“Tomorrow, when you dive,” she said hesitantly, “when you’re very deep, when you’re alone in the sea, will that be a pleasure for you?”
“Pleasure?” He turned his head a bit toward her.
“Will you like that?”
For a time he stared out across the water. “I like being in the ocean. It is where there are things that I know. But... what I must do... is not a pleasure. Your friends...”
“Yes.” She leaned her head back and looked at the sky. “I’m sorry you must look for them. That is not a pleasure.”
“No.”
She leaned forward and looked into his face. “Are you afraid?”
“Afraid?”
“I mean, about running into any trouble down there, or...” She put a hand on her cheek and shook her head. “No, of course not. Crazy. I keep forgetting what—who you are.”
“I am not afraid... in the ocean.”
“But on land.”
“Sometimes. There is much I do not... understand. I must always be near the water. It is different with you.”
They leaned over the rail and stared out to sea. Elizabeth breathed deeply of the salt air, savoring its fresh tang, yet aware that Mark, standing beside her breathing the same air, was not savoring it. With each breath he took he was nearer the time when he needed to breathe from the water to restore himself. She wondered if he could come to enjoy his times on land as she enjoyed her times down among the reefs.
Elizabeth pinched her lips together, started to speak, hesitated, then turned to him. “Mark, I want you to look at something.” From her jacket pocket she took a tiny plastic box. She held it in front of him and snapped it open. In it was a tiny, multifaceted crystal that glittered like a diamond in the moonlight. The crystal was embedded in a foam cushion.
Mark looked at it, then up at Elizabeth.
She plucked it carefully from the box and held it in her palm. “This is a miniature transponder. It sends out signals through the water. Those signals can be picked up by our sensors, here on the ship. We can tell wherever this transponder is in the water, from the signals. Tomorrow, I want you to swallow it...” She saw a slight tenseness in his face. “Yes, just swallow it. It won’t be difficult. When you swallow it, you won’t even know it’s inside you. It won’t harm you. And it will send out signals. So wherever you go in the ocean we will be able to keep track of you.”
She held it out to him. He made no move to take it, just stared at her.
“Please understand, Mark. It’s not that we don’t trust you. You know how much I trust you. We just want to keep track of you. For your own safety.”
Still he looked into her eyes, and did not take it.
“Mark, this transponder will not make you come back. It will not allow anyone to capture you. You will still be free. But if you need help—for any reason—it will let us find you. That’s the only reason I want you to take it.”
Mark now looked down at the crystal. Gingerly he took it, closing his hand over it.
“Thank you for understanding.”
“I do not always understand.” Again he gazed out across the night sea. “But I believe you. It is good to be able to believe... when you are in a place... where you understand... so little.”
Dawn broke clear on the Pacific over the deepest abyss known to man, the Mariana Trench. At its deepest, the floor lay 35,630 feet below the huil of the U.S.S. Moon River.
Preparations for the dive had been going on since before dawn, seamen scurrying over the decks and below them, crane operators moving heavy gear around.
The swells that gently rolled the ship had no effect on the soberly efficient, well-drilled team who worked aboard.
The dive officer and safety officer roamed the deck, watching closely as systems were prepared and checked.
Then, from above, the overhead crane operator signaled that he was ready to lower the dive platform down through the diving well into the sea.
Mark and Ernie emerged from below decks through a hatch. Both wore black wet suits with yellow stripes on the arms and legs. Two assistants assigned to them quickly brought over their equipment and helped Ernie and Mark into diving gear.
Both men had standard breathing regulators attached to flexible hoses that ran to their backpacks, and wide-angle Kirby-Morgan face masks. But their backpacks were not similar. Ernie strapped on a standard set of double air tanks. Mark’s apparatus—strange to everyone there except Elizabeth—was a single black square rubber-covered box.
Ernie bit down on his mouthpiece, adjusted it, checked for the passage of air through it. His assistant checked the gauges.
Elizabeth quickly stepped in to take over Mark’s final checks. He copied Ernie’s moves, and Elizabeth scanned the secretly useless gauges, and noddèd.
“All set,” she said.
“Ready here,” said Ernie’s assistant.
Ernie nodded to Mark, and Mark nodded back.
A sailor wearing earmuff headphones leaned his head back and raised his hand, giving the go-ahead signal to the overhead crane operator.
The crane rumbled into action, lowering the dive platform slowly over the dive well. When it was level with the deck, Ernie stepped aboard, assisted by other sailors who watched his arms and feet so they didn’t snag anywhere. Then Mark stepped on.
Elizabeth and Mark locked eyes briefly—he peering out through his face mask. Then the platform was lowered into the well and the water, and disappeared from view.
Elizabeth took a deep breath, rubbed her hand over her eyes, then turned and headed inside for the control station.
Two naval aides, standing at rest with their hands behind their backs, stood at either side of the door when Elizabeth entered. They followed her in, shut the door, and remained standing inside.
She sat quickly on the swivel chair in front of a console with a row of display paneis and monitors and microphones. She flicked on several switches, and digital displays lit up in front of her. She activated a tape recorder to one side, then leaned to the other side to flick on the switch that lit up a green scope. A silver dot appeared on the scope.
She spoke into one of the microphones. “Transponder capsule reads five-by-five at 0847 hours. Program for tracking optimum...” Her eyes moved back and forth over the readouts. She leaned toward another microphone. “Okay, Ernie, all systems go...”
The digital depth gauge read fifteen and descending. On a chart, an electronic writing stylus etched a wavering line. Elizabeth’s eyes moved busily over all the gauges and monitors. “All systems go...”
Beneath the ship the platform slowly descended, its two passengers standing erect, watching schools of fish flash by. Whatever Ernie did, Mark copied it. When Ernie checked his wrist gauges, Mark did the same. When Ernie adjusted the position of his facemask slightly, or wiped the glass with his mitten, Mark did likewise.
The colors of things in the water began to change. Reds were gone at thirty feet; orange disappeared at thirty-five feet; greens gave way to blue-green tints at eighty; by ninety feet, fish and drifting animais and seaweed ali appeared gray-blue.
They stared down into the depths. The first mountainous ridge appeared as a hazy, irregular shape, becoming more distinct as they descended.
Over the mike, Ernie heard faint pings coming from Elizabeth’s console, then her voice: “You’re coming up on one-fifty, one hundred fifty feet...”
Sharp canyon walls rose past them in the near distance. Small schools of fish, different sizes but all appearing gray—to Ernie at least—darted by this way and that.
Still they moved slowly down, the only sense of their descent coming from the visions of the canyon walls. That and—again only to Ernie the increased pressure. Streams of bubbles rose from Ernie’s regulator; none came from Mark’s.
Again Elizabeth’s voice: “You’re coming up on two hundred... Coming up on two hundred... oh..... two hundred... Okay, that’s it... Cable is stopped... Okay, men, you’re on station... Ali systems still go... Clear for yo
ur mission...”
Ernie checked his wrist gauges, adjusted the regulator in his mouth, leaned over to pat Mark’s arm and give him thumbs-up. Then he spoke into his facemask mike. “Okay, we’re hanging loose at two hundred feet. Everything’s A-okay down here. We’re gonna take a little walk around.”
Ernie gestured toward the open water. Mark nodded. Ernie reached around to check the fastenings on his tether rope.
Then Elizabeth’s voice came again, unexpectedly: “Ernie, I have something to explain to you. The special equipment Mark has is more special than we’ve told you...”
Ernie yanked on the rope, testing it.
“It will allow him to go much deeper than anyone knows...”
Ernie flexed his shoulders under the straps. “Okay.” He tried to disguise the impatience in his voice. To be interrupted with this garbage now, just when he was about to leave the platform, was not wise, and hardly professional. He was concentrating on his equipment and his work. His mind was filled with times and depths. Any minor delays at this depth wasted crucial air time on his tanks.
“Actually, the whole matter is highly classified...”
“Then don’t tell me,” Ernie snapped.
While this conversation was going on, Mark had been behind Ernie, obscured from his vision. He had unstrapped his backpack.
“But Ernie, I must tell you...”
“Look, I don’t have time to listen to...” Ernie turned around and stopped dead. His face went white behind his mask.
Mark’s regulator dangled loose in front of him. He slipped out of his turtle pack and handed it to Ernie, who took it in a slow, dazed motion.
“But you’ve got to know, Ernie;” her voice went on, “because you’re going to see...”
“Don’t! Don’t tell me nothin’! I don’t wanna know nothin’!” He shook his head, as if she could see his emphatic gesture. He stared wide-eyed at Mark.
Mark lifted off his mask and handed it to Ernie.
Ernie saw his glowing green eyes for the first time—green even at that depth, almost luminescent. “Don’t say any more.” His eyes never left Mark. “He’s a terrific guy... and... whatever he’s had done to him is... is... okay with me. He’s...”
His voice trailed off as he watched Mark. Mark’s face and head were now completely exposed. His hair waved free in the water. No air bubbles were emitted from his nose or mouth. He slipped off the platform into the gray ocean. Once in the open water, he stripped off his wet suit, leaving him clad only in his tight swim trunks. He put the wet suit back on the platform at Ernie’s feet. Then he began swimming back and forth, undulating smoothly, and went through a series of acrobatic spins, twists, somersaults—all manner of playful maneuvers.
He stopped, waved quickly to Ernie, flipped upside down, and shot downward out of sight.
“He’s,” Ernie’s voice was a near-whisper as he watched Mark disappear into the depths, “he’s my... friend...” His mitted hands clutched Mark’s diving gear like talons.
At the shipboard console, Elizabeth, seeing by her gauges that Mark was now descending alone, sensed Ernie’s profound confusion. “... It’s okay, Ernie, he’ll be okay. His respiratory system is—different from ours. I’ll explain when you’re topside. Try to relax, Ernie, or you’ll use too much air. We’re bringing you up now. Just take it easy. Try to calm yourself...”
Her eyes were on the digital depth gauge. Mark’s body was a slowly moving dot on the scope. The gauge registered wildly: 2,000, 3,000, 4,000. Sonar pinging began. “Decompression is ready and waiting for you. We’ll have plenty of time to talk...”
The gauges continued to reel off the depths: 10,000, 15,000, 20,000. She sensed added tension behind her. The two aides had heard her side of the conversation, and they could see the numbers. She wondered if anybody could really believe what was happening.
But more than that she wondered whether it would all work, and whether it would all be worth it.
For a time, Mark continued his playful maneuvers as he wound his way downward. He zig-zagged among schools of fish and reached out to touch a glowing squid that flashed by. He grabbed a hunk of floating kelp and swallowed it.
He veered over to be closer to the steep canyon walls, and wove his way among some pinnacles of rock.
He stopped briefly and circled, checking his surroundings. He moved horizontally for several yards, then darted down through a gully of rocks covered with odd growths and living protuberantes that humans seldom see.
Finally he neared the ocean floor. He swam eel-like above it, gazing at the terrain, until he saw the spot he was looking for, and settled down on his feet.
He looked around, studying the environment. He had no way of knowing how deep he was in feet—though he knew exactly how deep he was by his own senses and reckoning. He had no way of knowing that high above him, the gauge before Elizabeth’s eyes held steady at 35,021 feet, and that the silver dot on the green scope, which represented him, had stopped. And he had no way of hearing what Elizabeth was announcing into her microphone: “He’s on the bottom, Ernie, and he’s okay.”
Nor could he have imagined Ernie’s stunned face at hearing that announcement, and how his voice sounded when he replied to Elizabeth: “Thirty-five thousand feet... seven miles... My God...”
Mark stood looking around, his green eyes glistening in the darkness. He looked up and down the canyon walls that surrounded him. He heard strange underwater sounds—clicks and snaps and eerie, high-pitched whistles.
Mark knew he was not as far down as he could go—not yet. He swam over to the side of the cliff, examined it with his eyes and hands, then pressed the side of his head against the rock wall. The sounds were louder there, the odd, repeated cadentes of the whistles. They were distant whale sounds, communications. But there was something else too, something slight, something that to Mark was as strange as whale sounds were familiar.
He turned around, peering in all directions. He probed along the edge of the cliff until he found his passageway. Then he moved off down the cliff into the deeper gloom.
As he descended along the face of the cliff, he kept his eyes trained on the rock. But there were no signs of recently inflicted scratches or gouges through the vegetation, no broken rocks or any other kind of trail that might be left by a damaged submarine falling through this chasm to its doom. Nothing was disturbed.
Back and forth he glided over the cliff face, studying the rock and growth. From time to time he cocked his head to listen to the unique underwater noises he detected: He seemed not so much distracted by them as simply aware, as a motorist becomes attuned to the slight variations of pulse and hum of his engine.
He moved across the chasm to probe the opposite wall. Quickly he traversed it several hundred yards back and forth, descending several yards with each pass.
At last he approached the true bottom, the deepest part of the trench. He swam over it, gazing down. Back and forth and in slow circles he patrolled, like hungry hawk searching for prey. Nothing on the bottom caught his attention particularly; nothing seemed to startle him. He moved in and out of the lowest crevasses, glided over and around the deepest crags, as if all were familiar terrain.
It was not that nothing moved in his view. There was life of wide variety in that pit. The animais were small, tiny. There were minute, transparent shrimp and eels and spiny bugs, clans of feathery plant-like fish, families of spidery, sightless crabs. They were so small and blended in so with the flora and rock that ordinary human eyes might not detect them.
To Mark, they were highly visible, and their presence, drifting or crawling unagitatedly, indicated that all was in order.
He was sliding along the bottom, no more than a foot above it, when he stopped. He hung motionless in the water. Then slowly he rolled over so that he was facing up. He cocked his head. Then he froze, as still as a chameleon on a tree limb.
There was a slight and unusual sound in the water. A sound Mark had been vaguely aware of before he desce
nded past the face of the cliff. But it had been far distant. He had noticed it, kept tabs on it. Now it was closer, more distinct.
It was approaching him. He waited.
First it was a dull throbbing sound. Then that sound was accompanied by a high-pitched whine. These were not animal sounds. There was a metallic edge to them. Soon they were identifiable. The throbbing was the pulse of propellers; the whine was an engine, probably electric.
For several minutes Mark had not moved a muscle, not even to breathe.
At once, all the tiny animais suddenly scattered; Mark knew the source of the sounds was near.
And then he saw it. First there was a needle of light penetrating the ocean above him. Then he discerned a bulbous nose. It glided evenly through the water some yards above him and to the side. As it passed he saw it all.
A black submarine of four round sections like bathyspheres, with small portholes gleaming from the sides. Atop the first sphere was a conical conning tower. The sub was pushed along by two slowly spinning propellers.
This was not the sub he was looking for. Nor was it like anything he had ever seen before. As it passed and began moving slowly away from him, he had to make a rapid determination of whether the sub related to his mission or not.
If it did not, to follow it would waste valuable time. Mark was aware of the vulnerability of the ship high overhead on the surface of the Pacific. Anything restricted to the surface was more susceptible to climatory changes than were water-breathing denizens of the deep like him. And on the trip out to this area aboard the ship, he had sensed clearly that although they called it an oceangoing vessel, it was not truly a creature of the sea. It was only the best creation land dwellers could devise to allow them brief excursions out onto the water but above it, where they could breathe their air while afloat on his world. But if a sudden typhoon sprang up—which Mark knew was a possibility in there waters—the people would have to flee with their complicated raft. When such a storm had passed, they might return with their ship or they might not—he was unsure of their commitment to this mission, so little did he understand of their natures and will. Nor was he sure the ship could safely escape the surface winds before which it was so defenseless.
Man From Atlantis Page 10