The Watch Below

by James White

  "Well now," he said gently, "it seems that your scarred face bothers you. To be honest it bothers me, too, a little. But suppose I close one eye so as not to see your bad side. That way I'd be kissing one of the nicest-looking faces I've ever seen."

  He cut short her objections by quickly smothering them, and this time he made sure that the kiss was not a hurried peck. It was like kissing the face of a marble statue, a cold and resilient marble face with imperfections on one side. She put her hand against his chest but did not push him away, and suddenly her arms were tight around him.

  It was not a passionate embrace, Wallis thought, but more in the nature of the hug a frightened younger sister in need of protection gives to her big brother. It was not a passionate kiss, either, although her lips seemed to be softening and growing warmer. Through his open eye he could see that her face was relaxing, too, and becoming less strained. Maybe he wasn't such a bad psychologist after all, and it really was a small thing to do to make her feel better about things. Now if he counted up to ten slowly and then gently broke the near-stranglehold that she had on him, she certainly should not feel that this one had been a frightened peck.

  There was a sudden, peculiar change in the expression in her face, an odd play of light and shade that made him think that there might be two sources of light in the tank instead of one. Wallis pulled away guiltily.

  "I'll go out and come in again," said Dickson in a carefully neutral voice. He did just that, and then added, "Breakfast's ready, if anyone is interested."

  XI

  On the Unthan flagship the problems continued to be technical rather than personal. The food supply for the trip was ample if the crew spent practically all the time in Long Sleep, but completely inadequate for the needs of a small though increasing population who were continuously warm and drawing on it for many generations. Food would have to be grown, therefore, and while there was no shortage of the proper seed in the ship, the growing of food required an increased temperature which, if the proper safety measures were not taken, could fatally affect the cooled passengers in the food-growing areas.

  Fortunately, the flagship's crew were the best of the best, the top people in their particular specialties, so that purely technical problems did not worry them for long, but, for instance, both the organization and the transfer to tape and print of all the technical knowledge which allowed them to solve these problems did worry them, however, and continuously. It worried them even when all their records were complete and there was no longer any reason for them to remain warm in the ship.

  The records of Hellahar and the captain were far from complete, partly because they had the rest of their lives in which to complete them and partly because their problems were more difficult of solution. Problems such as how to avoid a small-scale population explosion in the ship a few generations hence -- a problem stemming from when the most important considerations in choosing the female section of the fleet had been the physical ability and a strong psychological urge to have children. And there were the more tenuous, but very real, personal problems that no amount of specialization or technical know-how would help to solve, because the solutions were so intensely individual.

  Deslann would have liked the crew to stay warm a little longer, if only to have their company and moral support. The healer was more honest about it, saying that the longer they were around, the farther off would be the evil hour when the captain and himself would have to start founding their dynasties. Meanwhile the crew had reached the point where they had nothing useful to do and were wasting precious biological time not doing it; so Deslann had a preliminary talk with the healer and then summoned them to the control room for the last time.

  The last time, he silently corrected himself, so far as Hellahar and himself were concerned.

  He made formal farewells, as did the healer, to each member of the crew, during which a great many informal things were said on each side. Deslann was surprised and deeply moved by the odd combination of insubordination and respect in some of the things they said. At the same time it was plainly obvious that they were afraid, afraid for themselves and for the thousands of others like them spread throughout the fleet. Afraid for their race and at the same time personally afraid that after they went into Long Sleep in a few minutes time they would never, never wake up.

  There was little that Deslann could say that would make them feel better, but he had to try to say it.

  He began, "The healer and myself will arrange, when the time comes, that you people will be warmed ahead of the other captain so that you will be able to explain the present situation to him and prepare him for what you will find when you are revived. I'm putting this badly, but that is because I have no real idea of what you will find then, only that it is sure to be a surprise.

  "Of course, to look on the worst possible side of it," Deslann conjectured, "there is always the chance that our generations of captains and crews will mismanage things so badly that you will never be revived -- that the pile will go critical or the timers will be damaged by unskilled maintenance or our descendants will kill each other off or die in some other fashion. Or you might waken to find that the fleet, or this ship or both, has missed the target sun and that there is nothing at all you can do about it."

  This is supposed to be a pep-talk, Deslann reminded himself sharply; you are not supposed to add all your own worries to theirs!

  "But I think that you can all rest contentedly," he resumed seriously, "because the possibilities I have just mentioned are extremely remote; perhaps they are impossibilities. Nobody knows better than yourselves the long, careful work which has gone into the recordings and training manuals for the use of the generations of astrogators, engineers, and computers to come. You can rest assured that the ship will be efficiently crewed and that you will reach the target system.

  "After that . . ."

  Deslann broke off, watching the faces of Gerrol and the others as they thought of what would happen after that. The truth was that none of them knew what would happen in detail, only that they would be close to a world that would be cool and almost completely covered by tremendous oceans, and that they would have to map and investigate those oceans and choose sites for the initial settlements, which must be at the correct depth and as free as possible from inimical life-forms, and that they must establish themselves securely enough and in enough time to guide in the main body of the fleet. The end of the journey might prove to be the most dangerous and difficult part as well as the most rewarding, and Deslann had fully expected to share both the dangers and the rewards. Now, though, he would share nothing except a lifetime of work and worry and hope that was so faint at times that it verged on outright self-deception.

  There would be no rewards for Hellahar and himself or for a large number of the offspring still unborn. Not for the first time he felt a pang of sympathy for all the crews that were to come, and a sort of angry pity as he wondered if there ever could be enough hope, or self-deception, to balance the decades of unrewarding work ahead. His present crew did not know how lucky they were.

  Very seriously, Deslann said, "We will not see each other again. You, on the other hand, will see each other in a very short time, because there is no detectable time lapse while in hibernation anesthesia. Of course, I don't know what sort of situation you will have to meet when you awaken. Doubtless there will be changes in language and customs and values, perhaps a certain amount of degeneration. To you, all these changes will seem to have happened within the next few minutes, so they will be bound to come as a shock. But no matter what that future crew has become or how it behaves, I would like you to treat them with sympathy and understanding. And respect.

  "If for no other reason than that their ancestors were once your healer and your captain," he ended on a lighter note, repeating, "you will treat them with respect."

  XII

  The fight started over the use to which their remaining stock of oxygen tanks should be put. When Gulf Trader had begun to sink
again the acetylene had given out and they had to use some of their oxygen. Dickson insisted that the next time they started to sink there was no point in keeping it afloat if they were going to suffocate anyway, while the doctor said that they were not really suffocating and must keep near the surface for as long as possible and hope for the best. Wallis got between them just in time.

  They were both heavier men than he was, but he had been working with a length of heavy pipe when the argument started and so was able to negotiate from a position of strength. He told them that they probably would not be fighting if they had not been suffering from oxygen starvation and splItting headaches, but if they did not start behaving themselves their headaches would get much worse. They began to look ashamed of themselves and after that they never fought again, although they did argue nearly all the time.

  The next time the ship became too still and quiet they used the oxygen tanks until the wave motion could be felt again. Half their original supply of tanked oxygen was gone and the air was becoming really foul. It was so bad that two people at a time were needed to work the generator and even then there had to be a third standing by with an oxygen tank in case one of them passed out. The two people not on the generator or standing by it stayed in the garden, where, with the lights in operation and the process of photosynthesis at work in the struggling young bean plants, the air was supposed to be fresher. It was hard to tell because everyone who stayed there for more than a few minutes needed nose plugs.

  It was a day or night in the middle of June, while the girls were in the garden and the men were on the generator, when the subject of their air supply came up -- not for the first time that day.

  "Carbon dioxide is heavier than air," Radford said suddenly, "and the openings between the tanks are at the roof of each tank. Would it be possible to rig fans to keep the good air circulating so that -- "

  "They would blow that foul muck from Eleven and Twelve up here," Dickson broke in, "and we wouldn't be able to breathe at all, much less work the generator pedals."

  "We need the generator," said Radford dully. "During daylight a plant absorbs CO2 and releases oxygen. In darkness it releases excess CO2 and produces no oxygen at all -- "

  "This intriguing horticultural fact," Dickson broke in, "has been mentioned by you before, Doctor. Also that the garden is doing well. But if this is the case, then why don't we feel the effects?"

  "Because there is so much foul air down here in comparison with the leaf area of the beans!"

  "You two gentlemen should step outside for a minute," Wallis said sharply. "Either that or change to a more pleasant subject."

  Nobody laughed at the crack about stepping outside. They had all made it, and every conceivable variation on it, too many times for it to be funny anymore. Dickson continued pedaling in silence for several minutes, breathing deeply -- hyperventilating, the doctor called it -- before he replied.

  "There is only one pleasant subject," he said, trying to look lascivious, "women. I can talk about them for hours. Not just the anatomical details, but the funny things they do sometimes. For instance, there's a certain female who doesn't live far away from here, who gets nervous and jumpy and cries a lot, and when a certain man, who also lives in the neighborhood, winks at her she stops being nervous and crying. It's a slow and, in my opinion -- based on a wide experience of winking, ogling, and giving the eye generally -- a meaningful wink. It is invariably given with the same eye and it is almost always effective.

  "Curiosity," Dickson ended, "is killing me. And Jenny, and the doctor . . ."

  "Wild horses . . ." began Wallis, smiling to hide his embarrassment.

  "I've thought of winking at her myself several times," Dickson went on quickly, "just to see if it works with other people. But she might misunderstand and Jenny certainly would not understand. And the doctor -- "

  ". . . Would have his name stricken from the rolls," Radford finished for him. "The BMA are very stuffy about patient-doctor relationships."

  It was an odd situation, Wallis thought, especially as he had only kissed Margaret, with his eye closed, once. The effect on her seemed wildly out of proportion, because she appeared more often nowadays without her face bandages and when she was feeling bad, instead of talking to her and saying things which would merely make her feel embarrassed when the others were present, he would simply wink the eye on her bad side. He had thought about it a lot and had decided that her reaction was due partly to having a Big Secret to share with someone in a situation where privacy of any kind was practically nonexistent and partly to feeling that she was still attractive enough for someone to kiss her, if only once. And the trouble was that the secret had to be kept or the therapeutic wink, as the doctor called it, would lose its effect.

  Dickson, still trying desperately to satisfy his curiosity, changed his line of attack.

  "It seems to me that people who wink at people," he went on, still lasciviously, "are indulging in a form of, uh, intimacy -- the early stages of intimacy, of course. I'm talking about winking between men people and women people at the moment, as I don't want to get sidetracked onto the subject of fairy-type people."

  "I'm glad," said Wallis.

  "Such intimacy should not be indulged," Dickson continued unchecked, "by an officer or a gentleman, or both, unless his intentions are honorable. It could be argued that continued winking is tantamount to having an 'understanding,' or being unofficially engaged. However, the problems of a couple engaged to be married are many, and require a certain amount of tact and -- "

  "My intentions aren't -- I mean, I don't have intentions!" Wallis protested, almost laughing.

  "Requiring tact and understanding from those who are already married and have experienced and surmounted these difficulties," Dickson went on as if Wallis hadn't spoken. "The first problem may be that of the marriage itself, which turns out to be the easiest of all, since as a first officer with a master's ticket, and bearing in mind the fact that in the merchant service we marry people at sea much more frequently than they do in the Royal Navy, I would be glad to officiate and return the favor already done me. A simple case of you marry me and I'll marry you. Not you , of course -- I mean the two of you."

  "I understand," said Wallis.

  "The next difficulty," Dickson resumed, "may be that of ignorance. The complete or partial ignorance regarding, uh, geography and, uh, technique. I mean, there's this business with the birds and the bees -- "

  "I kept rabbits as a boy," said Wallis gravely, "and my stern old father told me about people."

  "Good!" said Dickson. "You have a grounding in birds, bees, rabbits, and people. You understand the subtle urge -- nothing to be ashamed of, mind! -- which brings the two sexes together. What you perhaps do not fully appreciate is the purely physical problem, a problem which normally does not exist with bees and rabbits and even people, of bringing them together closely enough when in so doing for a single unguarded movement or carelessness in arranging the sacking could let in a blast of cold air which would certainly ruin the warm, tender, and romantic atmosphere it is one's intention to create and which might result in pneumonia or rheumatism besides -- "

  "Where do you find the breath," said Wallis, wanting suddenly to change the subject again, "to pedal and talk at the same time?"

  "It isn't because of fresh air and exercise," the doctor said, adding, "or, I suspect, from clean living."

  Ignoring them both, Dickson went on delicately, "My own hard-won experience in this matter may be of interest, and possibly of value to you. To begin with we shall assume that the two people of opposite, uh, gender are under their heap of sacking and that the psychological climate is right, that there will be mutual cooperation during the forthcoming project. The problems which then remain are basically those concerning clothing, the need for operating in a confined space in darkness, and the necessity for silence, so as to avoid the embarrassment of people . . ." He looked pointedly at the doctor, " making cracks at breakfast time. The first thin
g you must do . . ."

  Dickson went into detail regarding the first thing, the second thing, and the third thing. He spoke quietly and gravely, and if his tongue was in his cheek the fact was not at all obvious. When he had dealt with the fifteenth or sixteenth, and last, thing, it was the doctor who broke the ensuing silence.

  "Better change the subject again, Dickson," he said, smiling. "I think you're making the commander feel uncomfortable."

  "The word," said Wallis, "is overstimulated."

  A few days later it became impossible to talk while at the generator, and gradually it became the accepted thing for one or other of them to black out while pedaling and need to be revived with pure oxygen. The only comfortable place was in the garden when the lights were on, but then only two of them could use it at a time. The most uncomfortable time was the period between sleeping and working the generator, when they had nothing to do but think and when they thought so much that it was nearly impossible to sleep at alL

  They all breathed too fast and sweated despite the cold and snapped at each other for nothing at all. At first Wallis had tried to use his authority to stop this continual bickering, but he had a constant, thudding headache which soured his every waking minute and which throbbed in the background of his dreams, and more often than not he found himself snapping and snarling as badly as the rest of them. By far the worst offender was Margaret Murray, who had begun to have waking nightmares about her time on the raft again and who had begun to cry all the time and cover her burnt face again despite all that Wallis could do. In the doctor's opinion Wallis wasn't doing enough.