Secret sea; (18 page)

But now, as he actually lay in the water, ready to go down, he waited a moment longer, looking up through the glass faceplate at the boy standing beside the rail, the life line lying in his hands.

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He was only a kid, Pete thought. A kid Johnny's age. There wasn't much for him to do when Pete was down. Especially in the self-contained outfit. Nothing to do but watch the hands of a clock go around. And to Pete those clock hands meant either a safe ascent or the agony of the bends.

Pete looked up at Mike once more. "Okay," he said into the throat mike, 'T'm going down. Start the stop watch as soon as I go under."

'*Got it." Mike's voice came roaring into the helmet.

"Not so loud, the phone works well," Pete said as he turned the exhaust valve.

He went down fast, plummeting straight down, the leads on his feet pulling him. The light faded slowly foot by foot, but Mike's voice seemed close and familiar, as he read off the distances.

At eighty feet Pete slowed his rate of descent until by ninety feet he was going down at about a foot a second. Peering through the faceplate, he could see nothing but a dark, empty plain rising as he settled to the bottom of the ocean. It was like the wester^ deserts after the sun had gone down and the dark of night was crowding in upon them.

Pete's heavy feet crunched into the hard sand bottom and he adjusted the exhaust valve so that he could walk easily.

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"On bottom," he said.

"What's down there?"

"Looks empty. But there isn't much light."

"You mean she's not there?" Mike's voice asked.

"Don't see her," Pete said.

He turned slowly, swinging one heavy foot wide around and putting it down firmly and then swinging the other one. Air from the oxygen bottle hissed steadily into the top of the helmet and felt cool against the back of his neck. The bubbles of air going into the caustic soda regenerator made a frying sound. And there was coming from the sea a faint crackling, tingling noise which never stopped.

Pete swung another foot around. Ahead of him, looking far away, was a shape: a wall, a block of coral and barnacles. It had no resemblance to a ship—it was just a gray block rising from the white sand of the sea's floor.

"There's something here. I don't know whether it's her or not. Pretty well encrusted," Pete said.

Mike didn't answer but since Pete could hear him breathing into an open phone he didn't worry.

Walking as though in a dream of slow motion, Pete approached the wall which went up beyond the edge of the faceplate. As he came closer, he

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He lifted it up in front of the glass.

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began to stumble into chunks and piles of broken coral and barnacles scattered across the sand. "Looks like there's been an explosion down here ... recently," Pete said.

"Does that mean—somebody's been here?" Mike asked.

Then Pete remembered. "Don't think so," he said. "We sank a German sub here in '43. That's probably what scattered this stuff around—or maybe it's just a rocky formation."

But he was close to it then and, through the growing gloom, he saw the rough outlines of a ship's ribs and carlings. They formed a broken skeleton rising from the rubbish which had been blown from the hull of the Santa Ybel by the explosion of the depth charges which had killed the sub.

Pete's foot hit something which tinkled, and he bent down, groping with his hands until he found it, and lifted it up in front of the glass. It was a deadeye.

"I'm coming up," Pete said. "How long?"

"Five and a half minutes," Mike said.

"All right, hoist away. Bring me up at thirty feet a minute. Stop me at ten feet and leave me there three and a half minutes."

"Listen, bright boy," Mike said. "I can read."

Pete chuckled. Holding the deadeye in his hand, he relaxed as Mike hoisted him up toward

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the glow he could see above him. Halfway up he felt an itching between his shoulder blades and started to tell Mike to send him down again, but the itching stopped and nothing else happened, so he kept quiet.

At ten feet Mike stopped him.

"Let's don't play strong and silent, Mac." Mike's voice rang around the helmet. "What'd you see down there?"

"The skeleton of a wooden ship, Mike. And she was under sail because I've got one of her shroud deadeyes."

"What do you think?" Mike asked.

"I think I've been floating around here long enough," Pete said, turning on his back and looking over at the hull of the Indra floating dark and long against the glowing water.

"Listen, fathead!" Mike said, his voice ringing in Pete's ears. "I'll cut you loose and leave you down there forever. Talk or, so help me, I'll sink you."

"What was the name of that ship we were looking for?" Pete asked, his voice gentle.

He heard Mike groan and then say, "The U.S.S. Lollipop:'

"Well, she's right down below me, pardner."

Mike's voice was low. "You sure, Pete?"

"Just about, Mike. She's old—there's twenty or thirty feet of coral on her in places. She's wood

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and—if you'll pull me up—I'll show you a dead-eye the likes of which haven't been seen in these parts for many a century."

Mike spoke bitterly as he began hoisting Pete again. "Oh, how I love a comic."

It was pitch-dark when Pete and Mike finished stowing the diving gear, switching oxygen bottles, and cleaning up the mess. All the time they had been talking, planning. Both of them were excited, but neither wanted the other to know it.

Pete went forward and began hauling up the anchor chain. Heaving, he broke the grapnel out and began feeding the chain down into the locker.

"Why don't we just stay here tonight and get an early start?" Mike asked.

"Let's don't take any more chances than we have to, Mike. Weber's in the Gulf somewhere chasing pips on his radar screen. He might come around here."

"Seems like a waste of time though."

"Not really. Up until about eleven it's too dark to work down there anyway. We'll slip back to the island and come back in the morning."

Pete started the engine, and the Indra moved slowly away.

"Hope that coconut doesn't pull loose," Mike said.

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"We can find her again with the bearings. . .. What're the bearings of our fix?" Mike rattled off the bearings. "Good." Pete settled down at the wheel. "Mike, give us a week of fair weather and—we've got It.

"The gold?" "Yep."

Mike didn't say anything for a long time as he just sat and looked into the darkness. Finally he said, "Pete, you know what's the first thing I'm going to buy if we find it?" "A zoot suit," Pete said. "Naw. A bicycle."

"Bicycle? How old did you say you were?" "Look, meathead, what difference does that make? I remember that for a long time—for a whole lot of years—I wanted a bicycle, understand? I wanted one bad, and I never got one. So I'm going to get one. I'm going to get a red one with chromium all over it, and I'm going to ride

it, see? After that, you know what I'm going to do?"

"I'm scared to guess," Pete said.

"Well, I'll tell you. I'm going to ride my bicycle down into the part of town I ran around in. I'm going

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to ride it around down there until I see a kid— just a young punk, see—who looks like he's wanting a bicycle as bad as I used to want one. Then I'm going to give'm the red one and walk oj6F, see?"

Pete looked at Mike in the darkness. "Yes," he said, "I see."

was beautiful with

text morning again lying in the water on his back, gazing up at Mike on the htdra. The weather a featherlight wind which hardly ruffled the surface of the blue Gulf, and a cloudless sky which assured Pete that there would be more light sifting down to the Santa YbeL

Pete looked up through the glass faceplate. He was in the heavy suit and could hear the faint

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sound of the air pump working on deck. Mike looked small, Pete thought. He looked more like a very young kid than he had the day before. And Pete's life really depended on him now, for there was no oxygen bottle strapped on his back with this suit. It was entirely up to Mike to insure that the air pump continued to run; that the pressure of air coming down to him be steadily and correctly increased for each foot of depth; and that the volume of air be right all the time. Pete reflected on the gloomy distance he had to descend, and he felt sweat breaking out on his upper lip.

But he knew that he was wasting precious time just floating around on the surface, so he spoke into the microphone which was located to the left of the faceplate. **Is she steady?"

"Steady as a headache," Mike said.

"All right. Punch the clock, Tm going down."

Pete opened the outlet valve, and air whooshed out of the suit. The thirty-two-pound leads on his feet dragged them down; the forty pounds on his chest and back seemed to shove him. The suit deflated until he could feel it pressing in on him, and as he passed sixty feet, he felt riornnness around the water^i^ht rubber "^"^ *=» o*^ ^'^ wr's^. He closed ^he valve '^ little ^o ^qu^li^e ^^-^ pressure of air in the suit against the pressure of water outside.

As Mike called out, "Seventy feet," Pete said,

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"Mike, as soon as I get on the bottom, I'm going to give you a description of what I see. Just in

case."

"In case of what?"

"I don't know. But we shouH both know what progress we make. Maybe you'll have to do the diving."

"I'll dive anywhere as long as I can keep my head above water," Mike said.

Pete scooped with his hands against the water until he could look down.

Below him and to one side lay the Santa Ybel. She was encrusted with coral but, in the filtered sunlight, Pete could see the outh'ne of her d"ck>, the stumps where the masts had been, even the lumps of the guns lined up on her gun deck. He swam away from her with his hands and settled to the bottom thirty feet away. The black ir hose came coiling down, startling him until he saw what it was.

"On bottom," Pete said. He looped the air hose and life line so that he would have ^nme sl-^^k without the help of Mike and adjusted the valves. By letting air out or holding it in th suit,' he could adjust the pressure until he could no longer feel the drag of the weights on his feet or feel the shoulder straps of the we'ehts slung over his chest and back. Bv carefully adinstine the air he finally felt completely free in the wa'-e^— neither pressed down against the bottom, nor hav-

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ing any tendency to float upward with each step. This done, Pete looked slowly around. Tie sunlight came down pale and greenish through the water. A thousand small fish swam slowly around, sea shells crawled on the surface or lay with beautifully colored mouths wide o^en, feeding. Weird and lovely flowers whi^h were actually living animals grew around the ship.

"Hit's right purty down here, pardner," Pete said. '*Got a regular flower garden. I'm standing about amidships of the Santa Ybel and about thirty feet away from her. As far ^s I can make out, she is lying with her bow pointing almost due east. For about fifteen feet from amidships fore and aft the explosion which sank t^e submarine—or something—blasted away the thick coral that covers her and cracked it in long, jagged lines in other places. The coral has fallen down on the ocean floor in lumps and blocks. The coral, breaking away, pulled away the planking of her hull from just below the witer line—anyway, what looks like the turn of the