Atlantic Abomination

by John Brunner

  At length he pushed himself away, grunting. “No, you are wrong. There’s nothing left of this thing but its hide and its skeleton, and the hide is so impervious it makes a rhino’s look like papier-mâché. There’s just the hole in the belly where the water leaked in. Aside from that, it’s still sound, and the interior is full of water, not mud. If I’m any judge, we could lash a cable round it and drag it clear without trouble. As for it bursting on the way to the surface it won’t. At the speed the ’nef rises, the pressure can equalize quite happily through the hole in the belly.”

  “Peter, even if it’s possible I still don’t think we dare! Supposing—supposing this is a sort of graveyard for the things? Would we like it if someone came grubbing up corpses in one of our cemeteries?”

  “Don’t be anthropocentric!” Peter snapped. “What gives you the idea they’d bury their dead deliberately? In any case, this thing was under so much ooze before the avalanche it must have been here for centuries. This is our last dive before heading for home, remember. We could save a thousand unnecessary problems by taking it along to where we can study it properly.”

  “Oh, very well. I give in. I suppose there isn’t much they could do to us inside the ’nef. Go on, tie it up.”

  A few minutes later the ’nef was straining and tugging at the body, with two quarter-inch hawsers taut and singing like violin strings. Peter and Mary watched in puzzlement, asking themselves whether the little mud in which it was still embedded could possibly suck at the beast so powerfully. But it was not the fault of the mud. The corpse was shifting, very slowly, moving out over the ooze like a tractor over snow.

  “It’s not full of mud!” exclaimed Peter. “It couldn’t be.”

  Mary gave him a wry glance. “No. Haven’t you realized? That thing’s heavy, Peter. It weighs tons!”

  Peter’s hands closed convulsively on a bar before him. He had sudden idiotic visions of the dead weight of the body dragging them down into the ultimate depths, while he sawed frantically at the hawsers and tried to cut the ’nef free.

  Then the balance turned, as the raging power of the atomic beacon atomized the water in the buoyancy tanks past a critical point. The nightmarish corpse rose from its muddy grave and swung slowly to a point below them and out of their view. The ’nef continued steadily to rise.

  First: remnants of a lost civilization.

  Second: a man alive when he should have been dead.

  Third: the body of a creature that resembled, literally, nothing on earth or under the sea; with an articulated skeleton harder and denser than granite, and a flexible hide so tough it blunted their biggest wire-cutting shears before they managed to cut a sample of it.

  What kind of insane world had the bathynef brought man into?

  A kind of awe-struck hush seemed to have settled over the Alexander Bache. Since they had hauled the beast’s corpse alongside with the anchor winch and rigged an improvised crane to dump it on the afterdeck, the staff and crew both had been going about with faraway, mystified expressions, talking little, and then only about the things beneath the sea.

  Even the Chief, although he was fascinated by the strange animal Peter and Mary had found, was subdued. The reason was probably to be found in what he had said to the discoverers in the privacy of his office directly after their return.

  “I don’t know what to make of this,” he had muttered. “And nobody else will, either, for a hell of a long time. Was it creatures like this one that built the city down there? And if it was, how did they vanish so completely in such a short space of time, geologically speaking? And why haven’t we found relatives of theirs? Damnation, a hundred thousand years isn’t much more than yesterday as the earth counts time! There’s never been a trip like this, not in history; never a single voyage that’s brought back so many unanswerable questions!”

  It had almost been possible to see, behind his brow, the illusions dissolving into puffs of smoke. For a few crazy days he had been able to give full rein to his long-hidden dreams of sunken civilizations whose forgotten lore had once been the common property of mankind and now would be brought to light again; now the nightmare beast had stamped its many feet on his hopes and left him shaken and depressed.

  They had more than enough to be going on with, anyway. A message had been radioed to their base at Atlantic Foundation, not describing their discoveries but indicating their tremendous importance. Tomorrow morning, the ’nef would be made ready for towing and they would turn for home. Everyone would have preferred to leave at once, but Fred Platt and his two apprentice engineers were too busy to see to the ’nef at the moment. They had to build cradles and weld anchor posts to the framework of the hull to secure the corpse on the afterdeck. If they hit even slightly rough weather with so much loose weight aboard they would be in for serious trouble.

  “My God!” Peter said suddenly, an hour after he came back aboard. “We forgot to trigger the beacon we planted!”

  He dashed in search of the Chief and made frantic apologies. Absently, the Chief brushed them aside. “Tell Fred to sink another one,” he suggested, and walked away.

  The problem wasn’t that simple. Platt frowned over it and promised to work out an answer, and came up with a jury-rigged adaptation of one of their robot fish-spies, equipped with a sonar homing device which was cued to operate when it reached the precise level of the city-site and would then circle for up to a hundred days within a few hundred feet of its point of arrival.

  The work on that, too, would delay their departure.

  Preparing reports, developing photographs, going back to look at the creature’s body again, Peter found that he had been back aboard for several hours when it occurred to him that he had not seen Luke around. Perhaps a familiar foot-fall had alerted him; a moment after he had the thought there was a knock at his cabin door.

  “Yup?” he grunted, not looking round.

  The door slid back. It was Luke, in dressing gown and pajamas, heavy-eyed with sleep and seeming uncertain of himself.

  “Why, Luke! How are you?” Peter demanded, getting up from his chair with a start.

  Luke’s eyes wandered as though slightly out of focus. He shrugged. “I’m great,” he said around a vast yawn. “I’ve slept till I don’t think I’ll want to see a bunk for weeks.”

  “You even slept through all the commotion when we came back?” Peter could hardly believe it. The sound of the body being dumped on deck should have woken a dead man—

  And chills ran down his back when he realized belatedly that that was precisely what Luke should have been.

  “I must have,” Luke agreed. “I woke up only a few minutes back. I wanted to rest up as much as I could before your return, you see.”

  “So you haven’t seen what we got this time?” Peter was halfway out of the cabin as he spoke, tugging at Luke’s sleeve. “This will really shake you. It looks like it’ll displace you as the number one mystery! You—uh—do you remember any more than we were told before we went away?” He paused and looked around.

  An expression of mental pain showed on Luke’s mobile face for an instant. Then he was shaking his head worriedly. “I was unconscious. More than unconscious. My guess is that I was kicked into some kind of suspended animation by the shock of being buried. Maybe the Ostrovsky-Wong process caused it.”

  “Well, we’ll find out sooner or later. Right now—”

  Almost dragging his companion, Peter made for the deck.

  He had said the sight would shake Luke. He had not been prepared for the effect it actually had. Rounding the deckhouse and coming literally face to face with the monster, Luke stopped dead in his tracks and went white. He was frozen for ten heartbeats, and then his lips began to work as though he were about to burst out crying.

  “Steady there!” said Peter, taking his arm for fear he might faint. “Look, it’s pretty horrible, but it’s stone dead, you know. It’s nothing but an empty shell with bones inside.”

  “Dead?” echoed Luke, as tho
ugh disbelieving. He took a tentative step forward, his hands clasped together tightly.

  “Of course. Think it would sit there calmly and let Fred chain it down if it weren’t?” He indicated the engineer, his face hidden by a welding mask, who was anchoring a section of I-beam to act as purchase for a chain around the body.

  Cautiously, keeping his distance, Luke began to walk around the corpse, studying it. Now and again he nodded, and by the time he returned to his starting point he seemed to have recovered himself. He licked his lips.

  “Yes, of course. Stupid of me. I don’t know why it surprised me like that.” He wiped his face absently with the sleeve of his dressing gown.

  Peter looked at the glistening brown-black hide, on which the sun made bright patches. “Lord knows what it is,” he said. “The biologists are going to go crazy over this. I wish we weren’t going to have to wait so long to see what they say. Still, I suppose five days isn’t eternity.”

  “Five days?” Luke’s voice was sharp and shrill. “What do you mean, five days? We’re five days from home, at least!”

  Peter felt astonished. “Why, of course! We’re pulling away early tomorrow, you know—”

  “No, I didn’t know. And we’re not going to leave tomorrow.” Luke’s eyes were feverish. “Whose idea was this, anyway? I bet it was that fool Gordon’s! I’m going to give him a piece of my mind—”

  He had whirled and vanished before Peter could recover. Before he caught up again, Luke had slammed aside the door of the Chief’s office and was demanding in a hysterical voice, “What the hell’s the idea of leaving before I’ve had another dive?”

  The Chief backed away, hands outstretched as though to fend off an attacker. Peter yelled for assistance. Ellington materialized out of the messroom with a beer glass still in his hand just as Luke’s self-control snapped and he started to scream.

  Between them, they got him to his cabin and dosed him with sedatives. But in spite of everything they pumped into him, and although his eyes were shut and he did not move, he muttered without ceasing about making another dive, and his face contorted, occasionally with pain.

  Again, Mary kept watch at his side.

  It was just after three in the morning when the hear-this came alive with a squawk. Ellington, who was keeping the watch, demanded to know whether Fred Platt was working on the ’nef. Peter, who had been sleeping with difficulty, decided to go out and see what was happening.

  Cast loose from its mooring line, the ’nef was by then a quarter submerged, and from the confused shouting he could tell that everyone else was too startled to think straight.

  On a terrified suspicion he ran back to Luke’s cabin. He found Mary slumped on a chair beside the rumpled bunk, with a livid bruise across her left temple.

  Of Luke himself there was no sign.

  IX

  “HE HIT me with the water bottle,” said Mary dispiritedly. Eloise was dabbing the bruise on her temple with lotion. All about them on the brightly lit deck crew and staff milled in their night clothes, fantastic under the stars.

  “But where did he get the strength?” Gordon snapped. “After the sedatives we gave him, he shouldn’t have been able to stir for at least twelve hours.”

  “He was feverish and delirious all the time,” Mary said. “About twelve, he opened his eyes and asked for water. I gave him some and asked how he was. He said the pain was awful, but he couldn’t tell me what pain it was. He said it was in his head. I asked if he wanted veganin or anything, and he said no, that wouldn’t be any good. Then he went to sleep again for another hour or two, and I dozed. I was awakened by him sitting up and picking up the water bottle, but I was too dazed to move before he hit me.”

  “Ellington, what the hell were you doing all this time?” Gordon wheeled on the First Officer, who spread his hands.

  “What reason had I to expect trouble?” said Ellington defensively. “I knew you wanted to make an early start, so when I saw someone going down the line to the ’nef I naturally assumed it was Fred up early and deciding to use the time to get the damned thing ready for towing. I sang out on the hear-this as soon as I saw the line cast loose, but I thought Luke was still under sedation and who else would want to take the ’nef?”

  Platt snorted. “Didn’t he light the beacon? He’d gone under before I came on deck.”

  “No! If I’d seen the beacon go on I’d have known something was adrift, wouldn’t I?” Ellington was almost shouting. “He didn’t light up until the tanks were well under.”

  “All right, Ellington,” Gordon interrupted in a weary tone. “We won’t get ahead any faster by yelling at each other. How about the reserves, Fred? You hadn’t serviced the ’nef, had you?”

  “No, but we’ve pretty well established it’s foolproof, and although the oxygen is low he’d have plenty for just himself if he’s only going to make a straight trip down and back. I doubt if he’d have long to stay at the bottom. Question is, what does he mean to do? He’s a crazy man, and you just can’t figure!”

  Peter glanced at Mary. She was biting her lip, and it was not due to the pain of her bruise, which had now been dressed. What the hell kind of mixed-up thoughts did Luke inspire in her attractive head? Peter wished achingly he could have the answer to that maddening problem, if not to the others.

  He said, to distract himself, “What do we do now?”

  Eloise gave an unfeminine snort. “Sixty-four dollar questions while you wait,” she said acidly. “What the hell can we do? Care to swim down after the ’nef and haul it back?”

  “Shut up, Eloise!” Gordon ordered. “Ellington, warm the radio and see if you can raise a Navy station. Find out if there’s a fast submarine anywhere within range of us. It’ll take Luke about three hours to get down to two thousand feet. If there’s a sub nearby there’s a chance of catching him with a grab or a net or something.”

  Ellington nodded and made for the radio cabin. Dick Loescher made as though to catch at his arm, changed his mind, and spoke to Gordon. “Nets aren’t standard equipment on naval subs!” he exclaimed. “And if they go after the ’nef with a grapple, won’t Luke just cast loose and try to continue down under his own power?”

  “As Fred said, we’re dealing with a crazy man and we can’t figure him,” Gordon responded somberly. “The bathynef is far too big for our own tackle to hold, or I’d have suggested trawling for it at once. But the whole problem’s too big for us, period. I wish we hadn’t been so cautious about publishing reports. Now there’s fifteen millions worth of unique engineering in the hands of a crazy idiot on its way to the bottom of the sea. By the time we catch up with it again—if we do—it’ll have been made obsolete. Hell and damnation!”

  Into the dead silence which followed this outburst came Ellington’s voice, very faint, saying, “Survey ship Alexander Bache, P-one-T-one-zero!”

  “Maybe he’ll be satisfied,” suggested Hartlund dubiously. “I mean, maybe he just had a temporary obsession. He’ll go down and come back up again, normally.”

  “Maybe, but I doubt it,” Gordon sighed. “Did anyone get the impression that Luke thought he ought to have died down there, and needed to go back and finish the job? I’m no psychologist,” he added. “Just an idea.”

  Mary shook her head. “It was the pain that seemed to be driving him.”

  “Well, there is the chance he’ll come back up. Hartlund, do you know of any naval survey ships working this area? We can’t sit around and wait for him, but we could get someone else to quarter the area until it’s beyond doubt he’s lost.”

  “I’ll check,” nodded Hartlund, and thrust his pipe between his teeth before starting towards the bridge.

  Ellington came back from the radio cabin. “Best I can do for you, Chief,” he said despondently, “is a British sub, one of their latest. It’s undergoing trials about thirty-six miles from here. It’s a pure-reactor job, and they’re having trouble with sustained high-speed running, but they’re going to do their best for us. If noth
ing goes wrong, we can expect them in forty minutes.”

  “What?” said several people simultaneously.

  “That’s what they said. Forty minutes. Apparently when this thing is working properly it’s a wowser. They wouldn’t say what its top speed is, but it must be seventy knots at least. Trouble is it’s still crawling with bugs, they said.”

  “Let’s hope none of them bite on the way here. That’s the first real glimmer of hope.” Gordon relaxed visibly.

  “Look!” said Hartlund, and pointed to a Vee of phosphorescence on the dark water.

  “That was never a sub!” Peter objected, straining to make out the vague silhouette.

  “Of course not. That’ll be the mother ship. Probably a converted torpedo boat, if this thing is really as fast as they told us. Yes. Look, there she blows!”

  The whaling term was appropriate. The bluntly round snout that was breaking water a half mile distant did look like a vast sea animal, although the effect was spoiled by the stub wings which were its control surfaces. Four of them at right angles. Curved back. No conning tower, just a fish-shaped hull with fins.

  The mother ship swung to within hailing distance, and a British voice rang out through a loud-hailer.

  “Hello Alexander Bache! I hope you’re all properly disinterested scientists aboard. Nobody except us is supposed to see our baby this close. Tell us what you want done and we’ll try and do it.”

  Hartlund checked his watch. “Thirty-six miles in thirty-eight minutes,” he whispered. “Maybe they’ll catch him!”

  The Chief was answering through their own loud-hailer, giving only the essentials.

  “How fast does this thing of yours dive?” the British officer inquired.

  “It doesn’t dive. It just sinks, and sinks more slowly the deeper it gets. It’s been going down for an hour, and is probably beyond a thousand feet, but slowing down gradually.”