by James White
"This point has been raised before," Gunt resumed sharply, "by everyone including myself! The answer is ethically unsatisfactory, but it is this. If we had been the kind of race which accepted fate quietly and philosophically, we would have stayed on Untha while our seas boiled away and us with them. We aren't and we didn't. This is a fight for the survival of our race, and as senior captain of the fleet my duty is clear. It is unfortunate that we are forced into fighting other intelligent beings, potentially friendly beings perhaps, and that the struggle to survive in a strange environment has become a war with no foreseeable end. But we must fight and we must put every effort into fighting effectively; otherwise we might just as well have stayed at home -- "
"I still think we should try to communicate, sir," another voice broke in. Inevitably it belonged to the senior communications officer, Dasdahar.
"So do I," said the captain. "But how much success have you had up to now?"
Dasdahar hesitated, then said, "These beings are gas-breathers living on the dry surface of their planet. This being so, they could be expected to discover the principles of radio communication at a much earlier stage of their technological history than water-breathers like ourselves, who knew nothing, about ionization layers until we were practically on the brink of space travel. The point I'm trying to make is that there are bound to be fundamental differences in approach. Add to that the fact that their aural and vocal senses are designed for use in a gaseous medium while we hear and speak through water and you will understand some of the difficulties.
"At the moment we are working on a device to convert sound waves produced in water into frequencies which should, we hope, be audible in the more tenuous gaseous medium," the officer went on. "And vice versa, of course. The tests are promising, and once we gain some idea of the frequencies used by these beings, we should be able to hear them and they us. We won't be able to understand what they're saying , of course, but with luck maybe . . . some kind of . . . simple message . . ."
Dasdahar floundered into silence, and Gunt said, "Something more definite than an untried sound converter and a lot of wishful thinking is required if we are to change our plans, plans which have general, if reluctant, agreement. . . . And now I want to go into the landing drill in more detail. . . ."
The plan called for no change in procedure so far as the expendables were concerned. Domestic and food animals making up the vanguard would be warmed automatically just prior to arrival and released from their ships as soon as the vessels had water around them, after which they would have to fend for themselves. They would at the very least create a diversion and some might even survive. The timers throughout the fleet would be set to warm up the cold-sleeping Unthans to have the situation explained to them by Gunt and his crew on the flagship and by various sub-fleet commanders via radio on the other ships. Ideally the explanations should be given soon enough before arrival for the situation to be grasped but not so early that a general panic could develop. There were no alternatives except fight or die, and if they were going to survive as a race they would have to fight hard.
"I don't want to hear any more talk about communicating with these beings," Gunt went on harshly. "We must be realistic. They are alien people, so much so that they may have nothing in common with us. Even if we did by some chance share a common outlook or philosophy or even a dislike for something, there will be no time to find out about it. To them our arrival is an act of war and in the interests of survival we must proceed as if it is war!
"The landing areas have been chosen with concealment and survival in mind," the captain went on, "such as near outcroppings of rock which penetrate the surface and similar obstacles to sea-surface navigation, underwater caves and geological features where we can establish concealed bases. The data from the probes and the telescopic observations will enable the fleet to land in optimum surroundings. The water is breathable so that no cumbersome protective suits will be needed. . . ."
Immediately as a ship landed, its newly warmed cargo would scatter, carrying as much portable equipment as possible. Later, if the ship were not destroyed in some fashion by the enemy, they might risk returning for heavier and more complex equipment, but only if it were safe to do so. The main idea was to hide and survive until their strange new world no longer seemed so strange. Very likely a great number of them would be hunted down and killed, but not everyone. Some of them would survive and go on the offensive. In time there might even be peace.
Nevertheless, at the present time the most important point to remember was that the new world was almost as strange to the enemy as it was to themselves. The planet belonged to these gas-breathers and they floated thousands of surface vessels on its oceans, and there were many indications that they were not afraid of water, but as a race they did not live and breathe in water, they did not have the instincts or the evolutionary background of the Unthans. It was the captain's belief that many more of his people would survive than would be killed.
Which brought him to the subject of weapons.
". . . The weapon most likely to be used against us," Gunt continued, "will be a limited mass-destruction affair using a chemical charge exploded at depth and relying on compression effects to produce casualties. We may expect a great many of these bombs to reach us, singly and in patterns calculated to inflict maximum damage. Our defense against this weapon will be our high degree of mobility, early decentralization, and small personnel domes anchored to the sea bed using layers of plastic, gas, and gas-filled sponge to absorb the shock waves. At the present time I do not see them exploding nuclear weapons in the sea, as our observations regarding their population and the numbers of small surface vessels indicate that the sea might be a small but important part of their food supply. They will not want to risk poisoning it until their position appears desperate.
"Our own weapons will be crude and ineffectual to begin with," the captain went on. "Spring-loaded harpoons, a few adhesive mines, and so on. If the gas-breathers underestimate us, so much the better. Eventually some of us will establish ourselves, reclaim heavy equipment from our abandoned ships, begin mining the sea bed. Quietly we will develop more sophisticated weapons, process radioactives, perfect our technology. We will stockpile dirigible torpedoes carrying nuclear warheads capable of traversing the gas envelope and striking any point on the planetary surface.
"The pollution of the planet's gas envelope and the death of surface food supplies will have very little effect on sea dwellers," Gunt went on grimly, "and provided we retain the initiative, retaliation from the gas-breathers should be minimal."
There was a strange lack of motion in the bodies around him, and he was aware that the silence was not simply due to attention for a superior officer. Astrogator Gerrol, the engineers, and the rest of his contemporary crew members were floating still and silent like so many cooled food animals, all staring at him with exactly the same expression. Even the female Heglenni, who, because of her lack of sensitivity and background, might have been expected to support him, wore the same expression.
Gunt did not try to meet their eyes. Angrily, he said, "It's them, or us. I'm sorry, it is a question of survival!"
XXI
Conditions, Doctor Wallis had been fond of telling his people, could not possibly get worse. . . .
They were awakened one night in late winter, that is, those who were lucky enough to be asleep, by a high-pitched creaking noise and the sound of running water. There had never been sounds like this in living memory or in the Game-recalled history of the ship, so they struggled out of their sleeping hair and ran for'rard, following the direction of the noises. They ran fast and sure-footed despite the darkness, because they knew every inch of the way, the height and placing of every watertight door, and the exact position of the contents of each and every tank. It was a matter of memory plus the fact that there had been no changes in the ship for a very long time. Now, however, there was change.
In Number Four they ran into water, a slow, icy trick
le moving aft along the deck and collecting, because of the stern-downward attitude of the ship, at the watertight door between Four and Five. At the entrance to Three, the water was dammed up level with the coaming and they splashed through it knee-deep. It was the same beyond the entrance to One, except that here the water poured over the edge of the coaming in a steady flood, and from the forward wall of the tank there came sounds as of a gentle waterfall overlaid by the erratic creaking and groaning of metal under strain. The deck beneath their feet seemed to twitch and shiver.
"Everybody out!" shouted the doctor. "There's nothing here worth salvaging. Out!"
Wallis stationed himself at the watertight door, counting the bodies as they went past him. He had no idea who they were exactly since they were merely centers of heavy breathing and splashing in the darkness, but five of them went through before the forward wall gave. There was a sharp, metallic screech, a gargantuan bubbling and then by a sudden rush of water he was swept through the door gasping and trying not to cry out with the pain of what the rusty edge of the door had done to the skin of his hip and leg. Then, abruptly, the flood was gone as suddenly as it had come. Wallis picked himself up and moved to examine the door.
Despite the stiff, rust-clogged hinges, the weight of water pouring into Number One had slammed the door shut. But the door, again because of rust, was no longer completely watertight. The doctor's exploring fingers detected a thin, high-pressure jet of water coming from the edge of the door all the way round. The plating between the flooded One and Two was beginning to creak alarmingly under the mounting pressure of water, and above them the escaping air thumped and gurgled thunderously towards the weather deck and the surface. Everywhere there was the pattering and splashing of water.
"Back to Four!" called the doctor. "Forget about Two and Three. But make sure the door is tight. Scrape off the rust, hammer it loose, do what you can. And hurry !"
Two and Three were saddle tanks and if one should remain airtight while the other did not, there would be a strain set up in the badly weakened fabric of the ship, a strain which might very well crack open the entire system of tanks. Allowing both tanks to flood would equalize the strain on the forward wall of Four. It would also, Wallis reminded himself, double it!
Like the other watertight doors between the tanks, this one had been dogged open to facilitate the free circulation of air, and like the others it was practically rusted solid in that position. They had to hammer at the door and its surrounding with scrap metal in an effort to dislodge the gritty incrustation that could be felt (but could not be seen) covering everything, then to scrape frantically with bits of metal and wood and even their fingers to free hinges and coaming of the clogging rust. They used files that were themselves little more than bars of rust, and the damage they inflicted on each other amid the darkness and confusion was severe although not, it seemed, immediately disabling. Yet, all the time the water rose steadily, spraying into Four through the supposedly watertight door from Two. When they closed the door they were working on to check the fit, water built up so quickly behind it that the efforts of all of them were needed to push it open again. Then came the time when they could not force it open. Water streamed from its edges in a steadily increasing volume and ran aft along the deck. They were forced to retreat again.
The door into Seven was in better condition, since it was closed frequently to contain the heat generated by the lighting in the garden there. Number Seven held, even though it was not perfectly tight either. Nevertheless, it allowed them time to stop and think. It gave them a chance to take stock, to realize how much was lost to them, and to adjust to their new, harsher and, it was plainly obvious, all too impermanent world.
The other two seniors were dead. The elder Dickson had been trapped in Number One and Wallis's brother had died during the confusion in Four. It was difficult to say what exactly had happened by touch alone, but it seemed that his brother had tripped in the darkness -- a lot of gear had changed its position, moved both by the water and by the people working on the doors -- and hit his head with sufficient force for him to lose consciousness, and he had drowned quietly in a few inches of water. They could have moved the body aft, but the doctor had asked that it be left where it was. The entrance to Richard's Hole was under water, as was the generator, the garden, and most of the bedding. All the tanks forward of Seven were flooded or inaccessible. Within the space of a few hours their world had shrunk by half.
Whereas before there had been miserable cold and dampness, there was now the added misery of flooding. The water was more than a foot deep around the connecting doors and, because of the attitude of the ship, it was almost waist-deep in the sternmost tank, Number Twelve. With the generator gone and the garden destroyed by sea water there was no possibility of producing light or heat, or of recycling air or distilling drinking water. With half their world had gone half their air supply. There were odd scraps of wood and metal, even a few electric light bulbs, and enough food. They would not starve. The food supply, while meager, would far outlast the water and air.
Full circle, thought Wallis.
Five survivors in a sunken ship, Wallis thought sadly. Two young couples and an aging, bad-tempered doctor facing death because there wasn't enough air or drinking water. But this time there was no possibility of continued survival, for their resources were gone and there was no scope in which to exercise their ingenuity, nothing with which they could build a world for themselves, and no means of extending their lives by more than a few weeks. This was, finally, the end of the world. They should all try to accept that fact, stop struggling, and try to adopt a more philosophical attitude to their approaching end.
"Is anyone badly hurt?" Wallis asked gently.
There were numerous cuts and bruises, but nothing serious. He advised them to bathe the wounds in a saline solution -- there was plenty of it about -- to remove dirt or rust, and warned them not to cover the areas until a scab had formed, because of the danger of septicemia from the hair coverings. He also suggested that they move to Richard's Rooms with as much bedding as could be salvaged, that being the only relatively dry spot in the ship. They could wave the damp bedding around their heads to dry it off, and the exercise would help keep them warm. . . .
That night they did not play the Game. Instead they huddled together for warmth, wriggling to get closer together and farther away from the cold, damp bedding and even colder deck, which sucked the heat remorselessly from them, and cursed because they could do neither. It was the first time the Game had not been played, the first night that their phenomenal minds and tremendous memories had not been able to lift them out of the discomfort of the here-and-now and into the bright, happy worlds of music and fiction and history, even of ship history. It was the first time that the memories of recent events had raised such a terrible barrier, a barrier cutting off all retreat into the past, the future, or even the might-have-been. It was perhaps the first time that they all realized that there was no hope, that there never had been any hope.
The commander lay shivering and cursing and listening to the sounds of dripping water and the creaking of their rusty, disintegrating world for a very long thne; then he said, "You know, with five of us occupying this small cabin there is bound to be a lot of breath condensation. We can collect it and eke out the drinking water. It might even be possible to salvage enough for a small generator -- a hand model, of course, because of the small space available, and, if nothing else, building it will occupy our minds. We'll have to make a determined effort to attract attention again, by banging on the hull in relays. This will help warm us up as well as . . . as . . ."
He trailed off into silence and the silence remained unbroken.
You stupid, cowardly fool! he raged silently at himself. Don't you know when to give up!
On the surface, in the War Room of a building many times older than the sunken tanker, other men were discussing the question of survival.
"Is it agreed that we use anti-missiles, p
roximity-fused, with chemical warheads?" said the officer at one side of the table. "Our anti-missiles were intended for use against ground-launched ICBMs, and will therefore not be effective until the enemy has penetrated to within one hundred miles of the surface. Do we also agree that to use nuclear warheads in these circumstances would hurt us more than the enemy, assuming that the enemy ships are in fact susceptible to damage and are not equipped with, uh, super weapons of offense or defense?"
There was no head to the table. The officers seated around it were the top military men of their respective governments and bore equal rank despite the fact that some of their uniforms were heavy with ribbons and gold braid while others were almost ostentatiously simple and unadorned. It was one of the latter who spoke next, using his interpreter.
"I do not understand their strategy," he said. "To send in a small advance force to test our defenses is good. To wait nearly a year, which is the time our observatories tell us will be required for the remainder of their fleet to reach earth, before committing the main force is bad tactics. It gives us too much time to prepare."
"Not enough time, by far," said another. "With luck we will be able to deal with the first wave using all of our present stock of anti-missiles, but a year is not enough to prepare for the main invasion!"