Chapter 5

When Beryl walked in, Westervelt was at one of the tall windows with Simonetta, dialing filter combinations to make the most of the setting sun. They had the edge of it showing as a deep crimson ball beside another building in the vicinity.

“What are you two doping out?” asked the blonde. “Some disappearing trick?”

Simonetta laughed as Westervelt shoved the dial setting to afternoon normal.

“It’s an idea,” he said, scowling at Beryl.

“For underwater?” she demanded mockingly.

“Ever hear of a squid?” retorted Westervelt. “They hide themselves underwater. Maybe a cloud of dye would be as good as a filter.”

“Willie, that is an idea!” said Simonetta. “You ought to tell Mr. Smith.”

Westervelt looked at her sourly. Now Beryl knew that they really had been wasting time, and had a point to score against him in their next exchange.

Oh, well. I can’t hold a thing like that against Si, he thought. I can think of people who’d be on the way to Smitty already, calling it their own idea.

Beryl had done a ladylike collapse into her chair and crossed her legs. She dug into her purse for cigarettes and requested a light.

“Why don’t you buy a brand with a lighter in the box?” asked Westervelt.

Nevertheless, he walked over to the switchboard cubicle for the office desk lighter that had been appropriated by Pauline. Returning with it after a moment, he lit Beryl’s cigarette and inquired, “Well, what did you and Parrish dig up?”

“I don’t know,” she sighed, leaning back, “but, boy, did we dig!”

“Yeah, I thought I heard the shovel clink once,” said Westervelt, thinking of the laughter he had heard through the door of the dead file office.

Beryl, concerned with her own complaints, ignored him.

“We must have looked up thirty or forty cases,” she went on. “I never even heard of most of those places on the newscasts!”

“Did he find anything that gave him an idea?” asked Simonetta.

“Not a thing! There seemed to be some real crazy spots in the records, but nobody ever got in jail at the bottom of an ocean.”

“You’d think it would have happened sometime,” said Simonetta thoughtfully.

“I suppose,” suggested Westervelt, “that on any planet where Terrans were taken underwater, they didn’t live long enough to be one of our cases. On a place like Trident, they usually wouldn’t have any trouble. They’d stay on land, and any local life would stay in the sea. It took a nut like Harris to go poking around where he wasn’t wanted.”

“That’s what Mr. Parrish hinted,” said Beryl. “All I know is that it sounds like a story out of a laughing academy. They shouldn’t allow them to get into places like that.”

“Then we’d all be looking for work,” said Westervelt. “Don’t complain, Beryl--maybe it will happen to you someday.”

The blonde shivered and turned to face her desk.

“Not me,” she declared. “I’m staying on Terra, even if they do offer me a field trip as a sort of vacation.”

Ah, he’s already started that line on her, thought Westervelt. I wonder if there’s anything in the files on how to spring a secretary from a penthouse?

Lydman and Parrish walked in, the latter pausing to exchange remarks with Pauline, the switchboard operator. A moment later, Smith opened his door as if expecting someone. He must have phoned them for a change, Westervelt realized.

“Oh, there you are, Willie,” said the chief. “I suppose you might as well sit in on this too. We might need something, and meanwhile, you can be picking up a tip or two.”

Westervelt rose and followed the others into Smith’s office, where he took a chair by the window. The others clustered around the chief’s desk, a vast plateau of silvery plastic strewn with a hodge-podge of papers and tapes.

The office itself was like a small museum. The walls were lined with photographs, mostly of poor quality but showing “interesting” devices that had been used in various department cases. The ones in which the color was better usually showed Smith in company with two or three men wearing space uniforms and self-conscious looks. Sometimes, a more assured individual was shown in the act of presenting some sort of memento or letter of appreciation to Smith. Lydman and Parrish also appeared in several of the pictures.

The record of our best cases, thought Westervelt. The bad ones are buried in the files.

Standing along the walls, or on little tables and bases of their own, were a good many models of spaceships, planetary systems, and non-humanoid beings. A few of the latter statues were enough to have made Beryl declare she was perfectly happy to stay out of Smith’s office and be someone else’s secretary. One model, which Westervelt secretly longed to examine at leisure, showed an entire city with its surrounding landscape on a distant planet.

Westervelt tore his attention from the mementoes and turned toward the group as Smith settled himself behind the desk.

“This is no longer even approximately funny,” said the department head. “I’ve had a few calls put through. Do you know how little we’re going to have to work with?”

“I gather that it is not very much,” said Parrish calmly.

“There are less than fifty Terrans on that whole planet!” declared Smith, running the fingers of one hand through his already untidy hair. “The nearest colony or friendly spaceport from which we could have equipment sent in is twenty odd lightyears away.”

“Well, that could be done,” said Lydman mildly.

“Oh, of course, it could be done,” admitted Smith. “But how long do we have to fool around? We don’t know under what conditions Harris is being held.”

Parrish leaned forward to rest his elbows on Smith’s desk.

“We can deduce some of them pretty well,” he suggested. “In the first place, if he got out several messages--which we’ll have to assume he did--they must have found some means of providing him with air.”

“He could have lived a while on the air in this submarine he built,” said Lydman.

“Yes, but in that case, he would have used its radio for communication. We have to assume that they pried him out somehow, no?”

The others nodded.

“He wouldn’t last too long in a spacesuit, even if they pumped in air under pressure,” said Lydman judiciously.

“So they must have built some kind of structure to house him, if only a big tank,” said Parrish.

Westervelt stirred, then closed his mouth rather than interrupt. Smith, however, had seen the motion and looked up.

“Speak up, Willie,” he invited. “It won’t sound any sillier than anything else that’s been said in this room.”

“I ... I was wondering about these Tridentians,” said Westervelt. “Does anybody know how they live? Do they have cities built on the sea bottom?”

“If they have water jet vehicles, they certainly have the technical--”

Smith stopped as he saw Parrish lean back and roll his eyes toward the ceiling.

“What now, Pete?” he demanded apprehensively.

“I don’t know why that didn’t occur to me sooner,” groaned Parrish. “A hundred to one they have a nomadic set-up. It would be typical, with an environment like that. This is worse than we thought.”

“You mean,” muttered Smith after a few moments of silence, “how can we get a direction fix on a thought?”

“Something like that,” said Parrish. “I suppose they have bases, where they keep permanent manufacturing facilities. Probably set up at points where they have access to minerals--unless they know how to extract what they need from the water itself.”