The Watch Below

by James White

  It wasn't that he did not want to give the two men the pleasure of verbally cutting each other to pieces, but the airy persiflage would have to be tamped down to a minimum until some of the more important matters were settled.

  It was some time later that the doctor said, "One of the things I don't understand is why they gave us so many electric light bulbs. There must be hundreds of the things. Extra welding gear and tools I can understand, and nonperishable food in the shape of sacks of dried beans, powdered eggs, and tins of Spam. But light bulbs!"

  Wallis said, "You must realize that in time of war it's sometimes easier to route large quantities of material to any given destination than small and that, say, two dozen spare bulbs is below the permissible minimum. Another factor is that they practically gave us this ship and carried out the major structural alterations before we joined it at Houston, and generally have been overgenerous with material and assistance. They are friends who have just recently become allies, you see, and it's my idea that a lot of these friends feel they should have become allies much sooner and this is their way of telling us how they feel. . . ."

  "That's true," said Dickson seriously, and then he added, "except for the Spam. I think the Spam is their way of telling us that they have not quite forgiven us for the War of 1812. . . ."

  The persiflage, Wallis thought, refused to be tamped down.

  Shortly afterwards they ate a freezingly cold meal, made the patients as comfortable as possible, and prepared to sleep. All the available blankets had been used to keep Dickson and the girls warm, so the doctor and Wallis slept bundled together under a heap of sacking. They lay back to back, knees drawn up tightly against their stomachs, completely covered by the sacking and breathing through two lengths of piping. In this way they were able both to pool their body heat and to warm themselves with their own expelled breath.

  But the sacking was coarse and stank of oil, the end of the pipe was shockingly cold even with his handkerchief wrapped around it, and the warm stale air he exhaled gave him a headache as well. When the doctor moved, either because one of the patients needed attention or simply because he was a born wriggler in bed, an icy draught breached the tiny cocoon of warmth which Wallis was trying to build around himself and he would feel like committing murder. And if the doctor did not move he would lie cold and miserable and angry because Radford was asleep and he wasn't.

  At such times he would stare into the blackness of his cocoon, thinking about the absolute blackness of the compartment outside it, of the utter darkness of the ship around it, and of the dark ocean beyond that -- a sort of triple distilled blackness. It never occurred to him at such times that sunlight might be glinting off the waves a few feet above them. Rocked gently but not lulled to sleep by the wave action on the deck below him he would stare and watch the mind pictures which formed on this perfect, utterly black screen, and he would try to think.

  The wave action seemed much less marked than it had been the last time Wallis had tried to sleep. He had a mind picture of the ocean's surface grown strangely calm and he knew that the picture was an unusual one indeed for the North Atlantic in February. A second and more believable picture formed of the great ship, buoyant but in a state of unstable equilibrium, sinking imperceptibly beyond the influence of the waves, drifting slowly deeper as water forced its way into the isolated pockets of air trapped in odd corners of the ship which were not quite so watertight as were the main tanks. He would try to think of some way of dealing with this problem, and if no answer was forthcoming he would shelve it temporarily and think of other problems.

  He couldn't sleep and there was nothing better to do.

  V

  In another ship adrift in an immeasurably vaster ocean, there was also a captain who was trying desperately to find an answer. The problems were similar in that they were both in the life-and-death category, different in that in Deslann's case death, if it came, would touch each and every being in the entire Unthan fleet.

  Deslann's initial anger towards Captain Gunt had changed to a feeling of angry sympathy, with sympathy predominating. He had come to realize the full extent and implications of their dilemma together with the desperate attempts his co-commander had made at finding a solution. Not that Gunt had so forgotten the rules that he had left a personal message for Deslann, but the private log contained a tremendous quantity of material on the problem since it had first been brought to his predecessor's attention a little over a year ago -- all listed in the approved, impersonal manner. These were Gunt's thoughts on the subject. He did not ask Deslann to do anything about it, but at the same time the data made it very clear that Gunt had reached the stage where he had to go cold in favor of the other captain.

  The crew, with the exception of the medical officer, had been pressing Gunt for an early cooling now that their work was done, but he could not give permission for this until he told them everything he knew. At the same time he did not want to tell them the worst before the other captain was made aware of the problem -- for there was always the chance, the log implied, that Captain Deslann with his completely fresh viewpoint would find a solution which Gunt could not. If a solution could not be found, then Deslann could tell all to the crew and hope that one of them might come up with something.

  And if that failed . . .

  Deslann had been unable to find a solution in six days and, because Gerrol was becoming downright impertinent in his requests to be cooled, Deslann had told all to the crew. Or to be more accurate, he was letting the medical officer tell it while be himself observed reactions and tried desperately not to give up hope.

  "But surely there was some indication that this might happen!" Gerrol broke in suddenly. "Hibernation anesthesia was perfected fifteen years ago. The fleet -- the whole operation depends on it!"

  The astrogator stopped, plainly unable to find the words to describe his feelings of outrage and betrayal. From their positions around the control room the two computer technicians and the engineer were also silent, although not, Deslann thought, because they were slow to grasp the implications. With them it was probably a state of emotional shock. Their personalities were more simple and well-rounded than that of the cold, egotistical, highly intelligent, and of necessity selfish Gerrol, so it was to be expected they would feel this thing more strongly and take longer to recover from the shock of being told that they all were as good as dead.

  Looking at each of them in turn the medical officer said defensively, "That is not wholly accurate, Gerrol. The technique was used successfully, but the subject was a volunteer who understood the risks involved. While we were trying to perfect the technique many of the later volunteers were not so lucky as he was. But you must understand that the method had to show only a strong probability of success at that time for the decision to be taken to begin building the fleet. There wasn't enough time for the usual lengthy program of testing given to new drugs and techniques -- "

  "I understand that time was limited, Healer," Gerrol broke in again, "but we were told that the technique was safe -- "

  ". . . Despite this time limit," the healer went on, looking at Gerrol but otherwise ignoring the interruption, "the technique was perfected and rendered safe so far as was possible to do so within our own home planet and solar system ! I must stress that point. It is hard to see how the absence of weight could affect a person whose metabolic processes have been halted in a Cold Sleep tank -- but this might be a factor. It is more likely that subtle differences in background radiation are the cause, or a combination of free fall and radiation, or some factor which we cannot conceive of as yet. Whatever it is it has uncovered a flaw in our suspended animation system. The effects are subtle, but cumulative, and they are serious enough to wreck this whole operation."

  "I don't see that," said the communications officer suddenly, speaking for the first time. "The effects are subtle, you say -- so subtle that they won't actually kill anyone. Why can't we carry on as planned and hope for the best?"

  Bitin
gly, the healer replied, "There is nothing to stop your going ahead as planned and hoping for the best, for as long as you have enough brain left to hope with -- and that won't be for long, believe me! I have now definitely established the fact that with each cooling and subsequent warming there is a deterioration in cell structure, and it is the brain cells which come off worst.

  "I have been working on this since the shutdown of acceleration," he went on more quietly, "nearly ten years ago. The tests were conducted with animals, of course, which means that they could not verbally communicate their symptoms to me, but there are methods of physical and psychological probing which render such communication superfluous. The tests covered the smallest lab animals right up to food animals with eight times the physical mass of ourselves. They were exhaustive and left no room for doubt. I was absolutely sure of this flaw even before the captain's warming added final proof."

  He looked apologetically at Deslann, possibly because what he was about to say might be a breach of privilege, then went on, "The effect after the first warming is minor. There is a mild, peńistent headache which is, of course, susceptible to medication. There is a feeling of mental confusion, also mild, and temporary. It is a little difficult to remember things, but the memories are still available and are complete and accurate.

  "After the second warming," he continued grimly, "the effects would be more -- noticeable. Large segments of memory are no longer available and those remaining have faded or become distorted, the most recent memories or training being the first to go. You will all have had experience with aged relatives, and noticed the gradual decaying of mental processes which seems to peel away the more recent layers of memory so that they live increasingly in the past. What is happening here, however -- and this is an extreme oversimplification, since none of you are advanced in this specialty -- is that the tiny electrochemical charge by which data are stored in the brain cells leaks away, partially at first and then completely, when the brain in question is subjected to repeated hypothermia. After two periods of Long Sleep I would not trust any of you to navigate this ship to the target system, or to land if we got there.

  "After the third or fourth warming," he concluded softly, "I wouldn't trust you to get to the other end of the ship. If you were very lucky you might remember how to talk."

  And on the voyage it was expected that each member of the crew would be cooled and warmed on an average of twenty times, and anything up to fifty times for the two captains. . . .

  Gerrol and the others began asking the questions and putting the suggestions expected of highly intelligent lay people, and Deslann found his attention wandering away from them and from the increasingly testy answers being given by Healer Hellahar. Perhaps it was the effects of his first resuscitation beginning to show, or more likely it was simple autosuggestion brought about by the knowledge of those effects, but his mind seemed bent on dwelling on the period of his late childhood and early maturity.

  Not that any of them were old now, because the aging and infirm, the middle-aged, and the unfit had all been left behind on Untha, together with the young people who had elected to stay and those who had not so elected but for whom there were not enough places in the fleet. The people who went with the fleet were very carefully chosen, the people who crewed the ships were chosen with even greater care, and the crew of the flagship was the result of a physical and psychological screening process which had been carried almost to ridiculous lengths. With Deslann the initial testing had started before he had reached maturity, so that he did not have much childhood, and that which he did have had not been exactly happy.

  This had been due to the atmosphere of fear and tensions which pervaded his home and his world rather than to any failing on the part of his parents. During the past three hundred years Untha's sun had grown steadily hotter and her two great oceans had shrunk until there was no longer a water connection between them. Plant and animal life had long since disappeared from the land surface and in the sea his people were being forced to occupy an ever narrowing life stratum -- between the ocean surface, which was close to boiling point and too hot to allow life without complex refrigeration systems, and the depths where the increased pressure demanded even more complicated forms of protection. And so at an early age Deslann had come to understand the reasons for the atmosphere of tension and fear, and to realize that not only were his people being pressed between an ever deepening layer of boiling heat and the crushing pressures of the ocean depths, they were trying to decide on which of two methods should be adopted to solve the problem. The choice was not easy.

  They could bend all of their considerable technology and resources of metal and power to pushing downward, to building great pressureproof cities on the ocean floor, perhaps extending down into the bed of the ocean itself. In this way they could buy a few more centuries of time for all their people before the oceans boiled completely away and the very water they breathed became superheated steam. Or they could throw all those same resources into an attempt to place a small proportion of their people onto another and more hospitable world.

  To a people who had had space travel for ten generations the choice, although difficult, was perhaps obvious from the start.

  And so a tremendous telescope was built in orbit around Untha, an instrument whose mirror covered a greater area than a large city, and a suitable world had been found. Fifteen generations would come and go during the trip to this planet, but it was cool and its oceans covered four-fifths of its surface and its mass was just right and there were no indications of intelligent life, so that nearer and less-perfect possibilities were not seriously considered. The fleet was built, and during the building the hibernation anesthesia technique was perfected, making it possible to take along many more times the number of people originally intended, so the ships were modified to carry large numbers of passengers who would not require food from the beginning to the end of the tremendous voyage, and great efforts were made to develop foolproof timers for the Long Sleep tanks and remote-control systems for the un-crewed ships.

  The plan finally adopted called for full crews only at the beginning and end of the trip, the interim period being covered by individual crew members who timed themselves to wake for a few hours or days every four of five years for the purpose of checking position and correcting the courses of any wanderers. The ship which was to navigate for the fleet had a crew of six, the sub-fleet command ships had three each, and the section leaders had one each, the remainder of the fleet being comprised of uncrewed ships under remote control. In the event of death or disablement or some other emergency occurring in the ships of a sub-fleet commander or section leader there was provision in the flagship for controlling each and every unit in the fleet.

  It was to have been the flagship's job to make a detailed study of the target planet during the final approach, to decide on the best landing points and to see that the guidance systems of each of the following ships were set to land them at these points, and then to go down with the leading contingent to establish themselves and carry out the final on-the-spot tests which would aid the settling-in of the later arrivals.

  . . . Except that they all might just as well have stayed at home!

  Angry suddenly, Deslann silenced the five-sided argument still raging around him by saying sharply, "Since you have only just been made aware of this problem I think it is unlikely you will be able to assist the healer with it just yet. I suggest that you each go to your quarters -- you, too, Healer -- and think about it. There's plenty of time. Nothing drastic is going to happen until, or unless, you go into Long Sleep. When you have constructive suggestions to make I'll listen to them."

  As they swam out of the control room and dispersed, Deslann's mind slipped back again in time to the period when his archeologist father had first taken him on a trip overland to the other ocean. They had used a pressurized and refrigerated land-boat, traveling at night to escape the heat of direct sunlight and sheltering during the day at the bottom of
the deep lakes -- all that was left of the wide channel which had at one time joined the two oceans. Deslann had marveled at the dry, powdery soil -- at home dry substances could not be found outside a laboratory -- and at the fact that the incredibly thin gaseous mixture which stretched from the land and sea surface out to space had once been capable of supporting plant and animal life, even intelligent life.

  But one day they were forced to shelter in a cave instead of at the bottom of a lake and Deslann saw the remains of a family of these strange, gas-breathing land-dwellers. The awkward, strangely jointed skeletons large and small, the containers and utensils of baked clay and bone, and the charred remains of a long wooden structure his father said was a sea boat. His father spoke of the old records which told of these primitive but intelligent beings using such devices to float on the surface of the ocean while their crews speared any of the smaller and more stupid food animals which ventured too close.

  This family, his father said, had obviously taken shelter in the cave at a time when its mouth could only be entered at low tide. Here they escaped the savage heat of the day, which had killed the small land animals these people had hunted and made it impossible to grow food, and fished the sea in the cool of the night when low tide allowed them out of their cave. But the surface of the sea would have retained more and more of the heat of the day, and the smaller aquatic animals would have been driven away from the hot tidal areas. There would have been no light in the cave because all the available combustibles had already been burned by the furnace in the sky, and no food, and on days when there was a very low tide the cave would have been filled with near-scalding steam.