Arthur Clarke - Cradle

Thirty yards farther the tunnel passed what looked like a door to a submarine on their left. Both Troy and Nick tried pulling on the handle of the large and very heavy round door but nothing happened. With gestures Troy told Nick to continue trying to open the door while he swam on down the tunnel.

The gold bars and other objects that remained from the Santa Rosa treasure were sitting in the tunnel another thirty yards beyond the round door. The passageway itself came to an abrupt halt against a rock wall. In front of the wall was an array of gold and silver objects, stacked to an average depth of a foot or so across the width of the tunnel. The treasure was not hidden in any way, it was simply scattered in random piles on the concrete floor at the end of the tunnel. Troy was ecstatic. There’s plenty here, he thought. Enough for the aliens. Enough for Nick. Maybe even some left over for Carol and me.

He swam back to find Nick. Nick was absolutely exultant when he saw the unmistakable smile on Troy’s face. He raced around his friend to the end of the tunnel When Nick first reached the treasure, he spent a minute or two swimming around, picking up each object that was different and dropping it back into the piles on the floor.

Holy shit, Nick said gleefully to himself as he and Troy started putting gold bars into the buoyancy bags. I was right for once. There must be over a hundred pounds in bars alone. They had agreed before the dive just to bring out the bars, provided there were enough. The bars were the only objects they could be certain were pure gold. Even if we take fifty-eight to Troy’s friends, that might leave fifty or so for us. He did a quick mental calculation. That could be over three hundred thousand dollars apiece. Whoopee.

Joy and excitement surged through Nick. He was having difficulty containing himself. He wanted to sing, to dance, to jump with joy. He had been right after all. The bastards had stolen most of the treasure and now he was stealing it back. There’s no happiness quite like the redressing of an old and painful grievance. And to do it with panache… Nick was already celebrating in his heart. This was his day.

Filling the bags took no time at all. Nick and Troy both felt as if they had infinite energy. When they had finished picking up the gold bars, Troy gestured down the tunnel. Nick looked down at the other treasure objects remaining on the floor. We should take it all, he thought. We should leave Homer and Greta nothing. Nothing at all. But he had to be practical. Each of their bags was virtually full and they would be heavy enough as they were.

Nick swam off in the direction of the ocean, his buoyancy bag full of gold trailing behind him. Troy followed. As they passed the bulky door on the right, Troy found himself thinking again about the circuitry leading to the alarm in the box just ahead, between the two sections of pipe. What could those other connections be for? Suddenly he remembered seeing a diagram in an electronics magazine about advanced timers that could reinitialize systems and swap out failed parts. By now the component that Troy had disabled might have been declared a failure by the smart processor in the alarm box, in which case it would have either been replaced by a redundant part or the system would be ignoring its output. In either situation, Troy thought, that means the system could be active again.

It was too late. Nick swam into the field of view of the optical device and lights came on throughout the tunnel. A metal gate started closing behind Nick and his bag of gold. It was only with a burst of speed that Troy propelled himself through before the gate shut completely. But his buoyancy bag full of gold bars was left behind, on the other side of the gate.

Nick stared at Troy’s lost bag as it floated to the floor. He reached through the bars, grabbed the bag, and tried to pull it through. It was useless. He shook the gate. The metal was extremely sturdy. Angry and frustrated, he punched the gate with his fists. As Nick caught his breath in between punches, he became aware of a strange droning sound, like a motor, somewhere in the distance behind him. He turned around to find Troy. He could not see him anywhere.

Troy had been exhausted by his swimming sprint through the closing gate. His energy spent, he had let himself fall to the floor of the pool in the deepest part of the cave, halfway between the two manmade tunnels. He took several deep breaths through his mouthpiece and checked his air supply. He had about ten minutes remaining. He watched for a moment as Nick, almost out of sight to his right, tried fruitlessly to pull Troy’s bag through the gate. Shit, Troy thought, disappointed that he had lost the gold, if only I had been thinking. I should have known… He heard an unusual sound off to his left. Curious, Troy swam over to the entrance of the other tunnel and right into the path of the robot sentry.

Even though the original distance between them was over fifty feet, the guidance mechanism of the sentry fixed on Troy as soon as he appeared. Startled and fascinated, at first Troy did not try to avoid the onrush of the bullet-shaped submarine. The sentry was three feet long and a foot wide in its midsection. When it was about eight feet away, the sentry slowly loaded and fired a small but powerful spear, the size of a table knife, that Troy just managed to avoid as it hurtled past. The spear crashed into the wall beside him.

Adrenaline surged into Troy’s system and he swam out into the middle of the pool. The sentry did not follow him immediately. Instead it moved over in front of the natural passageway to the ocean, thereby cutting off the escape route, and then turned around to make a systematic search of the pool. Damnit, Troy was thinking, why didn’t I leave while I had the chance? He wondered if Nick was still over by the gate.

The sentry had now found Nick in its field of vision. He was swimming slowly toward the exit with his buoyancy bag. He was unaware that he and Troy were not alone in the pool. By the time Nick saw the sentry, he was fifteen feet away and within easy range of its underwater gun. Troy watched the sentry load a spear. Oh no, he cried out to himself. Watch out, Nick. There was nothing he could do.

It happened so fast that neither Nick nor Troy knew exactly what occurred. Troy would later explain that he felt a sudden warm tingle on his wrist and then something, a light beam or a laser burst or a stream of plasma perhaps, fired out of his bracelet and zapped the robot sentry into silence and motionlessness. Nick would say that the sentry, just when it was going to fire at him, was first distracted by Troy and then recoiled as if from an impact. Whatever happened, the sentry stopped all activity. Immediately thereafter the two men swam together over to the shallow part of the cave. They were temporarily safe.

Carol could not believe how plump and succulent the oysters were. Ellen was sitting at the other end of the table opposite her, and was beaming with pride. “Would you like some more, dear?” she smiled, lifting the huge pot containing the oyster stew. I’m now going to eat a second portion, Carol thought. In addition to the catfish with Nick. Greta would be disgusted. She smiled to herself and nodded at Ellen. There was at least one thing she had learned this evening. Ellen was certainly a fantastic cook.

And a very sad person too, Carol thought as she spooned herself some more spicy stew rich with the fabled Appalachicola oysters. Homer had personally answered all the questions during the twenty-minute interview before dinner. Whenever a question had been controversial or delicate, such as when Carol had asked about the allegations that part of the treasure haul had been secretly stolen and hidden by the three of them, he had looked only at Greta before he made a response. No wonder Ellen eats all the time. She’s the odd man out. Or is it woman?