by Jack Finney
In the rapidly narrowing aft compartment were the main engines, two small diesels, their shafts connected in a straight line to the propellers; behind them were the generator, main motor; the air compressor, propeller clutch, and so on. Throughout the ship everything seemed in reasonable order, as far as we could tell, though we knew there was bound to be a good deal of work to be done.
The big hand wheels for operating the diving planes and the hand steering gear, for example, were absolutely immovable, and we knew all planes and the rudder were rusted tight. We inspected everything visible throughout the ship; switchboard, bilge pumps, engine clutch, electric range, torpedoes — the tubes each contained a torpedo — the vent valves, Kingstons, the periscope dry-air system, steering engine, the waste locker — which was empty — periscope telescoping gear and motor, and everything else.
It was noon when we finally left the little sub. Then all of us stood in the dock staring at her, and Lauffnauer said, "Well, what do you think? I think she looks good; as good as we could reasonably expect."
Moreno said, "Yeah, on the inside," then he nodded down at the sub. The tide was very low, and two thirds of the ship was out of water; we could see the concrete blocks on which she rested, just under the surface. And now all the dry surfaces of the ship were a dull orange with rust. "But look at the rust," Moreno continued. "Can we chip loose all movable parts? And if we do, how far can we trust them, everything half eaten away?"
Lauffnauer said, "We'll find out; that's all we can do. It's the batteries I worry about. … Hugh, what about them?"
After a moment I said, "Well, I'm doubtful; in fact, I don't have much hope at all. I'm darn sure you couldn't have washed the elements free of electrolyte; did you, Frank?"
"It would never have entered our heads," he said.
Vic said, "What if they'd been able to wash them?"
I shook my head. "Even then I don't think the batteries would be any good after forty years, or anything like it. Occasionally some will hold a charge or take a charge long after you'd think it was impossible. But even under expert care in a laboratory, I don't think they could be made to last that long."
"So, as it is, we're finished, then," Linc said. "Before we start. We've got to have batteries."
"We're not finished," Vic said shortly. "Hugh, you'll think of something. I didn't bring you into this for nothing." He smiled. "You'll figure this out one way or another."
I smiled. "Thanks, pal," I said, though I didn't know what I could do about it if those batteries were hopelessly dead, as I felt certain they were.
There is an enormous loss we all of us suffer, growing up — we stop playing. The things adults call play very seldom are. With hardly an exception they're competitions; even hunting or fishing, even golf all alone. Rarely ever again do we experience pure play — doing something for its own sake completely, utterly absorbed and lost in it, nothing else mattering.
Now I had to leave our toy; most of us did. Most of us had jobs — no one had quit his till we knew for sure that the old sub could be raised and transported. And now we all but Moreno and Rosa had to go back to New York: to break leases, check out of hotels or leave rooming houses; to quit jobs or resign positions; to sell securities, close out bank accounts, withdraw savings or raise cash at a pawnshop. Moreno had an old jeep in a little shed back of the shack, and, after a last look at the sub, we all walked up the path, climbed into the jeep and he drove us to the closest railroad station.
I was shaving in my hotel room well before two o'clock; then I dressed, wearing a lightweight blue suit and a tie, and packed everything else I owned into my old sea bag. I checked out at the desk downstairs, took a cab to my bank and, while the cab waited, withdrew all the money I had in both a savings and checking account. Then I went to the ferry terminal, checked my bag in a coin locker, and by three-forty I was at my office, stepping out of the elevator, grinning at the receptionist. I had no trouble resigning — summer was coming, slack season for our department and the whole broadcasting industry. And when I suggested giving up the two-week vacation I had coming in exchange for not giving notice, it was O.K. with the boss. He was sorry to lose me, he said; wanted to know what I was going to do. I told him I was going to drive out West somewhere, just for the hell of it.
In the record department Herb, the big kid in charge of putting records back on the shelves more or less in their proper places, was sitting at his little desk.
A moment or so later, dusting her hands, Alice Muir walked out, then stopped and stood looking at me; she wore a white linen sleeveless dress, a green jade brooch at the square neckline, and she looked wonderful. "Hello," she said, frowning a little.
"I just quit," I said. "Got time for a coffee?"
She looked at Herb, who said, "I'll add your duties to my other responsibilities; go ahead." Alice thanked him, and we walked out to the elevators.
We didn't speak till we were down at the little lunch counter just off the main lobby. My coffee came and Alice's soda, and Alice — unwrapping her straw, not looking at me — said, "So you quit. You didn't need to for my sake, Hugh; I was going to ask tomorrow for an early vacation."
I wondered why she hadn't asked today, but I said, "Well, you can take your time now; I won't be back."
She nodded, taking a sip of her soda. Then, still without looking at me, she said, "All right; I meant what I said Friday." She looked up at me now. "But I was hoping you didn't. That's why I didn't ask about my vacation."
She turned back to her soda, and I sat looking down at the top of her head, at her straw-yellow hair and the clean white scalp at the part. "Maybe I'm crazy," I said quietly, and I meant it. "I have the feeling now that if I'd just let go a little, just relaxed a bit, I'd have fallen crazy in love—"
"Don't," she said. "I don't want to hear it; you don't know how sad I feel right now. I'd have married you in a minute; I still would, and I wonder if I'll ever get over you. But you're not sad; you're excited. I don't know about what, but you are. Right now, sitting here, looking at me, you're wondering for a moment whether you made a mistake. And maybe you have. But you're going to do what you want to do anyway." She drew herself up, shoulders back, and turned to me, her chin lifting, her eyes sad, but proud too. "Look at me, Hugh," she said softly, and I did, my eyes meeting hers. "This is what you could have had — me. For the asking. You can't do much better; and you may do far worse."
Suddenly she relaxed her posture, reaching out to touch my hand on the counter for a moment. "But I haven't any right to put you through this," she said. "I haven't any claim on you. You came to say good-by, and I'm glad you did."
I was on the edge of saying it: Wait for me; just a few weeks! But I didn't say it. I hadn't the right; I might be dead soon or in prison. I could say it to myself: Wait for me, Alice!But all I could say was "So am I, Alice. We had a lot of fun."
"Yes." She nodded rapidly, looking straight ahead. "Maybe you'd better go now, Hugh; I'll stay and finish my soda. Please do; please go now, Hugh."
"All right." I stood up from the stool and put coins on the counter, more than enough to pay for the coffee and soda. Then I reached out for her hand, squeezed it, and she squeezed back, hard, then dropped my hand and turned away, and I walked out to the street.
Lincoln Langley sat smoking a cigar in the jeep, parked in the shadows beside the little country station when Vic and I got off the train that night. It was funny, really — I thought about this later and was amused — we wasted no time in greeting each other. I liked Linc and felt cordial to him, but, reaching the jeep a step or two ahead of Vic, heaving my sea bag into the end, the first thing I said was "How is she?"
And Linc had no trouble understanding me. "Good," he said eagerly, yanking the cigar from his mouth. "Moreno's got cotton waste wrapped around every movable part on the outside. Tied on with wire and soaked with penetrating oil. He's already chipping rust."
I nodded, climbing in beside him. Vic got in back as Linc started the motor, then
backed out into the empty little main street. "Lauffnauer back?" Vic said, and Linc nodded, shifting gears.
"Came back with me; we've been here an hour," he said, driving slowly down the street. "We've started work on the Kingstons."
From the back seat Vic said quietly, "What do you think, Hugh?" and I saw Linc turn to me, his mouth opening a little, waiting intently for my answer.
But all I could do was shrug and say, "We'll know in a few minutes now." Vic was asking about the batteries; they were the all-important question. For without electrical power the sub couldn't run underwater — or run at all, for that matter; these diesels couldn't be started at sea without current from the batteries.
The shack was lighted, illuminating the path beside it, and down the hill at the shore every crack of the dock building was brightly defined, two rectangles of yellow light from the dusty windows high under the eaves lying on the black water beside the building. "See you," Linc said and, actually trotting down the path, he hurried back to the submarine.
Rosa was making up the last of five metal cots lined up along one wall of the shack. As we walked in with our sea bags she was pulling an olive-drab blanket taut. She glanced up to smile at us. "They are waiting for you," she said to me, nodding in the direction of the dock, "like children. Can you make their toy run for them, papa?"
I nodded, lifting my sack onto the cot she'd just finished. "Sure," I said, "I'll make it run; one way or another."
"Where you sleeping, Rosa?" Vic said; he was sitting on the edge of his cot, pulling blue denims and a work shirt from his sea bag.
"In my own house," she said shortly, "alone." Then she walked ahead into the little area that served as a kitchen and sat down at an enamel-topped table there, her back to us. On a wall shelf beside the table was a small radio, and she snapped it on. Without turning around she said, "Go ahead, get dressed; they are waiting for you."
I glanced at Vic, shrugging, then sat down, untied my bag and began tugging out a pair of denim pants and a shirt.
We changed clothes quickly then and all of us walked down the path to the dock. Inside it Moreno, wearing dirty tan coveralls and an old felt hat, was standing down in the water in hip boots beside the orange-red sub, chipping rust from the aft dive-plane mountings. He glanced up as we walked in, nodding shortly, and began climbing out of the water as Vic and I walked across the plank to the conning tower, then climbed down the ladder through the open hatch. Lauffnauer and Linc, working in the control room with socket wrenches, were twisting bolts from the stuffing box of one of the big Kingstons.
Moreno came down the ladder just behind us, and I squatted on the deck. Under the hatch cover, set into the deck beside me, were batteries, others in the forward compartment. Grouping themselves about me, the others stood silent and watching, waiting for what I'd have to say, and I lifted the hatch cover.
A submarine's batteries are huge — as tall as a man in a modern sub, and even these ancient batteries were four feet tall. And they weigh tons; they're actually an important part of a submarine's ballast. Now I began the routine of inspecting, then testing them, without any real hope. There was acid in the batteries, I found, as I'd expected; it doesn't evaporate to amount to anything. Now all I could do was to see if miraculously the batteries had somehow held a charge for forty years. I didn't bother taking a hydrometer reading, but simply tested each cell at the voltmeter panel of the switchboard here in the aft compartment. And now I threw the old knife-blade switch and tested the first cell.
The needle barely flickered, indicating just a trivial difference in potential. I tried each of the other cells then, everyone watching my face. Then I thought about trying to charge these old batteries. We could run power in to the diesels, rig them to run and try a charge. But I knew it would be so much waste motion, and after a few moments I glanced at the others and shook my head.
Moreno began to curse, quietly and viciously; then Rosa gave him a little push, and he shut up. The others swung away from the hatch, Lauffnauer jamming his hands into his white coverall pockets, slowly shaking his head; Vic muttered something angrily, and the life seemed to have gone out of Linc's face. For a moment Rosa stood watching me, then she said, "All right, papa; how are you going to fix it for us?" and the others turned back to stare down at me again.
I looked at them. "There's only one thing I know of to try," I said, "and I don't like it. But there's not another single thing we can do."
"All right, all right," Moreno said irritably, "let's have it; what can we do?" He was staring down at me, his eyes sharp with a hope he didn't really have.
"Use automobile batteries."
It was actually a little comical; they were frowning, their mouths opening in astonishment. Vic said, "Car batteries? Ordinary car batteries?"
"Sure." I had to smile, looking at their faces. "The sub doesn't care where the power comes from. A few big batteries or a lot of little ones, the sub doesn't care; get the juice to the motor and it'll turn."
"Hugh, are you sure?" Lauffnauer said. Then he laughed, the beginning of relief in his voice. "It just does not seem possible, that's all."
I tapped the big sub battery with my foot. "This is only a two-hundred-and-forty-cell battery," I said. "That's nothing nowadays, but it's what this boat had. Well, a hundred and sixty ordinary six-volt automobile batteries will give us a four-hundred-and-eighty-cell bank of batteries. And I can hook them up so that we'll have, in effect, two batteries of two hundred and forty cells paralleled for operation."
"And it'll be the equivalent of the sub's batteries?" Line said eagerly.
"No, certainly not." I shook my head. "It'll give us maybe ten to fifteen per cent of the normal operating potential of the big one, at best."
"And what the devil does all that mean?" Moreno said angrily.
I grinned at him. "It means that if you need power you can get it from any battery regardless of its nature, including car batteries. But not for long. We'll get all the power of the big batteries from the hundred and sixty little ones, but not for anywhere near the same length of time. They won't begin to store the power of the big ones; it's like a bucket compared to a great big tank. We can go under for" — I hesitated, then shrugged — "twenty minutes, say. Maybe a little longer, though I'd hate having to try getting more than a half hour out of them. And get this straight" — I glanced around at all of them. "We can go under one time only. Then our batteries will be as dead as this" — I patted one of the big cells. "And there'll be no recharging them; not at sea, anyway."
"Why not?" Vic said.
"With what?" I said. "The ship's generator would pour in more juice than any little car battery could take; it'd be like trying to fill a washbasin with a high-pressure fire hose. They're still little six-volt batteries no matter how we hook them up, and you use anything much more than an ordinary car-battery charger, you could burn them out. We put a full charge in them here, then we go out; and we can dive once. And for about twenty minutes, and fifteen would be safer. And that, my little ones" — I grinned at Rosa — "is the very best that papa can do."
After a moment or so, Lauffnauer said, "And those batteries will cost what?"
"Well, besides batteries, Frank, we'll need chargers — fast chargers and overnight chargers with a capacity of several batteries at a time. Plus connectors, and so on. No way in the world to do it, short of stealing the batteries, for any less than three thousand dollars."
Linc whistled slowly, then we all looked at Moreno. "Well," he said, shrugging, "everyone who can is to turn in a thousand bucks, as you all know. I can, just barely. And Rosa can; you got insurance money left, haven't you?" He looked at her, and she nodded shortly. "Vic?" he said then.
"Yeah." He nodded. "I've got it with me."
"So have I," I said, "in my sea bag."
"And I can't," said Linc.
Moreno nodded. "And Linc can't. He told us that from the beginning; he just hasn't got it, not a dime, and that's that. Frank turned over eight hund
red dollars to me an hour ago. It's every cent he's got, and after all" — Moreno smiled — "he's contributing the sub. So we have forty-eight hundred dollars to get this boat operating, and to live on. I could scrape up a little more, maybe. And maybe Rosa could too. How about you, Vic?"
"Yeah; maybe another five hundred. But that'd be the end of the line."
"Hugh?"
"About the same; maybe a little less."
"O.K." Moreno shoved his hat back off his forehead. "We got forty-eight hundred bucks now. And say sixty-five hundred tops if we need it. So we'll spend three thousand dollars for power, because we've got to have it and there's not another darn thing we can do about it. We'll get by on what's left if we have to quit eating." He grinned tightly. "Linc, what about the radio?"
"We don't need this type of wireless. We need only a small, portable outfit of very limited range. Our best bet is to buy it and forget this one. I'd say perhaps a hundred pounds — three hundred dollars. Maybe less; I haven't priced them in America lately." He smiled.
"All right." Moreno nodded. "We've got plenty of fuel; I checked it today. So now we start buying batteries — at every gas station, garage and auto-supply place for fifteen miles. And in New York; every time someone has to go in. And from the mail-order houses. We'll buy no more than two at any one purchase; and we'll take turns buying." He said to me. "You take care of the chargers?"
"Yeah, I'll run into New York with the jeep for them."
"O.K. Bring back as many batteries as you have room for, too; maybe Linc can run in with you and bring back his radio and a couple rafts. Now, let's get organized." He held up one hand and began ticking off on his fingers the next things to be done. "We'll start work on the diesels right away. Then overhaul the Kingstons, the air compressor and all vents. Get the engines and air compressor working, refill the air flasks, and we can test the tanks a few dozen times."