The Golden Age of Science Fiction Novels Vol 03

by Anthology

  "But why?" asked Beryl. "I mean... I see that it worries all of you that... that he might find out. But what if he does?"

  "Possibly nothing," answered Smith. "On the other hand, Mr. Lydman was once imprisoned, in his space traveling days. He was held for a long time under very trying conditions; and the experience has left him with a problem. It is not exactly claustrophobia... "

  He paused, as if to let Beryl recall other remarks about Lydman. Their general air of gravity seemed to impress her.

  "I'll be... glad to help," she said reluctantly.

  "Fine!" said Smith. "Probably nothing will be necessary. Now, I think we had better go in and tell Si, so that everyone will be alerted to the situation."

  Westervelt caught the glance that passed between Parrish and Beryl. He was almost certain that each of them was mentally counting the people who had known before they had been told.

  That's what you get for being so busy in the dead files, he thought.

  They trouped in behind Smith. Simonetta watched as if they had been a parade. Smith, with an occasional comment from Parrish, told her the story.

  "So that is the partial reason for staying late," he concluded, "although, of course, the case of Harris comes first."

  Westervelt had wandered over to a window. He adjusted the filter dial for maximum clarity and looked out.

  From where he was, he could see a great black carpet across part of the city, spreading out from somewhere beneath his position until it was cut by a sharp line of street lights many blocks away. Beyond that, the city looked normal. To the near side of the invisible boundary and, he supposed, for a like distance in the opposite direction behind his viewpoint, there were only sparse and faint glows of emergency lights. Some were doubtless powered by buildings with the equipment for the purpose, others were the lights of police and emergency vehicles on the ground or cruising low between the taller buildings.

  I wonder what they actually do when something like this happens? he thought. What if they think they have it fixed, turn on the juice again, and it blows a second time?

  His reverie was interrupted by the sound of Simonetta's phone. From where he was, he could see Joe Rosenkrantz's features as the operator asked for Smith.

  "Oh, there you are, Mr. Smith," said Joe. "Pauline has been trying all over. Trident is transmitting, and I thought you would want to be here. They say they have a relay set up right to Harris."

  Smith let out a whoop and made for the door.

  "He'll be right there," Simonetta told the grinning TV man.

  Parrish and Westervelt trailed along. When the latter looked back, he saw that Simonetta had replaced Beryl; and he could hardly blame the blonde for seizing the chance to sit down and collect her thoughts. He felt like crawling into a hole somewhere himself.

  Passing the library, Parrish cocked an eyebrow at him. Westervelt nodded. He went in and told Lydman about the call. The ex-spacer was interested enough to join the procession.

  When Westervelt followed him into the communications room, Joe Rosenkrantz was explaining the set-up to Smith.

  "Like before, we go through Pluto, Capella VII, and an automatic relay on an outer planet of the Trident system, but you won't see anything of that. It's after we get Johnson that the fun begins."

  He leaned back in his swivel chair before the screen and surveyed the group.

  "Johnson is gonna think to a fish near his island. This fish thinks to one swimming near Harris. They claim Harris answers."

  Smith ran both hands through his hair.

  "We try anything," he said. "Let's go!"

  Joe got in contact with Johnson, the Terran D.I.R. man, among other things, on Trident. The latter was not quite successful in hiding an I-told-you-so attitude.

  "Harris himself confirms that he is being held on the ocean floor," he said. "He seems to be a sort of pet, or curiosity."

  "Can you make sense out of the messages?" asked Smith. "I mean, is there any difficulty because of a language barrier? We don't want to make some silly assumption and find out it was based on a misunderstanding."

  After the weird pause caused by the mind-numbing distance, Johnson replied.

  "There isn't any language barrier in a thought, but you might say there's sometimes an attitude barrier. Usually, we can pick up an equivalent meaning if we assume, for instance, that our time sense is similar to that of these fish."

  "Well, try asking Harris how deep he is," suggested Smith.

  They watched Johnson look away, although the man did not seem to be going through any marked effort of concentration. Hardly thirty seconds of this had elapsed when they saw him scowl.

  "This fish off my beach can't get it through his massive intellect that he can't think directly to another fish at your position. He thinks you must be pretty queer not to have someone to do your thinking for you."

  Smith turned a little red. Westervelt admired Joe Rosenkrantz's pokerface. Johnson appeared to be insisting.

  "Harris says he is two minutes' swim under the surface," he reported.

  "Well, how far from your position, then?" asked Smith.

  The distance turned out to be a day-and-a-half swim.

  "Does he need anything? Are they keeping him under livable conditions?"

  The pause, and Johnson relayed, "They pump him air and feed him. He needs someone to get him out."

  "How can we find him?" asked Smith. "Can he work up any way of signaling us?"

  "You are signaling him now, he says. He wants you to get him out."

  Smith looked around him for questions. Lydman suggested asking how Harris was confined. Smith put it to Johnson, and after the maddening pause, got an answer.

  "He says he's in a big glass box like a freight trailer. It's like a cage. Inside, he is free to move around, and he wants to get out."

  "Then have him tell us where it is!" snapped Smith.

  "He doesn't know," came the reply. "They move about every so often."

  "What did I say?" whispered Parrish. "Nomadic."

  No one took the time to congratulate him because Smith was asking what the Tridentians were like. Johnson's mental connection seemed to develop static. They saw him shake his head as if to clear it. He turned a puzzled expression to the screen.

  "I didn't get that very plainly," he admitted. "A sort of combination of thoughts-they feed him and they don't taste good."

  "Well, tell your fishy friend to keep his own opinions out of it," said Smith, surprising Westervelt, who had not quite caught up to the situation.

  Johnson, a moment later, grimaced. His expression became apologetic.

  "Don't say things like that!" he told Smith, turning again to the screen. "It slipped through my mind as I heard you, and he didn't like it!"

  "Who? Harris?"

  "No, the fish at his end. I apologized for you."

  There was a general restless shifting of feet in the Terran office. Smith seemed, in the dim lighting of the communications room, to flush a deeper shade.

  "And what does Harris say?"

  Johnson inquired. Harris requested that they get him out.

  "Goddammit!" muttered Smith. "He must be punchy!"

  "It happens," Lydman reminded him softly.

  "Yes," said Smith, after a startled look around, "but some were like that to begin with, and his record suggests it all the way."

  He asked Johnson to get a description of the place where Harris found himself. The answer was, in a fashion, conclusive.

  "Like any other part of the sea bottom," reported Johnson. "And, furthermore, he's tired of thinking and wants to rest."

  "Who does?" demanded Smith.

  "They won't tell me," said Johnson, sadly.

  Smith choked off a curse, noticing Simonetta standing there. He combed his hair furiously with both hands. No one suggested any other questions, so he thanked Johnson and told Joe to break off.

  "At least, we know it's all real," he sighed. "He was actually taken, and he's still alive."
>
  "You put a lot of faith in a couple of fish," said Lydman.

  Smith hesitated.

  "Well... now... they aren't really fish," he said. "Let's not build up a mental misconception, just because we've been kidding about 'swishy the thinking fishy.' Actually, they probably wouldn't even suggest fish to an ichthyologist, and they may be a pretty high form of life."

  "They may be as high as this Harris," commented Parrish, and earned a cold stare from Lydman.

  "I think I'll look around the lab," said the latter, as the others made motions toward breaking up the gathering.

  Westervelt promptly headed for the door. He saw that Lydman was walking around the corner of the wire mesh partition that enclosed the special apparatus of the communications room, doubtless bent upon taking a shortcut into the lab.

  I want to go sit down a while before they pin me on him again, thought the youth. I need fifteen minutes, then I'll relieve whoever has him, if Smitty wants me to.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The light, impotent after penetrating fifty fathoms of Tridentian sea, was murky and green-tinted; but Tom Harris had become more or less used to that. It rankled, nevertheless, that the sea-people continued to ignore his demands for a lamp.

  He knew that they used such devices. Through the clear walls of his tank, he had seen night parties swimming out to hunt small varieties of fish. The water craft they piloted on longer trips and up to the surface were also equipped with lights powered by some sort of battery. It infuriated Harris to be forced arbitrarily to exist isolated in the dimness of the ocean bottom day or the complete blackness of night.

  He rose from the spot where he had been squatting on his heels. So smooth was the glassy footing that he slipped and almost fell headlong. He regained his balance and looked about.

  The tank was about ten by ten feet and twice as long, with metal angles which he assumed to be aluminum securing all edges. These formed the outer corners, so that he could see the gaskets inside them that made the tank water-tight. The sea-people, he had to admit, were quite capable of coping with their environment and understanding his.

  The end of the tank distant from Harris was opaque. He thought that there were connections to a towing vehicle as well as to the plant that pumped air for him. The big fish had not made that quite clear to him. All other sides of the tank were quite clear. Whenever he walked about, he could look through the floor and find groups of shells and other remnants of deceased marine life in the white sand. Occasionally, he considered the pressure that would implode upon him should anything happen to rupture the walls, but he had become habitually successful in forcing that idea to the back of his mind.

  Along each of the side walls were four little airlocks. The use of these was at the moment being demonstrated by one of the sea-people to what Harris was beginning to think of as a child.

  The parent was slightly smaller than Harris, who stood five-feet-five and weighed a hundred and thirty pounds Terran. It also had four limbs, but that was about the last point they had in common. The Tridentian's limbs all joined his armored body near the head. Two of them ended in powerful pincers; the others forked into several delicate tentacles. The body was somewhat flexible despite the weight of rugged shell segments, and tapered to a spread tail upon which the crustacean balanced himself easily.

  Harris felt at a distinct disadvantage in the vision department: each of the Tridentians had four eyes protruding from his chitinous head. The adult had grown one pair of eyestalks to a length of nearly a foot. The second pair, like both of the youngster's, extended only a few inches.

  The Terran could not be sure whether the undersea currency consisted of metal or shell, but the Tridentian deposited same sort of coin in a slot machine outside one of the little airlocks. It caused a grinding noise. Directly afterward, a small lump of compressed fish, boned, was ejected from an opening on the inside.

  "Goddam' blue lobsters!" swore Harris. "Think they're doing me a favor!"

  He let them wait a good five minutes before he decided that the prudent course was to accept the offering. Sneering, he walked over and picked up the food. There was usually little else provided. On days he had been too angry or too disgusted to accept the favors of sightseers, his keepers assumed that he was not hungry.

  In the beginning, he had also had a most difficult time getting through to them his need for fresh water. That was when he had come to believe in the large, fish-like swimmer who had transmitted his thoughts to the sea-people. The fact that the latter could and did produce fresh water for him aroused his grudging respect, even though the taste was nothing to take lightly.

  He juggled the lump of fish in one hand, causing the little Tridentian to twirl his eye-stalks in glee and swim up off the ocean bottom to look down through the top of the tank. The parent also wiggled his eye-stalks, more sedately. Harris suspected them of laughing, and turned his back.

  Looking through the other side of his tank, he could see-to such distance as the murky light permitted-the parked vehicles of the Tridentians. Like a collection of small boats, they were of sundry sizes and shapes, depending perhaps upon each owner's fancy, perhaps on his skill. Harris did not know whether the Tridentians' craftsmanship extended to the level of having professional builders. At any rate, they were spread out like a small city. Among them were tent-like arrangements of nets to keep out swimming vermin. Other than that, the sea-people used no shelters.

  They were smart enough to build a cage for me! he thought bitterly. What the hell is the matter with the Terran government, anyway? That Department of Interstellar Relations, or whatever they call it. Why can't they get me out of here? And where did Big Fish go now?

  He saw several of the crustacean people approaching from the camping area. Shortly, no doubt, he would again be a center of mass attention, with cubes of compressed and stinking fish shooting at him from all the little airlocks. He snarled wordlessly.

  The groups seemed to come at certain periods which he had been unable to define. He could only guess that they had choice times for hunting besides other work that had to be done to maintain the campsite and their jet-propelled craft.

  I'd like to get one of them in here and boil him! thought Harris. Big Fish claims they don't taste good. I wonder. Anyway, it would shake them up!

  He had long since given up thinking about what the sea-people could do to him if they chose. Their flushing the tank eighteen inches deep with sea water twice a day had soon given him an idea, especially as he had nowhere to go during the process. He no longer permitted himself to fall asleep anywhere near the inlet pipe.

  He noticed that the dozen or so sightseers were edging around the end of the tank to join the first individual and his offspring. Looking up, Harris saw the reason. A long, dark shadow was curving down in an insolently deliberate dive. It was streamlined as a Terran shark and as long as the tank in which Harris lived. The flat line of its leading edge split into something very like a yawn, displaying astonishing upper and lower carpets of conical teeth. This was possible because the eyes, about eight Harris thought, were spaced in a ring about the head end of the long body.

  They know I don't like to eat them, but I like to scare them a little. Big Fish thought to Harris. Look at them trying to smile at me!

  Harris watched the Tridentians wiggling and waving their eye-stalks as the monster passed lazily over them and turned to come slowly back.

  "I'd like to scare them a lot," said Harris, who had learned some time ago that he got through better just by forgetting telepathy and verbalizing. "Is the D.I.R. man still there?"

  Which... what you thought? inquired Big Fish.

  "The other Terran, the one on the island."

  The other air-breathing one is gone, the other Big Fish is feeding, as I have done just now, and it is not clear about the far Terran who lacks a Big Fish.

  "All the bastards on both worlds are out to lunch," growled Harris, "and here I sit!"

  You are in to lunch, agreed the mon
ster.

  The three eyes that bore upon the imprisoned man as the thinker swept past the tank had an intelligent alertness. Harris had come to imagine that he could detect expressions on Big Fish's limited features.

  "You're the only friend I've got!" he exclaimed, slipping suddenly into self-pity. "I wish I could go with you."

  Once you could, when you had your own tank.

  "It was what we call a submarine," said Harris. "I was looking to see what was on the ocean floor. Tell me, is it all like this?"

  Is it all like what? With blue lobsters?

  Harris still retained enough sanity to realize that the Tridentians did not suggest Terran lobsters to this being who probably could not even imagine them. That was an automatic translation of thought furnished out of his own memory and name-calling.

  "No," he said. "I mean is it all sand and mud with a few chasms here and there? Where do these crabs get their metals?"

  There are different kinds of holes and hills. It is all mostly the same. You cannot swim in it anywhere, although there are little things that dig under the soft sand. Some of them are good to eat but you have to spit out a lot of sand. The crabs dig with machines sometimes, in big holes, but what they catch I do not know.

  "Isn't there anything that catches them?" asked Harris bitterly.

  No. They are big enough to catch other things, except a few. Things that are bigger than I am are not smart.

  The monster made a pass along the ocean bed near the Tridentians, stirring up a cloud of sand and causing Harris's captor to shrink against the side of his tank. The Terran laughed heartily. He clapped the backs of his fists against his forehead above the eyes and wiggled his forefingers at the Tridentians on the other side of the clear barrier.

  Even after the sand had settled, he ran back and forth along the side of his tank, making sure that every sightseer had opportunity to note his gesture. He had an idea that they did not like it much.

  They do not like it at all, thought Big Fish. Some of them are asking for the man who lets the sea into your tank.

  "Don't call it a man!" objected Harris, giving up his posturing. "I am a man."