Classic Fiction

by Hal Clement

  Could the oxygen get from the stomach to the bloodstream? Not directly, but it could take the same path as the other foods. Into the small intestine and through the villi. I seemed to remember that there is a lot less absorbing surface here than in the lungs, but under the pressure of this depth that might not be a serious lack.

  Working hypothesis two, therefore, is that these folks eat or drink something that gives off oxygen gradually. If, under this pressure, the gas always remained in solution, the body would still be relatively indifferent to pressure change. Though my outside passenger of a few hours back might have been in serious trouble after all if he’d gone all the way to the surface with me.

  How about carbon dioxide elimination? No problem. Out through the lungs, as usual, and into immediate solution in the surrounding liquid. Maybe that was why the liquid wasn’t water; they might be using something that took up CO2 better, though under this pressure water certainly should be adequate. Of course, with body fluids under the same pressure, it might be more a matter of complex ion equilibrium than simple solubility; perhaps pH control had been necessary. It certainly was inside the body, and this whole idea seemed to be lessening the differences between inside and out.

  All this suggested that if I chose to stay down here, they would presumably start pressurizing me. Sometime during the process I’d be given a meal, or a drink, of the oxygen source. That, as far as I could see, would be it, barring minor mechanical tricks for filling my sinuses and middle ears with liquid.

  How about getting back to breathing habits? The pressure would have to come down again. The oxygen source in the stomach—yes, that would present a difficulty. If it were still giving off the stuff, and pressure got down near one atmosphere—hmph. Very close timing, doing the job just as the stomach oxygen ran out? Mechanical assistance such as an artificial lung between the time the inside source gave out and natural breathing was resumed? Either way, it would be difficult for me to manage alone, if the need ever arose.

  In any case, I could now do some tentative planning, always realizing my hypothesis might be all wet. I was fond of them, though, and felt that it would be at most a case of having to modify details as more information came in. It was a pleasant sensation while it lasted.

  Under the circumstances, then, it seemed best to tell Bert that I was staying and waste as little time as possible getting out of this bubble so I could do something useful. I’d developed my own moral standards—made my private Loyalty Oath to Mankind, if you like—long ago, so there’d be no conscience question if they wanted me to take some sort of local declaration before they’d accept me. Probably they wouldn’t; things like that had been worn too thin to be meaningful back in the days when people thought their chief danger was political difference rather than energy shortage. Lodges and similar private groups still used formal oaths, but even these didn’t carry quite the same implications that they used to.

  I wondered suddenly why my mind was wandering off in that direction—after all, my plan might be a little deceitful, but it was in a good cause, and my conscience was clear enough—and got back to immediate problems.

  Details, of course, would still have to wait. I’d have to learn the local geography, especially the way to Marie’s submarine. I’d have to find out just how much freedom of action I was going to be allowed. Bert seemed to come and go at will, but he’d been here for a year. In that connection, probably I’d be expected to earn my living in some fashion; if finding out the details I needed, and working up a plan to get Marie and me back to the surface, all took very long then I’d probably have to do something of the sort. What sort of work would be both useful down here and within my powers was something else for the future to tell.

  Right now, then, the thing to do was wait for Ber1, or send for him, and give him the word. Waiting would probably be better. There was no point in looking too eager. He’d said he’d be around often, and no doubt had been while I was asleep. He’d be bound to expect me to wake up before long.

  I waited, like a monkey in a zoo—or perhaps more like a fish in an aquarium.

  XI

  It was about half an hour before he showed up. He glanced in through one of the ports, saw that I was conscious and picked up the writing pad.

  “Been doing any thinking?” was his opener. I nodded affirmatively.

  “Good. Made up your mind?”

  “I think so,” I called back. “I—” I hesitated. Part of it was for effect, but part of it was genuine uncertainty. I could be wrong in so many ways. Then I stiffened up.

  “I’m staying.”

  He looked a little surprised and started to write. I went on before he had finished. “At least, I’m staying if you can tell me one thing for certain.”

  He cleared his pad and looked at me expectantly.

  “Do you genuinely believe—I’m not asking do you know, just do you believe— that these people are justified in keeping out of the power net and the rationing system?”

  Bert’s face took on an annoyed expression as he wrote.

  “I told you you’d have to make up your mind by yourself. I won’t take the responsibility.”

  “I expect to make it up myself,” I retorted, “but not without data. You say there’s too little time for you to tell me everything I’d like to know, and I’m arguing that. I’m asking for a conclusion of yours, not even a piece of information you’re not supposed to give me, just a conclusion—an opinion—as a summary of information I can’t get. Did you make your decision on as little knowledge as I have now?” He shook his head negatively.

  “Then I’m sorry if you read my question as a reflection on your morals, but I still want an answer.”

  He frowned thoughtfully for half a minute or so and looked at me a little doubtfully. I repeated my question, to be sure he understood.

  “I really do believe they have the right idea,” he wrote at last. I nodded.

  “All right, then I’m staying. How long will it take to get me out of this coconut shell?”

  “I don’t know.” His writing was slow and interrupted by pauses for thought. “It’s not what you’d call a standard procedure. We’re more used to our guests coming in submarines, which have pressure locks or at least some sort of port. I’ll tell the Council, and we’ll hunt up some engineers who have time to spare, I’m sure it can be done.”

  “You mean—you mean it may take a long time? Suppose it takes longer than my air supply?”

  “Then I suppose we’ll just have to shove you outdoors anyway. If you still want to badly enough, you can always come back in a sub, the way Marie did. I’ll go start things moving.”

  “But why didn’t you mention this before? I thought—well—”

  “Some things really shouldn’t need mentioning. Where in the world would you expect to find ready-made equipment for taking a man out of a high-pressure escape shell while it was still in a high-pressure environment? Think it over.” He put down the pad and was gone before I could think of a good answer to that one.

  In fact he had come back, nearly an hour later, before I could think of one. I still haven’t.

  Bert, on his return, had better news than I had been afraid he might. The Council, or such of them as he had found—I was getting an idea that it was a body of rather fluid composition, and that the usual way of getting things done officially was to find and deal with one’s own chosen quorum of members—had approved my application for citizenship, if it could be called that, with no argument. Several engineers in the group had been interested enough in the problem I represented to go to work on it at once. They were at the task now and might be expected to come up with something shortly.

  That was encouraging. I’m an engineer of sorts myself, though I work at it only in its incidental connection with my main job, and every idea I had thought of ran into a blank wall. This was usually a matter of basic procedure. I couldn’t see how welding, or high-speed drilling, or any of several other ordinary operations you take for gran
ted in machining and handling work could be done in a liquid environment under a pressure of more than a ton to the square inch. Most tools, for example, have high-speed motors; high-speed motors are a little hard to conceive with their moving parts bathed in an even moderately viscous fluid; and under that sort of pressure, how do you keep the fluid out?

  Of course, if these people had been down here the eighty years or so that Bert had mentioned, they should have learned the basic tricks for the environment, just as men had learned space engineering the hard way. I wished I knew how they were going about my problem, though.

  I didn’t find out in detail, but it didn’t take them too long. About eighteen hours—a very boring eighteen hours—after Bert had brought the news, he came back with a team of helpers and began moving the tank. It was quite a trip. We went back outside and traveled half a mile or so to another, larger entrance. Inside it there were several large corridors, instead of just one, opening from the main chamber.

  They towed me down one of these for a distance and stopped by a pair of the first genuine locks I had seen since my arrival.

  One was quite ordinary, and I barely glanced at it; the other was circular and just about large enough for my tank. It was located in the same wall as the smaller lock, about twenty yards away from it. It was opened as we approached by a couple of the party who swam on ahead, and the tank was juggled through. The wall in which the door was hung turned out to be several feet thick, and the door itself but little thinner; I judged that the room beyond was the one to be depressurized.

  The chamber itself was fairly large. One side was crowded with apparatus, the most recognizable items being an operating table with broad restraining straps and a set of remote-control hands much finer than I was used to seeing on work subs.

  The larger part of the room, in which the tank had been placed, was almost bare, and it looked very much as though the operating room had originally been much smaller. There were signs that a wall as thick as the one I had come through had been removed from between the spot where I now was and the place where the table and its auxiliary gear stood. I would have liked to see the tools that had done the job.

  My guess, as it turned out, was correct; the smaller section had been the original conversion room; the smaller lock leading into it could be connected to the hatch of a visiting sub. The whole trouble had been that my tank had no hatch; it normally opened by bisection.

  Bert wrote instructions for me while the others were getting out of the place.

  “When we’re all gone and the door is sealed, the room will be pumped down to surface pressure. A green light will flash over the table when it’s down, but you’ll know anyway—you’ll be able to open your tank. When you can get out, go over to the table and get onto it. Fasten the straps around your body and legs. It doesn’t matter whether your arms are free or not. When you’re tight to the table, press the red signal button you can see from here.” He indicated the button to me. “It’s within reach of your right hand, you see. A container of sleeping medicine will be delivered by one of the hands. Drink it and relax. Nothing more can be done while you’re conscious.”

  “Why not?”

  “You’ll have to be plugged into a heart-lung machine during the change. Don’t worry. It’s been done many times before. Once you’re out of that tank and onto the table, the only unusual problem you offer will have been solved. All right?”

  “I see. All right.” He put down his pad and swam out through the ponderous lock, which swung slowly shut. I hadn’t seen any special dogs or clamps on it, but it opened out into the corridor and wouldn’t need any. With its area, once the pressure started down in the room nothing much short of an earthquake could open it.

  I could tell when the pumps started; the whole place quivered, and the vibration carried through to the tank very easily. I spent some time estimating the work that would have to be done to empty a room of this volume against a one-mile head of sea water and a little more in wondering how the mysterious fluid that was replacing water would behave when the pressure came down. If it had a high vapor pressure there would be a purging job on top of the pumping one—no, not necessarily, come to think of it; the stuff must be physiologically harmless, so probably the vapor could be left in the room. Of course if it were flammable it might make trouble when they put oxygen in for me to breathe. Well, they were used to that problem and had been for decades. I needn’t worry about it.

  In spite of all the free energy which seemed to be around, it took nearly half an hour to empty the place. The liquid level went down steadily. The surface, when it appeared, remained smooth. There was no boiling or other special behavior. It might as well have been water. They took no pains to get the last of it out; there were several puddles on the rather uneven floor when the light flashed.

  I wasted no time opening the tank; I’d been in it for a long time and couldn’t get out too fast. My ears hurt for a moment as the hemispheres fell apart; pressures had not been perfectly matched, but the difference wasn’t enough to be serious. Once out I slowed down. My arms and legs were badly cramped, and I found it almost impossible for a few moments to walk even as far as the table. I spent several minutes working the kinks out of my limbs before I took the next step.

  The table was comfortable. Anything I could have stretched out on, including the stone floor, would have been comfortable just then. I fastened the broad, webbed strap about my waist and chest, then of course found I couldn’t reach down to the ones for my legs. I undid the first set, took care of my legs, refastened the upper strap and finally was ready to push the signal switch.

  As promised, one of the mechanical hands promptly extended toward me with a beaker of liquid and a flexible tube to let me drink it lying down. I followed orders, and that’s all I remember about the process.

  XII

  I woke up with a reasonably clear head. I was lying on a bunk in a small room that contained two other beds and nothing much else. No one else was around.

  Someone had removed my clothes, but they were folded in a sort of hybrid, offspring of a laundry basket and a letter rack near the head of the bunk. Another similar affair held a pair of trunks such as I had seen worn by many of the men around my tank. After a moment’s thought I put on the trunks; my other garments weren’t made for swimming. I got out of the bunk and stood on the floor, though my head felt a little funny.

  It occurred to me that I had no business feeling enough weight to let me stand, under the circumstances; I was presumably immersed in a liquid denser than water, and therefore denser than my body. A thought crossed my mind; I rummaged in the pockets of my old clothes, found a jack-knife, and let go of it.

  Sure enough, it fell past my face. I was standing on the ceiling, as were the bunks.

  I tried swimming after the knife, which had come to rest a couple of feet out of reach on the floor/ceiling. It was quite an effort, though not by any means impossible. It: was obvious why the people I had seen wore the ballast belts. I didn’t see any of those around, though, for the moment at least, I’d have to walk if I wanted to go anywhere. This promised to be rather inconvenient too, since the liquid was fairly viscous, though less so than water. Also, the architecture wasn’t designed for walkers; one of the doors to the room was in a wall and fairly accessible, but the other was in the floor—that is, the floor toward which my head was now pointing and on which my jackknife had come to rest. Under the circumstances I decided to wait until Bert or someone showed up with ballast and swim fins.

  The decision was helped by the fact that I still didn’t feel quite myself, even aside from the difference of opinion between my eyes and my semicircular canals as to which way was up and which was down. As a matter of fact, the canals couldn’t seem to make up their minds at all on the matter, and it suddenly occurred to me that some surgery must have been done there as well. They could not possibly have been left full of air—or could they? How strong was bone, and how well surrounded by it were the canals, anyway?<
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  I felt around and found several places on my neck and around my ears where the smooth plastic of surgical dressing covered the skin, but that didn’t prove much. It had been obvious all along that some work around the ears would be necessary.

  I felt no desire to breathe; they must have slipped a supply of their oxygen-food into me sometime during the procedure. I wondered how long it would last.

  It suddenly occurred to me that I was very much in the power of anyone who chose to exercise it, since I hadn’t the faintest idea where to get more of the stuff. That was something I’d have to discuss with Bert very shortly.

  I tried forcing myself to breathe. I found I could squeeze liquid slowly out of my lungs and get it back equally slowly, but it hurt and made me feel even dizzier than being right side up and upside down simultaneously. The liquid went into my windpipe; I could feel it, but there was no tendency to cough. I still think that must have been one of the trickiest parts of the conversion procedure, considering the nerve and muscle activity which coughing involves.

  The presence of liquid in my windpipe, expected at it was, raised another question. I certainly couldn’t talk, and I didn’t know the sign language which appeared to be standard here—didn’t even know the spoken language on which it was presumably based. I had a long job ahead of me if I were to communicate with the local inhabitants. Maybe it would be better to bypass any such effort; if I could find out all I needed to know from Bert, language lessons would be a waste of time.

  I could hear, though. The sounds were almost strange, though some might have been the hum of high-speed motors or generators. There were whistles, thus, whines—nearly everything there is a word for, but none of it exactly similar to anything familiar, and one particular class of noise completely missing. The gabble of speech which drenches every other inhabited part of Earth was totally lacking.

  Nearly an hour passed according to my watch, before anyone appeared (the watch itself was a solid-state radioactive-powered affair which had not been designed with sea-bottom pressure in mind, but had come through the change perfectly). I spent most of the time cursing myself—not for making the change, but for failing to take advantage of the time between decision and action by getting more information from Bert.