by Damon Knight
45
At twelve hundred hours the next day, when Bliss was just sitting down to a solitary lunch, his phone buzzed.
“Yes?”
It was his secretary’s voice. “Mr. Bliss, we have an incoming video call from the President.”
“Oh, God,” said Bliss. He got up and went to the desk phone, turned it on. The image of an earnest crop-haired young man appeared on the screen.
“Ah, Captain Bliss? Will you hold, please, for the President of the United States?”
“I will, yes.”
Several minutes passed; then the famous features appeared on the screen.
“Captain Bliss, as you know, I’ve been hearing a great many expressions of concern about your situation, and I want you to know that I’m ordering the aircraft carrier Bluefields to leave station and rendezvous with you sometime tomorrow. They will be searching for your missing lifeboat, and they’ll be carrying a group of Navy doctors and nurses as well as a detachment of Marines to keep order in Sea Venture, and you’ll get every aid and assistance we can possibly give you.”
“Yes, Mr. President.”
“And, Captain Bliss, the Bluefields will also have orders to take off as many passengers as they can who are not affected by the disease. We’ll send you a list of those passengers later today, and this is a tentative list, and you can add to it from those passengers who want to go, up to the limit of what the Bluefields can carry.”
“Mr. President, may I ask what will be done with the passengers?”
“Yes, you certainly may, and I was coming to that. They will be kept in quarantine on the Bluefields, of course, until our medical people are sure everything is all right, and then they’ll be taken to Guam.”
“Thank you, Mr. President.”
“That’s all right, Captain Bliss, and if there’s anything else we can do for you, I want you to call my office, night or day, at any time. Now I’m going to let you get back to your duties, Captain, and I want you to know that our prayers are going out to you.”
“More trouble on the stricken Sea Venture,” said the anchorperson, looking gravely at the camera. “While a helicopter carrier steams to the rescue, a famous passenger, Paul Newland, mysteriously disappears. We’ll have these and other stories after this message.”
That evening over dinner with Hartman, Bliss said, “I’m at my wit’s end, frankly. We’ve tried everything on earth, and it’s all been a disaster. Now the thing’s got off the lifeboat. That couldn’t have happened, but it did. And the worst of it is that it’s got McNulty, and Jacobs too. Jacobs was going to build us a gadget, to spray the thing with radio frequencies and so on while it’s between victims.”
“Do you think it took Jacobs to keep him from making the gadget?”
“Or to make us think that was the reason. Well, mustn’t be depressing. Try this claret.”
Hartman took a sip, tried not to let his opinion show on his face. “Very nice.”
“It’s all up to me, you know,” Bliss said. “I wish it had been anybody else.”
“It is a bit of a quandary, isn’t it?” said Hartman. “You can’t let anybody off Sea Venture until you’ve got rid of the parasite, but on the other hand you can’t keep them here forever.”
“My masters have instructed me to let a carrier take off certain selected passengers. I can’t do it. If the thing once gets onto a ship that carries helicopters, there’ll be no holding it.”
“No, I see that. I suppose in the end it’s going to come down to heroic measures. Nelson at Copenhagen, that sort of thing.”
“There’s the rub, I’m not a hero.”
“No, well, none of us are until it comes to the point, are we?”
46
At oh-two-hundred that night his bedside phone brrred. More or less awake, Bliss picked it up. “Yes?”
“Chief, sorry to disturb you, but it’s collect from your wife.”
“On video?”
“No.”
“All right, put her on.”
“Stanley?”
“Yes, dear.”
“We’ve been so worried about you, are you all right?”
“Yes, I’m fine.”
“Well, dear, I wouldn’t have called at this hour, but I couldn’t get through before—they kept saying all the circuits were busy.”
“Yes, they probably were. Is anything wrong?”
“Well, it’s nothing really, but Tommy is in a little trouble. He borrowed some money from a man at work, and then, you know, he lost the job and so of course he couldn’t pay it back.”
“How much money?”
“Well, they say it’s three thousand pounds, and you know with the new furnace last year, and the rise in the rates, it’s left us very short indeed.”
“How much has he got left?”
“Well, only a few pounds, you see he lent most of it to another man, I’m afraid it’s a complicated story. But this man, the one he borrowed from, is being very nasty, calling day and night, and we really are at our wit’s end, dear. I just wanted to know if there’s anything you can do.”
“I’ll wire the money,” said Bliss.
“Thank you, dear, you are an angel. What about your epidemic, is there anything new?”
“No, it’s the same.”
“Well, I know you’ll come through it all right, dear. Oh, by the way, old Mrs. Frye particularly wanted to be remembered to you. She prays for you every night, and of course we do too.”
“Thank you.”
“Well, dear, this is costing the earth. I’ll ring off now. Sleep well.”
“Yes, you too.”
“And I’ll give your love to Tommy, shall I?”
“Yes. Good night.”
At oh-eight-hundred the next morning, Bliss entered the Control Center as was his custom; Deputy Ferguson had just come on shift. Stuart was at the communications console.
“Mr. Ferguson and Ms. Stuart, I regret to tell you that I have been ordered to do something that in my judgment would be extremely dangerous.”
“Yes, Chief?” said Stuart.
“A U.S. aircraft carrier is steaming towards us from Guam and will arrive at approximately oh-nine-hundred.”
“Yes, sir.”
“The carrier is to take off a number of our passengers and keep them in quarantine. I don’t think they realize the impossibility of doing so on a carrier, but naturally I have no choice but to comply.”
“No, sir,” said Stuart.
“In the circumstances, it is regrettable that you should have informed me that our communications gear is down, and that we cannot send messages.”
“Sir?”
Bliss put a finger beside his nose. “Something to do with the aerial, I believe. In fact, it’s quite serious, because we can receive messages on the emergency channels, and weather and navigation signals, but no other incoming messages at all—no telephone, no TV. Naturally I expect you to make repairs with all deliberate speed. Do you understand me now?”
“Oh. Yes, sir, I think I do.”
“Good. And you, Mr. Ferguson?”
“Yes, Chief.”
A light was blinking on the comm console. Stuart flipped a switch and listened. “Chief, a message from the Bluefields. They say they will make rendezvous at oh-nine-thirteen. They’re asking for confirmation.”
“It’s a pity we can’t answer, isn’t it? Prepare for submersion, Mr. Ferguson.”
“Yes, sir.”
Sirens went off all over the open decks. Stewards hurried about stowing away loose gear and escorting passengers inside. The weather doors were shut and dogged. The fishery and marine sections were secured. “Ready for submersion, sir,” said Ferguson. Bliss did not reply.
At oh-nine-hundred Stuart said, “A radio message from the Bluefields, sir. ‘We are approaching rendezvous. Do you read? Please open telephone link.’”
“Thank you.”
He turned to Ferguson. “Can you see them?”
“Yes, s
ir. There they are.” He pointed to the TV screen.
“Bone in their teeth,” remarked Bliss.
“Yes, sir.”
“They must be rather irritated.”
“Yes, sir.”
In the screen, the carrier was now plainly visible, a hulking gray shape. Lights were winking from her foremast structure.
“She’s signaling by heliograph, Chief.”
“I see she is. Can you read that, Mr. Ferguson?”
“Yes, sir. ‘Prepare to receive helicopter.’”
Bliss frowned. “How long is it since you learned heliograph, Mr. Ferguson?”
“Thirteen years, Chief.”
“So you’re bound to be a little rusty. You’re really just guessing at the message, aren’t you?”
“If you say so, Chief.”
“I do say so. In fact, we don’t know that’s a U.S. Navy vessel at all. It could be hostile. I think we must consider evasive action, Mr. Ferguson.”
They watched in silence as the carrier rapidly drew nearer. It hove to half a mile away; there were further signals. Then they saw a helicopter lift off the deck and swing toward them.
“Down to plus ten,” said Bliss, “smartly, Mr. Ferguson.”
“Yes, sir.”
The water rose until only ten feet of Sea Venture’s upper works stood above the surface. The copter was still droning toward them. In the view from the camera on the foretop they saw it fly over, vastly foreshortened; it reappeared, circled twice, and turned back to the carrier.
“There’ll be hell to pay for this later,” Ferguson remarked.
“I know it,” said Bliss. In the old days on the Queen, a first officer would not have spoken to his captain in quite that way, but Bliss wasn’t a captain and this wasn’t a ship.
47
On the bridge of Bluefields, Commander Leonard W. Markey watched in the television screens as the copter turned back from the submerging vessel. Beside him was the Executive Officer, Glenn Pugliese. The speaker crackled: “Returning to ship.”
“Roger.”
“What the hell do they think they’re up to?” Markey said.
Pugliese, who knew his captain, did not reply.
“Send the pilot up for debriefing as soon as he gets here. No, belay that. Hell! I’m going to my cabin.”
Bliss waited half an hour and then gave the order to surface. Presently the helicopter came out again. “Down to plus ten,” said Bliss. The helicopter circled, dropped something, and went back to the carrier. “What is that?” said Bliss.
“Dye marker,” Ferguson replied.
“Oh, I see. Well. That’s a pity.”
Twice more they surfaced, and the copter came over, and twice more they submerged. Bliss could imagine the messages flying back and forth between here and Washington.
The yellow stain spread out around them; gradually they left it behind. In the late afternoon the copter came over again and renewed it. After dinner, which he ate in blessed tranquillity, Bliss came back to the Control Center. Deputy Davis was on duty. The stars were bright over the ocean.
“Submerge to minus three hundred, Mr. Davis,” he said.
“Three hundred, sir.” The cub gave him a worshipful look.
“Keep her there until twenty hundred hours tomorrow. Log it.”
“Yes, sir.”
And now he was counting boxes in a storeroom, good lord, when was that? Seventy-nine or eighty, probably, his freshman year in college, a summer job, pure monotony, but the boxes were absolutely real now, he could even read the printing on the brown cardboard, “TEKTRONIX Decoupler, Model 105, 4920-29.” He hadn’t thought of that in years, and certainly hadn’t remembered the lettering on the boxes, but he knew it was right. He could see his own hand with the pencil, and the clipboard, and he could see the dust motes swimming in the sunlight from the one high window.
Now the bright sparks were streaming past him, not dust motes anymore, and there was a wet smell in his nostrils, a clean cold underwater smell as familiar as bacon and eggs, and he felt his jaws snap as something came by. And now a fish swam up to him in the water that was colorless and pure as air; its scales were like multicolored armor, and it turned to look at him with one round idiot eye, then flicked away and swam to the other end of the tank.
Newland woke without knowing that he had been asleep. His body hurt all over. It was dark outside; he was very thirsty. He managed to get out of the pilot’s seat and into his wheelchair; he drove it back down the aisle, found a water fountain, and drank. He thought that he probably ought to eat something. He could see the food-storage lockers over the microwave ovens, but they were out of his reach.
48
Commander Leonard W. Markey was a stocky blond man. His eyes were pale blue; his eyelashes were almost white, and his skin so fair that it burned and peeled. He would have been well suited to North Atlantic or Arctic duty, and therefore, as a matter of habit and tradition, the Navy had assigned him to the Asiatic Fleet.
Markey had graduated from Annapolis seventeen years before, standing one hundred forty-first in his class. At the age of thirty-nine, he knew he had been a little too long in grade, and could not look forward to further advancement unless there was a shooting war, an eventuality for which, as a sensible man, he had no yearning. He considered himself a good officer; in maneuvers last spring, Bluefields had scored the second-highest marks of any helicopter carrier in the fleet. On the whole, he was satisfied with his life and his career; he looked forward to another few years of undistinguished service, then retirement with his wife and children on Oahu.
His present mission had started out as something just unusual enough to be interesting, but certainly not much of a challenge. The search for the missing lifeboat was routine; the recon helicopters came back every day with nothing to report, and that was not surprising: if the lifeboat was under power, it could be anywhere in a thousand-mile radius by now. That was not really his problem—other ships and planes out of Guam were looking for the lifeboat, and eventually one of them would find it. Meanwhile, rescuing the VIP passengers from Sea Venture was his problem.
At first he had not been able to believe that CV’s behavior was anything but some kind of dumb mistake, but now he was beginning to see the matter differently. This was not an aid-to-civilians mission, like ferrying Roosevelt’s dog home from Yalta during World War II; he was fighting a naval engagement against an opponent who was making a jackass out of him.
The problem was that he couldn’t land a copter on CV’s deck, because every time he tried, the damn thing submerged. With helicopter reconnaissance, he could locate it every time it surfaced, but he couldn’t fire a shot, couldn’t drop depth charges, couldn’t do anything that might injure civilians; and if the copter approached, down it went again.
There had to be a solution. There was; Markey had found it, and he felt pleased with himself.
For the time being, Bliss had decided, the best thing would be to run partly submerged at night, when the chances of being sighted were almost nil, and surface in daylight. There was no way to escape the carrier except by running fully submerged indefinitely, and he couldn’t do that because the air-purifying chemicals wouldn’t hold out forever. Food was going to be a problem, too; their supplies were meant to last only until they reached Manila.
When he entered the Control Center at oh-eight-hundred on Thursday, the sun was well up in a partly overcast sky. He said good morning to Ferguson and Stuart, looked at the log, then the barometer. “No sign of our friends yet?” he asked.
“Not yet. Woop, excuse me, I think I see them.”
In the foretop monitor, a dark shape was rising and dipping near the horizon. “Yes, there they are,” said Bliss. “Everything secured?”
“Yes, sir, as you ordered.”
“Any complaints from the passengers?”
“Oh, yes.”
The four frogmen were mustering on the flight deck. In the bridge monitors, Markey watched them climb into the
copter carrying their gear. The door closed.
“Charlie Hatrack Four Niner, you are cleared for takeoff,” said the speaker.
“Roger.”
After a moment the two sets of blades began to turn; the ungainly machine rose from the deck, hovered, swiveled in midair, and tilted off toward Sea Venture.
“Down to plus ten, Mr. Ferguson.”
“Yes, sir.”
The water rose over one deck after another. The copter made a pass overhead, swung back; then a series of dark shapes dropped from it into the water.
“What was that?” said Bliss sharply.
“Frogmen, sir. Four of them.”
“No, I meant that other thing—what was it, a raft?”
“Looked like one, sir.”
“What are they up to?” Bliss muttered, and gnawed a thumbnail. “Raft—they’ll tie onto us— Oh, God! Surface, Mr. Ferguson, smartly!”
“Sir? Yes, sir.” Ferguson touched the controls. In the lookout screen they saw the water receding; then the Signal Deck broke the surface, and as the lenses cleared they could see white water boiling across the deck. Four struggling figures were washed over the side.
“Plus ten, Mr. Ferguson. Where’s the copter?”
“There, sir.” The helicopter swooped overhead, descended to port, came back again.
In the screens now they could see the raft, and four dark heads bobbing in the swell a few yards off the port quarter. The frogmen and their raft were slowly falling astern. The copter circled again. Presently it hovered and lowered a sling. They watched as one frogman after another was hoisted into the copter. They left the raft behind. The copter drifted away toward the carrier.
Ferguson was clearly puzzled. “Chief, if you don’t mind my asking—”
“They were going to tie onto us with a long line. We’d tow them, wherever we went. Then the next time we surfaced, they’d be there. That would be the end.”