Classic Fiction

by Hal Clement

  The spring was strong. Remember, it was built to prop the tank in position on a slope even when the ballast was still attached. The engineers who built it could tell you how many pounds of shove it gave. I can’t, but I could feel it. The sub and tank were pushed neatly away from each other. The line of thrust was not exactly through the center of my shell, and I got quite a bit of spin out of it. The sub didn’t. Either the push was better centered on him or he was quicker this time with his control jets.

  He was a stubborn character. He came back and tried the same thing again, after my spin had stopped. I was able to repeat, with about the same results. Konrad the Chiton was still with me, though, and he had my technique figured out by this time. He moved a little away from me to free his hands for signaling, waved them for about ten seconds in a complicated pattern that meant nothing to me, and then came back and took hold of the tank once more.

  The sub made another approach, similar to the preceding two, and I tried to line up for another kick. My friend, however, had different ideas. He was much farther from the center than I was, and could exert much more torque. He could also see where the legs were, and when I shifted my weight to line up the proper one with the approaching grapple he interfered. He was too smart to fight me directly, though he probably could have managed it; instead, he let me get moving and then supplied an extra shove to one side so that I either overshot or missed the right position. I made three attempts to line up as the hand was coming in and finally gave the kick a little out of line when the sub was about to make contact. The leg grazed the side of the handler and put a little spin on the tank, but didn’t hit anything solid enough to push us apart. Worse, it gave the sub operator a chance to grab the leg itself. This he seemed to feel was a better hold than whatever he had planned on; he clamped on tightly and began to cut buoyancy once more.

  This proved to be a mistake, though it didn’t help me as much as it might have. The leg wasn’t strong enough to hold the tank down. It parted, and once more the sub disappeared below me. I cut my lights promptly, hoping that my passenger had lost his hold with the jerk. Maybe he did, but if so he wasn’t far enough away to lose track of me. In a few seconds the tapping resumed, and in a few more the lights of the sub were close enough to make my blackout an idle gesture. I turned mine back on again so that I could see to resume the sparring match.

  Now he got the idea of making his approach toward the spot where the leg had been lost, so that I’d have to turn further to bring another into line. My swimming friend was co-operating nobly, and for a little while I was afraid they had me. The sub operator was too smart to try for a leg again, but he managed to keep out of the way of several kicks I gave out. He got in, made what should have been a successful grab at something on my outer surface, but was hurried and missed. He had to back up for another try… and I had time to get another idea into operation.

  I knew where the swimmer was. I could see enough of him to tell not only that but to guess which way he’d be pushing next time. I began to put a spin on the tank with him at one pole so that he wouldn’t notice it quite so quickly. This worked, though I didn’t get a really rapid rotation—I couldn’t, of course, with such poor torque; but with the tank’s weight I had enough for what I wanted. One of my strong points in basic physics, ages ago in school, was mechanics. I couldn’t handle the present problem quantitatively because I didn’t know either my angular speed or the tank’s moment of inertia, but I hit the qualitative answer on the button. As the grapple approached again I shifted my weight to start the tank processing. Billy Barnacle tried his usual stunt of pushing me sideways and sent the leg right through the point I wanted. Either he’d forgotten what they’d taught him about gyroscopes or he was getting tired. I hit the grapple dead center with my kick, and we were apart again. If I’d been driving that sub, I’d have been getting tired of the whole business by now.

  Apparently he was more patient than I. He was back again all too soon.

  I had gained maybe three or four hundred feet with each pass of our duel. I had an uneasy feeling that I was going to run out of tricks before those increments added up to the total distance to the surface. Certainly if he had the patience to keep repeating the same technique, he’d soon run me dry.

  He didn’t, though. He seemed to have decided that the grapple wasn’t quite the right tool after all. When he came back next time he did his usual speed-matching some distance above me, instead of level. A small light flickered, apparently in code, and my pressure-proof friend let go of the tank and swam up to the sub. He was back in a moment, trailing a line behind him.

  Apparently it had been decided that human hands were more versatile than mechanical ones.

  At first I wasn’t worried. There was nothing on the outside of the tank except the legs which would really lend itself to the attachment of a rope, and it had already been demonstrated that the legs weren’t strong enough. Hours before, on the bottom—no, come to think of it, it was much less than one hour—my pal had felt the need of a cargo net to wrap around the sphere. If he didn’t have such a net here, all should be well.

  He did, unfortunately. It was bigger and heavier than the one they had had on the bottom, which was probably why he wasn’t swimming with it. When he got back just above the tank he began hauling on his line, and the net emerged from one of the sub’s service ports. He pulled it to him and began to spread it out so that my tank would float up into it. He failed the first time through no doing of mine; he simply didn’t get his net deployed in time. I ran into it while it was still only partly open. It had more of its weight on one side of me than on the other, so I automatically rolled out from under it and kept on rising. I didn’t have to move a finger. The sub was also rising, of course, so the net trailed downward to the end of its line and folded itself together. The boy in the sub had to reel in mechanically while the swimmer held onto me, before they could go through it all again.

  That was another few hundred feet gained.

  The next time they spread the net much farther above me. Once open it was even less maneuverable than the tank, and by a little judicious rolling to make the outer irregularities affect my direction of ascent I managed to get far enough from its center to roll out the same way as before. What that team needed was two more swimmers, I decided.

  It turned out that one more was enough. They reeled in the net again, lifted the sub a distance, adjusted its buoyancy so that it rose a little more slowly than I did, and then the operator came out to join the swimmer. Each took a corner of the net and with the boat for the third corner formed a wide triangle which they were able to keep centered over me. I tried to work toward the sub, which seemed to be unoccupied and wouldn’t back up to keep the net spread. It didn’t work. The men moved just a little in the same direction, letting the net sag toward me.

  The next thing I knew it was draped around me, and I couldn’t tell which way to roll even if I had been able to start rolling. The swimmers came in from their corners and began tying it together at the bottom.

  If they finished, I was done. I watched them as well as I could, trying to spot where there was an edge—anything to tell me that there was more weight of net on one side of me than the other. I spotted what I thought was a chance to interrupt the work while I got a better look, and I’m afraid I took it.

  One of the men was next to the tank and a little below it, pulling a section of net closer. Maybe it was the sub operator—the light was good, but I didn’t take time to check—and he wasn’t as familiar with the leg arrangement as his companion. Anyway, he was in the way of one of them, and I let him have it.

  My intention, if I had one—I really didn’t take time to think—was to knock him out of the way so I’d have a chance to roll out of the net. I certainly didn’t mean to do him serious or permanent damage. The disk at the end of the leg, though, caught him on the right side and could hardly have helped breaking some ribs. It kicked him away like a shark butted by a dolphin. The line he was holdin
g practically flew out of his right hand, and a tool whose nature I couldn’t make out fell from his left. He began to sink out of sight.

  The other swimmer was onto him before he’d left the reach of the lights. He was evidently out cold; his body was completely limp as his friend towed him up toward the sub. I didn’t watch too closely, partly because I was trying to roll myself out of the net and partly because I regretted what I’d done.

  I made little progress with the rolling. They’d gotten some knots into the system already, and it looked as though I were there to stay. I managed to make a half turn, getting what had been the tank’s bottom when I was caught swung up to the top, but it didn’t do me a bit of good. The meshes wound around the tank even more tightly during the turn.

  I was a little above the sub by that time—as I said, they’d trimmed it to rise a little more slowly than the tank—and the tension on the line connecting the net with the boat was swinging me directly over the latter. It was also tipping the sub, I noticed, since the line wasn’t attached anywhere near the latter’s center of gravity. I watched, helpless but hopeful, to see whether the single rope was strong enough to drag me down when they really put weight on the boat.

  I didn’t find out. The uninjured man towed his companion to the little vessel, opened its main hatch, and after some trouble got him inside. Up to that point we’d still been raising. Now it appeared that the sub was putting on more weight, for the line tightened and my pressure gauge reversed its direction once more. However, the sub, which had leveled off after the men got on board, now went down badly by the stern. Evidently the off-center lift through the net line was more than could be countered by shunting ballast, at least if enough total weight was in the tanks to maintain a descent. Apparently there was a higher priority attached to bringing me back than to keeping the boat level. I watched, with my fingers crossed, hoping the line would give.

  It didn’t, but someone’s patience did. Maybe the swimmer I had hit was seriously injured, though I hoped not; but whatever the cause, whoever was now running the sub decided that speed was of prime importance.

  He suddenly cast off rope, net, and all, and disappeared in a few seconds. I was alone at last, bound once more for the surface. It was almost an anticlimax.

  It was also quite a letdown. The dogfight, if you could call it that, had lasted only ten or fifteen minutes in all and certainly hadn’t involved me in much physical labor, but I felt as though I’d just done ten rounds with someone a couple of classes above my weight.

  Now I was safe. There wasn’t a prayer of their finding me again without sonar, with no one hanging outside to broadcast sound waves from my own hull, and with my lights out—I hastily turned them out as that thought crossed my mind. I had less than two thousand feet to go—not much over ten minutes, unless the drag of the net and line made too much difference. I watched the gauges for a while and decided that they didn’t, and for the first time since I’d left the surface I fell asleep.

  VII

  I was awakened by being tossed around; the storm was still on. More specifically, I was awakened by being cracked on the head by a corner of the control panel.

  It wasn’t hard enough to damage either the panel or my skull, but it was uncomfortable. So was the whole situation. Riding up and down on fifteen-foot waves is bad enough in a stable boat, but in a nearly spherical container which has practically no preference for a definite up and down it is infinitely worse. I’ve been in free fall in space, which is no joke, but I’ll take it again any time before being a human volleyball in the middle of even a modest-sized Pacific storm. That was one thing they hadn’t bothered too much about when they designed the submarine escape shells. The idea was to get to the surface rather than to be comfortable afterward. All I could do was turn on the rescue broadcaster and try to keep my stomach in place.

  I couldn’t even be sure anyone was receiving it—the broadcast, I mean. It was a good bet that they were, since my return was certainly expected. But several good bets had failed to pay off already.

  I couldn’t even sleep. Fortunately I’d had enough sense not to eat when the idea had occurred a while back, so I couldn’t do what my stomach wanted most to do just then. I couldn’t do anything. The whole situation was as bad physically as the original descent had been mentally.

  But there’s no point trying to make it any clearer; I might succeed.

  I did wish I’d taken the trouble to find out how long the storm was due to last. Then I might have gotten some comfort from an occasional glance at the clock. As things were, I quickly found that it was better not to look at it; the time since the last look was always so much less than I’d guessed. As it turned out, I should have watched some of the other instruments, though their reading would have been no comfort either—and there would have been nothing to do about them.

  I would never have believed that the end of that motion could have been anything but a relief. If anyone had told me that it would make me feel worse, I’d have used violence on him for fear he might convince me. Unfortunately, he’d have been perfectly right. The end came much too suddenly.

  The first motion to stop was the rolling. The tank still bobbed up and down, but seemed to have acquired a definite top and bottom. Then the vertical oscillation also decreased, and finally stopped. By that time there was nothing more the pressure gauge could tell me, but I looked at it anyway.

  I was right. The tank was going down again.

  There was one thing I didn’t have to worry about; it wasn’t a case of ordinary sinking. The only hollow space which gave the tank its buoyancy was the one I was in, and if that had been leaking I’d have known it already. No, I was being pulled down; and granting that there are such things as giant squids, I didn’t for an instant think that one of them was responsible. The sonar monitor was dark now, but maybe it hadn’t been for the last hour or so—I wouldn’t have—known.

  There was only one reasonable explanation. I looked down, not knowing what I really hoped to see and didn’t see very much; the sub wasn’t bothering with lights. I turned on my own, but could see only the single line, taut now, leading from the net which was now thoroughly tangled around me to a vague bulk just on the edge of visibility.

  The line, it may be remarked, was quite strong enough for what it had to do; we were descending much faster than my original ballast had carried me down. If the owners of that rope were prepared to trust it under such stress, I saw no point in doubting their judgment. I didn’t even bother to hope it would break. I calculated that I’d be on the bottom in twenty minutes or so, and let it go at that.

  At least, I could eat now. I began to absorb a dextrose pill with such calmness as I could collect. There was nothing else to do; they had me.

  We were still several hundred feet from the bottom when company showed up. Two more subs, brightly lighted, hove into view. They were work machines similar to the one I’d had trouble with a few hours before. If they were in communication with the one which had me in tow, it was by means of something none of my instruments could pick up. They probably were, since their maneuvers were perfectly coordinated. First one and then the other newcomer swung close beside me, and each used its ‘hands’ to hang several hooked slugs of metal into my net. These weights took nearly all the stress off the tow rope and removed any hope there might have been of its breaking at the last moment.

  Then a swimmer slipped out of each boat and took station beside me, saving themselves work by holding onto the net too. I flicked my lights on for a moment, but couldn’t recognize either face. I began to wonder about the fellow I’d hit and what his friends might think about it if I’d hurt him really seriously. The human mind sometimes goes off on funny sidetracks; I never once, while I was being towed, thought about their reaction to my having discovered their obviously secret installation. If I had, I’d probably have told myself that if they really wanted to do anything final any of their subs could have cracked the tank with no trouble at all.

&nbs
p; Eventually the bottom came into view in the range of my own lights.

  It wasn’t luminous this time. I thought at first that they must have turned their lights off; then I realized that the storm must have carried me some distance, and there was no reason to expect to be very near the tent. This was ordinary sea bottom complete with crab burrows; I could tell, because after reaching it the sub reeled in most of the tow line and left me only about twenty feet up. This gave me a good look at the boat itself, too, and I could see that it wasn’t my former antagonist. For one thing, it was about twice as big.

  It wasn’t very different in general design, though. There was still plenty of equipment on the outside—more, if anything. It was meant for work, not travel. Even without the drag of my tank it wouldn’t have made very good speed over the bottom, but I could see that we were moving. I had no doubt we were heading either for the entrance I’d seen earlier or for some other one and kept looking ahead for its lights.

  As it turned out, we reached a different one. We were a couple of hours getting there, though that’s an academic point since I didn’t know where we’d started from anyway. This pit was smaller than the other, and the lighted tent roof was nowhere in sight when we reached it.

  This entrance was only about twenty-five feet across, much too small for the sub that was towing me and borderline for the other two. It was perfectly cylindrical, with vertical sides, and opened from the bottom of a shallow bowl just as the other had. It was very well lighted, so I had no trouble making out details.

  There were many ladders around the rim. At first they led down out of sight, but as I came closer I found I could see the bottom ends of those on the farther side of the opening. The pit was apparently a hole in the roof of a chamber something like forty feet deep.