The Watch Below

by James White

  " You are navigating for the fleet," Deslann broke in gently. "You have sole responsibility, so there is no need for you to share any of the credit." He paused as Gerrol wriggled briefly at the compliment, then went on, "As for our position in the formation, the reason might be that you would be expected to take slightly greater pains with your astrogation if you personally are the first to suffer by a mistake. Our psychologists have some funny ideas at times."

  "They do indeed, sir," said Gerrol, with feeling.

  Such as forbidding all personal contact between the two captains carried by the ships in the fleet which had crews. While Captain Deslann was being warmed, Captain Gunt had already been cooled, because the psychologists held that a captain was, and of necessity had to be, the sole authority on his ship. They maintained that discipline and efficiency would be seriously undermined if even for a short period the ship possessed two supreme and equal authorities. Apart from the effect on the crew there was also the possibility that the two supreme authorities might disagree regarding the handling of a problem and ultimately resort to violence as a solution. As well, and to guard against the opposite eventuality, the two captains were forbidden to leave taped messages or even advice for each other because of the danger of their discussing things in too much detail, of sharing responsibility too much until finally the buck was passed back and forth so often that it became lost and the ship with it. Deslann was not even supposed to talk about Gunt to the other officers, and vice versa.

  Deslann could appreciate the psychologists' position, but he thought that some kind of transition period should have been allowed -- even if only half a day. A short talk with his predecessor would have been of great value to both of them and Deslann did not see how such a brief discussion between equals could end in their biting lumps out of each other's tails.

  Psychologists, he decided, had a very low opinion of people.

  But if he could not speak to the other captain there was always Gerrol who, as astrogator, was second in command to both captains. Talking things over with Gerrol would be a delicate business, however, since he would have to discuss his predecessor's work with neither of them admitting the other captain's existence. Still, it would have to be done and the time to begin was now.

  "The crew?" asked Deslann suddenly. "Are any of them cold yet?"

  "Warm, sir, all five of us," Gerrol replied. "We thought it only proper to wait until you . . . until he . . ." The astrogator faltered, aware that he had almost committed the unforgivable sin of mentioning the other captain, then went on quickly, "We've been very busy, sir, you understand. Post-acceleration checks, periodic checking of each refrigeration unit, observation, computation and transmission of course corrections to 800-odd ships -- corrections which had to be made many, many times.

  "There was a lot to do, sir," he went on, "and the time passed very quickly for us. But now all that can be done has been done, so far as the fleet is concerned. Present deviations are so small that they will require several years to become manifest, so that there is no longer anything for us to do that warrants continued aging on our part. Provided you have no orders to the contrary, sir, we would like to pay our respects and . . ."

  "Very sensible," said Deslann, breaking in, "but it will have to wait until after my inspection and you have all submitted your reports. . . . I take it that you all wish to be cooled as soon as possible, that there are no individual projects needing to be tidied up?"

  Deslann had to remind himself that his crew had already experienced ten years of shipboard life, while he, so far as his conscious mind was concerned, had only just arrived. He did not believe that he was becoming afraid of being the only warm and conscious being in the whole ship; it was simply that he would have preferred that his approaching solitude come in easy stages. At the same time he could not order one or more of his officers to spend precious biological time with him simply because he wanted someone to talk to. . . .

  "Nothing of importance, sir," Gerrol replied. "Most of us think the sooner the better."

  "Most of you? You mean it isn't unanimous?"

  "No, sir. One of the officers objects to being cooled. He says that he has given his reasons to the cap- . . . I mean the other . . ." Gerrol floundered for a moment, then ended awkwardly, "I'm very sorry, sir. I . . . the details of the incident will no doubt be in the captain's log. . . ."

  While concealing his amusement at the other's near panic at mentioning the one-who-must-never-be-mentioned, Deslann was having some mixed feelings at the news. He could not decide whether to be pleased at the possibility of having someone to talk to for a while or angry at his predecessor for handing him what might, by the sound of it, turn out to be a major problem. And, much as he would have liked to have gained a general idea of this problem from the astrogator, he knew that this was impossible at present. Gerrol was far too embarrassed by his slip to discuss anything which might have a close connection with Captain Gunt.

  Psychologists!

  Aloud, he said, "The private log can wait until after my inspection, a duty which I shall perform forthwith. Follow me, if you please."

  The quarters of the crew and himself together with their adjoining cold rooms did not detain them very long, even though Deslann was particularly thorough in his inspection of the refrigeration units and their associated timing devices -- there were three separate and supposedly foolproof timers to each unit, just in case one or even two of them proved faulty. Such an occurrence was unlikely, but if the individual members of a ship's crew could not be warmed and revived at an exact and precalculated time, their tremendous fleet might just as well never have set out. The communications room, built into the middle of a computer which filled five entire deck levels, required the longest time of all -- even though he was unable, because he lacked the specialized knowledge, to give it more than a cursory check-out.

  It was from Communications that the course corrections signals went out to more than eight hundred ships, including the fifty in the advance contingent which did not have crews and therefore had to be controlled remotely. And it was the computer, its two specialist operators, and Gerrol -- not necessarily in that order of importance, the way Gerrol told it -- who produced the data for these corrections. The engineer helped with computing and communications, since the power room would be fully operational only during an approach and landing, and the ship's medical officer was also helping out -- through sheer boredom, Deslann suspected, because the crew were in good health and the passengers were where aches and pains and bacteria could not reach them, far below freezing point.

  Before continuing aft Deslann chatted with the other officers, but briefly, because he did not want to acquire any strong impressions of them before he had a chance to study their personality outlines in the private log. Not that he had much chance of talking anyway, since Gerrol was doing most of it! There were several occasions when Deslann found it hard to conceal his irritation with the astrogator and felt like reminding him that, while it was quite true that this was his first look at this particular ship, he had been very thoroughly briefed and had had intensive training on a ship identical with this one before being cooled. Gerrol kept talking to him as if he were a cadet who had yet to shed his first scales!

  In the passenger well, however, Gerrol stopped talking. It was a place for silence.

  Because so much space was taken up by the computer, Deslann's ship carried two hundred rather than the customary five hundred passengers. As he dived slowly past the tiers of iceboxes -- there were no fancy timers, no sophistication at all on these units -- and felt the cold being conducted from them, Deslann began to think some very disquieting thoughts. In a way all these people were dead. They had come willingly, even eagerly, on board ship ten years ago and died. Life had stopped for them then and should some unforeseen catastrophe occur and the crew with their complex, foolproof timers be unable to revive them, they would remain dead. There was no way of their ever knowing when they became permanently instead of te
mporarily dead.

  Or were they truly, physiologically dead in their Cold Sleep? Was it not possible, despite the halting of all life processes, that they dreamed? It might take a whole decade for a single thought or a mind picture to form, and as long again to dissolve, but something must be going on in the frigid subconscious of those frozen minds, incredibly slow and faint though it must be -- something which furnished a tenuous link between an outwardly dead body and the living soul. . . .

  "This officer who objects to being cooled," Deslann said suddenly, "is it, uh, a religious matter, do you think?"

  "No, sir," said Gerrol, his tone subdued by their surroundings. "So far as we can gather -- he hasn't given us his reasons, you understand -- he wants to complete a private line of research. It's the medical officer, sir."

  Is that all! thought Deslann, and continued with his inspection feeling much relieved.

  It looked as if he were going to have company for a while after all, and without having to pull rank to get it. At the same time, if the medical officer proved to be unpleasant company or if his research did not merit the continued use of biological time -- time that would be infinitely more precious at the end of the trip than it was now -- Deslann would have no hesitation in pulling rank to end it. But there was no sense in trying to decide how long he should allow his medical officer to remain warm when all he had to go on at present was a brief meeting and a few words of conversation. The time to decide things like that was after he had studied all the data available in the private log.

  The private log was restricted to the captains of the ship and contained, in addition to the captains' notes regarding their officers and the operation of the ship, a complete and detailed personality outline of each crew member. The psychologists had not hesitated to make recommendations for the various courses of action should anything go mentally amiss with the ships's officers, but where Captain Gunt had added his data there were, of course, no personal comments or advice, just the bare facts.

  Concerning the ship's medic, whose file Deslann examined first after completing his inspection, the bare facts were more than sufficient. Reading it the captain for the first time began to appreciate the true wisdom of the Board of Psychology's ruling that there be no personal contact between the co-commanders of a ship. Had the situation been different and had there been a chance for him to meet his colleague face to face for a few minutes, Deslann knew that he would have spent all the time available in telling his co-captain exactly what he thought of him.

  Captain Gunt had presented him with a problem, and the more he read the worse it grew.

  III

  When the first torpedo struck Gulf Trader, Wallis was at the top of the ladder which connected the aft pump room with the floor of Number Twelve tank, gripping the topmost rung with one hand while the other spun the wheel sealing the watertight hatch set in the deck above his head. He was doing this because it was part of his naval training to close watertight doors when a ship was under threat of enemy attack and also because the pump-room floor was level with the weather deck and there was an appreciable quantity of water sloshing around the place. When the injured were being moved to the base of the ladder, Wallis did not want them to be soaked by an intermittent waterfall, or the rungs made more slippery than they were at present. Moving the special patients up to the pump room would be a tricky enough job without adding a wet ladder to the difficulties.

  The first hit was like a distant, discordant gong, heard clearly but not felt except as a tingling vibration in the metal of the ladder. But when the second torpedo struck the engine room, which was just thirty yards aft of his position, the noise was like a physical blow and the ladder seemed to jump away from him. As he fell backwards his right leg slipped between two of the rungs and instinctively he hooked it over the lower rung, gripping it tightly in the fold behind his knee. The result was that his head described a wide arc which ended sharply on another rung lower down. Wallis was unconscious during the remainder of the fall and did not know that his left arm snagged another rung, which turned him right side up again, and that when he landed at the bottom of the tank twenty feet below it was roughly feet-first, and he was so relaxed due to his unconsciousness that he did not break anything.

  He came to with a pain in the back of his head and regular, stingng pains which were much worse, affecting both sides of his face. The features of Lieutenant Radford came gradually into focus as he opened his eyes and a few seconds later he realized that the doctor was slapping his face, hard and rapidly, with both hands. Wallis was so shocked that it was several seconds before he could even speak.

  "In-insubordination," he managed finally.

  "Resuscitation," said Radford.

  Some of the tension seemed to leave the doctor's face and he went on quickly, "You've been out about twenty minutes, sir. We've been torpedoed -- one in the stern and I think one up for'ard. After the big bang there were a couple of dull thumps. They sounded like steam explosions, so the engine room must be holed. I'm telling you this in case you're still a bit dazed, you may know about it already. Do you think you can stand up?"

  "Yes," said Wallis.

  With the help of the surgeon lieutenant on one side and the ladder on the other he managed to stand up. While doing so he kept his eyes tightly shut, wondering if his head was going to split down the middle or just fall off. When surprisingly it did neither, Wallis was able to concentrate again on what the doctor was saying.

  " . . . No way of knowing the exact attitude of the ship with all this pitching and rolling, but I think we're down by the stern," Radford said hurriedly. "I tried to open the pump-room hatch, but there's too big a weight of water up there for me to push open the seal. We can't get out at this and and I don't know anything about the geography of these blasted tanks beyond the sick bay in Eleven. Is there another way out?"

  The picture of what had happened was becoming clear to him, but somehow he did not feel any of the uncontrollable panic that he expected to feel in such circumstances. Perhaps he was just too tired for panic, or not yet fully conscious. Dully, he said, "Amidships. Number Five saddle tank, port side. . . . But no, we can't use that. . . ."

  During the storm the cargo had shifted in that tank. The narrow, steep-sided passage which had been dug out of the cargo and which joined the tank entrances at floor level to the ladder from the deck above had disappeared under an avalanche of dried-egg crates and bean sacks when its walls caved in. It would be possible to clear a way to that ladder, but not with just two men working on it, not in time . . .

  "Forward of Number One, in the coffer dam," Wallis went on quickly, stumbling away from the ladder and with Radford close behind him. "There's a ladder running up the dam into the forepeak. It's going to be tricky getting those people up it though: we'll have to take them up piggy-back. The dam is less than three feet wide and there are structural members to stop us swaying up the stretchers on ropes, but it's the best place to get out. With that hit in the engine room we must be down by the stern, and the foredeck will be the last to go under. . . ."

  Wallis checked himself suddenly. He was talking too much and too fast. Even to himself he was beginning to sound panic-stricken.

  They went from Number Twelve, which was a saddle tank on the port side, into Number Eleven, where the doctor had his special sick bay, and through into Nine without stopping to look at the patients. They were in Seven, another center tank, when the lights went out. But Radford produced his pen-light and used this diagnostic tool with its tiny beam to light the way forward to Number Six, where there were a workbench and a rack of emergency lamps.

  In the tanks where they did not trip over packing cases, bundles of cable and scattered welding gear, they stumbled against and cursed and climbed over portions of the Trader's cargo, because even in the sections where modifications were currently under way there was food stacked in odd corners. The whole point of the U-boat blockade was to starve Britain into submission by cutting off supplies of food and
war material; consequently every available cubic foot of cargo space moving eastward across the Atlantic had to be put to use. Not to have done so would have been tantamount to treason, considering the frightful cost in lives and shipping which had to be paid for the vessels successfully running the gauntlet. In Gulf Trader's tanks the available cargo space was small in relation to the ship's total capacity because of the modifications, but the storm had tumbled it all over the place. Climbing over and around it was like running one of the commando obstacle courses, with the darkness and a heaving deck underfoot just to complicate things.

  We'll never make it, Wallis thought desperately, we'll never do it in time!

  Wallis did not know how much time they had exactly, only that it was taking them far too long to reach the fore-hold and that it would take a whole lot longer to move Dickson and the two girls there. Since the fall from the ladder his mind had been confused, but now it was beginning to clear and he felt desperately afraid. The ship was sinking and they had to get up on deck -- he had to get up on deck! Trying to save the injured, or even Radford, was becoming less important somehow. . . .

  They left the watertight doors open behind them as they passed through, to save time during later trips and because all the tanks were free of water. This was a very good sign. Wallis reminded himself of how incredibly buoyant tankers were supposed to be, especially when running empty. Trader wasn't empty, her cargo tended to be small, dense, and heavy, comprising as it did food and welding gear, but her tanks were intact and there was a lot of air in them. As well, there seemed to be a definite upward tilt in their direction of travel -- she was certainly down by the stern. The fact that he had the sensation of constantly moving uphill might have been caused by extreme fatigue or wishful thinking or both, but Wallis did not think so. As they stumbled through the door between Three and One and saw that the forward tank was as dry as all the others, Wallis began to lose some of his fear and to feel ashamed of what he had not yet lost.