Classic Fiction

by Hal Clement

  There were several more swimmers in and above the hole who seemed to be waiting for us. As we approached, they paddled out rather casually and gathered around the tank as the sub that was towing me settled to the bottom just beside the entrance.

  My tank drifted upward and slightly forward until the tow rope was vertical. One of the swimmers waved a signal, and an escort sub swung back in and hung another slug of ballast onto my net. That took the rest of the tension off the rope, and I began to sink.

  The swimmer signaled again, and the tow line came free of the big sub. Several men grabbed it; the rest took hold of the net, and they all began to work me toward the pit as I settled. This seemed to be the last lap. Unless they had the stupidity to leave me right under their hole in the roof, which would be too much to expect even in twentieth-century realistic literature, the most remote chance of my getting back without their consent and assistance would vanish once I was inside that entryway.

  I was nearly frantic. Don’t ask me why I felt so scared at one time and so calm and steady at another; I can’t tell you. It’s just the way I am, and if you don’t like it you don’t have to live with it, at least.

  I don’t know what I did or thought in those few minutes, and I’d probably not want to tell anyone if I did remember. The fact was that there was nothing whatever I could do. I had all the power of a goldfish in his bowl, and that sometimes upsets a man—who, after all, is used to having at least a little control over his environment.

  I was a little more calm as I reached the edge of the pit; I don’t know the reason for that, either, but at least I can report the incident. There was a pause as we reached the tops of the ladders, and the subs and swimmers both clustered around and began hanging more ballast onto my net, adding insult to injury. The swimmers also picked up what looked like tool belts from hooks near the ladder tops and buckled them around their waists, though I couldn’t see why they should have more need of these inside than out. At least, I couldn’t see any reason at first; then it occurred to me that tools might be useful in opening up my tank. I decided not to think of that just yet.

  From inside, the pit looked even more like a hole in a ceiling. The chamber below was much larger than I had realized, fully a hundred feet on each side. The entrance was simply a black circle above me, and as I watched it ceased to be above me. The swimmers were pushing me toward one of the walls.

  I thought for a moment that rolling across the ceiling would at least be easier than the same action on the sea bottom, but dismissed the point as irrelevant and academic. My morale was rising, but was still pretty low.

  At least, I was still alive, and in a way I’d done some of my job. I’d dropped-the transponder near one entrance, and there seemed a decent chance that it hadn’t been found. My pick-me-up broadcast had been going for several hours at the surface, and the chance that it had been received was excellent. The Board would know I’d done something, and would certainly be moved to check up on what had become of me. If they swept the bottom with high-resolution sonar they could hardly miss the smooth surface of the tent, even if the transponders didn’t work. In fact, considering how big the tent seemed to be, it was rather surprising that ordinary depth-meter records hadn’t picked it up some time or other.

  I should have given more thought to that point, though it would have sent my morale downhill again. As it was, I could believe that this installation would be found fairly soon, even if I myself wasn’t.

  The big room had little detail to mention. I assumed at first that it would turn out to be a pressure lock or the vestibule to one, but the big tunnel opening from it had no door. There were smaller panels on the walls which might have been locks—some of them were big enough to admit a human figure.

  The swimmers towed me toward the tunnel mouth and into it. It was fully twenty feet in diameter, much more than large enough for the tank, and was lighted almost as well as the chamber we had just left. I found myself getting angry again at this bunch who were being so free with their energy. I was also beginning to wonder where they got so much of it. I’d run into power-bootleggers before in the course of business, naturally, but never an outfit with so much of it to throw around.

  We went only a few yards—twenty or so—down the tunnel before coming to another large room which opened from it. They towed me into this. It had several much smaller tunnels—maybe I should say shafts—opening from its floor; I counted eight in my first glance. None of these openings had lids or doors either. Apparently a large part of the installation was flooded and under outside pressure. Maybe it was a mine; that would account for the energy, if the product were uranium or thorium, and it would not be practical to try to keep all the windings and tunnels of a submarine mine free of water.

  I had just about time to run that thought through my mind while the swimmers were putting me and my tank down on the floor. It started to roll a little, and I put out three legs to prop it. Luckily all three got through the meshes of the net which was still around me without being jammed.

  With that settled, I looked at the bunch of people around me to see what they’d do next. It was clearly up to them.

  I’m used to it now, but I still don’t like the memory of what they did and what it did to me.

  They took off their helmets. A mile under the sea, in pressure that would crush sponges, metal into foil, they took off their helmets.

  TO BE CONTINUED

  OCEAN ON TOP

  These people couldn't be breathing water a mile under the sea—but the facts were clear. They were!

  What has gone before -

  Three of my friends had disappeared in a single small area of the Pacific, just north of Easter Island. Like me, all worked for the Power Board, the group which was responsible for rationing man’s severely limited supply of energy and which was, because of that fact, practically the world government.

  Bert Wehlstrahl had vanished a year before, and Joey Elfven ten months later. Marie Wladetzky had gone two weeks after Joe, presumably in search of him, and I was principally interested in finding Marie. (Don’t ask for my name; it’s bad enough to have to listen to it occasionally, and I’m certainly not going to put it in print.) Since the two men were police workers of a sort, it was likely that their disappearance was not accidental, so my first step was to search the ocean bottom in the key area from a camouflaged vantage point—actually one of the spherical escape tanks used in ordinary cargo submarines, somewhat modified for my purpose.

  I found evidence of rationing violation the moment I reached the bottom—I almost landed on it. A mile down there was an area actually lighted artificially and apparently concealed under a flat, translucent surface which I interpreted as some sort of fabric. Seeing energy wasted to light the outside of a tent roof was bad enough; the sight of a swimmer in what looked like ordinary scuba gear under five thousand feet of sea water was far worse. The technological capacity so demonstrated suggested something much more serious than an ordinary black-market energy gang.

  My tank was not very maneuverable, but I managed to get myself “captured” and towed to an entrance to the undersea base. Here I dropped to sonar transponder, which should guide Board enforcement forces to the spot, released my ballast and headed for the surface with the comfortable certainty that the swimmers could not follow far because of the pressure gradient.

  This belief proved wrong. One of them hung onto my tank and by pounding on it was able to guide a sub to the scene. After doing my best to get the nearly helpless tank away, I was really captured and dragged back to the bottom.

  The tank was brought to a lighted pit in the ocean floor. There were no door or air locks. The swimmers, who had loaded my tank with enough ballast to keep it down even if they lost hold again, towed me into a tunnel which led from the entrance pit, along it for a short distance, and into a flooded room. Then they removed their helmets.

  VIII

  It must be obvious from the things I’ve already said that I’m no psychologist
, though I’ve read a little about the field. I’ve been told that it’s possible for a person to deny flatly and categorically the evidence of his own senses, if their reports disagree violently enough with what he thinks he knows. In fact I’ve met people who claim that the ability to do this is all that keeps most of us sane. Until that moment, I’d doubted both statements. Now I’m not so sure.

  I’d seen us come in from definite, obvious sea-bottom conditions to the place where we now were. I had not seen anything even remotely like a door, valve, or lock either open before us or close behind us, and I had certainly been looking for one. To the best of my knowledge and belief, therefore, my tank was now in a room full of sea water at a pressure corresponding roughly to a mile’s depth.

  I had seen the people now in the chamber around me swimming in the sea outside—the same people, for the most part. I had seen them, continually or nearly so, as they brought me in. They, too, were still in high-pressure water and had been all along. I was forgetting for the moment the clarity with which I had been able to see those some faces in the water outside, but even if I’d remembered I probably wouldn’t have seen the relevance just then.

  I had seen them remove the helmets, just now, still apparently in high-pressure water. No, I couldn’t believe all of that at once. It was missing something, but I couldn’t believe it was recently an observable fact. I’d been battered around during the storm and had certainly missed the technique which had been used in finding me, but I hadn’t been unconscious, then or later. I was short on sleep, but surely not so dazed by it as to have missed any major happenings. I had to believe that my observations were reasonably complete. Since I was, in spite of that belief, clearly out of phase with reality, there was something I just plain didn’t know. It was time for more education.

  I wasn’t too worried about my personal future; if there had been any intent to dispose of me, it could have been done earlier with much less trouble—and as I’ve said before, I couldn’t believe, deep down, that people would dp anything final to me anyway. If you think that doesn’t jibe with the way I’ve admitted I felt a few minutes before, you ask a psychiatrist.

  I had a couple of days of breathing still in the tank, and presumably before that time was up my new acquaintances would do something about getting me out—though I couldn’t offhand see what it would be, now that I thought of the problem. Any way I, looked at it, though, the next move seemed up to them. Maybe that shouldn’t have been comforting, but it was.

  Apparently they felt the same way—not comforted, I mean, but that they should be doing something. They were gathered in a group between the tank and the door we had come through, apparently arguing some point. I couldn’t hear their voices, and after a minute or two I decided they weren’t actually talking; there was a tremendous amount of gesticulation. They must have a pretty comprehensive sign language, I decided. This was reasonable if they spent much of their time, and especially if they did much of their work, under water. I couldn’t see why they used it now, since my common sense was having trouble admitting that they were still in water.

  In any case, they seemed to reach an agreement after a few minutes, and two of them went swimming—yes, swimming—off down one of the smaller shafts.

  It occurred to me that even if they couldn’t talk under the circumstances, they should be able to hear.

  So I tried tapping on the walls of the tank to get their attention—gently, in view of my experience with tank-tapping so shortly before. Evidently they could hear, though they had the expected difficulty in judging the direction of the sound source and it took them a few minutes to recognize that I was responsible. Then they swam over and gathered around the tank, looking in through the ports. I turned on my inside lights again. None of them seemed surprised at what they saw, though a continuous and animated gesture conversation was kept up.

  I tried yelling. It was hard on my own ears, since most of the sound echoed from the walls of the tank, but at least a little should get through. It evidently did; several of them shook their heads at me, presumably indicating that they couldn’t understand me. Since I hadn’t used any words yet, this wasn’t surprising. I tried telling them who I was—not using my name, of course—in each of the three languages in which I’m supposed to be proficient. I attempted to do the same in a couple of others in which I make no claim of skill. All I got was the headshaking, and two or three people swam away, presumably dismissing me as a hopeless case. No one made any obvious attempt to communicate with me by any sort of sign or sound.

  Eventually I felt my throat getting sore, so I stopped. For another ten minutes or so nothing much happened. Some more of the crowd swam away, but others arrived. There was more of the gesture talk; no doubt the newcomers were being given whatever there was to tell about me.

  All the new arrivals wore coveralls more or less like those I’d first seen outside, but some of these were in fancy colors. I got the impression that it was the difference between work clothes and white-collar suits, though I can’t give any objective reason for the notion.

  Then some new swimmers, less completely dressed, appeared from one of the tunnels, and things began to happen. One of them worked his way through what was by now quite a crowd, came up to the tank, and tapped it gently. It was refreshing to have one of them try to get my attention instead of the other way around, but the real jolt came when I recognized the newcomer.

  It was Bert Whelstrahl, who had disappeared a year before.

  IX

  He recognized me, too; there was no doubt about that. He put on a larger-than-life-size grin the moment he got a good look through my port, gave another bit of knuckle play on the tank and then drew back and raised one eyebrow in an oh-no-what-do-we-do-with-this-one expression. I decided the situation justified using up what was left of my voice and called out, “Bert! Can you hear me?”

  He nodded, and made a palm-down gesture which I interpreted as meaning that I didn’t need to yell so loud. That was a relief. I cut volume and after a bit of trial and error found that he could hear me when I spoke only a little louder than a normal conversational tone. I began to ask questions, but he held up a hand to stop me and began making some more signs. He pinched his nose shut, holding the palm of his hand over his mouth at the same time; then he held his left wrist in front of his face as though he were looking at a watch, though he wasn’t wearing one.

  I got his meaning clearly enough. He wanted to know how much breathing time I had left. I checked my panel, did a little mental arithmetic and called out that there was about fifty hours still in my tanks.

  Then he stuck a finger in his mouth and raised his eyebrows; I answered graphically, which was easier on my throat, by holding up the partly emptied box of dextrose pills. He nodded and put on a thoughtful expression. Then he hand-talked for two or three minutes to the people nearest him, the head motions which they threw in occasionally being the only part I could understand. With everyone seemingly agreed, he waved at me and vanished back into the tunnel he’d come from.

  Nothing more happened for the next half hour, except that the crowd grew even larger. Some of the newcomers were women, though I couldn’t tell whether the one I had seen outside was among them. I hadn’t seen her closely enough to recognize her face. Some of them certainly weren’t; apparently swimming doesn’t have to be the aid to figure control some people claim it to be.

  Then Bert came back. He was carrying what looked like an ordinary clipboard, but when he held it up to the port I saw that the sheets on it weren’t paper. He scratched on the top one with a stylus, which left a mark. Then he lifted the top sheet, and the mark disappeared. I’d seen toys of that sort years ago; apparently he’d spent some time improvising this one. It seemed a good and obvious solution to the problem of writing under water, and I wondered why none of the others had thought of it.

  He had to print fairly large letters in order for me to read clearly, so even with the aid of the pad our communication was slow. I started by a
sking what the whole business was about, which didn’t help speed, either. Bert cut me off on that one.

  “There isn’t time to give you the whole story now,” he wrote. “You have a decision to make before you run out of air—at least twenty hours before, in fact. It has to do with whether you go back to the surface.”

  I was surprised and made no secret of it. “You mean they’d let me go back? Why did they go to all that trouble to get me down here? I was already at the surface.”

  “Because your decision and its details will affect a lot of people, and you should know who and how. They didn’t know you were a Board official until I told them, but it was obvious your story when you got back would get to the Board anyway. It’s rather important just what the Board hears about this place.”

  “I suppose it’s a case of being released if I promise to tell nothing. You know I couldn’t do that.”

  “Of course not. I couldn’t either. That’s not what they expect. They realize you couldn’t go back without telling; there would be no rational explanation of where you’d been or why. You can tell everything that’s happened to you and that you’ve seen, but there are other things they want to be sure you include. We must make sure you know them.”

  I jumped on the pronoun.

  “You switched from ‘they’ to ‘we’. Does that mean you’ve chosen to stay down here yourself?”

  “Yes.” This was a nod, not a written word. “For a while, anyway,” he added with the stylus.

  “Then you’ve managed to stomach the morals of a bunch of people who waste thousands of kilowatts just lighting up the sea bottom? Have you forgotten your upbringing, and why—”

  He interrupted me with a violent shake of his head and began to write.

  “It’s not like that. I know it looks terrible, but it’s no more wasting power than the Board is wasting the sunlight that falls on the Sahara. Maybe there’ll be time to explain more before you decide, but you’re enough of a physicist to see that analogy or you wouldn’t be a Board worker in the first place.”