Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea

by Theodore Sturgeon

  “A Ten might not do the job,” Crane pointed out. “This one positively will.”

  Jamieson showed up: now, this man showed fear—white, wet, tight-drawn fear. “Have you seen Dr. Hiller?”

  Emery nodded toward a door on the inboard bulkhead. “Down to the aquarium, I think.”

  Wordless, Jamieson sprang to the door and disappeared. Emery said, “Ah youth. Ah spring,” dourly.

  The p.a. system crackled at them, “Captain Crane. Call the greenhouse, please.”

  Crane swore and padded back to the sick bay. “Crane,” he said into the intercom, which told him,

  “There’s a lot of shipping hanging around up there. We’re in luck one way, though—either they have no sound gear or they’re not using it.”

  “Keep me posted,” said Crane, and went back to the Admiral. He reported, and Nelson shook his head. “That is un-good. With no company, we could fire this thing from on deck. But if they see us before we launch, they’ll blow us clear to the Van Allen belt.”

  “I’m going out, sir,” said Crane. “Lu, snatch me down that manual launching trigger.”

  Emery, on tiptoe, got one of the heavy, small, flat devices. “Give it here,” said Nelson. He looked at his wrist. “I have 15 hours 39 minutes uh . . . nine, ten seconds.”

  “I make it nine seconds,” said Emery. I set it this morning.”

  “Close enough.” Nelson palmed a knife out of his pocket, opened a screwdriver blade and worked on the trigger. One screw wound clockwork inside; another set the time. “Here you go.”

  Crane took the device and ran forward, followed by Emery, who took the tanks from their hook and assisted in getting them strapped on. “Don’t stop to go fishin’ or anything,” he said with forced casualness. “You have all of nineteen minutes.”

  Crane nodded and pulled on the hood. Emery checked the zippers and seals, and coupled in the hose. Crane fumbled his gloved hand over the seam between faceplate and hood and found it intact.

  Emery held up both hands and shook them in front of the faceplate, and Crane responded with thumb and forefinger in a circle. He stepped into the closet-sized airlock, pulled the hatch shut and swung the dog-lever, then opened the seacock. The chamber filled with alarming speed. He glanced at his wrist pressure gauge as soon as his face was submerged, and grunted. Close to 400 feet. The suit could take it and he could take it, but at such pressures a tank of air was not good for very long.

  He got a grip on the outer hand-hold, and opened the hull gate. Suction snatched at him; apparently the submarine was making as much way as possible, spiralling upward. Well and good—it would be nice to get into shallower, less pressurized water, but not at the expense of being swept away.

  Gingerly he moved out, found the grips, and climbed slowly to the deck, then aft, taking precarious holds, fingers and toe-tips, on a cleat here, a stanchion-socket there. The railing around the lower fillet of the conning tower was one of the greatest luxuries he had ever known. He clung to it, gasping, gave himself a moment to get his breath.

  He did not get his breath. He began gasping harder. And he suddenly knew what this meant, this tightening band around the chest, this brass taste in the back of his throat. He had come out without a full tank.

  He would like very, very much to know who had drained most of the air out of his tank. Or who had left this emergency suit unchecked . . . but no, not on the Seaview.

  Let go, then, and kick for the surface.

  He had something to do first, though. Already it was getting hard to think. His hand strayed to the bulk of the trigger clipped to his belt, and he remembered what it was for. He began to edge over to the missile bulges.

  Which one? Which one? And then he remembered: the XII. He let go the rail and caught a stanchion fitting, lost his feet and for an awful moment streamed away from it like a pennant. Then he slowly doubled up, got a knee around the bulge, and then, with all his concentration draining to his hands, he watched his hands unclip the trigger and place it slowly and carefully on the bulge so that the t-shaped bar at the back engaged the slot on the warhead. He pressed it down, and down, and—click! Oh, a most satisfying click! as it latched.

  He uncoiled himself clumsily then, put out a hand and leaned and let the merciless current wash his arm out and against the lower rail. He got one hand on it, two, let go with his knee, and was swept against the conning tower. He got one toe hooked into the rail and clung there, trying, then failing, to hold his head still against the rush of water.

  For a long time he lay there, his head bobbing ludicrously in random eddies, and he began to dream . . . of Cathy, of the arch of fire, and shadows in the world, killing each other, of monsters like living cliffs with forests of tentacles, and they were tearing, tearing at him . . .

  With a roar the Polaris XII sprang up and away, throwing back a hammer blow of compressed air. It caught Crane and blew him off the flank of the submarine like a dustmote, sent him spinning end over end into the endless depths. Only partially aware, he went on dreaming . . . and spinning free away from life was no more unusual a dream than the others he was having, as for example the dream about Alvarez, wearing a T-shirt and navy issue shorts, fighting him and trying to get his helmet off.

  He fought back jovially, but knew he would lose, because nothing mattered any more: what happens to the universe when its center dies? And then the dream Alvarez got his seals parted and the zipper down and the hood pushed back, so that without a mask he couldn’t see any more and the crushing salt water, too warm, was in his suit with him.

  Somebody pulled down a black curtain.

  Somebody hurt the gums over his front teeth, hurt them agonizingly. He opened his mouth to yell and got a hard mouthful of plastic rubber with a hole in the middle. Through the hole, and this was the most improbable part of the dream; through the hole, air came rushing, cool, sweet, wonderful air.

  He opened his eyes. The warm salt water stung them, and without a mask all he could see was the vague outline of a face close to his, Alvarez all right, Alvarez doing a thing typically far out: Alvarez wearing an eye mask but no mouthpiece.

  Mouthpiece. He drew at the mouthpiece, drew again, and when Alvarez tugged gently at it, he let it go. Alvarez shoved it into his own mouth, pulled mightily at it, and had it back in Crane’s mouth almost before he missed it. Crane reached full consciousness abruptly, and from then on it was easier.

  They rose through the water that was like a warm bath, then a hot bath, taking turns at the mouthpiece, clinging together.

  And at last they broke surface.

  It was afternoon, and the sun was cruel. Over the sky arched the firebelt, bigger and angrier than he had yet seen it. Around them were ships, from a mile to four or five away—eight of them, a mismatched flotilla: one destroyer, a chaser, two private yachts and an oil tanker among them. They seemed to be converging on a spot four miles or so away, which was foolish: did they think for a minute that Seaview would hang around directly under the launching point?

  Alvarez squeezed his arm and pointed. Bobbing in the water a half-mile away was the Seaview’s camera buoy, its 360° lens glinting in the angry light. As he watched, it began to swim toward him.

  He looked at Alvarez, dog paddling in the water beside him.

  “And where did you come from?”

  “The hatch on the starboard side.”

  “Why?” Crane palmed water out of his red eyes so he could see the castaway’s face better. “I thought everything was God’s will: let it ride; with you. Since when did you start mixing in?”

  “God’s will is mysterious,” said Alvarez, and spat salt, “but it is never stupid. To bow to God’s will is not to surrender to Satan. When I see stupidity I see the hand of the Devil, and that I will fight until I am dead.”

  “What stupidity are you talking about?”

  “First my own; not seeing to it that those tanks were full.”

  “You weren’t responsible for that.”

  “Of
course I was.” He spoke almost without accent, except for the slightly exaggerated Spanish r.

  “I am the one who used it, and then never thought to replace the tanks.”

  “Used it when?”

  Alvarez tugged at Crane’s sleeve and raised it, almost ducking him. “You don’t recall the yellow suit?”

  Crane goggled at the yellow sleeve. “That was you saved me from the shark, there by the telephone cable?”

  “Fighting the stupid. No diver goes out like that alone. Not ever. That was the first thing I ever learned about diving.”

  “What do you know about diving?”

  “I am a frogman. That is why I was taken on that Arctic biology expedition. I collected samples under the ice.”

  “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

  “Why didn’t you ever ask me?”

  The information quite staggered him: and yet he saw how easy it was for Alvarez, especially a skilled Alvarez, to slip away from the mob in the greenhouse, go back to his quarters, out again through the corridor door, into the lock and the yellow suit. He recalled the patch of light from the bows of the submarine, and its dark margins, through which a diver could move, and move back again unseen. And—why hadn’t he ever told anyone . . .? then he recalled what Emery had said: this man genuinely doesn’t care if anyone likes him.

  There was a gurgle to their left, and the camera buoy sank. “Reeled in,” said Crane. He glanced at the sky. “I wonder how long it’ll take—if it takes? Alvarez—do you think it will work?”

  Alvarez tilted his head to his shoulder: a shrug. “I do not know enough about it to judge that.”

  “You don’t think it’s a stupidity, then. You haven’t been fighting it.”

  “No, I have not.”

  You believed this man.

  The periscope, then the sail broke water nearby, the brilliant flash of the signal lamps going sixty to the minute as it emerged. Crane looked over at the ships. Smoke poured from the destroyer’s stacks, and one of the corvettes spat a gout of smoke from the foredeck.

  “Relax,” snapped Crane. “Relax altogether. They lobbed a shell, and the concussion’ll hit you like—”

  The shell fell short; the concussion hit them like whatever it was Crane was about to say—hard, and all over.

  “Why the hell couldn’t he wait,” complained Crane, meaning Nelson, his surfacing before the sky could give any evidence.

  “I think perhaps the Admiral would die, and kill all hands, rather than miss that,” said Alvarez in his calm voice, and pointed.

  Crane looked, looked at the sky. There was a dark crease along the firebelt; it grew longer like the smoke trail of a jet plane, only faster, and it wasn’t white, but dark . . . and not dark either, but a lack of radiance up the spine of the arch of fire. It spread as it lengthened, making of itself a long wedge, a growing slender spearhead. And it lengthened on both ends, the narrow point—that would be the missile—and the broadening base, which went more slowly, but eating up more fire, in the opposite direction.

  Crane glanced at the submarine. The hatch was open, and on its edge sat the Admiral, and his hatch was open as well: he gaped up at the sky as happily as a kid on a fence watching his first model airplane actually fly. Below him, portside and aft, the bright, white signal lamp blinked urgently.

  Crane knew enough code to read “LOOK UP YOU IDIOTS” over and over again. He turned and looked at the ships, especially the trigger-happy destroyer. They were all turning, pointing their bows at the submarine, building up white fans of bow wave. White, white at last, not pink-tinged any more.

  “Hey, you on the pigboat!” Crane roared. “Goin’ as far as 58th Street?” and he thrust up a thumb in traditional hitchhiker’s style.

  The Admiral shaded his eyes, bellowed down the tower, vaulted out, slid down the handrails, and sprinted over the deck like a teenager. “Come aboard, dammit. Hey did you see that? Did you ever in this world see what happened to the firebelt?” and he burst into an echoing roar or unabashed, gloating laughter, ending in a wild whoop that may well have been heard as far as Midway Island.

  “Where the hell did you find him?” asked the Admiral, contentedly wetting his feet as he assisted the Captain aboard.

  “In hell,” said Crane, helping Alvarez in his turn, “and he found me. Nelse, Nelse, you’re a pigheaded old rooster, which is some animal, but I congratulate you from the bottom of my bottom.”

  “I couldn’t’ve done it without you, and I wish nobody had ever used that line before and this was the first time.”

  “I didn’t really do anything. I’ve got a secret—nothing can happen to me. God wouldn’t risk it.”

  Nelson whistled. “Folks get punished for that kind of talk,” he kidded.

  “I used to think that before I found out who I am. Hey!” he roared in greeting to the crew who were coming out of the sail hatch like hornets out of a fallen nest. They roared in answer.

  They made way as the Admiral, the Captain and the castaway climbed up. “Don’t stay out too long in this,” said the Admiral, nodding at Crane and Alvarez. Crane touched his forehead; already it was red and tender. The crew looked up respectfully at the sun, suddenly much more authoritative now that its rival was no more.

  In the control room, they parted from the Admiral, who went forward to his suite and to get into his ribbons-and-gold; judging from the traffic afloat, he was about to get one great gay gorgeous boarding party.

  “You really believe it now, don’t you?” Alvarez asked him quietly as they walked aft.

  Crane knew just what he meant. “I’ll tell you,” he said confidentially, “I’m going to act as if it was true. I’ll be a good man and a good commander. I’ll suffer for the sins of all the shadows, and know all the time that it doesn’t really matter, not to them, only to me. They’re safe. I’m not. I’ll be the careful one. I’ll be the good one.” He laughed exultantly. “What about you? All this while you’ve said the firebelt was God’s judgment on evil.”

  “And so it was,” said Alvarez composedly, “and so it would have been if you had failed.”

  “Not a judgment then: a test.”

  “If you had failed? a judgment. Humanity didn’t fail . . . I imagine that’s all God wanted to know.”

  Alvarez held up his strong narrow hand in salute, and stepped into the sick bay.

  Crane continued aft, through the magazine. As he passed the door to the aquarium, it banged open and Dr. Jamieson sprang out. He was whitefaced, harrowed.

  “Jamie! What’s the—”

  “It’s Dr. Hiller, she—she’s sick: I have to get a . . . Don’t! Don’t go down there. She—”

  From the depths of the aquarium chamber, echoing round and round its curved walls and ringing against its ceiling, came a single long scream of mortal agony.

  Crane shoved the jittering doctor aside and sprang down the steel ladder. He still wore his yellow wet-suit, which still wore its flippers, so that negotiating the ladder was more of a leap than a run. The water in the large main tank was swirling, and as he gained the catwalk he saw something long and white loom up in the water and sink again under a darting black shape. Without hesitation he vaulted over the rail and down into the water. The sharks, startled, shot away and turned. He bent into the water and came up with the shredded body of Susan Hiller. Even in that mad moment he could experience a profound shock at the sight of her face—eyes wide, features composed: upside down and dripping, and stained from a terrible rip in the side of the neck, the face seemed still to be just . . . watching.

  “No, Lee—No—get out! Get out!” screamed the doctor.

  A shark slid in and he lashed back with his left foot, catching it so hard on the snout that pain ran all the way up to his hip. He waded to the side and ungently dumped the body over the edge of the tank, got his hands on it and heaved himself up. Something caught at him and pulled; he kicked viciously and got himself seated on the edge. “Don’t worry, they can’t bite through this stuff
,” he said, and lifting his right leg to get out, saw that the flipper had been sheared right off within half an inch of his big toe.

  He knelt on the steel deck outside and composed the ruined body as well as he could, and tried to cover it with what was left of her clothes.

  “Now this is wrong,” he said. “This is wrong, just when everything is . . .” He looked up at the doctor, who was coming around the end of the tank, with all the fingers of his left hand in his mouth and his eyes too round. Crane stood up. “She was so damn fine.”

  “So damn fine,” said the doctor, kneeling in his turn. He touched the wet hair. “She was so . . . beautiful. She . . . tried to kill you.”

  “What?”

  Jamieson nodded miserably. “She told me. She cut one of the wet-suits when you tried to tap the cable, but you wore another suit.”

  “She didn’t!”

  “She told me,” he said again, brokenly. “She got Hodges under deep hypnosis, made him kill O’Brien.”

  “I don’t believe it. And anyway, people don’t kill . . .”

  “They don’t kill against their principles, no, but they can be made to kill something else . . . a wax dummy or a robot or a gorilla. She just made him see O’Brien as something else. And then when Hodges knew what he had done he couldn’t live with it and he took that stuff she gave him.”

  “Jamie! Jamie! Cut it out! She never—”

  “And,” said Jamieson relentlessly, “she wrecked the launcher, thinking you wouldn’t find it until too late. And when she found out you still had an ace up your sleeve, she tried to blow up the Seaview.”

  “She—”

  “She told me!” the doctor suddenly screamed at him. Shaken, Crane shut up while the doctor went on, keening over the body. “She took a ball bomb and went into the pile chamber with it.”

  “That wouldn’t go off in air! It’s an underwater bomb and has an interlock that—”

  “You know that. I know that. She didn’t. The one little thing she didn’t know.” He put out a shaking hand and gently removed something from the tattered strip of cloth that covered one breast, and handed it to the Captain. It was a lapel dosimeter, which would glow when the wearer had been exposed, turn pink as a warning of extreme danger. This one shone ruby-red.