Man From Atlantis Page 16

  Schubert was grinning wryly. “Welcome to Control. I’ve been waiting for you. What took you so long?”

  Mark’s green eyes burned a path into Schubert’s beady brown eyes.

  Schubert stood grinning, tapping his palms together.

  Mark stood with feet apart, his arms tensed at his sides. “Stop the signal beam... Open the door to the sea.”

  “You want the door open?” His voice was gleeful. “Nothing to it. Open it yourself, my lad.” He fluttered a hand toward the desks. “Merely depress the lighted button.”

  Mark whirled around. Up and down the row of desks, all the buttons were lit.

  Schubert giggled behind him as he pulled the bracelet from his jacket pocket and polished it on his sleeve. “Confused? Pity. Ah, me. All buttons look the same. And of course, you don’t know which of those buttons might override the countdown and prematurely blow all the ships at sea sky-high, and all their nations with them.”

  Mark turned back toward him.

  Schubert chuckled again. “Forgive me. But there’s no time for me to give you a course in how this all works. Pity you couldn’t have been more cooperative and understanding earlier; then I could have taught you everything. But then, let bygones be bygones. I’m an amicable sort.” He moved over to one wall, keeping an eye on Mark. “An afiliction of a warped adulthood coupled with my insatiable desire to be friendly—and I do want to be friendly with you—causes me still to wish to get to know you better, once our little upstairs job is done.”

  He pressed a lever in the wall, and another door opened near the end of the row of monitors. He went quickly over and stepped through, beckoning to Mark. “Come join me, Mark. Let’s do be friends.”

  Mark followed him though, and the door closed behind them. They were in a much smaller room with yet another set of controls.

  Schubert extracted the report from his inside pocket, unfolded it, and waved it at Mark. “I liked you when we first met. Does that surprise you? It shouldn’t. I admire special strength and intelligence. And now that I’ve read this report on your innards, telling me what makes you tick, I really like you. And I know all about you—where you’re strong and where you’re weak. Being out of water is to you what his heel was to Achilles, what kryptonite was to Superman.”

  Schubert smiled and riffled the pages of the report with a thumb. “Ah, had I but known that earlier, when I plunked you into the water in the shark cage. Such a foible of mine, at times to act in haste! In my ignorance, I actually restored your strength! Can you beat that?” Schubert chuckled and shook his head.

  Mark took a step toward him.

  “Ah-ah-ah,” he waggled a finger at Mark, “don’t be hasty now. You’re a visitor to my house, you know. My turf. Here we play by my rules. Before you could do a thing, I could put a hole in your head with a laser. I could blind you with a light. I could fry you to a crisp with ultrasonics that in ten seconds would leave you lifeless as a dried fish in the desert.”

  He stepped quickly to the wall, putting his hand up beside a row of buttons. “See? Each of these controls a real goodie I could use on you. But I don’t wish to do that unless you behave as an unworthy guest. And I value you highly as a guest. Because of what’s in here.” He waved the report, directing Mark’s attention to it while with his other hand he secretly slipped the bracelet out of his pocket and held it behind his back.

  “But not to worry. I never waste anything valuable that comes to me from the ocean.”

  Schubert stepped over to a small separate bank of controls, central to which was a single prominent lever. “I’m going to trade your friendship for the lives of those lesser people who apparently wish to leave our underwater habitat. Yours and mine, lad. See here?” He motioned to the lever.

  Mark cocked his head suspiciously. Above the lever were letters clearly identifying it: SEA-LOCK GATE.

  “Come on over here,” he gave a friendly wave, “and do the honors yourself.”

  Mark looked back and forth from Schubert to the lever.

  “Yes, the door to the sea. The door to freedom for your friends.”

  Mark took a hesitant step toward the lever. “Come on, lad, nothing to it.”

  He moved closer.

  “Right this way.”

  Mark raised his hand and put it on the lever. Instantly Schubert snapped the bracelet on his other wrist.

  At once Mark appeared calm and placid, his eyes dulled.

  They looked at each other.

  “Just take it easy, now,” Schubert said sternly, “and remove your hand from that lever.”

  Mark slowly pulled back his hand. A sequencer behind him on the wall clicked down to 6:43.

  Schubert smiled. “That was the correct switch, you know. I don’t lie to my friends. And I know you’re going to grow to be my...”

  While their eyes were locked, Mark had slipped off the bracelet, and now, in a flash of movement, he clamped it on Schubert’s wrist. Schubert immediately went quiet, his features drooped.

  Mark dropped Schubert’s wrist, which dangled limply with the bracelet on it. “The ocean that taught you has also taught me. When it senses danger, the sea animal prepares itself and self-regulates a portion of its body. Someday I will teach you how to do it. Now... stop the signal beam.”

  Schubert stared at him with listless eyes and spoke in a listless voice. “The signal beam cannot be stopped. The countdown sequence is automatic.”

  Mark scanned all the diais and levers hurriedly. “Can the mountain be filled with waterr

  “Yes.”

  “This room? All the rooms? Everything?”

  “Yes.”

  “Will that stop the beam?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do it.”

  Schubert turned to the main console. His movements were deliberate. He took a key from his pocket and turned it in a lock in the face of the console. A small compartment opened. Inside was a row of buttons.

  The sequencer ticked off 05:58 when Schubert pushed the first of the series of buttons.

  To either side of the sea-lock gate, rows of enormous concrete louvers opened. Sea water gushed in through them. The surface of the water channels throughout the complex began to rise.

  In the corridors, water began to pour from all the overhead light fixtures.

  Roth and the three scientists stumbled, slid, fell, got back up, struggled against the surge of water in the corridors already four inches deep.

  Roth splashed ahead. He made a wrong turn into a deserted office. He had just time to note the wall sequencer clicking past 04:17 before he pushed them all back out and continued down the corridor.

  Two guards came slogging toward them. But as the four tensed for the confrontation, the wide-eyed guards just kept moving past, staring straight ahead.

  They came to a four-way junction. Roth peered frantically down each one.

  The sound of gushing water seemed to be loudest through the tunnel to his right

  Roth guessed that the water would be coming in through the main gate. So they turned and splashed off toward the loudest sound.

  In moments they burst through the end of the tunnel into the dock area, lit now with but a single battery-powered flood. They saw the Pacific coursing through the concrete louvers. Ahead of them lay the sub.

  The water was up around their hips and flowing against them. They locked hands and strained against the current. Finally they reached the side of the strange, quadri-modular craft that had brought them here. The sub bobbed in the forceful stream.

  Roth helped each of the scientists onto the conning tower ladder, and they clambered up and dropped through the hatch.

  Roth looked behind him, scanning the corridors urgently for any sign of Mark.

  A new torrent of water slammed him against the side of the wallowing sub, washing over his head.

  Reflexively he reached for the lowest rung of the ladder, found, it, pulled himself up. He reached the top of the conning tower, slipped down insi
de, pulled the hatch shut over him, and spun the lock-wheel to seal it.

  He dropped to the bridge deck and raced forward to the controls. He pulled levers, pushed buttons, and brought the sub to life.

  The sub began to submerge. The engines hummed beneath them. They felt the first slight forward thrust from the propellers.

  Roth jabbed at two buttons near the helm. The powerful headlights came on.

  Suddenly Roth’s shoulders slumped. He turned off the engine and slowly turned to face the expectant scientists huddled behind him.

  He shook his head. “It’s no good. The gate is closed. There’s no way out of here.”

  They all stared out the forward ports at the massive gate.

  Red lights pulsed over the console. From deep within the complex, a siren wailed. The sequencer counted inexorably down: “05:02... 05:01... 05:00... “ The first drips of water trickled down the wall.

  Mark watched the gauges that indicated that flooding had commenced. He turned to Schubert. “Now open the door to the sea.”

  Schubert reached mechanically for the lever he had teased Mark with before, and pulled it down. The red light above it continued to flash.

  Schubert looked at the red light. “The sea-lock control is not functioning.”

  “It must!” Mark grabbed his shoulder and swung him around. “Why?”

  “Perhaps the moisture now dampening the walls is responsible for deadening the terminals.”

  Mark leaped toward the lever and swung his fist, smacking the concrete beside it, mashing it inward.

  The red light above it stopped flashing. Then an adjoining green light blipped on, sputtered, and finally glowed steadily.

  “The connections have been made,” Schubert droned. “The sea-lock gate is opening.”

  In the sub, they saw with disbelief that the gate was magically lifting.

  Roth jumped back to the controls. Headlights came back on; engines hummed at an increasing pitch; the propellers began to push the sub forward toward the yawning gate.

  A cheer went up from the scientists.

  “Mark Harris got us out,” Roth said grimly, bringing a halt to their cheers.

  “Who?” one of them asked.

  “A friend. He’s still in there.”

  The scientists looked back, as if they could see into the habitat. They became quiet and backed away from Roth, watching him as he steered the sub toward the row of lights outside the gate.

  Just as the sub cleared the gate, all the homing lights in the dock and outside went off.

  Roth closed his eyes for a few moments. The sub was silent except for the humming of the engines.

  Then he opened his eyes and stared out into the gloom where the headlights lit a path between the canyon walls.

  He guided the sub into the Mariana Trench, one hand on the helm, the other working the levers on the flotation panei, causing the sub to rise evenly away from the ocean floor as it proceeded ahead.

  Mark pulled Schubert out of the small chamber into the huge control center. Water slid in streams from several cracks in the walls and cascaded over control paneis.

  In the center of the room, water spilled over the giant map, flooding down over the plastic oceans, dislodging the miniature ships and sending them splashing onto the floor where they floated around as if they’d come to life.

  The digital sequencers alone seemed undisturbed:

  “04:29... 04:28... 04:27...”

  Mark picked up Schubert’s wrist and snapped off the bracelet and let it fall into the swirling water at their ankles.

  Sirens continued to wail in the distance.

  Mark looked deep into Schubcres blinking eyes. “I am sorry. for all of this... I have no anger.”

  Then he turned and trotted off through the main door and out into the corridor.

  The water deepened quickly along the concrete walkway. Mark plodded through it. Two guards splashed desperately toward him just ahead of a new wave.

  Suddenly they were inundated, and they tumbled past Mark, their arms and legs flailing under the water.

  Mark started to reach for them when a series of explosions wracked the big room just behind him, sending chunks of concrete slamming into the wall around his head and causing a surge of water to hurl him away.

  Mark allowed himself to be carried some distance in the surge, then began swimming through one corridor after another where a half hour before scientists had walked in dryness.

  Pieces of electronic equipment and furniture drifted past him. Scientific books, their pages flowing in the tide, fluttered past like seabirds.

  He swam down the final corridor toward the sea lock. Below him on the submerged floor, heads and torsos and feet and arms of smashed statues tumbled and bounced in the mighty current.

  Mark moved steadily against the full force of the lide, heading toward the biggest source of the water—the sea-lock gale.

  Then he was at the dock. The single floodlight high in the comer of the ceiling bathed the area in an eerie glow.

  The sub was gone. Water coursed through the louvers and the gate.

  He started to move off toward it.

  “Mark, my boy!”

  Schubert’s voice came over the loudspeaker, filtering down into the water. Mark stopped. He surfaced quickly. He saw one ceiling camera slowly turn toward him.

  “Yes, Mark, I can see you. Strange as it may seem, one monitor is still working. I made ample preparations, you see, so that in the event that all other scanning systems failed, I would still have my own private one...”

  Schubert sat at his desk before his monitor, water lapping up around his legs. His mouth was twisted into a strange smile. On the screen, he saw Mark looking up into the lens, only his head visible above the rolling water in the sea lock.

  “A valiant effort, my boy, but nonetheless merely an effort. Like so much of mankind’s vain acts, there is a nobility in the effort, though the attempt may fail. Pity. The only nobility should be in success. Success is mine. Just ten seconds now.”

  He watched the digital sequencer above the monitor. “... 00:08... 00:06...”

  Then the monitor showed an explosion in the dock area. Schubert saw an eruption of debris, and saw Mark hurled across the water.

  “A water-breathing man. What a loss. Just three seconds...”

  But then the sequencer stopped, frozen on “00:03.”

  “No!” Schubert rose from his chair. “It’s not poss—”

  One final explosion shook the entire habitat.

  * * *

  Mark’s left side was numbed by the first explosion that shattered the dock.

  He pulled himself toward the gate, using only his right arm. Something in the gate mechanism seemed to have been broken loose by the blast, and the gate began sliding unevenly down.

  He dove toward the diminishing opening, pulling furiously with his good arm in a sidestroke he had never used before.

  He was just a few feet away, the gate lowering to just above his head, when the final explosion blasted him forward unconscious.

  chapter 9

  Elizabeth leaned over the rail staring with unfathomable sadness across the sea in which odd bits of debris floated. The seismographs had recorded a series of explosions on the ocean floor—too brief and narrow in scope to be an earthquake or volcano, but enough to toss the U.S.S. Moon River for several hours.

  No one had an explanation for the explosions. But to Elizabeth they meant that whatever slender hope she might have had for Mark’s return had been annihilated in the horrendous blasts seven miles down.

  While technicians within the ship puzzled over the data recorded from the explosions, tears rolled down Elizabeth’s cheeks. Whatever had happened beneath the sea might dazzle, amuse, and occupy the world’s marine scientists for years. But it was of no interest to her. No scientific matter at all could tempt her.

  It was as if all she had lived and worked for had been blown apart in those mighty, mysterious eruptions so far d
own below.

  Ernie came up behind her, hesitated, then gently touched her shoulder. She turned to him. He pulled her close and wrapped his arms around her.

  She buried her face in his shoulder and lost herself in quiet weeping.

  The ship churned through the sea toward the coast of California. It was quiet aboard. Scientific personnel were closeted with their several private thoughts. The crew went about its routine duties with somber professionalism.

  Elizabeth and Ernie leaned their elbows on the rail and stared out over the sea. Behind them, as bells tolled 1500 hours, the deck watch headed for the stern, strolling casually past the empty diving well.

  Had he looked into the well he would have seen that it was not empty. A hand was sliding up the inside wall toward the top edge. Fingers clasped the edge, slipped off, regained it, and held. Then another hand appeared, scratching up the side, reaching the edge. It too held. For several minutes this unseen pair of hands gripped the edge of the diving well. There was no movement, no sound.

  Elizabeth fought to keep all thoughts out of her mind, to keep her brain a blank. She strained instead to listen for the sounds of the home-bound ship—the faint creakings of the hull, the footsteps of the working crew, the rustling of a line slithering across the deck, the deep rumble of the engines.

  Suddenly she and Ernie both heard another sound: a low moan coming from the diving well.

  Ernie sprinted over, dropped to his knees, and reached down to haul Mark up onto the deck. For a moment he lay there, then he struggled to his feet.

  Elizabeth stood speechless, gaping, too stunned to speak or go over to him.

  Mark staggered slightly, and Ernie supported him.

  “I must report...” Mark said weakly, “that I did not find the Sea Quest... But I found Commanders Roth and Hendricks... I do not know if they are... alive or dead.”

  He sank against Ernie’s arms, but ignored his pleading to lie down.

  Now Elizabeth dashed over and threw her arms around him, hugging him tightly. Then she released him and stepped back. She thought she had already used all her tears, but more flooded her eyes now. “Mark... Mark, you’re all right...”