Undersea Fleet

I shook my head. “You deserve all the thanks that are going,” I told her. “If it hadn’t been for you and Old Faithful ramming us just then, Bob and I never would have been able to take over the Killer Whale. And Trencher himself helped. He wouldn’t let the other amphibians shoot you—I don’t know why.”

She looked at me, astonished. She and David turned to each other, and then David looked back at me and smiled.

“You didn’t know?” he asked. “It isn’t surprising that Joe wouldn’t let them shoot Maeva…since she is, after all, his daughter…”

The last we saw of Maeva she was swimming beside the ship that bore David and Bob and me, waving farewell to the microsonar scanners.

All about us in the screens were the long, bright of men-of-war of the Sub-Sea Fleet, returning to station after ending the struggle of the Tonga Trench. She looked oddly tiny and alone against the background of those dreadnaughts of the deep.

She could not see us, but we waved back. “Good-by,” said Bob, under his breath.

But David slapped him on the back and grinned. “Don’t say ‘good-by,’” he ordered. “Say au revoir.’ We’re coming back!”