by Frederik
Undersea Fleet
by Frederik Pohl
and Jack Williamson
(1956)
1
The Raptures of the Depths
We marched aboard the gym ship at 0400.
It was long before dawn. The sea was a calm, black mirror, rolling slowly under the stars. Standing at sharp attention, out of the corner of my eye I could see the distant docks of the Sub-Sea Academy, a splash of light against the low dark line of Bermuda.
Cadet Captain Roger Fairfane rapped out: “Cadets! Ten-hut!”
We snapped to attention, the whole formation of us. The gym ship was a huge undersea raft, about as lively and graceful as an iceberg. The sub-sea tugs were nuz-zling around it like busy little porpoises, hauling and pulling us around, getting us out to sea. We were still on the surface, standing roll-call formation on the deck of the gym ship, but already the raft was beginning to pitch and wallow in the swells of the open sea.
I was almost shivering, and it wasn’t only the wind that came in from the far Atlantic reaches. It was tingling excitement. I was back at the Sub-Sea Academy! As we fell in I could sense the eagerness in Bob Eskow, beside me. Both of us had given up all hope of ever being on the cadet muster rolls again. And yet—here we were!
Bob whispered: “Jim, Jim! It gets you, doesn’t it? I’m beginning to hope—”
He stopped abruptly, as the whole formation fell suddenly silent. But he didn’t have to finish the sentence; I knew what he meant.
Bob and I—Jim Eden is my name, cadet at the Sub Sea Academy—had almost lost hope for a while. Out of the Academy, in disgrace—but we had fought our way back and we were full-fledged cadets again. A new year was beginning for us with the traditional qualifying skin-dive tests. And that was Bob’s problem, for there was something in his makeup that he fought against but could not quite defeat, something that made skin-diving as diffi-cult for him as, say, parachute-jumping would be for a man afraid of heights. It wasn’t fear. It wasn’t weakness. It was just a part of him.
“Count off!”
Captain Fairfane gave the order, and the whole long line of us roared out our roll-call. In the darkness—it was still far from dawn—I couldn’t see the far end of the line, but I could see Cadet Captain Fairfane by the light of his flash-tipped baton. It was an inspiring sight, the rigid form of the captain, the braced ranks of cadets fading into the darkness, the dully gleaming deck of the gym ship, the white-tipped phosphorescence of the waves.
We were the men who would soon command the SubSea Fleet!
Every one of us had worked hard to be where we were. That was why Bob Eskow, day after day, grimly went through the tough, man-killing schedule of tests and work and study. The deep sea is a drug—so my uncle Stewart Eden used to say, and he gave his whole life to it. Sometimes it’s deadly bitter. But once you’ve tasted it, you can’t live without it.
Captain Fairfane roared: “Crew commanders, report!”
“First crew, allpresentandaccountedforSIR!”
“Second crew, allpresentandaccountedforSIR!”
“Third crew, allpresentandaccountedforSIR!”
The cadet captain returned the salutes of the three crew commanders, whirled in a stiff about-face and saluted Lieutenant Blighman, our sea coach. “AllpresentandaccountedforSIR!” he rapped out.
Sea Coach Blighman returned the salute from where he stood in the lee of the bow superstructure. He strode swiftly forward, in the easy, loose-limbed gait of an old underseaman. He was a great, brown, rawboned man with the face of a starving shark. He was only a shadow to us in the ranks—the first pink-and-purple glow was barely beginning to show on the horizon—but I could feel his hungry eyes roving over all of us. Coach Blighrnan was known through the whole Academy as a tough, exacting officer. He would spend hours, if necessary, to make sure every last cadet in his crews was drilled to perfection in every move he would have to make under the surface of the sea. His contempt for weaklings was a legend. And in Blighman’s eyes, anyone who could not match his own records for depth and endurance was a weakling.
Fifteen years before, his records had been unsurpassed in all the world—which made it hard to match them! When he talked, we listened.
“At ease!” he barked at us. “Today you’re going-down for your depth qualification dives. I want every man on the raft to pass the first time. You’re all in shape—the medics have told me that. You all know what you have to do—and I’ll go through it again, one more time, in case any of you were deaf or asleep. So there’s no excuse for not qualifying!
“Skin-diving is a big part of your Academy training. Every cadet has to qualify in one sub-sea sport in order to graduate; and you can’t qualify for sports if you don’t qualify to dive, right here and now this morning.”
He stopped and looked us over. I could see his face now, shadowy but strongly marked. He said: “Maybe you think our sub-sea sports are rough. They are. We make them that way. What you learn in sports here at the Academy may help you save lives some day. Maybe it will be your own life you save!
“Sea sports are rough because the sea is rough. If you’ve ever seen the sea pound in through a hull leak, or a pressure-flawed city dome—well, then you know! If you haven’t, take my word for it—the sea is rough.
“We have an enemy, gentlemen. The enemy’s name is ‘hydrostatic pressure.’ Every minute we spend under the sea is with that enemy right beside us—always deadly, always waiting. You can’t afford to make mistakes when you’re two miles down! So if you’ve got any mistakes to make—if you’re going to cave in under pressure—take my advice and do it here today. When you’re in the Deeps, a mistake means somebody dies!
“Hydrostatic pressure! Never forget it. It amounts to nearly half a pound on every square inch, for every foot you submerge. Figure it out for yourselves! At one mile down—and a mile’s nothing, gentlemen, it’s only the beginning of the Deeps!—that comes to more than a ton pressing on every square inch. Several thousand tons on the surface of a human body.
“No human being has ever endured that much punishment and lived to talk about it. You can’t do it without a pressure suit, and the only suit that will take it is one made of edenite.” Beside me, Bob Eskow nudged me. Edenite! My own uncle’s great invention. I stood straighter than ever, listening, trying not to show the pride I felt.
There still was very little light, but Lieutenant Blighman’s eyes missed nothing; he glanced sharply at Bob Eskow before he went on. “We’re trying something new,” he said. “Today you lubbers are going to help the whole fleet. We’re reaching toward greater depths—not only with edenite suits, but in skin-diving. Not only are we constantly improving our equipment, the sea medics are trying to improve us!
“Today, for instance, part of your test will include trying out a new type of depth-adaptation injection. After we dive, you will all report to the surgeon for one of these shots. It is supposed to help you fight off tissue damage and narcosis—in simple words, it makes you stronger and smarter! Maybe it will work. I don’t know. They tell me that it doesn’t always work. Sometimes, in fact, it works the other way…
“Narcosis! There’s the danger of skin-diving, men! Get below a certain level, and we separate the real sea cows from the jellyfish. For down below fifty fathoms we come across what they call ‘the rapture of the depths.’
“The rapture of the depths.” He paused and stared at us seriously. “It’s a form of madness, and it kills. I’ve known men to tear off their face masks down below. I’ve asked them why—the ones that lived through it—and they’ve said things like ‘I wanted to give the mask to a fish!’ Madness! And these shots may help you fight against it. Anyway, the sea medics say it will help some of you jell
yfish. But some of you will find that the shots may backfire—may even make you more sensitive instead of less!”
I heard Bob Eskow whisper glumly to himself, beside me: “That’s me. That’s my luck!”
I started to say something to encourage him, but Blighman’s hungry eyes were roving toward our end of the formation; I took a brace.
He roared: “Listen—and keep alive! Some men can take pressure and some can not. We hope to separate you today, if there are any among you who can’t take it. If you can’t—watch for these warning signs. First, you may feel a severe headache. Second, you may see flashes of color. Third, you may have what the sea medics call ‘auditory hallucinations’—bells ringing below the sea, that sort of thing.
“If you get any of these signs, get back to the locks at once. We’ll haul you inside and the medics will pull you out of danger.
“But if you ignore these signals…”
He paused, with his cold eyes on Bob Eskow. Bob stood rigidly silent, but I could feel him tensing up.
“Remember,” the coach went on, without finishing his last sentence, “remember, most of you can find berths on the commercial lines if you fail the grade here. We don’t want any dead cadets.”
He looked at his watch.
“That’s about all. Captain Fairfane, dismiss your men!”
Cadet Captain Fairfane came front-and-center, barked out: “Break for breakfast! The ship dives in forty minutes, all crews will fall in for depth shots before putting on gear. Formation dis-MISSED!”
We ate standing and hurried up the ladder, Bob and I. Most of the others were still eating, but Bob and I weren’t that much interested in chow. For one thing, the Acad-emy was testing experimental depth rations with a faintly bilgy taste; for another, we both wanted to see the sun rise over the open sea.
It was still a long way off; the stars were still bright overhead, though the horizon was all edged with color now. We stood almost alone on the long, dark deck. We walked to the side of the ship and held the rail with both hands. At the fantail a tender was unloading two fathom-eters to measure and check our dives from the deck of the sub-sea raft itself. A working crew was hoisting one of them onto the deck; both of them would be installed there and used, manned by upperclassmen in edenite pressure suits to provide a graphic, permanent record of our qual-ifications.
The tender chugged away and the working crew began to bolt down the first of the fathometers. Bob and I turned and looked forward, down at the inky water.
He said suddenly: “You’ll make it, Jim. You don’t need any depth shots!”
“So will you.”
He looked at me without speaking. Then he shook his head. “Thanks, Jim. I wish I believed you.” He stared out across the water, his brow wrinkled. It was an old, old story, his fight to conquer the effects of skin-diving. “The raptures of the depths. It’s a pretty name, Jim. But an ugly thing—” He stood up and grinned. “I’ll lick it. I’ve got to!”
I didn’t know what to say; fortunately, I didn’t have to say anything. Another cadet came across the deck toward us. He spoke to us and stood beside me, looking out at the black mirror of the water and the stars that shim-mered in it, colored by the rim of light around the sky. I didn’t recognize him; a first-year man, obviously, but not from our own crew.
“How strange to see,” he said, almost speaking to himself. “Is it always like this?”
Bob and I exchanged looks. A lubber, obviously—from some Indiana town, perhaps, getting his first real look at the sea. I said, a little condescendingly, “We’re used to it. Is this your first experience with deep water?”
“Deep water?” He looked at me with surprise. Then he shook his head. “It isn’t the water I’m talking about. It’s the sky. You can see so far! And the stars, and the sun coming up. Are there always so many stars?”
Bob said curtly, “Usually there are a lot more. Haven’t you ever seen stars before?”
The strange cadet shook his head. There was an odd hush of amazement in his voice. “Very seldom.”
We both stared. Bob muttered, “Who are you?”
“Craken,” he said. “David Craken.” His dark eyes turned to me. “I know you. You’re Jim Eden. Your uncle is Stewart Eden—the inventor of edenite.”
I nodded, a little embarrassed by the eager awe in his voice. I was proud of my uncle’s power-filmed edenite armor, that turns pressure back on itself so that men can reach the floors of the sea; but my uncle had taught me not to boast of it.
“My father used to know your uncle,” David Craken told me quickly. “A long time ago. When they were both trying to solve the problem of the pressure of the Deep—”
He broke off suddenly. I stared at him, a little angrily. Was he trying to tell me that my uncle had had someone else’s help in developing edenite? But it wasn’t so; Stewart would never have hesitated to say so if it were true, and he had never mentioned another man.
I waited for the stranger to explain; but there was no explanation from him, only a sudden, startled gasp.
“What’s the matter?” Bob Eskow demanded.
David Craken was staring out across the water. It was still smooth and as black as a pool of oil, touched with shimmers of color from the coming sun. But something had frightened him.
He pointed. I saw a faint swirl of light and a spreading patch of ripples, several hundred yards from the gym ship, out toward the open sea. Nothing more.
“What was that?” he gasped.
Bob Eskow chortled. “He saw something!” he told me. “I caught a glimpse of it myself—looked like a school of tuna. From the Bermuda Hatchery, I suppose.” He grinned at the other cadet. “What did you think it was, a sea serpent?”
David Craken looked at us without expression.
“Why, yes,” he said. “I thought it might be.”
The way he said it! It was as though it were perfectly possible that there really had been a sea-serpent there, coming up off the banks below the Bermuda shallows. He spoke as though sea-serpents were real and familiar; as one of us might have said, “Why, yes, I thought it might be a shark.”
Bob said harshly: “Cut out the kidding. You don’t mean that. Or—if you did, how did you get into the Academy?”
David Craken glanced at him, then away. For a long moment he leaned forward across the rail, staring toward the spreading ripples. The phosphorescence was gone, and now there was nothing more to see.
He turned to us and shrugged. He smiled faintly. “Perhaps it was a tuna school. I hope so.”
“I’m sure it was!” said Bob. “There aren’t any seaserpents at the Academy. That’s a silly superstition!”
David Craken said, after a moment, “I’m not superstitious, Bob. But believe me, there are things under the sea that—Well, things you might not believe.”
“Son,” Bob said sharply, “I don’t need to be told about the sub-sea Deeps by any lubber! I’ve been there—haven’t we, Jim?”
I nodded. Bob and I had been together through Thetis Dome in far, deep Marinia itself—the nation of underwater dome cities, lying deep beneath the dark Pacific, where both of us had fought and nearly lost against the Sperrys.
“The Sub-Sea Fleet has explored the oceans pretty thoroughly,” Bob went on. “They haven’t turned up any sea-serpents that I know of. Oh, there are strange things, I grant you—but man put those things there! There are tubeways running like subways under the ocean floor, and modern cities under the domes, and sub-sea prospectors roving over the ocean floor; and there aren’t any sea-serpents, because they would have been seen! It’s crazy superstition, and let me tell you, we don’t believe in these superstitions here at the Academy.”
“Perhaps you should,” said David Craken.
“Wake up, boy!” cried Bob. “I’m telling you I’ve been in the Deeps—don’t try to tell me about them. The only time either Jim or I ever heard the words ‘sea-serpent’ used, the whole time we were in Marinia, was by silly old yarn-spinners, try
ing to cadge drinks by telling lies. Where do you hear stories like that, Craken? Out in Iowa or Kansas, where you came from?”
“No,” said David Craken. “That isn’t where I came from.” He hesitated, looking at us queerly. “I—I was born in Marinia,” he told us. “I’ve lived there all my life, nearly four miles down.”
2
The Looters of the Sea
At the bow, the stubby little sub-sea tugs were puffing and straining at the cables, towing us at a slow and powerful nine knots toward the off-shore submarine slopes. It was full daybreak now, and the sky was a wash of color, the golden sun looming huge ahead of us, wreathed in the film of cloud at the horizon.
Bob Eskow said: “Marinia? You? You’re from—But what are you doing here?”
David Craken said gravely: “I was born near Kermadec Dome, in the South Pacific. I came to the Academy as an exchange student, you see. There are a few of us here—from Europe, from Asia, from South America. And even me, from Marinia.”
“I know that. But—”
Craken said, with a flash of humor: “But you thought I was a lubber who’d never seen the sea. Well, the fact of the matter is that until two months ago I’d never seen anything else. I was born four miles down. That’s why the sky and the sun and the stars seem—well, just as fantastic to me as sea serpents apparently are to you.”
“Don’t kid me!” Bob flashed. “The sea-bottoms have been well explored—”
“No.” He looked at us almost imploringly, praying us to believe him. “They have not. There are a handful of cities, tied together with the tubes. There are explorers and prospectors in all the Deeps, an occasional deep-sea farm, a few miles away from the dome cities. But the floor of the sea, Bob, is three times larger than the whole Earth’s dry-land area. Microsonar can find some things; visual observation can find a few more. But the rest of the sea-bottom is as scarcely populated and as unknown as Antarctica…”
The warning klaxon sounded, and that was the end of our chat.
We raced across the deck toward the hatchways, even while the voice of sea coach Blighman rattled out of the loudspeaker:
