Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea (25 page)

Crane stepped into the magazine, and smiled at the after portside launching tube. Everything was shipshape here, the advanced Polaris missile programmed and sealed, with statically charged carbon particles in the warhead. He walked over to it and slapped the hose-like power supply cable which arched up from the deck to the launch control housing. “Good ol’ horse,” he said and slapped it again, whereupon it came away from the box and toppled limply onto the deck.

Crane stared for one appalled moment, then flipped the four locking levers on the launch control box and threw up the lid. Inside was not the shambles he half feared he might see. It was much worse than that. It was neat as could be. The clutter of parts had been efficiently tidied up: two tubes were gone, three thermistors and a diode were gone; most importantly, the preset step relay was gone.

He slammed down the lid and sprinted for the nearest intercom, which happened to be in the sick bay. He burst in. Dr. Hiller was standing beside the desk. “ ‘Scuse me,” he grunted, and half lifted, half shoved her aside, and dove for the key. “Chip, hook me to the Admiral, private, quick. I’m in the sick bay.”

He pounded an impatient fist against the desk top while he waited out the interminable eight seconds. He found himself looking at Susan Hiller’s face, which wore that wide-eyed, dispassionate, observing look. Well, let her observe. “Admiral,” he barked at the first sound from the intercom, “Crane here. Somebody’s scoured out the launch control box on our prepared missile. How far are we from firing point?”

“Right on, a hundred fathoms low. What do you mean scoured?”

“I mean sabotaged. How much time until launching?”

A pause. “Forty-six minutes.”

Forty-six minutes. And if the old man’s calculations were right, they fired in forty-six minutes or they didn’t fire at all, and if they didn’t fire, the belt of flame would reach a critical state, widen, and englobe the earth.

Because you bragged on yourself, the inner Crane said snidely. Pride goeth before a fall. And he answered it,
I’ll do what I have to do right up to the end. No sense getting mad at me. I was made like
that.

He said, “Please, Admiral—get back here. Maybe we—”

“He’s on his way,” said the intercom in Emery’s voice.

“We’ve got one ace in the hole,” he told Dr. Hiller, just because she was there. “The manual firing. But that has to be done from outside.”

“Oh?” she said, but he had already gone. He went, not through the corridor, but at a dead run past her room and into Alvarez’s, banging right through and out the second door, which he recalled facing the nearest of the four one-man escape hatches. He was only mildly aware of Alvarez rising slowly from his settee to stare at him through the door he had left open in his flight; then he was un-dogging the hatch, clawing out the suit which hung there, ripping at his buttons with his free hand. He discarded shoes, trousers and shirt, and sat down on the high sill to fight his way into the clinging fabric. Once he was in it, with the hood pushed back leaving his face free, he ran forward to the magazine. Emery and the Admiral were there. Emery showed only perplexity, Nelson was merely busy; neither showed fear. “The warhead charge hasn’t been messed with, anyway,” announced the Admiral as Crane pelted up to them. “Propelling charges are okay. It’s just the launch impulse she won’t get.”

“Can’t we cannibalize one of the others?” Emery demanded.

“Damn it, no: this is a XII; the others are all Tens. I blame myself; I should’ve used something we had two of.”

“A Ten might not do the job,” Crane pointed out. “This one positively will.”

Jamieson showed up: now, this man showed fear—white, wet, tight-drawn fear. “Have you seen Dr. Hiller?”

Emery nodded toward a door on the inboard bulkhead. “Down to the aquarium, I think.”

Wordless, Jamieson sprang to the door and disappeared. Emery said, “Ah youth. Ah spring,” dourly.

The p.a. system crackled at them, “Captain Crane. Call the greenhouse, please.”

Crane swore and padded back to the sick bay. “Crane,” he said into the intercom, which told him,

“There’s a lot of shipping hanging around up there. We’re in luck one way, though—either they have no sound gear or they’re not using it.”

“Keep me posted,” said Crane, and went back to the Admiral. He reported, and Nelson shook his head. “That is un-good. With no company, we could fire this thing from on deck. But if they see us before we launch, they’ll blow us clear to the Van Allen belt.”

“I’m going out, sir,” said Crane. “Lu, snatch me down that manual launching trigger.”

Emery, on tiptoe, got one of the heavy, small, flat devices. “Give it here,” said Nelson. He looked at his wrist. “I have 15 hours 39 minutes uh . . . nine, ten seconds.”

“I make it nine seconds,” said Emery. I set it this morning.”

“Close enough.” Nelson palmed a knife out of his pocket, opened a screwdriver blade and worked on the trigger. One screw wound clockwork inside; another set the time. “Here you go.”

Crane took the device and ran forward, followed by Emery, who took the tanks from their hook and assisted in getting them strapped on. “Don’t stop to go fishin’ or anything,” he said with forced casualness. “You have all of nineteen minutes.”

Crane nodded and pulled on the hood. Emery checked the zippers and seals, and coupled in the hose. Crane fumbled his gloved hand over the seam between faceplate and hood and found it intact.

Emery held up both hands and shook them in front of the faceplate, and Crane responded with thumb and forefinger in a circle. He stepped into the closet-sized airlock, pulled the hatch shut and swung the dog-lever, then opened the seacock. The chamber filled with alarming speed. He glanced at his wrist pressure gauge as soon as his face was submerged, and grunted. Close to 400 feet. The suit could take it and he could take it, but at such pressures a tank of air was not good for very long.

He got a grip on the outer hand-hold, and opened the hull gate. Suction snatched at him; apparently the submarine was making as much way as possible, spiralling upward. Well and good—it would be nice to get into shallower, less pressurized water, but not at the expense of being swept away.

Gingerly he moved out, found the grips, and climbed slowly to the deck, then aft, taking precarious holds, fingers and toe-tips, on a cleat here, a stanchion-socket there. The railing around the lower fillet of the conning tower was one of the greatest luxuries he had ever known. He clung to it, gasping, gave himself a moment to get his breath.

He did not get his breath. He began gasping harder. And he suddenly knew what this meant, this tightening band around the chest, this brass taste in the back of his throat. He had come out without a full tank.

He would like very, very much to know who had drained most of the air out of his tank. Or who had left this emergency suit unchecked . . . but no, not on the
Seaview
.

Let go, then, and kick for the surface.

He had something to do first, though. Already it was getting hard to think. His hand strayed to the bulk of the trigger clipped to his belt, and he remembered what it was for. He began to edge over to the missile bulges.

Which one? Which one? And then he remembered: the XII. He let go the rail and caught a stanchion fitting, lost his feet and for an awful moment streamed away from it like a pennant. Then he slowly doubled up, got a knee around the bulge, and then, with all his concentration draining to his hands, he watched his hands unclip the trigger and place it slowly and carefully on the bulge so that the t-shaped bar at the back engaged the slot on the warhead. He pressed it down, and down, and—
click!
Oh, a most satisfying click! as it latched.

He uncoiled himself clumsily then, put out a hand and leaned and let the merciless current wash his arm out and against the lower rail. He got one hand on it, two, let go with his knee, and was swept against the conning tower. He got one toe hooked into the rail and clung there, trying, then failing, to hold his head still against the rush of water.

For a long time he lay there, his head bobbing ludicrously in random eddies, and he began to dream . . . of Cathy, of the arch of fire, and shadows in the world, killing each other, of monsters like living cliffs with forests of tentacles, and they were tearing, tearing at him . . .

With a roar the Polaris XII sprang up and away, throwing back a hammer blow of compressed air. It caught Crane and blew him off the flank of the submarine like a dustmote, sent him spinning end over end into the endless depths. Only partially aware, he went on dreaming . . . and spinning free away from life was no more unusual a dream than the others he was having, as for example the dream about Alvarez, wearing a T-shirt and navy issue shorts, fighting him and trying to get his helmet off.

He fought back jovially, but knew he would lose, because nothing mattered any more: what happens to the universe when its center dies? And then the dream Alvarez got his seals parted and the zipper down and the hood pushed back, so that without a mask he couldn’t see any more and the crushing salt water, too warm, was in his suit with him.

Somebody pulled down a black curtain.

Somebody hurt the gums over his front teeth, hurt them agonizingly. He opened his mouth to yell and got a hard mouthful of plastic rubber with a hole in the middle. Through the hole, and this was the most improbable part of the dream; through the hole, air came rushing, cool, sweet, wonderful air.

He opened his eyes. The warm salt water stung them, and without a mask all he could see was the vague outline of a face close to his, Alvarez all right, Alvarez doing a thing typically far out: Alvarez wearing an eye mask but no mouthpiece.

Mouthpiece. He drew at the mouthpiece, drew again, and when Alvarez tugged gently at it, he let it go. Alvarez shoved it into his own mouth, pulled mightily at it, and had it back in Crane’s mouth almost before he missed it. Crane reached full consciousness abruptly, and from then on it was easier.

They rose through the water that was like a warm bath, then a hot bath, taking turns at the mouthpiece, clinging together.

And at last they broke surface.

It was afternoon, and the sun was cruel. Over the sky arched the firebelt, bigger and angrier than he had yet seen it. Around them were ships, from a mile to four or five away—eight of them, a mismatched flotilla: one destroyer, a chaser, two private yachts and an oil tanker among them. They seemed to be converging on a spot four miles or so away, which was foolish: did they think for a minute that
Seaview
would hang around directly under the launching point?

Alvarez squeezed his arm and pointed. Bobbing in the water a half-mile away was the
Seaview
’s camera buoy, its 360° lens glinting in the angry light. As he watched, it began to swim toward him.

He looked at Alvarez, dog paddling in the water beside him.

“And where did you come from?”

“The hatch on the starboard side.”

“Why?” Crane palmed water out of his red eyes so he could see the castaway’s face better. “I thought everything was God’s will: let it ride; with you. Since when did you start mixing in?”

“God’s will is mysterious,” said Alvarez, and spat salt, “but it is never stupid. To bow to God’s will is not to surrender to Satan. When I see stupidity I see the hand of the Devil, and that I will fight until I am dead.”

“What stupidity are you talking about?”

“First my own; not seeing to it that those tanks were full.”

“You weren’t responsible for that.”

“Of course I was.” He spoke almost without accent, except for the slightly exaggerated Spanish r.

“I am the one who used it, and then never thought to replace the tanks.”

“Used it when?”

Alvarez tugged at Crane’s sleeve and raised it, almost ducking him. “You don’t recall the yellow suit?”

Crane goggled at the yellow sleeve. “That was you saved me from the shark, there by the telephone cable?”

“Fighting the stupid. No diver goes out like that alone. Not ever. That was the first thing I ever learned about diving.”

“What do you know about diving?”

“I am a frogman. That is why I was taken on that Arctic biology expedition. I collected samples under the ice.”

“Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

“Why didn’t you ever ask me?”

The information quite staggered him: and yet he saw how easy it was for Alvarez, especially a skilled Alvarez, to slip away from the mob in the greenhouse, go back to his quarters, out again through the corridor door, into the lock and the yellow suit. He recalled the patch of light from the bows of the submarine, and its dark margins, through which a diver could move, and move back again unseen. And—why hadn’t he ever told anyone . . .? then he recalled what Emery had said: this man genuinely doesn’t care if anyone likes him.

There was a gurgle to their left, and the camera buoy sank. “Reeled in,” said Crane. He glanced at the sky. “I wonder how long it’ll take—if it takes? Alvarez—do you think it will work?”

Alvarez tilted his head to his shoulder: a shrug. “I do not know enough about it to judge that.”

“You don’t think it’s a stupidity, then. You haven’t been fighting it.”

“No, I have not.”

You
believed
this man.

The periscope, then the sail broke water nearby, the brilliant flash of the signal lamps going sixty to the minute as it emerged. Crane looked over at the ships. Smoke poured from the destroyer’s stacks, and one of the corvettes spat a gout of smoke from the foredeck.

“Relax,” snapped Crane. “Relax altogether. They lobbed a shell, and the concussion’ll hit you like—”

The shell fell short; the concussion hit them like whatever it was Crane was about to say—hard, and all over.

“Why the hell couldn’t he wait,” complained Crane, meaning Nelson, his surfacing before the sky could give any evidence.

“I think perhaps the Admiral would die, and kill all hands, rather than miss that,” said Alvarez in his calm voice, and pointed.

Crane looked, looked at the sky. There was a dark crease along the firebelt; it grew longer like the smoke trail of a jet plane, only faster, and it wasn’t white, but dark . . . and not dark either, but a lack of radiance up the spine of the arch of fire. It spread as it lengthened, making of itself a long wedge, a growing slender spearhead. And it lengthened on both ends, the narrow point—that would be the missile—and the broadening base, which went more slowly, but eating up more fire, in the opposite direction.