Date: 1985-10-01 07:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Science Fiction
Description: A collection containing Secret Under the Sea, Secret Under Antarctica, and Secret Under the Caribbean. Gordon R. Dickson's Robby Hoenig adventures are timeless young adult stories in the tradition of Arthur C. Clarke's Dolphin Island. Secret Under the Sea: Dive into adventure in the last unknown territory on Earth - the sea. Join Robby Hoenig and a cast of characters as unusual as any ever met on a distant planet... In the first Robby Hoenig adventure, Secret Under the Sea, an aquatic visitor from another world is threatened by a criminal gang... Secret Under Antarcica: Dive into adventure in
Publisher: Critic's Choice 1985

Secrets of the Deep

Gordon R. Dickson

START SCIENCE FICTION
An Imprint of Start Publishing LLC
New York, New York

SECRET UNDER THE SEA © 1960 by Gordon R. Dickson. © 1988 by Gordon R. Dickson.
SECRET UNDER ANTARCTICA © 1963 by Gordon R. Dickson. © 1991 by Gordon R. Dickson.
SECRET UNDER THE CARIBBEAN © 1964 by Gordon R. Dickson. © 1992 by Gordon R. Dickson.
First Start Science Fiction edition 2013.

All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Start Science Fiction, 609 Greenwich Street, 6th Floor, New York, NY 10014.

All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Published by Start Science Fiction,
an imprint of Start Publishing LLC
New York, New York

ISBN: 978-1-60977-170-6

Secret Under the Sea

To all dolphins, wherever they may swim

The Footprints

Balthasar was uneasy. In fact, Balthasar was scared—or at least he showed every sign that he was. And what could be here in this sunny, shallow reef water of the Point Loma Research Station, Robby Hoenig wondered, to cause the big dolphin any fear? Certainly not any of the usual sort of sharks. Balthasar was too big, too tough, and—above all—too fast for them. The Greenland shark or the great white shark, otherwise known as the man-eater, should not be in this particular area of tropical waters. That left only the killer whale.

But killer whales were rare, too, in this part of the ocean. And, in any case, if it actually was a killer, Balthasar would be asking to be let into the station through the lock five levels down, as he had once or twice before. But he had refused to come in when Robby had gone down to the control room and opened the lock for him.

Instead, Balthasar continued to patrol the underwater station, curvetting now up to the surface, and now underneath it—his slick, grey, thirteen-foot length flashing in the sunlight every time he broke water.

Robby stood on the surface platform by the boathouse, watching him. Robby was twelve, and would one day be as tall as his father. Meanwhile, he was lean as a fishing spear from the many hours he had spent in the water, and brown as a peanut from the same tropical sun that had bleached his hair almost white. He had grown up around salt-water research stations like this one, for his father was a marine biologist.

His mother was a marine biologist, too, but she had given up active work in the field when she had married his father.Times were not the same as they had been back in the twentieth century when a marine biologist was anyone who cared to study the plants and animals of the seas and oceans.This was the year 2013, and all the sciences had moved so fast and become so complicated that it was just not possible—as Robby's mother said with a sigh—to do honest research and take care of a son and a husband at the same time. One or the other of the two jobs had to go. And although it was quite a wrench, she sent in her resignation to the International Department of Fisheries—Salt Water Research Division—and concentrated on seeing that Robby and his father got their meals on time and sleep enough to keep them going.

At the moment, however, she was away on a short vacation visiting her father, and Robby and Dr. Hoenig were on their own. Her father was that noted, if somewhat elderly, marine biologist, Jacob Von Hoffer—the very man who had first tried the breeding and domestication of dolphins like Balthasar.

Robby frowned at Balthasar now, as he cavorted around the station. If his mother were back from her visit to the Marine Museum in Hawaii, he thought, she might be able to tell him what was bothering the dolphin. But on the other hand, possibly not, since after all he, Robby, knew Balthasar better than anyone else in the world, having grown up with him. Robby’s parents had deliberately arranged it. It is no small thing, when swimming around in tropical oceans, to have as a companion a lightning-fast, thirteen-foot watchdog that is afraid of nothing in the seven seas except the great black-and-yellow killer whale.

Robby leaned over the railing at the edge of the platform.Below him, the round, dark mass of the station plunged away to the sandy sea floor thirty feet below. It looked like a tower underwater. Through the glass-clear water he could see nothing but a few colourful small fish, some rocks, and coral.

For a moment he thought about going down to the laboratory section of the station, four floors below, and putting the whole problem in his father’s hands. But his father, he remembered, was right now engaged in some rather tricky breeding experiments in experimental tank number seven and would not like to be bothered with problems about the dolphin.

“Well,” said Robby out loud to Balthasar, “I guess I’llhave to investigate.”

He stepped over to the boathouse and took from a hook his water lung. This was a marvellous little atom-powered converter that clipped around his neck like a collar and extracted oxygen from the plain sea water, making atmosphere for him to breathe steadily as he went along. The atmosphere came up from the converter at his neck into a transparent diving mask that fitted over his face and was watertight. The result was that he was as much at home under the water as he was above it. The device had been invented by a man named Cogswellin the 1980’s.

Having put on his lung, Robby simply walked off the platform into thirty feet of water, the same way he might walk off a kerb. One moment he had the bright sun and the air about him, and the next moment the glass-green water had closed over his head and he found himself flying.

Flying is indeed the word to describe it. Wearing a lung in this clear, warm water, above the white sand of the bottom,was exactly like being suspended in mid-air. Robby kicked his feet together. Swim fins spread out from the toes of his convertible sandals and sent him gliding through the water like a soaring hawk in the world above.

But Robby had no intention of making his investigation under his own power. There was a far faster way than that.He whistled through the microphone set inside his face mask, and Balthasar came shooting like a torpedo through the water to meet him. Robby reached for the two reins trailing back from the dolphin’s shoulder harness, and fitted his wrists through the loops in the ends. Taking a firm grip, he whistled again, and Balthasar was off.

But not in the right direction. For Balthasar had a mind of his own, and if he did not feel like leaving the area around the station, he did not feel like having Robby leave it either. So, instead of heading directly out as Robby requested with a twitch of the reins, he spun right and spiralled down. Robby had a flashing glimpse through the underwater windows of,first, the equipment room on the top level, then his own living room on the level below, then a moment’s view of his father up to his elbows in the wiring controls of experimental tank number seven on the fourth level, and finally the stand-by tanks on the fifth level with the so-called Martians. The Martians were very interesting, and ordinarily Robby never passed them by without taking a look. But right now he was too busy getting Balthasar under control.

Balthasar, like most people who have just done something they know they are not supposed to do, was trying to pretend that it was all a joke.

“You know better than that!” Robby told him, out loud,the sound of his voice carrying through the microphone of his face mask and through the water to Balthasar’s sensitive ears.Robby pulled his own head up alongside the bashful eye and grinning mouth of the dolphin. Balthasar really could not help the grin, being born with his mouth turned up. “Now gos traight!”

Balthasar gave an apologetic flip of his flukes, scattering as mall cloud of angelfish, and shot off on a tour of the surrounding sea bottom.

The station had been built on an undersea high spot, actually an underwater hilltop or plateau. While it was a good eight miles off the coast in the ocean, the water was really quite shallow. No place was any deeper than seventy-five feet, and in some places it was no deeper than twenty. The area was marked as “shoals” on the navigation charts, and stretched for about a mile and a half in length, and up to half a mile across. Robby knew every inch of it like the palm of his hand. If anything out there was making Balthasar nervous,one thing was certain—it could not hide from Robby for very long.

“And if it is a killer,” Robby told Balthasar, “we’ll just duck back to the station and turn in the alarm. Then the Mexican coastguard can come and capture him.”

But Robby had been underwater king of the shoals around the station for so long he could not really believe that there was anything dangerous nearby.

They began to circle outward, going farther and farther each time. On the fourth circle they came around a twelve-foot spire of rock that Robby had long ago named the Castle,because of the way it looked. Beyond the Castle, the sea floor dropped another dozen feet to an open stretch of white sand some thirty feet below the surface. As they swung over this, Balthasar veered sharply.

Robby forced him back, and when the dolphin resisted, he let go of the reins and swam down himself. As he approached the stretch of white sand, he saw that there were marks on it.They looked like a line of holes, about fifteen feet apart,leading off into the dimness of the water beyond. Curiously,he swam to the nearest one—and then checked, a cold feeling running suddenly down his back. For the first time he began to feel thoroughly frightened.

The marks were not holes. They were footprints. A good four feet in length, a good half foot in depth—and with four sharper, deeper indentations along their front edge such as claws might make.

Something—something enormous which Robby had never heard of—had gone, not swimming, but walking here across the bottom of the sea.

The Unseen Singer

A chill gliding down his spine, Robby began, with little kicks of his swim fins, to back up along the line of footprints.Without realizing he was doing it, he had covered about tenor fifteen feet when he was bounced backwards in the water by the big body of Balthasar, who immediately began to push him away.

For a second Robby tried to hold his position, but it was a little like trying to stand still on the ice of a skating rink when the sweeper truck is pushing you ahead of it. He could not escape from the point of Balthasar’s nose, and the big dolphin was too strong for him to resist, so after a moment he gave in. Some people, Grandfather Hoffer included, think pushing is an instinct with the dolphins. There is even an old sailors’ legend which says that if human beings will lie still in the water, porpoises will push them ashore.

So, in the end, there was nothing for Robby to do but leave. What settled the argument more than anything else was the clear sound of a bell ringing through the water. It was the warning bell of the station, calling Robby home. Perhaps Robby’s father had decided that he needed Robby for some-thing, or maybe it was time for lunch. Robby grabbed Balthasar’s reins and let the relieved dolphin tow him quickly back.

At the top of the station Robby climbed out of the water onto the platform. He hung his lung on its hook and ran down the ladder leading from the deck to the communications room below.

“Dad!” he called.

There was no answer. Guessing that his father was still on the fourth level, Robby went through the door leading to the interior stairway of the station, and down three flights to the laboratory section.

His father was there all right, half-hidden in the temperature control system of experimental tank number seven. The metal panel that usually covered the controls was off, and some of the system’s parts were lying on the floor. Evidently things were not going very well because his father was muttering to himself in a bad-tempered tone of voice.

“Soldering gun!” Robby heard as he came up. “Half-size temporary circuit lead-ins! Squeeze my fingers in there some-how and put the hot end of the gun—ouch!”

Robby’s father backed out of the control system, blowing on his fingers, and saw Robby.

“Oh, there you are,” he said. “I’m skinny enough, but not for this. Squeeze round the back of the control system there and see if you can pass the leads for the stand-by thermostat through to me. Think you can make it?”

“Sure,” said Robby. He slid in behind number seven. It was tight there between the tank and the wall, but he was able to move his hands and arms about where a grown man would have been as helpless as if locked in a box.

“I’m there!” called Robby. There were noises from upfront as his father wormed his way in from the other side.

His voice filtered through a maze of wires and odd mechanical devices. “Right. Pass the leads through.”

Robby found the leads to the stand-by thermostat and poked them through the clutter of equipment in front of him. He felt his father take hold at the far end, and the sharp smell of the soldering gun at work drifted back to him.

His father was still grumbling as he worked, but Robby knew his words were all directed at the temperature controls.Dr. Hoenig had a furious temper. When he had been younger,it had got him into all sorts of difficulties. Then he became interested in zoology, and later in marine biology. When he discovered how many wonderful living things there were in the world, he fell in love with them all and began to make a valiant effort to contain his temper.

Shortly after graduation from college, he joined a scientific expedition to explore the Mindanao Deep, a spot more than six miles deep in the ocean east of the Philippine Islands. He went down in a bathyscape to where there is no light at all, nor has there ever been, and where the weight of the water could crush a steel bank vault in two seconds. When he came up he was a changed man, and after that he only lost his temper with things, seldom with anything living.

Seeing life under conditions that would have destroyed him instantaneously had made him humble. So now he was a hasty man, but very gentle with most people. He was also gentle with cows, horses, guinea pigs, dogs, cats, white mice, snakes, fish, and even insects and plants. He was gentle with creatures that people did not think of being gentle with, such as tigers, sour-tempered rhinoceroses, blood-thirsty weasels that kill whole hen houses full of chickens when they’re not even hungry, the dangerous water buffalo,and the carrion-eating hyena. He could also be gentle with sharks.

Robby, having waited to see if his father needed him behind number seven tank for anything else, wriggled his way out again.

“There we are,” said his father with satisfaction, putting the panel cover back on the controls. “Fixed. I want you to watch that now. The temperature of the water in the tank’s to stay the same while I’m gone.”

“Gone?” said Robby.

“Gone, departed, absent, or—by golly, that’s right,” said his father, straightening up from the panel which was now in place. “I didn’t tell you about that. Now, where did I put that soldering gun?”

“It’s in your pocket,” Robby told him.

“Oh. Yes. There it is. Well, what do you say to a little lunch?” Robby’s father glanced at his wristwatch. “Great foraminifera, it’s nearly three o’clock! Well, we’ll have some-thing to eat anyway and call it an afternoon snack instead. I wish your mother were back. She keeps track of meals better than I do,” he went on, bounding up the stairs two steps at a time to the third level where the kitchen was. “Not that it makes much difference to me, but a growing boy like you needs his food.” Reaching the kitchen, he opened the refrig-erator and paused to glance at Robby who had followed him.“You’re too thin.”

“So are you,” said Robby.

“Ah yes—but an old man like me,” said Robby’s father,forgetting he was a prize athlete and could still swim twice as fast as Robby, “I don’t get enough exercise to require food.”He stopped, struck by a thought. “Maybe we had better eat some vegetables.”

“Wouldn’t a steak be quicker to fix?” said Robby.“True,” said his father.

“And I could have a peanut-butter sandwich while I’m waiting,” said Robby. “That way I’d get whatever I needed that was extra.”

“Very sensible,” said his father, taking a steak out of the freezer and popping it into the infrared quick-thawer. “And you can make your own sandwich, which will save me the trouble. We have,” he went on, taking another look into the freezer, “been eating a lot of steaks since your mother left. I don’t know what she’ll say when she gets back. Particularly if she comes back while I’m gone.”

“Where are you going?” asked Robby, who knew better than to risk reminding his father that he had already mentioned being gone, and had never explained what he meant.

“Can’t tell you, I’m sorry,” said his father regretfully.“Top-secret, of course. You could have knocked me over with a feather when I got the call from Washington just now.Tell your mother not to worry.”

“What’ll I tell her when she gets back and asks all those questions?” said Robby, who had been through this sort of thing before.

“All what questions?” said his father.

“All the questions she’ll ask when she gets here and findsyou gone,” said Robby.

“Oh, tell her I had to go somewhere on government business and couldn’t say where, or when I’d be back—there’s some steak sauce around here, somewhere,” said Robby’s father, peering into a cupboard. And he took down a brown earthenware bottle with rings of different colours around it.The bottle contained a steak sauce Robby’s father had in-vented himself, containing soy sauce, mustard, Worcester-shire sauce, little red-hot chili peppers, beef bouillon cubes dissolved in water, and a secret Chinese herb. It was very tasty, but lit a roaring furnace in your mouth that three glasses of cold milk could not put out. Robby’s father put it on his steaks by tablespoonfuls and never turned a hair or drank a drop of milk.

“Balthasar’s excited about something,” said Robby. Having finished making his peanut-butter sandwich, he began to eat it.

“Give him some aspirin,” muttered his father absently,taking the steak out of the thawer and testing it to see if it was ready yet. “Ah—just right. Now, on to the grill.”

“I went out to see why, and I found some footprints,” said Robby, sticking to his guns. “You should have seen how big they were.”

“What continually amazes me,” said his father, rubbing salt and pepper on the steak and putting it on the grill, “is the fact I can never seem to put on any weight.Not that I’d like to be fat—nobody in his right mind would.But you’d think at my age I’d have started to flesh out a bit.”

“Three feet wide, anyway, and four feet long," persisted Robby.

“No one,” said his father sternly, “no one could ever accuse me of not liking to eat. I could eat steak, for instance,until the cows come home. Of course, now and then I get busy and miss a meal. Maybe what I should do is set up a schedule for a well-rounded diet. Breakfast at seven, say,consisting of cantaloupe, corn flakes and milk, a couple of fried eggs and sausage—and possibly a small steak. For lunch.”

“Dad, you aren’t listening!” cried Robby.

“Certainly. I heard every word—you said you want to measure Balthasar’s footprint. What you’ll have to do is mix some plaster of Paris and make a cast of one flipper—and for lunch, let’s see, tomato soup, a healthful green salad, french fried potatoes and—oh well, a steak. Apple pie ”

At that moment the bell that announced the arrival of a visitor rang suddenly through the station.

“Oh, there he is,” said Robby’s father, coming back to the moment. “Go and let him in. Now let’s see—for dinner.”

“Go and let who in?” asked Robby. But his father was now busy speculating out loud whether or not there was, after all, any good reason why he shouldn’t have steak for dinner as well, if he wanted it—or, failing that, a good roast. Robby gave up and hurried up the stairs to the surface platform. On the way, he found time to wonder who the visitor could be.The boat that brought supplies to them from the mainland was not due until the end of the week. And it could not be his mother home again, because his father had said, “Let himin.” It could be Lieutenant Vargas, in charge of the local Mexican coastguard patrol boat, a good friend of Robby’s,who might happen to be down this way investigating a report that Vandals were in the vicinity. In fact, the more he thought about it, the more Robby was sure that was who it must be.

But when he burst out on to the surface platform, there was no patrol boat in sight. In fact, there was no visiting boat to be seen. And no aircraft. No one was in sight, anywhere.Robby stared. The bell could not have rung by itself. And then, behind him in the boathouse, he heard a strange, raspy man’s voice singing. The song was like no song Robby had ever heard before. It was only a few notes going up and down, but they made an odd little tune that seemed to have no beginning and no end. The tune gave Robby a shivery, sad feeling like the kind that comes over a person seeing the sun start to go down, a long way from home, and suddenly feeling how tired and hungry he is, and knowing how far he has to go to get back to where he belongs.

This is what Robby heard:

Mr. Lillibulero

The first thing Robby did when he heard the singing was to stop in surprise. But then he walked over to the boathouse, opened its door, and stepped inside.

At first, in the sudden gloom after the brilliant tropical sunshine outside, his eyes were so dazzled that he saw nothing at all. Then his vision slowly adjusted, and a very unusual-looking man was revealed before him.

This man was hardly an inch or two taller than Robby, but he was fully grown. He was lean, wiry, and trim, dressed in slacks and a shirt of dark grey-green. He wore rubber-soled grey shoes, and from the thin grey belt threaded through the belt loops of his slacks hung a shark knife in a grey metal clip, and a flat, grey gun. Next to the gun was an olive-drab box about the size of a small transistor radio. Some plane had evidently dropped the little man on the station. Robby wished he had looked up at the sky as he had come out. The markings on the plane might have told him where the stranger had come from.

The man’s hair was curly, brown, and tight, like a skullcap above his sharp-chinned face which was brown as well, and leathery, the way a fisherman’s or a farmer’s face becomes when it is exposed a lot to the sun. It was marked by a fine,curving line on each side of his mouth and a sharp, short line like an exclamation point between black eyebrows. And under those eyebrows there looked into Robby’s face two green eyes so burning and bright that Robby stopped short again at the sight of them. It was then that he noticed that the little man was packing something into a small, square, white case.His brown fingers flew so quickly that Robby was barely able to see that it was a one-man copter-parachute before the case was closed and sealed.

“Where did you come from?” asked Robby, without thinking. “How did you get here?”

The little man flashed his sharp green eyes at Robby.“Curious, are y’not?” he said, dryly. His voice was the strangest Robby had ever heard. It had an accent that at first sounded Scottish, but on second thought also sounded Irish,only there seemed to be the accents of other languages in it, too. It sounded, if you can imagine such a thing, like a raspy buzz-saw biting its way through a dry log. But even with all this oddness about it, the tone of the voice made it perfectly clear to Robby that he had asked the wrong sort of question. Robby felt his face grow hot.

“It’s my station!” he said. “I’ve got a right to ask.”“Well, dinna hold y’r breath until y’get an answer, if y’dinna want to suffocate,” replied the little man, and walked out the door of the boathouse, quite as if he owned the station, to the entrance leading to the floor below. Robby stared, then ran after him, tumbling down the ladder just in time to see the man heading very quickly for the floors below.

By the time he caught up, the man was setting his things down on the kitchen table. Robby’s father turned from the grill with a pleased expression on his face.

“Lillibulero!” he cried.

“Ah there, James,” said the little man in his rusty voice.He didn’t crack a smile.

“Well, well, good to see you!” said Robby’s father, shaking hands happily. “Robby, I want you to meet Mr. Lillibulero. Lillibulero, this is my son.”

“Aye, we met above,” said Mr. Lillibulero in a voice that said he was not impressed. “However,” he held out his hand, “I’m pleased to meet you—Robertson, is it not? Y’r father’s written about you.”

“Everybody calls me Robby,” said Robby, shaking hands without any great joy.

“Do they now?” ground out Mr. Lillibulero. “Here’s one that does not.”

“Mr. Lillibulero likes to use full names, Robby,” said Robby’s father. He turned once more to the little man. “We were just going to have a snack—sort of a late lunch. If you’d
like to join us for a bite of steak ”

“I’m no slave to m’appetite, like some I could mention,”creaked Mr. Lillibulero. “However, since I’ve had the bad chance to disturb y’at mealtime, I will join y’in a sociable cup of tea.”

“Tea—tea,” said Robby’s father, turning and digging energetically into the cupboard beside the grill. “We had some around here, I know—ah, there we are!” He brought out a sealed metal-foil package. And then, rummaging in the cup-board below, produced a teapot. “Now, let’s see,” he said, tearing open the metal-foil package, “I’ll boil some water ”

“Dinna disturb y’self,” sniffed Mr. Lillibulero, taking the package out of his hands. “An ill-made cup of tea is worse than ditchwater. I’ll brew it m’self.”

While this conversation was going on, Robby was staring at his father. Dr. Hoenig showed no signs of being even slightly annoyed at Mr. Lillibulero’s crankiness. It was almost as if he liked the way Mr. Lillibulero grumbled and snapped.

During the meal Robby found nothing out about the strange visitor. His father and Mr. Lillibulero seemed to have known each other for a long time, although Robby could not remember his father mentioning the name. There were other men mentioned, too, whom Robby had never heard of.

“And Morrison?” asked his father between bites of steak.

“India,” replied Mr. Lillibulero.

“You don’t say!” said Robby’s father. “I suppose the Char Ben Dhu. ”

“That’s taken care of,” said Mr. Lillibulero, darkly.

“Then what?”

“Our fat friend. Y’know the one.”

“Still.”

“Aye.”

By the time the meal was over, Robby was bursting with curiosity and resentment. The last few years he had become used to talking to his father man to man, and now the two of them, his father and this funny little man, were speaking as if he could not be trusted. Rebelliously, after the meal was over, he shoved the dishes into the disposal. Mr. Lillibulero marched out to look over the station, and Robby followed his father into his bedroom.

“Now let’s see,” said his father, diving into his dresser, “shirts, shorts, socks, toothbrush, razor.”

“What do you have to go away for?” said Robby, looking at the bed and feeling like kicking it hard.

“When authority calls, I—hey!” said his father, straightening up and fixing Robby with a pair of sharp, discerning eyes. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing,” said Robby, glowering at the bed.

“I know that kind of nothing,” said his father. He sat down. “What’s the matter?”

“Oh—him,” said Robby. “That Mr. Lillibulero.”

“What about him?”

“What’s he here for, anyway?”

“Oh,” said his father. “My fault. I should have explained before. He’s here to look after you and the station while I’m gone.”

Robby stared.

“I don’t need anyone to look after me!” he cried. “And I can look after the station. I know more about it than he does!”“You aren’t being very reasonable, old boy,” said his father mildly. “This station doesn’t belong to me, you know.It’s the government’s, and it’s worth half a million dollars—or more, if you try to figure how much it’d cost to replace the Martians downstairs. I don’t think the International Department of Fisheries would take very well to the idea of my leaving it in the hands of a twelve-year-old boy, even if said twelve-year-old happens to be the eminent Robertson Alan Hoenig.”

Being wrong made Robby even more furious.

“Well,” he burst out, “at least they might have sent somebody useful instead of a squeaky little sorehead like that!”

“All right, now stop right there!” Robby heard a note of anger suddenly come into his father’s voice and saw that his eyes had gone hard and stem. “I never thought I’d hear a son of mine talking like a Vandal.”

“I’m not talking like a Vandal,” muttered Robby.

“Oh, aren’t you? Suppose,” said his father, “you tell me just what a Vandal is.”

“They’re people who like making trouble,” said Robby, painfully.

“But why do they like making trouble?” demanded Dr. Hoenig.

“They just do,” said Robby.

“There’s a lot more to it than that,” his father said, “as you’re now old enough to realize. Nobody does anything without a reason. If you get mad at somebody, you have a reason for getting mad, haven’t you?”

“Well, sure,” Robby answered.

“Of course you do,” said Dr. Hoenig. “And in just the same way, the Vandals have their reason for acting as they do. They’re men—and some women, too—who’ve refused to grow up in one particular way.”

“You mean they’re little," said Robby. “But everybody always said—”

“It’s inside that they’ve refused to grow up,” Dr. Hoenig said. “Most people learn somewhere along the line that they sometimes have to put other people’s feelings or wishes ahead of their own if the world is going to run smoothly. The Vandals never have, and they never do. They do nothing except what they want, all the time.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad,” said Robby.

“You’ll see how bad it is when you run into some Vandals—if you ever do. People who act like that never have any friends. And that makes them unhappy—which is why they band together to smash and destroy things.”

“There’s a lot more to it than that,” said Robby. “In school—”

“I know,” said Dr. Hoenig. “In school they give you the history of it. They tell you how the Vandals grew out of the old criminal gangs and societies of the twentieth century. With better methods of catching criminals, ordinary crime was stopped, as war has been stopped nowadays. The real criminals are all caught and cured now before they can get started. But the merely unhappy people are still with us. They gang up, and hunt for something to hate to prove that, bad as they are, there is something that is worse. And when they find it, they band together and try to destroy it.”

“Well, anyway,” said Robby, rebelliously, “I’m no Vandal.”

“Don’t be so sure,” said Dr. Hoenig. “We’re all likely to act like Vandals on occasion, unless we watch ourselves. You may not like Mr. Lillibulero—that’s your privilege—but that doesn’t excuse you for telling lies about him.”

“They weren’t lies. They ” Robby broke off, and bit his lip.

“Of course they were,” said his father, calmly. “How do you know he’s a squeaky little sorehead? You don’t, of course. You just made that up because you’d like to think he is a squeaky little sorehead. Then you’d have an excuse for not liking him.”

“Well, he’s certainly not very polite!” said Robby.

“No,” said Dr. Hoenig slowly and thoughtfully, pursing his lips, “Mr. Lillibulero is not very polite. But as you grow up, you’ll learn that sometimes there are reasons for people being the way they are that go a long way towards excusing their faults.”

“Such as?” said Robby. “Just tell me one thing!"

“Well,” said his father, “for one thing, Mr. Lillibulero is an orphan. And for another, he is a top—perhaps the top—security agent for the International Bureau of Police, of which I’m sure you’ve heard.”

“Him?” said Robby. He stared at his father. “Him?”

“Exactly. Mr. Lillibulero,” said Dr. Hoenig. “So you see,the International Bureau of Police does not share your opinion that he is a squeaky little sorehead. Nor do Vandals, ordinarily, since his main job is breaking up their gangs. And as for his being not so polite, if you grew up in all sorts of odd comers of the world, if you worked and dedicated and prepared yourself for police work and thought it was more important to be honest than anything else, you too might be a little outspoken and inclined to say what you think.”

Robby’s father turned back to his luggage. “Come on, now, give me a hand with this packing because I’ve got to get done and on my way. They need me right away over there.”

“Over where?” asked Robby, reaching for a handful of shirts.

“Just over there,” replied his father. “Hand me those shirts.”

Just as they were snapping the locks on the suitcase, the arrival bell rang. Going upstairs together, they found Mr. Lillibulero already talking to a man in the uniform of the International Department of Fisheries—Fish Warden’s Division. A fast-looking, two-man flying disc was resting on the water beside the platform.

Robby’s father shook hands with the uniformed pilot of the disc and climbed aboard. He leaned out to wave good-bye to Robby.

“Don’t forget the temperature control on number seven!” he called. Then the bubble top of the flying disc popped shut over him. The disc skimmed the surface of the water and was off into the darkening sky of the east. It was getting late in the afternoon and the tropical sun was just about to go down.

Robby watched the disc dwindle out of sight. With it gone and the sun sinking, he felt lonelier than he had ever felt in his life. He remembered suddenly that he never told his father about the footprints. And now there was nobody else to tell.

Except Mr. Lillibulero.

“Huh! Him!” said Robby aloud, and hurried downstairs,looking for something to kick.

The Vandals

Mr. Lillibulero had already left the surface platform. When Robby entered the communications room on the floor below,he found the little man had brought his box up to the control panel for the station’s signalling system, and was busy connecting wires from the box to the panel.

“What—” began Robby and then closed his mouth. He was not going to ask Mr. Lillibulero another question and bemade to feel foolish again.

“ ’Tis a specially sensitive warning device,” replied Mr. Lillibulero without turning around, almost as if he had eyes in the back of his head and could also read minds. “We’ll want no troublemakers sneaking in on us without warning.”

“Oh, nobody could,” said Robby. “Balthasar would let us know if anyone came up to the station.”

“Och, aye?” said Mr. Lillibulero, turning and fixing Robby with one of his needle-sharp green glances. “And who might this Balthasar be, Robertson?”

“My pet,” said Robby. “He’s a Risso’s dolphin. One of the Hoffer dolphins. I got him from my grandfather. Actually, he’s an experimental animal, but he was given to me, and he’s very bright.”

“Bright? Ah, that’s interesting,” replied Mr. Lillibulero, dryly. “And his brightness provides as fine a warning system as underwater radar wi’ a twenty-mile sweep?”

“Yes,” said Robby defiantly, knowing it was not true.

“ ’Tis a meeracle of a beast,” sniffed Mr. Lillibulero, disbelievingly.

“I don’t care!” shouted Robby, losing his temper which,perhaps, he had inherited from his father. “Balthasar is twice as good as any radar. I ought to know. I’ve had him since he was a baby, and you don’t like him just because he’s mine!”

“Ah, indeed?” replied Mr. Lillibulero, not in the least impressed. “Well now, I’ll just finish this up, and we’ll go have a look at him.” And he turned back to the box and the panel.

“I don’t know where he is right now,” muttered Robby.

“Don’t y’now?” said Mr. Lillibulero. “I know where my scannar is.” And he tapped the box beside him.

Furious, Robby stamped up the stairs and pressed the button on the platform. It rang the same underwater bell that had summoned him and Balthasar home earlier in the day. For a second there was no response, and then Balthasar broke surface in the water which was already red from the descending sun.

“So yon’s the beast,” said Mr. Lillibulero’s voice in Robby’s ear. Robby jumped. He had not heard the little man approach behind him. Balthasar plunged and came up, rubbing his side against the edge of the platform at their feet. He opened his mouth playfully at Mr. Lillibulero.

“Gramphidelphis griseus,” murmured Mr. Lillibulero thoughtfully.

“Gramphidelphis griseus X,” Robby corrected him. “X for experimental breed.”

“Och, aye?” said Mr. Lillibulero, still gazing at Balthasar,in a kinder voice than Robby had heard him use before. “Well, he’s a fine beast, and it’s no harm t’have him about.”

“If he sees anyone coming, either on top of the water or under it, he butts the bell button on the air lock down on the third level,” said Robby.

As he spoke, the sun, which had been slipping into the far-off waterline of the horizon, took the last few degrees of its plunge and disappeared with tropical suddenness, leaving them only the fading blue of the sky.

“Ah,” said Mr. Lillibulero, squinting his green eyes at the west. “Time to button up.”

Robby followed him down, closing and locking the platform hatch as he went.

“Come along, laddie,” said Mr. Lillibulero. “We’ll make a security check of the entire estableeshment.” He led the way, and they made the rounds down to the stand-by tanks on the fifth level. Mr. Lillibulero looked with interest at the squid, the small basking shark, and the other creatures.But he stopped to linger over the tank holding the Martians.

“This’ll be them?” he said to Robby.

“They’re the Martians,” said Robby.

“Are they now?” said Mr. Lillibulero. “ ’Tis interesting to obsairve they’re little different from earthly creatures.”

“There isn’t much difference,” said Robby. “Anybody who knows anything about marine biology knows there couldn’t be. Their sea water isn’t quite as salty as ours on earth, and there’re little differences like that—but that’s all.”

“I wouldna say they look exactly like earthly fish and plants,” commented Mr. Lillibulero, following a ribbon-like Martian with his eye as it eeled its way among some waterplants remarkably like orange-coloured bamboo shoots.

“That’s because of the environment,” said Robby. “There probably were some species quite like our fish, but all we’ve got is the live forms that adapted to living in underground caves and were sealed off and frozen in underground lakes.Nobody thought there was anything more than a plant or two on Mars until geologists started drilling in the dead sea bottoms and discovered the ice caves way under the ground.They didn’t discover any higher Martian life forms—only these simple plants and fish that were gradually frozen as Mars cooled.”

“And is that a fact, indeed now!” said Mr. Lillibulero, and moved off. Robby, his ears burning with embarrassment,realized that the small man probably already knew these things.

He did not speak to Mr. Lillibulero again, and the two went their separate ways about the process of buttoning up the establishment. What Robby did was to check the temperatures on all tanks of fish, check the filters in the tank, feed the fish whose turn it was to be fed. Turn off the lights in the laboratory. Tidy the kitchen.

Last of all, he made a couple of sandwiches, poured a glass of milk, took the snack to his room, and shut the door.

Meanwhile Mr. Lillibulero, with a diagram of the station in one hand, proceeded to test the water intake and topside ventilators to make sure no one could get in. Lock the first-level hatch leading to the platform above. Secure the air lock. Check his gun and knife.

And do eighty one-arm push-ups (forty for each arm), a hundred sit-ups, a hundred and fifty squat-jumps, two hundred deep-knee bends, and touch his toes three hundred and one times without stopping and without bending his knees.

Then he sat down to relax in Dr. Hoenig’s office, with theSmithsonian Scientific Series, Volume Number Ten, on shelled invertebrates.

Robby, one level below, was also relaxing. It would have been hard not to relax in Robby’s room, in fact, for it was very pleasant. It was shaped something like a big slice of pie,with a door where the point of the slice would be. Two walls spread out the way the edges of the slice would have run. And where the crust of the pie would have been, there was the outside wall of the station which, in the case of Robby’s room, was one big window.

Along the walls were all sorts of interesting things, such as a fishing gun that worked on compressed air, the huge top shell of a sea turtle, big enough to be the shield of a knight in the Middle Ages, the jaws of a tiger shark showing several rows of teeth, a photograph of the Syrtis Major area of Mars,taken from a spaceship fifty miles above the surface, and a picture in coloured chalk, rather smudgy around the edges, of Balthasar, done by Robby himself.

But the best part of Robby’s room was the window. He could lie on the bed in the daytime and look out as if into a giant aquarium full of fish and plants of every colour and size. But at night it could be even better. There was no telling what might come up after dark, attracted by the light of the reading lamp, to bump its nose on the window. After the lights were turned out, if there was a full moon on the water above, it became even more mysterious. Just enough light filtered down for Robby to see the strange shapes coming and going and turning before the window. He could lie in bed watching and wondering about them until his eyes slipped closed without his even noticing. When he blinked them open again it was bright green, watery, sunlit morning.

Now, Robby ate his sandwiches and drank his milk. He tried to read for a little while, but then decided against it. He switched off his lights and lay in the dark, watching the faint flickers of fish he could not quite make out. Once Balthasar swam down and looked in, and Robby recognized the dolphin by his size and the outline he made against the glass. Gradually, Robby felt himself slipping, slipping, down that long smooth slide into sleep. His last drowsy thought was that if not liking Mr. Lillibulero was something a Vandal might do, then he wasn’t too sure he blamed the Vandals for being the way they were. And then Robby was asleep.

Sometime during the night he began to dream that he was steering Balthasar through the watery ways of a city like Venice that used canals for streets. No one was moving up and down the canals except Robby and Balthasar, although on the pavements that ran alongside, people were busily going to and fro. He thought he recognized some Vandals by the bushy beards which Vandals liked to wear, but nobody else seemed to be noticing them.

Then, far away, he heard a sound like a police siren, and his first thought was that he and Balthasar had been speeding.

He slowed down and steered Balthasar to the side of the canal so that the siren could catch up with him. But the siren did not catch up, though the noise went on and on. Looking about, he could see no sign of a pursuing police boat.

Finally he urged Balthasar ahead. They swam until they reached an intersection. There in the centre on a pedestal rising out of the water, he saw Mr. Lillibulero in a blue police uniform directing the water traffic.

“What’s wrong?” he asked Mr. Lillibulero. Mr. Lillibulero reached down and took Robby by the shoulders.

“Up!” he snapped. “Up! Up! Wake up! Wake.”

Robby opened his eyes to find the real Mr. Lillibulero shaking him. A siren was keening through the station.

“I—I’m awake,” mumbled Robby, blurrily. I'm awake. What is it?”

“Up and out of bed, laddie,” replied Mr. Lillibulero. “That’s my scannar system hooting y’hear. There’s a ship approaching us fast and underwater. We’ll have t’abandon the station.”

“But why . . . ?” said Robby, thickly. “What ship? Who’s coming?”

“A submersible, Robertson,” said Mr. Lillibulero. “And it’s a submersible which has not called the station to warn of its arrival—as, by international marine law, it is required to do. Only Vandals would do such. And by the size of the ship on the scannar screen it’s a good-sized gang of the rascals we’ll be having about our ears in the next five minutes!”

The Killer Whale

“Y’ll have t’leave the watch,” said Mr. Lillibulero as Robby rolled out of bed and reached automatically for his swimming trunks and sandals. His quick fingers slipped the expansion band over Robby’s right hand and he dropped on the dresser the calendar watch-depth indicator Robby had got for his birthday just a few months before.

“Why?” said Robby, who was just sleepy enough to argue.

“We can have no metal about us. They’ll have searching equipment, too.” said Mr. Lillibulero. “Dressed? Then come along. It’s up to the platform and out into the water for us, before they arrive.”

“But my watch . . .” protested Robby, trailing after him.

“Y’notice I’ve left my knife and gun as well,” said Mr. Lillibulero, slipping out the bedroom door.

“What do we have to leave for?” gasped Robby, catching up with the little man. They started up the ladder to the surface platform.

“Discretion,” replied Mr. Lillibulero, not the least out of breath, “is the better part of valour. Particularly when y’r outnumbered.” They emerged into the night. “It’s only a wee bit after five in the morning,” said Mr. Lillibulero, sniffing the darkness. “ ’Twill be daylight in an hour. Here y’be.”

He handed one of the underwater breathing lungs to Robby and slipped one on himself.

“We’d best stay t’gether,” he said, and plunged into the water. Robby followed him, and the warm, night-time sea closed over their heads.

He swam down, keeping the shape of Mr. Lillibulero before him. Out of nowhere a large, dark body rushed at them. Mr. Lillibulero swung about sharply to face it but Robby spoke into the microphone that allowed him to talk through the face mask.

“It’s Balthasar,” he explained.

“Och, aye?” came back Mr. Lillibulero’s voice, rather tinnily, through the water. “Keep the beastie with us, if y’can. It may be all t’our good that they dinna know we’ve such a creature about.”

“All right,” said Robby.

“Now,” went on Mr. Lillibulero, “where’s a close place we can hide and watch?”

Robby thought. There was Seal Rocks, a jumbled mass of coral and rock that stuck up from the sandy bottom of the sea about fifty feet from the station. He told Mr. Lillibulero about it.

“Vairy good,” said Mr. Lillibulero. They turned, Robby leading the way from memory, and swam for the rock. When it loomed up before them they circled about it and then settled down, holding lightly on to an outcropping.

They did not have to stay there very long before things began to happen. They heard the rumble of the approaching submersible, the water tumbling away behind its powerful stem jets, while it was still some distance out. The vibration it setup touched them with a feeling like water in air, rippling over them. The rumble grew louder, the vibration increased, and suddenly they felt, rather than heard or saw, the big body of the ship come to a stop between them and the station. An underseas shock wave bounced at the rock so that they were forced to hold on tightly to keep from being swept away.

For a moment the ship was quiet. Then there was a sudden banging and clattering as the topside hatch was flung open, and Robby could hear men jumping from it to the station platform. With a crash the platform hatch was forced back,and a second later they heard sounds inside the station.

Robby listened, considerably surprised to hear how noisy his familiar station must have seemed to underwater creatures when something energetic was going on inside. It was easy to forget how quickly sound travels in water, where it has five times the speed it has in the air, and the way it echoes in the ear. Now, it seemed to him that the Vandals must be tearing the station apart.

He put his mask close to Mr. Lillibulero’s ear. “What’d they want to come here for?” he asked in a worried voice.

Mr. Lillibulero merely shook his head, as if he were at a loss for an answer. “Quiet now, laddie,” he murmured, and pushed off from the rock, towards the ship.

Robby and Balthasar swam after him. There is one nice thing about creeping up on something underwater. You can make your approach without giving any warning whatever. On the surface, of course, you splash. But underwater you can glide along as quietly as an owl swooping through the night-time forest.

They came silently up to the submersible, looming enormous in the water. From its bottom plates to its top plates it measured a good twenty feet or more. If it had not been for the streamlined shape, a ship this size would have scraped the sea bottom here in shallow water. As it was, it had only five feet of water above it and five below. To someone from th etwentieth century, the submersible would have looked more like an aircraft than a submarine. In fact that was what it most resembled, a jet plane of the 1950s, one designed for super-sonic speeds, with little, stubby, back-raking wings and along, needle nose. The submersible, however, was thicker-bodied and had a cargo section just forward of the rudder and diving planes. This section looked exactly like the rudder and the tail on an aircraft, and did the same duty.

Robby and Mr. Lillibulero approached the heavy, swelling mass of the submersible from the rear, where the large, round openings of the jet tubes were located. They skirted these, not wanting to be caught in the thrust if the motor of the submersible were suddenly turned on. They were just about to make an exploratory trip under the length of the ship when they bumped head-on into a trailing cable.

The cable stretched back some distance, but soon Mr. Lillibulero came to the end of it, with Robby and Balthasar right behind him. From it waved a thin, white material which stretched over the sea bottom in enormous shreds and tatters.

“A pod!” breathed Robby.

“Aye,” agreed Mr. Lillibulero.

They recognized the pod at once, although there were many people who would not have. Robby was not the son of two marine biologists for nothing. As for Mr. Lillibulero, he knew a great many more things than most people suspected.

What they were looking at had once been a device for transporting large ocean creatures without harming them. The idea behind it was simple enough. It was merely to put a big creature in a bigger bag through which sea water continually flowed as the bag was towed behind a ship like the submersible. The idea was simple, but the execution was difficult until the invention, a dozen years before, of a tough, durable plastic that could withstand the pressure of the water and the weight of even the largest whales.

What was so astonishing now was the shreds and tatters. If one of the great blue whales could not burst open such a bag, what could? Perhaps, thought Robby, it had caught on something very sharp and very hard.

“Come,” said the voice of Mr. Lillibulero softly in Robby’s ear. “ ’Tis getting light. We’ll have to hurry to see the rest of this ship.”

He led the way back to the underside of the submersible. Here they ran smack into another mystery.

The bottom of the cargo section was ripped open from the inside, as if by a giant tin-opener.

More than this they could not see in the dark waters. Although the paleness overhead showed that dawn was on its way, the interior was black as pitch. Only the faint glimmer of self-sealing bulkheads showed where the water was locked back from the rest of the submersible, which otherwise would have flooded and sunk.

Mr. Lillibulero put his hand on Robby’s arm to guide him away from the station. At that moment they were startled by aloud bubbling noise.

The bubbling came closer. And then—so close that they might have reached up and caught one of his swim fins—a swimmer thrashed by overhead. A stream of air bubbles came from a clumsy, full-sized breathing helmet, and the man struggled with the painful awkwardness of someone who was decidedly unacquainted with operating underwater.

He was patrolling the side of the submersible’s hull and required the full helmet, no doubt because of the beard which most Vandals grew in order to look different from other people. The neat little lung Robby and Mr. Lillibulero were wearing could not fit tightly over a hairy face.

Robby and Mr. Lillibulero, followed by the faithful Balthasar, swam quietly off into the dimness. They passed Seal Rocks, and Mr. Lillibulero waved at Robby to keep going. About them the dark waters of night slowly and imperceptibly lightened, changing from blackish murk to a pearly grey. Almost within minutes, for the sun in the tropics comes up as fast as it goes down, it was clear shimmering day above the sandy sea bottom again.

But by that time they were out of sight of the station. At the Castle, where Robby had discovered the footprints the day before, Mr. Lillibulero settled down and signalled Robby to do likewise.

Robby grabbed for one of the battlements, but the moment he touched the rock Balthasar bumped him.

“No!” said Robby sharply, and tried again. Again, Balthasar shoved him away. Robby reached back behind the dolphin’s head and caught hold of the harness to which the reins were anchored. He jerked quickly on it, with his “Now, stop that nonsense” signal. Balthasar backed off, but began to circle the two human beings excitedly.

“We’re some eight miles from shore now, are we not?” asked Mr. Lillibulero.

“Eight miles and a bit,” said Robby.

“I’m thinking about swimming ashore,” nodded Mr. Lillibulero. “When I first saw yon ship approaching, I tried to get a message for help out on the phone, but on the sub they’d already blocked off our communications wi’a jammer. If I could get ashore and call the coastguard, now—”

“Oh, we could do that all right,” said Robby eagerly.

“I wasna thinking of we doing it at all,” replied Mr. Lillibulero. “It was I, I was talking about.”

“But you’d need Balthasar to cross the deep water,” said Robby. “And Balthasar wouldn’t take you without me.”

“And why would I need the beast, now?”

“To show you the way,” said Robby, “and warn the sharks off, and pull you there two or three times as fast as you could swim it.”

“Hmmm,” said Mr. Lillibulero thoughtfully, but not convinced.

“Besides,” went on Robby, “what good would it do for me to stay here alone?”

“There is that,” admitted the little man. His bright eyes glittered through the transparent face plate of his mask. “It’s unfortunate, y’know, about the Martians. If it weren’t for that, y’could swim back to the station and let them hold y’prisoner until help arrived.”

“What’ve the Martians got to do with it?” asked Robby.

“I’d not have said anything,” said Mr. Lillibulero, “but perhaps it’s best y’know, seeing the way things have turned out. There’s a large to-do among some Vandal gangs to gather all things Martian that’re on the earth, and see them destroyed. But public opeenion will not agree—so they’re at work these last few months t’prove that the Martians from the ice caves on Mars are dangerous. It was for that reason I was sent here—to guard y’r Martians. But it wasna expected the Vandals’d come in such force. Several gangs must’ve banded together to steal yon ship. I’ve no doubt they planned to kidnap y’r father and force him to work in wi’their plans,that’s why they came here. And it’s no impossible that,lacking y’r father, they might try t’make use of you.”

Robby stared through the water at the little man.

“Was that why Dad—” he began, but Mr. Lillibulero cut him short.

“I’ve said enough and too much already,” he replied.“Well, if there’s no choice for it, there’s no choice for it—and we’ll all make the long swim to shore. Call in y’r Balthasar and—what ails the beast?” demanded Mr. Lillibulero, breaking off.

Balthasar was throwing himself around in the water in a frantic fashion, plainly trying to lead Robby and Mr. Lillibulero back to the station. A chilling suspicion crossed Robby’s mind.

“I’m going to go up on top and take a look,” he told Mr.Lillibulero. “Just a second.”

He reached out, and the big dolphin came shooting to him.Robby took hold of the harness and pulled himself on to Balthasar’s back.

“Up!” he ordered Balthasar. “Up and out!”

Balthasar slanted towards the surface, some twenty feet above. He could have gone straight up, but Robby, shot suddenly from twenty feet underwater to ordinary air pressure, would have been seriously hurt when the air in his lungs abruptly expanded to nearly twice the volume it had at twenty feet below.

When they were within a half-dozen feet of the top, Robby jerked back on the harness and gathered his feet up under-neath him so that he was crouching instead of sitting on Balthasar’s back. This was an old trick to both of them, but an effective one. Balthasar was about to make himself into a diving board.

The minute the dolphin felt Robby’s swim fins pressing against his wide back he put on speed, made an upward turn,and broke the surface like a torpedo. All the Cetacea can jump, and like to do so—even the big whales. Balthasar was no exception. When he decided to move, he could really move—and when he pointed up instead of straight ahead, he could fling his whole thirteen feet clear of the water.

With Robby riding his back it was not quite so easy,although Robby—to Balthasar—represented only about as much extra weight as a ten-pound sack of sugar would to a man. It was mainly a matter of adjusting his balance while jumping—and Balthasar had learned to do that.

So up went Balthasar, and up went Robby—ten feet clear of the water. And when he reached the peak of Balthasar’s jump, Robby gave his own spring.

This was the point at which Robby ordinarily went into a swan dive, or a jack-knife, or a cannonball, but this particular time he was interested only in taking a look around. He jumped as high as he could, and straightened out so that he would come down again feet first, meanwhile hoping no one would be on the platform to see him.

Robby gained another three feet with his own jump, so he was able to see around quite well. He had a flashing glimpse of the blue waters on the far horizon, and the cloudless sky,and two hundred yards away the empty metal circle of the surface platform on top of the station, with the silver rudder of the submersible sticking out of the water beside it. Just as he hit the water, he caught sight of a tall, black fin cutting the waves. Then the ocean closed over his head once more.

Cold with terror, he shot downward as fast as he could swim, not minding now the painful pressure and creaking in his ears that came from too quick a descent. He reached Mr. Lillibulero, still sitting on the Castle.

“Killer!” gasped Robby.

“What’s that y’say?” demanded the little man.

“A killer whale!” cried Robby. “That’s what Balthasar was so scared about. And it’s between us and the station!”

The Battle on the Sea Bottom

Robby grabbed Mr. Lillibulero’s arm. There was no time for arguing or explaining, and the little man wisely did not seem to expect it. Robby pulled him down and around the Castle,and in through an opening in its grey-green rock to a natural cave hollowed out of the interior. Balthasar had followed Robby through the water, and now he seemed to be at war with himself. His natural instinct told him to run—to put as much distance between himself and the great black-and-yellow killer whale as he could. But at the same time his love for Robby anchored him to where he was, even though, if the killer did come, there was little Balthasar could do to protect him. Finally, Balthasar shot through the opening and joined them in the cave.

“Balthasar!” said Robby, pushing him urgently out again.“Go and breathe!”

But Balthasar would not leave. Robby swam back into the cave, hunting along its roof for a high spot. When he found one he took off his face mask and let it bubble atmosphere up into the hollow he had discovered until he needed the mask to breathe again. Then, after a breath, he held it up once more.

“What’s that y’re at now?” asked the voice of Mr. Lillibulero. Robby put the mask on again. He could not talk underwater without it.

“For Balthasar,” he said. “I’m collecting air for him.” He pointed to the hollow where, indeed, all the air that had bubbled from his mask had caught against the rock. Little by little, Robby was building up a water-free space between the water and the roof.

"Oh, aye,” said Mr. Lillibulero. “How long can the beast stay under wi’out breathing?”

“Twenty or thirty minutes if he has to,” said Robby. “But then, when he breathes, he needs a lot.”

“What makes y’think the killer whale’ll know we’re about?” asked Mr. Lillibulero.

“I don’t know,” answered Robby, briefly, between bubblings. “They smell you or something. Like Balthasar knows when he’s around.”

Mr. Lillibulero left Robby and drifted over to the mouth of the cave. It was not very big—Balthasar had barely squeezed himself inside—and when they first came in they had hardly been able to see in the comparative darkness. But now that their eyes had adjusted, the cave seemed to be in shadow, while outside the open waters seemed ablaze with sunlight.

A moment later Robby put his mask on again, and with a flick of his swim fins swam over to join Mr. Lillibulero.

He looked out among the rocks and coral and occasional clumps of waving underwater vegetation. Far off, perhaps forty or fifty yards away, he saw a great dark shape slide smoothly out from behind one hummock of rock and coral and disappear behind another. It was the killer on his voracious patrol for food, and he was working their way.

For a full minute or two they did not see him. And then he came into sight again. He had been swimming from their right across to their left. Now he came back from left to right,slipping easily through the water, for all his size—which they could now see was twenty-five or thirty feet in length. He was half again as close to them on this pass, but he glided unhurriedly by, as if he never dreamed that anyone was near.

But the three in the cave knew his tricky ways. For a killer whale is not like a big shark which only has brains enough to swim around and swallow anything that looks like food. A killer is actually a dolphin, the largest of them all, and in theEncyclopaedia Britannica it says that in all the Cetacea who live out their lives in the sea, “the brain is large, its cerebral hemispheres much convoluted.” That is why the Cetacea are so intelligent, and why Grandfather Hoffer had such large plans for teaching and training them.

So the killer is not merely something that can gulp one down like a sardine. He can also out-think one if one takes it for granted he is just another appetite with fins swimming around. The three knew very well that the killer realized they were near—even if he did not know exactly where they were.

Balthasar quivered in the rear of the cave. Robby had gone back to the bubble he was building for the dolphin to breathe.It was good-sized, now, filling the hollow in the rock roof to the point where Balthasar could poke his whole head up into it. Robby put his mask on again, swam over to Balthasar, and led him back to the bubble.

Balthasar rose until the top of his head entered the bubble.A second later, a loud snorting sigh rang through the cave. Balthasar had exhaled, in the same way that whales do when they spout, by blowing out the bad moist air in his lungs through the nostrils in the top of his head.

Then he sank down into the water and rose again into the bubble several times. He was now inhaling. The bubble grew noticeably smaller. Then he settled back, looking satisfied and relieved.

The killer whale swept back directly in front of the cave, his little piggy eye above the end of the grinning mouth staring intently at them. It was obvious that he was expecting them to come out—in the same way that seals, or porpoises, or even Balthasar would ordinarily have had to do, in order to breathe. Then he could chase them and devour them in a twinkling. Of course, the killer had a breathing problem himself, but he could pop up to the surface and down again without giving them a chance to escape, and this he had been doing.

Robby’s and Mr. Lillibulero’s and Balthasar’s position was far from good. There was no fresh flow of water through the cave, and the artificial lungs were using up, at a rapid rate, all the breathable oxygen that could be made. Pretty soon Balthasar would have to breathe again. They had another safe half-hour left perhaps, and then they would have to leave.

It was at this moment that something happened. The killer whale checked abruptly. His great flukes quivered a moment,and then he shot away, no longer moving with lazy power,but travelling like a torpedo, with speed and purpose. In a second he was out of sight.

Robby quickly grabbed hold of Balthasar’s harness and pulled the dolphin to the cave entrance.

“Go breathe!” he ordered, urgently. And this time Balthasar did not hesitate. He eeled through the mouth of the cave and shot upwards. Robby and Mr. Lillibulero slipped out into the clean fresh ocean and hung in the water, staring in the direction in which the killer had disappeared.

“We’ll not be trying to get to shore now. Can y’make it to the station wi’your Balthasar, do y’think?” asked Mr. Lillibulero.

“I don’t know,” replied Robby. “I don’t know what made the killer go off like that.” He looked at Mr. Lillibulero.“Maybe I ought to go look.”

“I’ll not let y’do that,” said Mr. Lillibulero. “The danger’s too great. ”

“I could ride Balthasar,” said Robby, as the dolphin swooped down from above. “If I saw him, I could rush back here.There was something funny about the way the killer left. As if he was going somewhere special.”

“I’m the one who’ll go,” said Mr. Lillibulero.

“But you can’t ride Balthasar,” said Robby. “He won’t let you.”

The little man paused, looking doubtfully at the big dolphin.“Verra well,” he said, finally. “Y’can go take a look. But I’m trusting y’not to go too far. Stay in sight of me, here. Then I can wave y’back if I see the killer whale, myself.”

“Sure. I will,” said Robby, catching hold of the reins trailing from Balthasar’s harness. He climbed, on to the big dolphin’s back and they sped off.

Robby was feeling that kind of exhilaration that comes on the heels of a close call with danger, when everything has come out all right. So now, recklessly, he headed Balthasar towards the path of the killer whale, although ordinarily he would have had far more sense. And Balthasar, as if he had given up trying to caution his young master, made no effort to turn aside from the way Robby was steering him.

They swept now into an area where the water was only fifteen or twenty feet deep, but which was on the edge of the drop-off to the normal sea bottom, six hundred to a thousand feet below. But, while this part of the reef was shallow, it was cut and sliced and gullied, and tumbled about with rock and coral stretching clear across one end of the shoals to the Seal Rocks. It was a sort of undersea badlands.

Robby, still lightheaded, slipped off the dolphin’s back.

“Stay!” he ordered. “You know the caves down here are too little for you to get into. I’ll go alone.”

He shoved the dolphin back when Balthasar tried to follow,and swam off.

He pushed himself through the clear water with his swim fins, not hard, but steadily, threading through spires of rock and over little white sand gullies. And so heedlessly did he go that he came finally round a pile of coralled rock and swam almost smack into the mighty flukes of the killer.

In that terrible moment, Robby realized suddenly how foolish he had been. All at once, the way a drowning man is supposed to remember in his last minutes everything that happened in his life, Robby saw his recklessness in coming alone, and regretted it. But there was nothing he could do now. He had taken the fatal step, and only a miracle could save him.

And it was, indeed, a sort of miracle that did save him. For it happened that the killer was, at the moment, too busy to notice his presence. And when Robby saw why, his eyes opened wide with shock.

For the killer was engaged in a battle to the death with a creature such as Robby, who, in his twelve years, had learned of many strange beasts that walked, swam, or crawled through the ocean deeps, had never seen or heard of before.

The Sea Badger

Robby froze, expecting any second that one of them would spot him. The battle was taking place on a white sand area, in a gully about twenty-five feet below him. In the comer of this arena, next to a coral cliff, stood the odd creature in a posture of defence. Above it circled the killer.

The creature did not look as if it had much chance for life and victory. True, it was big—bigger than Balthasar by four or five feet—but it looked more clumsy than anything else,and not at all vicious.

It had a pointed, delicate head, with a large mouth that contained not teeth, but a fringe-like arrangement of broad,flat plates. In place of eyes, two long feelers trembled in the direction of the attacking killer. The thick body was mounted upright on two stumpy legs with broad, clawed feet. From a hump between the shoulder-blades grew a truly tremendous pair of arms ending in great, spade-like claws, each as big as a car door. These hand-claws had blunt forward edges and shone oddly in the water, as if they were metallic.

The creature held up his hands as if to ward off the diving rush of the killer. For a second Robby thought it was just going to huddle up in fright and let itself be devoured, but then a wonderful thing happened. The killer swung in without warning and the creature suddenly straightened. With a speed that Robby would not have believed possible underwater, the two big hands lashed out like the fists of a boxer.

The first blow spun the killer against the cliff, and the second, pinning him there, sank deep into his mid-body. The killer got away, but he shuddered and seemed to be badly hurt.

He rose clumsily through the water, reaching instinctively to the surface for air. The great spade-hands of the creature had not cut into him, but they seemed to have hurt him inside, for he paid no attention to Robby. A half-roll took him to the surface some ten feet above the boy, and Robby heard him sigh as if in great pain. And at the sound Robby awokeonce more to his own danger.

He turned quickly, but the creature below was hurrying off—not swimming, but loping through the water, leaving its tracks in the sea bottom. They were the same tracks that Robby had discovered the day before, near the station, when he had gone out with Balthasar.

Robby stared after them. The killer, descending once more, swam feebly, turning off towards the far edge of the shoals where the sea bottom dropped away into a green-black darkness. He swam slowly, twisted sideways and a thin trail like grey smoke strung out behind him in the water. Robbyknew that it was blood.

He stiffened. Blood in. the water meant the coming of sharks, meant that it would lead the sharks to the killer—they who would never have dared to approach him while he had his full strength. There was hope for the killer yet, however,if his wounds were not too great. Out over the great silences of the ocean he stood a chance of escaping the scavenger sharks. If they pressed him too hard he could dive six hundred feet and more below the surface where they would not follow him if they could. And so, perhaps, he could survive to heal himself, and be once more the terror of the seas.

But Robby had no such way of escaping the sharks whent hey came. The best thing for him to do was to get away fast.He turned with a kick of his fins and swam to where he had left Balthasar. Gratefully, he caught hold of the reins and they hurried back to the Castle.

Mr. Lillibulero was waiting for them.

“Y’saw him?” were his first words.

“He’s gone,” said Robby, rather breathlessly, for Balthasar had been moving fast, and he had had to work to hang on against the pressure of the water. “But he was bleeding.We’ve got to get out of the water. There’ll be sharks around.”

“The rocks?” said Mr. Lillibulero. He was referring to Seal Rocks, a couple of hundred yards off across the shoals. They were called Seal Rocks, not because there were any seals around them, but because Robby thought they looked like the Seal Rocks at San Francisco, where, as everyone knows, there actually are seals.

“Yes,” said Robby. “You’d better take one of Balthasar’s reins. Hurry!”

Mr. Lillibulero caught hold, and in a very few minutes they found themselves towed across the shoals and climbing out of the sea on to the smooth water-polished rocks, out of sight of the station.

“Ah,” said Mr. Lillibulero with satisfaction, as he sat down. “A wee bit of sun’ll do us no harm.”

Robby found himself feeling the same way.

Human beings lose the natural heat of their bodies faster in water than in air, and swimming underwater takes quite a bit of work in spite of the fact that it looks so easy in pictures.All this means that they get cold and tired and hungry. Robby and Mr. Lillibulero were just that. But before they let them-selves rest, there were things the little man wanted to know.

“Y’have something to tell me,” Mr. Lillibulero said, looking shrewdly at Robby.

“Well...” Robby was embarrassed at remembering how he had almost swum right down the killer’s throat. Then, as usual, he began to feel annoyed with Mr. Lillibulero. “Well,”said Robby again, “I—I saw the killer. He was fighting a—I don’t know what it was. A funny sort of big animal with big claws, or hands.”

“Och, aye?” said Mr. Lillibulero, his gimlet eyes hard on Robby.

“Yes, and d’you know what?” went on Robby eagerly,forgetting about being angry as he remembered how strange the peculiar creature had been. “I’ve seen the kind of tracks it made before. I saw some yesterday, close to the station.”

“And y’don’t know what it is?”

“It had a head like a catfish,” said Robby. “And it was bigger than Balthasar. And—and it drove off the killer!”

“What’s that?” said Mr. Lillibulero, pouncing on Robby’s words with the quickness of a killer, himself.

“It’s true!” said Robby. “I saw it. The killer came inclose and this thing hit the killer twice—like a prize fighter. And the killer began bleeding from the mouth, and swam away.”

“Ah, now,” said Mr. Lillibulero, veiling his eyes with a thoughtful look. “Is that so?” He picked up a chip of rock that was lying nearby and scratched on the softer rock behind him. As Robby stared, a finely sketched outline of the strange creature took shape on the rock. “Was this what y’saw?”

“That’s it!” cried Robby. “How do you know what it looks like?”

“Ah, now . . .” said Mr. Lillibulero and sat for a moment, thinking. Then he turned sharply on Robby. “Can y’keep a secret?”

“Of course I can!” said Robby.

“P’raps,” said Mr. Lillibulero. “However, there’s little choice for it. What I’m about to tell y’is a governmental secret, and y’must hold it to y’rself.”

“I will,” said Robby. “Didn’t I say I would?”

“Y’did not,” said Mr. Lillibulero. “Not until this moment. What y’said was that y’could keep secrets, not that y’would keep this parteecular one. However, since y’have promised, ’tis this. Y’r father was not the only man to be working on the creatures taken from the ice caves on Mars.”

“Well, he was the only man who was doing experimental research—” began Robby, and broke off as he felt the emerald glare of Mr. Lillibulero’s eyes like sword blades thrust him through and through. There was an uncomfortable pause.

“As I was about t’be saying,” went on Mr. Lillibulero, “y’r father was not the only man who was doing experimental research wi’ Martians. A certain well-known marine biologist by the name of Jacob Von Hoffer—”

“That’s my grandfather... go on, go on,” said Robby, hurriedly, as Mr. Lillibulero’s eyes blazed again.

“Jacob Von Hoffer was engaged in parteecular research wi’certain larger creatures which have been recently discovered—and no word of it supposed to be published—in caves below those which had been previously explored. And the interesting bit about these larger creatures is that the caves in which they live are both bigger and deeper than the caves above. As a result, they are kept warm from some interior volcanic heat of the planet, and they are not caves of ice, as are the caves above, wi’the creatures frozen in them for centuries and aeons,but caves of water.” Mr. Lillibulero stopped and looked at Robby as if to say, now you may speak.

“What’re . . .” began Robby, and hesitated.

“No,” said Mr. Lillibulero. “Not whatter—water."

“I know,” said Robby. “I mean, I know you said water. What I meant was, what’re—I mean what are they?”

“They, the larger Martian creatures of the lower caves,”said Mr. Lillibulero solemnly, as if handing down a decision of law, “are of various sizes, and types. On the average, they are bigger, and further evolved than the ones in the ice caves.In short, they are the higher, more intelligent and complicated sort of creatures which would not have been able to survive if frozen in ice, the way simpler animals can.”

“Oh,” said Robby.

“Somehow,” went on Mr. Lillibulero, “word of what y’r grandfather was doing appears to have leaked out. Three days ago, the largest of the Martians at y’r grandfather’s institute was stolen away, and it was.clearly a matter of abduction by Vandals.”

Robby stared.

“But why would Vandals want a Martian?” he said. “Vandals don’t like live things from other worlds, you said. They say they all ought to be destroyed.”

“Ah. Vandals!” said Mr. Lillibulero, and his eyes snapped abruptly. They grew green and hard as fine emeralds. Robby blinked at the change in the little man’s face, and an unexpected trickle of fear ran slowly down his spine. He would never have suspected that Mr. Lillibulero could look so dangerous. “There’s all kinds of Vandals, laddie.”

“Dad says they’re all alike. People who just wouldn’t grow up in some way.”

“Aye, he’s right enough,” said Mr. Lillibulero. “But the way they are takes different forms. There’s no great organization of them, y’see. They’re just a lot of loose gangs, some of them against one thing, and some wanting to smash some-thing else. It’s just when some of the gangs start getting together, that decent folk have to look out. And it happens that’s just what’s come about in the matter of the Martians.”“What do you mean?” asked Robby.

“I mean,” said Mr. Lillibulero, “that there’s one kind of Vandal worse than all the rest, and that’s the kind that wants power. For fifty years now we’ve had no wars in the world.But there are men among the Vandals who’d like to bring war back because that way they could become powerful and important. Now if this sort of Vandal could get people all worked up and arguing about the Martians, perhaps some fighting would start.”

“But they don’t really mean to hurt people, do they?” said Robby. “And that ”

“And that excuses them, y’would say?” Mr. Lillibulero’s voice was no longer friendly. “If someone you loved drowned in the station because Vandals blew it up, would you say it was no blame of theirs because they were only out to destroy the Martians and didn’t mean to hurt the people who were there, too?”

Robby, who had been just on the edge of continuing the argument, closed his mouth. He had not thought of the matter that way. He stared out to sea, seeing in his mind’s eye the station collapsing as it was blown up, and the tons of water rushing in on his father, and his mother, and himself.

When he looked back at Mr. Lillibulero, he was surprised to see that the man’s eyes had clouded over.

“Och, aye!” said Mr. Lillibulero, gruffly. “The Vandals have caused enough sadness and loneliness in the world to young lads without my talking about more tragedy. But to get back to more important matters. The information I’m about t’give you is top-secret, but it may be it’ll help you to know it for your own protection if the Vandals get their hands on you,as they well might, with us on this rock, and them in the station.

“The beast y’saw drive off the killer whale was one of y’r grandfather’s Martians.”

Robby stared.

“It was!” he said.

“Aye.”

“But it was so big!”

“ ’Tis the biggest Martian creature yet discovered,” said Mr. Lillibulero. “There’re only two in captivity, both in y’r grandfather’s possession. Unfortunately, the Vandals that stole the one you saw also hurt the other one they left behind.That’s why y’r father had to hurry off the way he did. He’ll be trying now to help y’r grandfather and y’r mother save the life of the one that’s left. They call the creatures,” added Mr. Lillibulero, “sea badgers.”

“Sea badgers?” said Robby.

“Aye. Y’see, they’re not the terrible monsters the Vandals would like to believe, for all their size. In fact, they’re vegetarian, and live on the plants that grow in the Martian sea caves. Their mouths are built for grinding up the plants they find, by the bushel, and those big arms and hands are for digging from one underground sea cave to the other, in search of food. That’s why they call them sea badgers—because the badger, you know, is a famous digger.”

“Moles are very good at it, too,” said Robby.

“And clams,” said Mr. Lillibulero. “However, we have no earthly digging creature the size or strength of the Martian sea badger. He can literally burrow through rock. Which,”went on Mr. Lillibulero, “brings me back to the rest of the information I was about to disclose.”

“What?” asked Robby.

“Down at the Intelligence Bureau we’ve known what the plan of one group of Vandals has been for some time. We learned of it shortly after it came to our attention that news of the Martian sea badgers had leaked out. The leader of this parteecular group—they call him the Captain—planned to capture a killer whale, turn it loose at some crowded beach, and later blame the havoc it caused on one of the sea badgers, escaped and loose upon the world.”

“That was where the killer whale came from!” said Robby.“They must have been towing it in the pod—and the sea badger was locked in the cargo section of the submersible!”

“Aye. From which he dug himself out, obviously,” said Mr. Lillibulero, “and either attacked the killer whale in the pod, or was attacked by him.”

"I think he was attacked,” said Robby. “The killer whale was doing all the attacking in the fight I saw.”

“Well, whichever way it was,” said Mr. Lillibulero, “they all ended up here—for what reason I’m not quite sure. It maybe they were running short of Martian vegetation to feed the sea badger. Maybe it was ill, and they planned to kidnap y’r father to nurse it. A dead sea badger would not back up their lies about it, particularly if it had been dead some time.”

“Well, the killer whale’s gone now,” said Robby.

“Aye. But there’s the sea badger yet to worry about,” said Mr. Lillibulero. “Or, at least, I must worry about it, that being m’duty. However, there’s nothing to be done for the moment until we dry out and rest a wee bit. So pick y’rself a bit of shade, Robertson, and stretch out. And I’ll do the same.”

“I wish I had something to eat,” said Robby.

“I could do with a bite, myself,” admitted Mr. Lillibulero. “Unfortunately, we’ve nothing.”

Robby sighed and took off his lung and crept in under an overhang of rock that cast a little shade. He pillowed his head on the lung and went immediately to sleep. Around the rocks Balthasar swam on patrol, and Mr. Lillibulero lay gazing at the rock overhead, deep in thought.

Into the Dark Tunnel

Robby was dreaming again. This time he was at an amusement park, standing by a hot-dog stand.

“Hot dogs! Free hot dogs!” the man behind the stand was chanting. “Hot, fresh, juicy, delicious hot dogs! Have a hot dog, kid?”

“Thanks,” said Robby. He took the hot dog the man gave him and ate it in three bites.

“Hey, let’s see you do that again!” said the man, as people began to crowd around. “Look at this, folks.” He handed Robby another hot dog, and they all watched in amazement as Robby ate it in two bites. Murmurs of admiration went up.

“Hey, kid, how’d you like to work for me?” said the man, leaning over the counter to whisper in Robby’s ear. “All the hot dogs you can eat and two dollars an hour. Show the folks how hot dogs ought to be eaten and drum up business?”

“I don’t mind—for an hour or two,” said Robby.

“You’ll have to start out by eating a dozen hot dogs in a row,” warned the man.

“Huh!” said Robby. “What’s a dozen hot dogs? Give me two dozen.” The man served them up piping hot, and Robby polished them off without batting an eye.

“Gee, kid, how do you do it?” asked a man in the crowd.

“I’ve got a secret bite,” Robby told them. “I call it the Robby Snap. It’s the way I bring my teeth together. There’s no use your trying it,” he went on, as half a dozen people in the crowd rushed to order hot dogs, “nobody else in the world can do it, and it’s quite dangerous if you let your teeth slip. I learned it by watching killer whales and sharks in action.”

“Whew!” said the man behind the counter. “I’m having to make so many hot dogs so fast that it’s getting too hot around here. I’m going to have to close down. Whew, it’s hot.”

And it was getting hot. Robby tried to wipe his forehead and scratched his hand on a rock. Surprised, he blinked open his eyes—and woke up.

The sun had moved in the sky, and the shade he had been lying in had disappeared. So had the dozens of dream hot dogs in his stomach. He felt thirsty, dizzy, headachy, in a bad humour, and very, very hollow inside. He sat up, rubbing his sticky eyes.

Mr. Lillibulero was seated cross-legged like a Buddha, a few feet away. In front of him were a couple of white plastic jugs and several white plio-film cartons. Robby recognized them at once. They were the standard emergency rations every lifeboat and small sea—or aircraft had to carry under law.

“Where’d you get those?” said Robby.

“From the craft in y’r boathouse,” replied Mr. Lillibulero.“I swam over and slipped in while y’were sleeping.” He passed a jug and a couple of the cartons to Robby.

“Thanks,” muttered Robby, looking sourly at the two objects in his hands. He knew very well what went into boat emergency rations, and was not too pleased at the prospect of eating them. What he really wanted was a triple-decker peanut-butter sandwich and an enormous tumbler of ice-cold milk.

But there was no denying that he was thirsty, so he broke the seal on the white jug and took a swallow. The water inside was warm, and it had that particular flat taste that water gets when it has been sitting so long that all the air has gone out of it. But it flowed down Robby’s dry throat like lemonade. He took the jug away from his mouth and looked at it in astonishment.

After drinking the water, Robby suddenly discovered how hungry he was. He broke open the carton and dug into the rations. And these, like the water, were surprisingly delicious. To him the hard, nourishing biscuits tasted like fine,crusty French bread, the chewy bar of compressed meat tasted better than fresh-grilled steak, and the cube of rich chocolate outdid all the sweets and desserts he had ever eaten.

Meanwhile, Mr. Lillibulero had been sitting with his elbow in one hand and his chin in the other. His green eyes, veiled once more in thought, glowed like beryls set in some sooty idol. Robby opened his mouth to speak and then, wisely,thought better of it. He waited.

After a moment, Mr. Lillibulero’s expression became bright and piercing again, and he glanced over at Robby.

“Ah, Robertson,” he said. “I’ve come to a wee decision,here. Are y’through eating?”

“I think so,” said Robby, and took another swallow of water. “Yes,” he said.

“Ah then, pay attention,” said the little man. “We find ourselves at th’moment in a very preecarious position, y’understand. ‘Caught between the devil and the deep blue sea’ might weel describe it. On the one hand, prudence bids me try to swim to the mainland. On the other hand, duty calls me to remain here. And in spite of y’r Balthasar (fine beast though the creature is, I’ve n’doubt) I hesitate to let y’try to make the beach, y’rself.”

“I could ” began Robby.

“Dinna interrupt,” said Mr. Lillibulero. “As I was in the process of saying, my duty orders me to remain here. I must try to find and, if possible, recapture yon sea badger. There may be a bit of danger involved in th’job, and I hesitate t’expose y’to it. There y’see my dilemma—there’s danger foryou if I part with you, and danger if we stay together.”

“I can take care of ”

“Nobody,” said Mr. Lillibulero decisively, “can take care of himself in all situations. M’self, now, I’ve had a bit of expeerience wi’tight spots, but I wouldna say I could always take care of m’self. However, t’get back to the point. Since y’know this parteecular underwater area as well as y’do, and have y’r friend Balthasar for company, it appears t’be the lesser of two evils t’keep you with me. Accordingly, I’ve decided that we hunt the sea badger t’gether.”

He paused and frowned at Robby.

“Y’will, of course, obey orders at all times, and wi’out stopping to ask why.”

Robby, who had been just about to get excited over the prospect of hunting the sea badger, found himself irritated,instead. The idea of Mr. Lillibulero treating him like a baby was more than he could stand, particularly when he thought of how much better he must know the creatures of the sea,and the area around the underwater station, than the little man possibly could.

“I’ll be all right,” Robby growled.

“See that y’are. And now,” went on Mr. Lillibulero, “t’track down the sea badger. We’ll be going to where we saw it last, and follow the footprints it seems the beast has a habit of leaving.”

He gathered up the plio-film cartons and the two water jugs and hid them in a crevice of the rocks. Then he adjusted his lung and slid off the rock into the water. Robby followed,still annoyed.

They swam down through the green water, and Balthasar came to tow them. Robby took one of the reins of the dolphin’s harness, Mr. Lillibulero took the other, and they headed towards the place of the battle between the killer whale and the sea badger. Robby looked nervously around for sharks. But if they had been attracted by the fight, they were now at their business in other parts of the ocean. Only a two-foot-long hammerhead shark, too small to be dangerous,cruised along the bottom below them.

When they reached the gully the footprints were no longer to be seen. The gently moving waves had erased them from the loose, light sand.

Robby, however, pointed out the narrow gully down which he had seen the Martian creature go. For a while it seemed that they might be right on the trail, but in a little while the gully became so broken up by hollows and high spots and little valleys splitting off that it was soon apparent that they were wandering about at random.

It was at this moment that Balthasar gave them a helping hand. He had been swooping and stunting about them ever since they reached the place where the fight occurred. Balthasar,compared to them as swimmers, was like a blooded racehorse trying to hold his pace down to that of a humble donkey. He could literally swim rings around them, and usually did. It was all the more interesting, then, when he suddenly stopped doing so and, as suddenly, began pushing Robby back the way they had come.

“Hey!” cried Robby, excitedly, through his mask to Mr. Lillibulero. “I bet we’re getting close to the sea badger—stop it, Balthasar!”

Balthasar expressed his concern with every fluke and flip-per of his being,

“Now, stop it, Balthasar!” said Robby. “It’s perfectly harmless. It’s a vegetarian Martian.”

Balthasar protested.

“That’s enough of that!” said Robby sharply, giving Balthasar’s harness a warning jerk that ordered him to obey,no matter what. Balthasar shivered backwards in the water but did as he was told.

After a little while Robby and Mr. Lillibulero came upon the creature’s tracks. They seemed to wander about without any real plan.

“Why do you suppose he’s going around all over the place like this?” Robby asked Mr. Lillibulero.

“I’ve no idea,” replied the small man, briefly.

“He acts like he’s looking for something,” said Robby, but he said it half to himself, and Mr. Lillibulero gave him no answer.

Several times they lost the trail when the sea badger walked over rocks, or where the bottom was so hard that it did not show footprints. Then they had to swim around in bigger and bigger circles until they caught sight of the tracks again.

Mr. Lillibulero was leading the way between two spires of rock when he stopped so suddenly that Robby swam into him from behind.

“What is it?” asked Robby, wriggling forward. Mr. Lillibulero caught him with a hard hand on one shoulder.

“Moray eel,” he said.

Robby looked into a dark hollow between the rock spires.

Sure enough, there, his eyes glittering above his sharp snout and snarly mouth, was a member of the family of the Muraenidae. His angry jaws gaped at them, daring them to approach too close.

“It’s all right,” said Robby. “I know him. If we don’t come too near, he won’t bother us.”

Writhing and slithering about in the water, the eel cocked a bitter eye at them. It was quite true. Vicious as he is, if provoked, the moray eel always has his own territory and prefers to fight on it if given his choice. For he is conservative, as a great many fish are—and fish he is in spite of his snakelike shape and actions. The eel, whether moray, conger,or any other kind, is simply a fish grown long and limber and narrow. In Europe, he is caught and sold in the markets and eaten in large numbers.

“However,” said Mr. Lillibulero, “we’ll take the long way round and risk no risks.” And he led the way out from between the spires to pick up the trail beyond.

Robby followed, sneering. He was feeling unkind towards things in general. Lifeboat emergency rations and a short nap in the hot tropical sun were poor substitutes for a normal schedule of sleep and food. So this was the brave Mr. Lillibulero, thought Robby disdainfully, afraid of a morayeel! So this was the dangerous Mr. Lillibulero! So this was the Mr. Lillibulero who was supposed to look after the station and Robby while Robby’s father was gone! So this was . . .

“Watch y’r head,” warned Mr. Lillibulero, and Robby, who had been so busy thinking that he had almost swum directly into the little man’s wavering swim fins, checked himself.

“Huh!” muttered Robby. “Watch your own self!” But he muttered it under his breath, and if Mr. Lillibulero heard, he ignored it.

All this time they had been following the tracks of the sea badger as they wound about the ocean floor. Now those tracks led them to a pile of underwater rock that Robby knew well. Nor did they stop at the rock. For there was in this rock a huge hole, a cave like entrance like the opening into atunnel. The tracks went directly in and did not come out again.

Mr. Lillibulero peered into the darkness at the mouth of the hole.

“Well,” he said, at last, “I fear there’s no hope for it. You wait here, Robertson. I’ll go in and see if the beast is there now.”

Robby opened his mouth to protest, then closed it again. He had just had a thought. It was something he was to regret later, but at the moment he hugged it to himself secretly.

Mr. Lillibulero swam alone into the hole.

Alone Against the Raiders

Robby hung in the water, waiting for Mr. Lillibulero to reappear, and the moments slipped by. To occupy himself, Robby thought about his idea.

It was really not so much an idea as a piece of secret knowledge. For he happened to know that the hole in front of him was not a hole, but a tunnel in the rock. And in the tunnel was an octopus. It was not a large octopus, and Robby knew octopi are shy creatures and not really dangerous, any-way. But he was hoping that Mr. Lillibulero would not know this, and would come flying out in fear.

Floating in the water, Robby daydreamed of how he would swim to the rescue, and of how impressed Mr. Lillibulero would be. Meanwhile, there was no sign of Mr. Lillibulero.The minutes continued to crawl by. Balthasar, becoming bored, had swum away, though he probably had not gone far.Now, as Robby waited, a small spiny puffer swam out of the tunnel, saw Robby, and immediately blew itself up in alarm.It bobbed in the water like a little round ball studded with spikes.

“Don’t be crazy,” said Robby to it, “I don’t eat puffers. You think I want to get poisoned?”

The puffer backed speedily off through the water, but remained inflated until it was a safe distance away. Then it returned to its normal shape and size.

Balthasar came back and nosed Robby inquiringly. For the first time, Robby began to feel uncomfortable.

Mr. Lillibulero had had plenty of time—not just to find the octopus and retreat in fright, but to reach the far end of the tunnel and open water, and return for Robby. But he had not come back.

Robby was now a little scared. He felt sure that Mr. Lillibulero had run across the octopus, and something wholly unexpected had happened. The more Robby turned the idea over in his head, the more worried he became.

At last Robby swam nervously into the tunnel, unaccompanied even by Balthasar who had wandered off once more.

The tunnel’s darkness enfolded him at once. It was like swimming into absolute night. But his eyes began to adjust quickly, and he had the advantage of knowing how the tunnel turned and twisted.

He swam on, and very soon the water began to grey and lighten as he approached the far end where the octopus should be.

Here, the roof of the tunnel began to reveal openings to the water overhead. But the sunlight, filtering down from above,showed no octopus. And no Mr. Lillibulero. What it did show was something frighteningly different. Just ahead, where the end of the tunnel was choked by coral, sand, and rock ripped from the tunnel floor, a gaping hole opened in the ocean bed. The hole was so deep and dark that Robby could make out nothing in it. But in the soft sand and rubble in front of it, there was a deep print—the heavy mark of the sea badger’s clawed foot. The footprint pointed into the hole.There was nothing pointing out again.

Robby found himself swimming, panic-stricken, as fast as he could. He burst out of the entrance to the tunnel, almost blundering into Balthasar who was now waiting there for him. He grabbed at the reins and flipped them. Balthasar spun about with a swirl of the water and raced off, trailing Robby behind him.

Robby torpedoed through the water. As he put a little distance between himself and the tunnel, his panic began to grow less. It ebbed from his mind, leaving behind the almost as frightening fact that Mr. Lillibulero and the sea badger must be down there in that hole together. The footprint Robby had seen showed that the Martian creature had gone in and not come out again. Mr. Lillibulero had also gone in. There was nowhere else for him to be, with the far end of the tunnel blocked the way it was. Mr. Lillibulero ought to have comeback by this time, Robby thought. That is, if he were able to come back at all.

Robby could feel his heart throbbing like a propeller. Mr. Lillibulero was in serious trouble, and there was no one but Robby to do anything about it. For a moment Robby thought wildly of going to the Vandals in the station, giving himself up, and begging them to rescue Mr. Lillibulero. It would mean, of course, that the Vandals would be able to recapture the sea badger after all. But human life, Robby’s father had always said, was sacred. Mr. Lillibulero—or any person, for that matter—was more important than the Martian.

That is, thought Robby, if Mr. Lillibulero were still all right. A creature like the sea badger that could drive off a killer whale could do just about anything it liked to a single human swimmer.

Then, unexpectedly, Robby remembered something. There had been no sign of sharks around the tunnel entrance. That meant that, whatever else had happened, Mr. Lillibulero had not been wounded by the sea badger. Sharks could scent blood in the water from great distances, and they would have been on the spot by this time, hoping to finish off whatever was there.

So at least Mr. Lillibulero had not been hurt. And, beside that, he should be fairly safe for the moment. His face mask would go on manufacturing oxygen from the water around him, and the hole looked big enough for there to be plenty of fresh water circulating into it. But, thought Robby unhappily,he could not stay where he was forever, underwater, without food or rest. And there was no telling what a strange being like the sea badger might be up to. It could have dug the hole to make itself a nest. It might even be planning to hibernate,to save its strength, since it was cut off from its usual sources of food.

Robby suddenly straightened up in the water. Why, he wondered, hadn’t he or Mr. Lillibulero thought of it before?It was the most sensible reason anyone could imagine for the way the sea badger had been prowling around. Being a Martian, it would probably not eat any of the earthly seaplants any more than the Martians in die station tanks had ever been able to do so. It would need Martian vegetation.And if that were the case, Robby thought he knew how he could lure the sea badger out of the hole and give Mr. Lillibulero a chance to escape.

Then, once the little man was free, he could do the deciding about what the two of them would do next. Robby made himself a silent promise that from now on he would let Mr.Lillibulero make the decisions for both of them. From now on, that is, as soon as Mr. Lillibulero was free. Robby twitched at Balthasar’s reins and headed the dolphin towards the station.

They came in low, skimming the sea bottom, with Robby keeping a wary eye cocked for Vandal swimmers in the water. But there were none to be seen. He aimed for the salt-water intake on the fifth level. A gentle current helped pull him into it.

The opening was too small for Balthasar, and it would have been cramped for a grown man, but Robby could travel along it very well. He swam through the intake to the pumping chamber, circled the screen around the pump with only a little difficulty, and turned down the conduit leading to the tank that held the station’s Martians.

Where the conduit joined this tank it was equipped with a complicated filter-mixer which made sure the sea water was altered to conform in every way to the slightly different sort of sea water found in the Martian caves. To open the tank entrance, as Robby planned to do, would be to mix this special water with ordinary sea water. But Robby reminded himself that the sea badger seemed to live in earth’s ocean water well enough, so possibly it would be all right for the other Martians. The openings were set up to be handled easily for maintenance purposes, and Robby got them undone without any trouble.

It gave Robby a quivery feeling actually to be in there with the Martians, as if he were one of the specimens, himself. He had looked through the glass walls of the tanks from the other side so many times that he could imagine how he must appear, swimming round inside. Several small, ribbon-shaped creatures took alarm as he approached, and they dashed off to hide, much as their earthly cousins might have done in a similar situation. But Robby ignored them. He was busy pulling up large handfuls of the delicate, bamboo-like Martian plants. When he had an arm-load, he swam out of the tank with it, carefully locking the entrance again behind him, and headed back towards the outside of the station. A few stems floated out of his arms as he went and settled to the bottom of the conduit, but he was able to hold on to most of what he had. He reached the pumping chamber, and, with a small struggle against the incoming current, he got through the intake pipe into the open sea.

Balthasar was glad to see him and curious about the vegetation. Robby pushed aside the dolphin’s inquiring head and grasped his reins. He steered Balthasar away from the station,leaving a trail of the plants which sank to the sea bottom. Like the sea badgers, most of the Martian plants seemed to be heavier than their earthly counterparts. This was odd, since the gravity on Mars is much less, and one would expect Martian natives to be rather flimsy and light. It was thought that temperature-induced currents in the underground Martian seas might in part be responsible, too. But Robby had no time to think about that now. He was too busy.

When he dropped the last plant, he checked Balthasar and turned him back. Now that the job was done, he remembered again, in a rush, how hungry and weary he was.

He had just recalled the boat in the boathouse from which Mr. Lillibulero got the emergency rations. There would be still more food and water in the lockers. All he had to do was to sneak in and get it. He could swim in underwater, climb directly into the boat itself, then eat, drink, and hide there until the sea badger released Mr. Lillibulero. Perhaps Mr. Lillibulero could start the boat without the key, and they could scoot for shore.

All was quiet from within the station as he carefully floated up underneath the boathouse. The water darkened around him as the boat’s shadow came between him and the sun. He rose,and his head broke water beside the boat, tied to the four bits that anchored it. The room echoed to the gentle lapping of the little waves in the dimness of the boathouse. Robby reached for the side of the boat to pull himself aboard, and the hull bumped loudly against the bits. Robby froze. But no sound of alarm came from the platform outside. Rapidly changing his mind, he swam over to the end of the boathouse where the platform built around the three sides of the boat was open to let a swimmer climb up. He grabbed hold and hoisted himself out of the water. It was an effort, for he was tired.

At last he stood upright in the fresh air. His legs trembled a little with his own weight. But before he could take a step towards the boat, the door at the end of the boathouse opened behind him.

Strong arms clamped suddenly around him, catching him.A man’s voice yelled in his ear.

“Harry! Charlie! Come quick. I’ve caught one of them!”

In the Hands of the Vandals

Rough hands hauled Robby out on to the platform. For a moment the bright sun dazzled him. Then he saw a big bushy-bearded face looming before him. Twisting his head,he saw another similar beard on the face of the man holding him. Both men were big. In blue zippered jackets and white trousers, they looked fierce. Robby tried to think that he wasn’t frightened, but his heart thudded in his chest.

“It’s just a kid,” said the one in front of Robby.

“That’s all right!” said the one holding him. “It’s still on eof them. The Captain’ll be glad to see him. Where’s Charlie?”

“He went down again. Bring the boy along. Captain’s in the office downstairs.” He shoved his bushy face down towards Robby. “Where is everybody? Where’s your folks?”

“They’re g-gone,” stammered Robby.

“Never mind you asking him questions, Harry!” interrupted the Vandal holding Robby. “Captain’ll ask the questions. Come on, kid!”

He walked Robby forward to the entrance. They all de-cended together, Robby first, the Vandal who had captured him just behind, and the one named Harry bringing up the rear. As they marched down to the library-office, Robby had a chance to see that whatever else the Vandals were, they were not good housekeepers. There were full ash-trays everywhere and lots of sweet wrappers screwed up and dropped carelessly on the floor.

At the door of the office they knocked. The door opened, and a fair-haired boy of about sixteen years old looked out.

His hair was uncombed and he had a few scraggly whiskers on his face. His eyes widened as he saw Robby.

“Hey, Jones,” said the Vandal holding Robby, “I got a prisoner for the Captain.”

“Bring him in! Bring him in!” barked a voice from within the office. Robby was thrust into the room.

He found himself standing before his father’s desk. Behind the desk was a short, angry-looking man with a jutting chin, freckles, and a red beard.

“Well,” he said, staring at Robby, “well, well. Where’re your people?” The last words shot out as from a gun.“P-people?” gulped Robby.

“Your father? Your mother?”

“They’re gone,” said Robby faintly.

“Gone? Gone where? Gone when?”

Robby falteringly explained that his mother was taking a holiday and his father had left the day before.

“You’d better tell me the truth!” said the red-bearded Vandal Captain, leaning over the desk to shake a finger in Robby’s face. “You’re sure they’re gone?”

Robby nodded.

“Where’ve you been all this time?”

“In the water,” said Robby, “swimming.” Just then he happened to catch the eye of the fair-haired boy, who had come round to stand behind the Captain. The boy gave him a horrible grin over the Captain’s shoulder, and drew one finger slowly across his throat. Robby’s heart flip-flopped, and the Captain, probably warned by the expression on Robby’s face,turned around in time to catch the other boy in the act.

“Jones!” roared the Captain. The boy shivered, all the sly fun going out of his face. The Captain jerked his head back to Robby and his gaze rested on Robby’s swimming trunks,lung, and mask.

“Lock him in his room!” he roared. “Everybody out! I want the water around this station searched with a magnifying glass!”

Robby was hustled out and down to the living section on the floor below. The door to his own room slammed behind him, and he heard the click of the lock.

He fell on his own bed and tears sprang to his eyes. He did not know what the Vandals were going to do with him, or if they would ever let him see his father and mother again. But in spite of his fears, he slept from sheer exhaustion.

Robby woke with a start. Bright green undersea daylight poured in the big window of his bedroom. He sat up, rubbing his eyes. The bed was rumpled, the covers thrown back, and his lung and mask were lying on the floor. Vaguely, he remembered waking up in the night-time, after having fallenasleep on the bed, and taking them off. A bump on thewindow made him look up.

Balthasar was swirling around outside, trying to get his attention. Robby gave the dolphin an automatic wave and got up.

He dressed himself in shorts and a striped T-shirt. It was good to get out of his swimming trunks which felt as if they had almost grown to him after a night and a day of continuous wearing. Once dressed, Robby became conscious that he was very hungry. The Vandals had evidently not taken the trouble to wake him up for dinner.

He went over and tried the door, but it was locked. He pounded on it, and shouted a few times, but nothing happened. After a moment, he had an idea. He walked to the phone beside his bed. He knew he could not call out of the station. Mr. Lillibulero had said the communications were jammed. But he thought he might be able to raise someone inside the station.

He pressed the first in a row of buttons that were lined up below that blank grey screen on his phone, but the foot-square area of it did not light up. In rapid succession, he tried the buttons for the various rooms, starting at the top of the station and working down. It was not until he pressed the button for the library-office that the screen suddenly lit up,and he saw the jutting chin and red hair of the Vandal Captain staring at him.

“Who’s that? Oh, it’s you!” said the Captain. “What’re you doing, using the phone?”

“I’m hungry,” said Robby.

“Oh? We’ll see about that!” said the Captain, and broke the connection from his end. Robby sat back from his own phone, feeling quivery inside, wondering if it might not have been better to go on being hungry rather than arouse the Captain.

After several minutes, however, the door to his room was unlocked. It opened to show the fair-haired boy who took Robby sullenly up to the kitchen and stood over him while he cooked himself bacon and eggs.

“Now,” said the fair-haired boy when Robby was finished and the dishes put in the disposal unit, “Captain wants to see you.”

He took Robby up to the library-office and pushed him in,closing the door behind him. Robby found himself alone with the Captain who was sitting at the desk. The Captain looked up at Robby and smiled.

“Come in, come in,” he said. “Sit down.” Robby came forward and eased himself into a chair beside the desk, facing the Captain. The Captain was showing two rows of white teeth in his red beard, but somehow Robby did not feel that his smile was genuine.

“Well, well,” said the Captain, still smiling. “I’ve been looking round here.” He waved his hand at the filing cabinet that held his father’s personal business papers and records.“So you’re young Robin.”

“Robertson,” mumbled Robby.

“Don’t they call you Robin for short? Well, now,” said the Captain, leaning forward with his elbows on the desk,“Robertson, that was too bad about your not getting any dinner last night. That Jones can’t remember a thing. But then he’s not good for much, anyway. I can see just by looking atyou, you’re several times as smart as he is.”

There seemed to be hardly anything to say to this, so Robby did not reply.

“If I didn’t realize you were a bright one, I wouldn’t waste my time talking to you like this, of course,” said the Captain.“But I think there’s some hope of your understanding things. I don’t like the thought of a bright boy like you having to live with all the wrong notions people spread around nowadays.”

He winked at Robby.

“You know, all those stories about Vandals?” He laughed.“Yes, I can see you do. Well, now, I’m going to tell you something that will knock you right out of that chair you’re sitting in.” He pointed a freckled finger at Robby. “Some of those stories are true!”

He sat back and nodded seriously.

“It’s a fact!” he said. “Now, what do you think of that?” Robby was feeling bewildered. So far the Captain had carried on the conversation all by himself, and none of it seemed to make much sense. But he saw now that the Captain had finally stopped and was waiting for an answer.

“I don’t know,” he managed, finally.

“Of course you don’t,” said the Captain. “How could you? How could you tell the true stories from the false ones? Lots of well-educated people—even your father and mother,I’ll bet—haven’t any way of telling the true stories from the lies. Yes, Robin,” he said, leaning forward again, “there are some Vandals who do terrible things. But there are others,”he paused and tapped himself significantly on the chest of his blue zippered jacket, “who are simply working for the good of all men. You understand me?” He paused.

“You mean you’re different?” said Robby.

“Judge for yourself,” said the Captain. “If a thief broke into your house to take your things, that would be bad, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Robby, wondering where this was leading.

“But if a policeman saw the thief in there and had to break in himself to arrest the thief and protect you, that would b egood, wouldn’t it?”

Robby thought. And nodded.

“But what if it wasn’t a policeman who saw the thief, but just a public-spirited private citizen? Wouldn’t it be just as good if he broke in and stopped the thief?”

Robby squirmed. What the Captain was saying sounded right. But something about it still seemed wrong.

“But what if it wasn’t really a thief he saw?” said Robby, after a long moment. “Maybe he ought to just go get a policeman, anyhow, because ”

“There isn’t time,” interrupted the Captain. “Let’s say the policeman isn’t on duty where he should be, or some such thing. What then?”

“Well,” said Robby, doubtfully, “I guess . . .”

“Of course, you see the point now!” said the Captain.“Public-spirited people must come to the rescue of their neighbours. And that is exactly what we’re here to do now—protect the people of our world against the Martians.”

“Oh, but the Martians can’t hurt us!” said Robby. “I’ve taken care of them in the tanks downstairs for a year, now,and—”

“How do you know?” broke in the Captain, thrusting his chin at Robby. “How do you know they can’t hurt the world? What if they got loose in the seas, and multiplied? And then came out on the land and overran the land? What makes you so sure they mightn’t chase us right off the face of the earth?” He sat back, and his voice became smoother and less loud. “No, no, Robin—the thing to do is destroy the aliens before they destroy us.” His eyes lighted up. “The world will thank us for it, some day! But we need your help.”

“Me?” Robby stared at him.

“Yes,” said the Captain.

He got to his feet. “Just a moment while I lock the door.There are spies everywhere.”

He went over to the door of the office to lock it, and Robby, glancing at the desk he had just left, had a wild idea. Sitting on the desk, he saw his father’s video-phone. It looked, and almost was, like all the other extension phones spotted about the station. But Robby knew that this one was different in one small way. It was connected, not only to the regular telephone centre in the communications room upstairs which the Vandals had jammed, but also, by a special switch, to a government cable for official and top-secret calls dealing with the research animals. Robby glanced at the Captain. His back was still turned.

Hurriedly, Robby reached behind the phone to flip the cable switch. Then he pushed a button. Now every word he and the Captain said would go out over the special cable.Robby could only hope that there was somebody at the other end to hear it and understand the situation he was in.

“There!” said the Captain, with satisfaction. “Tricky locks you have here.” He sat down again and became suddenly brisk. “One of the most dangerous of the Martian monsters escaped recently from where some misguided scientists were examining it. We captured the monster, but it got away from us again. It’s somewhere in the vicinity of this station, and we believe you may have seen it. Have you seen anything that looked like this?”

He passed a drawing across the desk to Robby. Robby took it. It was a picture of the sea badger all right, but the artist had made a number of changes in the Martian’s appearance.Only the shape of the body was the same. Instead of the bony plates in the mouth, the drawing had dragon-like fangs, in-stead of the big digging hands, savage claws. The monster was shown crouched and snarling over a small, shrinking human being, a fierce expression on its face.

“Ah,” said the Captain, who had been watching Robby closely. “I see you have. Perhaps you have also seen an Intelligence Bureau agent, a little man about your size?” Robby said nothing.

“I see,” said the Captain, at last. “Robin, it wouldn’t be very wise of you to refuse to help us find those two. We’re good friends to those who are friends to us, but we can be pretty terrible to our enemies.”

“You can’t make me!” burst out Robby, desperately.

“Yes, we can,” said the Captain, “but I don’t think we’ll have to.” He turned halfway in his chair and pointed out the undersea window. “Is that dolphin a pet of yours?”

Beyond the glass, Balthasar—as he so often did—was swirling and turning in the hope of luring Robby outside for a swim.

“I imagine you’re pretty fond of him,” said the Vandal Captain, all the smiles and pleasantness gone from his face now. “Unless you help us find the monster and that agent, as I know you can, I’ll arrange to have that dolphin netted and—”

He broke off. At first Robby could not understand why. Then he saw that the Captain was listening. He sat motionless at his desk, and his face under the freckles had gone quite pale. Robby listened, too.

After a second, he heard a voice. It was a voice distantly singing—and it sang a song that Robby had heard before.

“Lilli-bu-ler Lero, lero—

Lilli-bu-ler—

Lero—”

Rescued and Trapped!

Where the song was coming from, Robby could not tell. He looked at the ventilator above the desk, he looked at the video-phone on the desk. He looked at the door of the closet—and he looked back at the Captain.

But the Captain had evidently made up his mind where the song came from. Slowly and quietly, he was sliding open a drawer of the desk, and, as Robby watched, he rose silently to his feet. On tiptoe he approached the door of the office, laid his hand on the lock, and noiselessly slipped it off. He put his hand on the knob of the door, ready to jerk it open.

And, in that second, the screen of the ventilator suddenly twanged and sprang outwards into the room. Frantically, the Captain spun round, but before he could duck, the steak-sauce bottle—the one with many-coloured rings—came whiz-zing from the ventilator opening and shattered against his forehead.

The Captain fell to the floor. And Mr. Lillibulero leaped lightly out of the ventilator opening.

“Now, Robertson,” he said. “Quickly!”

He snatched open the door of the office, led Robby out, and locked the door behind them. He led the way out into the corridor at a run, past one startled Vandal, and up the steps to the top level.

“Hey!” cried the Vandal behind them. But they were already up the stairs, into the top level of the station, and Mr. Lillibulero was securing the heavy inter-level door. Robby turned to see a Vandal coming from the communications room and two more approaching from the opposite direction.

“Lock the top door, laddie!” cried Mr. Lillibulero. “Pay no mind to these others. Leave them t’me.”

Robby darted towards the steps leading up to the surface platform overhead. The Vandal from the communications room made a wild grab at him, but Robby ducked under the man’s arm like a greased eel and was up the stairs in a moment.

He grabbed for the lock to the surface hatch and shot it closed, expecting any moment to feel heavy hands upon him. But they did not come. When Robby turned round, he saw why. The Vandal had gone to help the others against Mr. Lillibulero.

It was one of the strangest fights that Robby had ever seen.The lightest Vandal there weighed almost twice as much as Mr. Lillibulero, and there were three of them.

But it never pays to underestimate an opponent. On a certain paper in a certain filing cabinet in a certain top-secret office, there were listed (unknown to the Vandals) certain abilities of Mr. Lillibulero. And this list, in addition to mentioning a host of other things he was good at (pistol, rifle, bow and arrow, knife, boomerang) carefully noted that Mr. Lillibulero was highly proficient in the arts of boxing, wrestling, judo (and jujitsu), savate (including chausson, or jeu marseillais) and karate.

The first Vandal that reached him found himself flipped head over heels, to land on the floor so hard that all the wind was knocked out of him. The second Vandal was tripped up, and the third, falling over the second, ran headlong into a right cross to the jaw that felled him in his tracks. The second Vandal, struggling to his feet, met a judo chop on the way up, and lay down again.

The combat was over.

Robby helped Mr. Lillibulero tie the hands of the Vandals behind them. Meanwhile, fists could be heard pounding on the two doors—the one to the level below, and the hatch to the surface platform above. But those doors had been built to withstand all the power of the sea in case it should break into the station and one level needed to be sealed off from an-other. They held.

"By the time Robby and Mr. Lillibulero had finished tying up the Vandals, they were all conscious again, but quite unhappy. Mr. Lillibulero got them on their feet, marched them into the equipment room, and locked them in a small closet.

“Now,” said Mr. Lillibulero, turning to Robby, “to get off a wee message to the proper authorities.”

In the communications room he sat down before the main board. In front of him were controls for the regular video-phone connection to the mainland, a bypass on the International Fisheries official teletype, short-wave equipment for communicating with ships at sea and aircraft, and an automatic distress signal.

Mr. Lillibulero went to work on these controls. After a second he sat back and looked at them all.

“Hmmm,” he said.

“What’s the matter?” Robby asked.

“The matter, Robertson, now that y’ask,” replied Mr. Lillibulero, “is that yon Vandals are still jamming the communications. I had hoped they’d have quit when they found no one here earlier. But they’re still at it.”

“You mean we can’t call out?”

“I mean that.”

Robby stared at the little man, feeling his stomach sink. He had been so glad to see Mr. Lillibulero, he had somehow jumped to the conclusion that now everything would be all right. It came home to him with a shock that things might not be all right, after all. In fact, they might be even worse, judging by the noise the Vandals were making, shouting and pounding on the door. It might be that the Vandals would be angry enough to do something desperate, once they had succeeded in breaking down one of the doors.

“But can’t we do anything?” cried Robby.

“There are,” said Mr. Lillibulero, “a number of things we might do. Most of them, however, such as running around in circles and tearing our hair whilst bemoaning our lot, would hardly be of much sairvice to us. On the other hand, there are two excellent things we can do.”

“What?” said Robby.

“We can wait. ’Tis always good tactics when y’find y’rself losing to delay th’end as long as possible. There is no telling what may turn up, even in th’most hopeless situations. Also we can think. Dunking is the gr-reat ability of man—that which separates him from the poor beasts of the animal kingdom. I would advise any person,” said Mr. Lillibulero, with kindling eye, “I would advise him, when in a tight spot, t’think first and act afterwards, because there is no telling what he may think of if he gives himself the chance. Therefore, Robertson, let us sit down, make ourselves comfortable—and think while we wait.”

Suiting the action to the word, Mr. Lillibulero found himself a comfortable chair across the room. Robby sat down in a chair opposite. For a long moment, neither one of them said anything, and the distant sound of the Vandals was the only thing to be heard.

“Uh ” said Robby, hesitantly, after a little while. “Is it all right to talk while thinking? Because I—"

“Y’have the floor,” said Mr. Lillibulero, courteously. And then, seeing that Robby looked somewhat puzzled, he explained, “I mean, talk as much as y’want.”

“Well, I just wanted to mention,” said Robby, “that they’re trying to bum down the door from the second level, or something.”

The little man popped to his feet, hurried over to the door and examined the cherry-red spot that had blossomed on its metal surface near the doorknob. He put his palm close to it,nodded, and then came back to sit down again.

“ ’Tis only an ordinary welding torch,” he said to Robby.“And th’door’s made of a cerametal compound—which, in case y’dinna know, is a material developed originally for rocket nose-cones to take the great heat of travel through the atmosphere. They’ll not cut through it with that.”

“Oh!” said Robby, suddenly remembering, “I maybe got a message out myself a while ago.” And he told Mr. Lillibulero about his trick with the video-phone on his father’s desk.

“Well done, Robertson,” said Mr. Lillibulero, when he had finished. “Though I’d not count too greatly on rescue in the nick of time. ’Tis something that happens more often in books than in real life.”

“I guess so,” said Robby. He wriggled uncomfortably on the chair, “I’m—uh—sorry about the—well, you know—”

“The what?” asked Mr. Lillibulero.

“The Octopus,” stammered Robby.

“What octopus?”

“The octopus in the tunnel. I mean, I knew there was an octopus in there—”

“Octopi,” said Mr. Lillibulero, sternly, “have never been one of my terrors . . . ah!” he said, breaking off sharply and fixing Robby with a penetrating eye. “You thought perhaps they might be?”

“Well, you see—” said Robby, going rather red in the face.

“Say no more,” said Mr. Lillibulero. “There was no harm done. As it happened, when I got to a certain point in the tunnel, there was no octopus, but a hole dug by the sea badger. I swam down it until some long distance away I came out into open sea again. The Martian beast must have been attempting to tunnel until he came into another cave, hoping for food, as he would have found it on his own world.Finding nothing, he dug down to the sea he knew was there.When I came out the other end of the tunnel, I did not know where I was, and so had to come back by the same way as I went, to make sure of finding you.” He looked closely at Robby. “However, when I got back to where I’d left you, y’were gone.”

“Well, I thought ”

“Y’need not tell me what y’thought,” said Mr. Lillibulero. “Perhaps we’ll both be happier wi’me not knowing.”

“Oh, no!” cried Robby. “What I mean is I thought you had been trapped by the sea badger and that it was all my fault for not telling you about the octopus. I thought something had happened to you. And if I’d told you, you wouldn’t have gone in after the sea badger.”

“Ah, indeed?” said Mr. Lillibulero, in a sharp, jagged voice. His eyes were quite shiny. He stood up and walked over to the communications main board, where there was a box of tissues left by Robby’s mother. He took a couple and blew his nose vigorously. “Well, Robertson,” he continued, returning to his seat, “y’r feelings do y’credit. We’re none of us so perfect as we’d like to be, and it may be I’m wee bit unreasonable myself sometimes. As for what I did, y’may put y’r mind to rest, it being my duty to follow th’beast at th’time, no matter where it chanced to lead me.”

After which he cleared his throat very fiercely, glared at Robby, and seemed about to say something more. Then, abruptly, his expression changed and he went over to the door.

“What is it?” asked Robby, following him.

“I’m afraid it’s our luck running out,” said Mr. Lillibulero. He pointed to a spot of white in the centre of the glowing red patch on the door. “They’ve found something hotter—possibly a pressure torch—and they’ll be able to cut through after all.” He crossed the room to the communications board and began feeling the weight of microphone stands and a heavy brass ash-tray he found on a table. Finally,he unscrewed the base of a table lamp and held it in his hand.

“ ’Tis a poor sort of club, but necessity is the mother of invention,” he was beginning to explain to Robby, when the whole station seemed to explode with sound. The floor under their feet shivered, the walls rang, and the noise of great blows against metal jarred their ears. Robby and Mr. Lillibulero stared at each other. And then, without warning, the little man dropped flat and pressed his right ear against the floor under their feet.

“ ’Tis coming from below all right!” he cried at Robby over the noise. “At the base of the building, I’d say.”

“Maybe it’s—” Robby shouted, but his voice was lost in the noise.

“What?” cried Mr. Lillibulero, bounding to his feet.

“I say,” yelled Robby—and the noise suddenly ceased, so that he found himself shouting in a quiet room. “I mean,” he went on in a lower voice, “maybe it’s the sea badger. I took a lot of Martian plants from our experimental tank and made a trail up to the station. I figured he was hungry and—”

“And the beast’ll be trying to dig its way in right now!”snapped Mr. Lillibulero. “Listen t’them outside there!”

They could hear Vandal voices raised in excitement and alarm.

“Overside, all of you!” the voice of the Captain was roaring. Somebody objected. “Well, out of the third-level lock then, if you can’t get up to the platform! Rig the nets! I want that Martian, like the two in there, dead or alive."

The tremendous banging began again. And for several minutes nothing could be heard.

“Back to the door! Bum it through!” was what came through to their ears when the sea badger paused again. “The others can get the Martian.”

“Laddie!” snapped Mr. Lillibulero. “Now’s our chance. Follow me!”

He was up the steps to the platform above in a flash, and had the locks on the hatch shoved back before Robby caught up with him. He shoved upward. Bang, went the hatch, up and open. And the two of them tumbled out on to the floor of the surface platform.

They emerged, it seemed, into the midst of a horde of Vandals. There were not merely two or three of the big men on the platform, armed to the teeth, there were six, or eight,or maybe even a dozen.

“Never mind me, lad!” cried Mr. Lillibulero, throwing himself among them. “Jump, Robertson! Over the side!” Robby grabbed a lung, raced and plunged. The soft water closed with a cool shock around him. He dived deep, intending to baffle his pursuers by slipping round the station and away. But to his dismay, he found himself surrounded by Vandals (there were, in fact, twenty-three of them in the water at the time, as he found out later), all with swimming lungs and shark knives.

They dropped the large underwater net they were rigging and turned, as one, to close in on Robby.

Balthasar

Balthasar had spent a restless night since he had watched Robby go with the Vandals into the station. There was no good reason for this. Here was the station as it always had been, and there was Robby inside it. But, somehow, Balthasar did not like it. He swam past the window of Robby’s bed-room and saw Robby inside. Robby waved to him, but still Balthasar felt uncomfortable. He even went so far as to swim down to the third-level lock and push the button that signalled that he wanted to be let in.

A Vandal, thinking it short-circuited when he heard it ring, had shut off the sounding bell. But nothing happened. After getting no response at the lock, Balthasar surfaced several times at the edge of the platform, clacking his hard lips together and giving the hoarse, squeaky little cry of the dolphins. But only a Vandal standing alone on the platform stared at him rather foolishly each time he came up. The man made Balthasar uneasy, and the dolphin dropped back into the obscurity of the dark waters.

No, there was nothing wrong that he could see. But still Balthasar sensed that there was trouble about.

He cheered up considerably when he saw the little man Robby had befriended swim stealthily up to the platform and sneak down the ventilator scoop when the Vandal guard’s back was turned. But just after that there was a lot of noise from inside the station that made him uneasy again.

And then, a short while later, he was thrown into sheer panic when he saw the sea badger approaching.

Balthasar was afraid of the sea badger. It was strange. It was different. Who knew what it might not do? Balthasar expected the worst from it.

And almost immediately his expectations were justified.For the sea badger, which had been quietly eating its way along the sea bottom up to the station, suddenly went berserk.

It began to attack the station—Balthasar’s station—with Balthasar’s Robby inside!

Balthasar’s first, automatic action was to streak around the station and down to the lock button to sound the alarm. After jabbing at the useless button for several frantic seconds, he shot away to peer in Robby’s bedroom window. But Robby was not there. He whirled around the station, staring in all the windows. But Robby was not to be seen.

In absolute desperation, Balthasar dashed down to join battle with the sea badger itself. It was now inside the station,but to Balthasar’s annoyance the Vandals were hanging a net over the hole where it had forced its way in.

There was only one thing to do, and that was to tear through the net. Balthasar slipped up to the surface to blow and fill his lungs with air. As he started down again, Robby plunged into the water from the station platform.

Robby’s dive had taken everybody by surprise, including the Vandals in the water. Nevertheless, they dropped their net with no great alarm, knowing that there was no way he could escape them.

And then Balthasar hit them.

There is a reason why sharks and such creatures are not eager to tangle with dolphins. Even a small dolphin can flash himself through the water at forty miles an hour or better, and when he hits, he butts hard, with all the weight of his body,into the shark’s soft side and belly. Also, he bites and twists as he hits, and his teeth, while not so terrible as the shark’s,are not so small that a shark can take much of that sort of treatment and survive.

Balthasar burst into the midst of the Vandals like a lion into the middle of a flock of sheep. Luckily for them, he was more interested in getting to Robby as quickly as possible than he was in dealing out any damage on the way. Consequently, he merely bounced them aside, not injuring them too badly. He swirled to a stop before Robby, who grabbed thankfully at his reins, and they headed out again.

Once more Balthasar tore through the Vandals, and this completed the rout. The frightened Vandals swam desperately for safety—most of them for the platform, but a few for their own ship.

Those scrambling back on to the platform joined the Vandals trying to grab Mr. Lillibulero, but Mr. Lillibulero was so small, so quick, so limber and spry, that he continually managed to wiggle out from their grasp.

It had only been a minute or so since Robby had dived overboard. Mr. Lillibulero, however, was still free, and since panic is contagious, the battle ended then and there. Suddenly, all the Vandals could think of was to get away from whatever terrible peril now pursued them. And the fact thatnone of them really understood what he was running away from made no difference at all.

Meanwhile, Robby, who had turned round after Balthasar had pulled him off to a safe distance, rose to the surface, saw what was going on, and came sweeping back to see if he could help Mr. Lillibulero.

He approached to find Mr. Lillibulero in control of the platform. Some Vandals were bolting for the interior of the station, while others were still clambering out of the water. But just then, looking beyond, Robby had a flashing glimpse of something more, something large and silver, coming quickly up to the station.

“A sh . . .’’ he started to yell, and then a wall of sea waterstopped him as Balthasar plunged into a wave. Robby bobbed up immediately, shaking the water from his mask microphone.

“A ship! Mr. Lillibulero!” he cried. “A ship!”

Robby and Balthasar set off at top speed in the direction of the oncoming vessel.

Balthasar was fast, but the ship was faster. It slid across the surface on a cushion of air pushed out by thousands of tiny jets in its flat bottom. It was the Mexican government patrol boat under the command of Lieutenant Vargas.

The patrol boat reached the station and came to a skillful stop alongside. Robby and Balthasar were close behind.

Coastguards men in neat uniforms leaped from the deck to the platform as Robby scrambled out of the water and was grabbed by his own worried father.

“Your mother,” said his father about half an hour later,“your mother should be here in a couple of days, at the most. After we pulled the other sea badger through, she went to visit your aunt Sophie. What she’ll say, I don’t know. Probably it’ll be my fault for not checking sooner to see if all was well. Did you watch the temperatures on experimental tank number seven?”

They were standing on the platform, and the coastguards men were herding the Vandal prisoners up from below and on to the patrol boat, where they would be taken under guard to the mainland for trial. The coastguards men had sprayed a soothing gas at them in order to capture them without hurting them, and they were very relaxed at the moment and sleepy, although they would return to normal when the effects of the gas wore off. Before Robby could answer his father, the Vandal Captain came up out of the platform entrance, smiling dizzily. He was led aboard the patrol boat.

“A sad case,” commented his father. “Still, there’s always hope of reform. And who knows? Possibly, there, but for the sake of marine zoology, go I. None of us can afford to look down our noses at any of them. Don’t you think so, Lillibulero?”

“I do,” agreed the little man, who was standing nearby with Lieutenant Vargas. “ ’Tis not easy not to be a Vandal.Each man must take the responsibility of escaping the temptation for himself. Luckily, however, in this case, no harm’s been done to speak of.”

“Fortunately not,” agreed Lieutenant Vargas. “My men have secured the hole by which the Martian entered your experimental tanks. The creature will not be able to escape again. It’s feeding quietly in there now.”

“A thousand thanks,” said Robby’s father politely.

“For nothing,” replied Lieutenant Vargas with equal politeness, looking very trim and military with his white uniform and the neat black moustache on his handsome olive face. “The creature gave us no trouble. We should thank your son for cleverly opening the video-phone line and alerting us that this bunch was here.”

Robby squirmed with pleasure.

“Well, at any rate, the sea badger seems quite happy in there with the other Martians,” said Robby’s father. “Possibly that’s what it needed and wanted all along. A little bit of home. Probably quite gentle and friendly under ordinary circumstances. We’re to keep it, I understand, for further study here. Of course, we’ll rig a tank it can’t break out of. Robby may yet have it eating out of his hand.”

“You should have seen it fighting the killer whale,” began Robby.

“Whatever you do, don’t tell your mother about that!”interrupted his father, horrified. “Not for a day or two, at any rate. Not until she’s had time to get used to having the sea badger around. You know how your mother is.”

Robby nodded seriously.

“And, as I say, she will probably hold me responsible. Of course, to a certain extent, I am. I would have taken you with me, except that my government orders were explicit—to go alone to your grandfather’s and help him try to save the life of the sea badger that was hurt when the Vandals stole this one.”

“This other Martian, is it well now?” inquired Lieutenant Vargas.

“Quite well, thanks. A rather bad cut on the head, but it’s recovering nicely,” answered Robby’s father.

“The point is,” he went on, “lacking second sight, I had no way of knowing the Vandals would head straight here.And anyway, I left you in the care of Lillibulero, the most capable man in the world.”

“I would not say that,” objected Mr. Lillibulero.

“I would,” said Robby’s father. “I’ve known you for years. I know what you can do.”

“Ah, but you forget what I cannot do,” said Mr. Lillibulero.“For instance, I cannot fight a killer whale bare-handed. No more can I capture half a hundred or so Vandals, nor put a leash about the neck of a Martian sea badger and lead it home. If y’must know, it was not me that brought Robertson alive and well through the last day and night, but Robertson and myself that somehow brought each other through.” He cast a grim but approving eye on Robby. “Was that not so, Robertson?”

“It sure was, Dad!” burst out Robby, excitedly. “If it hadn’t been for me, no telling what might have happened. I mean, I knew about the shoals here, around the station, and where to look for the sea badger. I rode Balthasar after the killer whale and saw the sea badger and knew it was around for sure. I left the video-phone off the hook and switched on the secret cable line. I left the trail of food for the sea badger. I did it. If it hadn’t been for me . . .”

Robby saw all three men looking at him with an embarrassed expression, and all at once he seemed to be sitting once more in his father’s office with the red-bearded Vandal Captain opposite. Once again he heard the Vandal Captain talking about right and wrong—and twisting them around to put himself in the best position. And now Robby heard himself doing the same sort of thing. He gulped.

“That is—I mean . . .” he said quickly, “it was really us.What I mean is . . .” and he looked at Mr. Lillibulero, “it was mostly him.”

Mr. Lillibulero almost smiled. His frosty emerald eyes sparkled. Lieutenant Vargas did smile. And Robby’s father beamed. As for Robby himself, he felt good all over, with a warm, spreading glow he had never experienced before. So that suddenly he had to do something to show it.

“And Balthasar!” he cried, running to the edge of the platform where the big dolphin curvetted in the waves. “Balthasar was more help than two of me!”

And Balthasar leaped clear of the water, twisting with joy. The praise meant nothing to him, but what meant all the world was the sound of his name called happily once more in the voice of his beloved young master.

Secrets Under Antarctica

Without making him in any way responsible for the shortcomings of the author, I would like to acknowledge my appreciation for the suggestions regarding research materials of Mr.John Anderson, Field Leader of the University of Minnesota Geology Team, Antarctica, 1961-1962.

Whale in Trouble

Rrrrriiiing!—went the alarm bell.

Robby Hoenig, who was down below the main deck, for-ward in the storage section, and up to his neck in cartons of Control Caps, Control Boxes, and similar equipment, dropped everything. He raced for the metal ladder in the middle of the ship and went up it like a porpoise heading toward the surface for a leap out of water.

“I’ve got it! I’ve got it!” he yelled, popping out into the Control Room like the porpoise into the air. At the same moment his father came racing in from the laboratory in the tail of the Palship X (for “experimental”) Two—one of the five small experimental Palships, or whale pod research vessels currently in the Antarctic waters—also shouting, “I’ve got it! I’ve got it!”

They ran into each other just in front of the Whale Signal Board. Robby, being half Dr. Hoenig’s weight, bounced. He managed to grab the Whale Signal Controls, though, and keep his balance.

“Oh, sorry,” said his father. “Did I hurt you? You aren’t going to get a nosebleed are you? Just a minute while I shut off the alarm. You’d better sit down.”

He shut off the alarm. The silence seemed to ring in their ears.

“Yes,” said Robby, feeling his nose.

“Yes, what?” said Dr. Hoenig, anxiously.

“Yes, you hurt me,” said Robby. “But I’m all right now. I don’t get nosebleeds anymore. Look, it’s Blue Mountain Bill.”

He pointed to the Whale Signal Board, a large, upright panel divided into squares. In each square were several meters with numbers and quivering black needles, some lights, and what looked like a small television screen. Across each screen a line of white light wavered up and down. On one of the squares a light was flashing red.

“You’re right,” said Dr. Hoenig, turning around to look at the board. “That is Blue Mountain Bill’s square. What on earth—? A blue whale his size ought to be able to take care of himself.”

“A kraken—” began Robby, then stopped himself. “I mean, maybe a giant squid attacked him.”

“Impossible,” said his father. “A deep-sea cephalopod that big wouldn’t show up this far south. These Antarctic waters are shallow by their standards. Only about a mile or so deep.”

“But the kraken. . .” began Robby.

“. . . doesn’t exist,” said his father, doing things with the controls and studying the dials of the instruments in the square connected with Blue Mountain Bill. One dial showed that Bill was a good half mile away from the pod of whales under the protection of Palship X Two, and half a mile deep in the icy Antarctic Ocean.

“But—” began Robby again.

“The kraken,” said Dr. Hoenig firmly, “is merely a legend. A Norwegian legend about a sea monster. We think the legend was started by the sight of a giant cephalopod, but we don’t know.”

“There might be sea monsters,” said Robby. “Nobody knows for sure, do they?”

“No,” said his father. “But I, personally, doubt it. Bill’s hurt.”

“Hurt?” said Robby, forgetting about sea monsters in his concern over the big whale. He and his father had been in the Palship X Two, moving with this pod of whales for over two weeks now, and he had come to know the enormous sea beasts as individuals. He felt almost as close to them as he did to Balthasar, his own Risso’s dolphin. But with the large numbers of killer whales that hunted their prey in these frigid waters, Dr. Hoenig had thought it wouldn’t be safe for Robby to bring the big dolphin with him. Otherwise he would have been here now, playing in the waters about the Palship X Two and mingling with the great blue whales of the pod.

“He acts as if he’s fighting something. I’ll take the smallboat,” said Dr. Hoenig. “Jump into your Outside Suit,if you’re coming with me.”

“I’m coming,” said Robby.

He hurried to his locker on the other side of the Control Room, as Dr. Hoenig turned to burrow into his own locker. Two minutes later they were both dressed and sealing them-selves in their suits by pressing together the magnetic edges of the suits’ openings. This magnetic fastener, invented by a man with an odd name that at the moment Robby could not remember, was a great improvement over the zipper. In the heated suits, boots, and fishbowl-like helmets with the little converters that could extract oxygen from the sea water, the two Hoenigs would be safe and comfortable not only under the surface of the salt Antarctic seas, but in the far more cold air above the sea and ice. Although right now, thought Robby,the air temperatures were probably no worse than freezing.This was the twenty-fourth of January, which is summertime around the South Pole.

“We could take the Palship,” he said now, speaking over the radio circuit between his helmet and his father’s, “instead of the smallboat. Then, if it just happened to be a kraken—”“It is not a kraken!” Dr. Hoenig’s voice sounded tinny coming through the receiver speaker in Robby’s helmet. “And I’m not going to chase a hurt whale with sixty other whales following me. The pod is used to staying close to the Palship for protection against the killer whales. They’ll follow if we take it. If we leave it, they’ll stay behind. Come on now. And be careful of that suit of yours.”

“I will,” said Robby patiently.

He was used to his father’s mentioning the suit every time Robby put it on. It had needed to be specially made to fit Robby’s wiry, thirteen-year-old body; and had cost more than Dr. Hoenig cared to think about. As a marine zoologist employed by the International Department of Fisheries, Salt Water Research Division, he had his own suit furnished free by the Department. Robby, of course, was no employee of the Department, and in fact had been allowed to come with his father only by special permission.

That permission was a reward from the Department for Robby’s help in capturing some Vandals who had invaded the Department’s Point Loma Research Station, off the west coast of Mexico. The Point Loma Station was where the Hoenigs lived. But it was also an underwater tower full of valuable Departmental equipment and specimens of sea life. Robby, together with an operative of the International Bureau of Police named Mr. Lillibulero, had not only captured the Vandals but helped recapture a large and valuable Martian sea badger that the Vandals had stolen.

Accordingly, the Department had given Robby permission to come along with his father when Dr. Hoenig came here. Dr. Hoenig was making the trip to study the way in which cow blue whales seemed to be able to “talk” to their whale calves. The study was a direct descendant of the original radio-telemetry experiments with wild birds of the “Grousar” project by Dr. W. H. Marshall away back in 1962. Now Dr. Hoenig thought that if more were known of how the blue whale cows and calves communicated, a big step would have been taken toward the day when man would be able to talk to whales.

It was a fascinating subject to Robby. Already people like his grandfather, Jacob Hoffer, had been able to come close to talking with the porpoise and the dolphin. These, like the blue and killer whales were Cetacea. And Cetacea were—like fur seals, walruses, sea elephants, sea lions, and “true” seals such as the fierce leopard seal—actually land animals who had gone back to living in the sea. But the intelligence of the Cetacea was astounding. Their brains were almost as fully developed as man’s.

It would be something, Robby had thought to himself, to talk with one of the blue whales, the largest living creatures in the world. It would be fascinating to hear, for example,what they thought of humans. Also, the whale would have things to tell that men had never known before. He might know that there was a kraken, and where one lived, and what it looked like. He might even guide men to such a sea monster and help them capture it. Anything was possible.

Dr. Hoenig had no such thoughts. He simply wanted to find out everything about the blue whales that he could. He was a true scientist, who loved knowledge for its own sake.When he had finished studying the whales here, he planned to write a paper entitled: Intercommunications Between Cows and Calves of Blue Whale Pod Number 5498 and Their Relationship to Brain-Mapped Areas.

Robby was writing a paper on the Whale Signal Board, and how it worked with the Control Caps each whale wore. This was to make up for the school he was missing while he was in the Antarctic. He had wanted to write a paper on the kraken, but his father had overruled this. Robby had decided not to argue. There was the matter of the expensive Outside Suit that had had to be bought for him, and the fact that his mother was not very enthusiastic about his going to the Antarctic without her.

Once she too had been an employee of the Department, for she was a marine zoologist herself. But she had given up professional work in order to take care of Robby and his father properly. So she too would have needed special per-mission in order to go, and that might have complicated the situation so much that the Department would have withdrawn Robby’s permission.

“After all,” Dr. Hoenig had said, “I’m supposed to be down there working, not taking a family vacation.”

So Robby and his father had gone, and Robby’s mother had stayed home. She phoned them daily, though.

Now Robby and his father hurried down into the fore part of the ship and climbed into the two-man smallboat that was housed there. It resembled a canoe with a transparent cover, but it could travel under water at eighty miles an hour, and it carried a sonic cannon in its front. This was a gun that shot bursts of sound for stunning wild killer whales that attempted to attack the blue whale calves.

“Ready?” asked Dr. Hoenig.

“Ready!” said Robby.

A wall came down from overhead, shutting them off from the inside of the Palship. Another wall opened and they were suddenly out in the gray-green water fifteen feet under the surface. Dr. Hoenig looked at the small Whale Signal Board before him and quickly punched the buttons that would relay to the main board the signals from Blue Mountain Bill.

“There he is,” said Dr. Hoenig, looking at the board, “about a mile and a half to the left of us, and nearly a mile down. He’s sounded again.”

He put his hands on the smallboat controls and Robby was jerked back in his seat as if by a roller coaster’s starting. The smallboat flung itself forward through the water just under the surface.

“We’ll meet him when he comes up on the surface,” said Dr. Hoenig over his shoulder to Robby. “I can’t understand this. He doesn’t seem to be fighting anything now. But the instruments show that something has hurt him.”

The smallboat slowed suddenly, and came to a neck-jerking halt. It popped up onto the gray, rolling surface of the Antarctic Ocean. Robby looked around him. Far off to his left he could see a faint something shimmering on the horizon. He knew it was the edge of the pack ice around the Antarctic continent, which was more than twice the size of the United States, not including Alaska and Hawaii. Underneath their smallboat the cold water was nearly a mile deep.

“Where is he?” asked Robby, looking around for Blue Mountain Bill.

“He’s still coming up,” replied Dr. Hoenig, watching the instruments intently. “He’ll breach not fifty yards to our right.”

Robby looked to his right and waited. He knew that whales can dive to depths of a mile or more, and that this was called sounding. When they came up, they came up like a cork released at the bottom of a swimming pool—gathering speed as they came. When they finally reached the surface they would be traveling fast enough to hurl their whole bodies out of water. This was called breaching. It was the same thing Robby had seen Balthasar do many times, but made much more impressive because of the difference in size between a thirteen-foot Risso’s dolphin and a sixty-to-hundred-foot whale.

“Here he comes—now!” shouted Robby’s father, excited himself by the prospect of watching Blue Mountain Bill break surface this close.

And, as he spoke, it happened.

There was a sudden explosion in the water, a roar like an express train in a tunnel, and a titanic blue-gray body a hundred feet in length burst skyward. Up, up it went, until the enormous scoop-shaped head reached higher than the roof of a three-story apartment building. Then it turned; and, curving over, the great and awesome creature reentered the water with a sound and impact that flung the smallboat wave-high in the air.

As it did so, the two humans in their smallboat saw a long and savage cut running from behind the fluke of Blue Mountain Bill for nearly twenty feet slantwise and down.

“Did you see that?” shouted Robby’s father, staring. “What out here in deep water could cut him up like that? There just isn’t anything!”

“A kraken!” cried Robby, almost beside himself with excitement. “And I’ll bet it’s under us, right now!”

Someone Below Decks

Robby’s father did not answer. He was too busy trying to maneuver the smallboat alongside the wounded bull whale. Blue Mountain Bill was plowing and diving through the water in the up-and-down weaving motion typical of the Cetacea, and he seemed on the verge of sounding again.

The truth of the matter was that Bill was confused. The instruments before Dr. Hoenig showed electrical readings from certain areas of the whale’s brain—this was what brain mapping was all about—which were signs that the big bull was both frightened and enraged. The instrument readings showed that he was half-looking for whatever had hurt him and half-hoping that he would not find it. The Cetacea are as different, one from another, as humans. Blue Mountain Bill resembled that kind of human who secretly does not like to fight, and who has to work himself up into a rage in order to do so.

He was in a rage now, and more or less working to keep himself in it. For that reason, he did not see the little boat with the two humans in it that was chasing him. They were simply too small to be noticed.

Dr. Hoenig’s fingers went out to the small boat’s Whale Signal Board before him. He set one of the instruments at the number on a scale that corresponded to a certain area of Bill’s brain. Then steadily, gently, his finger began to press on a little control device rather like a car’s foot pedal in miniature.

The huge bull whale began to slow down. And as he did so, Robby could see what looked like a little metal skullcap no bigger than Robby’s hand, winking as it caught the sunlight. It stayed firmly in its position just even with the tiny-looking eye above the comer of Bill’s enormous mouth. The little device was known as a Control Cap. It was picking up the electrical impulses sent out from the signal board in the small boat as Dr. Hoenig pressed down on the lever, and passing them on like magic through all the blubber and bone and flesh to the part of Bill’s brain known as the pleasure area.

As a result, Bill found his rage slipping away from him in spite of his efforts to hang on to it. Little by little, as he plunged down and thrust up through the waves, a soft feeling of contentment and pleasure began to grow in him. This sensation was created by Dr. Hoenig, skillfully increasing his pressure on the lever. Slowly, the anger seeped out of Blue Mountain Bill. He no longer wanted to find his enemy and ram it with that great head of his, or smash it to flinders with his enormous tail-flukes, as whale boats had been smashed in the old days before it was realized how wasteful it was to kill intelligent creatures like whales. Little by little, Bill began to feel that it was a pretty good watery world after all. He might have a few insignificant enemies in it, but on the other hand he had lots of friends too.

He looked around for some. And saw the smallboat.

“That does it,” said Dr. Hoenig, with a sigh of relief, as Bill slowed, and turned and allowed the small boat to run up alongside the cut in his side. “Now there, Bill. There’s nothing to be embarrassed about.”

He spoke these last words out loud into the microphone that attached to the whale-speakers outside the boat, both above and under water. He could see from the instruments that Bill was now feeling sheepish, just as a human would who had flown into a rage and now was over it. Bill, of course, could not understand human speech, but the tone of Dr. Hoenig’s voice reassured the huge beast.

“Take over on your set of controls, Robby,” said Dr. Hoenig, over his shoulder. “Keep the smallboat alongside. I’m going to have to climb out and fix that slash on Bill’s side.” He turned and spoke into the microphone again. “Easy now, Bill. I’ve got to fix up that side of yours.”

He had already collected things from the first aid compartment and now he tilted back the cover of the smallboat. The freezing sea air of the Antarctic summer came in, but neither he nor Robby felt it. Inside the Outside Suits it was all the same to them, air or water. Dr. Hoenig could have opened the top under the sea surface without worrying. Their exposure suits would have protected them and the water-lung converter attached to the suits would have supplied them with oxygen from the sea water.

Robby took over the smallboat controls.

“He’s been bleeding,” Robby heard his father’s voice say over the radio circuit. “You better slip into the front seat and keep an eye out for killer whales. If there are any close they may notice the blood and try to attack him.”

“All right,” said Robby. He slid over the back of the seat in front of him, into the place his father had just left, as Dr. Hoenig stepped up onto the side of Blue Mountain Bill and anchored himself there with a large, soft sucker pad attached to his belt. Robby fingered the firing handle of the sonic cannon in the bow of the smallboat. He had never fired at anything as big as a killer whale before; and even though he knew the sonic blast would not hurt the creature, only dizzy it enough to keep it from attacking the wounded Bill, there was something a little sobering at having the weapon under his hand. He wondered how it would work against a kraken that was even bigger than Blue Mountain Bill.

“Well now,” he heard his father saying. Dr. Hoenig was still speaking to Bill over the radio circuit that brought his words to the whale-speakers and into Robby’s helmet as well.“Let’s see what we can do about that slash.”

Dr. Hoenig’s voice rumbled on in a soothing monotone. He had a particular knack for handling all living creatures. He got along as well with tigers and baby meadow mice as with blue whales. The secret, he had told Robby, was to treat them all as equals—and friends. Robby had tried it. It worked.

So Dr. Hoenig went on talking in his best whaleside manner as he sprayed the long cut from a pressure can of anesthetic which also contained anti-infective agents. Then, working slowly and gently, he began to close the wound with a specially developed surgical adhesive which as it dried drew together and glued the sides of the cut. The adhesive would be absorbed as the wound healed and eventually Bill would be left with a scar that could hardly be seen.

Meanwhile, Robby was thinking his own thoughts. He was remembering the poem Alfred, Lord Tennyson had written entitled "The Kraken." Robby had memorized it:

Below the thunders of the upper deep;

Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea,

His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep The Kraken sleepeth...

And so on. . . .

A little chill snaked its way down Robby’s spine, but he glowed inside. Why shouldn’t it be true? What else but a kraken could have given a wound like that to Bill, a blue whale, considered to be the largest living creature on land or sea? It had to have been a kraken. And the kraken would not have gone away. He imagined it underneath them right now, sensing their presence. It was rising slowly through the water.It was coming closer. It felt they would be easy prey. It did not know that the one person who suspected its existence—Robertson Alan Hoenig—sat waiting for it, one hand on the firing handle of the sonic cannon, one finger on the trigger.

As it ascended through the shimmering water toward them,its cold, dark, deep-sea mind knew nothing of sonic cannons. It could not expect that it would be stunned and captured; that Robertson Alan Hoenig sensed it was there right now, just about to break the surface of the sea before them in all its monstrous form—

“Well,” said Dr. Hoenig, stepping down into the smallboat beside Robby, “that’s that.”

Blam went the sonic cannon. Robby’s finger had been on the trigger, and being startled was just too much for him. Blue Mountain Bill, alarmed, sheered and plunged away,almost dragging the smallboat down on the swirling wake of his leaving.

“What on earth . . . ?” said Dr. Hoenig.

Robby suddenly felt about as big as one of the tiny, red shrimp-like crustaceans, called kril, that Blue Mountain Bill swallowed daily by the millions.

“The kraken,” he said in a small voice, “I was thinking it might come up beside us—”

“Kraken!” said Dr. Hoenig. “Climb into the rear seat. ”Robby climbed back. Dr. Hoenig closed the transparent cover over their heads, sat down at the controls and headed the smallboat back toward the pod of whales and the Palship, which was now so far off from them that it looked like a dot on the watery horizon.

“Robby,” said his father thoughtfully, “we’ve absolutely got to come to some meeting of the minds on this kraken notion of yours.”

“It’s not a notion,” said Robby. He had stopped feeling as big as one of the kril, and was starting to feel his own size again. “How do we know there’s no kraken?”

“We don’t,” said Dr. Hoenig.

“Well, then!” said Robby triumphantly.

“But,” said his father, “there is no solid evidence for believing there is such a creature and plenty of indirect evidence against it.”

“How about that cut on Bill?” Robby asked. “No giant squid made that. And if it wasn’t a giant squid, what else could it be? It had to be a kraken.”

“No ‘had to’ about it,” Dr. Hoenig retorted, almost happily. He had had a terrific temper in his youth but had learned to control it. Now he never lost his temper, but he thoroughly enjoyed a good argument or debate as long as it was conducted politely. Secretly, he was rather pleased with Robby for sticking to his guns. “No ‘had to’ about it. It could just as well have been a Boojum.”

“A what?” said Robby.

“A Boojum—a sort of snark. From a poem by Lewis Carroll called The Hunting of the Snark. I thought you told me you’d read it.”

“Oh, that!” said Robby. “I’m talking about something real—not some made-up animal. Lots of people have heard about the kraken. Who ever heard of a Boojum?”

“Everybody who read the poem.”

“You’re not arguing fair!” shouted Robby. “I’m serious!”

“So am I,” said Dr. Hoenig. “The Boojum is a creature invented by Lewis Carroll. The kraken is a creature inventedby ancient Norwegian sailors.”

“You always win,” shouted Robby, “because you know more words than I do. Don’t you always tell me to keep an open mind until all the evidence is in?”

“I do,” conceded Dr. Hoenig.

“All right,” said Robby, lowering his voice. “Then I’m right to believe in the kraken.”

“Right to believe in it, no,” said Dr. Hoenig. “Right to keep an open mind about the chance of its actually existing, yes. The two are entirely different. The second is the scientific attitude. The first is superstition.”

“I don’t see how you tell,” said Robby, “which is which.”

“I’ll give you an example,” his father replied. “Suppose you are in the library one day—”

“Doing research for a paper on large animals from the deepest parts of the oceans,” put in Robby.

“Very well,” said Dr. Hoenig, “doing research on the kraken, we’ll say. And you come across a book written by somebody who has a theory about the kraken. The author believes it exists—”

“There!” said Robby, triumphantly.

“Remember, this is only a theory,” said his father, “a theory which states that the kraken exists, but that there is only one way his existence can be proved—by blowing up all of New York City. If this was done, the kraken would emerge from the depths of the ocean and tell us how to solve all our problems. We would all end up wise, happy, and with every-thing we ever wanted, just for blowing up one city. Would you blow up New York then, if you could?”

Robby thought about it.

“Could I get all the people out first?”

“Yes,” said Dr. Hoenig, “we’ll say you could get the people out but you had to leave everything else.”

“Then I’d blow it up,” said Robby.

“And you would be absolutely wrong to do so,” said his father severely. “How would you know the kraken would actually show up, or whether it would be as helpful as the theory said? You haven’t any proof of either part of the theory.” He looked sharply at Robby. “If you blew up New York you might get no kraken but a tidal wave instead, that would drown thousands of people living along the seacoast around New York.”

Robby wriggled uncomfortably.

“You would,” went on Dr. Hoenig, “have killed a great many people simply because you wanted to believe in a theory for which you had no evidence of any kind. Your belief would have been a superstitious belief that does not stop to examine what it believes in but simply charges ahead,sometimes to do great damage instead of accomplishing its desired end.”

“But what can you do then?” burst out Robby. “Just put the book with the theory in it away and forget all about it?”

“Not at all,” said his father. “You simply file the theory on your shelf of kraken materials with the notation: interesting, possibly true. And then set about comparing it with other theories or facts, or reports about the kraken. You are quite willing to believe, if only the theory can be proved. But until it can be proved, you do not go around trying to blow up New York.”

“Do you always have to prove things?” grumbled Robby.

“If you’re a scientist, yes,” said his father. “The scientific attitude looks at all theories, but insists on asking questions about all of them. The superstitious attitude insists at looking at only one theory, and gets angry if any questions at all are asked about it. That’s the difference between them. If you’ll—” He broke off suddenly. They were almost back to the Palship X Two, cruising in the midst of the pod of whales. Blue Mountain Bill had rejoined the pod. Robby saw him diving and surging through the water not far off. But Dr. Hoenig was not looking at the wounded whale. His head was turned toward the Palship X Two, driving itself forward on its automatic controls.

Moored to the Palship X Two floated a small, ducted fan-flying craft. One of the portholes on the Palship was smashed and hung open. The above-water entrance to the Palship was also standing open.

Dr. Hoenig swung the smallboat in to attach its magnetic mooring line to the Palship beside the open entrance. Then he shoved back the transparent cover and leaped up into the entrance opening. Robby followed him.

They stepped through the air lock into the main Control Room. Drawers were pulled open in cabinets and the papers inside them strewn over the floor. It looked as if the Palship had been roughly and quickly searched for something valuable.

“Wait here!” snapped Dr. Hoenig to Robby, turning to go forward into the laboratory. But before he could take the first step they heard a sound from under their feet. It was the noise of feet on the ladder from the storage area below deck, the ladder up which Robby had raced just a short time ago when the alarm bell had rung to warn them of Blue Mountain Bill’s being hurt. And, at the same time, there came to their ears a raspy, scratchy voice humming a strange little tune as the singer came up the ladder.

The tune was one both Robby and his father had heard before. It was from a song that went:

Lilli   bu—ler    ler — o   ler  —  o
Lilli   bu—ler    ler — o  —  o

“Jump for Y’r Life!”

The tune and the sound of footsteps came up the metal ladder together and a moment later a very unusual-looking little man emerged into the Control Room of the Palship X Two.

He was wearing an Outside Suit just like the ones Robby and Dr. Hoenig were wearing. His fishbowl helmet was tipped back as they had tipped theirs back automatically on returning inside the Palship, and the white Outside Suit fitted him like a second skin. In it, boots and all, he stood hardly an inch or two taller than Robby. However, in a belt around his narrow waist was a holstered pistol and a sheathed shark knife, and he moved as if the muscles of his wiry legs were powerful oiled springs. During the Vandal attack on the Point Loma station the summer before, Robby had seen this man defeat three six-foot Vandals with nothing but his bare hands,in a half a dozen seconds. He was, as Robby’s father had told Robby, perhaps the top security agent for the International Bureau of Police. He was probably the most dangerous manon earth that someone breaking the law could encounter.

“Mr. Lillibulero!” cried Robby.

“Ah, there, Robertson,” replied the little man in an odd,rusty, rasping sort of voice. It sounded rather like a buzz saw biting its way through a dry log. He stepped up onto the floor of the Control Room and nodded at Robby’s father. “James.”

He gave them both a twisted bit of a smile. His voice had a strange accent, sounding mainly Scottish, but full of tones and turns that could have come from a half-dozen other languages from Irish to Portuguese. It was not a dangerous-sounding voice, and his dangerousness did not show in his face either, which was sharp-chinned and leathery under curly, tight, brown hair. There was a fine, deep, curving line on each side of his thin-lipped mouth and a sharp short line like an exclamation point between two black eyebrows. From under those eyebrows burned two green eyes so sharp and bright they seemed to stop in his tracks anyone who met that green gaze.

“Lillibulero!” said Dr. Hoenig. “What’re you doing here?”

“Y’might say,” rasped Mr. Lillibulero, “locking the barn door after the horse has been stolen, James.”

“Stolen!” exclaimed Robby’s father. “Stolen? What’s been stolen?”

“That,” said Mr. Lillibulero dryly, “I dinna know, not knowing exactly what y’had on board y’r ship here. But I hardly think it likely y’were broken into by someone merely wishing the exercise o’the job.”

“But there’s nothing aboard but scientific equipment and my notes, and—hmm!” Dr. Hoenig stopped, suddenly thoughtful. “We have some large amounts of drugs and medicines for doctoring the whales that might be valuable. And there’s a spare sonic cannon down in the stores.”

“Then if y’ll check the drugs t’see if any are missing,” said Mr. Lillibulero, “meanwhile, Robertson can be showing me the stores to see if the sonic cannon or anything else has been taken—can y’not, Robertson?”

“Sure!” said Robby. “Come on.”

He leaped for the ladder up which Mr. Lillibulero had just come and went down it in three jumps. He had been half-hoping to move so fast that he would be able to turn around at the bottom and call up to Mr. Lillibulero to come along. But when he actually turned around on the deck below, he found Mr. Lillibulero right behind him.

“Ah, Robertson!” said Mr. Lillibulero, with a frosty twinkle in his green eyes, “it’s good t’see y’can move from place t’place without dragging y’r feet and lagging along the way. Now, where might this sonic cannon be stored?”

Robby led him toward the back of the ship and through the metal door into the storage place. In an ordinary ship it might have been called the hold, and been merely a large open space piled high with boxes of supplies and other things needed on board. But on the Palship X Two, it was a room neatly filled with rows of metal shelving with spaces to walk between the rows. Robby led Mr. Lillibulero to one row, and along it almost to the wall at the back, beyond which was the steam jet engine that drove the Palship X Two. This was a small nuclear engine, a sort of little cousin to the engines of the first atomic-powered submarines like the Polaris.

“I think the cannon’s still there,” said Robby, as they came to the end of the row. “Yes, there it is. See?” He pointed to a large wooden crate about five feet long with blue metal showing between the wooden slats of the crate’s side.

“So I see,” said Mr. Lillibulero. “It was clearly not the cannon y’r visitors were after, then. D’you observe anything else that appears t’be missing?”

Robby looked up and down the rows of shelves between which they were standing.

“No,” he said finally. “I don’t think so. Wait a minute though!”

He bent down and peered over the crated cannon and between the shelves at a spot two rows away.

“No,” he said, “I thought maybe our deep-sea cameras had been taken. But I remember now, Dad’s got them up in the lab.”

“In that case,” said Mr. Lillibulero, “we’ll just search through the whole room, and make certain all’s here.” He led the way back toward the entrance to the room. “I’ll begin wi’the shelves against the wall there, Robertson, and you start on this side of the room. If nothing’s missing, we’ll meet in the middle row. But if you find anything’s missing, y’are to call me."

He bent his bright green gaze on Robby.

“All right,” said Robby.

They split up and took opposite sides of the room. For a few moments they searched in silence, and then Mr. Lillibulero’s voice called through the shelves.

“There’s an empty space here—between some spear guns y’use for underwater fish-hunting and a stack of books.”

“That’s all right!” Robby shouted back quickly. “Those are just some schoolbooks. That part of the shelf was empty anyway.”

There was no immediate answer from Mr. Lillibulero.“You don’t have to worry about that!” called Robby. “Just study books and things!”

“So I observe, Robertson,” floated back the dry voice of Mr. Lillibulero. “ ’Tis most admirable, y’r deep devotion to the study of all these books about the kraken, when y’might be enjoying y’rself instead studying arithmetic or other skills and sciences. I’ll not disturb the books.”

They both went on searching in silence for some moments after that. Then Mr. Lillibulero called over to Robby to ask about an empty space between some oxygen tanks and a welding torch. Robby coldly answered that more oxygen tanks had been stored there, but these were now empty, waiting in the back part of the deck above to be recharged the next time the Palship X Two got supplies.

There was another period of silence. Then . . .

“I found it!” yelped Robby suddenly. “Mr. Lillibulero, come here!” Then, suddenly remembering Mr. Lillibulero would not know where “here” was, he added, “Third row, halfway back. Come quick!”

In a little more than three seconds, Mr. Lillibulero was beside him. Robby pointed to a bottom shelf, empty for a good six feet of length.

“And what was there, laddie?” said Mr. Lillibulero.

“That’s what I don’t understand,” said Robby. “There were a couple of hundred Control Caps for the whales stored there. What would anyone want Control Caps for?”

“It’s barely possible I might answer that question,” said Mr. Lillibulero, “if y’ could inform me what a Control Capis?”

“Oh!” said Robby. He was so used to his father, his mother, and the Salt Water Research Division people knowing all about the caps, that he had forgotten entirely that Mr. Lillibulero might not know. It more than made up for Mr. Lillibulero’s sharp-edged remark about the kraken books.

With only a slight note of superiority in his voice, Robby began an explanation.

“Well,” he said, “you see they’re small electro-radio devices that fasten adhesively to the head of the whale and send weak little electrical signals into certain parts of the whale’s brain. The connections used to be made with electrodes, which had very fine wires which actually went in and touched certain areas of the brain—you understand?”

“Go on,” said Mr. Lillibulero. He was listening very attentively.

“Well, even back in the twentieth century, scientists discovered that certain parts of the brain when stimulated with an electrical current would make an animal feel good, or feel hungry, or feel angry. And as they learned which parts of the brain did what, they began to use the currents to control wild animals, sort of, and even talk to them in a simple sort of way.” Once more, Robby looked at Mr. Lillibulero to see if he was following the explanation.

“Go on, laddie.”

“I mean,” Robby said, “if an animal or a whale did what you wanted it to, you’d send a little electrical signal to the part of his brain that made him feel good. If he tried to bite you, you sent a signal to the ‘fear’ part. And so on.”

“Aye.”

Robby took a deep breath, because it was taking more words to explain than he had thought it would. “The Control Caps send the signals without electrodes or wires—like a little radio station on the whale’s head that sends messages to its brain. The caps work the same way on other animals too. If you have a control box to send the proper signals with and know which signals to send you can make even wild animals do all sorts of things—”

“Aye.” said Mr. Lillibulero, sharply and explosively; and suddenly, the little man had turned and gone.

For a long moment, Robby stood staring at the place where Mr. Lillibulero had stood. Then the sound of feet racing up the ladder amidships, and the rasping voice calling out some-thing to Robby’s father, woke Robby out of his trance. He raced in his turn for the ladder. When he got to the top, he saw Mr. Lillibulero talking to Dr. Hoenig from the door between the Control Room and the ship’s laboratory. There was a concerned look on Dr. Hoenig’s face.

“. . . as the Tropicans weel know,” Mr. Lillibulero was saying when Robby jumped up onto the floor of the Control Room and ran up to the two men.

“Who’re Tropicans?” said Robby. But neither man took time out to answer him.

“Oh, there you are,” said his father. “Pack your toothbrush and a change of underwear in your overnight bag, and put on your Outside Suit. Lillibulero’s taking you to McMurdo with him right now.”

“McMurdo!” cried Robby. He did not in the least want to be shipped off to McMurdo, the early Antarctic base just off the Ross ice shelf that had now grown into a permanent, but rather dull city. He wanted to stay here, where things were just getting interesting. “But why? Why do I have to go to McMurdo?”

“McMurdo,” said his father, “and then home, for you. And because your mother would skin me alive if I let you stay here now that we know it’s dangerous.”

“But we don’t know it’s dangerous!” said Robby. “But—”

“No buts,” said his father flady. “No buts, ifs, ands, wherefores, or otherwises. You go. I’m sorry, Robby,” he added more gently. “I’ll see that you get to come back as soon as it’s safe and have as much time here as you were supposed to have, in the long run. But for now—you go.”

“You’re staying,” said Robby, rebelliously but sadly turning away toward the ship’s bedroom where his overnight case was.

“I’ve got a responsibility to this ship and the whales,” said his father. “Now, jump! Mr. Lillibulero has to get to McMurdo as fast as he can.”

Robby had no choice in the matter. Ten minutes later, without even his books on the kraken, he was sailing westward in Mr. Lillibulero’s ducted fan flyer, fifteen hundred feet above the pack ice on the edge of the Amundsen Sea. After takeoff they flew in silence for about twenty minutes, with Robby brooding on the injustice of the situation. However, he was not the sort of person who is able to brood very long. He found life too interesting.

“Are we almost to McMurdo?” he asked Mr. Lillibulero, who sat at the controls of the flyer, his green eyes watching the ice and water ahead.

“Aye,” said Mr. Lillibulero. “That’s the Ross ice shelf, beginning up there on the horizon. And McMurdo’s just on the far side of it, maybe twenty minutes’ flying time away.”

“By the way,” said Robby, “I asked back on the Palship, but neither you nor Dad told me. Who are Tropicans, anyway?” But the question didn’t get answered this time either. Before Robby could close his mouth on the sentence, Mr. Lillibulero had suddenly slammed the controls of the little flyer hard over, kicked the autopilot into control, and jumped up from his bucket seat. He jerked open a locker in the wall beside him, and jerked out two copter-parachutes. He ripped open the case of one and threw the harness of it around Robby, buckling it tight.

“Fasten y’r helmet down!” he snapped. “We’re being chased by a homing missile with explosive in its nose. When you leave the flyer, guide y’rself down to the pack ice below. Then find a flat open spot where y’can be seen, and stay put until rescued. Y’understand me, Robertson?”

“Y-yes,” said Robby staring at him as the little man’s fingers flew about the harness, fastening it tightly to Robby’s chest and shoulders. “But—you mean I’ve got to get out of the flyer, here?”

“I mean that,” said Mr. Lillibulero. “I mean y’ve got to jump now, laddie. Jump for y’r life!”

Trapped by the Leopard Seal

A copter-parachute had been the device that had landed Mr. Lillibulero at the Point Loma Research Station, back when Robby had first met the little man. Robby himself had never used one before, but he knew all about them.

They were more copter than parachute. When you jumped from a flyer and pulled the release ring, at first a little parachute did pop out at the end of a six-foot line. But this was merely what was called a drag chute. Just like a sea anchor, which is a sort of water parachute dragged behind a boat, its purpose was merely to pull you into line with the direction you were going. The drag chute got your feet down and your head up so that you were falling straight.

Then, the slim, eight-foot blades—all four of them—of the copter part unfolded from the pack and began to whir, driven by a little motor. The motor was not strong enough to let the wearer fly around like a helicopter, but it was enough to slow his falling to about the speed of dandelion fluff dropped from a second-story window on a day without any wind. A couple of handles let him steer himself so that he did not have to fall into someplace like the Antarctic Ocean—as might otherwise have happened in Robby’s case—and possibly be eaten by some nearby killer whale or leopard seal. Instead, he could aim, as Robby did, for a sort of small ice cliff among the great lumps of the pack ice, and land safely on that.

Everything happened so fast, from the moment Mr. Lillibulero jumped up from the flyer’s controls, until the moment of Robby’s landing on the pack ice cliff, that Robby had only a few blurred memories of what actually had taken place. He remembered Mr. Lillibulero making sure Robby knew about the release ring and the steering handles of the copter-chute. He remembered leaving the flyer, and the first jerk of the drag chute as it straightened him out in mid-air. He remembered seeing the pack ice below him, and one monster chunk of it several miles wide, to which he steered in the beginning.

Back the way the flyer had come, a thin trail of gray smoke had lifted from the pack ice and ended in a small black object that came toward the flyer above him at dazzling speed. And he remembered that, a few seconds later, it passed behind his drag chute so that he could no longer see it. Then, almost immediately, there had been the dull sound of an explosion and the black flickers of fragments falling toward the sea and ice. But Robby had seen no sign of another copter-chute or of Mr. Lillibulero.

Now, safely down on the ice himself, Robby looked around him. But the ice and the sky were empty. He saw no sign of anything human or mechanical.

Automatically he unbuckled the harness of the copter-parachute and stepped out of it. There was no point in trying to save the device. It would only be troublesome to carry as he scrambled over the pack ice, which was like a land of mountainous boulders, but was actually composed of huge ice chunks in all shapes and sizes that had broken off the thick crust of ice, a mile deep in some places, which covered the Antarctic continent. These chunks—some of them ice-bergs as big as the state of Connecticut—had floated around for a while, and had finally been frozen together back along the edge of the permanent ice.

It was one of the icebergs that Mr. Lillibulero had told him to find and stay on. Such icebergs had large, flat surfaces, and Robby would show up on such a surface like a black dot on white paper when flyers from McMurdo came searching for him. And come they would—as soon as Robby’s father called to see if he had left on the big intercontinental rocket for Mexico City, Mexico, on his way home to the Point Loma Station. As soon as it was known that Robby and Mr. Lillibulero had failed to arrive at McMurdo, flyers would be searching this area.

So now, Robby stood up on his ice cliff and turned slowly around, trying to locate the wide chunk of ice he had spotted from the air. He saw it after a moment. It was about a quarter of a mile off over the pack ice, which was a good distance to walk and climb, but nothing impossible. All the same, Robby shivered and felt very alone.

The Antarctic pack ice was a big and unfriendly place to be lost in even when a boy knew as much about it as Robby did.

He had a sudden temptation to sit down where he was and curl up in his Outside Suit, which would go on keeping him warm and protected long after he might have perished of hunger and thirst, and simply wait where he was for someone to come and save him. He might, in fact, have done just that, if Mr. Lillibulero’s final orders about finding a flat open space were not still ringing in his ears. Robby had grown up as much in the waters around the Point Loma Station as in the station itself, and the first safety measure that he had learned from his father and mother was: In an emergency, follow the orders of the nearest adult immediately, and without question.

That rule had saved him several times from the danger of sharks, barracuda, and killer whales. Now it was to save him once more.

Robby sat down and slid down off his ice cliff and began to tramp and climb through the wilderness of the lumps and boulders of ice toward the distant flat space.

It was slow going, but not as slow as it might have been,because of one fortunate circumstance. Robby was in a section of the pack ice where relatively large chunks had frozen without being piled tightly together. As a result, there was a sort of floor of flat sea-ice out of which the big, steep-sided chunks poked and loomed. In places this flat area was narrow, but by picking his way, Robby could still wind between the steep ice walls toward his destination. Once in a while he found a chunk with walls he could climb, and by scrambling up on this he could make sure he was still heading toward the flat sheet of ice he had originally seen.

Luckily the copter-chute had not landed him in the free-floating pack ice farther out. There he would have had to swim from ice raft to ice raft, at the risk of becoming the prey of killer whales or leopard seals.

He was just thinking that he must be close to the flat space and was looking for a chunk he could climb to see, when he came out of a narrow alley in the chunk ice. He found himself on a sort of ice beach that sloped smoothly to the black Antarctic sea water winding between walls of chunk ice that rose sharply, three to five feet above the surface. On top of them he noticed the black, three-foot-tall forms of a number of Adelie penguins.

They looked, as the Adelies always look, like fat, small,old men in tail coats. The water below them curved away among the tumbled ice floes to Robby’s right. But at his left it came to an end at a point where again the ice sloped down gradually like a small white beach. He could skirt that area and get around the water.

He was not more than twenty feet from that little beach and just about to get started around it, when three Addlie penguins, swimming strongly, swung into view around the ice comer where the open water wound out of sight. For a moment it looked to Robby as if they were having a race to where the beach was. He stopped to watch.

Then, suddenly, the reason for their hurry appeared on the scene. With a small dark bow-wave cresting just under the high-held chin, the flat, heavy dog-like head of a leopard seal emerged around the comer in pursuit. The surface of the icy water bent down and swirled behind that head above the leopard seal’s heavy, fourteen-foot body. The thin-lipped mouth,holding the sharp canine teeth with the rows of tridentated teeth behind them, was closed. But the cold, hungry eyes stared straight ahead.

As Robby watched, the three escaping penguins reached the three-foot-high vertical edge of the ice where their companions were, ducked momentarily out of sight, and then suddenly shot up again out of the water into the air like small rockets, landing safely on the ice.

Robby felt like applauding. He looked back at the leopard seal to see how that bloodthirsty terror of the penguin rookeries was taking his defeat. Like all of the Phocidae, or “true” seals, the great leopard seal could not climb anything vertical.Many thousands of years ago, when early ancestors of the seals returned to the sea, their back legs had grown together and their feet had fanned out to form a tail, like a fishtail only crosswise instead of up and down the way a fish’s tail is.Therefore, the leopard seal could only wriggle along a flat, or gently sloping, surface with its foreflippers helping. However, Robby remembered, the leopard seal is reported to move very fast in this way when the ice is clear, faster than a man can run.

The reason Robby suddenly remembered this was because when he looked back at the leopard seal, it did not appear unhappy at all at losing the three penguins for its dinner. It was swimming right on past the ice-edge where they had jumped out of the water and heading for the sloping beach up which it could easily climb.

The leopard seal was no longer looking at the penguins. Its eyes were now fixed on Robby.

With a sudden thrill of fear, Robby started to run, just as he saw the leopard seal skid up onto the ice beach. Then the ice chunks and blocks around him hid the scene from his eyes as he hurried as fast as he could between them away from the water.

He was no longer worrying whether he was moving toward the open ice sheet. If the leopard seal should happen to catch up with him, he did not want it to be out where the hungry creature could run him down, to make up for the meal of penguins it had missed.

He scrambled along, running and dodging between the ice blocks that were too high and steep-sided for him to climb. Ina few minutes he was hopelessly lost, and no longer knew whether he was headed away from the water or back toward it. His heart pounded and his Outside Suit, which was so light that ordinarily he did not notice it, began to feel like a suit of heavy armor.

He began to run out of breath. He stopped for a moment at last, in a little open space completely surrounded by straight ice walls, except for the entrance where he had come in, and
a little opening at the top of a slope reaching halfway up one of the opposite walls.

He felt his chest heaving under the Outside Suit. If it had not been for special heating elements he would have fogged the helmet up with his rapid breath long before this. Now that the sound of his running was stilled, he heard his own panting echoing loudly in his ears.

The thought occurred to him that he might by this time have outrun the leopard seal, or lost it among the ice chunks.Perhaps now he was safe and could rest. He turned to look back through the opening in the ice chunks by which he had entered this little area.

A harsh, spitting, hissing bark vibrated in the ear valves of his helmet, and the heavy body of the leopard seal, larger and longer than that of the huge Siberian tiger, slithered in through the opening. Its murderous jaws gaped. Its sword-like canine teeth gleamed.

Robby turned and went flying up the little slope through the small opening at the other end of the space. And stopped. He was in a pocket of ice. Walls as high and hard to climb as the walls of his own living room at home surrounded him. There was no escape.

He jerked around. There was still one hope. It was that the leopard seal could not climb up the slope that led to this place. But there was a slithering noise on the ice outside, and a second later the big, slick dog-like head poked into view over the edge of the pocket.

It stopped. It stared at Robby. And suddenly a deep, harsh,but definitely human voice sounded in the little ice pocket.

“There you are, Boy!” it said. “You can’t slip away from me this time. I’ve got you now.”

Prisoner of the Tropicans

Robby stared. The leopard seal’s motionless head stared back. And then Robby noticed something.

He had not stopped to look closely at the big carnivore before. But now he had no choice. And he saw under and behind the head a sort of belt or strap around the leopard seal’s neck. Attached to the belt and under the chin of the seal was a small box that looked like a combination television camera, transmitter, and receiver—water-transceivers, his father called them—which the Salt Water Research people sometimes put on killer whales and seals in order to observe them when they were turned loose again. Then the leopard seal lowered its head a little, and Robby caught sight of a Control Cap just like the ones that had been stolen from the Palship X Two. It was attached to the belt behind the seal’s neck,pressing against the back of its skull.

Robby was still too scared to talk or move. The transceiver on the collar beneath the seal’s jaw spoke again.

“All right, all right,” it said, a little impatiently. “Cerberus here won’t hurt you. Will you, Cerberus?”

As the words came from the transceiver, the leopard seal suddenly ducked its head as if something invisible had clubbed it. It was exactly the reaction Robby had seen in creatures wearing Control Caps when someone inexperienced had stimulated too strong and sudden a feeling of fear in the creature. It was a small thing to recognize, but it had the effect of abruptly raising Robby’s spirits. He had been feeling as fear-stricken and helpless as a person could feel, but now he knew that whoever was on the other end of that transceiver knew less about Control Caps than he did. And this gave Robby hope.

“Back, Cerberus!” ordered the voice from the transceiver. The huge seal ducked his head again, this time not as if he had just been hit, but as if he were expecting a blow. Fierce he certainly was, perhaps as ferocious as the mythological monster from which he got his name, the three-headed dog supposed to guard the entrance to the underworld of the ancient Greeks. But the voice seemed to have this Cerberus under control. Hastily, his head disappeared from view and Robby heard him slithering back down the icy slope outside the enclosed area.

“Come on, Boy!” called the voice from the transceiver. “I sent Cerberus after you to bring you back here where you’ll be safe. Follow him! Do as I tell you!”

Automatically, Robby walked forward. There was nothing else to do. The big seal was waiting at the foot of the slope,and as Robby appeared, he bowed his head and turned around.

“That’s right. That’s right!” said the voice. “Just follow Cerberus.”

Robby slid down the slope after the seal, who now had started toward the entrance to the larger, ice-walled space.The copper-colored Control Cap, clinging like a skullcap to the back of Cerberus’s head, winked in the Antarctic sun. The sun was fairly low in the sky, but at this season of the year it would not be setting. It would simply come close to thehorizon and then climb back up. This was the South Polearea’s season of the midnight sun.

With Robby trailing him, the seal turned and slithered and skidded between chunks and walls of ice. It looked as if traveling this way was no pleasure to a naturally sea-living creature. Once or twice the great seal barked in a strange fashion, and Robby thought he could almost detect a sad,weary note in Cerberus’s voice. But he kept on, and Robby followed him. And after quite a distance they came to what seemed to be the base of a large, thick sheet of ice—perhaps the very sheet of ice toward the level top of which Robby had been heading when he encountered the penguins and Cerberus.

The base was fifty or sixty feet high, and made a sheer,bluish-white wall that seemed to loom over them as they wound along it. Robby could not help shrinking a little inside himself at the thought of part of that wall suddenly breaking off as glaciers break off from the land ice—his father had spoken of glaciers “calving” when that happens—and falling down on him and the big leopard seal.

But, no such thing happened. After a little while, they came around a sudden comer in the ice wall, and discovered a crack running back through the ice sheet. The crack was a good hundred feet wide where they were, and in the middle of it there was open water, full of floating chunks of ice no bigger than a small house. As the crack went back into the ice sheet, it narrowed, and the open water narrowed, too. But it seemed to go as far back as Robby could see.

Now, with a bark that sounded as if it was a mixture of relief and sadness, the great seal slipped into the water and started swimming alongside the ice, pausing from moment to moment to look back and see if Robby was following. Robby went slowly and carefully along the shelf of ice between the open water and the great high wall of the crack, on his left.As Robby and the seal went, the towering walls drew together until they seemed to join at the top. Only a little light filtered through, and the ice of the walls became a beautiful blue,ranging from the clear delicate colors of the star sapphire to the pure darkness of the blue sapphire, almost to the purple-blue of the quartz amethyst. It was like being in the heart ofsome precious gem as big as a mountain.

At last they came to a point where the open water was so narrow Robby could have jumped across it. Here Cerberus stopped and turned to face Robby, who also stopped.

“Now, Boy!” said the voice from the transceiver. “That suit of yours will protect you, so you don’t have to worry. Let yourself down into the water and take hold of Cerberus’s collar. He’s going to have to tow you down under the water for a little way. But you’ll be quite safe. Don’t be afraid.”

“I’m not afraid,” said Robby disgustedly. He was rapidlylosing whatever fear he had had of the voice from the transceiver. “I’m used to being under water.”

“I hope so. I hope so,” said the voice. “All right. Don’t waste my time now.”

Robby sat down on the edge of the ice and lowered himself into the water. Because of his suit, he felt no difference from being out in the air, except that now the water buoyed him up. He swam a single stroke that brought him to where Cerberus’s great head was lifted out of the water, watching him. He took hold of the seal’s collar, and as he did he looked directly into the big, dark seal eyes. They looked back into his sadly and savagely, and he was suddenly aware of tears seeping out of them into the coarse hairs of the rough fur lying flat on the broad muzzle.

For a moment he was startled by the thought that the big,predatory seal was actually crying. Then he remembered what he had learned a long time ago about the “true” seals of which the leopard seal is one—how their eyes often water when they are out in the air to protect their vision. So the tears of the leopard seal were like the smile of the killer whale and the other dolphins, something built-in by nature and not necessarily reflecting their feelings.

All the same, there was something tragic about Cerberus to someone like Robby who had grown up among the creatures of the sea. It was the tragedy of any free creature roped or harnessed or forced to do things against its own will. Balthasar, Robby’s Risso’s dolphin back at Point Loma, was Robby’s pet and companion because he wanted to be. He was free to swim off, but he chose not to do so.

It was not so with Cerberus. His jaws were the jaws of a hunter. His eyes were wild, untamed eyes without pity. His gaze was the gaze of death for even the big, five-foot emperor penguins and for the Ross, the Weddell, and the crab-eater seals—anything less than the killer whale, who in turn hunted Cerberus and his brothers. But it was a free, savage, proud gaze, that did not belong in slavery.

Now, as if at a signal, Cerberus ducked his head under the surface and swam down through the water, trailing Robby along with him. In the dimly lit waters, Robby could barely make out the ice walls of the crevasse like dark shadows on each side of them. For a moment it seemed that the walls were closing in and that they would be caught between them.Then, suddenly, they were in open water below the ice entirely.

Cerberus turned off at an angle, swimming level now. Only somebody as used to being under water as Robby could have known that they were not going still deeper. But by the“feel” of the water against his suit and the pressure of the air in his helmet, he knew that their depth under the surface was staying about the same.

All at once the darkness before them seemed to blossom with light. They had come around some dark body, and before Robby’s eyes was a brightly lit underwater, floating structure—whether ship or station, he could not tell. The light dazzled his eyes, and before they had time to adjust, he found himself towed through some sort of an air lock and his feet struck an underwater floor. He stood up, still blinking against the unexpected light, and waded forward out of what seemed to be a small air-locked pool.

Then his eyes adjusted to the light. He found himself at the beginning of a long corridor with transparent floor, ceiling,walls, and doors, through which he could look in all directions. He could see that there was one floor above and one below, and only now and then was there an opaque wall so that he could not see what lay beyond. There were rooms like living rooms, only bigger; rooms like offices full of desks;rooms full of plants; and still other rooms full of laboratory equipment or machinery.

Just then two huge men muscled like heavyweight wrestlers stepped out of a door and stood in front of him in the corridor. They wore neither shoes nor shirts; only wrap-around kilts or skirts of brightly flower-patterned cloth in theP olynesian fashion of the South Pacific Ocean islands. The two men had open, smiling, good-looking faces. They were both young. And they looked exactly alike.

“Are you all right?” asked the one on the left. “You can open your helmet, if you want. You won’t have to do anymore swimming.”

Robby put his helmet back.

“I want to call my father, Dr. James Hoenig. He’s on the Palship X Two,” he said.

“I’m sorry,” said the one on the right. He looked unhappy. “You can’t do that just yet. You’ll have to see the Director first.”

“Why?” said Robby.

“He said to bring you to him,” said the one on the left.

“Right away. Bring him right away!” snapped the transceiver behind Robby. He turned around to see that Cerberus had followed him out of the pool. “And introduce yourselves. Reassure the boy.”

Robby looked back at the two big men.

“I’m Dick,” said the one on the left. “This is my twin brother, Harvey.”

“We’re Tropicans,” said the one on the right. “Members of the great Tropican Movement. This is Tropican Underseas Headquarters Number One.”

“What’re Tropicans?” said Robby for the third time that day. The twin brothers looked at each other.

“Well ...” said Dick.

“I don’t know if we ought to—” said Harvey, uneasily glancing at the transceiver.

“We’d better take you to the Director,” said Dick. “Come on. He’ll explain.”

They started off down the corridor. Robby caught up and walked between them. He could hear Cerberus slithering after them.

“What’s his name?” Robby asked. “The Director?”

“His name,” said Dick—at least Robby thought the one on the left was Dick, if they had not switched places when he had turned around to look at Cerberus. There was no other way but position to tell the two brothers apart—“his name is—”

“Brownlee Patterson Waub!” crackled the transceiver behind them. “Of the Waub Magnetic Clothes-Fastener—if you know anything about inventions, Boy. Come on now. Hurry on!”

They hurried. They turned right off the main corridor and went down a flight of stairs. Then they went straight along a shorter corridor to a door that was not transparent at all but seemed to be made of heavy, beautifully polished oak. It swung open as Robby reached it.

“Come in, Boy!” snapped the transceiver behind them. “Dick, Harvey, I won’t need you for anything more right now. Come in, Boy!”

Robby walked through the door, hearing Cerberus follow him. He found himself in a luxurious living room with a desk at which nobody at all was sitting and a number of ordinary armchairs that were dwarfed by one special overstuffed arm-chair almost as big as a sofa.

In the armchair sat the fattest man Robby had ever seen.

He was wearing the same sort of flowered cloth kilt that the twins had worn, but his was as big as a blanket and above it he wore a kind of short, fancy vest that covered his chest but left his arms free. His face was as round as the sun, and would have been just as cheerful if it had not been for a pucker of worry between his eyebrows and a frown line graven deep in his forehead above the pucker and below reddish-blond hair. Behind him, on the wall of the room at right angles to the transparent wall that looked out into the water of the Antarctic Ocean (just as Robby’s bedroom at the Point Loma Station looked out under water), was a big oil painting of a man. The man in the painting looked as if he might be a relative of Brownlee Patterson Waub except that he was as skinny as Waub was fat. The eyes of the painting and the eyes of the Director were the same. They were blue eyes, innocent and sparkling with wild enthusiasm at the same time.

“Well, Boy!” said Brownlee Patterson Waub, “you see me as I am now and as I was in that picture before I invented the Waub Magnetic Clothes-Fastener. Without the invention of the fastener, I would probably still look the way I do in that picture. And you would not be here now in Tropican Headquarters Number One, where I’m going to have to keep you a prisoner.”

Gondwanaland Will Live Again

Robby stared at the fat man.

“You can’t keep me a prisoner!” he burst out. “My father and the police will come looking for me. If you keep me here, that’s kidnapping. It’s against the law!”

“Now, now,” said the Director. He was too heavy to squirm in his chair, but he managed to ripple uncomfortably. “Now, now, it’s just for a little while.”

“I don’t care!” shouted Robby. “You can’t keep people prisoner. You’ll be arrested. You’ve got to call my father and have him come get me!”

“I can’t,” said Brownlee Patterson Waub. “I’m sorry, but I can’t.”

He did look sorry. And there was something regretful but definite about the way he said it that stopped Robby suddenly from saying anything further.

“I’ll have you treated just as well as we can here,” said Waub. “But I and the other Tropican Movement members with me here at Headquarters are finally on the verge of changing the whole world for the better. If we called your father, or delivered you safely to some place like McMurdo, shortsighted people who don’t realize how important our work is would find our Headquarters and stop us from the great work we’re about to do.”

“You should’ve left me on the ice then,” said Robby, “so they could have rescued me!”

“But what if they hadn’t?” asked Waub. “You might have died, and it would have been our responsibility.”

“Why?” asked Robby.

“Because,” replied Waub sadly, “we’re the ones who shot down the flyer you were riding in.” He sighed again. “Believe me, I hate to do things like that. But our work is so important that we can’t take chances. One day, Boy, you will be proud to tell your children how you were present at the rebirth of Gondwanaland.”

Robby stared at the fat man. The last word had sounded vaguely familiar, but he could not remember where he had learned it.

“Gondwanaland?” he said.

“Gondwanaland!” repeated the fat man, his blue eyes lighting up. “The paradise of the past, brought to life once more. Trees and flowers and singing birds here at the South Pole where the ice now lies piled two miles deep. And over the rest of the earth, everywhere warm sunshine, blooming plants, and summer the year around.”

Robby sat down on one of the armchairs. He was tired from all the walking and scrambling over the pack ice, and he felt he had waited long enough for the Tropican Director to invite him to take a seat. His first wild feeling of alarm at being told he was a prisoner was beginning to fade before the tiredness and hunger inside him. He wanted a sandwich, a cold glass of milk, and a short nap. After which, he thought,he would find some way of getting to a phone, and calling his father.

“That is why”—Waub was still talking—“we work so hard. Our aim is to turn earth into a tropical paradise. You see where our name comes from—Tropicans. And all because of the Waub Magnetic Fastener.”

The last statement was such an odd one it woke Robby up from the doze he had been starting to slide into.

“Fastener?” he said. Then he remembered the magnetic strips that replaced zippers on his Outside Suit.

“Yes,” said Waub. “Before the fastener, I was no different from a hundred, or a thousand, other starving inventors.Then one day I happened to be in a library looking up the word ‘gonfalon’ to see if it had been used as a trade name for a patented article. Directly in front of the cards labeled ‘gonfalon,’ I found cards for books and articles on Gondwanaland. ’ ’

He looked at Robby.

“The name caught my eye, and I began reading one of the books. After a page or so, I couldn’t put it down. I realized then that here was the goal I had been dreaming of all my life—to do some big work like bringing Gondwanaland back to the world. It inspired me. Two months later I invented theWaub Magnetic Clothes-Fastener, and I was rich.”

Robby yawned, but covered his mouth in time with hishand. The fat man, wrapped up in his dream, did not notice.

“I resolved,” he went on, “to devote all my money and the rest of my life to bringing South America, Africa, Australia, India, and all the other parts of Gondwanaland back into one continent again.”

Robby’s eyes flew wide open.

“Together?” he said. “Bring South America and Africa together?”

“And Australia,” said Waub. “As they once were. You don’t believe me. Look at the map on the wall there. No, not the wall with my portrait on it—the other wall.”

Robby turned around and looked behind his chair. On a big wall map he saw a strange sort of continent made up of four pieces. One of the pieces had the shape of South America,and the bulge that was Brazil fitted into the indentation of West Africa. Antarctica was up against the east side of Africa, and the Wilkes’ Land bulge of the Antarctic Continent fitted into the shallow hole of the Great Australian Bight in the side of Australia that was now turned to the south.

In fact, the four big chunks of land in the south part of our world were fitted together like a jigsaw puzzle to make one monstrous continent. On it, the South Pole was not, as now,in the middle of Antarctica, but off on one edge.

“Gondwanaland,” said the fat man, blissfully, “as it existed over a thousand million years ago. And as I will make it exist again.”

But Robby has just remembered why the name Gondwanaland sounded familiar. He had overheard his father talking about it with a geologist friend just before Dr. Hoenig and Robby had come down here to Antarctica.

“But that’s all just a theory!” cried Robby. “The name of it even comes from some place in India. Somebody just suggested it over a hundred or a hundred and fifty years ago—”

“Eduard Suess,” said Waub. “A great nineteenth-century geologist.”

“But nobody’s proved it—” began Robby.

“Proved it? Hah!” said the Director of the Tropicans, managing to sit up straight in his chair in his excitement. “Have they not proved it? No, of course they haven’t. And there’s plenty of proof. We know there are fossil trees and creatures and plants millions of years old, here in Antarctica. And coal—which means great forests once existed here!”

“Yes,” said Robby. “But—”

“But! But!” said Waub, waving his fat hands in the air. “Plants and animals and forests—right where there’s a layer of ice two miles thick, now. Could the ice have been there when the plants were there? Of course not. Could the South Pole have been where it is now? Could the continents have been where they are now? Of course not.”

He almost glared at Robby.

“You have to keep an open mind about such things.Gondwanaland was here, then. The South Pole was in a different place. And the whole earth was like one tropical land where oranges grew from the South to the North Pole.”

He sank back into his chair.

“Look at the continents—the way they fit together,” he puffed. “Rock layers on land separated by thousands of miles of ocean fit together. Fossils match.”

He fumbled on a little table beside him and picked up a small oblong object with buttons and dials, about the size of a transistor radio. Behind Robby, Cerberus gave a sharp, involuntary bark.

“Not that!” Waub grumbled. For a second his voice sounded also from Cerberus’s transceiver. He dropped the device, which Robby recognized as a Control Box—no doubt the one for the transceiver and cap Cerberus was wearing—and picked up another small device with buttons, He pushed one. “You shouldn’t upset me like that, Boy! I’m not supposed to be upset. Doctor’s orders. ‘Not proved!’” He broke off suddenly as a small voice spoke from the object he was holding. “Dick, Harvey, come get this boy and lock him up in one of the bedrooms. ‘Not proved!' You’ll see it proved when I set off the bombs that will blow up the Ross ice shelf and the permanent pack ice and start the ice melting all around the South Pole! Once started, it’ll melt all the way and the continents’ll drift back together again. It’ll be Gondwanaland again, and the world will be a tropical paradise—oh, there you are, Dick!”

“I’m Harvey,” said the big man who had just entered the room.

“Harvey, then,” said Waub, “take this boy, feed him, and find him a place to sleep. And lock him in. Leave Cerberus to guard him. You’d better pick one of the bedrooms with a pool and a water lock to the ocean outside.”

Robby stood up. He was not at all unhappy to hear about food and bed. He looked keenly at the Cap Control Box Waub had picked up first. He wondered if he could find one like it. If he could—a yawn came to interrupt him, and he barely got his hand up over his mouth in time.

“You think over what I’ve said, Boy!” muttered the Director of the Tropicans. “I don’t mean to be angry with you. No—no. But I won’t have anyone around me who doesn’t have an open mind about Gondwanaland. Maybe you can come back when you’ve learned not to argue so much. Take him away, Harvey.”

“This way,” said Harvey to Robby, in a friendly voice,and led him out the door, with Cerberus slithering along in the rear. Robby heard the big oak door close behind him,cutting off the voice of the Director of the Tropicans, who was still muttering to himself in outrage at Robby’s refusal to believe in Gondwanaland, and the tropical paradise that would result from its return.

“Is he . . .” mumbled Robby, half-asleep in spite of himself. But the end of the question was lost before he could get it out of his mouth.

“You’d better be careful how you talk to the Director,” he thought he heard Harvey’s voice say from a long way off as the man guided him down the corridor. “We’re all here to bring Gondwanaland back to life. And there’s only twenty-four hours more to go before we do.”

For some reason, Robby thought sleepily, he should be very frightened by what Harvey had just said. But just then he was too close to the dark mists of slumber to figure it all out.

Song of Mr. Lillibulero

He woke with a start some hours later, with Harvey’s last words ringing in his ears. He sat up in the dark and peered around him, wide awake all at once, and trying to see where he was. He had suddenly remembered, dreaming, why Harvey’s words about twenty-four hours before the Tropicans brought Gondwanaland back to life should have frightened him. And his dreams had put the understanding into pictures.

In his dream, he had seen Brownlee Patterson Waub pulling a large red lever, inside a closet in his room. Then, in a flash, Robby had been watching from above in the air as the pack ice around the Antarctic coast and the whole Ross ice shelf went up in a sheet of flame. And abruptly, where all that ice had been, there was a tremendous tidal wave curling over and bearing down on the Palship X Two, as his father tried in vain to outrun the wave.

Just before the Palship had been buried under all that water,Robby had awakened. Now he sat upright and tried to see in what kind of a place he had been put.

He was in a bed, and a dimness that was not a complete blackness surrounded him. It was the dimness of the Antarctic underwater with the great mass of the floating ice above him hiding the sunlight. Robby could just barely make out that he was in a good-sized room with the flat darkness that must be the surface of the pool Waub had mentioned covering the floor at the other end. Shapes of furniture bulked here and there nearby, and there was the faintly seen outline of a small bedside table.

He reached out to the tabletop, found a row of buttons there, and pushed the first one.

Light sprang on all over the room. He sat there blinded and blinking in the unexpected brightness.

The room was, as he had suspected, a large one. The wall farthest away from him was transparent, letting in the fain dim light of underwater when the artificial light was turned off. As he had thought, a pool filled a full third of the room and touched the transparent wall. A water lock bulged beyond the wall, so that it would be possible to swim from the pool to the ocean outside, or vice versa.

As he watched, the still surface of the pool broke and Cerberus raised his head to look at the bed and Robby.

Robby looked around at the rest of the room. On a round coffee table not far from the bed was a silver tray. And on the silver tray was a bowl of soup, two sandwiches stacked on top of each other, and cut diagonally down through the center, and a pint bottle of milk.

Robby got out of the bed, discovered that he was still wearing his usual slacks and tee shirt. His Outside Suit had been taken off and laid on a chair. In his stocking feet he padded over to the coffee table and sat down in the chair before it.

He picked up one of the sandwich halves and bit into it. It was a cheese sandwich and the bread had got rather dry while he slept, but just then it tasted good. He opened the bottle of milk and drank some. It was warm, but it tasted better than the sandwich. The soup, of course, was cold. But by the time Robby finished the sandwiches and the milk he was still hungry, so he tasted that, too. It was tomato soup, which is not at its best cooled down, but Robby surprised himself by eating it quickly.

With something inside him, he began to feel better. His mind started to work. He got up and went over and tried the door to the corridor. It was locked. Then he discovered that there was a bathroom attached to the room he was in and he went in there to splash cold water on his face and bring himself wide awake.

The water worked. When he came out again, he was thinking of several things he had been too sleepy to pay attention to when Tropican Director Waub had been talking to him. The first thing was that Waub had admitted that Tropicans had shot down Mr. Lillibulero’s flyer. If that was so, then they were the ones who had taken the Control Caps, too. Mr. Lillibulero must have been after them from the start and that was how he happened to be on the scene when Robby and his father found that the Palship had been broken into.

Then, Waub had mentioned blowing up the pack ice of the Antarctic and the Ross ice shelf. He had been very angry and excited at the time and perhaps he had not intended to let that slip out. But he had meant it—and it was almost as enormous a statement as someone saying he would blow up the ice of the whole frozen North Pole area. The Ross ice shelf alone, Robby knew, was as big in area as the country of France.

Blowing up something that large could only be done with nuclear explosives. Nowadays these were made only in very small sizes for commercial use such as mining and harbor construction, in packages that could be carried in one hand. It would take a tremendous number of these packages to blowup all the Antarctic pack ice.

The third thing that Robby now suddenly remembered was that the twin, Harvey, who had led him away from Director Waub’s room, had said something about Gondwanaland being brought back to life in the next twenty-four hours. If that meant the Tropicans were planning to blow up, and actually could blow up and thereby melt all that ice by that time, then maybe Robby’s nightmare about the tidal wave crashing down on his father in the Palship was not too far from becoming real.

Robby began to feel scared and helpless once more but he fought the feeling down. Don’t waste valuable time feeling sorry for yourself, he could almost hear his father saying, as he was in the habit of repeating whenever some project of Robby’s went wrong, or something Robby was building fell apart. Do something!

Robby looked at the pool. A thought occurred to him. He went over to his Outside Suit and climbed into it. When he had it firmly on and the helmet sealed tight over his head, he walked into the pool. The bottom sloped steadily until the water was over his head. Cerberus, who had been down under the pool’s surface on some investigation of his own, swam over to see what Robby was doing. Under the water he looked enormous.

He made no objection, however, as Robby examined the water lock. This was simply a small room with two doors.You opened the inner door, went into the small room, closed the first door behind you to seal in the water and air behind,and then opened the outer door.

Robby tried it, shutting the inner door before Cerberus could follow him into the small room. The outer door was not locked. He found he could open it easily the moment the inner door was safely sealed and closed. He remembered how Director Waub had expected a boy like Robby to be frightened of being towed by Cerberus down under the water. It had never occurred to Waub, evidently, that Robby would try the water lock as a way of escape.

Now, he swam free out into the dark Antarctic waters below the pack ice. But there, his courage failed him. And he turned back.

No one could blame him. It was true Robby had spent most of his free time in and under the waters around the Point Loma Station since he was old enough to wear a swimming mask. But it was a far cry from those sunlit waters with the friendly bottom less than fifty feet below, and in plain sight,to this murky darkness under the ice roamed by killer whales and leopard seals, like Cerberus but uncontrolled by caps, in which he had no way of knowing where he was going or what might be chasing after him.

Heavy-hearted, desperate, Robby swam back into the water lock, closed the outside door, and opened the inner one. Cerberus nosed curiously at him, but he ignored the great seal and made his way back up out of the water and sat down at its shallow edge, discouraged, with his feet lapped by the water and no hope in his heart.

Fat Director Waub had been right. There was no escape out the water lock for a thirteen-year-old boy, no matter how much at home he was in the sea.

Robby sat there, feeling more alone than he had ever felt in his life. Suddenly a heavy weight settled down across the toes of the boots of his Outside Suit.

He looked down to see what the weight could be, and blinked. Cerberus had come up to the shallow end of the pool and laid his great dog-like head upon Robby’s feet. His dark seal-eyes stared up into Robby’s, and they were the eyes of every animal who had ever come to love and trust a human being.

It was a miracle, but then perhaps it was not so much of a miracle after all, if you take for granted the much repeated miracle of affection between human and animal. There were reasons behind Cerberus coming as he did now to offer his friendship to Robby.

The first of these was his intelligence. The seals do not have the highly developed brains of the whales and the dolphins. But below this level they are among the brightest,and very possibly the most bright, of the animal kingdom.It is true that in his ordinary wild way of life in the ice pack it was his great strength and savage courage that Cerberus depended on the most. But the intelligence was there, and he was quick to recognize situations and under-stand them.

For many centuries man had believed that the only animals he could really tame were those who could be made dependent on him, like the dog, the cat, the ox, and the mule. He had believed that the wild animals, and especially the great carnivores like the timber wolf and the African lion, could never be safely known by human beings unless these beasts were safely penned behind the bars of a cage.

Then, gradually, stories began to come from people who had made friends with the great carnivores without trying to cage them first. And, here and there, it was begun to be understood that each animal is an individual in its own right.Some will respond to affection, as some people will respond to affection, more quickly than others. The most important thing is that people do not try to make toys or playthings out of them. For the great carnivores are not built to be dominated by force and if man tries to so dominate them, they will always look on him as an enemy to their teeth and claws. But if they come to understand affection and friendship, even these wild and powerful beasts will sometimes come of their own free will—as the lion has been known to do and as Cerberus did now—and lay their head in trust and affection on the feet of a human being.

What exact thing or things had brought Cerberus to do this, was something it was impossible for Robby to tell. Certainly,for some time now the leopard seal had been held in the power of the Control Cap, made to come and go, stop and wait, by harsh signals to his brain sent by the unskilled hands of Director Waub. Perhaps this had made the big seal helpless and unhappy for the first time in his life, and as a result, he was receptive to kindness. Robby’s long experience in handling his dolphin, Balthasar, and other sea and land animals had perhaps made his touch different from most people’s. So that when Robby took hold of the seal’s collar to be towed down under water to Tropican Headquarters Number One, Cerberus had recognized that here was a kind person, the first potential friend he had met since he had been made the slave of Waub.

Now, neither he nor Robby was alone in this underwater fortress and prison any longer.

The effect was electrifying upon both of them.

Robby’s first reaction was to do something about the Control Cap fastened to the back of Cerberus’s collar and pressing against his head. He bent over with the seal’s head in his lap to examine it.

It was, as he had almost expected, stamped with the name and number of the Salt Water Research Division. It could not be one of the Caps stolen from the Palship X Two, because Cerberus had evidently been wearing it for some time. Therefore it must have been one stolen from some other ship or warehouse at an earlier date.

However, this Control Cap was like the ones Robby was familiar with, and which he had been going to write his school paper on. They were made in two attached parts. One part was like a radio receiver that received the signals transmitted by Waub’s Control Box. The other was a little transmitting device which relayed electrical impulses set off by the signals directly into the proper area of the seal’s brain. In this way, if Waub pressed his controls for the signal “Stop,” almost immediately inside Cerberus’s head the big seal felt a sudden alarm, as if he stood on the edge of an ice floe above water in which a hungry killer whale had just shown his raking back fin, black as a pirate’s sail.

That was all there was to the cap—the really delicate and intricate machinery was in the transmitter in Waub’s hands.But the Control Cap did have a little plate that could be removed, so that the power of the impulses it received could be set stronger or weaker.

Now Robby, with experienced fingers, unscrewed the plate and quickly set these controls down to the very minimum.Then he replaced the plate. It was not much to do in return for Cerberus’s offer of friendship, but it would at least tone down the hard signals that had been making the big seal flinch and duck.

Then he reached down under the powerful jaws and gave the transceiver a half-turn in its mountings on the collar. Now the camera part of it pointed not straight ahead, but down at Cerberus’s hairy throat and chest. Waub would not be able to see what was going on until he got the transceiver turned straight forward again.

“Now, Cerberus,” said Robby patting the big head. “Let’s see if we can’t figure out something to do before they find out I’ve adjusted your equipment.” A thought was beginning to take shape in Robby’s mind that filled him with hope.

He had turned back from facing the dark waters outside alone. But, if he had Cerberus with him, things might be entirely different. For one thing, used as he was to having someone like Balthasar, his dolphin, with him, he would be a lot braver in Cerberus’s company. For another, Cerberus with his knowledge and instincts would know how to find an opening in the pack ice where they could crawl out, and would also sense if any enemy came toward them. Moreover, Cerberus could tow Robby many times faster than Robby himself could swim.

“What we could do—” Robby was murmuring to Cerberus,when a distant sound of voices and of running feet approaching the hall outside the locked door of his room made him look up.

He scrambled to his feet. As he did so, the running feet stopped at the door. The lock of the door clicked back. The door flew open and the two twins, Harvey and Dick, burst into the room, carrying heavy revolvers in their hands.

“What’s going on?” cried Harvey—or it may have been Dick—as they bore down on Robby. “The Director thought the seal had eaten you, or some—”

He broke off, and they both stopped, staring at Cerberus.The seal still lay in the shallows, his head uplifted on his long neck to stare at the humans. In that position, the transceiver under his neck was plain to see.

“How’d that get turned around?” asked one of the twins,as they both converged on Robby. Their faces were not as friendly as they had been before. “If you think you can—”

He broke off. He and the other twin wheeled about simultaneously. The door behind them was still standing half open.And through that opening came the quiet melody of a voice,softly singing, as it came closer and closer.

And the voice was one that Robby had practically given up hope of ever hearing again. It sang:

“Lilli-bu-ler, ler-o, ler-o,“Lilli-bu-ler, ler-o...”

Escape to the Pack Ice

Just then the song ceased, and the singer appeared in the open doorway.

“Mr. Lillibulero!” cried Robby.

“Ah, there, Robertson,” replied the little man coolly. He was still wearing his Outside Suit, as Robby was, but Mr. Lillibulero had tipped his helmet back and locked it in position out of his way. His gun and knife were missing from his belt, but he did not seem at all disturbed by this fact, or by the guns in the big hands of Harvey and Dick. He came into the room, politely but firmly closing the door behind him.

“Mr. Lillibulero?” echoed either Harvey or Dick now. “That can’t be Lillibulero, the International Police Agent?” He looked at his twin brother.

“Certainly not,” said the other twin. “Lillibulero couldn’t have got in here without our alarms going off.”

“Besides,” said the first, “we shot him down in his flyer.”

“And this fellow’s too small,” said the second.

“And weak,” said the first.

“He couldn’t be Lillibulero, not according to the stories they tell about him,” said the second. “It must be some crazy little man pretending to be Lillibulero. Let’s grab him.”

They both grabbed at Mr. Lillibulero. Robby, who had seen the little man in action against half a dozen Vandals at once, could have told them grabbing him would not work.

The gun-free hands they grabbed with met empty air. Mr.Lillibulero simply was not there when the hands arrived.

Instead he was behind one of the twins, twisting one arm up behind his back.

“Ow!” cried Harvey—or it may have been Dick—dropping the revolver from the hand attached to the twisted arm. Mr. Lillibulero promptly kicked the gun into the pool, where Cerberus bent his neck to look curiously at it under the water.

“OOoof!” grunted Dick—or it may have been Harvey—as his twin brother, shoved forward by Mr. Lillibulero, rammed his head into Dick’s stomach. Dick also dropped his gun. Mr. Lillibulero kicked that gun into the pool too, leapfrogged over the falling Harvey, got a head-and-shoulder hold on Dick,threw Dick against a wall, turned around and, taking his time,knocked Harvey out with a beautiful left hook to the jaw. The twins lay still. Dick against the wall, Harvey in the middle of the floor.

—Or vice versa.

“Mr. Lillibulero!” shouted Robby with joy and excitement, almost ready to take a hand in the battle himself.

“Laddie,” said Mr. Lillibulero, turning to him. “My apologies for y’r being here, and for my not arriving before this moment. But m’duty to some thousands of other lives kept me busy until th’ present second.”

He looked over at Cerberus, where the big seal’s head stuck up out of the pool, watching them.

“There’s no time t’lose,” he said. “We’d best go out through the water lock of yon pool, if I can figure some way to prevent y’r watchdog there from stopping us leaving.”

“But he’s not a watchdog!” said Robby. “I’ve made friends with him. He’s on our side!”

“Indeed?” said Mr. Lillibulero, raising one eyebrow skeptically and bending a hard emerald stare upon Cerberus, a stare the seal returned with perfect calm and composure.

“See?” said Robby. He turned and splashed through the pool to the seal’s side. He put an arm around the thick neck and Cerberus swung his head in friendly fashion against Robby, almost knocking him over.

“Indeed,” said Mr. Lillibulero. His eyebrow came down.“ ’Tis not the sort of happening normally t’be expected. How-ever, I’m not th’ man t’look suspiciously at any help we can get. How can y’be sure, however, these Tropicans canna control the beast and turn him against you?”

“I turned down the controls on his Control Cap,” said Robby.

“Why that?” said Mr. Lillibulero. “Why not remove th’Cap entirely?”

“I thought . . .” said Robby a little uncertainly, “I might be able to get hold of a Control Box. Then I could send him with a message to McMurdo, or someplace.”

“Indeed!” said Mr. Lillibulero. “I may just be able to help you t’acquire such a box. But for now, and if y’ll bring the beast along, we’d best be going.”

With that, he flipped his helmet forward over his head, sealed it tightly against the water pressure, and walked forward into the deep waters of the pool. Robby followed his example, and a second later, they both emerged into the dark Antarctic Sea, with Cerberus following.

Mr. Lillibulero turned right and swam up around the curving side of the Tropican Headquarters Number One. He paused for a moment to let Robby swim up beside him, and put his helmet against Robby’s. Robby saw the little man’s lips move and heard his voice thinly carried through the two touching transparent walls of the helmets. They were talking together the way divers in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries with their old-fashioned metal helmets had talked together under water, particularly after Augustus Siebe had invented his “close,” or complete, diving dress in 1819.

“If y’ave anything to say to me, Robertson,” said Mr. Lillibulero’s thin, filtered voice, “touch y’r helmet to mine. We canna risk using our suit radios for fear they’ll hear us on their radio circuit inside the ship.”

Robby nodded to show he understood, and followed Mr. Lillibulero as the little man turned and began to swim on again.

They were moving along the length of the Tropican Head-quarters, which Robby could now see had the shape of a big submarine yacht, which was what it undoubtedly had been before Waub anchored it here under the ice and gave it another name. It was shaped somewhat like a supersonic airplane with needle-pointed nose, fat body, stubby tail, and what looked like stubby wings amidships. They were actually stabilizers to keep the yacht from rolling or twisting sideways at high speeds under water.

The difference between this ship and a plane, of course,was that it required a much less powerful engine in proportion to its size. As a result, most of the yacht’s interior was free to be taken up with staterooms or work rooms. The wall-wide windows of these rooms made up most of the sides of the ship. Robby felt as if he were looking into a three-level fishbowl with each level split up into compartments with different fish inside, although in fact this was a people-bowl where the fish were on the outside, reversing the usual procedure.

It was a very large yacht, and Robby was startled and not a little scared to see so many people through the transparent windows. They all wore the same sort of flowered cloth kilt that the twins and Waub had worn. It was hard to believe that they could not see Robby, Mr. Lillibulero, and Cerberus as the three of them swam by the big windows. Actually, the lights inside were too bright for this to happen. It was like looking out a window of a lighted living room at night.Anyone outside can see you perfectly clearly, but all you see is blackness beyond the window pane unless there is a light of some kind outside. This is because your eyes are adjusted to the inside light, while the eyes of anyone outside have adjusted to the darkness there. Robby’s eyes were adjusted to the darkness of the Antarctic waters.

They swam up and forward to the compartments on the top deck at the front of the yacht. And Robby found himself staring. They had just come level with one big room, several times the size of the room in which Robby had been imprisoned.

It had a water lock like most of the other rooms on the yacht, but that was the only usual thing about it. There was no furniture of any kind and the room was crammed with a great crowd of Adeile penguins, many more than there should have been even in a room that size. As they jostled and jammed into each other, their parted beaks showed them to be protesting unhappily about the crowded conditions. Robby was tempted to stop, swim in the water lock, and let them out, but before he could put his helmet against Mr. Lillibulero’s to suggest it, they were past. And the next big room was filled with the rarely seen Ross seals, in equal numbers.

They passed this, too. At the next room, Mr. Lillibulero stopped and turned into the water lock. Robby and Cerberus followed him. The window had been made milky and opaque so they could not see in. Robby was therefore completely surprised by what he saw when they broke the surface of the pool inside.

They had come up in a fairly small room that seemed to be some sort of a storeroom. Piles of equipment filled shelves and the available floor space. But that was not what surprised Robby so much. He found himself face to face with a stack of Control Caps and he recognized them as the ones taken from the Palship X Two. Beside him, he heard Mr. Lillibulero swing back his helmet.

“Take a look, Robertson,” the little man said. “The Control Box y’seek must be on one of the shelves around here.”

Robby put back his own helmet and waded on up out of the pool. He hunted with his eyes quickly up and down the shelves, and finally spotted a cardboard carton that looked like the cartons for the spare Hand-Control Boxes he had seen stored on the Palship. He went quickly to it and tried to break it open, but it was sealed with heavy tapes where the top flaps came together.

“Here, laddie,” said Mr. Lillibulero, pushing Robby gently aside, “let me.”

He took hold of the ends of the flaps and twisted his wrists in opposite directions. The tape popped and split open. Mr. Lillibulero pulled up the flaps. Inside were rows of Control Boxes like the one Robby had seen on the table by Waub’s chair.

Robby opened the upper part of his suit and put a Control Box safely inside at his belt. He turned to speak to Mr. Lillibulero, but the little man, moving with his usual quiet swiftness, had gotten two shelf-lengths away in the interval and was examining a stack of flat black metal boxes, each about the size of a blackboard eraser, but much heavier, to judge from the way Mr. Lillibulero was hefting one in his hand.

“Ah, Robertson,” he said, looking up to see Robby’s eyes fixed on him. “Do y’know what these are?”

Robby shook his head.

“They’re harbor-makers,” said Mr. Lillibulero, “or tunnel-busters, as some construction men call them. This wee box I’m holding could blow up this ship we’re on and the ice above us for a solid mile in each direction.”

He put the flat box back with the others.

“And now,” he said, “we’d best be going before it’s found out y’ave escaped.”

“Shouldn’t we take those boxes and dump them, or something?”

“They’re too heavy to take with us,” said Mr. Lillibulero, “and we dare not dump them with the water perhaps half a mile deep below us. There’s no telling if they could be recovered, and they would remain a danger until they were recovered. We wouldn’t want them all going off down there together two years or so from now because the water had rusted through one and started it off.”

He turned and went toward the pool, putting his helmet back and sealing it in place. Robby followed, sealing his own helmet.

They went back out through the water lock and swam upward until they were above the yacht. Then Robby took hold of Cerberus’s collar and motioned Mr. Lillibulero to do the same. Cerberus looked mistrustfully at the little man when he felt himself grasped by somebody besides Robby, but Robby patted him clumsily through the water, and the big seal seemed reassured.

He began to swim off into the darkness. Soon they were able to see a faint light ahead in the water. A moment later they were between the walls of the crack in the ice sheett hrough which Cerberus had brought Robby earlier. And in the space of a couple of breaths their helmets, together with Cerberus’s head, popped out into the air.

Robby looked questioningly at Mr. Lillibulero. Mr. Lillibulero pointed out and away between the ice walls to the distant sunlit, white tumbled shapes of the pack ice and the dark open water. Robby nodded and urged Cerberus forward.

Slowly, powerfully, Cerberus swam, dragging them behind him, out of the widening water in the crevasse into the free-floating ice and the open water beyond where his own fierce brothers and the killer whales prowled the icy depths for just such food as their human selves.

It was a dread place into which to go forward. But with the Tropicans behind them, they could not go back.

The Time Is Near

Mr. Lillibulero’s plans, it soon began to appear, had to do with getting as close to the open sea as possible. Robby, under the little man’s directions, kept Cerberus at work towing them forward between the floes in the open water, and out toward the edge of the permanent pack ice—that ice that did not melt loose even in the Antarctic summer.

Cerberus obeyed without any sign of resentment. He was,in fact, surprisingly docile for such a naturally independent creature. Secretly, Robby began to think that perhaps it was more than just that he had gotten into the habit of obeying humans. Robby was starting to fear that the clumsy and punishing discipline Waub had used through the Control Cap had affected the big seal’s mind—that, in effect, Cerberus’s spirit had been broken, as they used to say of animals who had been tamed by methods that were too harsh.

If this was so, Cerberus might be little use to them except to tow them through the water. He might, thought Robby,have no courage left and desert them just when they needed him most because he sensed the nearness of a killer whale or some savage bull seal of his own kind.

However, Robby kept this fear to himself. It was not only that he did not want to alarm Mr. Lillibulero before he was sure about Cerberus. It was also that Cerberus had come and put his head on Robby’s feet when Robby had felt at his worst and there had seemed ho hope left. He did not want to betray any weakness or cowardliness in the big seal even if it was true, unless it became absolutely necessary to do so.

They had actually become fast friends, the seal and Robby, in that locked room; and Robby stood by his friends.

Meanwhile, Robby expected that Cerberus by his actions would at least give warning if any carnivore larger than himself was in their neighborhood. Consequently, he felt fairly safe as Cerberus towed them out beyond the ice crack until they seemed to be traveling through a sea filled with icebergs about the size of buildings.

Eventually, they came without any trouble to an area where these floating chunks of ice were widely spread out. Beyond this they approached what looked like a solid barrier of frozen pack ice, but which Robby suspected was merely a floating mass too large to see around.

They searched until they found a sloping edge where Cerberus could climb out of the water, and then hauled themselves up onto this final stretch of ice. Cerberus rolled half-over in the bright Antarctic sunlight, almost as if he were going to take a sun bath. Mr. Lillibulero sat down on the ice and opened his helmet slightly. He signaled to Robby, who did the same.

“How are y’now, Robertson?” he inquired through the opening. “Y’ave not had it easy since I took y’aboard the flyer to carry you to McMurdo.”

“Oh, I’m all right,” answered Robby. “They gave me a room to sleep in and some sandwiches and milk. And soup,”he added, although the soup was hardly worth mentioning,cool as it had been. “Did you get anything to eat?”

“As it happens, I did,” said Mr. Lillibulero. “Yon Waub has a fat man’s appetite. I found a small kitchen connected wi’ his suite of rooms on the yacht, full of fancy eatables and candy. I took some of the candy to eat as I went, it having more energy per pound than most foods—though I’ve no sweet tooth, myself.”

“Candy,” said Robby, licking his lips. It had been some little while since the sandwiches, the milk, and the cold soup.“ Do you have some left?”

“I have not,” said Mr. Lillibulero.

“You should have stuffed your pockets while you had the chance,” pointed out Robby.

“I had no time to waste. I was looking,” said Mr. Lillibulero severely, “for you.”

“Oh,” said Robby.

“However,” said Mr. Lillibulero in a softer tone of voice,“I dinna blame y’for asking. After all, it was my fault y’were there.”

“It’s just that I’m still hungry,” explained Robby, apologizing in his turn. “And it wasn’t your fault I was there. I landed on the pack ice all right, but that Director sent Cerberus after me.”

“Ah, but y’would not have been on the ice,” said Mr. Lillibulero, “if I had not suggested to y’r father that y’would be safer at McMurdo. I should have realized the Tropicans knew I was on their trail and that they might attack m’flyer.”

“Oh, well,” said Robby. They sat in silence for a fews econds, both of them thinking about that moment in the flyer before Robby had jumped. A Maccormick’s skua, called the eagle of the Antarctic, screamed suddenly from nearby and swooped close on its four-foot wings to see who these strange-looking friends of a leopard seal could be. The skua had probably been feeding on eggs from the rookeries of the Adglie penguins ashore, unless most of the penguin eggs were already hatched, this late in the Antarctic summer. At any other time Robby would have been interested in watching the fierce, piratical skua or any of the Antarctic flying birds—the clumsy-looking blue-eyed shag, the giant fulmar, the swift Cape pigeon, the little burrowing whale bird, or the even smaller storm petrel. But now he had too much else to concern him.

“What’re we going to do?” he asked.

“That’s the question, indeed,” said Mr. Lillibulero. “Y’said y’might be able to direct the leopard seal.”

“His name is Cerberus,” put in Robby.

“Direct Cerberus t’some destination by means of that Control Box we picked up.”

“That’s right,” said Robby. “I thought maybe I could write a message, put it in his collar, and send him to McMurdo. The only thing is, I don’t know which way McMurdo is. I’m all turned around on this ice.”

“I’m afraid,” said Mr. Lillibulero a little grimly, “th’Tropicans will have caught us again before Cerberus could swim th’ distance t’McMurdo. McMurdo’s a distance of pack ice and the full width of the Ross ice shelf from us. It’ll be more than five hundred miles at the least.”

“Oh,” said Robby, crestfallen. Then he looked up hopefully. “Maybe they won’t try to catch us again. They didn’t look very excited when we were swimming past the windows of the yacht.”

Mr. Lillibulero chuckled with a sound like a heavy iron key rattling in an old iron lock.

“I suspect,” he said, “that those two large twins were none too quick to rush t’Waub and admit I had gotten aboard their Headquarters, and you and I had escaped, taking y’r friend Cerberus with us. That’ll be the reason there was no immediate alarm and pursuit of us.”

“Oh,” said Robby.

“However,” said Mr. Lillibulero, “sooner or later they’ll have gotten up their nerve to report what happened. Then the Tropicans’ll be fast after us.”

“How did you get into their Headquarters?” asked Robby.“I heard the flyer blow up, and I looked around when I landed because I thought you’d be coming down with your copter-chute behind me. But I couldn’t see you anywhere.”His throat felt a little dry, remembering. He swallowed. “I almost thought you were still in the flyer when it blew up.”

“Indeed,” said Mr. Lillibulero, “that was precisely what I wanted thought, not by you, Robertson, but by the Tropicans who were without doubt watching. Consequently, when I jumped just behind you, I let myself fall free as far as I could before opening my copter-chute.”

“What good would that do?”

“I fell past you, laddie,” Mr. Lillibulero said, “while you were coming down slowly with your copter-chute. As I hoped,they watched you and the exploding flyer, and I was able to land on the ice without being noticed.”

“I wish you’d told me what you were planning,” said Robby. “I thought I was all alone out there.”

“I wasna sure I could do it successfully,” said Mr. Lillibulero.

“That’s point number one. Point number two, there was no time to tell you. And point number three, I watched you comedown and started to you as soon as you landed, but I could not catch up with you before y’began to run from the seal.And when y’did that, I lost you among the tumbled ice.”“Then how’d you find the Headquarters and my room?”“Shortly,” said Mr. Lillibulero, “after I lost sight of you—” He broke off abruptly as the same skua that hadscreamed at them earlier swept past again. “There’s something about that bird I dinna like. But to answer y’r question, Robertson, I caught sight of you shortly afterwards, traveling in friendly fashion with Cerberus. Since it was not natural, I suspected the Tropicans were somehow controlling the seal;and I followed behind the two of you, without letting m’self be seen.”

“You swam down after us under the ice?” said Robby,staring at the little man. For it had been a very brave thing to do, even for Mr. Lillibulero. He would have had no way of knowing what was waiting for him down below.

“Keeping a safe distance so’s not t’be discovered,” went on Mr. Lillibulero calmly, “I watched you enter the yacht. It hen swam around the outside of the Headquarters until I located you. Y’were just leaving Waub’s room at the time. I made sure of the room y’ended up in, and then set about searching the inside of the yacht.”

“But you said you knew where I was?”

“I knew that,” said Mr. Lillibulero, “but I did not know the answer to th’ question that’s kept me on the trail of Waub these six months. I needed to know how he intended to carryout his plans.” He looked sharply at Robby. “And I found out.”

“Have you been after them for six months?” said Robby.“Aye,” said Mr. Lillibulero, “shortly after it was learned this yacht was setting sail for parts unknown. I tracked it halfway over the world, from port t’port as it picked up men we knew to be Tropicans. But two months ago I followed it south to the Antarctic, and here it gave me the slip.”

“And I helped you find it,” said Robby.

“In a manner of speaking, yes,” said Mr. Lillibulero severely. “However, it might be more accurate t’say it helped me to find it, through you. Y’were not exactly concerned with the Gondwanaland question until Waub shot our flyer down and captured you.”

“Is it a question?” said Robby. “Gondwanaland, I mean?”

“I would say so,” said Mr. Lillibulero. “It’s a geological theory that such existed in the Devonian Period of the Paleozoic Era—or from about three hundred million years ago when the fishes were just beginning to come ashore and trade their fins for feet. And the continent theoretically lasted until the JurassicP eriod of the Mesozoic, or until the time of dinosaurs.”

“Then why do you say it’s a question?” said Robby.

“Because it’s a theory,” said Mr. Lillibulero, “and not yet a proven fact.”

“What good is a theory if you can’t believe it?” asked Robby.

“It’s good for considering,” said Mr. Lillibulero. “First,because it may turn out to be right, after all. Second, because it may turn out to be wrong. If y’prove either that it’s right or wrong, you usually have turned up evidence that’s very valuable, and learned something—even if it’s not what you wanted to believe in the first place.”

“Don’t they have evidence about Gondwanaland?”

“They do,” said Mr. Lillibulero. “Coal beds under the ice at the South Pole here, which means plants once grew where that coal is now—”

“Mr. Waub mentioned that,” said Robby, a little smugly. “—Giant rock scratches in India and Africa, indicating glaciers moving in a direction that favors the Gondwanaland theory. Similar beds of rock in South America and Africa that makes it look as if it was the same bed of rock broken apart when the continents separated. Fossils that are very much alike in widely different places. And, last, evidence about the position of the earth’s magnetic poles, which seemed to have moved around from time to time.”

“That’s a lot of evidence,” said Robby.

“Aye,” said Mr. Lillibulero. “But on the other side there are the facts that we know th’ Tropical Zones covered much more of the earth at times in the past than they do now. That,and the wandering of the Poles, could account for the coal.Similar conditions could result in th’ laying down of similar sedimentary rocks such as the argument is about. There are fossils that aren’t alike when they might be, as well as ones that are alike in different continents. Also, if South America,for example, had been joined to Africa, we would expect the plants and animals of South America to be like the plants and animals of Africa. While actually the South American plants and animals are like those of North America. And the North American varieties would have been living not on Gondwanaland at all, but on Laurasia, the North Pole continent, according to the Gondwanaland theory.”

Robby thought about that. This sort of evidence was in his own field of knowledge. He knew something about the animals of North and South America, and Africa.

“They aren’t,” he said at last. “The animals in South America are most like the animals in North America.”

“There you are,” said Mr. Lillibulero.

Robby thought for a moment.

“Would it be so bad, though?” he said, “If Gondwanaland was true?”

“It would not necessarily be bad by itself,” said Mr. Lillibulero. “What’s bad is Waub’s acting as if it was true, and that it’s being true was an excuse to do a great deal of harm.”

“Making the earth a tropical paradise? Would that do harm?”

“Stop and think it through, Robertson,” said Mr. Lillibulero. “If it was warm enough t’be tropical here at the South Pole,how hot would it be at the equator, or even around your own home off the coast of Mexico?”

“Oh,” said Robby. “Pretty hot?”

“Too hot. The equatorial lands would become desert where nothing could live for the heat.”

“But it’d be nice and warm up around New York and Canada, and Europe and Asia,” said Robby.

“Too warm,” said Mr. Lillibulero. “Those places are in the Temperate Zones. And the Temperate Zones are the great producers of food grains and other eatables for the world. Wi’ the middle of the earth all desert and the Temperate Zones all tropical, where would we raise the food to feed the population of the world?”

“We could live off seafood,” said Robby.

“Now, perhaps, we could live off seafood,” said Mr. Lillibulero. “But with the Equator boiling hot, the temperature of all the oceans would be affected and most sea life canna stand much change of temperature. Much of the sea life would die off.”

“Oh,” said Robby. He did not like the idea. He was close enough to the creatures of the sea to want to keep them safe from extinction.

“Indeed,” said Mr. Lillibulero. “But I don’t know why I continue t’make a horror tale out of it, Robertson. Because the truth is Waub could never possibly change the world as he plans.”

“He couldn’t?” said Robby, staring.

“Not if his Headquarters was packed to the roof wi’ tunnel-buster explosives,” said Mr. Lillibulero. “The ice of the Antarctic is two thousand five hundred miles across and averages more than a mile thick. There is not enough man-made explosive in the world to do more than nibble at it, let alone melt it entirely.”

“But if they could—”

“If it could be done, the result would be that the sea level would rise all over the world from a hundred and thirty to two hundred feet, depending on whether the ocean bottom sank under the extra weight of water. But this would only drown the shorelines of the continents for hundreds of miles inland. It would not drift all the southern continents back together at the South Pole here and make th’ world a tropical paradise.”

“Well,” said Robby, somewhat sharply, “if it can’t be done, why worry about the Tropicans?”

“Because,” said Mr. Lillibulero, “Waub has a great deal of very dangerous nuclear explosive and the determination to set it off no matter who gets hurt. What he believes in isn’t possible, but he is not sensible at all about it. He refuses to see anything that argues against it, and he will sacrifice the real lives of real people in the impossible task of bringing what he believes in to pass.”

Mr. Lillibulero looked grimly at Robby.

“There are stations on the Ross ice shelf and nearby wi ’innocent people in them who could suffer if Waub’s tunnel-busters are set off. The shore ice is not so thick or stable as the ice inland. He could cause a tidal wave, perhaps—”

He broke off as the same skua screamed past them once again.

“Mr. Lillibulero!” cried Robby. “I just thought of something. One of those two twins you had to fight told me when he was taking me to my rooms that they were going to bring Gondwanaland back inside of the next twenty-four hours. And that must have been hours and hours ago!”

Mr. Lillibulero jumped to his feet on the ice. This is not an easy thing to do in one motion from a cross-legged seated position, but Mr. Lillibulero was one of the few men in the world who could do it. And he did it now.

“Robertson!” he cried. “Robertson, why did y’not tell met his before?”

The Skua Speaks

“I didn't think of it,” said Robby.

“True. True—with all that’s been happening, it’s not y’r fault. I should have thought to ask what you’d learned,” said Mr. Lillibulero. “When was it that Waub said twenty-four hours?”

“Not Waub,” said Robby. “Dick, or Harvey. After I left Waub.”

“That’ll have been about eight hours ago,” said Mr. Lillibulero, as Robby, too, scrambled to his feet. “If Waub was that close to setting off his explosives, he may not wait t’load up that last batch of penguins and seals—”

“Load them up?” said Robby.

“Aye, Robertson,” said Mr. Lillibulero. “That’s been his scheme from the start. To strap explosives on to certain of the wild creatures of the ice pack, and either let them wander and spread of their own free will, or direct them to spread out by use of th’ Control Caps. Then, when he was ready, he would set off the explosives all at once by radio control.”

“But that’s terrible!” said Robby. He was thinking at the moment more of the penguins and seals who had been equipped to blow themselves up than of the other damage the explosives might do.

“It is,” said Mr. Lillibulero, who was not thinking of the penguins and seals at all, but of the people on the ice and offshore. “We’ve no more time to waste. You canna send Cerberus here with a message to McMurdo—and likely they’d shoot him there on sight without waiting to let him get close enough to show he was carrying a message—”

“They’d believe he was a wild leopard seal,” put in Robby. “I didn’t think of that.”

“But,” said Mr. Lillibulero, “in the small time that’s left us, we might send him far enough out to sea so that one of the boats bound for McMurdo from Tierra del Fuego or the South Shetland Islands might pass by and see him. If we could only fit th’ beast now with some sort of flag, or signal—”

“I’ve got it! I’ve got it!” shouted Robby. “Dad was moving this way with the whales! I could send him to Dad.He wouldn’t shoot a leopard seal on sight. Dad never shoots anything. And when Cerberus got close enough I could talk to Dad through the transceiver on Cerberus’ collar—the way Waub talked to me through his Control Box when he had Cerberus catch me!”

Mr. Lillibulero frowned, but the frown slowly faded.

“It’s a chance,” Mr. Lillibulero said. “It’s true James was t’bring his pod of whales toward McMurdo, t’make it easier for whoever was to come out and relieve him. He was about six hundred miles from the McMurdo side of the Ross ice shelf when we left him. How close do y’think he’ll have come in about ten hours since then?”

Robby thought.

“The pod travels as slow as three miles an hour, or as fast as ten,” he said. “He could be a hundred miles closer. Of course, if the pod decided to really move, whales can go pretty fast.”

“Then it’s no use,” said Mr. Lillibulero, shaking his head.“He could be no closer than twenty or thirty miles, and he’d be several miles out from the pack ice edge, no doubt. Y’r Cerberus, swimming at—what? Six miles an hour?” Robby nodded. “. . . would take five hours or more t’reach him even if we knew just where to send the beast. And we don’t.”

“But we don’t have to!” cried Robby, ready to bounce up and down with impatience and excitement, and only keeping himself from doing so by remembering he was too old and sensible for such antics. “The Control Caps have a special radio unit in them to broadcast a distress signal! That’s why Dad and I weren’t in the Palship when it was broken into and you got there. We were out helping a whale whose Control Cap had broadcast a distress signal. I can set Cerberus’s cap to do that, and Dad’s is the nearest Palship, and he’ll pick up the signal, and it’ll ring an alarm in the Palship, and he’ll see the signal isn’t one of his whales, and go to it at eighty miles an hour in the Palship and find Cerberus!’’

Completely out of breath with all those “ands,” Robby fell silent, staring at Mr. Lillibulero. But this time Mr. Lillibulero did not frown.

“Robertson!” said the little man. “I take m’hat off to you—or would, if I was wearing one inside m’helmet. Come on. The sooner we get the beast headed out to sea, the better.”

He turned on one boot heel and headed off across the level ice. Robby hurried after him, Cerberus bringing up the rear, like a well-trained hunting dog.

The skua, which seemed to have taken a special interest in them, swooped and screamed, and followed also.

They had a level stretch of ice to cross—it was really not true ice but “fim,” which is what the icelike hard-packed snow of the Antarctic is called. Then there was a short distance of jumbled snow blocks frozen hard together—a sort of icy badlands like the rough, rocky Bad Lands of South Dakota, only on a smaller scale. Through this, Cerberus in particular had hard going. Luckily, however, it was merely a narrow strip on the larger strip of ice floe they had landed on.Inside of minutes they came out on another level stretch of fim. And fifty yards ahead of them, they saw the heaving expanse of open ocean, with no more ice in sight.

They went on to the edge of the floe, and Robby made the necessary adjustments in Cerberus’ Control Cap. When he altered the cap to operate on the frequency of the Palship X Two, he also set his Control Box on the same frequency. He had to undo his Outside Suit to get it out, and then reseal the suit, which closed with the Waub Magnetic Clothes-Fastener.This way, Cerberus would get Robby’s signals, but no signals from the Tropicans’ Control Boxes. Robby also set Cerberus’s cap back to passing on signals at normal strength.

“It’s a long way offshore,” said Mr. Lillibulero, who had watched Robby do all this, “and there’ll be a chance of killer whales about. Do y’think he’ll swim out willingly?”

Robby looked and felt unhappy.

“I hope he does,” Robby said. “I think he will.”

In the back of Robby’s mind was the fear he had felt earlier that Cerberus’s spirit had been broken by Waub’s brutal handling. He was on the verge of mentioning this to Mr. Lillibulero, but for a second time he decided against it.

“I could try forcing him if he wouldn’t,” Robby said.“But I don’t know how well it would work, and I don’t want to try it if I don’t have to.”

“Indeed.” Mr. Lillibulero nodded approvingly. “Force is always t’be thought of as a last resort. Let’s see what the beast will do for friendship’s sake.”

Cerberus looked at the little man almost as if he understood him, then looked suddenly back to Robby as the boy, holding the Control Box in the transparent gloved hands of his Outside Suit, sent a mild pleasure impulse to the big seal.

He had guessed that Waub had not trained Cerberus with pleasure impulses—what animal trainers call “reward ” training, such as giving an animal something he likes to eat after he has performed a trick or duty properly. Robby was willing to bet that Waub had used “punishment” training, sending fear or panic signals into Cerberus’s brain whenever the big seal did not obey a command. That kind of training is like beating a donkey with a stick to make it move. It requires less patience for the trainer, but it only works for the crudest sort of orders and commands, and often it does not work at all.Some animals will never learn that way. They are like brave men who prefer death to slavery.

So Robby used the other method, which is really the only proper method. He sent little pleasure signals to the big seal,and when Cerberus began to respond, he gradually mixed the pleasure signals with gentle command signals: first for Cerberus to wriggle forward on the ice, then to stop, then to turn right and left. Finally he gave the signal to enter the water.

Cerberus turned, wriggled to the edge of the ice and suddenly tobogganed down a six-foot slope to enter the sea. He slipped clear out Of sight under the water for a moment; then his head popped up again like an otter’s to look back at them.

“Go on, Cerberus!” called Robby, as he sent the big seal a signal to swim away from the ice flow, out toward the open ocean. “Go find the Palship. Go.” He opened his suit, tucked the Control Box inside at his belt, and sealed the suit again.

The heavy dog-like head turned. Facing away from the ice and the land, Cerberus began to swim, leaving the small V-shape of his wake trailing on the heaving water behind him. Straight out into the waters of the more than twelve thousand miles of the Antarctic and Pacific oceans he swam without hesitation, into the mile-deep ocean where the killer whale hunted, and there was no floe ice upon which to climb or among which to hide.

“It’s a good beast,” said Mr. Lillibulero softly, as they watched the head of the swimming seal lose itself among the waves. “It seems hardly fair to send him out there among the dangers while we stand here, and safe.”

The skua which had hovered about them all this time swooped down close above their heads, squawking shrilly at them.

“Safe!” cried the voice of the Director of the Tropicans over them. “You just think you’re safe! Look behind you!”

Under the Pack Ice

“Mr. Lillibulero! Look!” shouted Robby. “The skua’s wearing a Control Cap and a transceiver!”

It was true. The skua was now swooping low enough for them to see; obviously Waub no longer cared whether they knew the bird was controlled or not. It had a collar around its neck and a transceiver and a Control Cap much smaller than any Robby had ever seen before—evidently a model which had been designed for small animals or birds.

“It’s a matter of small moment, now, Robertson,” said Mr. Lillibulero, looking, not up in the air at the skua, but back the way they had come. He held up one gloved hand to shadow his helmet from the glare of the Antarctic sun. “It’s not just a bird we have to worry about.”

Robby looked where Mr. Lillibulero was looking. Through a small gap in the tumbled ice, he caught sight of something black that moved and disappeared again.

“What is it?” Robby looked at his companion. “Tropicans,” he replied. “There’ll be at least half a dozen of them coming after us. I counted five just now, and there’ll be others behind those.”

Robby stared at him. Mr. Lillibulero turned to look at the boy. There was a sparkle to his green eyes and a grim little smile on his lips.

“Well, Robertson,” he said, “there’s still the small chance we can keep out of their hands until help arrives, though a slim chance it is. While we’re still free, yon Waub’ll not dare set off his explosives on the penguins and seals he’s already sent out, for fear we’ve sent off some message t’point the finger of guilt at him after he does.”

“But if all he cares about is Gondwanaland,” said Robby, “won’t he just be thinking of that, and not care if people know or not?”

“Dinna fool y’rself,” replied Mr. Lillibulero. “In his inner self, Waub knows his Gondwanaland is but a shimmering dream, with but one chance in a million of its coming to be as he says. Inside, even if he won’t admit it to himself, he has thought of what may happen if he sets off all his explosives and nothing but bad comes from it. And that fear will hold him until we’re safely in his hands and he’s sure there’s no proof he was responsible, if things go wrong.”

The little man smiled at Robby.

“Did y’notice perhaps,” he said, “that when you were talking to Waub he could not bear any argument against Gondwanaland?”

Robby nodded.

“He got mad at me,” said Robby, “when I didn’t believe it right away.”

“Aye,” said Mr. Lillibulero, “if he was as certain as he makes out t’be, he would have only felt sorry for you that you did not have the wit t’realize what was so obviously true. But when he lost his temper about it, he gave himself away. An honest man may lose his temper when he is attacked unfairly.But he will not do it often, or at the first sign of opposition as Waub does at the first suggestion of a different point of view.”

“Dad,” said Robby, “likes to argue, but he doesn’t lose his temper.” He thought about it. “Sometimes I do.”

“As y’get older and more experienced, you will do it less,” said Mr. Lillibulero. “Not that a man should give up the right to anger when the need actually arises and his cause is just. But we should not stand here gabbing, Robertson.Follow me!”

He turned and led the way at a trot to the left along the strip of level ice on the edge of the ocean. Robby ran with him. In their Outside Suits, running was not the easy job it would have been in ordinary clothing, but nevertheless it was a great deal easier than it would have been in the heavy clothing of early explorers like Scott, Amundsen, Mawson, and Shackleton, or even scientists of the first International Geophysical Year in the mid-twentieth century.

Accordingly, Robby and Mr. Lillibulero trotted with fair quickness along the ice, and in seconds they were out of view of the Tropicans who had been climbing toward them through the icy badlands they had crossed earlier.

As soon as they had made about fifty yards down the flat stretch of ice, Mr. Lillibulero turned and led Robby back into the badlands. And as soon as they were well in among this tumbled mass of ice blocks, he stopped, sat down and gestured to Robby to do likewise.

Robby found a convenient bump of ice and sat on it. He was glad to rest, but he was puzzled also. He looked over at Mr. Lillibulero.

“Why are we stopping?” he asked. “They’ll just catch up with us that much faster.”

Mr. Lillibulero pointed up in the air, and Robby looked up to see the skua still sailing not far from them.

“When y’are being hunted,” said Mr. Lillibulero, “an extra ounce of brain is worth several extra inches of leg, Robertson. Wi’ that bird up there, we canna hope t’simply outrun them. We must get where the skua canna see us and send back word to Waub of where we are and the direction in which we’re heading.”

“But how can we get where the skua can’t see us?” said Robby.

“First things first,” replied Mr. Lillibulero. “Before we take care of that, we’ll just tire th’ men behind us out a bit.You and I just had an easy run of it down the open ice next to the water. But now we’re back in among the difficult chunk ice, and those behind us’11 have had to change direction andc over the same distance through these badlands to reach us.They dare not come through t’the open ice and follow us that way, for fear we’ll slip back past them through this tumbled mass of blocks.”

“Oh,” said Robby. “I see. And following, they’ll get more tired than we will.”

“Indeed,” said Mr. Lillibulero. He got back to his feet again. “And now, if y’ave caught y’r breath, we’ll get along again.”

Robby got up and they went on, through and around the blocks of frozen ice. Now and then they would come to a little open space, but soon they would be back where they had to climb over or wriggle between chunks of ice.

Robby was getting tired, and Mr. Lillibulero, seeing this,stopped once more and sat down, motioning Robby to do the same. Robby dropped with relief on a level piece of ice as Mr. Lillibulero sat down cross-legged opposite him. The little man seemed to be made of spring steel. Robby had slept and eaten since they had both had to bail out of the flyer. But Mr. Lillibulero had had no sleep and only a handful of candy from the personal kitchen of the Director of the Tropicans; yet he looked as fresh as if he had just got up out of bed.

“Why don’t you get tired?” Robby asked him now.

“I do, Robertson,” the little man replied. “However,being in good physical shape wi’ steady exercise, regular hours of sleep, and good food enables me to stand fatigue better than some. A man can do much or little wi’ his own body as he wants. He can choose t’be in shape, or t’be like yon poor fat grubworm of a Director, barely able t’get out of his chair without help.”

“He’s pretty studgy,” said Robby. “That’s what I call people like that—studgy. ”

“If y’mean what I think y’mean by studgy,” said Mr. Lillibulero, “I’ll agree with you, Robertson. And now, we must be going again.”

Robby would just as soon have sat where he was a few moments longer. But after talking about Waub as Robby had,he could hardly ask to rest longer without running the risk of having the little man think Robby was perhaps a little studgy himself.

They had covered a good distance now of this rough going but gradually they were being overtaken. Through the ear-phones in his helmet, Robby could hear behind them the shouts of the pursuers, as they occasionally caught a glimpse of Robby and Mr. Lillibulero. Robby’s spirits began to sink.

He suddenly realized that all this time he had been expecting Mr. Lillibulero to work some sort of miracle that would save them from the men that were after them.

Now, he began to face the fact that perhaps they had run out of miracles. But, just then, Mr. Lillibulero ducked around a small mountain of ice in their path and stopped suddenly with an exclamation of satisfaction.

Robby caught himself just in time from running into the little man from behind and peered over Mr. Lillibulero’s shoulder to see what could be making his friend sound so happy. He caught a glimpse of a crack in the ice between two floes that were frozen together. The crack was about a foot and a half wide at its widest, and black sea water showed in the opening.

“Come, Robertson!” said Mr. Lillibulero. “We’re about to play a trick on our winged spy overhead.” He moved on,glancing up at the skua which had continued to circle between them and their pursuers. “We’ll just wait until we hit a bit more watery territory.”

“Is the ice getting thin?” said Robby, feeling a small shiver go down his spine at the thought of being trapped at last by the men behind.

“We’re nearing the far end of this big floe,” said Mr. Lillibulero. “There’ll be more open water from now on.”

He was a true prophet. Soon they were having to circle around the edges of patches of open water as large as duck ponds. The voices of the men behind became louder as they rapidly began to catch up. Mr. Lillibulero, however, kept right on, only now and then glancing up over his shoulder at the circling skua. He was moving now almost at a trot, and it was all Robby could do to stay close to him.

For the first time it crossed Robby’s mind to wonder if Mr. Lillibulero would go on and leave him if Robby could no longer keep up. He had always thought of the little man as someone he could always depend on, but now he remembered that Mr. Lillibulero was first and foremost an agent of the International Police. It might well be that he would, at the last, put his duties before his friendship to Robby and go on alone.

Robby glanced at the little man now as together they dodged the ice blocks, hoping to read some sign of worry or concern in the man’s eyes for the boy who was with him. But Mr. Lillibulero’s eyes were as hard as emeralds and glittered with a fierce light.

“Faster, Robertson, faster!” he hissed.

“I—can’t—” panted Robby, stumbling and reeling as they were forced to turn once more to avoid a sea-filled hole in the pack ice. “I—”

He tried to catch Mr. Lillibulero’s eye, to make him see how exhausted he was. But Mr. Lillibulero had his head twisted, glancing at the skua, which had just now circled back toward the pursuers, showing its tail to Robby and Mr. Lillibulero.

“Now," snapped the small man. And, without warning, he slapped both their helmets closed, wrapped his arms around Robby and dragged him off the ice and into the open water alongside.

The water closed over their heads. Robby, too exhausted to struggle, felt the little man, swimming strongly, towing himd own and away.

A moment later the ice was everywhere over their heads and they were shut away from the air and most of the light,where all directions seemed the same and all openings to the above world were lost to sight.

Day of Battles

After Mr. Lillibulero had swum for some little distance, he stopped and they floated up together until they came to rest against the ice, which was as lumpy below as it was above. Mr. Lillibulero put his helmet up against Robby’s helmet.

“Can y’swim on y’r own now, laddie?” His voice came thinly to Robby’s ears through the double layer of the two transparent helmets. Robby nodded.

“Good,” came Mr. Lillibulero’s thin voice. “I’ll explain to y’now what I’ve got in mind. We’re going to double back under the ice and get behind them. Unless they’ve thought to put a guard under the ice or bring a boat or ship into position under it, we can play hide-and-seek wi’ them for a while yet.”

Robby nodded for a second time.

“Good,” said Mr. Lillibulero again. “Follow me, then. First we’ll swim on out to the edge of the ice, and follow tha tso we’ll not get lost. When it seems safe, we’ll come back out, up on the ice, and hide amongst the ice blocks again.”

He turned and swam off, with Robby after him. Swimming easily under the ice was an entirely different thing from scrambling laboriously over it. Soon they began to see lightness in the water ahead of them, and shortly they came to the beginning of sunlit water.

Looking up, they saw the edge of the ice floe, like a bumpy ceiling, broken off abruptly. Mr. Lillibulero pointed with his arm and began to swim back in the direction they had come on top of the ice. Suddenly, Mr. Lillibulero stopped swimming, and put out an arm through the water to stop Robby. They hung together just under the edge of the floe.Mr. Lillibulero pointed ahead.

Robby looked. So far in front of them that it was just barely possible for him to make it out, he saw something that at first looked like a looming, gray shadow under water just at the edge of the floe. It was drifting toward them.

Mr. Lillibulero’s helmet made a quiet, underwater tick as it touched Robby’s helmet.

“It’s the yacht.” Mr. Lillibulero’s voice came to Robby’s ears. “They’ve brought their Headquarters itself t’help capture us. We’ll have to turn back, Robertson.”

He turned and began to lead back the way they had come. Robby swam behind him. After a while he looked back and he could no longer see the yacht behind them. He looked sideways at Mr. Lillibulero and swam close to put his helmet against the little man’s helmet.

“They’ve gone away,” said Robby. “Look!”

Inside his helmet, Mr. Lillibulero’s head shook in disagreement. “They’ll be holding the ship down to the speed of their men on top of the ice,” said Mr. Lillibulero, “and staying a little distance behind so that they can listen through the ice for sounds to show we’ve slipped back past the searchers on top of the floe.”

He turned his helmet away, beckoning Robby, and swam on. After some time, patches of light began to show through the darkness to their right, where up until now the floe had been a solid roof.

They were coming to the part of the ice where they had first started swimming. The patches of light meant open stretches in the ice, where the sunlight could strike down and illuminate the water. Mr. Lillibulero swam on a little further,and then turned and headed toward the light patches. He picked one and approached it cautiously. Then his head broke through the shimmering ceiling of the water into the air, he looked about for a second, then motioned Robby to follow him, and climbed out onto a level edge of ice only a few inches above the water, but sloping up and back.

He could not have picked a better place for them to come up out of the water. They were in a little pocket in the ice with sloping walls all around them. Mr. Lillibulero motioned Robby to stay where he was and the little man crept up one side of the cup and looked back the way they had come. He ducked quickly back, however, and without a word came down and climbed the opposite wall to dart a quick glance out before returning to Robby, who was sitting on the ice by the open water, adjusting the heat controls to his helmet so that the water still on it would not freeze in the cold air.

Mr. Lillibulero sat down facing Robby and opened his helmet a crack. Robby did the same.

“Well, Robertson,” said Mr. Lillibulero, “it’s probably best y’should know the facts. And the facts are that they have us trapped. The ice beyond us goes only a few yards further and then the floe ends. And th’ bunch that’s been following us on the ice is getting close. What’s been happening wi’that leopard seal of yours?”

Robby unsealed his Outside Suit and unhooked the Control Box from his belt. He held it up and stared at the tiny vision screen in it. He worked its controls for a moment, and then he turned to the little man.

“Mr. Lillibulero!” he said. “It’s not working! It’s gone dead!”

“Dead?” Mr. Lillibulero’s voice was quiet, but his eyes had a hard, green light. “Y’mean it’s not working?”

“The screen doesn’t show a picture of anything.”

“Robby!” came a voice from the Control Box speaker suddenly. “Robby, can you hear me?”

“It’s Dad!” cried Robby. He spoke into the Control Box. “Dad! I can hear you. I’m with Mr. Lillibulero!”

But Dr. Hoenig’s voice had started talking without waiting from the Control Box.

“Robby, you won’t be able to answer me. I got a distress signal on the Palship Control Board and I’m headed toward itr ight now. I’m broadcasting back on the same wave length inh opes you can hear me. If you can hear me, Robby, hang on.We’re headed right for your distress signal, Palship, whales, and all. Hang on. We’ll be there in a few minutes. I repeat, Robby, if you can hear me, we’ll be there in a few minutes...”

Dr. Hoenig’s voice went on talking from the Control Box. Robby staled at Mr. Lillibulero.

“He must be heading toward Cerberus, not toward us!” said Robby.

“And y’ave no idea where the seal is?” said Mr. Lillibulero.

“Nothing shows on the screen,” said Robby, “not even he water I’d see rushing past the camera eye if he were still just swimming out in the ocean.”

“Can y’signal th’ beast t’return to us here?” said Mr. Lillibulero.

“I can make him turn around and go the other way from the way he’s going,” said Robby, “but I don’t know which way he’s going. Maybe I’d be turning him so he was going away from us, or away from Dad.” He looked at Mr. Lillibulero, feeling scared. “Maybe he isn’t going any way. Maybe a killer whale got him and that’s why I’m not getting any picture on the screen. Maybe the transceiver’s been swallowed by a killer whale, or torn off and sunk down a mile deep in the ocean and Dad’ll never find us.”

“There’s a more likely answer,” said Mr. Lillibulero, “and that’s that yon Waub in his yacht is broadcasting wi’ his own equipment and jamming the signal from Cerberus’s transceiver t’your Control Box. Y’r father’s signal is probably too powerful t’be jammed.”

Robby stared. He had not thought of that.

“In which case,” said Mr. Lillibulero, “y’r father will find the seal, all right, and from where he finds him be pretty well able t’figure out where we are. But I dinna know if he’ll be able t’come in time.”

Mr. Lillibulero unsealed the front Waub magnetic closure of his Outside Suit and reached in through the suit and under the jacket he wore inside. To the surprise of Robby, who had not seen the little man pick them up, Mr. Lillibulero produced the two revolvers he had taken away from Harvey and Dick and kicked into the pool of Robby’s room on the yacht.

“It’s unfortunate,” said Mr. Lillibulero, seeing Robby’s eyes widen at the sight of the guns, “that I do not have my own weapons. But when I leaped from the flyer I threw them away, so that th’ Tropicans would not be able to find me wi’ metal-locating equipment. These are clumsy devices, but sup-pose we see if we canna delay our enemies a bit with them.” Resealing his suit and taking a revolver in each hand, he crept up to the rim of the ice which faced toward their pursuers. Robby came after him.

“Keep y’r head down,” cautioned Mr. Lillibulero.

“Are you going to shoot them?” whispered Robby.

“I’m not in favor of shooting anyone,” said Mr. Lillibulero, sternly, “except in th’ absolute last resort t’protect human life. However—” He peered cautiously over the rim of the ice. There was the sharp crack of a firearm in the distance and ice flew suddenly in a spray from the ice rim about two feet to his left. “Stay well below the edge of the ice, Robertson.However, as I was about t’say, there’s no harm in letting them think I might shoot them a wee bit.”

He raised his head and a revolver barrel over the rim of the ice and fired, then ducked down again. From off in the distance came a startled yell. Mr. Lillibulero chuckled.

“There’s one of them’ll be feeling the coolness of the day,shortly,” he said. “I put a bit of a hole in the helmet of his Outside Suit.”

“I’d like to look,” said Robby.

“Y’ll stay down,” said Mr. Lillibulero sharply, “and that’s an order.” He peered over the rim himself for just a second.“Ah, they’ve stopped t’think things over. I doubt there’s a good pistol shot among them, and they’ll be trying t’decide whether it’s luck or skill that helped me put a hole in that helmet at something over a hundred yards.”

There was a moment of silence. Robby was thinking about his fear that Cerberus’ spirit had been broken. If the yacht was indeed jamming the signals from the seal’s transceiver,anything might have happened. Cerberus, left on his own,had probably stopped swimming out into the ocean where Dr. Hoenig and the Palship could intercept him. He had probably turned back into the pack ice, his lack of natural courage now driving him to look for a place to hide. Once the big seal was among the pack ice, Dr. Hoenig could never possibly find him in time to discover Robby was not with him, and figure out where Robby could be.

Robby was about to share his thoughts with Mr. Lillibulero—not that telling the little man could change anything, but it might make Robby feel better to stop keeping it to himself—but just then, there were a couple more explosive cracks out where the Tropicans were, and more ice flew off the rim of the hiding place of Robby and Mr. Lillibulero.

“Ah,” said Mr. Lillibulero, not the least bit disturbed. “As I suspected, they’ve talked it over and ended up deciding t’believe what they’d like to believe. That m’last shot was luck, not skill. I’ll just cure that notion of theirs.”

He waited a second, then popped up above the ice rim and fired two shots so close together they sounded almost like a single shot.

He ducked back down again. There was the sound of a number of voices exclaiming out among the Tropicans.

“What’d you do?” asked Robby.

“Put holes in a couple more suits, Robertson,” said the little man coolly. “It’ll hold them a while, though not for long, I’m afraid. A couple more holed suits wi’ men inside them unhurt and they’ll get braver.”

Mr. Lillibulero was a true prophet. There was a wait of perhaps fifteen minutes, and then another halfhearted attempt from outside to get close to where Robby and Mr. Lillibulero were hiding. Another example of the little man’s marksmanship, however, put the Tropicans in hasty retreat.

Robby’s spirits began to rise.

“We can just keep chasing them back,” he said. “And—”

“We could indeed,” said Mr. Lillibulero, “if we had a small arsenal of extra ammunition t’hand. As it is, I’ve used up five shots out of the twelve these guns contain between them, and there’s no more t’be had. They’ll have figured that out by this time, and after a few more rushes—”

He had been keeping a watch through one of the notches the shots of the attackers outside had made in the ice rim above them. Now he interrupted himself to bob up once more and fire two more shots.

“Five more rounds to shoot,” said Mr. Lillibulero, “and they’re getting aware of th’ fact I’m not shooting t’hurt them. Now—”

He fired both guns again.

“Aye,” he said, a little grimly. “They’re on to me now.”

“Robby?” squawked the Control Box at Robby’s belt suddenly. “Robby, can you hear me? I’m getting close to where your distress signal is coming from. It seems to be near or inside the pack ice. This is your father, Robby. If you can hear me, hang on. It won’t be long now.”

Robby felt his hopes and his heart go down within him. He had been hoping he was wrong, but now his father’s voice had confirmed his fears. Cerberus had evidently, feeling him-self free of any controls, turned back to hide in the pack ice where his broken spirit and lack of courage had driven him for safety.

“I think Cerberus turned back and hid in the pack ice,” Robby said now. “Dad won’t be able to find him in time.And Dad must be close, too. His voice comes in strong on the Control Box. Can’t we hide under the water, again?”

Mr. Lillibulero fired three times more and threw his guns aside.

“I’m afraid not, Robertson,” he said quietly. “I was aiming t’kill on that last shot, and I missed. But it was not a man I was shooting at, but another leopard seal like y’r Cerberus. They’ve not the courage to come after us themselves, so they’re sending th’ beast.”

“Robby!” cried his father’s voice from the Control Box.“We’re getting close to the pack ice, and I can see some men there on an ice floe. Are you one of them? Wave your arms if you are. Wave your arms.”

Robby started to get to his feet, but Mr. Lillibulero pulled him down.

“We daren’t risk y’r standing up,” said the little man. “It’s not likely they’d want t’kill you. Only m’self. But yon armed men might shoot without stopping t’see if it was you or me they were aiming at.”

“What’ll we do?” cried Robby.

“When the seal comes over the edge there, y’are t’leavehim to me,” said Mr. Lillibulero as quietly as if he were discussing the weather. “And if I tell you t’jump, you close your helmet, dive into the open water here and swim toward th’ edge of the floe. If the Tropicans catch you, you’ll have to surrender to them. But if y’get away there’s a faint chance your father may pick you up out in the sea beyond the floe. Now let’s get back behind the open water.”

They backed up around the edge of the small, water-filled hole in the ice from which they had climbed out of the sea. It was only about six feet wide. They waited.

After a few moments the Control Box spoke again with the voice of Robby’s father, saying he was almost to the floe.The whales of the pod were in his way. They had trailed behind him, but he had overshot, and now he had to comeback through them.

Robby’s hopes bounded up. But, in that moment they heard a slithering sound outside their hiding place, and a second later a snarling face appeared over the rim of ice.

“Get ready, laddie,” said Mr. Lillibulero. This was no Cerberus, but a completely untamed seal driven half-frantic by the commands of the Control Cap fastened to the back of his head. The seal heaved itself hissing over the edge of the ice and tobogganed down toward the little patch of black water that was all that barred his way.

As Robby crouched, ready to dive into the water, a huge, liquid-streaming body shot like a rocket out from beneath its surface, up into the air and landed almost on top of the oncoming beast.

It was another leopard seal. It was Cerberus. And if there ever had been any doubt that his spirit was broken and his courage gone, that doubt was now gone. He had come to their defense and was barring the way of the other seal to them like a knight of old.

“Quick, laddie!” shouted Mr. Lillibulero, as the two fighting seals, wound together like struggling ferrets, rolled in the direction of the two humans. “Up and out of here!”

They scrambled up the opposite side of the rim, just as the floe beneath them suddenly shuddered with a shock like an earthquake. From the top edge of the rim, Robby had one quick glimpse of the Tropicans only about thirty feet away, of the Palship X Two surrounded by curvetting whales coming fast toward the floe, and of two big, official-looking aircraft racing toward them out of the west where McMurdo was.

Then the ice under them shook and crunched again. Fifty feet to one side the ice broke and flew in the air as one of the stabilizer fins of Waub’s yacht poked through and stuck.

No one on top of the ice understood it just then, but what they were watching was the revenge of Blue Mountain Bill. He had finally caught the enemy that had attacked and cut him so badly before, and now he was doing his titanic whale best to batter that enemy to pieces against the ice. It was a day of battles.

Cerberus Winks

Suddenly everything happened at once. The third blow of the great blue whale rammed the crushed and battered yacht halfway up through the ice, where it stuck. The Palship came skidding up to the edge of the floe as the two big aircraft came down to a landing alongside, and green-uniformed International Police ran down the hastily extended landing ramps onto the ice.

Tropicans were boiling out of the part of the battered yacht that projected above the ice. The group that had been chasing Robby and Mr. Lillibulero were battling the police and being subdued by them. Mr. Lillibulero ran to help the police, and the skua with the Control Cap flew screaming overhead as Robby’s father leaped out of the Palship onto the ice with a portable Control Box like Robby’s in his hand.

“Get in the Palship!” he cried to Robby. “Bill’s liable to break up the whole ice floe if I can’t calm him down!”

“But Cerberus—!” cried Robby, waving his own Control Box.

“Who?” shouted his father. Just then, however, Bill of his own accord stopped his assault on the now utterly wrecked yacht and appeared suddenly, curvetting thunderously and evidently with pride in the waves about fifty feet from the ice floe. Robby scrambled down into the cup of ice that had enclosed his and Mr. Lillibulero’s hiding place, followed by his father. But Cerberus was now alone next to the little patch of open water there. It seemed he, too, had won his war.

Meanwhile, the rest of the Tropicans were being taken into custody by the police. The Tropicans might have put up abetter fight if they had been more warmly dressed, but most of them were still barefooted and wearing only the patterned cloth kilt that was their uniform aboard the yacht. Soon they were being herded, shivering, up the landing ramps into the two aircraft, and several policemen came out of what was left of the yacht with Waub in their midst. He had been unable to get out on his own because he was too fat.

Robby was busy introducing his father to Cerberus, and vice versa.

Half an hour later, Robby, his father, Cerberus, and Mr. Lillibulero were once more all together back aboard the Palship, watching one of the big aircraft, now loaded with prisoners,take off. The other was still waiting while a few policemen searched the wrecked yacht to make sure they had everybody safely out of it.

But what about all the penguins and Ross seals and whatever other animals there are wandering around the ice pack with nuclear explosives strapped to them?” Dr. Hoenig was saying.

“Thanks t’the vanity of the man, Waub,” replied Mr. Lillibulero, “the McMurdo detachment of the police think all can be recovered. Y’see, Waub fitted each one not only with the explosive, but with a Control Cap. That was why he attacked Blue Mountain Bill with his yacht, t’draw you both out of the Palship so’s he could steal th’ caps. It gave him a feeling of power t’be able to look at his Control Board and direct his penguins and seals in their wanderings.”

“Ah,” said Robby’s father, “then it’s simply a matter of calling them in through the Control Caps, I should think, and when they come in, taking off both the caps and the explosives.”

“Indeed,” said Mr. Lillibulero. “But it might not have ended so happily at all.”

“You certainly can say that,” said Robby’s father fervently. “Innocent animals, property, and lives could have been taken simply because a man like Waub was determined to make his impossible daydream come true.”

“Doubtless,” said Mr. Lillibulero, “it was only a notion with him at first. But then he started acting as if it might be true, and th’ more involved he got, the bigger excuses he had to make t’justify it. Until finally nothing would do but he must try to change the world to make it fit his own ideas.”

“Well, the authorities will see that he’s straightened out, now,” said Dr. Hoenig. “But it shows what can come of shutting your eyes to true facts rather than give up a belief in something you only happen to wish were true.”

“Indeed,” said Mr. Lillibulero. “I suppose now, y’will be staying with y’r whales?”

“Well, no,” said Robby’s father. “I’d phoned the Research Bureau for somebody to replace me, and as a matter of fact, I’m more or less done with my studies of the whales in this pod anyway. Besides—” He looked over at Robby, who was scratching Cerberus’s rather ample stomach while the big seal lay sprawled on his back with a blissful look on his face. “We’re going to take Cerberus back to Point Loma and possibly rig up a special cold tank for him, while we make some studies. Do you realize no one’s ever succeeded in making friends with one of these fierce predatory seals before?”

“I do,” said Mr. Lillibulero. “Robertson seems t’have a knack with the beasts.”

“I believe he has,” said Robby’s father, looking sternly at Robby. “Though his talents in other directions remain to be seen.”

“I might mention it was his notion, James,” said Mr. Lillibulero somewhat sternly, himself, “t’send the seal swimming out toward you, broadcasting the distress signal. If it had not been for that, y’would never have found us and brought the police in time.”

“We have to give the seal half the credit, though,” said Robby’s father, “for turning around and swimming back to him.”

“He did it because he likes me,” said Robby, still scratching. Cerberus closed his eyes in an excess of enjoyment.

“A friend in the hand,” observed Mr. Lillibulero, as the two men watched, “is worth two in the bush.”

“Or one in the mind,” said Dr. Hoenig. “I am referring, Robby, in case there is any doubt, to the kraken.”

Robby felt embarrassed.

“I’d rather,” he said awkwardly, “have Cerberus any old day than a kraken.”

Both men smiled. Robby, looking back down in friendship at the big seal, saw Cerberus open one eye, close it, then open it again.

It was exactly as if he winked.

Secrets Under the Caribbean

To Dennis and Barry

Into the Sea

“I’ve got,” said Robby Hoenig, “a feeling . . ."

As he said it, a cold bright shiver of excitement ran through him. It got into his voice. He made himself frown thoughtfully to cover it up. Leaning forward, he looked ahead, out,and down through the windshield of the ducted fan flyer at the Caribbean Sea, far below.

Below were the waters, blue as the blue of oceans painted on old pirate treasure maps. The waters where treasure galleons had sailed and buccaneers had boarded hapless craft in search of—well, treasure—nearly four centuries ago. The same waters were reeling past now at almost four hundred miles an hour under the two thrumming ducted fans that took the place of wings on the flyer.

“. . . A sort,” Robby went on, “of a searching feeling. A digging feeling. An unlocking feeling. A discovery sort of a feeling as if at any minute—”

“Apple pie,” commented Dr. Hoenig, speaking at last. He was seated at the controls of the flyer, beside Robby.

Robby started, and jerked about in surprise. The little copper-colored cap perched on his sun-bleached hair almost fell off. Which would have jarred MacRuffian, the young Steller’s sea lion in the cargo compartment behind. Mac was wearing a cap just like it, tuned to receive what Robby’s cap broadcast. It was one of Dr. Hoenig’s zoological experiments.

“Apple pie?” echoed Robby, suspiciously.

“Absolutely,” said Dr. Hoenig, his lean face lighting up with what seemed to be enthusiasm. He was a doctor, not of medicine, but of science. His field was research in marine biology, and he was given to enthusiasms about finding the reasons for things. "Often, people have strange feelings which turn out to be something they had for lunch. What did Scrooge think Marley’s ghost was? A piece of cheese. Now, there’s are search project for you. Match up famous events with what the outstanding people in them ate just beforehand. What did George Washington eat before crossing the Delaware River?”

“I don’t know,” said Robby.

“What did his cook serve Admiral Rodrigo de Torres y Morales—”

“Who?" said Robby, for his father had rolled the names out in a fine Spanish accent.

“Commander,” explained Dr. Hoenig, “of the wrecked silver fleet, or flota, of New Spain in 1733—which included,” he glanced a little slyly at Robby, “the sunken ship you and I are about to see when we drop in at Bob Clanson’s underwater archeological site in about ten minutes.”

Robby looked even more suspiciously at his father.

“My feeling—” he began stiffly.

“—Is what,” said Dr. Hoenig, “I’m driving at. Now, in the famous event of the present moment we know what you had for lunch in Nassau before we left. You wound up with two pieces of apple pie—”

“I knew it!” shouted Robby. “You’re making fun of me!You’re doing it deliberately! How about all that steak you ate? Just because you don’t like desserts!”

“That is not,” said Dr. Hoenig, “the same thing. However—” he added, as Robby opened his mouth to argue some more. “Peace. Whatever our eating habits, they haven’t made either of us fat, so I guess there’s no harm done.”

That, thought Robby, was the truth. He was tall but skinny for his thirteen years—thirteen and a quarter, to be exact. His father was just plain tall, and lean enough to look almost skinny. However, as Robby knew, Dr. Hoenig, in spite of his leanness, was powerful enough to do things like flip a hundred-pound sea turtle in over the side of a small boat from the water into the boat’s bottom, where it would lie sighing and waving its legs after the mournful fashion of sea turtles, unable to turn right side up again without help.

At that, though, it would be lucky. Dr. Hoenig would only want it so that he could attach a small waterproof tag to its undershell before returning it to the sunlit waves again. Other turtle hunters most likely would have wanted it to take ashore to make into soup—which was admittedly delicious.

But Robby’s father was a marine biologist, more interested in where the Chelonidae—which include the hawksbill, the loggerhead, and the green turtles that are so tasty for soupmaking—wandered, than how they tasted for lunch. Possibly, thought Robby now, if instead his father had become a zoologist ashore, he might have ended up more interested in where the tribe Bovidae, typified by the Bos taurus or common ox, wandered—instead of how these animals tasted ass teaks. But ashore, he could never have met and married Robby’s mother, who was at that time a marine biologist and also employed by the International Department of Fisheries, Salt Water Division, which was the department for which his father still worked.

And Robby would not have been born and he would not behaving, at this precise moment, a sensation that...

“But about this feeling . . ." he said to his father.

“What sort of a feeling? Be specific,” said Dr. Hoenig.

“As if,” said Robby, “something is going to happen.”

“Nonsense,” said his father. “What could happen?”—and of course, just then, something did.

There was a bang like a cannon going off from the cargo compartment behind them. A howling noise like a hurricane and a sea lion roaring together. The flyer dragged sideways, as if it were going to flip over.

“It’s Mac!” shouted Dr. Hoenig, wrestling with the controls to keep the flyer level. “Go see what’s wrong!”

But Robby was already out of his seat and struggling to open the door to the rear compartment against the hurricane.He got the door partly open and looked through to see the bellowing young sea lion half wedged in the open cargo door in one side of the flyer. Mac was fighting to keep from being sucked through it, to perish in a fall to the ocean, three thousand feet below. Robby turned his head to shout at his father.

“The cargo door’s open,” he yelled, “and Mac’s falling out of it. Can you turn the ship so he’ll fall back in?”

Dr. Hoenig nodded. Robby could see his father leaning against the controls and the cords standing out on the back of his long, brown hands. Then the flyer shuddered, and twisted half over with a wrench, so that one side of the front compartment became the floor and the floor became a wall to Robby’s left. Robby overbalanced, slid down the floor (that was now a wall) and landed flat on the wall (that was now a floor). Dr. Hoenig, braced in his seat, stayed put.

From the cargo compartment came another cannon like bang,followed by a thud against the opposite side of the flyer that again made it shudder. Mac weighed three hundred pounds and he had evidently fallen back from the door and clear across the compartment. But the wind noises had now stopped.

“The door’s closed!” shouted Dr. Hoenig. “Go check on Mac, and lock the door—but be careful!”

“I will!” Robby yelled back, pitching his voice over the bellows of Mac, who, if unharmed, was evidently eager to get back at the cargo door for what it had tried to do to him.Robby crawled back to the cargo compartment door and let himself through it. Inside he found Mac safe and the outer door closed but unlatched. By standing on tiptoe against the floor-wall and jumping up, Robby was able to catch and flip the latch into locked position.

“It’s all right, Dad,” shouted Robby. “Quiet, Mac!” Mac stopped roaring abruptly, taking Robby unaware as he, himself, was roaring for a second time, “I say it's all right back here now, Dad!”

“You don’t have to shout!” called Dr. Hoenig. “I heard you the first time.” The flyer rolled back to its proper position, and Robby looked severely at Mac.

“How’d you open that door?” demanded Robby. “Aren’t you ashamed?”

Mac barked with a note that rang with no ashamedness at all. He came of fighting stock; and his reply to any threat of danger was like that of Sir Bleoberis, whom Robby had read about recently in King Arthur and His Knights.

". . .I dread,” announced Sir Bleoberis to Sir Tristan in that book, “no Cornish Knight!’’ Neither did Mac. Nor did the young sea lion dread anything else—and that went double for the cargo doors on flyers.

He was a handsome young Steller’s, a close relative of the cow California sea lions seen doing tricks in circuses and usually miscalled performing “seals.” Two-year-old Mac had just grown the rough gold-and-brown back hair of a maturing bull sea lion. In three more years he would weigh nearly twelve hundred pounds or more, three times the size of his California relatives, and fear nothing that swam in his home of the Bering Sea, but the twenty to thirty-five foot killer whale. And, when he had a few friends of his own age and weight with him, not even the killer.

Adult male Steller’s, as Robby had learned, when in their native rookeries, had even been observed to get together and swim out to attack killer whales who approached too close to the rookeries. “Come on, hey guys!” those watching seem to hear the Steller’s barking to each other. “There’s one of those killer whales. Let’s go get him!”

And off they go. But the killer whale, accustomed as he is to seeing all sea creatures flee from his permanently grinning mouth and his great black-and-yellow, lightning-fast body,turns the other way. When he sees the big Steller’s forging toward him he casually swings around as he swims until he is going in the other direction, as if it had never crossed his hungry mind in the first place to snap up one of the yelping, slate-gray Steller’s pups, or one of the dark brown Steller’s yearlings not too much smaller than Mac.

This phenomenon of the adult Steller’s swimming out after killer whales who approach the rookeries was the reason for the experiment with the caps Robby and Mac wore. They were called rapport caps—rap caps for short. They made use of recent developments in radio telemetry and medical brain mapping to establish emotional contact between Mac and Robby. Robby’s rap cap recorded the electrical activity of the emotional centers located in that part of the mid-brain known as the hypothalamus. It then coded these impulses and transmitted them by radio beam to the rap cap on Mac. Mac’s cap decoded and broadcast them as electrical stimulations to the emotional centers of Mac’s brain. So that when Robby felt excited about something like pirate treasure, Mac was made to feel excited also. And when Robby felt kindly toward something, Mac would find himself feeling kind, though he would have to decide for himself what he was feeling kind towards.

There was some evidence he did. On Robby’s mother’s birthday, when Robby gave her her present, Dr. Hoenig observed Mac nuzzling a sofa pillow and cuddling up to it in loving fashion.

It was for this reason that Dr. Hoenig thought the rap caps might provide a way of answering a question about the Steller’s chasing killer whales. The question interesting him, and other zoologists as well, concerned the reason why Steller’s should go out of their way to attack a dangerous enemy like the killer whale. Were they simply responding to the impulse to gang up on an enemy, the way wolves have been known to gang upon a bear, or dogs in a pack attack wild boar? Or was it an impulse to protect the rookeries that sent the big adults swimming out to battle?

The rap caps, and Mac and Robby wearing them, could provide the answer. The reason was that it had already been proved it was not normal behavior for Steller’s to come to the assistance of a human acquaintance. This was evidently not because of any lack of affection for the human, but because of the Steller’s inborn nature.

Mac could hardly bear to be parted from Robby. But while Balthasar, Robby’s dolphin at the Point Loma Station, always pushed Robby away from the neighborhood of passing sharks or the dens of moray eels and so forth, such actions never seemed to occur to Mac. Was this because Mac was not bothered by the sight of a shark or a moray eel, and therefore it did not occur to him that Robby should be? (Robby wasn’t. He often got exasperated with Balthasar’s attempts to shield him from danger.) Or was it because Mac, unlike the dolphin, lacked a protective instinct?

Mac was a happy, wild, adventurous, almost cocksure individual. So, said Dr. Hoenig, was Robby. They were emotionally alike. The only difference was that Robby had a human’s protective impulses. Mac appeared to have none. If this was so, then the reason the Steller’s would swim out to attack the killer whales was simply the urge to attack a known enemy. Dr. Hoenig, in spite of hoping this was otherwise, thought it the most likely answer.

However, if the reason was the urging of a protective impulse toward the Steller’s young, then the rap caps might prove it. Mac, being constantly exposed to Robby’s emotions, might some day be stimulated to come to what he thought was Robby’s rescue. If this happened, then it was a pretty sure bet that, if a Steller’s could be protective to a human, they were probably being protective when they sallied out toward the killer whales from their rookeries. This was what Robby believed was true.

At any rate, if Mac was not feeling protective now, neither was he feeling very disturbed by the situation. Robby went back to the pilot’s compartment.

“What happened back there?” asked Dr. Hoenig.

“Mac must have gotten the door open,” answered Robby,sitting down again in the copilot’s seat. “He must have been really working at it to do that.”

“He’s keyed up,” said Robby’s father. “That’s one trouble with this team cap project. When I get a geared-up Robertson Alan Hoenig, I have a geared-up Mac RuffianEumetopias stelleri. Excitement jumps like a spark between you two.”

“Well, anyway,” said Robby, “it’s all, all right now.”

“Not so all, all right as you may think,” replied Dr. Hoenig a trifle grimly. “That door slamming open didn’t do the flyer any good. The controls are mushy and the flyer’s dragging sideways. We may have to skip Bob and go on direct to Miami.”

“Dad!” cried Robby.

“Can’t help it,” said his father. “I didn’t count on any-thing like this when I said we could drop by and see Bob’s site.”

“But I’ll probably never have a chance to see a real Spanish treasure ship again!”

“Of course you will,” said Dr. Hoenig. “You can see it along with everyone else at the University of Florida Marine Museum after they move it ashore there next week.”

“But that’s not like seeing it on the bottom of the sea at the exact point where they excavated it!” cried Robby. “They’ll probably never excavate another treasure galleon like that again.”

“Now, I told you, Robby. It’s no galleon. It’s a sloop, La Floridana, like the sloop in which Commander Maynard sailed to attack and kill Blackbeard the pirate in 1718. You’ve seen a picture of a similar ship in the Mariners Museum at Newport News, Virginia. It’s a small boat, rigged fore-and-aft with mainsail and jib, and designed for scout or patrol duty. And it carried, as far as Bob’s team has found, no treasure—which,” continued Dr. Hoenig with a severe glance, “is what I think you’re really interested in at this site. Not underwater archeology."

“Well,” said Robby. “There could be treasure and the archeologists just didn’t find it. You said so, yourself!”

“I said so?” echoed Dr. Hoenig, his eyebrows shooting up.

“The other day,” said Robby. “You told me it was knowledge Bob and his team were interested in—not treasure.”

“A team of men seeking knowledge at a spot like that could hardly miss any treasure that was also on the site,” said Dr. Hoenig, dryly. “Treasure’s much easier to uncover than knowledge as it is less valuable.”

“Less valuable?” Robby stared at his father. “Treasure—gold and silver—less valuable than knowledge?”

“Much less valuable.”

“Prove it to me,” Robby demanded, skeptically.

“Robertson,” said his father, “if you’ve convinced yourself that gold, silver, or any such thing is more valuable than what you can store in your head, I’m not going to be able to argue you out of it. You’re going to have to discover I’m right, for yourself. And I can only hope,” said Dr. Hoenig piously, “that the discovery may not prove a painful one.”

“That’s what you said about my eating the second slice of apple pie,” pointed out Robby. “And I feel fine. No stomachache at all!”

“The truth about knowledge and treasure,” said his father,“is a lot more of a chunk to digest than an extra slice of apple pie. Meanwhile, what to do about this flyer? There’s Alligator Reef and Bob’s site, just ahead; but I can’t just drop a wrecked flyer on a scientific team and expect repairs. Possibly if we turned in to land at Upper Matecumbe Key—”

But that was one “possibly” that was fated never to be resolved. For at that moment there was a tearing screech to their left. The port ducted fan jammed and stopped. The flyer whirled into a spin, now that the starboard ducted fan was no longer balanced by the push from the fan at port. And the push of the unbalanced, single fan sent them twisting, cartwheeling, before Dr. Hoenig could balance the push, tumbling out of control toward the sea and the coral rocks and reefs of the waters of the Florida Straits below.

The Ghost Captain

“Sit tight!”

It was Dr. Hoenig’s voice, coining calmly and quietly through all the turmoil to Robby. So might Commander Maynard have spoken to his crew as they sailed in to join battle with the pirate Edward Teach, known as Blackbeard.Robby trusted the voice, and obeyed it. He clung to his seat in the spinning flyer while the sky and the sea went wheeling dizzily about them and the single unbalanced fan screamed,trying to tear itself loose.

Then there was a sudden wrench, and a shudder. The screaming dropped to a steady hum of power. The flyer leaned heavily to one side and came out of its spin. A moment later, with a single hard bounce, the flyer smacked down on the surface of the heaving ocean waves.

Dr. Hoenig shut the motors off and sat back with a sigh.

“All right?” he asked, looking over at Robby.

“All right,” said Robby.

“Good boy,” said his father. He leaned forward to the radiophone and pressed the “send” button on its instrument panel.

“Mayday!” he said crisply into the microphone grille of the panel. "Mayday. Ducted fan flyer number zc346 0729, flyer number—” But at that point a strong, cheerful voice from the phone speaker broke in on him.

“Jim? Is that you, Jim Hoenig? This is Bob Clanson. Can you hear me?”

“I hear you, Bob,” answered Dr. Hoenig. “We’re down—”

“I know. We saw you go down from the site, here. Hello,Coast Guard? This is Dr. Robert Clanson, leader of the University of Florida archeological team at Alligator Reef. We can probably reach the downed flyer before you can.We’re heading for it now in a skimmer.”

There was a moment’s pause. Then a new, crisp voice spoke.

“This is Coast Guard Rescue Nine. Repeat, Coast Guard Rescue Nine. We are fourteen miles north of you and will continue to approach transmission point at speed of one hundred and forty knots until occupants of flyer are reported rescued. Keep your radio open on this channel until then, and acknowledge this transmission.”

“Acknowledged,” came the voice of Bob Clanson. “I ought to have them picked up in five minutes. I’ll keep you informed, Rescue Nine.”

“Better go check on Mac,” Dr. Hoenig turned to Robby.

Robby could not remember a sound from the sea lion since the fan had first jammed. He got up and hurried back into the cargo compartment. But Mac was sitting up with excitement making him quiver all over. He was evidently picking up Robby’s excitement through his rapport cap, again. He barked happily when he saw Robby. Clearly he was unharmed and still feeling like Sir Bleoberis ("I fear no wreck at sea!”). Robby went back to his father.

As he sat down again, he looked out through the windshield. The skimmer from Alligator Reef was already insight. Robby could see it as a black dot with two wide wings of water spray thrown up on either side. It was rushing toward them, borne not upon water, but on air—riding, as Robby knew, on thousands of tiny jets of compressed air. It was a descendant of the Hydroskimmer skmr-1, built by Bell Aerosystems in the early 1960’s for the U.S. Navy BuShips.The compressed air jets held the ship a foot or two above the wave crests. And the jets propelling it could send the ship over the ocean surface at hissing speeds of more than one hundred knots, which was more than a hundred and fifteen miles per hour.

Coast Guard Rescue Nine would be similar but larger and much faster, and would also have special hydrofoil vanes for especially rough water. Robby had ridden the Mexican Patrol Boat in waters near his home, the Point Loma Experimental Station. He knew how swift such powerful craft could be.

Five minutes later, Robby and his father were with Bob Clanson aboard the small, saucer-shaped skimmer, headed back to the archeological site. The flyer was in tow behind them and Mac was still in the flyer. Robby’s father had decided that a thoroughly excited, totally fearless, three-hundred-pound sea lion was much better in a cargo compartment than galumphing around the cockpit of a small skimmer, where he might quite possibly take it into his head to defy and attack the skimmer’s controls, to the regret of one and all.

“I want to take a look at him, though,” Bob Clanson said, after phoning Coast Guard Rescue Nine that the castaways were safe, “after we get back to the site. Steller’s sea lion, is he? I thought they were too big and rough to handle safely.

”Bob Clanson was a broad-shouldered, athletic-looking man with a sun-tanned round face under blond, crewcut hair. He was shorter than Robby’s father, but was more muscular. There was a kind of twinkling humor about his dark blue eyes as he grinned at Robby now, as if he were just about to play some friendly but harmless joke on him or Dr. Hoenig. He looked more like a high-school football coach than the head of a scientific expedition. Robby had thought well of him at first sight.

“A full grown bull Steller’s would be,” answered Robby’s father. “But Mac’s still a youngster. And Robby seems to have a knack for handling sea animals like him. Mac would follow Robby anywhere. In fact, he does—that’s the trouble.”

“Oh?” Bob grinned at Robby and turned to his father. “By the way, do you know a man from the International Bureau of Police named Lillibulero?”

“Lillibulero?” asked Robby’s father. “I know him well.”

“He was out at the site last Sunday, when everyone except me had gone ashore,” said Bob. “He came to warn me about an art-treasure thief called Red Carswell who may try to steal the ship we’ve excavated. For years now Lillibulero’s been after this Carswell, but he’s never been able to convict him.

Lately Carswell’s been mixed up with an old and rich collector of art treasures who’d be able to pay Carswell’s price for the robbery.”

“I’d watch out,” said Dr. Hoenig. “Lillibulero’s a good man. When he gives a warning, he’s worth listening to.”

“I intend to listen,” said Bob. “Well, here we are.”

And there they were, indeed. Bob had just swung the skimmer, with its flyer in tow, across jagged reefs that lay less than a yard below the water’s surface. They came to a halt alongside a flat metal barge some eighty by forty feet in area. It was anchored inside and parallel with the reef, and its gun-metal gray sides lifted some three feet above the small waves of the sheltered waters inside the reef. Metal ladder sled up from the sea on each side of the barge. At one end was a sort of pocket leading underwater to a glass bubble from which the excavation on the sea bottom could be filmed as it proceeded. Almost beside the pocket was a curved pipe, like the handle of a cane, with a screen on its open end, projecting out of the water. Below it was a device called an airlift, a canvas tube going down through the water to the sea bottom.Robby recognized its straight vacuum-cleaner-like end from his reading on sunken treasure. Not far from this end, looking down through thirty feet of the clear water, Robby saw the shadowy shape of the craft that had been excavated, resting on an underwater metal framework.

Half the barge was covered by buildings with white-painted sides and roofs; the other half was taken up with compressors, donkey engines, machine tools, and so forth, including a large crane sticking up in the air between the skimmer and a squat-bodied power boat on the opposite side of the barge. A little man with mousy hair was busy using the crane to lift heavy pieces of equipment onto the deck of the power boat.

“This way,” said Bob, leading them up on the deck of the barge. He called to the little man at the crane, “Cal! Will you lift the flyer onto the power boat, so we can take her into Miami with the rest?”

The man named Cal waved and began to drive the motor that would swing the twenty-foot-high tip of the crane, with its dangling wire cable and magnet, over the flyer.

“Now, wait a minute, Bob,” said Dr. Hoenig, who had gained the deck of the barge just behind Bob, with Robby right behind him. “We’re not going to let you make a special trip in to Miami to take our flyer in—”

“We’re not making a special trip,” said Bob, turning around. “We’re going in anyway. You hit us at just the right time. Cal, there, is our power engineer, and he had a bit of bad luck earlier today. We’ve got one of the new MHD generators aboard the power ship to run all our equipment—you know what the MHD generators are?”

“Yes,” Dr. Hoenig replied.

“I don’t,” said Robby, quickly, at the same moment.

“Well,” said Bob. MHD stands for magnetohydrodynamic. They’re generators that make use of extremely high temperatures. Gas at those temperatures, seeded with a potassium salt, is moved through a magnetic field. The flow across the field creates electric power to run our machines here. Does that explain it?”

“Yes,” said Dr. Hoenig.

“No,” said Robby.

They looked at each other again.

“I guess Robby’s just going to have to take your word for it for the present,” said Dr. Hoenig. He looked back at Bob. “And?”

“Cal heated the generator up too fast this morning and developed some microscopic cracks in the main chamber. We daren’t run the generator for fear of gas leakage. I don’t blame Cal. It’s just that these things happen. But it’s stopped work here until we can get the chamber repaired in Miami. So, I gave everyone on the team a couple of days off. Cal and I and the three men crewing aboard the power ship are the only ones left here. So, you see, you had your accident at the right time and place. You and your flyer can ride in with us.”

“You’re leaving right away?” asked Dr. Hoenig.

“In about twenty minutes,” answered Bob. Robby gave a cry of dismay.

“Something wrong?” asked Bob, looking at him. Robby turned and looked desperately at his father, who frowned reprovingly at him.

“Robby,” said Dr. Hoenig, “was looking forward to seeing the ship and the site. It’s the main reason we were coming by to see you on our way back from the Whale Hospital in Nassau.” He looked sternly at Robby. “However, when equipment breaks down, plans have to be changed. That’s something we all have to learn to adjust to.”

Why? thought Robby, bitterly, his hopes of treasure tumbling.

“Oh, now,” said Bob, grinning cheerfully at Robby. “I guess I can manage a few minutes to take him down and show him around the ship and the site. You’ll find a spare water lung in the communications shack down at the end of the barge, there, Robby. Get it and I’ll get mine from my office shack, and we’ll go down to have a look.” Robby’s hopes soared again.

He raced off. Shortly he was back, stripped down to the swimming trunks he usually wore under his shorts and tee shirt, and the converter collar of a water lung buckled around his neck, with the face plate hanging from it.

This water lung was a clever little device which had replaced the somewhat clumsy mask and tanks of compressed air originally used by the scuba divers. The converter collar of the water lung recycled the atmosphere in a person’s own lungs, getting rid of moisture and waste products, but otherwise using the same atmosphere over and over again. It also added oxygen extracted from surrounding water, which, fortunately, is a compound of hydrogen and oxygen. A tiny atomic battery powered the collar.

When Robby got back to where he had left Bob and his father, however, the two men were not in sight. He looked around and saw only Cal, the power engineer, who had just finished loading the flyer onto the deck of the power boat. Robby went over to him.

“Excuse me,” said Robby. “Do you know where my father and Bob are?”

Cal turned slowly and looked at him. Under the mousy hair the little man’s gray eyes were as hard and as unfriendly as stone.

“Bunkhouse. They’ll be here in a minute.” Cal looked at Robby in a chilly way that made him feel uncomfortable.

“Going down to the ship, are you?” said Cal, after a second.“Look out for the ghost.” He spoke between tight lips that made his words sound like a threat.

Robby stared. He searched the engineer’s face for some sign that this was a joke. But there was no gleam of humor to be seen, either in the face or in the flat gray eyes hooded under reddish eyelashes. Cal turned and walked away. Robby stared after him until, a few seconds later, his father and Bob came out of the bunkhouse and joined him. Bob was wearing swimming trunks with a weighted belt to help him stay underwater, and had a water lung around his neck. He handed Robby a weighted belt.

“Cal said to look out for the ghost,” said Robby resentfully, as he put on the belt. “What ghost? What did he mean?”

Bob stared, then laughed.

“It’s a joke around here,” he answered. “Ever since 1923,when Carter and Breasted opened the tomb of old Egyptian King Tutankhamen, some joker is always ready to invent a superstition around the site of an archeological excavation. The legend on this site of ours is that the ghost of the captain of La Floridana still haunts his sunken ship. But it’s just a joke, Robby, even if some of our gang do like to tell each other they’ve actually seen the old captain.”

“I wasn’t worried!” said Robby, indignantly. “I don’t believe in ghosts.” He didn’t either. It was three years since he, with the help of his father, had rigged a ghost trap. They had caught nothing. Which, thought Robby, proved that was what ghosts were—nothing.

“Come on, then,” said Bob, pulling his transparent face plate up over his eyes, nose, and mouth. His voice changed then, sounding oddly hollow as he began to speak through the diaphragm designed for talking underwater, in the bottom of the face plate. “I’ll explain things as we go down.”

Robby pulled up his own face plate and followed Bob across the deck of the barge. Cal, Robby saw, had disappeared. Undoubtedly he had actually been trying to frighten Robby, and, thought Robby, now that he had failed, was keeping out of sight. He did not, Robby decided sourly, like the hooded-eyed little man. A moment later Bob walked off the side of the barge into the blue water between the observation bubble and the power boat, and Robby followed.

They sank slowly down through the magnificently clear water toward the white sand bottom where the ship lay. Bob’s voice, distorted by coming from the water lung diaphragm and through the water, sounded abruptly in Robby’s ears. It echoed like someone speaking with his head in a box.

“This ship of ours, La Floridana,” said Bob, as he and Robby drifted downward together, “was thought to have sunk outside the reef in deep water. But when we located her with modern metal-detecting tools, we found her inside the reef, buried under a lot of mud and sand. That’s one of the reasons she’s so uniquely valuable. Do you have any idea why?”

“Yes,” said Robby. “Because maybe there was treasure she’d been carrying spilled out in the mud and sand?”

“Not exactly,” said Bob’s funny-sounding voice. "La Floridana was among the smallest of the silver fleet vessels that left Havana, Cuba, on July 13, 1733. The four large galleons, and the seventeen noas, or merchant ships, carried most of the silver and the treasure. Of those, four grounded,but all the rest were sunk by the hurricane of July 15th, that sunk La Floridana. So we didn’t expect to, and we didn’t, find any real treasure aboard her.”

“Then why is she so valuable?” asked Robby unbelievingly, as they both landed, lightly as two feathers, on the white sand thirty feet down.

“Because she was covered up by the mud and sand,” said Bob. “Because of that, instead of being broken up by wave action and riddled by the teredo worm—and all the other destruction that would have put a quick end to her in open underseas water—she was preserved. If you look at her now,you’ll see how little she’s been damaged.”

Robby looked. He saw a shallow-sided ship about forty feet long with a square stem, a kind of low cabin toward the bow, and a mast just behind this, broken off short.

“Her mast is broken,” Robby pointed out quickly.

“That probably happened before she was sunk,” Bob replied. “Outside of that and except for being waterlogged,she’s almost ready to sail the seas once more. No eighteenth-century Spanish ship has ever been recovered in such good condition. She’s in better shape than the Swedish warship, Wasa, that was raised in I960 from the bottom of Copenhagen Bay, after seven hundred years. And the Baltic Seawaters of Copenhagen Bay have so little salt that they’re especially kind to sunken ships.”

They bounded gracefully from the sandy bottom the way skin divers do underwater and swam up toward the bow of the ship. As they went, Robby looked around at the underwater area where La Floridana had been excavated. It had a floor of white sand, for the most part. This was fairly clear where the ship had been excavated, but farther off it was covered by the dark shapes of rocks broken by storms off the reef beyond. And in among the rocks were sea fans, coral heads, and other marine growths, both plant and animal—for many of the seeming plants on the sea bottom are merely animals fastened in one spot.

Beyond, the reef rose like a miniature mountain range some twenty feet in height, with a gap in it, looking like a mountain pass on a small scale, particularly full of broken-off rock and coral heads and sea fans. Robby, having seen most of what there was to see around the ship, looked back at the ship itself.

They were right up by the bow now, and Robby noticed that there was no name to be seen written there. A flash of imagination suddenly lit up his thoughts. What if, he wondered, this ship was not La Floridana at all? What if it were some other ship known to have carried treasure, and the archeologists, not knowing this, had not bothered to look too hard for gold, silver, and other items . . . ?

“There’s no name,” said Robby slyly to Bob. “How do you know it’s La Floridana?"

Bob laughed, and the laugh sounded high and tinny in the water, because of its sound traveling at triple the speed it would have made in air.

“That’s part of the detective work that goes into archeology,” he answered. “First, we found this ship here about where La Floridana is known to have gone down. Second, this ship is a sloop”—he pointed to the stump of the single mast broken off about four feet above the deck planking—“and we only know of one ship like it in the flota of 1733.”

“But maybe,” said Robby, “this was a ship sunk some other time?”

“No,” came back Bob’s water-changed voice. “For this ship is built of both cedar and oak. Those woods indicate she’s of Spanish construction. We found her ballast was of smooth stones about the size of my fist, which indicates her nationality and period. And the lead sheathing on her hull as protection against the teredo worms indicates the same thing.”

“But if it just indicates,” said Robby triumphantly, feeling like some clever lawyer pinning down a reluctant witness,“you’re not sure."

Bob laughed again.

“We are, though,” he said. “You see, we did find a few coins, such as pieces of eight, aboard this ship. None of them were dated after 1733, and several of them were the first coins made in Mexico with a screw press, in 1732. These 1732 coins were called Pillar or Dos Mundos (meaning ‘two worlds’) coins. So, this is La Floridana, all right—”

The ringing of a bell from the barge above them, just under the surface of the water, interrupted him.

“That’s funny,” said Bob. “We can’t be out of time already? Well, I guess we’d better head up.”

He started toward the surface. Robby lagged behind. With the water lungs, where the same gases were used over and over with oxygen added, there was not the danger of dissolved nitrogen in the blood that had bothered divers breathing compressed air under pressure. It was still just as well, of course, not to rush to the surface from more than thirty feet down, where the pressure is double that of the air above the waves. But this was not the reason Robby hung back. It was because he wanted to take a look around the site for possible treasure, on his own.

The stem of the sloop was about ten feet below him. He was now in the shadow of the power boat overhead and drifting behind the canvas tube of the airlift, a device used by underwater searchers as early as the nineteen fifties to vacuum off the sand and silt covering objects buried on the sea bottom. Archeologists, Robby had read, never used it directly on a site for fear of damaging fragile discoveries—but for a second Robby thought of turning it on. Somehow, then, it would happen to suck up sand a little to one side of the site.Something would be uncovered . . .

Abruptly, he came back from his daydream. He was still looking past the airlift tube at the dark deck of the ship.Something there had moved and caught his eye.

As he watched, it continued to move. Something was emerging from the cabin, from the hatchway facing toward the bow, away from him. Slowly it rose above the level of the cabin’s roof, something shaped like the crown of a hat, with a feather sprouting beside it. Higher it rose. A broad brim came into view under the crown. Then shoulder-length hair appeared, and dark-coated shoulders, which soon revealed the back of a coat cut in sharply at the waist. The scabbard of a sword pushed out the skirts of the coat in back.

Last came narrow breeches, and high, dark, wrinkled leather boots. Neither clothing nor boots seemed dampened by the water.

Robby hung behind the airlift tube, staring at the back of a figure in the clothes of a Spanish captain of the eighteenth century. The tube of the airlift was between them, but Robby saw the figure clearly. For a moment it stood facing away from him, as if the ship it stood on was not lying on the sea bottom where it had sunk nearly three hundred years before,but heading once more before a stiff wind up the Florida Straits.

Then, slowly, the strange figure began to turn in Robby’s direction.

The Black-Clad Swimmer

The next thing he knew, Robby was scrambling up through the water as fast as he could swim, clutching the underwater end of the metal ladder to the deck of the barge, and clambering up it. He had not waited until the figure below had turned full around. But there was an image burned into his mind of the side of a face as white as chalk, a face almost too big for the body on which it rode. A face with a black heavy mustache and black eyebrows under the hat brim. And no water lung collar below it or face plate covering its nose and mouth.

Then he was standing dripping on the deck of the barge in the late afternoon light. The sun was shining merrily on the waves, down the reef a way a white gull was doing head-stands a few hundred feet in the air, and Bob and Robby’s father were deep in conversation by the ladder. Robby almost blundered into them.

“Oh, there you are,” said Dr. Hoenig sharply, noticing him. “Why didn’t you come up with Bob when the bell rang? I suppose you were happily drifting around and dreaming of treasure, without a care in the world? For all we knew you’d fallen asleep down there.”

Robby gasped. He had so much to say that the words blocked each other and left him choking on silence.

“Cover your mouth when you yawn,” said Dr. Hoenig, severely. “Now, wake up. I want you to do something for me. You’re homesick. You want to get home to the Point Loma Station.”

Robby stared, and found his voice.

“But I don’t!” he said.

“You can try, can’t you?” demanded his father. “Make an effort. Come on now. You want to go home. You’re tired of being around here. It’s dull. Nothing ever happens—”

“But—” stammered Robby.

“You aren’t trying,” accused Dr. Hoenig.

“But why do I want to go home?” Robby burst out. “Why—”

“Because maybe if you would start feeling as if you wanted to go home, that harebrained sea lion would start feeling the same way, and come back here to the barge, so we could load him on the power boat and get going for Miami.”

“Mac?” asked Robby, staring. “Mac isn’t on the barge—I mean, on the power boat?” He looked over at the powerboat.

“He is not,” said Dr. Hoenig. “He got that cargo door open again, and went overside into the water in a flash. It’s your curiosity and excitement keying him up again. Not only do I have a treasure-hunting son, I now have,” he said, turning to Bob, standing there, still in his swimming trunks and water lung, and looking sympathetic, “a treasure-hunting Steller’s sea lion. Though what sort of treasure Mac’s mind pictures baffles the imagination. A case of canned sardines packed in oil, no doubt, and a sea lion usable can opener.”

He turned back to Robby.

“You didn’t see any sign of him down there? No, I didn’t think so. Why have you got that peculiar look on your face?”

“What—what kind of a look?” asked Robby, playing for time.

“Like an oversize party cracker about to burst and spray surprises all over the place,” answered Dr. Hoenig. “Like a mouse who’s just stolen the cheese without springing the mousetrap. Did you see a three-hundred-pound, crazy sea lion down there, or didn’t you?”

“No,” said Robby.

“Well, that ties it,” said his father to Bob. “Mac’s too valuable for us to lose. It’s not just the rapport cap experiment, but the studies for fishworm and parasite medication we’ve been making on him.” He looked at Bob again. “That’s how we happened to be coining by. We were on our way back from taking Mac to the Whale Hospital in Nassau for his skin tests. We’ve been trying to find a medication to spray on the Bering Sea rookeries. The wild Steller’s are all subject to fungus infections. We’ve got a two-month history of medical tests on Mac’s skin. We can’t let that go down the drain.”

He turned back to Robby.

“I have to be at that conference on deep-sea oceanography in New York tomorrow morning without fail. There’s no way around it. However, if we both go off and leave Mac, he may just wander off, trying to find you, the way he always does at home. Only here, not finding you, he may revert to the wild.We’d never see him again. Which leaves it up to you, Robby,” said his father. “Are you willing to stay on the barge through tonight and tomorrow? Mac ought to be back as soon as you, yourself, calm down. And when he comes, you can tie or lock him up until I return late tomorrow night.”

He stopped and frowned at Robby.

“Now understand,” he continued, “you don’t have to stay if you don’t want to. You wouldn’t be alone here since Cal is remaining as watchman. And I’d expect you to do exactly as he says. But we can’t afford to lose Mac, and he’s partially your responsibility, as well as mine. How about it, Robby? Do you want to stay?”

Robby hesitated. He had been bursting all along with the desire to tell his father and Bob about the ghost figure, but his father’s remark about the mouse who had stolen the cheese from the mousetrap had silenced him. He remembered his father kidding him in the plane about eating two pieces of apple pie. Scrooge, Dr. Hoenig had reminded Robby, had at first blamed Marley’s ghost on a piece of cheese he had eaten. But now that he was back up in the bright sunlight and the good, clear air, Robby was becoming more and more certain that there was something funny about that ghost. It was a little too good to be true, a ghost showing up right after Cal had warned him about it. Robby had a growing hunch that maybe the ghost was one of the crew on the power boat,with a ghost mask over his water lung, perhaps, whom Cal had dressed up in some unsoakable costume to go down to frighten Robby.

If so, they had mistaken the boy they had to deal with,thought Robby. He was beginning to feel a little like Sir Bleoberis himself. If he insisted about the ghost, Robby knew his father would eventually give up kidding about it and investigate. But in that case, Robby would certainly not be left behind to recapture Mac.

And the treasure. A sudden, magnificent thought burst like a many-colored skyrocket in Robby’s mind. If he stayed behind, he would have a full day and a night to investigate the site for treasure. And why shouldn’t there be treasure? In fact, with people pretending to be ghosts, perhaps there was some dark and underhanded scheme afoot. . .

“I’ll stay,” said Robby.

“All right,” said his father. “Bob and I will get going then. He has to get his power boat to Miami before the repair dock there closes for the evening. Remember what I told you about obeying Cal. I’ll phone you tomorrow from New York and see how you’ve come out with recapturing Mac.”

He turned with Bob toward the power boat. Then Bob stopped and turned back.

“I haven’t time to hunt for Cal now,” he said briskly.“Will you ask him to phone me on the power boat when you find him? Tell him, too, I want him to finish putting the electric motors on La Floridana before I come back.”

“I’ll tell him,” said Robby, watching his father jump aboard the power ship, the side of which was about a foot higher than the barge deck. “Electric motors? What for?”

“To move the ship underwater to Miami,” answered Bob.He grinned at Robby. “We can’t bring the waterlogged wood of her hull out into the air until it’s treated, you know.Wood like that may look perfectly good while it’s still soaked,but as soon as it’s dried out it decays and crumbles. The whole ship will have to be soaked several weeks in carbowax—that’s polyethelene glycol. The wood takes up the carbowax instead of the water, and that way it’s preserved.”

“Oh,” said Robby. “I’ll tell him.” He watched Bob follow Dr. Hoenig to the deck of the power boat.

“Good luck with your sea lion!” called Bob, waving. He shouted from the door of the bridge of the power boat. “Let’s get traveling.” The power boat began to slide away from the barge. “Ask Cal for anything you want, Robby!” Bob called,as the distance between them widened.

“I will,” Robby shouted back. “But he isn’t very friendly!”

“Tell him I said he was to be friendly!” shouted Bob, laughing, his voice growing fainter.

The power boat pulled away and as it gained speed, it began to lift up on its air jets and hydrofoil vanes. By the time it crossed the reef it was lifting two wide wings of silver spray on each side, and drawing only about six inches of water. Its speed mounted swiftly, and it looked like some strange sort of waterbug as it shrank toward the horizon, faster and faster, until it dwindled to a dot and was lost in the glitter of the waves under the descending sun.

Robby watched until the boat was lost to sight. Then he went in search of Cal to give him Bob’s message. But it was some time before he finally located the small, mousy-haired man in the mess hall shack of the barge. Cal was drinking coffee from a large porcelain cup and eating a sandwich.

“Help yourself. There’s milk in the refrigerator,” said Cal.His eyes followed Robby as Robby got a quart of milk from the big refrigerator. “So you stayed to look for your sea lion?”

“Yes,” answered Robby, filling his glass. “Bob said for you to phone the power boat and put the electric motors on La Floridana.”

“I’ve phoned them,” said Cal’s cold voice behind Robby.“And the motors are already on and we’re ready to go.”

Robby turned around and found himself looking directly into Cal’s still gray eyes, as chilly and without feeling as a pair of sea-worn stones found on some lonely northern beach.The reddish eyelashes seemed to add a hard red glitter to the eyes themselves. Robby looked for some touch of friendliness, some sign of the humor to be found in eyes like his father’s, or Bob’s. But there was nothing; not even anger or dislike. It was like being watched from across some bottomless gap by someone who could not, and would never want to, cross over to your side.

The eyes held Robby motionless. He was like a small bird fascinated by the hooded gaze of a hunting snake.

“You’re going to be here overnight,” he heard Cal say, his voice also without feeling, without threat or anger. But Robby felt his heart beat, beat, beating in his chest as he listened, the way you can feel a small bird’s heart beating when you hold it in your hand. “I’d stay out of trouble if I were you. Yes, I’d keep out of trouble.”

Having said this, Cal got up to refill his cup from the pot on the stove nearby, and Robby snatched up a couple of the sandwiches and slipped out of the mess hall. Cal did not even turn his head to see him go.

Outside, in the clean, sunset air, Robby reached over to tap the barge side underwater in the signal that called Mac at Point Loma. But Mac did not come now. He took his milk and sandwiches to a far end of the barge and sat down to eat his snack with his back against an overturned rowboat. The white-painted side of the rowboat was warm from the last rays of the sun and so was the steel deck under him. These two warmths gradually soaked into him and began to drive out the coldness Cal’s eyes had given him.

He sat there as the sun went down and a magnificent full moon started to climb up from another quarter of the horizon.The brilliant stars of the tropics began to come out and fill the sky. Inside him, as Robby watched, there slowly built a tale of treasure, and of finding it himself, locked in ironbound chests and drifted over with the sands of time . . .

A splashing sound brought him out of this dream and he sat up with a start.

“Mac . . . ?” he called. But there was no answer. And the noisy, young sea lion would at least have barked in reply if he was returning to the barge. Robby climbed to his feet and looked around him. The moon was so bright now that Robby could see the white sand sea bottom under the barge and the dark shape of La Floridana down below. The deck of the barge, the equipment and the buildings on it were still and white in the moonlight.

Robby looked about him, a chilly, creepy feeling beginning to slide down his back.

“Cal . . . ?” said Robby questioningly.

Nothing answered. Nothing moved.

The chill spread all through Robby. He turned swiftly and began to walk back along the barge.

“Cal!” he called. He had been happy to get away from the cold-eyed man, but now he would have been glad to see him again. The utter silence on the barge was fearful, and suddenly even the lapping of the waves seemed full of unknown menace.

“Cal!” shouted Robby, running back to the mess hall. He found it empty, a place of moonlight and shadows. Silver beams slanting in one window showed the plate with half a sandwich still left on it and Cal’s cup with a little dark coffee still in the bottom.

Robby burst out of the mess hall and ran from building to building on the barge, tearing open the doors. But everywhere he looked there was silence and darkness.

He was alone on the boat.

Heart pounding, chest heaving, Robby came to a halt against the side of the radio shack. As he leaned against it,hope blossomed suddenly inside him. If he had not been gulping so hard for breath, he would have managed to laugh at himself. He had forgotten all about the phone in the radio shack. With that phone (which he knew how to use from experience with the radiophone at home in the Point Loma Station, which was several miles offshore from the Mexican coast) he could call to anyone. He could call Coast Guard Rescue Nine, which would come immediately, proceeding to the transmission point at a hundred and forty knots if necessary, and take care of—

But just then, not fifteen feet from him, something broke water at the foot of the ladder over the side of the barge.There was a swirl and a splash that sounded as loud as a clap of thunder in the still night. A second later came another sound, the dull, slapping noise of hands clutching at the metal rungs of the ladder.

Robby stood frozen.

There was the bubbling sound of a body hoisting itself from the water. A second later a smoothly black and shining head lifted itself into sight over the edge of the barge and a face plate glinted in the moonlight, looking directly at Robby.Slowly and deliberately a figure clothed all in a skin-tight suit of black climbed on to the deck of the barge. It stepped toward Robby; and as it did, he heard a strange and tinny singing noise from the diaphragm of its face plate.

The Dead Ship Sails

The figure stopped in front of Robby, and the singing noise ceased too.

“Ah, Robertson!” said a dry, distorted voice from the diaphragm of the face plate. “It’s fortunate I’m not the sort t’demand a warm welcome from m’friends, or y’would have disappointed me sorely!” And with that, the figure pulled down its face plate, and the moonlight struck full upon the face of an odd, sharp-featured little man whom Robby knew well.

“Mr. Lillibulero!” shouted Robby, with relief and happiness. “Mr. Lillibulero—where did you come from?”

“From the sea, Robertson,” replied the little man, with a sniff of disdain. “From th’ocean, which y’may just have noticed the other end of this ladder dips down into.”

And he bent his gaze, needle like even in the soft moonlight, on Robby.

However, neither the gaze nor the tone of Mr. Lillibulero’s answer managed to dampen Robby’s happiness at seeing the little man before him. For this was indeed the Mr. Lillibulero of whom Bob Clanson had spoken, and whom Robby had seen in action against such enemies of society as Vandals,and also against such misguided individuals as the Tropicans, who had tried to blow up the Ross ice shelf at the South Pole. Robby knew that the little man’s reputation as perhaps the top agent of the International Bureau of Police was well-founded. He was also familiar with Mr. Lillibulero’s manner and way of speaking, and it no longer bothered him. There was, he knew, a great deal more to Mr. Lillibulero than met the eye.

What met the eye was interesting enough. Mr. Lillibulero was hardly taller than Robby. Under the tight black head covering, his face was tanned brown like the face of a man who spends most of his time outdoors. His nose was straight,and his chin was sharp. Between his brown eyebrows was a short, sharp line like an exclamation point. Two other lines curved from the sides of his nose around the quirked-up corners of his mouth, which was thin-lipped and grimly humorous.

In the moonlight it was impossible to see the color of his eyes, but Robby knew from the past that these were green as emeralds and sharp as knife points, so that few people with guilty consciences cared to meet them squarely. And on top of all this, there was the oddity of Mr. Lillibulero’s voice.

It was a dry voice, with a strange accent which seemed to be mainly Scottish, although it appeared that there might be traces of other tongues flavoring it as well. Mainly, there was a crisp, burring sound to it, like that of a buzz saw rasping its way in businesslike fashion through a dry log. The kind of voice that stands no nonsense—but neither utters any. A comforting voice to hear at night on a deserted barge with possible trouble about.

“But how did you know I was here?” demanded Robby now.

“I did not,” replied Mr. Lillibulero.

“But . . .” Robby stared. “What are you doing here?”

Mr. Lillibulero pushed back his black hood, revealing his brown hair, curled close to his head, almost like a skull cap.

“Robertson,” he said, “Y’have th’most extraordinary notion of y’r own importance. Do y’think it can only be concern for y’rself that sends me to any location where y’may be?”

“Oh,” said Robby, his spirits somewhat dampened. “I guess not.”

“Indeed not!” replied Mr. Lillibulero. “M’duties as an employee of the International Bureau of Police concern me wi’the whole world, not merely wi’a thirteen-year-old boy,even though that boy happens to be th’son of m’old friend, James Hoenig.”

“Excuse me,” sulked Robby. “I guess I didn’t think.”

“Few people do,” said Mr. Lillibulero, sniffing again. “If more people thought before they spoke or acted, th’ crime rate would be cut to next t’nothing. And I could retire t’raise roses.”

“Would you like to raise roses?” asked Robby, staring at the little man in surprise.

“I would not,” said Mr. Lillibulero sharply. “It was merely a figure of speech, Robertson.”

“Oh,” said Robby. He thought for a second. “If,” he asked politely, “concern for me didn’t send you here, what did?”

“A computer,” replied Mr. Lillibulero.

“A computer?” Robby stared again. “How could—I mean, why would a computer send you here?”

“Because,” answered the little man, “on th’basis of certain statistical evidence about th’habits and methods of known criminals and about th’activities of Robert Clanson’s archeological team at this site, it computed that there was an eighty-six per cent probability of a crime being committed here at this time.”

“A crime?” echoed Robby. “Not. . .” he hesitated, hardly daring to hope it, “not a crime about stealing some treasure . . . ?”

“Y’r acuteness astounds me, Robertson,” said Mr. Lillibulero. “Th’crime anticipated did indeed concern a treasure here, which is in danger of being stolen by a criminal who’s been one jump ahead of me for some years, now.”

“What kind of treasure? Where is it?” cried Robby.

Mr. Lillibulero frowned at him.

“Y’r ignorance, Robertson,” he said, “astounds me even more than th’acuteness y’just displayed. The treasure t’which I refer happens t’be the excavated eighteenth-century sloop beneath us at this moment. ”

Robby blinked.

“The Floridana?” he asked. “But that’s not treasure!”

“Y’don’t say so, Robertson!” snapped Mr. Lillibulero. “Y’must forgive th’archeologists, historians, and others who’ve been so foolish as t'consider it so—not having th’noted expert Robertson Hoenig about t’set them right.” He sniffed. “It’s a pity y’cannot get this very valuable information particularly t’Red Carswell in time t’save us all a deal of trouble.”

“Red Carswell?”

“Th’criminal and art thief of whom I was speaking a moment ago. And who is probably within a half mile of us at this minute.”

Robby looked about at the peaceful sea surface surrounding the barge.

“He is? Is he dangerous?” Robby asked.

“Yes,” Mr. Lillibulero replied, a little grimly, “he is. He is, in fact, one of the few really dangerous men at large.”

“Why?” asked Robby, fascinated. He had a sudden vision of this Red Carswell, standing eight feet tall, his beard stuck full of lighted candles, as Blackbeard the pirate had been known to do to his beard.

“Because,” answered Mr. Lillibulero, “he is extremely capable. And because he believes he has a right t’hate the world and all honest people in it.”

“Has he?” asked Robby. “Did somebody wrong him, or something?”

“He thinks so,” said Mr. Lillibulero. “He believes fate wronged him by not making him as large and handsome as he is bright. Therefore he attempts t’tear down anyone or anything better or bigger than himself.”

“How big is he?”

“He is not big,” answered Mr. Lillibulero, dryly.

Robby’s vision of a large, red-bearded pirate-like man popped and dwindled sadly into nothingness like a dream made of soap bubbles would explode.

“He can’t be very dangerous then,” muttered Robby.

“Indeed?” said Mr. Lillibulero, gazing down at Robby from his own scant two-inch advantage of height. “Th’many big men he has beaten up and even hurt badly would not agree with you.”

Robby’s interest was revived. Now his imagination pictured a small, but tough, sort of buccaneer with a mop of flaming hair, beating up large pirates.

“How many big men,” Robby asked, “ever attacked him at one time?”

“None,” replied Mr. Lillibulero. “Y’seem to be getting th’notion, Robertson, that there is something admirable about this Carswell. There is not. He is not attacked by men larger than himself—he attacks them. And only when he is sure that he can win. His purpose is t’prove he is better than they are, in spite of his small size. But he is not particular. He would just as soon prove himself better than you, y’rself, though y’are a boy, and smaller than he is.”

Robby felt a shiver run down his back.

“But why?” he burst out. “How could it prove anything if he was bigger than I was and grown up?”

“Are y’aware,” asked Mr. Lillibulero, “of th’fact that a weasel or a ferret in a hen house will, after killing one hen for food, go on killing for th’sheer excitement of it?”

Robby nodded.

“At Point Loma,” he remarked, “we had a ferret that got in with some guinea pigs—”

“Then perhaps y’can imagine what kind of a man is Red Carswell,” interrupted Mr. Lillibulero. “Th’word vicious describes him; and who he does not wish to or canna hurt physically, he loves to terrify. There is only one thing he, himself, is mortally afraid of.”

“What’s that?” asked Robby.

“A man,” answered Mr. Lillibulero, “as small and smaller than himself who could outdo him in a fair encounter. If that should happen, Carswell’s image of himself as a giant-killer,which he has worked his whole life at building, would crumble. That is why you will always find him surrounded by big men, who—if one of them should ever get the better of him—can be said to have had an unfair advantage over him to start with. That is also why I have never laid eyes on him since I first found myself on his trail.”

“He’s afraid of you?” asked Robby.

“He is not physically afraid of me,” said Mr. Lillibulero, “because th’man has courage in his own way. But he is deathly afraid of being conquered or captured by me. He has, in fact, several times tried to kill me. But always from a distance, or by the hand of someone else.”

Robby looked around the peaceful ocean once more, but this time with a cold feeling, as if someone unseen were watching him.

“Where do you think he is now?” Robby asked.

“Doubtless,” answered Mr. Lillibulero, calmly, “somewhere out beyond the reef, where th’waters are deep enough t’float a craft capable of transporting a waterlogged hulk, liket he one under us.” He looked around. But around the barge, not around the sea, as Robby had. “Tell me, Robertson,” he said, “where is th’watchman that must be here with you? I had m’self dropped off after dark by copter-parachute so’s t’approach th’site by swimming underwater without being seen. But it was not m’intention t’keep my presence a secret from th’man left on guard here. I’ve been expecting him t’respond t’the sound of our voices by showing up ever since I climbed up here on the barge. But it appears he’s occupied. Where is he?”

“He’s gone! That’s what I was worried about just before you showed up—” and, as swiftly as possible, he told Mr. Lillibulero about the disappearance of Cal.

Even before Robby finished, the little man turned with the speed of movement characteristic of him; and Robby had to run to catch up with him at the door of the radio shack. Mr. Lillibulero slipped inside the shack, turned on the light and tried the radiophone. After a second, he grimly laid the phone back down.

“Dead!” he announced, and glanced over at Robby. “I sincerely hope,” he added, “that y’r friend Cal is not an honest man.”

“He’s not my friend. I don’t even like him very much,”said Robby. “But I’d think you’d want him to be an honest man. Why shouldn’t he be?”

“Because,” the little man replied, “if he is one of Red Carswell’s dishonest henchmen, he is safe at this moment, having put this phone out of action and abandoned th’barge. But if he is honest, someone else has disordered th’phone and disposed of him. He may be as dead as this instrument.” And he gestured at the phone.

“Do you think he’s—” Robby began. But he got no further. At that moment he was interrupted by the distant bark of a sea lion. With one motion he and Mr. Lillibulero turned and raced out of the radio shack.

For a moment they both stared around at the moonlit sea. But they did not have to look far. Something broke water just above the gap in the reef. There was a white streak in the waves and at the front of it was Mac, coming at top speed.

“Mac!” shouted Robby, happily. He turned quickly to Mr. Lillibulero. “Better stand back,” Robby warned. “He’s liable to dive and come out in a jump that’ll bring him right upon top of us, here.”

But Robby was wrong. At the last minute, Mac did not dive, but swerved around in a half circle, hoisting himself high in the water. He barked loudly, and Robby saw that apiece of rope was tied around Mac’s neck, a frayed end flipping over the waves.

“What is it? Is the beast yours?” demanded Mr. Lillibulero. “And what ails him t’act like that?”

“Yes, he’s mine!” cried Robby, though in reality Mac was not his, but the property of the International Department of Fisheries, Salt Water Division, for which his father worked. But Robby was too wound up to think of that, now. “Someone’s had him tied up. That’s why he didn’t come back all this time!” He explained Mac’s earlier disappearance and the fact that he had been left behind to recapture the sea lion.

“But,” said Mr. Lillibulero, “why’s he rushing about like that?”

“Maybe he thinks we’re in trouble and wants to rescue us—” began Robby hopefully, and then checked. Mac was clearly less interested in them than he was in something out beyond the reef. “He’s found something he wants me to see,” said Robby, glumly. “That’s all. He acts that way at home all the time when he’s discovered something interesting—hey!” Robby cried, struck by a wonderful thought. “It must be whoever had him tied up so that he couldn’t come back here all this time. It’s the way Steller’s do when they see a killer whale. I’ve got my trunks on—”

“Y’will not go, Robertson!” ordered Mr. Lillibulero.

Robby looked at his friend in outrage, ready to argue.

“I will go,” said Mr. Lillibulero, “if th’beast will take me.”

“But he’s my sea lion!” shouted Robby. “I understand him—”

“Y’r protests,” interrupted the little man coolly, “are duly noted. However, whoever’s tied up y’r sea lion is almost undoubtedly th’man and crew I’m after. And they are not th’sort of criminals I will allow you t’swim merrily into the hands of, under any circumstances.”

“I wouldn’t swim merrily—” Robby was beginning to growl, but a glance from Mr. Lillibulero cut him short. The little man was already pulling the hood over his head and the face plate up over his face.

“If the beast and I do not return,” came the little man’s voice from the diaphragm of his mask, “y’are to sit tight here until your father, the archeologists, or other help arrives.”

And with that, Mr. Lillibulero walked off the barge practically on top of Mac. He went under in a flurry of foam but came up holding the end of the rope around Mac’s neck. Mac barked at him in surprise and then turned to bark at Robby. It was plain that it was not Lillibulero he wanted for a passenger, but Robby himself.

“Can y’not make the beast take me?” demanded Mr. Lillibulero impatiently. For a moment Robby was tempted to say he could not, but the little man would find out differently later from Robby’s father, and Robby could not actually bring himself to lie to Mr. Lillibulero.

“I guess so,” he grumbled. He made himself think of adventure . . . exciting adventure . . . pirates . . . treasure . . .

Mac barked. The rapport cap on his head was pouring Robby’s adventure feelings into him. It was too much for the sea lion. He swung about abruptly and began to tow Mr. Lillibulero toward the gap in the reef to the open sea waters beyond. They vanished under the surface of the waves, and Robby was left alone.

He scowled at the nighttime sea. No adventure for him, he thought. No Mac. No treasure.

The thought of treasure nudged at the back of his mind.Hey, it said, remember me?

What about you? thought Robby.

Well, didn’t you want a chance to go down by the sunken ship and look around to see if there wasn't, after all, some of me there?

Three minutes later, water lung, face plate, and weight belt in place, Robby was sinking down through the darkly moon-lit, mysterious waters.

Below him, like a black ghost of itself, La Floridana lay against the white sand bottom that reflected the moonlight and made it possible for Robby to see. Even at that, the rocks, the ship, the corals, and sea fans were dimly altered shapes of their daytime selves.

It was not the first time Robby had been underwater at night. At home, at the Point Loma Station, he had gone out, even when quite young, with his father to observe the fish of the coral reef families who would be attracted to a small light underwater. He remembered them all—their identical cousins would be below him now. Angelfish with their wavery, gossamer fins like delicate veils, butterfly fish, and triggerfish (otherwise known as filefish). And spine-covered little pufferfish, ready at the first sign of danger to blow themselves up into a spiky ball. Flounders and bumpers and the small, but powerful-jawed wrasse who crush shells to get at the shellfish inside for their food. These and many others were old friends;as was the underwater nighttime sea at home. This sea wouldbe no different.

But it was different, somehow. As Robby landed on the sea bottom and began swimming and peering around with the aid of the brilliant reflection of moonlight, a slight shiver ran up his spine. He forced it to go away, and kept on looking.

So it was, a little while later, that a sudden loud underwater thrumming noise and thrust of water almost scared him out of his sea senses. Startled, he caught hold of a heavy rock, having sense enough not to grab some coral closer to him which would have cut his hands badly. He turned about to look.

The white sand of the bottom was being stirred up under the propellers of the two small electric motors Cal had attached to the sides of La Floridana back near her square stem. And, under their push, the ship was already lifting from its cradle of metal supports and beginning to move toward the gap in the reef and the open sea beyond.

Robby stared, wondering how motors like that could start themselves. Perhaps Cal had set a timing device to warm them up at a certain time, and the timing device had gone wrong? He let go of his rock and swam strongly after the ship, which was gaining speed as the motors gradually overcame the dead weight of the waterlogged hull. If he could catch up with it, he could turn the motors off, or at least disconnect them. But it looked as if the ship would get away before he could overtake it.

But he finally did reach the sloop. His fingers closed over the heavy wood edge of her square stem and he started to pull himself up and over that edge on to the deck. But then, he froze.

Out from the dark hatchway of the ship’s stem cabin emerged a figure Robby had seen before. There was a high-crowned hat on its head, a tight-waisted coat with wide sleeves on its upper part, and a sword pushing out the edges of the coat behind. On its legs were high leather boots.

It was the figure of the ghost. Quickly, Robby ducked below the heavy, flat wall of the ship’s stem, hoping he had not been seen. His first thought was to let go and allow the ghost captain to sail his dead La Floridana to whatever strange deep-sea watery harbor was the final resting place of drowned ships and long-gone captains.

But just in time, he renewed his grasp on the ship’s planking. Abruptly, Robby noticed that the ship had passed through the gap in the reef and turned to its right, leaving the reef behind. Robby cast a frantic glance around. But above was only the watery moon, and around, below, and on every side there was nothing to be seen but ocean darkness.

They were headed out through deep water along the outside of the reef, and he dared not let go because he did not know the way back to the safety inside the reef and shallow water.

He clung helplessly to the stem planking. And on they sailed into the deep-sea darkness under the moonlit waves—the drowned ship, the ghost captain, and Robby, clinging like a pilot fish to the shark that swims them both onward to an unknown fate.

Grabbed by the Ghost

I have to keep my head. Even if I am scared, I have to think straight, Robby kept repeating to himself as he was carried off into the chartless waters of the underseas by the sunken ship run by a ghost captain. I mustn’t lose my head and make things worse.

It was what his father had always trained him to do. And Mr. Lillibulero had made the same point, once long before when he and Robby had been trapped in the Point Loma Station, with the Vandals trying to get in through the door and through the roof over their heads, and all had seemed lost.

“I would advise any man,” Mr. Lillibulero had said with kindling eye to Robby in that desperate moment, “when in a tight spot, t’think first, and act afterwards, because there is no telling what he may think of if he gives himself the chance.”

Accordingly, in this tight spot, Robby closed his eyes against the darkness, his mind against the fear that threatened him, and tried hard to think.

The first thought that came to him was no use at all. It was a memory of something he had read—about how the women and children captured by Huron Indians during the French and Indian War had left trails of tom cloth for their husbands and fathers to follow. But, thought Robby in despair, how can you leave a trail through the moving waters of the ocean—particularly when you are wearing nothing but swimming trunks, weight belt, and water lung?

For a moment, fear and hopelessness rose in Robby like a dark tide and he felt the grip of panic tightly squeezing his throat. He squeezed his eyes tighter shut in answer, and tried to concentrate on something or someone courageous.

Unexpectedly, like a sudden little light in the darkness came the thought of Sir Bleoberis. For a moment Robby saw him clearly in full armor, helmet thrown back, mustaches bristling. He had his hand on the hilt of his sword, and his jaw outthrust, confronting the white-faced, black-mustached figure standing this moment on the deck of La Floridana. “I dread no Spanish Ghost!” the knight was snapping. And the white-faced Captain was cringing and drawing back. Robby smiled to himself.

All of a sudden, Robby’s fear was gone. The moment he smiled it drained out of him like water from a tub when the plug is pulled. Immediately, he could think clearly and sensibly, and remembered that he was still wearing the rapport cap. And that the cap was, as always, transmitting its radio signal to the cap Mac was wearing—wherever Mac was. That Mac should go on receiving the signal was not important. What was important was that anyone with the proper radio equipment could receive it also. What was more, with this equipment they could find Robby, no matter how lost he was.

It was too bad, thought Robby, almost light-headedly now that his fear was gone, that he could not use the cap to send a regular, telegram sort of message. For a moment he imagined it, printed on yellow paper all in the sort of capital letters found on telegrams, “HELP EXCLAMATION POINT,” he imagined it reading. “CLINGING TO SUNKEN SHIP STOP PROCEEDING UNDERWATER IN UNKNOWN DIRECTION STOP AT UNKNOWN RATE OF SPEED STOP GHOST OF SPANISH SEA CAPTAIN RUNNING SHIP STOP PLEASE RESCUE ME AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE STOP REPEAT HELP EXCLAMATION POINT HELP EXCLAMATION POINT ROBERTSON ALAN HOENIG"

But the cap was not capable of being used to send such a message. Would that it was!

However, the fact remained that as long as Robby held onto the cap, he would eventually be located. Just as soon as he was missed, someone like Coast Guard Rescue Nine, which would certainly have radio-locating equipment among its rescue devices, could track down the signal and find him.

By the time Robby managed to think all this out, he noticed that La Floridana was changing direction again, because now his body trailed at an angle to the ship, the way a car trailer trails at an angle when the car pulling it goes around a comer. Also, he could hear that one of the electric motors had almost stopped, so that the one-sided push from the other motor was turning the ship to Robby’s right. To Robby it seemed as if in a moment they would be heading back the way they had come, down the outside of the reef.

Before that point was reached, however, Robby sensed a heavier darkness in the moonlit waters, which he identified as the rocks of the reef. A few seconds later, La Floridanaturned in through another gap between two black, cliff-like walls of those rocks, and once more Robby saw a moonlit, white sand bottom beneath him.

The drowned ship swung sideways, slowly. For the first time then Robby saw that it was not alone here inside the reef. In the shallow water, less than forty feet deep, was what looked like a string of great sausage-shaped bags, connected in a line by short lengths of thick wire cable, which stretched out of sight in the darkness as the sloop passed them. Robby could not see more than one and part of another at a time, but he thought there must be at least five or six of the bags. La Floridana came level with the last of these, and Robby, looking ahead, saw a strange, stubby-looking ship.

It was like an enormous raindrop made of metal, fully thirty feet at its thickest. Metal shutters had been raised above portholes in its side, and light shone out through the thick glass of a number of these portholes.

Robby, who was familiar with most kinds of underseas craft, recognized this type of ship at a glance, though he had never seen one before. It was one of the deep-sea tugs that towed bags of oil, gasoline, and other liquid substances half-way across the world, to deliver them to markets needing these goods.

Robby had learned about such ships from research for a school project. He knew that the teardrop shape of the submarine tug was the result of research by the U.S. Navy into the way the streamlined form of dolphins helped the dolphins avoid the drag of turbulence. Dolphins, as Robby already knew, could swim several times faster than they ought to be able to with their strength, because of their shape. And unlike all other sea creatures, and all man-made ships, they left no wake in the water when they swam.

The bags were simply cargo containers. In them, explosive or inflammable materials could be transported much more safely under the water, free from storms, than they could in the old-fashioned, metal, surface-going tanker ships. But what, wondered Robby now, was a tug doing here inside the reef, far off the normal sailing routes for such craft?

Then he saw the answer. For as La Floridana swung in toward the cargo bag just behind the tug, Robby saw the bag slowly begin to open in a way no cargo bag had ever been designed to open. The whole side of it was rolling up like a window shade, leaving an opening wider than it was high—wide enough to take the full length of La Floridana, Inside, the bag was lighted up and men in water lungs and black underwater suits like Mr. Lillibulero’s were working.

Something clunked against the far side of La Floridana. Then, slowly, the sloop began to slide sideways through the water into the bag and Robby realized what was happening.Once inside the bag, with the opening rolled down again, the ancient Spanish ship could be transported secretly anywhere in the world without suspicion.

This sudden understanding struck Robby like the shock of chill water, driving away his optimism and he knew that he was caught up in an expensive and complicated robbery, directed and managed by desperate men. If he should be caught by those men, it would be far worse than being captured by show-off Vandals, or misdirected Tropicans.

Even as he thought this, Robby saw that La Floridana was almost into the cargo bag. In a moment he would be therewith the sloop, exposed to the glare of the lights and the sight of the men moving the ship. Quickly, Robby let go of the rough wood of the stern, ready to make a break for it and take his chances alone in the night waters.

But he did not make it, for at that moment he felt his right wrist caught in a hard grip.

There is a danger that follows the conquering of fear; the danger of going to the opposite extreme and becoming care-less, so that disaster occurs.

This is what happened to Robby. He forgot his danger and ran headlong into disaster. Jerking his head up to see what was holding his wrist, Robby felt his throat close with fright.and his body go rigid.

The mask-like white face and black mustache of the ghost of the Spanish captain was staring down into the face of Robby. The mustache was only a foot away from Robby’s eyes. And the gloved right hand of the ghost was clamped around Robby’s wrist.

Locked in the Strong Room

A moment later, La Floridana slid into the cargo bag and into a structure of metal rods that waited to hold it firmly in the bag’s center. The light fell on Robby briefly. Immediately the ghost captain stepped over the railing of the stem and swam off into the darkness of outside water, dragging Robby behind him.

Evidently weighed down by his costume, the ghost jerked along, as Robby swam numbly with him, dazed and sick with the shock of being captured. They crossed a little space of open water to the side of the tug, where the ghost felt about and finally struck a large, flat bottom.

At once, a metal flap swung down before them and Robby saw a small, bright water-filled room with lockers along one wall to his right, and a door in the inner wall directly before him. The end of a rope, like the rope that had been tied around Mac’s neck, was knotted to the handle of one of the lockers. Pulling Robby roughly after him, the ghost swam into the room, and punched the uppermost of two buttons to the right of the door in the inner wall.

Robby heard a faint, whining noise as the ghost released his wrist. Turning about quickly, Robby saw that the flap of the entrance was already closing. As he looked, it clicked shut and the whining noise stopped.

A new, rushing sound began as the water started to drain out of the room where they stood. In seconds the water level dropped below Robby’s chin and he was able to pull down the face plate of his water lung. It was clear that this was the airlock of the tug, and the lockers probably contained water lungs and other underwater equipment.

Robby turned to look at the ghost, who was taking off his costume, which apparently unsealed down the front, so that it could be stepped into or out of in a single motion. The breeches, coat, sword, and the rest were all connected together. The man underneath stepped out of all this and stood up in slacks and shirt, with soft-soled slippers on his feet. He took off the high-crowned hat, revealing himself as hardly taller than Mr. Lillibulero—or not much taller than Robby.Above this short and slender body the big white, black-mustached face and head looked more than ever too big for the rest of him.

Then, however, the man reached for the chin of this face and pulled upward. To Robby’s amazement, the whole face and head crumpled upward and pulled off. Underneath, the man was wearing a regular face plate and water lung collar, which he also removed. Robby found himself looking into a familiar face.

It was the cold face of Cal, the power engineer.

As if this was not enough of a shock, Cal’s hand went to his head again and lifted the mousy hair, to reveal bright, reddish hair, cropped short and bristly. Robby shrunk up inside.

It was his first experience with the fact that a fine actor does not have to cover himself with makeup to appear as an entirely different person. It is enough to change one feature and “play to it” as they say in the theater. This, the man who was obviously Red Carswell, had done.

With the wig of mousy hair, Red Carswell had appeared mean and unfriendly—but not frightening. Now, under the stiff crop of his own reddish pelt, not a line of his features was changed. But each feature took on a new meaning. Now Robby saw why Mr. Lillibulero had compared Red Carswell to a weasel, or a ferret. His hair had the red tinge of a ferret’s hair and his face had the same sharp, pointed expression. His bright, cold eyes showed a gleam of cold and murderous joy.

The shrinking feeling began in the region of Robby’s stomach, as those eyes looked toward him. Would Carswell turn on him now, with no respect for the fact that Robby was only a boy and smaller than he was, as Mr. Lillibulero had said the art thief was capable of doing? Maybe if he knocks me outright away, I won’t feel anything at all, thought Robby, seeing Carswell start toward him.

But the red-haired man was apparently only feeling impatient at the moment, not cruel. He reached out, unbuckled Robby’s water lung, jerked it off and then threw it, with his costume, into a locker, closed the door on them and shook his head at Robby.

Robby followed him through the inner door of the airlock down a long, echoing, white-painted metal corridor and around a corner. Here Carswell opened one of the solid metal doors set in the corridor walls and led Robby into a very large room fitted up like a gymnasium. In the far comer was a lounge area, where a towering old man who was nothing but skin and bones sat, a tall, half-filled tumbler on a small round table beside his chair. He had a steamer rug wrapped around him,and from across the room he seemed to be dozing.

In the rest of the room a number of large young men were climbing ropes hung from the ceiling, doing exercises, and two of them, wearing sweatsuits, were being instructed in something like judo or karate on a thick mat, by an ordinary-sized, but slightly older man, who was nearly bald and was bulging with muscles in his shoulders and arms.

"You aren’t trying, Samuels,” the instructor was saying grimly to one of the men on the mat. Abruptly, Red Carswell left Robby, went swiftly across the floor and onto the mat. The red-haired art thief pushed his way into the group and smiled up at the young man in the sweatsuit. The top of Carswell’s head, Robby saw, barely came to the young man’s chin.

“Not trying, Samuels?” said Carswell, softly. His voice was different now from the voice he had assumed when he was acting the part of a mechanic aboard the barge. Now Carswell spoke from behind his small, chill smile, his lips almost touching, his teeth close together, so that the words came out thin, and flat.

“I am! I am trying.” The big young man’s face was pale.

His eyes were ringed with white and large drops of perspiration stood out on his forehead. “I just can’t bounce around so quick!”

“No...” said Carswell, whispering between his teeth, “You’re clumsy, aren’t you? You’re a big, lumbering ox, aren’t you, Samuels? But when you’re on my team you have to learn anyway, don't you? So you can protect yourself, in case someone half your size comes along, and does this andthis!”

Suddenly and so quickly that Robby could hardly follow the motion of his hand, he chopped hard with the outer edge of it, into Samuels’ stomach, then chopped again behind Samuels’ ear as the big man doubled up, fell onto the mat and then lay there, huddled up and still.

“Make them learn, Hice!” said Carswell thinly to the bald man, who gave a little half salute in answer, with the stubby fingers of his right hand. Carswell turned, came back to Robby and led him to the old man in the comer.

He woke up at the sound of their feet approaching and lifted his head. His wrinkled eyelids raised, to reveal faded,but still surprisingly blue eyes.

“What’s this? What’ve you done now, Carswell?” he muttered, in a deep voice that rattled with the feebleness of old age. “What kind of dirty trick is it, this time?” His accent was faintly Irish.

As Carswell stopped in front of the man he reached back,took hold of Robby’s shoulder with a hard hand and shoved him forward.

“He was hanging onto the sunken ship when I brought it back—your ship, Millen!” said Carswell waspishly. “What’llI do with him? Cut him a little and leave him outside for the sharks? Or just push him out the airlock under twenty feet of water? Or what?” He let go of Robby’s shoulder. “You decide!”

“I’ll not decide!” The old man glared up at the thin face of Carswell. “I’ll have nothing to do with it. You and your—”he was interrupted by a cough, and he coughed for some little time, after which he seemed to be out of breath. He sat there, wheezing. But his blue eyes stared furiously, if helplessly, at Carswell.

“But it’s your sunken ship, Millen,” said Carswell. His voice was venomous. “You just hired me to get it for you. You’re the employer.”

“Yes,” wheezed Millen, getting his breath back enough to talk a little, “I hired you—and I should’ve known better. I’m as much at your orders as these young overgrown louts you browbeat and bully and punch about. But I’ll make none of your black decisions for you. ”

“No, that’s right,” whispered Carswell. “You won’t. And you never would have. Did you think a million dollars worth of old coin and bar silver bought me? I’ve lifted sculptures from the deep waters of the Mediterranean worth three times that!”

“Oh, you’re a great thief, I’ve no doubt,” gasped Millen.“You and this shabby lot you’ve got working for you. And I,helpless here in the midst of you—like this poor boy, whoever he is.” Millen glanced at Robby sympathetically for a second. “He’ll try to break you, Sonny. He’ll try to make you show how afraid you are of him. But don’t you do it.”

“That’s right,” purred Carswell. “You stand up to me, young Hoenig. You stand right up to me, no matter what I do.”

“Don’t listen to him,” said Millen. “He’s been trying to break me ever since he got me aboard here—fool that I was to come in the first place! It was a whim—the whim of an old fool with too much money and never a living relative—to own for the few years left to me the ship on which the one ancestor I honor was drowned, to end the noble Millen line. Hugh Millen, Sir Hugh Millen, boy—he was one of those of the gentry hounded out of Ireland in the early eighteenth century, who took service with the King of Spain—”

“Let’s not go through that again!” Carswell snapped. “Don’t wear me out with your jabbering, Millen, or I won’t turn the Floridana over to you, after all. I’ll tow it north to the Mediterranean, and sell it to the highest bidder.”

“You won’t!” shouted Millen, with sudden strength in his voice. “I’ve taken a deal from you, Carswell, but don’t think you can cheat me! If I don’t get that ship, nobody does. I warn you!”

He laid his huge, bony old hands on the arms of the chair and tried to push himself to his feet.

Carswell laughed.

“Help me up!” Millen cried.

Carswell stood laughing and did not move.

“You!” called Millen, swinging about to look at Robby. “Help me up!”

Robby had had no intention of getting mixed up in the argument. But just then, for a second, his eyes met with the old, blue, but still fierce eyes of the helpless Millen. And suddenly he found himself taking two strides forward to the chair. Millen reached up, clamped a hand on Robby’s right shoulder and hauled himself erect, turning Robby around as he did so that they both faced Red Carswell. Millen stood there, his weight bearing heavily on Robby, his big hand crushing painfully into Robby’s shoulder. He did not thank Robby for helping him, but Robby, looking up, saw him glaring triumphantly at Carswell.

“So!” said Millen.

But Carswell paid him no attention. The eyes of the smaller man were fastened on Robby. Suddenly he moved, and suddenly he was staring down into Robby’s face from only inches above it.

“Did I tell you—” whispered Carswell, in a sort of stifled rage, “did I tell you to help him up?”

He reached out and tore Millen’s hand from Robby’s shoulder. He shoved the old man and the lean, tottering body fell back heavily into its chair. Paralyzed with fear, Robby was jerked from beside the chair and pushed roughly toward the door where he and Carswell had entered the gym-room.

“I’ll think up something special for you, young Hoenig!” he said, thinly. Carswell raised his voice. “Hice!”

There was no answer. Carswell turned around. The bald instructor had left the room. Samuels, Carswell’s knockout victim, was standing alone in the middle of the mat, feeling his head as if it ached, and looking bewildered.

“Samuels!” snapped Carswell.

The big young man looked up, cringed, and approached reluctantly.

“Yes, sir?” he said, stopping finally, out of reach of Carswell.

“Come here!” whispered Carswell. “That’s better. Now, tell me. Where’d Hice go?”

“Down to the Supply Deck, to the equipment room, sir.”

“Take this boy down to him. Tell Hice to lock him in the brig.”

“The brig . . . ?” Samuels wriggled, uncomprehendingly.

“The room with the barred window in its door—nevermind!” said Carswell thinly. “Just take the boy to him, I’ll phone the equipment room from here. Get going!” He looked at Robby. “I’ll see you again later, young Hoenig.”

Robby numbly began to follow Samuels.

“He’s a little man!” shouted Millen behind him. “Don’t let him scare you, boy! He doesn’t scare me—he’s just a littleman!”

But Robby felt too miserable to pay much attention. Samuels led him out of the room to a narrow flight of metal stairs. They descended these to the Supply Deck, so named because the ship’s supplies were stored there. Just as the deck with the gym was normally called Forecastle Deck, from the fact that it held the crew’s quarters, and in old sailing ships the crew bunked in the forecastle, or the front cabin of a ship. Above Forecastle Deck would be the deck called Officer’s Country, the quarters of the ship’s officers, and above that would be the Bridge Deck, with the control room and Captain’s cabin.

Remembering all this kindled a small ray of hope in Robby’s mind. At least he knew his way around the tug. If Mr. Lillibulero could just somehow get in to rescue him he couldshow the way out . . .

He roused out of his thoughts suddenly. Samuels had led him to the open door of a room in which Hice was standing.The door had a small, barred window in it.

“Thought you were in the equipment room,” said Samuels, peering past Hice. “Is this the brig? I thought—”

“You aren’t putting him in here!” snapped Hice. “I just got a change of orders on the phone. Put him in the strong room. Here’s the key—you know where the strong room is?”

“Oh, sure,” said Samuels, eagerly, taking the small, narrow key. “That’s the one with all the—”

“I know what’s in it!” snapped Hice. “Just put him in there and don’t forget to lock it behind you.”

Samuels turned and led Robby back down the Supply Deck corridor, past the stairway by which they had descended. He stopped and unlocked a door about ten feet further on.

“All right,” he muttered, opening the door. “Get in!” Robby started to go in, but a noise on the stairway made him turn to look. Coming down the steel treads were two men carrying a limp figure. They reached the corridor and began to take their burden down to the open door where Hice stood—the door with the bars behind the window. Robby had only one glimpse, but that glimpse was sufficient.

The helpless figure they carried was Mr. Lillibulero.

“Go on—get in there!” Samuels growled. He gave Robby a hard shove. Robby stumbled forward and heard the metal door behind him slam to with a crash, and the lock clicked shut.

Mr. Lillibulero Speaks

Too stunned by the discovery that Mr. Lillibulero was also a prisoner, and unconscious and possibly badly hurt as well,Robby paid little attention to his surroundings and sat down heavily on the nearest object, which seemed to be a sack filled with small, hard objects. For a long moment he simply sat where he was, feeling unhappy. It seemed there was no hope left—no hope at all.

But he finally looked around him. Now he saw why the room had been called the “strong room.”

Not only was it a room with a particularly heavy-looking door without a window, but there was only one small porthole. In one comer stood a large, bright steel safe with a glass box on its door. Inside the glass box was a set of gears and cogs of the sort found under the front and back covers of an alarm clock. It was the time lock mechanism of the safe.

On the other side of the room was a stand—half empty—but still containing perhaps thirty or forty sonic pistols and rifles. At the sight of them, Robby’s spirits gave a bound upward. But a closer look showed that the stand was locked with a heavy padlock, and Robby’s spirits sank again. It was too bad, thought Robby. The sonic weapons he saw were hand versions of the mounted cannons used to stun killer whales and predatory sharks with a burst of vibrations in the ultrasonic range. He would have been able to use one of the rifles to break the lock of the door.

Stacked up like bricks against the wall beyond the arms rack were oblongs of silvery metal. And covering most of the floor were a number of heavy plastic bags like the one on which Robby was sitting.

Robby stared without much curiosity at the silvery bars and the bags. Then suddenly he came awake as if he had been jabbed by the idea which had just popped into his head. Bars of metal? he thought. Bags of... ?

Hastily, he got up and fumbled with the spring-snap of the wire drawstring fastening the top of the bag.

For a second it seemed the wire would resist his fingers, it was so stiff. Then it snapped open, and Robby spread the top. He looked inside.

The bag was filled with small, flat pieces of metal with square comers. For a second, Robby felt he must have been wrong in having that idea of his. But then he took one of the pieces out of the bag, and saw he was right after all.

What he was looking at was a coin, in spite of its roughly square shape. Robby had read about such coins in several books about buried Spanish or pirate treasure. What he was holding was a real, actual piece of eight.

It was not round because of a curious reason. Coins like the one Robby held were technically known as cobs. The name came from the Spanish term cabo de barra, which in English meant “cut from a bar.” This was a quick way of making coins used back in the days when so much silver from the New World was flowing to Spain.

The coins were made from square slices of silver, cut off the end of a silver bar. After these slices were cut off, they were heated up and stamped with Spain’s royal coat of arms. In spite of their square shape, they were worth just as much as the round pieces of eight minted in Spain. Their proper original name was piaster or peso. They were called “dollars” by English-speaking colonials. Familiarity with this coin caused the United States to call its official monetary unit the “dollar” in 1792. Their value was equal to eight reales,which was a smaller Spanish coin. Reales in the early days of the American colonies were also known as “bits” to English-speaking people—from which comes the expression “two bits” in English for a twenty-five-cent piece.

Robby looked at the hundreds of coins and the stacks of bars which must be bars of silver. This could only be the“million in old coin and bar silver” to which Carswell had referred when he asked Millen if the old man thought that amount could buy the red-haired man.

I’m rich! thought Robby, excitedly.

But then he realized he wasn’t. All this treasure was for no use as long as he was locked up with it. His excitement faded. Ben Gunn, the marooned sailor in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, Robby now remembered, had discovered the same thing where the pirate loot buried by Captain Flint was concerned. In fact, with all that gold, the poor sailor had spent most of his lonely nights on the island dreaming of cheese.

For the first time it occurred to Robby that treasure might not be all the wonderful sort of possession he had supposed it to be. Ben Gunn had found that he wanted cheese more than gold. Robby now discovered that he wanted freedom more than all the silver now available to him, and went over to lookout of the porthole. It was small, but not too small for someone as thin as he was to squeeze through. But outside there was water, thirty feet deep. If Robby should be so foolhardy as to open the porthole—and if he could—water under double the pressure at the sea’s surface would come thundering into the room. It would toss the bags and silver bars around like toys and crush Robby in a second. Even if he could get out safely, there was no place he could go without a water lung but the dark surface of the open sea above.

He was about to turn away from the porthole in despair, when he noticed he could see light through it. He stepped closer and peered out. The light was from the lighted cargo bag where Carswell’s men were securing La Floridana. As Robby watched, a dark figure swam past it, silhouetted for a second against the light glowing around the edges of the flap to the bag, then disappeared. A moment later it swam past again.

Robby’s hopes leaped up. For the figure was not the figure of a man in water lung and swim fins. Nor was it the figure of a large fish like a grouper or a shark. It was the streamlined shape of a Steller’s sea lion. It was Mac.

There could be only one reason Mac was out there. With Mr. Lillibulero gone, he was searching for Robby.

Robby ran and got a piece of eight from the open sack. He tapped with it on the glass of the porthole in the rhythm in which he was used to tapping the side of the Point Loma Station to call Mac. If Mac would only hear the sound of it and get his impulse to rescue Robby now . . .

A moment later, Mac’s questioning, dog-like nose was bumping up against the outside of the porthole. Robby’s spirits leaped upwards. It was true. Mac was trying to rescue him.

It would not have been easy for a human being without a face plate or goggles to look into an underwater room from the sea outside and recognize anyone. But this is because the human eye is designed to operate in the air. Mac’s was designed to operate underwater—he was, as a matter of fact, short-sighted above water. He recognized Robby at once, and showed it by his attempts to push his way through the porthole and join him.

Meanwhile, Robby was thinking furiously, his hopes high once more. With Mac to help him, he could easily make it either to the surface or to the airlock of the tug. Mac could tow him much faster than Robby himself could swim. But the problem was to get out to Mac.

Robby took another look at the porthole. It was, he saw,designed to swing open on a hinge, if the tug happened to be above water. Underwater, as now, it was not only shut, but fastened tight against water pressure by two large turnbuckle screws. Of course, for the real ocean depths, machinery would lower a steel shutter over the whole porthole. No turnbuckle screws could resist the water pressure half a mile down.

But the shutter was not down over it now. If Robby could open the porthole he could get out. The only difficulty was the matter of the double water pressure outside.

However, Robby was thinking. He turned around to look at the room. The only other apertures were the door and a ventilator set in the ceiling to supply the room with air. The door, Robby knew, would be designed to seal itself against any leak of water under pressure. So would the ventilator. It might be possible after all, not only for him to escape, but, with luck, to rescue Mr. Lillibulero. Robby took hold of the nearest turnbuckle screw and tried to loosen it.

For a while it seemed that he was not going to be able to move the handle of the screw. It had been set too tightly. Mac disappeared from outside the porthole, as Robby struggled on with the turnbuckle.

The handle moved under his fingers only a fraction of an inch, but he felt it give.

He heaved once more. Again it budged, a fraction of an inch... an inch... a quarter turn...

And a high-pitched hissing sounded in the strong room. Robby looked at the edge of the porthole beside the turnuckle. There was nothing to be seen. But then, he felt it—a fine, invisible spray of moisture, cooling his hand.

He turned to heave on the other turnbuckle screw as Mac reappeared. In a few seconds, fine jets of water were spraying the edges of the porthole.

Robby loosened the screws as much as he dared and sat down to wait. Water was shooting into the room and streaming down the wall below the porthole. Soon the rising flood forced him to stand up. Robby was not afraid of water,although his parents taught him to respect it. But waiting like this as the sea poured into a locked room was more than a little frightening. He heard a clang from the ventilator above him and, looking up, saw that automatic machinery had sealed it off with a metal plate behind the grill.

The water came in slowly but steadily. Soon it was lapping around his knees. Then it was up to his waist. It rose around his chest and Robby began to find it difficult to keep his feet solidly on the floor. Shortly he bobbed off his feet and began to float about, paddling slightly to keep his head up above the water, and floating ever nearer to the ceiling.

But by this time the amount of water coming in had lessened. Robby finally paddled over to the porthole, now completely under water. He reached down and loosened the turnbuckles all the way. They turned easily. Water bubbled and fountained up around the window, then stopped. When it was still, the water in the strong room was up to about eleven inches from the ceiling.

But it had stopped coming in.

Robby’s plan had worked. The room had sealed itself when the water had started coming in, and the air had been compressed more and more until its pressure was equal to the pressure of the entering water. All the air that had filled the whole room before was now squeezed into the small space left between the water and the ceiling.

And—the pressure in the room was now the same as the pressure of the deep water outside. Robby could safely open the porthole.

He ducked under the surface of the water and did so, now, swinging the circle of thick glass inward on its hinge. Mac immediately stuck his head through from the outside, but found his body was too big to let him get all the way inside.He stayed where he was for the moment, watching Robby and looking like a sea-lion-shaped cork stuck in the mouth of a bottle. Perhaps, thought Robby, Mac was finally wanting to rescue him.

Meanwhile, Robby had lifted his head once more up into the air and was breathing rapidly and deeply. This was an exercise used by pearl divers in ancient times, and known as“hyperventilation.” Its purpose was to cram into Robby’s lungs as much air, and into Robby’s bloodstream as much oxygen, as possible. After a few minutes he began to feel a little giddy from the extra oxygen. He held his breath and ducked under the water. But Mac was still in the porthole. He had not been trying to rescue Robby after all. He had been trying to join Robby inside.

Robby finally had to push Mac back out of the way, and once he did so, he had no trouble wriggling through the porthole. Outside, the water seemed dark after the light of the strong room. Also, without a face plate, he could not see well under the water. He caught hold of the rope around Mac’s neck, and urged the sea lion to tow him up and forward along the hull of the tug toward where he thought the airlock must be.

A moment later, he stubbed his fingers on the button Red Carswell had struck earlier to open the airlock, when he had had Robby in tow. Robby struck it, and the metal flap began to open downward. Mac pulled back, unwilling to enter the place where he had been tied to a locker, once before. So Robby swam in alone and punched the upper of the two buttons to the right of the inner door.

The flap whined shut behind him and a second later, the level of water in the airlock began to drop. In a moment Robby had his head above water and could breathe again. But so effective had been his hyperventilating that he did not feel desperate for oxygen at all. Nor was this surprising. As Robby knew, some pearl divers had been known to dive to depths of eighty feet and return to the surface, using this method. Of course, their lung capacity had been greatly built up by practice.

But he wasted no time congratulating himself now. He turned his attention to the lockers along the airlock wall. The third locker that he opened revealed his water lung, lying on top of Red Carswell’s ghost captain costume. Robby snatched it up and buckled it on—only he did not stop there.

Without hesitating, he picked up the ghost costume itself and began to climb into it. The waterproof plastic of which it was made was slick and rather stiff in his fingers.

This was the idea he had back in the strong room when he had first thought about how to get out of the porthole. On top of that flash of imagination had come the knowledge that he could get this water lung from the tug airlock—and that meant that he could also, if he wished, get the costume.

For what Robby had remembered in that instant was that Carswell, like Mr. Lillibulero, was only an inch or two bigger than he was himself. In the costume, no one would be able to tell it was Robby and not Carswell, walking about inside the tug.

However, now that he actually stood in the airlock with the costume in his hand, Robby felt his courage waning. It was one thing to think about dressing up like the red-haired man, another thing entirely to do it.

His heart was thudding uncomfortably as he put the suit and mask on. He stopped at the door, spotting a grill ands witch for what was evidently an intercom to the corridor beyond the watertight door. He turned it on and listened to see if he could hear anyone. But all that came to his ears was a far-off noise that might have been voices some distance from the other side of the door.

He took a deep breath, opened the door and stepped through into the corridor, closing the airlock behind him. He turned to the right.

And there, standing at the head of the stairs he must descend to reach the room where Mr. Lillibulero was prisoner, stood three men in slacks and short-sleeved work shirts.

They were so busy talking together that they did not see him. For a moment Robby was tempted to duck back into the airlock and make his own escape. Then something that was half courage and half stubbornness stiffened his back. He clumped forward.

The men at the stairway, hearing him, turned to face him.Peering ahead as best he could through the small eye slits in the ghost mask, it seemed to Robby that the faces of the three men were simply blurs. At any second he expected them to recognize him and try to recapture him.

Then the blurs cleared and Robby saw that the three men had all shrunk back. He had forgotten the fear Red Carswell inspired in all the men he controlled. And with the sight of them shrinking away from him all of Robby’s courage came bounding back. His shoulders stiffened under the old-fashioned doublet, his boot heels thumped the floor. As he got close he even began to imagine himself as a sort of combination of Carswell and the Spanish Captain. As he came up to them, he swaggered a little and glared from inside the mask.

Then he was past them all and thumping down the treads of the stairs, the metal tip of his scabbard tapping on the metal steps.

He reached the level below and turned toward the room called the brig. Then he noticed that another doorway was open, and in it stood the muscled, bald man named Hice, chatting with a man Robby did not recognize. Hice looked sharply at Robby as he marched forward. But after his suecess with the three men on the stairs, this did not disturb Robby. He sneered inside the mask and clumped on, not even bothering to return the bald man’s stare, and came at last tot he door behind which Mr. Lillibulero was locked. Robby peered in through the small, wire-screened window.

He saw a bare room with a table, a double-decker bunk,and the shape of a small figure lying huddled under a blanket.The excitement that had been filling Robby with the success of his masquerade went out of him with a rush. Fear flooded in. Mr. Lillibulero had seemed unconscious when Robby had seen him carried in. What if the little man was still unconscious or helpless, unable to walk? How would Robby get him out?

He reached down and fumbled with the bar that locked the door. Luckily, it was designed just to be slid aside, and this Robby did. Leaving the door ajar behind him, he clumped hastily to the blanket-wrapped figure on the bunk.

“Mr. Lillibulero ...” he whispered urgently, “Mr. Lillibulero...”

There was no answer. The shape under the blanket did not move.

“It’s me, Robby . . .” Robby whispered desperately. He reached out to lift the blankets, a cold feeling forming in the pit of his stomach. But his hand never closed on the blanket.

“I thought so!” boomed a hoarse voice behind him. Robby spun around.

Facing him were Hice and the man he had been talking to in the corridor. In Hice’s hand was a sonic rifle, pointed at Robby. Without letting go of it, he stepped forward and with his free hand grabbed the mask of the Spanish Captain.

Roughly, he yanked hat and mask off to expose Robby beneath them.

“Just as I thought!” he said, chuckling. “It had to be the boy. No one else is small enough to get into that outfit. And it couldn’t be Red, walking like that. Well, we’ve got you now, Sonny, you and your police friend, both.”

Behind the two men, who were together blocking the way to the corridor and Robby’s last hope of escape, he saw the cell door swing closed. The crash of its closing was like the final crash of a safe door slammed and locked. On the heels of it came the sound of another voice behind the two men.

“I wouldna be too sure about that, if I were you,” said the voice of Mr. Lillibulero.

The Mask Hides—Who?

Robby and the two men stared at each other. The voice had certainly not come from the blanketed shape on the bunk.Then everything seemed to happen at once.

Robby reached out to lift the blanket. But what he uncovered was not the figure of Mr. Lillibulero. It was a couple of pillows rolled up in another blanket to look like the shape of a man. Robby turned on discovering this. He was just in time to see the two men also spinning around to face the real Mr. Lillibulero, who had been standing behind the door since Robby had entered the room.

All in that one instant, as Robby turned, he saw the two men swiveling around, Hice raising the sonic rifle, and Mr. Lillibulero coming quickly out of the comer of the room behind the door. Mr. Lillibulero reached Hice and took the rifle away with so easy a motion that it seemed almost as if Hice had handed him the gun. At the same time, Hice took a step backward and blundered into Robby who was hurled onto the bottom bunk. He huddled there, glad to be out of the way.

In taking the rifle from Hice, Mr. Lillibulero had been forced to turn his back on the other man, who now grabbed the little agent of the International Police. Mr. Lillibulero twisted like an otter, rammed the butt of the rifle into the stomach of the man holding him, and knocked him to the floor.

Meanwhile, Hice recovered his balance, and jumped forward on top of Mr. Lillibulero.

The bald man was one of those thick-shouldered, chunky men who look as if they were born with a lot of muscle and who win every fight they enter. And he was twice as heavy as Mr. Lillibulero. When he jumped at the little man, Robby saw Mr. Lillibulero go down as if he had been struck by a truck. Robby held his breath.

Hice, unlike the Vandals and the Tropicans Mr. Lillibulero had fought in the past, was plainly an experienced fighter. He was fast and vicious.

But neither speed nor viciousness nor even muscles, Robby saw then, were the most important requirement for winning a fight. The bald man was an experienced fighter, but he was an experienced amateur, while Mr. Lillibulero was a professional. The little man had studied hand-to-hand combat all his life, was always in perfect training, and it was impossible to ruffle him. Mr. Lillibulero went down before the rush. However, he did not stop there.

Neither did Hice. In fact, he kept right on going. He seemed to fly through the air across the room as if he had suddenly grown wings, and crashed head-first into the wall.

Mr. Lillibulero had used the principle of jujitsu, first in-vented by the unarmed Lama monks of China to protect themselves from armed robbers on desolate roads. This principle was to use the effort of the opponent to undo the opponent. Instead of standing firm to take the shock of the bald man’s jump at him, Mr. Lillibulero had fallen gracefully on his back with his legs stiff and his feet in Hice’s stomach. So that Hice had found himself not stopped as he had expected, but carried forward with the speed of his own jump against the wall, knocking himself out.

As for Mr. Lillibulero, he rolled on over and back up onto his feet in the same smooth motion, not even short of breath.Like all experts, he had made the whole thing seem easy.

The two men lay still. Hice was unconscious. The other man was not.

“And now, Robertson,” said the little man snappily, “if y’would not mind interrupting y’r cosy nap on the bunk there, I suggest y’let me wear that costume for a while. It’s barely possible I can give a somewhat more effective imitation of Red Carswell than yourself.”

Robby scrambled off the bunk and began to get out of the costume while Mr. Lillibulero tied and gagged the two men with strips of blanket.

“Now,” ordered the little man, picking up the costume,“if y’ll take a look outside in the corridor to see if all is clear, I’ll take over y’r masquerade as ghost.”

Robby was only too glad to let Mr. Lillibulero do so. He had enjoyed wearing the costume when he thought he was fooling Carswell’s men. But one time of having the mask jerked off him was enough. He slipped out into the corridor, and saw it was empty.

“It’s all right. There’s no one out here,” he called softly back to Mr. Lillibulero. A low-pitched chuckle was his only answer and a moment later the besworded figure of the Spanish Captain stepped out of the room, closing the door behind him, and turned to face Robby. Robby stared. Mr. Lillibulero, he found himself thinking, must be an actor too.Even the way the figure stood and the cold glitter of the eyes behind the slits in the mask were as Robby remembered them when Carswell had brought him into the airlock of the tug.

“What are you going to do now?” whispered Robby. “Arrest Red Carswell?” He had been hoping to make the masked figure answer in the reassuring tones of Mr. Lillibulero, but he was disappointed. The reply came in the flat whisper of Carswell.

“You overestimate my abilities,” it said. “It’s well to keep a sense of your own limitations. And not even Mr. Lillibulero can capture a vessel this size, single-handed. Suppose we concentrate on escape?”

“It’s easy,” whispered Robby. “Up those stairs—”

But the costumed figure, without waiting to be told, had gone on ahead. Robby followed, uneasily. How, he wondered, could Mr. Lillibulero know the way out if he had been unconscious when carried in? However, Robby hurried after the figure, which was now moving with that swift, gliding walk of Carswell’s.

They reached the foot of the stairs without encountering anyone, but when they reached the level above they found themselves facing not only the airlock, but the three men Robby had met earlier at the head of the stairs, now standing just before the inner door of the airlock.

The costumed figure headed toward them with Robby following hurriedly. The three men looked puzzled. Robby had fooled them on the way down. But now the shape of the Spanish Captain was heading out of the ship, taking with him the boy that they must know had been locked up below. They did not move out of the way as Robby and the Spanish Captain approached.

“Mr. Carswell—” began one of them hesitantly, as the costumed figure stopped before them. Robby felt himself shrink up inside. But an icy whisper replied from the shape before Robby.

"Did I ask you to speak to me?”

It was the voice of Red Carswell in a stifled rage, as Robby had heard it when he had helped Mr. Millen stand up. It silenced the crew member as if a gag had been shoved into his mouth. He and the other two blundered into each other,getting out of the way. A moment later Robby and the costumed figure were alone in the airlock, the door closed behind them.

Robby put his hand to the water lung around his throat,ready to push it up. The costumed figure was getting another water lung from the locker. Robby watched with a sinking feeling.

It was impossible. Mr. Lillibulero had not been out of Robby’s sight for more than a few seconds while he put on the Spanish Captain’s costume. But how could he have known the way to the airlock and exactly where the water lungs were kept?

Right now, Robby wanted to know, one way or another, if it was really Mr. Lillibulero or whether somehow Carswell had changed places with the little man in the few moments Robby was alone in the lower corridor.

“Mr. Lillibulero . . .” Robby began hesitantly. The face with the black mustache swung swiftly toward him.

“Don’t talk to me about that friend of yours,” answered the voice of Red Carswell. “I’ve got other plans for you now. Lillibulero’s locked up where he can’t get out. And you won’t be seeing him again!”

Mac Roars Aloft

At the sound of Red Carswell’s voice coming from the mask of the costumed figure, Robby froze. The water was mounting up around his waist in the airlock, but he was so stunned by the thought that it might be Red Carswell instead of Mr. Lillibulero in front of him, that he did not even move to pull his water lung face plate up over his nose and mouth. The man in the costume stared at him for a moment and then reached up to lift the mask and put on the water lung he had found.

Beneath the lifted mask, Robby saw the familiar features and piercing green eyes of Mr. Lillibulero, one of which winked at him reassuringly. A moment later the water lung was in place and the mask was down again, but Mr. Lillibulero pointed at the intercom phone grill beside the inner door of the airlock. It was still switched on as Robby had left it earlier, and a little red light was burning above it to signal so.

Abruptly, Robby understood. The three men they had passed were still just outside in the corridor. With the phone on, they could hear every word he and Mr. Lillibulero said. Robby had forgotten the phone and had addressed the little man by his right name. It could have meant disaster. Mr. Lillibulero, by thinking quickly and answering as Carswell, had managed to cover up Robby’s blunder.

Overwhelmed with relief and embarrassment, Robby followed the little man’s lead in putting on swim fins and pulling up his face plate. A moment later they swam out into the open water—to nearly be battered against the hull by Mac, who had apparently been hanging around outside all this time.

Together, the three of them swam toward the cargo bag holding La Floridana. Light still came from around the edges of the flap in its side. Pushing aside some gray snappers and other fish that had been attracted by the underwater light, Mr. Lillibulero unhooked the fastener at one comer of the flap and swam inside.

Robby followed, hooking the flap closed to keep Mac hidden outside.

Inside, in the bright illumination from half a dozen self-contained, portable battery lamps, sealed for underwater use and hung about the scaffolding that enclosed the sunken ship, two men in black underwater suits and water lungs were finishing the job of fastening La Floridana firmly into the cradle of metal tubing.

Mr. Lillibulero was near the man working at the bow of the eighteenth-century sloop before the two caught sight of the costumed figure of the Spanish captain. Behind their transparent face plates, their faces showed surprise.

“All right!” commanded the ghost captain. “Turn the ship loose from that cradle. We’re taking it out of here!”

“But—” the man at the bow looked bewildered.

“Didn’t you hear me?” said Mr. Lillibulero. The sonic rifle he held swung up to point at the black-clad chest of the man in the bow. The man moved hastily to the nearest section of tubing and began to unbolt it. The other man immediately clutched the length of the enclosing framework close to him and began to unbolt, also. Whether it had been the voice of Red Carswell, the rifle, or both that had convinced them was not clear. But they were doing as they were told, without asking any more questions.

It struck Robby suddenly that there were real disadvantages in having people so afraid of you that they were afraid to argue if you gave them some peculiar order. It could result in what was happening right now—Red Carswell’s men were helping Red Carswell’s enemies regain the ship the red-haired man had been trying to steal. Robby filed the idea away for future reference.

If ever he had a crew of men doing things for him, he thought, he would make sure they would always ask questions if the orders seemed funny or wrong. They would not be afraid to speak up. In fact, he would make good friends with them. He would call them Jack, or Bill, or whatever the name of each one was. And they could call him Robby.

...Or Rob.

Meanwhile, the two men were working almost desperately to tear down what they had just put up. Like most things, the metal framework came apart faster than it went together. But it was some minutes before the job was done and they all pushed the sloop out of the cargo bag into open water. Mac swam up, nosing at Robby to see what he was doing.

Robby waved the sea lion back, pushed with the rest at the sloop and kicked his feet heavily in the water to help get La Floridana out of the cargo bag. But he was not much help.His feet in their swim fins felt as if they weighed twenty pounds apiece, and his whole body was aching to rest. He realized foggily what he had not had time to think about before—that he had been up all the day and probably now most of the night. When the sloop was outside, he merely sat on its watery deck, holding to the railing on the starboard side, while Mr. Lillibulero directed the two men to take a couple of the portable lamps from the cargo bag, and hold them up at the front of the sloop to light the boat’s way underwater. Then, as the little man started the electric motors that would drive the sunken ship, and moved to the steering device that had been connected to the two motors amidships,Robby feebly swam back to the costumed figure.

“I’m tired,” he sighed through his water lung diaphragm to Mr. Lillibulero.

The masked face nodded, and Mr. Lillibulero pointed to the stump of the mast

“Sit on the deck with y’r back against that,” he whispered sharply in his own voice. Robby obeyed. Mr. Lillibulero picked up the sonic rifle and loosened the sling by which a swimmer could carry the rifle on his back out of the way while hunting fish and other game underwater. He slid the rifle with the loosened sling over the stump of the mast and down until the rifle lay across Robby’s knees and the sling straps passed under Robby’s arms before going around the stump of the mast.

Anchored in this manner against accidentally floating away,Robby inched around so that he could see forward and then leaned back against the time- and water-pitted wood of the mast. Ahead of him he could just make out the two dark figures of the men silhouetted against the light of their lamps, reflecting back from the underwater rocks of the reef ahead as the electric motors began to make the sloop gather way. In that light, the rocks seemed to drift toward the ship, the lights seemed to dance, and the dark silhouettes of the two men seemed to shift and swim in the underwater as Robby’s eyes blurred with fatigue. Mac did an underwater loop before him, playing with the moving ship as he followed along.

And shortly, it all flowed together into one light-streaked pool of slumber like chocolate sauce and vanilla ice cream being swirled together in a sundae glass . . . and that was all he could remember of the lights and the underwater rocks.

Later, he roused to the feel of cold air on his skin and the vague impression he was being carried over someone’s shoulder up a ladder. Then that too faded away into the mists of asleep that seemed to go on, and on.

When, at last, he did open his eyes, it was without being fully awake even then. He had not come suddenly out of slumber but rather drifted up from the shadows of sleep and night, hardly knowing it, into the light of awakening and day. He blinked and stared at a white ceiling on which a ghost of pale light brighter even than the day-bright room seemed to be dancing. It danced as light dances when it is reflected from the shifting surface of sunlit waves. Robby lay watching this dancing ghost for some time before he figured out that this was what it was. But by that time he was all of the way awake and ready to wonder where he was.

He turned his head and saw Mr. Lillibulero. The little man had his head half out of sight inside the wiring of a radiophone panel before which he was seated. He and Robby were in the communications shack back on the barge, and Robby was lying on a couch across the room from the radiophone.

On a small coffee table near the couch was a plate with two paper-wrapped sandwiches on it, and a pint container of milk.Coming more awake, Robby looked at these things sourly. It seemed, he thought grumpily, as if he was never eating anything but sandwiches, or chinking anything but milk.

He had not had anything else since the two pieces of apple pie that had wound up the dinner with his father in Nassau. A vision swam into Robby’s mind of a much better breakfast than the one before him. Orange juice to start with, then little sizzling, snapping sausages, and crispy, crinkled waffles soaking with melted butter and golden maple syrup running allover them and collecting in the little squares . . .

“Ah, Robertson!” interrupted the dry voice of Mr. Lillibulero. Robby’s golden syrupy vision of a hot breakfast went pop and vanished. “Awake, are y’now? There’s some milk and sandwiches there for you on th’table.”

“I know,” said Robby, coldly, looking at the table. “I see them.”

He threw off the blanket under which he had been lying and sat up. He unwrapped one of the sandwiches to look at it, and found it was peanut butter. He tasted the milk and found it warm. Then, since there was nothing else around and he actually was rather hungry he drank the milk and ate the sandwich he had unwrapped.

“What are you doing?” he asked Mr. Lillibulero, as he brushed the last crumbs of the sandwich from his lips.

“Wasting m’time, I believe,” said the little man, taking his head out of the radiophone panel with an air of defeat. “Yon Carswell is not amateur at fixing things so they will not work. An amateur now, would have smashed this set with a hammer. Carswell, being cleverer than that, has caused some tiny break or flaw in th’mechanism that I canna find wi’out better testing instruments than are available here at th’moment.”

“You can’t fix it?” asked Robby. “We can’t call for help?”

“That, Robertson,” said the little man, darting a piercing green glance at him, “is th’bare bones of th’information I was attempting t’convey to you.”

“Oh,” said Robby. There was a little silence. Robby looked at the other sandwich for a moment, then slowly unwrapped and ate it. He finished it off and looked back over at Mr. Lillibulero, who was apparently deep in thought.

“—You see,” said Robby uncomfortably, beginning out loud in the middle of a sentence that had started in the back of his head some moments before, “I thought maybe Red Carswell had somehow changed places with you while I was in the corridor. So it really wasn’t my fault. I couldn’t help it.” Mr.Lillibulero turned to look at him.

“Y’are referring,” said the little man after a painful moment of silence, “to the matter in the airlock when y’addressed me by my proper name, forgetting the phone t’the corridor was turned on?”

“Well, yes,” answered Robby. “You knew how to get up to the airlock and where the water lungs were in the airlock. And I saw you when they carried you in. You were knocked out. I didn’t see how you could know all these things.”

“Quite simply, Robertson,” replied Mr. Lillibulero deliberately. “I was not knocked out, as y’put it, but entirely conscious when I was carried in.”

“Then why did you look knocked out?”

“Because,” said Mr. Lillibulero with some severity, “I had allowed th’men in the cargo bag t’think they had captured me and rendered me unconscious, in order to get into th’tug. It was my intention to rescue you. I had seen Carswell bring you in.”

He frowned at Robby for a second.

“Come t’think of it,” he added, “how was it you were able t’get into Carswell’s costume and come t’my room? I was just about t’break out of the cell they had me in and go looking for you when y’appeared.”

Robby told about his escape and his decision to try and rescue the little man. When he finished, Mr. Lillibulero did not say anything for a long second. He was staring at Robby and frowning so hard it made Robby vaguely uneasy.

“Robertson,” said the little man at last, “y’baffle, amaze and dismay me.”

“I do?” said Robby, surprised. “Why?”

“I canna deny,” said Mr. Lillibulero, “that y’r attempt t’come to m’rescue was th’result of a most commendable impulse. I am both proud of you and deeply touched. However,” added the little man sharply, as Robby began to beam, “I feel I must somehow bring you t’understand that y’r dressing up and re-entering the tug was most foolhardy. The risk was enormous. Th’ chance of success was miniscule.”

“Miniscule?” asked Robby.

“Very tiny,” replied Mr. Lillibulero. “Could y’not see that this rescue attempt of yours was rather like an untrained bystander dashing into a burning building t’aid a fully equipped and trained fireman who was in no trouble whatsoever?”

“But I thought you were in trouble.”

“I know y’did,” said the little man. “But even if y’had been right, it’s my job t’get into such trouble, as it is a fireman’s job t’enter a burning building. And both th’fireman and I are especially trained and equipped t’get ourselves out again. As you are not, Robertson. While if th’job becomes complicated by th’presence and actions of an untrained and unwanted helper, in either the fireman’s case or mine, perhaps neither the expert nor th’helper will escape safely.”

“Oh,” said Robby, glumly.

“Now,” said Mr. Lillibulero, twice as sharply, “y’will think me ungrateful and without appreciation for y’r courage in coming t’my supposed rescue as y’did.”

“No,” muttered Robby. But he did. That was exactly how he felt.

“In later years y’will better understand what I mean,” said the little man stiffly.

There was silence for a moment. They were both uncomfortable.

“Well, now,” said Mr. Lillibulero, finally, firmly breaking the silence. “Y’mentioned bars of silver and sacks of coins in the room in which they locked you up?”

“Pieces of eight. Cobs. And the silver was stacked up like bricks,” said Robby, revived by this change of the subject.

“Ah,” said the little man, “that’ll be part of the last remnants of treasure recovered from the galleons in Vigo Bay, Spain, then. The galleons that were sunk by the English fleet in 1702. This last amount of the treasure was recovered only last year, and stolen shortly after. No doubt this Millen bought it from th’thieves and used it t’pay Carswell. Coin and silver being easier for Carswell to dispose of than a ship likeLa Floridana and untraceable—which currency payment is not.”

“Is he an art thief too?” Robby asked. “Millen, I mean?”

“He has not always been completely honest in th’strict sense of th’word,” replied Mr. Lillibulero. “But I would say no—not at least in th’sense in which Carswell is a thief. Why do y’ask?”

“I like him better than Carswell,” said Robby. He told the little man about helping Millen to stand up and of the scene in the carpeted room of the tug. “He was the only one I saw there that wasn’t afraid of Carswell.”

“No,” agreed Mr. Lillibulero, “he would not be. Millen has th’faults of his nature, but they do not include a lack of courage.”

“He called,” said Robby, “Carswell a little man.” The moment the words were out of his mouth, it suddenly came back to him that Mr. Lillibulero was little, too. However, Mr. Lillibulero did not seem disturbed.

“And he was correct,” agreed the International Police Agent, surprisingly. “For all the deadliness and fearsomeness of Red Carswell—for all his intelligence, which is large, he remains a little man. Y’may perhaps have noticed,” went on Mr. Lillibulero, frowning fiercely at Robby, “that I myself am a wee bit under the average height.”

“Er . . . yes,” answered Robby.

“Those,” said Mr. Lillibulero, “who like m’self and Carswell are physically smaller than other men, often have a great desire t’compete. By proving ourselves better than large men we hope t’convince them that size does not make th’man.”

“It doesn’t,” Robby said, remembering something. “Character does—that’s what my dad says.”

“Quite right. Although it sometimes takes a few years for us to learn it,” said Mr. Lillibulero, “we eventually discover that a man’s character is th’measure of his size. And character,” continued the little man positively, “is gained by making our fellow man respect us. While it is lost by making our fellow man fear us.”

“You mean,” asked Robby, “the way Carswell makes his men fear him?”

“Exactly,” answered Mr. Lillibulero, “the more he makes them fear him, the more he destroys his own character. At th’present time, after years of effort,” concluded Mr. Lillibulero, “his character is just about invisible. And that is why Millen, who himself has a good deal of character even if it is misguided, referred correctly to Carswell as a little man.”

“Good,” said Robby. “Why does Millen have so much character though? I mean, if he hasn’t always been honest?”

“Because, though mistaken in his principles, he is true to those principles,” said Mr. Lillibulero, sniffing. “Millen’s early life was very hard and poverty-stricken. Then, after years of searching, he discovered the now-famous Rift Silver Mine extending out under the sea from Milford Sound, which is on the west coast of Otago, on South Island, in New Zealand. The Rift Mine made Millen very rich, but he found riches were not everything. He had no living relatives.”

“He must have been lonely,” said Robby.

“He no doubt was. And that was why he took to tracing his ancestors and now thinks he has evidence that one of them—Sir Hugh Millen—was Captain of the La Floridana, which is why he wants th’ship. He is a man of entirely different kidney than Carswell, who is merely a descendant of the early skin-diving treasure thieves of the Mediterranean—such as would cheerfully blow up priceless archeological finds like La Floridana if they suspected there was treasure hidden inside her.”

“Oh?” said Robby, wondering a little guiltily about his own kidney. Before he had met Bob Clanson, he would have thought it quite sensible to blow up a sunken old ship to get at any treasure that might be inside it. “Maybe he should have an operation?”

“Operation?”

“To get his kidney fixed,” said Robby, surprised at the question. “Or can’t they fix kidneys?”

“Th’word kidney, Robertson,” said Mr. Lillibulero, “in the sense I used it, means sort or type of a man. I meant to say Millen was one kind of man; Carswell an entirely different kind.”

“I’d have said that, then, instead of saying kidney,” pointed out Robby, feeling smug.

“You, no doubt, would have, Robertson,” said the little man severely. “But you are not me, any more than I am you.”

“Still—” began Robby, ready to discuss the matter further. But Mr. Lillibulero cut him off.

“And in any case,” said the little man, “we have things of more importance to concern us, with Carswell and his men due to be here shortly. I did not expect them until some little time after sun-up. But the sun has been above the horizon for half an hour now, and we canna have much longer to wait. I can stand them off wi’the sonic rifle I picked up aboard yon tug, but not for long. And we canna radio for help. I suppose there’s no hope of you sending y’r sea lion for aid?” Hel ooked inquiringly at Robby.

“No,” said Robby, unhappily. “If it was a different sort of cap Mac has on maybe we could. There is a control cap that makes animals do what you tell them, but this is just a rapport cap. It just receives what my cap transmits in a radio signal—”

“Transmits?” snapped Mr. Lillibulero, straightening up and driving a sharp glance from his green eyes at Robby.

“Yes,” said Robby, surprised. “You see, my cap picks up the electrical activity from the emotional centers in my brain and makes a radio signal out of it and transmits—”

“Y’mean it’s a radio transmitter y’are wearing on y’rhead?”

“Why, yes. But—”

“Robertson!” cried the little man, leaping to his feet and snatching the cap from Robby’s head. “Th’day is saved! Perhaps. If I can just connect this in time—”

He broke off, interrupted by the sudden baritone roaring of Mac. But it was not the simple fact of the noise that stopped his tongue and made him and Robby stare at each other. It was the direction from which it came—not from the barge or the level waves beyond—but eerily and impossibly from high over their heads.

No Answer Below

Neither Robby nor Mr. Lillibulero wasted any time on talk. They were through the door of the radio shack out onto the barge deck and staring up into the air before either of them could have said, “Red Carswell.” What they saw there was startling to them both, but it did not startle Robby half as much as Mr. Lillibulero.

“Th’beast must have grown wings!” cried the little man in astonishment. “How else can he have got up there?”

The beast in question was Mac. And “up there” was twenty feet above the rigid steel deck of the barge, at the tip of the crane that had been used to hoist the Hoenig flyer aboard the power boat the day before.

The crane arm was stubby and strong, composed of two long steel girders joined in a sort of narrow, upside-down-V. The point where the girders came together was the tip, high in the air. The end where they spread apart was anchored firmly to the crane engine on the barge deck. All the way up, six inches apart, were crossbars of steel plate, almost like the rungs of a ladder except that they got shorter and shorter as they came toward the point where the girders met. Right at the tip was a small steel box about a foot and a half square. It covered a pulley wheel, over which ran the heavy wire cable used to hook on to things the crane was to lift.

It was not so remarkable that someone should be up at the top of the crane. Robby could have climbed it with ease.What was surprising was that it should be an excited three-hundred-pound young sea lion perched there, jerking about
and bulging over the little surface of the steel box, and looking ready to fall off at any second. Just then, luckily,Mac saw Robby and Mr. Lillibulero below him and stopped roaring. It had looked as if the roaring alone would send him tumbling.

“Steller’s climb like that,” Robby explained to Mr. Lillibulero. “In their rookeries each bull picks out a rock and claims it for his own. He watches from the top of it and attacks any other bull who tries to come up after him and steal his cow seals—the cow seals that the first bull seal has collected on the rock.”

“This barge,” snapped the little man, “is hardly a rock in a Bering Sea sea-lion rookery, Robertson!”

“Maybe Mac thinks it is,” said Robby, imagining it suddenly. “They play at fighting and climbing from the time they’re pups. Maybe Mac thinks that the barge is his rock,and you and I are his cows that he has to defend, and he’s just seen something mysterious out beyond the reef that—” Robby broke off, for Mr. Lillibulero was no longer before him. With the skill of a gymnast, the little man had jumped up, seized the edge of the roof of the radio shack and flipped himself up onto it with ease. Then he had run lightly to the peak of the roof, leaped through thin air to catch hold of the crane arm in the middle and run up the metal crosspieces like a fireman up a ladder. He shaded his eyes, glanced out to sea,and in a moment was back on the deck with Robby again.

“Carswell,” he said briefly to Robby. “Looking for a spot t’bring his tug through the reef.” And with that he slipped back into the radio shack again. Robby hurried after him and found the little man, Robby’s rapport cap in hand, seated once more before the radiophone panel.

“The gap where La Floridana went out isn’t wide enough for a fat ship like that tug,” said Robby. “What’re you doing?”

“This phone,” said Mr. Lillibulero, continuing to work, “like all such instruments, can be considered t’consist of two parts, or stages. The first stage changes the human voice into a radio signal, the second stage amplifies and broadcasts that signal. Carswell put this radiophone out of order by gimmicking th’first stage, it being more difficult to locate trouble in that part without testing instruments. Now, wi’this cap of yours I can simply bypass th’first stage and connect th’phone directly t’the cap. And th’cap t’the second stage.”

He paused to glance at Robby.

“In short, Robertson,” he said, “Coast Guard Rescue Nine, which is th’unit of that service nearest to us, will in a moment be alerted to this location by th’loud hum of the carrier wave of y’r cap. I’ve no doubt they will first try to callus back by this phone, and when they discover they canna, will lose no time investigating. And,” continued the little man tartly, “I would greatly appreciate y’r drawing back slightly until I am done, Robertson! In small spaces such as behind this panel, two heads are definitely not better than one.”

“Oh. Sorry,” said Robby, backing off.

He watched Mr. Lillibulero finish, and lock the panel back into position. Barely had this been done than they were assaulted by a new burst of roaring from Mac above them. They raced outside.

Mac was now growling and throwing deep-chested challenges in the direction of the underwater opening in the reef.As Robby and the little man burst onto the barge deck, they both saw what looked like a spurt of water lance up from the waves just beyond the reef. It shot in the direction of Mac for the distance of a foot or so, and then fell back into the sea.

“They’re firing a sonic rifle at him,” said Mr. Lillibulero. Robby realized this was true. The jet from the waves, like a stream from a water pistol, had been the result of someone under the sea shooting in Mac’s direction. The little man sniffed. “It’ll do th’beast small harm.”

That too was true, Robby knew. The sonic rifle, related not only to the toy gun that knocks over a paper target at ten or fifteen feet but to the jet airliner creating a sonic boom by its high, swift flight above the earth, had its limitations. A powerful and effective weapon at up to a hundred yards underwater, it was hardly more dangerous than a popgun in the thinner medium of air, where sound waves have only a third of their water speed. It could not have been Carswell who had fired the rifle at Mac, thought Robby. The red-haired man would have known better.

Up on his crane and teetering precariously, Mac roared defiance. At that, Robby told himself, the young Steller’s sea lion had three hundred pounds of weight and the neck muscles that permitted him to slash with razor teeth almost faster than the eye could follow. He would be a match for any two or three of Carswell’s men at once, if they dared attack him barehanded.

Meanwhile, Mr. Lillibulero was up and down the crane again in a moment. Mac stopped roaring to watch the little man, curiously.

“Th’tug is now anchored just outside the gap in th’reef,” he informed Robby. “Carswell’ll be sending swimmers in through the gap underwater; and those swimmers will be armed with sonic rifles and ready t’use them. So y’must follow m’orders, exactly.”

Robby swallowed. He had not felt especially frightened up until now. Even the sonic gun fired at Mac had seemed more exciting than alarming. But now there was a flat note in Mr. Lillibulero’s voice that made the back of Robby’s neck prickle.Suddenly he felt the coolness of the sea wind blowing against his bare chest and the sun shining on the wave tops with a bright, hard glitter. It reminded him of the gray glitter in the utterly cold eyes of Red Carswell.

“I will,” he said, hastily.

‘‘Then come wi’me.”

The little man led the way to the far end of the barge and pointed down the short ladder leading into the underwater globe of glass that was the observation bubble. Through its transparent bottom, beyond the dark outline of the camera used to film the excavation work, Robby could see the shape of La Floridana resting serenely on its supports.

“Down y’go, Laddie,” commanded Mr. Lillibulero, “and hand up to me one of the phones y’ll find there.”

Robby climbed down the ladder. On top of the camera he saw two hand-phones with a coil of insulated wire between them. He took one and climbed back up to give it to Mr. Lillibulero.

“Y’are,” said the little man, “t’be my spotter, Robertson.” He pointed to the sunken sloop. “I’ll take a position with the rifle behind a gunport there, where th’side of th’ship gives me good cover and protection. And y’are to phone me as y’see them come swimming through the gap in th’reef. Or even if they come over th’reef—though they will not try that at first.”

“Why not?” asked Robby, half ready to argue the point.

“If they come in over th’reef, then once they’re over,”said Mr. Lillibulero, “they’ll be exposed high in the water against th’bare rock. So it’s most likely they will snake in just above th’sea bottom, taking advantage of the cover of coral, rock chunks, and sea fans like th’early American Indian attacking a settlement.”

“I see!” said Robby. “You can’t see them so well from the ship. But I’ll be looking down on them, like a fish overhead!”

“Correct,” the little man replied, calmly. “Now, if I should be hit, y’are to take y’r sea lion and try t’get as far from the barge as possible. I want no nonsense about attempting t’aid me as y’did aboard the tug.” He looked hard at Robby. “If it were another sort of people opposing us, I’d suggest y’let them capture you and you have patience until y’are released. But Carswell is perfectly capable of seeing he leaves no witnesses alive behind him.”

Robby nodded. There did not seem to be anything for him to say.

“I tell y’this, not to frighten you,” said Mr. Lillibulero, dryly, “but because it’s always better t’face the facts. Now, to y’r post, Robertson; and I’ll be getting t’mine.”

A few minutes later, Robby watched the little man swimming downward, through the clear water, paying out the phone line as he went. Robby himself turned and climbed down into the observation bubble to get ready for the excitement.

The chair in the bottom of the bubble was set on gimbals, as was the camera, so that it could film at any angle in the bubble. Robby pushed the camera around behind him and tilted his chair so that he was facing ahead and down toward the gap in the reef. As he did so, the phone beside him buzzed.

Robby picked it up, pressing the “receive” button on the side of it.

“Robertson?” said the voice of Mr. Lillibulero in his ear.“Can y’hear me properly? Over t’you.” Robby pressed the“send” button in and the “receive” button popped out beside it.

“I can hear you fine,” he answered, and then remembered to add, “over.” He pushed the “receive” button once more.

“Excellent! Call me at th’first movement y’see. Over and out.”

Robby laid the phone down on his knees and looked down at the deck of La Floridana. Mr. Lillibulero lay on his stomach there with his legs spread out to make his position firm. The rifle butt was tucked into his shoulder, his elbows were spread, supporting the weapon in both hands and with its stock pressing against his cheek. His right eye looked down the long, thin barrel with the pinhole opening in its muzzle. He was steady as a rock, in the proper prone position taught to marksmen with the rifle. Robby turned his gaze to the opening in the reef.

He had noticed earlier how narrow this opening was. It was only about twenty feet deep and forty feet wide at the top with the sides sloping inward. But the level bottom space was choked with big rock pieces, sea fans, and such behind which attackers could hide. From this floor of the gap, the slope to the area inside the reef where La Floridana lay was also cluttered with hiding places.

On either side of the gap, the jagged rocks of the reef were like small peaks of an underwater mountain range, coming within three or four feet of the surface. Beyond the gap Robby could see only green-blue, watery distance, though he knew the tug was there.

He strained his eyes to try to make out the dark shadow of he tug’s shape, but could see nothing. A flicker of motion in the gap caught his eye, and he stared for a moment without seeing anything and half-thinking it was a fish he had seen. Then, he saw it again.

It had moved for just a moment and then become still. It was the light upper body of a swimmer moving just above the white sand, from behind one rock to the next.

Robby snatched up the phone and pushed the lever to “send.”

“Mr. Lillibulero,” he whispered urgently. “I see one. Over.”

“Where? Over,” came back the little man’s voice as Robby’s thumb shifted the phone lever back to “receive.”

“By the big purple sea fan next to the square rock—over!”said Robby.

A faint streak of white, that was an almost microscopic stream of bubbles, lanced through the underwater from the gunport behind which Mr. Lillibulero lay. A swimmer suddenly tumbled into sight from behind the purple sea fan, and began to flounder back frantically through the gap. He kept the square rock in line between him and La Floridana. One arm trailed limply behind him.

Mr. Lillibulero, Robby saw, was using his rifle at a setting strong enough to paralyze, but too low to kill. It was typical of the little man to do so.

“You got him! You got him!” cried Robby, forgetting to switch the lever to “send” in his excitement. He corrected this just as he caught sight of more invaders. “Two swimmers, Mr. Lillibulero! One at the right, by the jagged rock, one at the left by the big clump of sea fans!”

Even as Robby spoke, sonic rifles fired from beyond the gap. Robby saw the white streaks of their ultrasonic discharges, streaking toward the sloop to keep Mr. Lillibulero pinned down. At the same time, the two Robby had seen swam quickly forward.

Streaks from Mr. Lillibulero’s gun met them almost as soon as they started to move. They scrambled back through the gap, one with a useless arm, the other kicking with only one leg. The little man was too well protected behind the gunport of the ship for the fire beyond the gap to bother him. And he was too good a marksman to miss at this short range.

Robby dropped the phone from his knees in the excitement and banged his head on the invisible glass wall of the bubble,picking the phone up again. He was too excited to sit still.

Somehow, their fighting to save the sloop had made it seem to grow more valuable in his eyes. It was no longer just the waterlogged hulk that had failed to produce the gold and silver treasure he had dreamed of in the flyer on the way here.It had become something else—something more valuable than treasure, to himself as well as to a host of people like Bob Clanson, his father, Mr. Lillibulero, and even the old man, Millen. Was there, Robby suddenly wondered, an invisible something special? Something which, when added to ordinary things made them more precious than silver, gold, jewels, or all that was ordinarily considered riches or treasure—

“Mr. Lillibulero!” cried Robby, bursting suddenly out of his thoughts as it dawned on him he had been watching movements in the reef opening for some seconds now. “Lookout! Look out! They’re coming through the gap and over the reef on the sides at the same time. Look out! Look over the reef top to your left, there—”

The glass of the observation bubble abruptly rang like a bell, almost deafening Robby. It became covered with millions of tiny bubbles so that Robby could not see, and the glass rang again and again. The swimmers who had come over the top of the reef had discovered Robby. They were firing at the bubble, to keep Robby from spotting for Mr. Lillibulero. And their trick was working.

“I can’t see!” cried Robby desperately into the phone. “Mr. Lillibulero—”

The bubble stopped ringing to the sonic shots, and the bubbles cleared as if they had been wiped away by a large,invisible cloth. Robby saw the two swimmers who had come over the top of the reef struggling to reach a place of safety and noticed that the reef opening was already cleared of other attackers. He sighed with relief and looked at the phone to make sure it was on “receive.” It was, but Mr. Lillibulero had not answered. Robby looked down and saw him lying alertly by the ship’s gunport.

“Mr. Lillibulero,” called Robby, setting the phone button on “send.” “You didn’t get hit, did you—” He broke off.

The little man had made no move to pick up the phone on the deck beside him. Then Robby saw why.

The end of the cord between his phone and Mr. Lillibulero’s dangled in the water just a few feet below the observation bubble. A shot aimed at the bubble had cut it.

What was worse, the little man evidently did not know he no longer had Robby to warn him of an attack. Looking straight ahead toward the gap, he had not seen the broken cord.

And at the same time a sound he had been hearing for some seconds finally claimed Robby’s attention. It was the sound of buzzing coming from the air above the barge. The sound like buzzing made by a ducted fan flyer high in the air above.

The Last Attack

Robby dropped the phone and went up the ladder to the barge deck as fast as he could scramble. His first thought was to dive overside, even without a water lung, to swim down to Mr. Lillibulero and warn him of the broken cord. The next was to drop something heavy over the side of the barge to make the little man look up and see the break for himself. But as Robby burst onto the deck, both notions were swept from his mind by the noise he had heard.

Still a distant dot in the sky, a flyer was coming in for a landing at the archeological site. Friend or foe, there was noway of telling. But, on the sea’s surface in almost the same direction and approaching at hardly less speed, were two graceful, swan-like wings of water lifting at least thirty feet into the air with a black dot between them.

No private skimmer could be throwing water that high. The black dot could only be Coast Guard Rescue Nine, approaching the transmission area of Robby’s rapport cap at an emergency speed of a hundred and forty knots.

Robby whooped, and turned to dive over the side, swim down and beckon Mr. Lillibulero to come up for their rescue.But, before he could take the first step, something clanged against the ladder leading down into the sea on the other side of the barge. And Mac, still perched on the crane, began growling overhead in warning.

Robby turned back. For a moment he saw nothing. Then,as if from nowhere, a huge, wet, black-gloved hand rose into sight and grasped the top rung of the ladder. A second hand followed, and slowly—motion by motion—a towering, black-clad figure streaming water climbed unsteadily onto the barge deck.

One hand of the figure held a small, flat, bright-metal box with a button on it, that gleamed in the sunlight. The other hand went to the glittering face plate that was reflecting sunlight into Robby’s eyes so that he could not see the face behind it. The hand pulled the face plate down. Robby saw.

It was the lined, old face of Millen. And it was ash-gray with exhaustion.

For a second Robby could not understand how Millen could be here. And then he realized the old man must have swum across the reef farther down, while Robby’s observation bubble was being fired on and the bubbles hid his view. Millen had taken advantage of that attack to swim to the barge on his own. Where he had found the strength to do so,probably no one would ever know. Only the old former prospector’s unconquerable, if misguided, courage, could have seen him through.

Now he stumbled heavily toward Robby.

“Out of my way!” he half-shouted in his deep, rattling ancient voice. “Get out of my way!”

“It’s too late!” Robby shouted back. “Look!” he pointed toward the dot and the two lifted silvery wings. “The Coast Guard’s coming. They’ll be here in a minute. You can’t get the ship, now!”

But Millen continued to stumble forward. He did not look in the direction Robby pointed. He held up the metal case he carried and shook it.

“I’ll blow her up!” he boomed hoarsely. “If I can’t have her, no one’s going to! You hear me, lad? Never let a little man beat you—never give up! Go on—always go on.”

“But Mr. Lillibulero’s down there!” Robby cried. “If you blow up the ship, you’ll blow him up, too!” Millen did not seem to hear. His eyes were glazed and strange. He was almost to Robby now, talking more to himself than Robby.

“Don’t give up . . .” he was muttering. “Give up, you’re done for . . .”

Overhead, Mac was growling, roaring, teetering on the verge of a plunge in the violence of his excitement and rage. Robby’s head spun. He saw the giant figure of Millen stumbling toward him. He saw the dot that was the flyer, too faraway to help. He saw the high-lifted spray water wings of the Coast Guard ship, too distant to reach the barge in time. And suddenly, what the old man was about to do came clear and sharp in Robby’s mind.

It was more than blowing up the old wooden hull of a ship that would never sail again anyway. It was ending something that could never be brought into existence again. As in the case of Mr. Lillibulero, who would be destroyed with the ship if Millen got to the other side of the barge, it was putting an end to all that might have been. All the good Mr. Lillibulero might be able to do in the rest of his lifetime, all the knowledge that might be gained in years to come by people who would see and work with La Floridana, would be finished if Millen dropped his explosive on the ship.

As all this became plain to him, Robby sprang forward at the huge but tottery old man, and wrapped his arms and legs around his mighty, but weary and aged, limbs.

For a moment Millen halted, hobbled and came to a standstill. Then, with a sound like a shout caught in his throat, he seemed to reach into himself and find a last spark of the strength that must have belonged to him when he was young. With a single casual effort he freed an arm and jerked Robby loose, tossing him off to one side with a flick of his massive wrist. Robby saw the crane, Mac, and the blue sky whirl wildly before his eyes, and the unyielding steel deck slammed cruelly against the back of his head. Half-stunned, he saw Millen striding heavily toward the far edge of the barge. And far above—mountain-high it seemed above them both—he saw Mac barking and growling, teetering against the cloudless sky with its approaching dot of a flyer.

The flyer would not get there in time to stop Millen and save the sunken ship or Mr. Lillibulero. There was no one to come to the rescue, no one—only Mac, who had never done so before.

“Mac!” cried Robby, desperately, trying to pour all the fear and anguish inside him into his voice and up to Mac on the crane. “Mac—help me! Help me! Mac—”

And Mac, darting his head down to look in the direction of the cries, bellowed suddenly like a sea lion possessed, then hurled himself recklessly downward from the twenty-foot-high tip of the crane to plunge flipper-first to the hard deck below.

“To Follow Knowledge..."

Mr. Lillibulero meanwhile, having driven off the attack that had come at the same time through the gap and over the reeftops, had spared a moment to look about him. Doing so, he discovered the cut phone cord and looking up, saw that the observation bubble was empty. And it was at that moment, his eye attracted by movement near the reef, that the little man looked and saw the last and most massive attack coming from the tug.

Red Carswell, evidently in a cold rage, had thrown all his remaining swimmers at La Floridana at once. Seeing this and the empty bubble over him, Mr. Lillibulero immediately decided that Carswell had somehow managed to get someone through to the barge to capture Robby. And, without the help of a spotter, the La Floridana’s lone defender could not standoff this final battle.

The little man’s decision was instantantous. Important asLa Floridana was, that importance could not compare to the value of a human life. Abandoning the sonic rifle, which would be useless out of water anyway, Mr. Lillibulero arrowed upward toward the ladder on the side of the barge away from the reef while the attacking swimmers, seeing him do so, automatically changed direction and raced for the ladder on the reef side of the barge.

So it was that the little man and the first of Carswell’s men climbed opposite sides of the barge at the same moment—just in time to see Robby call and see the apparently suicidal dive of Mac to the deck behind Millen in the center of the barge.

They all froze. Instinctively, they expected to see the young sea lion smashed by his impact upon the deck.

But it did not happen that way.

Mac landed—not on his head, but on his large, strong-boned front flippers and swelling chest. The barge rang to his fall like an oil drum pounded by a monstrous club. But a second later, evidently unhurt, he was flinging himself at Millen. A shuffling, bellowing charge caught him up with the old man and Mac’s neck and head darted out as if he was only pecking at Millen. But Millen went down as if struck by lightning—which, considering the speed of the so-called “strike” of the Steller’s sea lion, had been practically the case.

The next moment Robby was on his feet and the men from the tug, seeing a chance to get control of the barge, ran forward. But Mr. Lillibulero met them halfway. The first man to meet him flipped up into the air and over as if he had tripped on a springboard. The next took a fist in the stomach,and doubled up out of the fight. But then the rest were upon the little man, and though he knocked and tossed them about recklessly, more climbed out of the sea every second, and it seemed he would be overwhelmed.

But at this moment Mac, whose short-sighted eyes had lost sight of Millen when the old man had fallen to lie still among the equipment on the deck of the barge, joined the battle.Roaring, he shuffled forward, his head striking right and left. And every time it darted out, one of Carswell’s men went head over heels. The men from the tug broke and turned to escape; but it was too late.

Overhead, the flyer Robby had seen was dropping to the deck. Robby’s father, followed by Bob Clanson, popped out of it. They came running toward Robby, just as Coast Guard Rescue Nine slid over the reef to a stop alongside the barge, soaking everyone on it with the spray from the collapse of a portside wing.

All at once, the deck of the barge was swarming with armed men in neat blue uniforms and the battle was over. Efficiently, they rounded up the swimmers from Carswell’s tug while another group in a small, armed skimmer took off and captured the tug itself. Millen was carried off the barge onto the Coast Guard ship on a stretcher while the captured swimmers were marched aboard.

Mr. Lillibulero, the moment the Coast Guard arrived, had dived off the barge in search of just one man. But, as the barge was cleared of the last of its invaders, he climbed slowly back up the reefside ladder and pulled off his water lung face plate with a gesture of defeat.

“. . . Amazing! . . . He did? . . . And then you called?. . . And Mac? ... He did?” Dr. Hoenig was saying excitedly as he got the details from Robby. Robby’s father broke off at the sight of the little man, however, to put a sympathetic question. “No luck?”

Mr. Lillibulero stepped around Mac who, thoroughly calmed down by now, was scratching his left ear with his left hind flipper—an amazing sight, considering the smallness of his ear and the enormous size of the flipper. The little man shook his head grimly.

“That makes one more time,” he said, “that yon Red Carswell’s slipped through m’fingers. He must have had a small underwater boat ready t’take him t’safety at a moment’s notice. But I’ll put salt on his shirttail one of these days.”

He looked from Dr. Hoenig to Bob Clanson.

“Y’arrived just in the nick of time, I see,” he said, and added dryly, “or perhaps just a wee moment after.”

“When I couldn’t get through to Robby or anyone on the barge phone here,” said Robby’s father, “I cut the conference short and took the morning rocket to Miami. I found Bob and he hadn’t been able to phone through either, so we took the flyer, which was repaired by that time—oh, by the way, Robby,” said Dr. Hoenig, fishing a metal container out of his pocket, “I brought these sardines for you to tempt Mac in to the barge, in case he hadn’t come in on his own. But since he not only did so nobly, but made our experiment a success by proving Steller’s have rescue impulses—”

He thrust the sardine can into Robby’s hands.

“—For Mac. With my congratulations—Yip, Yip, Yarooo!” He wound up with a rebel yell he had learned in college. Everybody stared except Robby, who had heard the yell before and was busy getting the sardine can open without being shoved off his feet by Mac. Mr. Lillibulero sniffed disapprovingly.

“It hardly becomes,” he said, “a grown man, let alone a scientist, t’screech like a wildcat, James.”

“Never mind, Lillibulero,” said Robby’s father happily, “if you ever find yourself with a fifteen-year-old pet theory proved right, you may screech, too! Am I right, Bob?”

“What I can’t understand,” said Bob, diplomatically, “is why Mac didn’t dash himself to bits and pieces on the deck?”

“Oh, no,” said Robby. “I knew jumping down wouldn’t hurt him.”

“Y’knew!” said Mr. Lillibulero, strongly.

“Sure,” said Robby, seeing them both staring at him. “Anybody who knows about Steller’s knows that. They’ve known for years. There was an article on Steller’s back in a1959 issue of National History magazine. I wrote a report on the article and said we ought to study Steller’s for ways to land large spaceships on heavy gravity planets like Jupiter. The article told how even a twelve-hundred-pound bull Steller’s can jump twenty feet down onto solid rock.”

“Solid rock!” said Bob Clanson. For once his blue eyes were solemn—in sheer amazement.

“Well,” Robby continued, diffidently, “it’s the flippers, you see. The front flippers. They’re large and made to act like springs, almost. Steller’s come down on their flippers and then their ribs take the rest of the shock.”

“I would not care,” said Mr. Lillibulero, “t’land from a fall of twenty feet on to my own ribs.”

“They aren’t made like ours,” Robby explained. “The sea lion’s ribs are mostly cartilage, like sharks’ bones.” He turned to his father. “Isn’t that true, Dad?”

“Yes,” said Robby’s father, nodding. “It’s true enough. And that article Robby’s talking about—the author was G.M. Daetz—explains the matter very well. Some excellent pictures of the Steller’s sea lions in their Bering Sea rookeries, too.”

“I still have to think twice to believe it,” declared Bob. “But if Robby tells me it’s a fact. . ." His eyes twinkled on Robby.

“Adaptation,” said Robby’s father, watching as Robby turned away for a second to struggle with the tab opener on the sardine can—which, like most such gadgets, was not unrolling properly—“is the answer. Adaptation is the secret behind the unbelievable abilities of most creatures—except Man. Give Mac enough generations and he’d adapt a tooth or a claw for taking sardines out of cans.”

“Where, however,” said Mr. Lillibulero, sharply, “Man put them in the first place without needing t’adapt himself specially to do so. Adaptation may be wonderful, James. But it is nowhere so wonderful as the mind of Man, which does not need t’adapt t’get at th’treasures it seeks.”

“True,” said Dr. Hoenig, looking sly. “The crow now—and most of the Corvidae family—collects small and shiny objects into a hoard. But it treasures all items in the hoard equally. Along comes a man, examines the hoard, and with his superior mind identifies two objects in the hoard as a trouser button and a diamond ring. The crow would never recognize the use of these things—”

“Indeed not!” murmured Mr. Lillibulero, approvingly.

“—But the mind of the man understands immediately the proper use of both. The pants button will keep his pants from falling down and the diamond ring will get him married. And”— wound up Robby’s father, cocking an eye at the little man—“no one can deny that wearing pants and getting married make all the difference between the monkey in the cage at the zoo, and the man outside the cage watching him!” He winked at Bob, who grinned.

“Y’may choose t’laugh, James,” said Mr. Lillibulero, coldly, “but with y’r son only recently endangered by an attempt t’steal a ship that can be accounted valuable only in th’sense of being a treasure of th’mind, y’can hardly dispute m’thesis that there is a magic quality available, not in diamond rings or trouser buttons, but only in Man. Th’wit to discover the presence of that invisible treasure that transforms th’ordinary something into an object beyond price.”

“Pants buttons!” cried Dr. Hoenig. “That’s what the treasure is!”

“You know that isn’t what he means!” Robby retorted, annoyed, looking up from the sardine can, which he had finally opened. He scowled at his father. “I know what Mr. Lillibulero means!”

“Do you?” asked Dr. Hoenig, sobering suddenly. “Do you, Robby? Well, if you do I’ll be more than a little proud of you. In fact, I’ll ask you right now to accept my apologies for joking about it. What is it Mr. Lillibulero means?”

“Why,” began Robby, “he means . . .’’ He saw suddenly that the eyes of all three men were upon him, waiting for his answer. He stood with his mouth open, but while he was sure that he knew inside him what he wanted to say, the word he needed would not come to his tongue. The silence stretched out . . .

“You know!” cried Robby desperately, at last. “It’s what there is in everything you study and work at to find out something new about it...” He ran down, in chagrin and despair.

“Knowledge,” supplied Bob. “That’s the word you want, Robby.”

Dr. Hoenig nodded. His eyes were approving.

“And the hunt for knowledge!” cried Bob happily, without warning, his blue eyes snapping and his grin flashing out at Robby. “That’s the thing—the best life in the world. The biggest adventure. Down to the deepest oceans... up to the highest mountains... off to the thickest jungles and into the knottiest problems with skill and learning! To come back at last with a secret no one ever knew before, a secret that will change the lives of millions of people in years to come. Tofollow . . .’ ” he broke off. “How does it go in that poem by Tennyson about the Greek wanderer, Ulysses? 'To follow knowledge . . .’ ”

The young archeologist looked at Robby’s father as he asked the question. But surprisingly it was Mr. Lillibulero who answered, in a soft, ringing voice Robby had never before heard from him.

“ 'Tfollow knowledge,’ ” quoted Mr. Lillibulero, softly, " 'Like a sinking star,—Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.’ ”

For a second they were all silent. Even Mac, who had gobbled up all the sardines in the can and was busily licking the oil from Robby’s fingers. Then Bob Clanson broke the silence.

“Right!” he said, looking slyly in his turn at Robby. “And not just some little, personal bit of knowledge. Something important. Who knows?” He winked at Robby. “Maybe you’re already on the trail with your sea lion approach to the landing of spaceships. Why, we’re liable to hear spacemen saying everywhere a dozen years from now, 'Everyone knows that nowadays. That’s the Robertson Hoenig Theory of Steller’s Sea Lion Impact Construction. Believe me, we’d never have been able to get down on Jupiter without it!’

“Oh, well,” said Robby, embarrassed at being kidded, but rather pleased all the same. “It was just an idea . . . But I really was thinking I might write a report on La Floridana and underwater archeology sometime if you’d tell me what books to read and more about what you did here, sometime.” He looked hopefully at Bob.

“Why not?” said Bob, firmly. “Nothing I’d like better. In fact, what’s wrong with right now? Care to go down with me now and look the site and sloop over again?”

“Sure!” shouted Robby. “I’m ready—” he broke off, hesitating and turning to his father, “—if—if there’s time now?”

“Why not, as Bob says?” answered Dr. Hoenig. “The last day of the conference in New York is getting on very well without me, anyhow. In fact, I think I’ll join you, and Bob can teach us both about underwater archeology. Always wanted to know more about it. How about you, Lillibulero?” he said, turning to the little man beside him. “Care to make it a foursome?”

Mr. Lillibulero sniffed.

“If,” he replied dryly, “y’are inviting me t’a game of golf or a hand of bridge with y’r talk of foursomes, I must decline. On th’other hand, James, as I’m not immediately due elsewhere upon m’duties, an invitation t’learn more about a fascinating subject such as underwater archeology finds me more than ready.”

Mac, who had finished Robby’s fingers, looked up and barked as everybody began to move. He, too, was ready. At any time, anywhere, and for anything they had in mind that sounded like excitement and adventure.

He shoved an oily nose companionably and lovingly into the empty right hand of Robby, in a last search for his own kind of treasure. For Mac, unfortunately, that treasure would always be sardines. But that did not matter as long as he had Robby.

They were friends and there was nothing better, when you got right down to it.

—Not even sardines.

Table of Contents

- Cover
- Title Page
- Copyright Page

- Secret Under the Sea

- The Footprints
- The Unseen Singer
- Mr. Lillibulero
- The Vandals
- The Killer Whale
- The Battle on the Sea Bottom
- The Sea Badger
- Into the Dark Tunnel
- Alone Against the Raiders
- In the Hands of the Vandals
- Rescued and Trapped!
- Balthasar

- Secrets Under Antarctica

- Whale in Trouble
- Someone Below Decks
- “Jump for Y’r Life!”
- Trapped by the Leopard Seal
- Prisoner of the Tropicans
- Gondwanaland Will Live Again
- Song of Mr. Lillibulero
- Escape to the Pack Ice
- The Time Is Near
- The Skua Speaks
- Under the Pack Ice
- Day of Battles
- Cerberus Winks

- Secrets Under the Caribbean

- Into the Sea
- The Ghost Captain
- The Black-Clad Swimmer
- The Dead Ship Sails
- Grabbed by the Ghost
- Locked in the Strong Room
- Mr. Lillibulero Speaks
- The Mask Hides—Who?
- Mac Roars Aloft
- No Answer Below
- The Last Attack
- “To Follow Knowledge..."