The Watch Below

by James White

  But Richard did not settle down to anything like the extent they expected of him, although as a person he became much less obnoxious -- the doctor, thought Wallis, must have given him some intensive tuition in the bedside manner. He was plainly unhappy and discontented and kept putting forward ideas which were stupid or dangerous, or both. One of his more frequent proposals was for increasing the living space within the ship by opening a passage to the storage spaces under the bridge deck or to the aft pump room. In a weak moment Wallis gave him permission to go ahead on this project, because he was sure that the preparatory work would take such a long time that Richard would lose interest in it, but in this Wallis was wrong.

  At that time the population of Gulf Trader was eleven, three of whom were very young children, and the doctor's garden covered two whole tanks. He had done this to absorb the extra wastes rather than because of a shortage of oxygen, and the air was so rich in this gas that he was advocating the burning of certain wastes to bring it down to a more normal level. When Richard asked if the garden would absorb carbon monoxide as well as the dioxide, the doctor said that he wasn't sure but he thought it would, and after that the ideas came thick and fast.

  They would use the old generator's petrol engine and a compressor to refill the empty oxy and acetylene tanks with compressed air. As an extra precaution they would pipe the engine's exhaust into a tank of sea water in the garden, and the carbon monoxide which wasn't dissolved in the water would be absorbed by the plants. With compressed air available they would pierce the plating between themselves and a likely compartment, letting the water run out of it while replacing it with air. A lot of water would collect inside the ship, but there was no danger in this as they were fast aground and did not have to worry about buoyancy. When they had emptied the chosen compartment of water they would observe the rate at which it was refilled from outside leaks, if any, over a period of several "days" before cutting a way in. Provision would also be made for sealing the opening quickly in an emergency. And there were other ideas which could be developed as they went along. . . .

  By the time Richard had finished speaking, his brother, Joseph, and Wallis's son, David, were solidly behind him, and the lieutenant commander was beginning to wonder if his mind was not, perhaps, becoming a trifle inelastic in his old age, for he, also, was becoming caught up in Richard's enthusiasm although previously he had been dead against the project. But Wallis retained enough common sense to veto Richard's first choice of what he called the New Country to be opened.

  Gulf Trader had gone aground bow first and had settled, since it lay on a shelving bottom, stern down. Richard's first plan was to drain the aft pump room. But the volume of water in the pump room was such that it would have flooded the three sternmost tanks to a depth of anything up to six feet, quite apart from the fact that it was almost certainly open to the sea. The second choice Wallis agreed with, after a long consultation with Dickson Senior.

  It was a short length of corridor and two cabins which had been part of the stokers' living quarters, but which had been stripped to make room for some communications equipment due to come aboard at Liverpool. The corridor opened onto the weather deck via a watertight door and was interrupted by another such door six or seven yards later at a point for'rard of the companionways leading down to the engine room and up to the poop deck. When the second torpedo had struck aft there would have been direct access to the boat deck via the companionways for survivors from the engine room; the weather deck had been awash, so nobody would have entered the corridor from that side; and the two cabins were no longer used by the crew. The chances, therefore, were very good that the watertight doors had not been opened, and the volume of water contained in the short stretch of corridor and the two cabins was not excessive.

  The project took almost two years.

  By way of a dress rehearsal Richard opened a way into the bilges through one of the modified intercostal spaces. There was an airtight hatch in the tank floor leading to the space, similar to the one used as a head, and another airtight cover on the floor of the tiny compartment underneath it which was not supposed to be opened until the ship was in drydock. Richard went into this compartment and had it sealed after him. He used his torch and compressed-air tank and sheer brute strength to open the lower hatch, and was able to look directly into the water-filled bilge while the extra air pressure kept the water from flooding up, and he could see fish swimming about. It was the first time he had seen a fish, or any living creature other than human beings, and the effect on him was something he would talk about for years. He replaced the lower hatch quickly before the light faded completely from his torch -- its battery had been recharged so many times that it did not hold a charge for very long -- and tapped to be let out.

  They were not able to open the upper hatch slowly enough to avoid a sudden pressure drop, and Richard had an attack of nosebleed and trouble with his ears. But he was able to tell them that there was now a place to dump the growing pile of waste in Number One, as well as any other undesirable material.

  Richard did not say it in so many words, but they all knew that there was now a place for their bodies to go when they died. . . .

  Wallis thought about this useful if somewhat morbid discovery many times during the long wait for the stokers' cabins to drain, but he forgot it completely as the last of the water gurgled out of the new territory and he signaled for the opening to be made. If there should be a sudden deluge through the opening they would all get a soaking and have to abandon some useful material, but there would be plenty of time to get out of Number Twelve and seal it behind them in an emergency. Besides, Wallis was as impatient now as was Richard to get up there, although unlike Richard he could not have stated his reasons with any clarity.

  A few minutes later they were pushing their way through the opening, ignoring the scorched hands they received on the still-hot edges. Dickson Senior, Richard, the doctor, Eileen, and Wallis himself -- everyone who was not either looking after the children or working the generator -- ran laughing and shouting along the tiny stretch of corridor and in and out of the two cabins, stamping their feet like children in the poois of sea water still covering the deck and bumping into each other and talking hysterically about drying out the place and oiling the door hinges. But gradually they grew quiet and gathered silently around the two portholes.

  In the port looking forward they could see the outline of the navigation deck and mainmast, dull shadows in a cool, green twilight, with the catwalk, weather deck rail, and derricks in much greater detail. The view over the side showed a sandy bottom with irregular outcroppings of reef. There were very few fish about and very little undersea plant life. Wallis had been surprised that the glass of the port had not been obscured by scum, and guessed that a strong current or tidal effect kept the greenery from taking hold. The view forward and upwards was cut off by the projecting poop deck, but the second port was set in the side of the ship.

  It showed the towering, black precipice of a reef which soared upwards until it poked through the bright, dimpled mirror of the surface two hundred feet above them.

  "Now," said the doctor, laughing suddenly, "I can tell the days and not just the months."

  "Now," said Richard, in the most solemn voice that Wallis had ever heard him use, "I know that there is something outside the ship

  Shortly after that the joy and excitement of being able to see outside was damped suddenly. Up until then nobody on Gulf Trader had died.

  Jenny was the first one to go. Richard knew every bit as much as the doctor did about the treatment and control of diabetes, but there was no insulin on the ship and nothing that either of them could do. A little later Richard's father tripped and hit his head against a hatch coaming -- his mind had not been on what he was doing, only on his dead Jenny -- and he did not regain consciousness. Then Margaret caught what both the doctor and Richard agreed was pneumonia, and they broke the news as gently as possible to Wallis that there was nothing they coul
d do for her, either, except to allow the lieutenant commander to stay in the sick bay with her for as long as possible. Wallis began the watch, which was both long and all too short, but he did not know exactly when she died. He had been holding her in his arms, with one eye closed and the other blinded with tears, for a long time, when Richard tapped him gently on the shoulder and led him away.

  After that the doctor and Wallis returned to sleeping together for warmth. But it was a very cold winter and for many months their age had made it impossible to exercise even briefly on the generator. More and more frequently Wallis lay shivering and sleepless, just as he had done when they were very recent survivors and worried about the possibility of escape and very little else. Now he was not worried, but the death of Margaret had left him with an aching sense of grief, which worsened with every passing day. It was as if he had lost a limb and the shock was beginning to wear off. But there were nights when he was able to sleep.

  "What were you doing last night, sir?" the doctor said after one of them. They were at breakfast and he was obviously trying to cheer Wallis up. "When you grabbed me, for a minute I thought that you had designs on my virtue!"

  "I'll sleep somewhere else," said Wallis.

  The doctor was silent for a moment, then he said awkwardly, "I know how it was with you two. Putting your arm around me in your sleep doesn't bother me. I like it. To tell the truth -- it doesn't make me feel so cold. I'm always cold these days. . . ."

  A few days later Surgeon Lieutenant Radford made a self-diagnosis of pneumonia and Wallis began another long, heartbreaking watch. This time it was shared by Richard, a young but strangely mature Richard who had grown close to the doctor over the past few years, as close as he had ever been to his parents. Richard watched dry-eyed and listened, in the doctor's increasingly brief lucid spells, to his mentor laying down the law.

  "I've packed your head full of symptoms and diseases and treatments which you'll probably never get to use," Wallis heard him tell Richard on one occasion, "and as a result you are pretty good on theory. Your practical experience, on the other hand, is confined -- if you'll excuse the pun -- to maternity cases. You wouldn't know a liver or a transverse colon if they were to stand up and slap your face. You can't help that, of course, because we have no medical texts, or illustrations, or even the means of making decent sketches. But in a day or two you will be in a position to find out a few things and I urge you -- no dammit, I order you! -- to do so. You understand what I'm driving at? I do not want to go into the bilge all in one piece!"

  Richard understood what the doctor was driving at, and so did Wallis.

  "Good!" said Radford weakly. "We'll make a doctor out of you yet. But there's another thing -- a small point, really, but it sort of makes your position official. I had to take it, and I'd the devil of a time remembering all of it. You can repeat it after me.

  "I swear by Apollo the Physician, by Aesculapius, Hygeia, and Panacea, and I take to witness . . ."

  Richard repeated the oath slowly and carefully, committing it to memory against the time when he might have to administer it to someone else. He was unlikely to forget it in any case, because people on the ship did not forget things, the Game saw to that. But it was a long time before Richard would answer to his title without looking uncomfortable or objecting to its use.

  And then the time came when Wallis himself began to display the old familiar symptoms -- rendered unfamiliar only because he was viewing them from the inside -- of shivering, of coughing fit to tear his chest apart, and of increasing periods of delirium. He could not die well like Doctor Radford; he was so afraid that he rarely spoke at all. In his later lucid periods, though, he lay thinking about the sky and trees and Margaret, and worrying about the hole they had all made in the ship's food supply. There would be no actual shortage for a long, long time, but David or Joseph should begin thinking seriously about growing food to augment the canned supply. And he lay listening to his children and the Dickson's and all their grandchildren playing the Game.

  It was a story he had always liked, about a civilization that had grown up in a giant interstellar ship lost forever among the stars, with Joseph taking the part of Hugh Hoyland and his son that of the mutant Joe-Jim. But they made it a short story. Wallis overheard Richard telling everyone there would not be time enough to recite the dying Commander's favorite novel. Considering the situation in Gulf Trader, Wallis thought, it was a rather appropriate story.

  XVII

  Deslann was succeeded by Haynor, who was succeeded by his son of the same name, who was succeeded by Helltag the Mad, who was killed by the third Haynor. The population of the Unthan flagship had stabilized at forty to fifty people, the larger proportion of which were female. This was a troublesome situation, both potential and actual, but a minor one compared with the terrible problem of inbreeding. A significant increase in the incidence of male sterility had been expected and planned for, also certain physical deformities and weakening of the intellect. They did not expect the large-headed throwbacks to presapient times, who had to be restrained long before they reached maturity because of their predatory habits, nor did they foresee the birth of outwardly normal offspring whose minds grew more monstrous and twisted than the bodies of their unfortunate brothers and who were still intelligent enough to conceal their mental abnormalities as had Captain Helltag.

  The third Haynor was not above average in physical or mental ability and he was not even a trainee captain -- of the five young engineering pupils in training at that time, he rated number four. But he was on watch in the control room with his engineer tutor when Captain Helltag, in a perfectly normal tone of voice, said, "Nothing ever happens in this place," and unlocked the Fleet Landing Board. Before the other two realized what he was doing, more than thirty units of the fleet -- the main fleet, that is, not just the food vessels in the vanguard -- had been given random changes of attitude thrust of random duration applied through their main drives.

  Shouting at Helltag about the hundreds of cold-sleeping colonists in each of those misdirected ships, the engineer darted towards the captain to restrain him by force, since it was obvious now that Helltag was no longer rational. But Haynor's tutor was much older than Helltag and his attempt to knock the captain away from the control board only made the other turn vicious as well as irrational. A sudden dark fog grew around the old officer's body. Helltag was using his teeth. . . .

  Haynor joined the struggle then, trying to get a hold on Helltag behind the dorsal and baring his own teeth. One of the trainee healers had told him about a weak spot which, when firmly pressed by the teeth or other small, firm object, caused temporary paralysis and loss of consciousness. Haynor found the spot all right, but just as he was applying pressure to it Helltag twisted toward him suddenly and Haynor's teeth punctured the captain's skin and tore the area deeply.

  Helltag went violently out of control then, tried to tie his body into a physically impossible knot, and died.

  Because he was a trainee engineer, and not a very promising one at that, Haynor had very little knowledge or appreciation of the tremendous amount of responsibility devolving upon the flagship's commander. But he had stopped Helltag from killing the aging engineer and from wreaking even greater havoc among the fleet. After all, the safety of their thousands of cold-sleeping charges -- the last survivors of Untha's past and the only hope of her future -- was something taught early and often, so that Haynor found himself promoted to captain for reasons which were purely emotional. Despite this Haynor made a very good captain. During his reign he was able to inspire the astrogation and computer departments into correcting the courses of the ships Helltag had sent astray -- a job requiring close to two decades of time and an order of fine computation of which the great Gerrol himself would have been proud.

  The appointment of Haynor, however, good in itself as everyone agreed at the time, set dangerous precedents: The precedent of promotion across the lines of specialty and training. Promotion based on psychologi
cal factors of an emotional and personal nature rather than. on technical ability. And the solution of problems, or the resolution of difficult situations, by physical violence.

  For the flagship civil war was not many generations away.

  From the sweating bulkheads of Number One to the Commander's Ladder in Twelve, and from Richard's Hole in the bilges to Richard's Rooms under the poop deck, a philosophical war was brewing. On one side were the old people and the majority of the women, all of whom believed that the material handed down through the years by way of the Game was fact, solid, immutable fact containing precisely the same degree of reality as, say, the recollection of the first stumbling words of one's own child only a few years away in time. Some of these people were so fanatical in their beliefs that there were times when they confused remembered fiction with remembered fact. But the other side went to the opposite extreme, being fanatically cynical about practically everything. Somewhere in the middle was Dr. Kimball Bush Dickson.

  It was his professional duty to be neutral, of course, but his neutrality was further assured by the fact that in matters outside his profession he was very easily swayed.

  At the present time, however, the doctor was alone and his opinions were all his own. Striding briskly through the absolute darkness of the midships tanks on his way to Richard's Rooms, he thought they would all have been better advised to worry about the increasing corrosion and dampness in the tanks, the mounting number of mechanical and electrical failures, and the diminishing supply of canned food, light bulbs, and material suitable for clothing. But to be perfectly fair, the doctor knew that they did worry, especially the younger people, and very often they tried to do something about these problems. The trouble was that they tended to be a little cynical about the effects of external water pressure and the behavior of electric current, which meant that there were periodic power failures and that in winter the air was so damp that it was difficult to keep warm even following a turn on one of the generators, and so the incidence of death from respiratory diseases in the very young and old was increasing as well. Maybe if they all listened a little more carefully to each other and worked together on these problems something could be done. Again, maybe not.