They walked through corridors under blinking red lights, making a turn here and there. Mark was conscious of the heavy man’s labored breathing; Schubert was just as conscious of Mark’s.
“From time to time,” Schubert said, his voice softer, “we all need a little reminder that we still have a few ‘I’s’ to dot and ‘T’s’ to cross before we get the results of a rather interesting experiment we’re working on here. But it’s all going to click into place shortly, with the help of a few mathematical types—the very ones who came on the sub,” he laughed, “the sub you accompanied.”
Mark looked at him, his face showing nothing.
“Right over here then,” he gestured toward a door. “You’ll get some rest. And when you wake, refreshed and relaxed—aha! I’ll have some interesting things to show and discuss with you!”
Elizabeth, still at her console, where the sonar scope was silent and the green screen blank, was talking on a red phone. Ernie, in clean work blues, sat on a folding canvas chair nearby.
“... We brought up the diver, Ernie Davis. He’s fine, no effects at all. Except of course he’s as concerned as we all are. And Commander Johnson has ordered an S & R unit.”
“What the devil good is a search unit going to do!” came Admiral Pierce’s exasperated, angry voice over the line. “The only thing that could go down there is the same Sea Quest your man was after!”
Elizabeth heard his hoarse breathing over the phone. “Well, sir, we...”
“With ali the precautions we’ve taken, all the instructions we’ve given, all the work and worry and negotiations—I don’t see how you could lose him!”
“We’ve been trying to—”
“We had a deal, Dr. Merrill!”
“I’m well aware of that, sir.” Her face flashed anger, she struggled to keep her voice calm. “The deal was that he would find the Sea Quest in exchange for his freedom. Well, he—”
“And he took off!”
“No sir!” Rage welled up in her. She gripped the receiver tightly and glared at the console. “I’m sure that’s not it. He wouldn’t do that. He didn’t do that.”
“Well, what other explanation...”
“He just fell off the scope, Admiral.”
“Fell off the scope!”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well then check the scope! Those things aren’t perfect.”
“We did, sir. And we have backup equipment.”
“You gave him the transponder?”
“Of course. We had the signal.”
“Well maybe your fish digested the darn thing!”
“Admirall I resent your referring to Mark Harris as my—”
“Sorry. Sorry. Forgive me. I know what you must be going through. just try to understand, I’m sitting in here like a dumb landlubber, staring out my window, helpless to do anything, with so much of my work riding on this mission—so much of yours too. I should have gone out there with you.”
“I don’t think it would have helped, sir. Nothing would have changed. Preparations were perfect. All systems were functioning optimally. He reached the bottom in good shape. Then he just disappeared.”
There was a silence on the line.
Ernie leaned forward and whispered, “Does the admiral know that—know what Mark...”
Elizabeth nodded.
“Well listen, Dr. Merrill,” came his voice finally, “our job has become a good deal more complicated, to put it simply. First we were supposed to find the Sea Quest. Now we’ve got to find the one who was supposed to find the Sea Quest.” He paused. “I’m keeping a line open for any news. I want to be informed of anything, any development, large or small, positive or negative.”
“Yes sir.”
“Find him.”
“Have a drink, Ainsley.” The admiral shoved a glass and a bottle of Guatemalan rum across the desk at the lieutenant.
“No thank you, sir.” Ainsley sat stiflly in the armchair and held up his palm.
“Have one, Ainsley,” he growled. Then he smiled wryly. “You don’t approve.”
“Oh, no sir, it’s not that. I have nothing against a little drink now and then.”
“But you don’t approve of me having a little drink, right now, under these circumstances.”
“Oh, no sir,” he shook his head vigorously, “it’s not that. Whatever you do is your, is your...”
“Business, Ainsley. My business. I am very much on duty, Ainsley. And I am thinking. I am thinking hard. Have a drink. That’s an order.”
“Yes sir. Fine.” He took the bottle and poured a small amount into the glass. “Just one.”
“No such thing.” The admiral raised his glass for a toast, and Ainsley lifted his. The admiral tilted his head back and threw it down. Ainsley sipped a bit and put his glass on the desk.
“No, no, Lieutenant. The first one goes down neat and quick, all at once. Gets your thought processes moving. You gotta break your brain outta the rut first with a hard shove from the rum. Then you can coast. Sip the second one. Come on, toss her down.”
“Yes sir.” Ainsley picked up the glass, closed his eyes, and drank it down. He blinked and wiped his mouth with his fingers.
“There.” The admirai leaned back and smiled. “Pour another, and let’s talk.”
Ainsley poured another.
“Now. What’s on your mind, Lieutenant?”
“Sir?” Ainsley coughed lightly.
“Speak out. What do you think about all this, man to man?”
“About all what, sir?”
“Me, Dr. Merrill, Mark Harris, the mission—everything.”
“Oh. I haven’t thought much about it.”
“Cowpies, Ainsley. You haven’t been thinking about much else but lately. Same as me. You think I’ve made a mistake. Or several.”
“No sir.”
“Look, Ainsley,” he leaned across the desk, “I’d rather you just didn’t answer rather than lie to me. This is just between us. You think, number ofie, I shouldn’t have trusted Dr. Merrill so completely. Hunh?”
“Well,” he said softly, looking at the floor, “it’s just that she’s a scientist, not really a Navy officer, and...”
“It’s just that she’s a woman, right? You don’t care beans whether she’s a scientist or a Marine. It bothers you that I leave a woman with so much responsibility.”
Ainsley opened his mouth.
“Don’t speak.”
He closed it.
“I know it’s the truth. She ain’t just another pretty face, buddy. Not just another pretty face. She is absolutely brilliant. Did you know that? And here’s another newsflash for you: she is one very tough Navy man. How’s that grab you? Tough as the toughest old sea captain you’ll ever meet. She knows what she’s doing and she knows how to do it and she’ll fight for being allowed to do her job. Just like I will. Will you fight to be allowed to do your job, Ainsley?”
Ainsley opened his mouth silently.
“Talk.”
“Yes sir. My answer is yes, I will, sir.”
“More cowpies, my boy. You’re scared to death to take a step on your own. Let me tell you something about command. You’d like to have your own command someday. Well, command is not a set of theories that you go around asking other people for answers about. It is not a discussion group. It is not therapy. It is not hemming and hawing and seeing all sides and taking none. It is decisions. A command is like a computer—a series of firm yesses and nos. Yes, you go; no, you stop. You have a mission, you have your materiel, you have your personnel. Will it work? Yes, you go; no, you don’t. And that’s it. There’s no time for wondering about ali the ways a mission might fail, once you’re moving, or all the ways it might succeed, once you’ve killed it. You pick a yes or you pick a no. If you’re good, you pick ’em right most of the time. That’s all there is to it.”
Ainsley sipped his drink and nodded thoughtfully. “That’s really beautifully put, sir.”
“Ah, me.” The admirai
sighed and swiveled back and forth and stared at the ceiling. “And another thing that’s rather quaint about what’s on your mind, son. You think Mark Harris is some kind of fraud.”
“Fraud, sir?”
“You don’t really believe all this stuff about what he can do. Why not?”
“Sir, I’m in no position to doubt...”
The admiral banged his fist on the desk, causing some papers and the lieutenant to jump. “Say it straight out!”
“It’s just that no man can breathe under water!” he blurted. “Sir.”
“Good, good. Now we’re getting someplace.” The admiral smiled. “Now tell me, how do you think he pulls this stunt off?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know.” The admiral chuckled. “Now, imagine yourself in command here. You find some jerko washed up on the beach. You get him revived and cleaned up. You put him through some tests. You see those tests yourself, just as you and I have. You see him stay under water for hours, even sleep under water. You see him dive to thirty thousand feet in the pressure tank. You see him race a dolphin and win. You see him dig a torpedo out of the mud and bring it up faster than a CURV. You witness all this. You can doubt it all you want. Try to figure it out. You figure the jerko’s got an angle, and one day you’ll put your finger on his tricks. Right?”
“Yes sir.”
“Sure. Then you lose the Sea Quest down in the Mariana. You got nothing that can go down there after it. Except maybe Jerko. Your Houdini there. Maybe he can work his magic one more time and find the Sea Quest.” The admirai poured two more glasses of rum. “You haven’t got time to figure him out. You got time for a yes or a no. And it’s up to you, Commander Ainsley. What do you say?”
“I don’t know.”
“Wanna be a lieutenant for the rest of your life, and a go-fer for the admiral?”
“No sir. I mean..”
“Do you dive the jerko, yes or no?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Yes is right. You dive him. But that’s the easy part, right?”
“Easy?”
“Yes or no is easy, comparatively. Now comes the harder part. You lose Jerko. The whole shebang falls apart. What do you do now?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“You think, Lieutenant Ainsley. You think hard. Now’s the time you try to figure it ali out. You think like you never thought before. You wring your brain. You got to come up with something. Isn’t that right?”
“Yes sir.”
“And here’s the hardest part of all: you come up blank. You sit here in this chair, commanding this important mission, you are faced with total failure, and you can’t think of anything to do. Ain’t that a fix, Lieutenant Ainsley?”
“Yes sir. It surely is, sir.”
“And what’re you gonna do about it?”
“Me, sir?”
“You. I’ll tell you what you’re gonna do. You’re gonna put all your doubts and second-guesses aside. You’re gonna support your admiral inside and out, heart and soul. You’re gonna think about Dr. Merrill out on that ship and Mark Harris seven miles underneath it, and you’re gonna hope with all you got that somehow they can put this thing back together and get out of it. You know why?”
“Unh, well...”
“’Cause I put em there, Ainsley.”
Elizabeth finally allowed herself to be relieved at the console, agreeing that so long as the detectors were picking up nothing, a qualified technician might just as well stare at the monitors for a while.
She was supposed to rest, but instead she took Ernie Davis to the debriefing room. She poured them both some coffee and sat across the table from him.
The eyes of both were red-rimmed with weariness. For a moment they both stared at the black porthole. There were no stars, no moon, nothing visible out in the night. The bridge reported clouds, maybe some rain, but no storm expected.
“Okay, Ernie,” she said finally, “give it back to me, piece by piece.”
“Gee, Doctor,” he slowly turned his coffee mug in his hands and stared at it, “I don’t know what I can add to what you already know. We went down easy, you know, to two hundred. I’ll admit I was curious about the guy. I liked him, but there was something different about him, you know? But it wasn’t worrying me none. He seemed to know what he was doing. I had my mind on the dive.
“Then we got down there to two hundred, and I was testing my line, and talking to you. Then I seen him take off his gear. Like, I gotta admit, I was really stunned. I don’t even remember what he took off first and second and like that. I was just dumfounded, you might say.”
“How was he acting? What was his mood?”
“Well, he’s like, you never could tell what his mood was. He didn’t smile or nothin’. Except for what he was doing, which shocked me down there, he seemed to be just like before—serious, quick, efficient. He just took off his stuff and handed it to me and stepped off the platform.”
“And then?”
“It was strange. Everything was, you might say. But it was strange how he acted in the open water. He started doing all sorts of gymnastics and stuff, you know, spinning around, head over heels, bobbing and weaving, that kind of stuff.”
“Right next to the platform.”
“Yes, in fact. Almost like he was putting on a show for me.”
“Did it seem like he was reflecting some kind of mood then?”
“Yes it did. It did. Again, he didn’t smile. But I would say, from the way he was behaving, he was happy. That’s how I would describe it. Happy as a kid just let out of school, or a guy just let out of jail. But then suddenly he stopped all that, waved to me, and took off straight down.”
“Now Ernie, this may be a hard thing to answer, because I’m asking you for a guess. But did you have any feeling at all that he might have been so happy swimming freely out there that he would just abandon the mission and go away?”
Ernie thought for a moment. “Just before he went out of sight, he stopped one more time to give me the thumbs-up. To my way of thinking, as a diver, that means just one thing: you’re gonna go ahead and do your job.”
She nodded slowly, took a sip of coffee, and leaned across the table. “Now, Ernie. Anything you want to ask me? About Mark Harris or the mission?”
“No, ma’am, if you don’t mind. I got an inkling, from your conversations and stuff. Just now I’d rather know only what I gotta know to be helpful. I’ll do anything you want. I’m ready to dive, go down on a recovery—whatever.”
“Thanks, Ernie.” She smiled and tapped his arm. “We’ve really got a good team.”
“Yeah. Except that the best part of it’s wandering around down there on the bottom of the ocean, running into who knows what kinda trouble.”
“You think he’s down there then, still functioning?”
“Just a feeling. But you know as well as I do, when you dive a lot, and get used to working deep, you get to trust your feelings. I got a feeling Mark Harris is down there somewhere tryin’ to do his job.” He paused. “Or maybe not.”
“That about sums it up, Ernie, I guess.”
chapter 7
It was not rest Mark needed, but water. The room into which he was guided and left alone contained a double bunk, a dresser, a mirror, a closet, and a shower.
As soon as Schubert had shut the door and left, Mark pulled off his clean-room suit and stepped into the shower. He turned the cold water on full and tipped his face to the nozzle, leaning virtually against it, directing the spray into his mouth.
He stayed that way for approximately as long as one would be expected to take a nap.
He was still not sure how or even if this undersea complex related to his assigned mission of locating the Sea Quest. But until the submarine appeared on the scene, he had found nothing unusual in the trench. And Mr. Schubert’s operation was in the general area of his search. If the Sea Quest lay someplace near where the Navy thought it did, it was likely that Mr. Schubert wou
ld know something about it. If not likely, at least possible.
But it was Mark’s instinct to approach any new situtation cautiously, watching and listening before revealing his own intentions. It had been the same at the Undersea Center with Dr. Merrill.
Here he would not yet reveal his mission, because what Mr. Schubert was all about was still a mystery to him.
Finally he turned off the shower—it wasn’t enough, but it would do for a while. He dried himself and lay down on the bunk, waiting for the knock on the door that would summon him to the promised revelations by Mr. Schubert.
“Come in, come in,” Schubert beckoned to the French woman scientist, “let’s have it.”
She entered his of ice, followed by a lean, grayhaired man with a badge pinned to his chest that said SUPERVISOR. She put a sheaf of papers on the desk in front of Schubert.
He bent quickly over the papers, which were scientific readouts, and examined them closely, flipping them over one after another.
The woman and the supervisor stood silently.
“Hmm, grmmp, fsss,” came the mumblings from his mouth. His lips moved incessantly as he scanned the papers, tracing his index finger under certain lines, tapping it on certain others.
At last he leaned back and scowled. “Garbage. Incorrect, imprecise, out of tune. I could have got better stuff from an M.I.T. freshman. It doesn’t add up. It doesn’t jibe. It wouldn’t work. If I used these numbers here, the computers would spit them right back out at me, laughing as they did.”
“The mathematicians are redoing the computations,” the woman said in a monotone.
“Well, they better get cracking or we’re going to miss the bus. Get these chicken tracks out of my sight.”
She quickly scooped up the papers and backed away from the desk.
“Go.”
She left.
“Now then, George.” He nodded to the supervisor,_ who stepped up to the desk. “I need that other report, about our unexpected visitor. I want to know exactly what I have here. Where does that stand?”
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