Undersea Fleet (4 page)

Nothing happened.

I don’t know how long I waited there. Then, slowly, I remembered. I was not supposed to stay there. I was supposed to be doing something. I had a definite goal. I was on my way back to the lock—

Painfully I forced myself into motion again.

That brightly gleaming line seemed a million miles long. I kept close to it, swimming as hard as I could, until the stern lights took form and the dome of the lock itself bulged out of the dark.

I dragged myself inside the sea-gate and looked back.

There was nothing there.

The sea-gates moaned and whined and closed, and the pumps forced the water out.

I don’t know what the other two had seen—nothing, I suppose—but they looked as beaten, as exhausted as I did, when the last of the water was gone and Coach Blighman came swinging in from the escape hatch.

He was grinning, and when he spoke his voice resounded like thunder in the little room.

“Congratulations, men!” he boomed. “You’re real sea-cows, you’ve proved that! The three of you have qualified at nine hundred feet—
nine hundred feet!
—and that’s a record! In all the years I’ve been sea coach at the Academy, there haven’t been half a dozen cadets to make the grade this far down—and now there are three of you in one class!”

I was beginning to catch my breath. I said: “Coach. Lieutenant Blighman, I—”

“Just a minute, Eden,” he said sharply. “Before you say anything, I want to ask you all something.” I wasn’t sure what I had been going to say—something about the thing I had seen, or thought I had seen, I suppose. But in the brightly lightly little room, with Blighman talking about records, it seemed so utterly remote, that less and less could I believe that I actually had seen it.

Blighman was saying: “You’ve all qualified, no question about that. But Lieutenant Saxon has asked if any of you are willing to try another dive two hundred feet farther down. It’s a strictly volunteer operation—no objections if any of you don’t want to do it. But he has hopes that his new injections are going to make it possible to establish deeper and deeper records; and he would like to try a little more. What do you say, men?”

He looked us over, the shark’s eyes glowing. He stopped at me. “Eden? Are you all right? You look like you might be getting some kind of reaction.”

“I—I think perhaps I am, sir.” I hesitated, trying to think of a way to tell him just what that reaction was. But—a giant serpentine head! How could I tell him that?

He didn’t give me a chance. He barked: “All right, Eden, that lets you out. Don’t argue with me. You’ve made a splendid showing already—no sense going on unless you’re
sure
you can take it. Craken?”

David said, almost too quietly to hear, “Yes, sir. I’m ready.”

I remembered, looking at him, what he had said about sea serpents, just a short time before while we were still on the surface. And what I had said to him! For a moment I was tempted to warn him that his sea serpent was really there—

But probably it was only an effect of pressure and the injection, anyhow. There were no sea serpents! Everyone knew that.

“Fairfane?”

Roger Fairfane said, with an effort: “I’m okay. Let’s dive.”

Sea Coach Blighman looked at him thoughtfully for a moment. Then he shrugged. I could read his mind as clearly as though he had spoken. Fairfane didn’t look too well, that was sure—but, Blighman had decided, if there was anything wrong the sea medics would spot it, and if there wasn’t, it didn’t matter how the Cadet Captain looked.

The sea medics trotted in, made their quick checks, and reported both David and Roger in shape to go on.

Then Blighman curtly ordered the sea medics and me out of the lock. As I left I saw Roger Fairfane turn to glare at David, and I heard him mutter something.

It sounded like: “You’ll never make a jellyfish out of me!”

Eleven hundred feet.

Coach Blighman let me come with him into the control room to watch Fairfane and David Craken swim their eleven-hundred-foot test.

The ship’s motors rumbled and sang, bringing us down another two hundred feet, trimming the ballast tanks. It was important that the ship be kept dead still in the water—if it had been moving when any of us were swim-ming our trials, we would have been swept away by the motion of the water. The diving vanes fore and aft were useless for that reason; the trim of the ship depended only on the tanks.

Finally it was adjusted, and the lock was flooded. I could see the sea-gates iris open—the round portals spinning wide like the opening of a camera lens. David and Roger came slowly out of the lock.

The thick lenses in the observation port made them look distorted and small. They swam painfully away into the gloom, queer little frogs, slower and more clumsy than the fish.

As soon as they were out of sight I began to feel guilty.

Crazy or not, I should have warned them of what I thought I saw. I waited, and they didn’t come back—only seconds had passed, after all.

I began to squirm.

Hesitantly I said, “Sir.”

Blighman paid no attention to me.

I blurted out: “Coach Blighman! That reaction—I didn’t tell you, but what I thought I saw was—”

“There they are!” he cried. He hadn’t heard a word I was saying. “There they come—both of them! They’ve made it!”

I looked, and I saw them too—the pair of them, coming slowly, limping, out of the dark. They kicked sluggishly toward us and it seemed to me that Roger Fairfane was in trouble.

Both of them moved slowly; but Fairfane looked weak, strained, erratic.

David Craken was swimming close alongside him and just above, keeping watch on him. They swam into the lock above us and I heard the doors whine shut.

It was over. I was glad I hadn’t said anything about sea serpents. They had returned safely, the tests were at an end, and now we could go back to our life at the Academy.

Or so I thought…

The coach splashed in before all the water was out, and I was at his heels. Roger Fairfane was sprawled on the bench, exhausted; David Craken was looking at him anxiously.

Blighman said exultantly: “Fine swimming, men! You’re setting new records.” He looked sharply at Roger. “Any reactions?”

Roger Fairfane blinked at him glassily. “I—I’m okay,” he said.

“You, Craken?”

“I’m perfectly well, sir,” said David. “I tried to explain to Lieutenant Saxon that I didn’t need the shots at all. I am not sensitive to pressure.”

Blighman looked at them, speculating. He said: “Do you feel fit for another dive?”

I couldn’t help it. I burst in: “Sir, they’ve gone two hundred feet farther down already than the regulations

“Eden!” The voice was a whiplash. “I am in command of these tests! It’s up to me to decide what the regulations say.”

“Yes, sir. But—”

“Eden!”

“Yes, sir.”

He stared at me for a moment with the cold shark’s eyes, then he turned back to Roger and David. “Well?” he asked.

Roger Fairfane looked white and worn, but he managed to get the strength to scowl—not at Coach Blighman, but at David. He said: “I’m ready, Coach. I’ll show him who’s a jellyfish!”

David spoke up, his voice concerned. “Roger, listen. I don’t think you ought to try it. You had a tough time making it back to the lock at eleven hundred feet. At thirteen hundred—”

“Coach!” cried Roger. “Get him off me, will you? He’s trying to talk me out of a record because he can’t swim me out of it!”

“No, please!” said David. “If the record is so impor-tant, I’ll stop too. We’ll leave it a tie. But it isn’t safe for you, Roger. Can’t you see that? It’s different for me. I was
born
four miles down; pressure isn’t important to me.”

“I want to go through with it,” said Roger doggedly.

And that was the way it was. Coach Blighman made the sea medics double-check both of them this time. Both came up with clear records—no physical reactions at all. Were there mental reactions?—the narcosis of the depths? There was no way to tell, for anyone except David and Roger themselves. And both of them denied it.

The process of descending and trimming ship again seemed to take forever.

Thirteen hundred feet!

We were a quarter of a mile down now. On every square inch of the sturdy edenite hull of our sea-raft a force of more than five hundred pounds were pressing.

And that same force would be squeezing the weak, human flesh of David and Roger as soon as they began their test.

I heard the sea-gates whine open.

David came out—slowly, but sure of himself. After a moment Roger came into sight behind him. They both headed down along the guide line toward the invisible bow superstructure.

But Roger was in trouble.

I saw him veer away from the guide line, toward the starboard rail. He caught himself, jerked convulsively back, then seemed just to drift for a moment. His arms and legs were moving but without co-ordination.

“He’s reacting!” Sea Coach Blighman said sharply. “I was afraid of that! But the tests were all right—”

Behind me the voice of Lieutenant Saxon said crisply: “Call him back!” I hadn’t even seen Saxon come into the control room but I was glad for his presence then.

Blighman nodded abruptly. “You are right. Keep an eye on him—I’ll try to reach him.”

He trotted over to the deep-sea loud-hailer that would send a concentrated cone of vibrations through the water. Near the surface it could be heard by men in skin-diving outfits. But this far down—

Evidently it wasn’t penetrating the enormous pressure of the depths. Perhaps the diaphragm couldn’t even vibrate, with five hundred pounds squeezing at every inch of it. But whatever the cause, Roger didn’t come back. He jerked convulsively and began to swim—steadily, slowly, evenly.

And in the wrong direction.

He was headed straight for the port rail and the depths beyond.

“Emergency crew! Emergency crew!” bellowed Blighman, and cadets in edenite depth armor clanked cumbersomely toward the emergency hatches.

But David Craken turned, looked for Roger, found him—and came back. He swam to overtake him, caught him still within sight of our observation ports.

He seemed to be having difficulties; it looked as though Roger was struggling, but it was hard to see clearly.

But whatever the struggle, David won. They came back, David partly towing Captain Roger Fairfane, into the lock.

Once more we had to wait for the pumps.

When we got inside the gloomy lock, Roger was lying on the wet bench with his goggles off, the mouthpiece hissing away as it hung from his shoulder harness. He looked pale as death; his eyes were bloodshot and glazed.

“Fairfane, are you all right?” rapped the coach.

Roger Fairfane took a deep breath. He said, choking, “He—he slugged me! That jellyfish slugged me!”

David Craken blazed: “Sir, that’s not true! Roger was obviously in difficulty, so I—”

“Never mind, Cracken,” snapped Blighman. “I saw what was happening out there. You may have saved his life. In any case, that’s the end of the tests. Get out of your gear, all of you.”

Roger Fairfane hauled himself erect. “Lieutenant Blighman,” he said formally, controlling his rage, “I protest this! I was attacked by Cadet Craken because he was afraid I’d beat him. I intend to take this up with the cadet court and—”

“Report to sick-bay!” cried Blighman. “Whether you know it or not, you’re reacting to Saxon’s serum or to pressure! Don’t let me hear any more from you now!”

He left. Grudgingly and angrily, but he left.

And once again I thought that was an end to the tests.

And once again I was wrong.

For David Craken, looking weary but determined, said: “Sir, I request permission to complete the thirteen-hundred-foot test.”

“What?” demanded Blighman, for once off balance.

“I request permission to complete the test, sir,” David repeated doggedly. “I didn’t strike Captain Fairfane. It would be fairly simple for me to complete the test. And I request permission to demonstrate it.”

Blighman hesitated, scowling. “Craken, you’re at thirteen hundred feet. That isn’t any child’s game out there.”

“I know, sir. I’m a native of Marinia. I’ve had experience with pressure before.”

Blighman looked him over thoughtfully. Then he nodded abruptly.

“Very well, Craken. Lieutenant Saxon says these tests are important to help establish his serum. I suppose that justifies it. You may complete your dive.”

We went down once more to the control chamber.

The sea-gates opened above us, and I watched David come swimming out into the cold blackness of the water at a quarter of a mile’s depth.

He looked as slow and clumsy as human swimmers always do under the water, but he stroked regularly, evenly, down the glowing guide line until he was out of sight.

We waited for him to return.

We waited for seconds. Then minutes.

He swam down the guide line past the threshold of invisibility. And he never came back.

The next day it all seemed like a bad dream. There was no time for dreaming, though. It was Academy Day, and the big inspection and review had us all on the hop.

Over the sea-coral portals of the Administration Building, etched in silver, was the motto of the Academy:
The Tides Don’t Wait!
The tides don’t wait for anything—not for a lost shipmate, not for tragedy, not for any human affair. David Craken was gone, but the Academy went on.

We fell in, in full-dress sea-scarlet uniforms, on the blindingly white crushed coral of the Ramp. Overhead the bright Bermuda sun shone fiercely out of a sky full of fleecy clouds. The cadet officers snapped their orders, the long files and crews went through the manual of arms and wheeled off in parade formation. As we passed David Craken’s crew I risked a glance. There was not even a gap to mark where he should have been. I saw Eladio Angel, his face strained but expressionless as he stood at stiff attention, waiting for the order to march off; David would have been marching beside him.

But David was—well, the wording of the official notice on our bulletin board was “lost and presumed drowned.”