is possible that the Hawaii city scientists prepared their selected chromosomes and timed them for birth in staggered periods long after their own and their city’s death.

“Cybernetics and computer sciences were, perhaps, more advanced than they are today. You in this time lack metals. The men of the past did not. Machines could operate under water, you know, and could be programmed to laboratory tasks as well as to the creation of amniotic environments.”

“How about the protective creatures, if that’s what they were, as we say today?” asked the senior biologist.

“They too start from cells and could be timed to appear when necessary.”

“Sir,” asked Kim, “when did the Service first notice unusual occurrences in this area?”

“About two years ago,” said Commander Brent.

“I would then guess that in that period there has been two birthings, or hatchings, which have entered the open sea, with every indication that the third is on the way,” said the Cryo.

“Would you care to estimate how many of the man-stock sea breed are then in our oceans?” rapped Brent.

“I would not,” said Ury Kaane, “But any number will do.”

“They are able to reproduce, I assume,” said the coordinator.

“I would guess, lavishly.”

“Then there will be no third birthing, or hatching, even if we lose this boat and all its hands,” said Brent solemnly.

“But why, sir?” burst Kim. “Whatever they are, if they exist at all, they are meant and made to keep man alive at a time when their makers thought there could never be a human race at all.”

“Good boy,” grunted Commander Cassius.

“Not good boy, “ snapped Brent, “a warden in need of reconditioning.” He went on coldly.

“What feeds the hive cities? Answer: the sea. What happens to the cities, all of them, if so-called sentient creatures, thinking creatures in numbers, begin to use the same sea for food, metals, medicines, life itself? What happens when real men, natural men, cannot compete with animals specifically adapted to oceans for their existence?”

“We could ask them to help us,” said Kim steadily. “They too are part of man.”

“They are not men. But our orders will come from the Council and they will be obeyed.”

The Cryo looked at the space around him.

“First find thy rookery,” he said, “then ask how to destroy it.”

The hydronauts foursome discussed the matter in their own privacy.

“How do we catch these mackerel men? With a hook?” asked Tuktu.

“Mullet men, and you take ‘em with a net,” drawled Genright.

“Funny, funny,” said Kim. “But I don’t see the humor.”

“We know,” said Tuktu.

“It keeps us from crying,” said Toby Lee. “And there may be Council members who agree that whatever they are, if they really are, should be saved and made part of all of us.”

“I doubt it,” said Kim sourly.

The Polaris found Hawaii that night, once the largest of a chain of volcanic mountains that stretched from Midway Island, northwest to east. Sonic topographic scanners measured the peak once known as the Big Island from the sea floor to a present height some three hundred feet from the surface. As the Polaris cruised easily, radar devices sought out openings in its cliff sides and mapped its physical differences. The boat found peaks upon the giant peak, which was the island, many of them named on the old maps: Mauna Loa, Mauna Kea, Kilauea. And it found crater after volcanic crater, all of the now vast, water-filled pipes leading into and, perhaps, through Hawaii to the sea floor.

The Polaris cruised around the island and over it. There was a great depression between the two largest peaks, and as the scanners printed facsimile charts, Ury Kaane put his finger on it.

“That’s the site of Hawaii city,” he said.

Radar, sonar, and occasionally the laser-flash TV cameras picked up strange and sometimes huge animal shapes in the waters about the island. They were not appreciated by any of the divers, although most of the civilian biologists and their technicians enthusiastically advocated capture attempts for study purposes.

The Polaris cruised and cruised, unmolested, but with a patience that tried the young wardens.

“What are they going to do, buy it?” asked Tuktu.

Ury Kaane explained. “We are looking for some possible exit vent to the open ocean where the water temperatures are the highest, the nutrient counts the greatest, and where small life could surface immediately without excess pressure strains. Trouble is, it could be a hole five feet in diameter or a big crater itself.

“The technical and biological staffs need time. Besides, I don’t think that Commander Brent has orders from the Council as yet.” He smiled as he looked at Kim. “Further, I think that some of your remarks upset him slightly. He’s a fair and just man, if a cold one.”

“How do we get to that hole wherever it is?” asked Genright. “If it’s topside at about three hundred feet we could work at that depth in silco suits as well as shields.”

“Not without losing divers to that swimming stuff out there,” said Tuktu, “and I don’t want any white arm like yours. I like my old creamy brown one just fine.”

“That white one does get dirtier than most,” admitted Genright pensively.

“You could dye it.”

“What! A skinny guy like me already.”

“Will you two cut it out,” snapped Toby Lee.

The Cryo grinned. “I think you’ll be using one of the four-man work subs and carrying nerve gas dispensers when we find what we’re looking for out there.”

“Against whales?” breathed Toby.

“And maybe some thousand-year-ole booby traps,” said Kim.

“I doubt it,” smiled Toby Lee. “Those people wouldn’t have left anything that might hurt their own babies.”

“Oh, brother,” moaned Genright.

“You mean, oh, mother,” said Tuktu.

The technicians apparently made their reports and that night Coordinator Commander Brent summoned another all-boat conference using the vessel’s communicators. He was sparse with words as usual.

“The first portion of this mission is accomplished. There are two others: explore as fully as possible and destroy this geographical unit of the sea.

“Two four-man work subs will leave their exit bubbles in the morning. They will be armed with gas dispensers and fixed lasers fore and aft, each set with wide-angle beams. One work craft will be manned by crew complement. The other will be staffed by Wardens Rockwell, Selsor, Barnes, and Lee. That crew will explore two sites, each of them tunnels leading into what we believe to be the vanished city itself. The warden crew will explore as far into those vents as possible. The Polaris men will stay outside to give whatever protection possible in the event of animal or other hazard.

“Each craft is expected to make a running report. Each will be followed by our instruments. Their own have been set to self-record under maximum sensing capacities—sonic, visual, and physical. The crews will find all visual devices set to 180-degree sweeps.”

Commander Brent paused.

“The exploration craft will destroy as fully as possible all life forms found within tunnels, vents, and possible chambers.”

Cryo Ury Kaane and Commander Cassius, sitting alongside Kim in the wardroom, were stolid.

“He’s the boss, Kim,” said Cassius, “and the boss has had his own orders.”

“I hope we don’t find anything,” muttered Kim.

There was a painful twitch at the corners of Ury Kaane’s violet eyes. “I don’t know why,” he said, “but I have the queer feeling that if you do, I may not survive the discovery.”

Kim was painstaking the next morning. He examined every inch of the eighteen-foot work sub; it’s a-pack power plant, its compact ballast tanks, its miniaturized instrument board, the view screens, and its weapons. A drop or two of the nerve gas, liquid at lethal concentrate, could kill over a wide area of sea, but he made certain that the dispensers were full. He checked the laser, the set, the food locker, and every fitting he could think of to check. He asked for and got a small dip net and a rectangular, screen top box. This he took down the one-man hatch of the work craft himself and stowed.

“Strip,” he ordered his crew when they assembled in the discharge bubble.

“Come on, now,” said Toby Lee.

“Well, down to bare decency anyhow. I checked with the technicians right after I went over our air tanks. They told me that temperatures over those holes we’re about to peek into go as high as the nineties. You know what it will be with four of us in this can.”

The Polaris crewmen took their craft out of the mid-ship bubble first. Kim followed from the stern launch, adjusting for neutral buoyancy, then setting the automatics to maintain it.

The sea was clear but it boiled with wild life before the two craft had gone two hundred yards; small fish, sharks of fantastic sizes, other strange creatures—all bent on attacking the small craft.

The lead sub’s laser fan winked on and stayed cutting a broad path through the animal concentrate. “Am also using gas,” reported Kim’s communicator.

“Keep using it,” said the steady voice of Commander Cassius from the Polaris. “Are you all right, Wardens?”

“Following the lead boat,” said Kim, “and all sensing equipment functioning. No use of weapons.”

“No music either,” muttered Tuktu.

The first site was a funnel-shaped crater some five hundred feet in diameter, and while the Polaris crew work sub hovered above it, cruising in a circle around its perimeter, Kim nosed his craft down its slope. It dead-ended in a splintered coral-encrusted vent, and Kim so reported as he maneuvered cautiously for the trip out. “High temperature pocket,” he said into the communicator, “pumice and obsidian sides. There is a definite jet forming a sort of separate water column rising from the bottom, but it seems to be coming from a crack in the rock.”

“Fine, try the second site, but be careful to spot the boat above you. It is still using weaponry,” said Cassius’ voice from the Polaris.

“We know our friends,” interrupted the crew sub. “Come out on the lip at three o’clock, Wardens.”

“They should have given this job to a brace of dippy dolphins,” griped Genright.

“They found something dippier,” said Tuktu with a nervous giggle.

Kim followed the crew boat through a wake of dead and inert carcasses to the second site. He reported as he reached it while the other craft up to its circular station.

“Seems to be a round bore some two hundred feet descending vertically, although it is located on the shoulder of a slope. We’ll descend on even keel, plenty of room for this canoe. Take a time check on us now.”

“And if we ain’t back for lunch, mail sandwiches,” said Tuktu.

“Share the wealth with us, little brother,” said the companion boat. “We’ll be right upstairs.”

Kim held the boat laterally, operated the tanks manually, and let the craft settle in the middle of the bore. The light from the sea above them vanished into a dot above, and the boat splashed its own illumination upon the walls of a giant shaft.

“I think I’m frightened,” murmured Toby Lee.

“Be positive,” said Tuktu. “I know I am.”

“Shut up and see if one of you can get a spotlight on the walls,” ordered Kim.

Genright managed.

Kim spoke into the communicator. “I think we’re on it,” he said. “Shaft walls look finished, man-made, and smoothed,” he reported. “Are you in contact? Are you in contact?”

There was no answer.

At one hundred feet down the shaft, they were still in blackness. At two hundred, there was a discernible glow, and at two hundred and fifty, the shaft opened into a huge cavern. Kim halted the descent. He tried to raise the Polaris and the companion work boat. There was still no contact.

“We’re on our own,” he said.

And awe-stricken.

Even the irrepressible Tuktu was stunned into shocked silence.

There was light in the giant cavern, a golden illumination that seemed to come from faraway walls. They were suspended in a gold teardrop of vast dimension in the very heart of a mountain.

As Kim moved the work sub forward, the spotlight beam, cutting through the soft radiance and through the clear veil of water, picked up bank after bank of strange machines, of unfamiliar equipment. The sonar devices indeed all the sonic gear, indicated that many of them were working, if the steady hums and clicks were evidence of function.

Inboard temperature recorders settled at 98.8 degrees Fahrenheit.

The prime source of the mutual shock was in the water itself. It was busy water, alive with bodies by the thousands, child-size forms duplicated over and over again, all of them swimming effortlessly in an endless milling.

They had found the sea babies born of man stock.

Toby Lee giggled hysterically. Tuktu moaned, and Genright clapped both hands to his head as if to dispel a weird dream. Kim merely stared as a man entranced.

“They’re cute,” whispered Toby, the whisper a near shriek.

Kim shook himself. He strained to make his voice even. “Make sure every recording instrument is functioning,” he snapped. “All of you check everything.”

The young hydronauts, jarred back to duty, did as he asked.

The sea babies were some two feet in length. Their backs were a pale green-blue from head to tail, and the tail looked like a juncture of ankles with feet turned into a fluke. They looked like dolphins rearranged with their backs less humped and a strange, almost feathery dorsal fin standing alone. Their undersides were a faint, blush-pink. And where pectoral fins should be, there were webbed, translucent fins through which five fingers and an opposite thumb showed clearly, usable fin hands.

Their heads slope from the back curve into a clearly defined ridge, much as a forehead which then jutted into a long pointed nose. The mouth was a sickle shape like a young moon, and its curve ended in a series of gill slits.

It was the eyes that chilled Kim.

They were round, lidless, completely human with both iris and pupils.

They were violet.

And they radiated intelligence.

It was Tuktu who broke Kim’s spell.

“Ten thousand Ury Kaanes equipped to go to sea,” he muttered. “You’ll remember the Cryo left a son in the city,” mused Toby Lee, “a boy, the boy he thought Kim was, during the quake at the shark pens. It’s possible the geneticists used that boy for the original genes, the basic chromosome patterns.”

“Too much,” said Tuktu somberly. “A father, a Cryo for centuries, returns as grandfather to a whole new human race.”

Genright shifted uneasily. He cleared his throat and words stumbled from it.

“What do we use? The nerve gas or the laser beams?”

“You will destroy all life forms as fully as possible,” intoned Tuktu.

Toby Lee cried without shame.

They are not men, not natural men, thought Kim, and they will starve the cities, and orders are orders are orders.

A lifetime of psychological and physical conditioning, of discipline and teaching, fought something else in Kim Rockwell, Warden II on special Rover duty. And lost!

“There will be no weapon used under my command,” he said slowly. “But I will record any protest from any of you for future hearings. I urge you to think hard. Your careers are at stake; perhaps, under strict Service rules, your lives.”

“Pishy-tushy, tootie,” said Genright.

“Hear the hard captain,” grunted Tuktu.

Toby Lee flung herself forward and kissed Kim through a blur of her own tears.

“You could keep your knee out of my neck,” snapped Genright.

“Look,” said Kim uncomfortably, “while we still have jobs we’re working. First, how long have we been in this hole?”

“Three-quarters of an hour,” answered Tuktu.

“They’ll give us more time than that topside,” said Kim. “Listen, I brought a box, just in case. It will hold two of these little…”

“Brothers,” said Genright.

“But I want a girl and a boy,” grinned Kim. “And hot as it is in here, I’m going to a pound or two over sea pressure on the bottom hatch. Toby can pop out with the net and pick up a pair. We’ll fill the box with this amniotic water and take ‘em home with us.”

“You sure Toby knows the difference between boys and girls?” asked Tuktu loftily.

“Boys hunch up all scroogie,” said Toby.

“Tank and shield suit at this depth,” said Kim, “no matter who you kick getting into it.”

They watched the capture, which was no capture at all. The net was unnecessary. As Toby slid into screen view, she was surrounded by the sea babies.

“You’d think they wanted to cuddle,” muttered Tuktu.

The work sub was three-quarters of the way up the exit bore when the boat broke into a babble of sound.

“Come in, Rockwell. Come in. Come in. Report.”

The companion sub and the Polaris were each talking.

“This is Rockwell,” said Kim steadily. “Cavern in the mountain is an actual laboratory, and functioning. Found rookery. Repeat, found incubator. Am homeward bound. Will follow lead boat. Any instructions?”

There was a long moment of silence. Then clear, distinct, and level, Coordinator Commander Brent’s voice filled the small craft.

“Rockwell, did you carry out your mission?”

As if by some unspoken rehearsal, Toby Lee, Genright, and Tuktu held up their right hands with crossed fingers.

“Part of it,” said Kim quietly. “We found the life forms, and they are man-stock sea babies.”

There was no way to describe Commander Brent’s returning voice.

“Sea babies? Sea babies?” It said, the steady tone sliding up the scale. “Did you or did you not destroy?”

“Not a one,” replied Kim.

There was a garble. The commander’s voice seemed to be fighting a way through a swamp of algae gel.

“Repeat, sir. Repeat,” said Kim.

Commander Cassius’ robust tones filled the work boat.

“The man said, ‘thank God, Rockwell.’ Now all of you get home. Stop use of nerve gas. Repeat, stop all use of nerve gas. Use only lasers if necessary. Home now. That is all.”

The wardens stared at each other.

“What’s he mean? The man said ‘thank God’?” asked Genright.

“We’re just too valuable to shoot,” said Tuktu.

Kim could feel that mystic sense of Toby Lee enter his mind, that always warm and surprising closeness. She said it for him.

“The Council of Cities changed its mind,” she guessed.

“I don’t think I can take much more of today,” griped Genright.

“You better set yourself then,” said Tuktu. “I’ve got that old bell in my ears telling me that there’s more to come.”

There was.

When the work subs were stowed back in their portion of the pressure bubbles aboard the Polaris, and the wardens were once again in coveralls and ready for open ship interrogation by both commanders as well as the technicians assigned by Brent to the routine, Kim off-loaded his specimen box, a small tarpaulin over its top. Tuktu and Genright carried it to the biological section of the Polaris with Brent, Cassius, and Ury Kaane at their heels.

They placed the box on a long metal table, and Kim removed its cover.

The sea babies rolled and sloshed in their watery cradle. There was a stunned silence in the room. The small creatures lifted their heads toward the ceiling lights.

Their wide, round violet eyes stared into the round, wide violet eyes of Ury Kaane.

The Cryo went mad.

He stretched an agonized hand toward the box and froze into a forever darkness as deep as the one in which he had been placed when Hawaii city was born.

The medical ESPERS took him away.

The Council of Cities had indeed changed its mind, explained Commander Brent to Kim and his companions sometime later as they sat in the con section of the Polaris with Commander Cassius. He was brittle, trying to bend as he spoke.

“My superiors reasoned what you, Rockwell, apparently knew by instinct. Namely, that your sea babies were man stock and designed by loyal, earth patriots trying, with God’s help, to make sure some form of mankind would endure. I take some comfort in the fact that the Council’s original order reflected my own thinking, in short, that the man-like cities could starve if creatures designed for the sea were permitted, with man’s intelligence, to exploit the sea.

“I think I take more comfort in the fact that some of the Council, all cold men, raised the question of murder at a time soon to come when this blasted planet would heal enough to demand all of the man stock possible to obtain—any color, shape, form and type of it.

“I am not used to explaining things to children, especially young wardens whose ideas of discipline vary from my own, but I also think that there were members of the Council who decided that they would eat better if more skilled practitioners of life in the sea than those not designed for it were busy about the business of supplying the needs of the cities.

“This, of course, may ultimately put the Service out of work.”

“It may be,” he said. “I think the Service, however, will demand a new type of Rover for some time. There will be the work of locating the dispersed—oh, ah—oceanic men fish, fish-men, making them friends, if possible, establishing mutual bonds of need, enlisting their help in the tasks of the future.

“If so,” he continued, “I shall make my recommendations for candidates for such Rover duty, and they will include those of you in this room.”

The wardens knew when to keep silence. They did so.

Coordinator commander Brent spluttered.

“You can’t run a Service on hunches and guesses, sir. Guesses and hunches, hunches and guesses!” He stared at Kim, and his face broke into a startling grin. “But I shall add my own recommendations.”

The Polaris stayed in the area. For days its experts made the dive down the bore to the incubator cavern, examining the machines, the details of the laboratory built centuries ago, searching for records, delving always for more knowledge of the original city. Hawaii hive had been long gone, its original life snuffed out. What remained swam placidly in the nutrient nursery.

The Polaris stayed in the area. It made sure that the toxic nerve gas waters were diluted by winds, currents, and dissolved into harmless solution.

Still, the Polaris stayed in the area.

Then one morning as the sun stained the eastern rim of the heaving Pacific, and the shreds of surface mists colored with new light into cloud-patch confetti, the Polaris watched an exodus.

Thousands of tiny forms bobbed to the top of the sea and the new sun winked into violet eyes. Thousands of small, proud dorsal fins feathered the wave foam, and thousands of flukes churned those forms into directed motion.

The school headed north as the Polaris tracked it and recorded its passing. Every view screen on the submarine was in action.

Kim, Toby Lee, Genright, and Tuktu sat in the small wardroom and watched, mutually embraced in their own silence.

“Guesses and hunches. Hunches and guesses,” said Tuktu. “You can’t run a Service on guesses and hunches. But it’s my guess and my hunch that we’ll see them again.”

“Scroogie,” said Genright flatly.

“Want to go back to the lab?” asked Toby Lee. “It’s time to feed the babies.”

End of Book One

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Book Three, Escape From The Crater

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