by Robb White
He had been so busy with panic that he had hardly looked out of the glass face mask. But now, halfway to the bottom, he did.
The brilliance of daylight was gone. Looking up he saw the surface of the water shining like a flowing sheet of quicksilver. Looking down he saw only a dark, blue, deep, impenetrable gloom.
How could he see anything in that? he wondered,
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sinking now slowly down into it. But, as he sank fathom after fathom, he found that he could still see a long way through the clear quiet water.
He drifted at last to the bottom—white sand which now looked light blue-gray. Storms had reached all the way down here and swept the ocean floor, leaving the sand in gentle dunes and valleys, over which he walked slowly.
The sea was alive with life of all sorts. Around his feet all manner of things in shells crawled or swam and fish in schools and alone moved as far as he could see through the blue world of water.
Suddenly, to his left, he saw something long and black reaching down. For a moment he stood still, scared so bad he began to gulp air, but at last he turned toward it and felt silly when he saw that it was the anchor chain hanging down from the Venture. Soon he saw the anchor embedded in the sand.
For ten or fifteen minutes Bill walked slowly around on the sandy bottom. He got over being frightened by every moving thing and shadow and was soon really looking for the sunken ship.
Keeping an eye on the wrist compass he wore, he
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struck out first north, then east, walking along until he could no longer see the hull of the boat breaking the silver surface of the water.
For an hour he walked, going in a rough square with the Venture at the center.
And then, just as he was about to give up, he saw something dark in the blue gloom. Just a blur. He walked slowly toward it and saw the blur take shape.
For a moment Bill stood perfectly still.
There, broken, twisted, torn apart, lay the submarine. As he looked at her he remembered days and nights and weeks he had spent in her; remembered the cabin—no bigger than a closet—he had shared with Jim Crowell, another ensign, who must be lying here now, long dead. There was the bow gun, festooned with sea growth, and the shattered conning tower.
He remembered the skipper's calm and yet angry voice saying, 'Tire one . . . fire two.'* He turned and walked in the direction the forward torpedo tubes were now pointing.
Another dark shape marred the uniform blue gloom of the undersea light.
As he came closer Bill saw again the red and black
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swastikas of Nazi Germany painted on the shields. Now, smashed, torn, ripped apart the legs of the ugly crosses looked like giant spiders crawling up the sides of the dead ship.
Bill walked slowly toward it, a feeling not of fear but of a strange uncanniness making his flesh crawl inside the rubber suit. For some reason he could not get over the feeling that there was, in the ship, still an enemy as dreadful and dangerous as the Nazis who had died with the ship.
He had very little more time so now he hurried. Going down the side of the ship, which was resting almost straight upright on her keel, he came around the stern and, to the outboard propeller strut, tied one end of a thin nylon cord. On the other end of the long cord was a bright yellow cork float which, when Bill untied it from his belt, shot upward, pulling the line along with it.
With the ship marked. Bill went back to the Venture and slowly climbed the anchor chain.
John and Sticks helped him over the side and, as he took the mask off, John said, his voice disappointed, ^'Didn't find it?^'
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Bill unstrapped the tank harness and lowered the tanks to the deck; then he worked his shoulders free of the cramp.
"Young man, you may not know it but you are gazing at one of the Navy's great losses," Bill said sternly to his brother. "A navigator pitching in the same league with C. Columbus.*'
"You found it?" John yelled.
Bill pointed out at the yellow cork float bobbing on the surface. It wasn't a thousand yards from where Bill had estimated the ship would be.
Sticks came up and held out his hand to John. "Pay off, chum," he said.
John looked embarrassed. "I owe Sticks a dollar, Bill. We had a little bet."
"On what?" Bill asked.
"Well, I didn't think you'd find it so soon."
Sticks put in, "He bet me it would take a week of looking all over the place for it. And I told him that when you said it'd be down there it'd be there. Pay me, John."
John blushed. "I haven't got a dollar. Sticks."
"You will have soon. I'm going back down in a little
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while. Let's rig up that phone first, though." Bill grinned. *'Gets kind of lonesome down there."
"What's it really like?" John asked.
Bill looked away. Even here on the sunny deck of the Venture the feeling of uncanniness still clung to him; the feeling of deep and hidden danger down there in the ship.
''Not bad," he said.
Sticks Neal looked at him. "Boy, I wouldn't go down in that water for all the money in the world. Anything could happen to you! Sharks, or barracuda, or those octopus things. Maybe even sea serpents."
Bill smiled at him. "It's not bad," he said. Then, suddenly, a cold chill swept all over him.
Cnapter 7
AS BILL RESTED, JOHN AND STICKS MOVED THE
Venture over and anchored her close to the yellow buoy.
Bill, stretched out on the deck forward, listened to John and Sticks kidding each other, laughing and yelling. He heard them splashing around as they swam in the clear, warm water. They sounded happy and unconcerned.
They sounded as though they were in a different world from the one he was in.
Bill could not rest, could not relax and let the sun ease his muscles. Clinging to him still, and growing stronger and stronger, was that feeling of dread. If he
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closed his eyes he saw the spiders of the swastikas crawling on the dead ship, or he saw the submarine, a tomb for many friends of his.
The feeling clung to him like the weird weeds of the undersea.
At last he got slowly to his feet and walked over to the diving gear. Sticks and John were splashing around somewhere astern, as he pulled the suit on.
He noticed that his hands were shaking a little, the palms sweaty. Almost aloud, he said, ''Pantywaist," and angrily strapped the belt. He swung the tank harness up and checked the tanks for full pressure.
Pushing the mask up on his head, he went aft and leaned over the stern. John, trying not very hard to keep the bandage on his head dry, was swimming awkwardly, his lame foot dragging.
*'Okay, kids, recess is over," Bill called down.
John looked up, surprised. "The book says don't rush it. Bill."
*Tm all right. Fm just going down, get the money, and come on back."
John waited for Sticks to get aboard and then help him up the ladder. He wiped his head dry with his
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shirt and put on the headphones and pushed the button to talk. ''Hear me?''
Bill nodded and pushed his own talk button. "Loud and clear.''
''Got you loud and clear."
Bill pulled the mask down and fitted it around his face. Into the phone he said, "I hope Sweiner left that dough lying on the mantelpiece where I can find it. I don't want to spend all day searching that ship."
Then the water closed around him again and he was sinking down and down into the blue gloom he could see below him.
The Ventures anchor was not more than fifty yards from the Nazi ship.
As Bill approached her, he fought off the feeling of dread and said into the little microphone in the mask, "Pretty down here. All blue and silver. Plenty of fish."
"Bring up some for lunch," John told him.
One of the torpedoes had torn a huge hole in the side of
the ship, the explosion tearing her open so that Bill had very little trouble getting into her. Being careful with his phone line and the life line, he climbed
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up past the shattered engine room and up another deck which he guessed was for storage.
There, where he could see more of the ship, he stopped and looked around, using the big torch to light up the dark places.
If Sweiner was as important a man as the ONI lieutenant had said he was then he'd be bunked up in officer's quarters, Bill figured. Maybe even have a stateroom of his own.
On a ship like this the officer's country would be amidships—around the bridge.
He climbed on up past blasted decks and caved bulkheads. ^I'm in her now," he said to John. ''Be sure no strain's put on the phone line, hear? It's going around some sharp stuff down here."
''Don't worry—I'm holding a loop of it in my hand and will yell if you pull on it too hard."
Bill went slowly on, lighting his way now with the lamp as he walked down a narrow, dark corridor. There were doors on each side of it, some hanging open, others forever jammed shut.
Bill looked into one of the open doors, shining the light into the room. The bulkheads were lined with
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pipe bunks so that he figured it was a crew's space.
There were a few chairs, a row of lockers, and on each bunk hung a steel helmet.
And there were the bones of men, picked clean by fish and crabs and now ghastly white and sprawling, some evidently fallen out of chairs, some even lying in the bunks—mute evidence of the suddenness of the sub's fatal attack.
Bill went on but was soon blocked by the. result of the second torpedo's explosion. This had blown a great, gaping hole in the heart of the ship.
Hating it, hating what he knew lay in the rooms along the corridor, he had to go back down it and try a different way to get up into the stateroom country.
At last he found the remnants of a steel ladder going up. He climbed the twisted rungs carefully and came out into what must have been officers' country. The corridors were wider here, the doors bigger.
Walking along he shone his light into a fairly large space which, from the furniture still in it, must have been the wardroom.
Beyond that were four doors, two on each side of the corridor.
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At the end he came again to the great hole in the ship. Standing at the edge of the sheared-off metal, he looked down all the way to the twisted keel of the ship.
This was a one-way street, Bill realized, looking back. Once in this corridor there was only one way out—the way you came in. A fall at the other end would be fatal.
Bill turned back and examined the doors with his light. Two of them were open, swinging out into the corridor. Over each door there was a brass plate. Bill reached up and rubbed the sea growth off of one of them and read, in German, the word Commander. The next down the line was the equivalent of Executive Officer. The one on the opposite side from the commander's was marked Passenger.
Bill stood for a moment, thinking. With Sweiner and all his crew of saboteurs aboard, the ship must have been crowded. They had probably doubled up in all the staterooms.
What, Bill asked himself, would be the most logical place for Sweiner to put his maps and the money?
If this ship was anything like a U.S. Navy ship there would be a safe in the captain's room, another in
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the communications office, and a third somewhere in supply country.
Bill decided to try the captain's stateroom first, since the door was already open.
The room was big—bigger than Navy skippers got on a ship that size—and had only one bunk in it. The walls, overhead and floor all seemed to be made of stainless steel. So was the furniture—the desk, chair, and cabinets. On the wall there were three picture frames, pictures inside them long ago faded into nothingness. There was no safe, but the desk had drawers and there was a steel file cabinet.
Bill reached back on his belt and got the small crowbar hanging there. To John up on the Venture he said, "Fm in the captain's stateroom now. What's my time?"
''Twenty-seven minutes."
Bill went to the desk drawers first and found one of them locked. He pried this open, but only rotted books and paper were inside. The others contained nothing which could even once have been money.
He was working at the locked drawer of the file cabinet when, slowly, he began to feel strange. It was not the feeling of dread and horror which had never
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left him; this was something he could not name. He stopped prying at the drawer for a moment and stood, playing the light on the door and listening. There were all the myriad sounds of the sea—the hissing and tinkling and creaking, the tiny grunts and sighs and moans—but nothing that he had not been hearing all along.
t He had been down so long that he now had no feeling of being submerged in water. He was used to the slowness of every movement he made, used to the feeling that his arms and legs and body met resistance from something whenever he took a step; and now he was so used to it that he felt as though he were just standing in a room in an ordinary ship.
A dim, steady, unchanging blue light came through the two plate-glass ports in the bulkhead, but there were no shafts of light. It was as though the glass ports were blue paintings. Blue light came in through the open door also, but this, too, seemed to be only a rectangle of flat deep blue. The beam of his searchlight was a cold and much paler blue. The rest of the room was almost dark.
The pecuhar feeling grew stronger until he felt a
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chill race up his spine and across the back of his neck. He could not tell what was causing the strange feeling, but as it grew, it slowly began to come into focus.
Bill felt that he was not alone down there.
He turned slowly, facing the door.
Something there moved. Something which had been in the doorway moved.
Bill said quietly into the microphone, ''How's everything up there, Jawn?''
'Wonderful. Sticks is snoring in the sun.*'
"Any sign of Sweiner?''
"No! You got the money yet?''
"Not yet."
"Is anything wrong. Bill? Your voice sounds funny."
"Must be the mike. All okay here."
But he waited, watching the door.
As nothing happened. Bill began to feel foolish and angry at himself. There he was quaking like a schoolgirl because a little fish had swum past him. "I'm breaking up," he said to John and tried to laugh. "For a moment I thought there was somebody else down here with me."
"He'd have to have a long air hose if he is."
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Bill turned back to the file drawer. He got it open but found nothing except more paper, the German print still clear on it.
Then, as he was walking toward the tall cabinet the feeling of not being alone hit him again. It was like something leaping on his back.
He turned this time fast, not moving the light. When he was facing the door, he swung the beam toward it.
The thing was enormous. It moved when the light hit it so that he only caught a glimpse of one cold, staring eye, and the long, cruel, jutting underjaw with the teeth gleaming. Then, just floating, the long body streamed across the door opening, its paleness marked by blotches of grayish black.
Judging by the width of the doorway. Bill estimated that it was about eight feet long and bigger around than he was.
He heard his own breath and felt the hard pounding of his heart.
Trapped in the room, Bill looked slowly all the way around the walls. There was no other opening.
''John," he said, trying to keep his voice level,
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"looks like IVe walked into something, so stand by/'
"What's the trouble?''
"I'm in a room with one door. Out in the corridor there's an eight-foot barracuda.
Got a full set of teeth."
John's voice came quick and scared. "What're you going to do?"
^on't know. If it comes in here we'll have a picnic. If it stays out there—well, send down some sandwiches because I'll be spending the summer in here."
"How about the shark chaser?"
"Going to try it now."
Bill got the packet of Navy shark chaser from the pouch on his belt. He noticed that his hands were shaking as he broke off a section of it.
Staying close to the wall, the light fixed on the doorway, he eased down the room, the black cloud of wet smoke from the shark chaser trailing him. When he was as close to the door as he dared get, he dropped the rest of the chaser on the floor and backed away.
"John," he said. "Got some shark chaser almost in the door. Everything's getting gloomy in here."
"Including me. Can't you get out through a window?"
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"No, too small/'
The black dye from the shark chaser gradually filled the entire room until the beam of light could hardly penetrate three feet. Slowly, though, the darkness began to fade as the dye floated to the surface. Bill could now see a stream of it flowing out at the top of the door, and the beam of the light penetrated deeper and deeper until at last he could see the walls again.
The barracuda had come into the room.
It lay as though suspended halfway between floor and ceiling, facing him. The gill flaps moved rhythmically but otherwise it was motionless.
The face of the thing was infinitely cruel, the long fanged jaws shut, the razor teeth outside the bone structure. Its eyes were pale and without any expression as they stared fixedly at Bill.
He remembered once watching a barracuda through a glass-bottomed bucket. That was a small one—two or three feet long—and it was stalking a parrot fish feeding in the coral.
That one had hung motionless in the water, too, watching the parrot fish. As it came closer and closer the barracuda kept turning to face it, but the motion