by Hal Clement
After a quarter of an hour my porters aimed away from the lights again and headed up the slope which I assumed was still to our right. About two hundred yards in this new direction brought us to the lip of another bowl or gully, apparently much like the one I had almost been trapped in a few hours before, but larger. The center of this depression was even more brightly lighted than the roof of the tent, and the entrance was in the very middle of the bright region.
I didn’t take a very good look at it; I acted too fast. I glimpsed what seemed to be a smooth-walled pit about forty feet across with ladders going down at a couple of dozen points around its rim. Most of the light came from some point in the pit below my line of vision. Between me and the opening were a dozen or more swimming figures, and it was the sight of these that made me act. If I were to be surrounded by a whole school of swimmers, my chances of dropping a transponder unnoticed would be negligible; and without spending any more time in thought, I dropped the ballast and one of the sounders simultaneously. I instantly realized that might be a mistake, since each of the lead slabs was heavy enough even under water to smash the instrument, and as I felt the tank lurch upward I dropped another of the little machines. There was a good chance that my company had been distracted by the ballast—a much better one than I realized, as I found later.
I heard the lead hit the rock. So, evidently, did the swimmers around the hole. It took them a few seconds to spot the source of the racket. A man judges sound direction partly from the difference in arrival time of the wave at his two ears; and with the high speed of sound in water, the fact that the disturbance was also being carried by the rock, and the helmets they were all wearing it was impossible for them to get more than a vague notion of where the sound had originated. When they did start coming my way it was in response to a flashlight which one of my carriers was shining toward them.
The two original swimmers were hanging onto my legs—the tank’s I should say. They couldn’t hold me down, of course. It takes more than a couple of almost-floating human bodies to replace several tons of lead. They were staying with me, though, and guiding the others.
That didn’t worry me at first, since there weren’t enough people in sight to hold me down, and if there had been they couldn’t all have found room to get hold. The only real cause for anxiety was the possibility that there might be work subs with outside handling equipment somewhere around. Even from these, though, I’d be fairly safe if they’d just put off their appearance for a few more minutes. They’d have to hunt me with sonar once I was out of sight, and I was beginning to feel pretty certain that the last thing this bunch would do was send out sonar waves. The darned things travel too far and can be recognized too easily. I still didn’t know what these folks were up to, but there was enough obviously illegal about it to suggest that secrecy would be high on their policy list.
The ones who were holding on to me would have to drop off soon. There isn’t an underwater breathing rig made that will let a man rise at three feet a second or so for more than a few hundred feet without running into decompression trouble. I didn’t care what gas mixture these characters were breathing; there are laws of physics and human bodies have to obey them.
The more distant swimmers were turning back as this thought crossed my mind; I could see them against the fading background of the lighted pit. I could also see, poorly, the light which one of my hitchhikers was shining toward them. He seemed to have some hope still; maybe there was a sub in the neighborhood, and he was trying to stick with me long enough to guide it. Unless it showed up very soon, though, he was going to lose that gamble and kill himself in the bargain.
I saw another swimmer, quite close, dwindling between me and the light; my second passenger must have dropped off. When would the first go? His light was still shining, but it could hardly do any good now. I could barely see the pit, and surely no one down there could see his little flash.
Evidently he realized this, for after a few more seconds it went out. I expected to see him leave like his fellow, since he could do no more good by sticking, but he wasn’t thinking along those lines. He had different ideas, and one of them from his viewpoint was a very good one. I didn’t like it so much.
The dual-phase stuff they make pressure tanks out of isn’t a metal, and differs widely from any metal in its elastic properties; but like metals, if you hit it, it makes a noise. I didn’t know what my rider started hitting with, but it most certainly made a noise. I, from inside, can vouch for that. A nice, steady, once-a-second tapping resounded from the tank, hurting my ears and doing worse to my plans. He didn’t need his light; any work sub could home in on that noise from miles away if it had even a decent minimum of instrumentation.
And there was no way that I could think of to stop him.
V
I could try the legs, of course. I did. It was so dark by now, with the light from entrance pit and tent roof alike faded to the barest glimmer, that he may not even have known that I did anything. If he’d been holding on by a leg he may have been disconcerted when I pulled it in and maybe bruised when I popped it out again, but there was no evidence that anything of the sort happened. I ran the legs through their cycle several times without making the slightest change in the rhythm of that tapping.
I tried shifting my weight to make the tank roll over. It worked, but didn’t bother my passenger. Why should it? A swimmer doesn’t care whether he’s right side up or not, and a submarine hitchhiker in total darkness should care even less. I was the only one who was bothered.
But why was this character alive, conscious and active? We’d risen more than a thousand feet now, through a pressure difference that should have popped his suit if it were really sealed as tightly as I had judged. If it weren’t, and if he were valving off gas to keep his lung volume down, he was going to be in trouble when he descended again; and in any case, volume or no volume troubles, whether he was breathing helium or anything else, he should by now be completely helpless with embolisms.
The simple sad fact, independent of what should be, was that he was still going strong, and I had no way of getting rid of him.
Nothing like this had been foreseen by the Board geniuses who had worked out this mission. There was not the slightest doubt that some sort of sub was going to be along shortly to pick me up—no other notion was sane, in view of the fact that this fellow had been fit to stick with me. There were always insane notions to consider, of course; maybe he had decided to sacrifice his life to make sure I didn’t get back to the surface, but even that assumed the coming of something. Maybe a torpedo, but something. Personally I doubted the sacrifice idea. Lots of people will, for a cause they consider important enough, but I’ve never met a lawbreaker who acted that way. Especially I’ve never seen an energy waster who would; selfishness is the key word with those lads—keep the eye out for Number One.
But never mind the psychology; what’s to be done? The guy may be a moving corpse, but he’s still there broadcasting. Why didn’t I come down in a work sub? Skip that question; it’s a waste of good thinking time. How can I make him get off, or at least stop making noise?
Badly phrased question. I can’t make him do anything. He’s outside, and I’m inside, and with his pressure difference never the twain shall meet. Then, how can I persuade him to leave or shut up? Until I start communicating, I can’t persuade him either. Obvious.
I put on my lights, both inside and out. That at least caught the fellow’s attention; the tapping stopped for a moment. Then it resumed, but less regularly, and I caught glimpse’s of him as he worked his way to a place which would let him see through one of the ports. I pulled my own face far enough back from it so that he could see me clearly, and for a few seconds we just looked at each other. The tapping stopped again.
It was the same man who had found the tank. I’m not a mind reader, but I felt pretty sure from his expression that he had only just realized there was anyone inside and that the discovery bothered as well as surprised
him. He resumed his banging on the tank, in a much more irregular pattern. After a few seconds I realized that he must be sending some sort of code, though I couldn’t read it.
I tried to explain my gestures that the racket was hurting my ears, but all he did was shrug. If he cared at all about my comfort, it certainly wasn’t at the top of his priority list. He finished his code message at last and resumed the regular tapping. He didn’t seem angry—didn’t scowl, or shake a fist at me, or anything of that sort, but he didn’t look as though he considered me a long-lost friend, either. I could see his face clearly and without distortion through the helmet, but I could see no sign of real interest in his expression. I spent some time trying to get him to respond to my gestures, but he paid no attention. I thought of writing a note that he could read through the port, though I couldn’t guess what languages he might know, and I managed to find some scraps of paper in one of my pockets; but I could find nothing to write with, and that idea collapsed. I finally gave up and turned my lights off again. There was no use in helping him guide the sub to us.
I couldn’t think of any more practical plans, and my mind wandered back to the question of how the fellow lived. We had risen several hundred more feet during the time the lights were on, and his suit hadn’t emitted a single bubble. I was beginning to wonder whether it really was an ambient-pressure unit. It was hard to see how anything so thin, and especially so flexible, could possibly be pressure armor; on the other hand, the peculiarities of the tent roof indicated that someone had been making progress in molecular architecture. I was in no position to say such armor was impossible, but I wished I could make at least a vague guess as to how it was done.
I can feel a little silly about it now, of course. I’d had the man in full sight, well lighted, only a few feet away from me for fully five minutes, and I missed the key fact—not in something I saw but in something I didn’t see. At least, I’m not alone in my folly.
The tapping kept up. It wasn’t really loud enough to be painful, but it was annoying, Chinese water torture style. It may have been equally so to the. fellow outside who was doing it, and I got a little consolation out of the thought that at least he was having to work at it. I got a little more out of the realization that as long as he did keep it up the help he was calling hadn’t arrived yet.
Two thousand feet was less than halfway to the surface, though it was an unbelievable pressure change for my hitchhiker. It wasn’t very much comfort to me to know that I’d put that much water under me; even twice as much wouldn’t be much help. It wasn’t as though there’d be a police squadron standing by to pick me up, or even a single boat. The tank had only the normal automatic transmitters for calling help, and they wouldn’t even start to function until I reached the surface—which I was unlikely to do. There probably was a Board vessel within a few miles, since the plan didn’t include my navigating the open halves of the tank to Easter Island when I got back to the surface, but that would do me no immediate good. The storm would probably still be going on, and they wouldn’t be able to see me at fifty yards. If they did, they probably couldn’t do anything about it unless there were more specialized salvage gear aboard than seemed likely. Even a minor ocean storm is quite a disturbance, and one doesn’t pick a pressure tank bobbing around on its waves casually out of the water.
There was an encouraging side to that thought, though. If I did get to the surface, it would also be hard for any sub to get hold of the tank. My broadcaster would then be working, and maybe—just maybe—if it even brought a Board ship into the general neighborhood the pursuers would keep out of sight. On the other hand, it was at least equally likely that they would consider it worth every effort to get hold of me, witnesses or no witnesses, in view of what I had obviously seen down below. But the other hope was worth holding onto for its comfort value. Since I’m a civilized human being, I never thought until later of the possibility that if they couldn’t capture me they might just punch a hole in the tank and let me sink.
Maybe I’d make it. The minutes were passing. It was taking each one a year to do it, but they were passing. Each brought me nearly two hundred feet closer to those storm waves, if they were still there. I hadn’t bothered to check the forecast beyond the time I was scheduled to submerge, and I’d been down quite a few hours. I’m not immune to seasickness by any means, but I rather hoped there would still be enough wave action to give me a good dose of it this time. Maybe it would even make my friend just outside lose his grip on whatever he was holding onto. That was something else to hope for.
But first I’d have to get up to those waves, and there was still half a mile to go. The tapping went on. If I’d been anywhere else on Earth I might have preferred the Chinese water drops by then, but this was no place to be asking for water drops. I tried to shut out the sound and keep my attention on other things, like the pressure gauge—was there a little wiggle in its needle which might be due to the wave action far above—or the question of food. If the waves were there, maybe I’d better put off eating.
I kept moving from one port to another in a hectic but rather useless effort to spot the sub which must be approaching; but it was my passenger who saw it first.
VI
I knew what had happened when the regular tapping suddenly changed once more to the complex code, but it took me another half minute to spot the approaching light. I didn’t have a very wide angle of view from any one of the ports.
All I could see at first was the light, a solitary spark on a space-dark background, but there could be no doubt what it was. It was just a little below us, well to one side. Its bearing changed as it grew brighter. Apparently it was approaching on a spiral course, holding the sound of the tapping at a constant angle off its bow to let the pilot keep a constant idea of his distance from the source.
Even when it was close I had trouble making it out, for its main spotlight was turned straight on the tank and there was too little diffused radiance to show anything close to it. This apparently bothered my passenger, too, for there was another burst of code tapping as the sub halted thirty yards away, and the light went out. In its place a dozen smaller beams illuminated the whole area, none of them shining directly our way; so I could see the newcomer fairly well.
It was not exactly like any sub I’d seen before, but was similar enough to some of them to give my eyes a handle. It was small, either one or two men, not built for speed, and well equipped with manipulation gear on the outside—regular arm and hand extensions, grapples, bits, probes, and what looked like a water-jet digger. One of my hopes died quickly; there had been a chance that a small sub would not have enough negative buoyancy to drag the tank back down, but this fellow had big, fat lift chambers and must have ballast to match. It was evidently a tug, among other things. If it could get hold of me, it could pull me down, all right; and it was hard to see how it could be kept from getting that hold. All I had to fend it off were the legs.
I wasn’t sure how effective these could be, but I kept my fingers at the panel resolved not to miss anything that looked like a good chance. At least, now that some sort of action was in the offing, I wasn’t dithering as I had been during the minutes before the sub came in sight.
The pilot’s first method was to drift above me and settle down. He must have had a strong streak of showoff in him, since it was hard to imagine a less efficient means of sinking a round object. I thought he’d have his troubles, but my passenger didn’t seem upset, and I have to admit the character knew his boat handling. The swimmer waved him into position, putting me under the sub’s center of buoyancy, and he made contact. My pressure gauge promptly showed that the upward motion had been reversed.
I waited a few seconds in the hope that my hitchhiker would go inside the sub, but he made no motion to, and I finally had to let him see my technique. This was simple enough—simpler than rolling along the sea bottom, since the surface above me was much smoother. Also, I didn’t have to go so far to accomplish something; a very small shif
t away from his center of gravity gave my tank’s lift a torque that was too much either for his reaction time or his control jets. Since he had enough weight in his tanks to overcome my own lift, he flipped over, and I was on my way up again.
Unfortunately, as I promptly learned, Lester the Limpet was still with me. His tapping started up within seconds of the time I got out from under. His friend evidently took a while to get his machine back into trim—I could understand that; tumbling, with a couple of tons of surplus negative buoyancy thrown in, is a problem for any sub—but he was back all too soon. He was no longer in a mood to show off; he bored straight in, with a grapple extended.
I turned on my outside lights, partly to make things harder for him and partly so that I could see better myself. This was going to be tricky for both of us; he had to find something the mechanical hand could grip, and I had to shift my own body weight so as to turn the tank enough to bring a leg into line for what I had in mind. It was just as well I’d gotten my recent practice on the bottom. At least I knew to a hair where each leg went out, relative to the positions of the ports.
I took him by surprise the first time. He hadn’t considered all the possibilities of those legs—maybe he didn’t even know how many I could use, though they were visible enough from the outside. He matched my upward drift very nicely, though I was able to hamper him a little bit by shifting my weight and changing the frontal presentation of the slightly irregular tank. With relative vertical motion practically zero, he came in slowly with the mechanical hand reaching for some projection or other—I couldn’t tell what he had in mind. I rolled just a little to get a leg in line with the grapple, and when the latter was about two feet from contact I snapped the leg out.