And one definition of a gentleman, thought Grimes, is a man who takes his weight on his elbows . . .
"And this offer of hospitality by the Princess von Stolzberg, it's no more than her way of apologizing to you and to the Survey Service. You'd better not get any false ideas."
"I won't, sir."
"Very well. That will do. See the Commander and ask him for the necessary men and equipment for the salvage of the re-entry vehicle. I have already told him that the entire operation is to be directly under your charge."
"Very good, sir."
Grimes got to his feet, stiffened to attention in salute, turned about smartly and marched towards the door. Daintree's snarl halted him abruptly.
"Mr. Grimes!"
"Sir?"
"I know that I'm only the Captain, but may I point out that it is not correct to take official leave of a senior officer with a pipe stuck in the middle of your cretinous face?"
"Sorry, sir."
"And, Mr. Grimes, may I request that you watch your manners when you are mingling with the aristocracy?"
"I'll do my best, sir."
"Your best, on far too many occasions, has not been good enough. Get out!"
Ears burning, Grimes got out.
Chapter 12
The following morning Grimes started the salvage operations.
As a unit of the Survey Service fleet, Aries was rich in all manner of equipment. She was a fighting ship but, officially at least, her prime function was exploration and survey, and a newly discovered watery world cannot be properly surveyed without underwater gear. Insofar as the raising of the dynosoar was concerned, the engineers' workshop was able to supply, at short notice, what little extra was needed.
Commander Griffin had let Grimes have one of the work boats, a powerful little brute fitted with inertial drive, aboard which the engineers had installed a powerful air compressor. There were coils of tough, plastic hose, together with the necessary valves and connections. There was a submarine welding outfit and a good supply of metal plates of various shapes and sizes. There were scuba outfits for Grimes and for the men who would be working with him.
Shortly after dawn the airlock high on Aries' side opened and the work boat, muttering to itself, slid out, wobbled a little in midair and then, with Grimes at the controls, set course for the further end of Lake Bluewater, from the surface of which a light mist, golden in the almost level rays of the morning sun, was lazily rising. The Lieutenant was already in his skin-tight suit, as was the remainder of the working party, but had yet to put on his helmet and flippers. The interior of the boat was crowded with men and gear, and there would have been little room to undress and dress. By his side, similarly attired, sat Chief Petty Officer Anderson, a big man, grossly fat until you looked at him more closely and realized that the fat was solid muscle. Baldheaded, baby-faced, he was peering intently at the submerged metal indicator that had been installed on the work boat's control console. He looked up from the instrument, said, "If I were you, Mr. Grimes, I'd run to the end of the lake and then come back in short sweeps." It was a suggestion, not an order, but when a C. P. O. suggests to even a senior officer the words carry weight.
Grimes replied, cheerfully enough, "I'll do just that, Chief."
He reduced thrust, lost altitude as he approached the beach, so that the boat would make its run barely clear of the surface of the water.
"If I were you, Mr. Grimes, I'd keep her up. That way we get a better spread on the detector beam. Once we've found the wreck we can come down for finer location."
"All right, Chief." And, thought Grimes, what the hell do we have officers for? To carry the can back, that's all.
Slowly, steadily, the boat grumbled its way out over Lake Bluewater. There were not, Grimes was relieved to see, any early morning swimmers or water-skiers. An audience he could do without, especially when such an audience would have with it a horde of watchbirds. He had good reason to dislike those robotic guardian angels.
To the end of the lake flew Grimes, toward the clump of screw pines that backed the sandy beach. "Anything yet, Chief?" he asked Anderson.
"No, sir." Then, in a reproachful voice, "You should have released the marker buoy, Mr. Grimes."
"I didn't know that we had one."
"I installed it myself, Mr. Grimes." Anderson was the ship's expert, rated and paid as such, in submarine operations.
"Why wasn't it an automatic release?" demanded the Lieutenant.
"Come, sir. You know better than that." The intonation made it quite clear that in the speaker's opinion Grimes didn't. "What if you make a crash landing on some hostile planet, in the sea, and don't want to give the potential enemy a chance to pinpoint your position? And hadn't you better watch those trees, sir?"
"I am watching them." Slowly Grimes turned the boat, started his sweeps back and forth across the width of the lake.
"Now!" exclaimed Anderson. "That's it, sir, I think. Bring her down, if you don't mind . . . Stop her. Now, back a little. Slowly, sir, slowly. Right a little . . . Stop her again. Cut the drive."
Gently, making only the slightest of splashes, the work boat settled to the surface. With the drive shut down it was suddenly very quiet. The air drifting in through the open windows carried a faint, refreshing tang of early morning mist. One of the ratings in the after compartment muttered, "This is a bit of all right. We should have brought fishing tackle."
Anderson turned his head, "You'll have all the fishing you want, Jones. It's a big, tin fish we've come to catch."
The men who knew what was good for them laughed.
"There are goldfish in the lake," contributed Grimes. His remark was received in silence. He shrugged. "All right, Chief. I'll go down to make the preliminary inspection. I'll let you know when I need help."
"Have you had your antibend shot, sir?" asked Anderson in a way that implied that all officers have to be wet-nursed, junior officers especially.
"Yes, Chief. Now, if somebody will help me on with my helmet . . ."
Anderson himself picked up the transparent sphere, lowered it carefully over Grimes' head, connected up the air pipes to the shoulder tank. The speaker inside the helmet said tinnily, "Testing, sir. Testing. Can you read me?"
"Loud and clear." The Lieutenant eased himself up from his chair, sat on the ledge of the open window, his back to the water. "Flippers," he said.
He saw Anderson speaking into the microphone that somebody had handed him. "If I were you, sir, I'd go down on the line."
"Just what I am doing, Chief. But I'll wear my flippers just the same."
Anderson strapped the large fins on to his bare feet, then made a thumbs-up gesture. Grimes replied in kind, leaned far back and then let himself fall. He knew that this unorthodox method of entering the water would not please the C. P. O. and, even as he hit the surface with a noisy splash, heard, through his helmet speaker, Anderson admonish the men, "Just because an officer does it that way you're not to. See?" The failure to place a hand over the microphone was probably deliberate.
He hit the water and, at once, started to sink. With his equipment and the disposable weights at his belt he had negative buoyancy. He looked up at the shimmering mirror that was the surface, broken by the black hull of the boat. Using his hands and feet he turned about his short axis until he was upright, saw the weighted line, pale-gleaming in the blueness. One tentative kick took him toward it. He grasped the rough-textured cord with one hand and hung there for a little while to get his bearings, to become acclimatized.
"Are you all right, Mr. Grimes?" It was Anderson, giving his famous imitation of a mother hen.
"Of course I'm all right, Chief."
The water was cool, but far from cold. And there was the exhilarating sensation of weightlessness. It was like being Outside in Free Fall but better, much better. There was the weightlessness but not the pressing loneliness, the dreadful emptiness. And the skin-tight suit was almost as good as nudity, did not, as did space armour, in
duce the beginnings of claustrophobia.
Grimes looked down.
Yes, there was the wreck, her canopy gaping open like the shell of some monstrous bivalve. Grimes hoped that it was not too badly damaged by the ejection; if it were not so, the task of sealing the ruptured hull would be much easier. Up through the gaping opening drifted a school of gleaming, golden fish. And that was a good sign; it meant that nothing larger and dangerous, even to Man, had taken up residence.
He relaxed his grip on the cord, felt it slide through his hand as he dropped slowly. Then, raising a flurry of fine silt, his flippered feet were on the bottom. He was about three yards from the sunken dynosoar.
"Calling C.P.O. Anderson," he said into the built-in microphone. "Making preliminary inspection." He heard the acknowledgement.
Clumsily at first, he swam the short distance. For several minutes he checked the canopy. Yes, it could be forced back into place and, where too badly buckled, welded over. If necessary, lines could be sent down from the boat to lift the valves to an upright position before their closure. Satisfied, he swam aft, closely inspecting the fuselage as he did so. He could find no damage on the upper surface; the damaged skin must be on the underside, buried in the silt. An air hose to blow the muck clear? Yes, but would it be necessary? After all, when expelled from the hull by air under pressure the water would have to have somewhere to go to, somewhere to get out from, and whatever holes there were in the plating could have been designed for that very purpose.
"Chief!"
"Yes, Mr. Grimes?"
"Tell your men to have the welding gear and the compressor and hoses ready. Then come down yourself as soon as you can."
"Coming, sir."
Something made Grimes look up. The big C. P. O. was already on his way, failing like a stone, weighted by the gear that he was grasping in both of his huge hands. Behind him trailed two of the air hoses and another cable, the power line of the welding equipment. Using his flippered feet only he controlled his descent, made a remarkably graceful landing not far from where Grimes was standing.
"And what do you have in mind, Mr. Grimes?" he asked.
"Get the canopy shut and sealed, Chief. Might run an air hose in at that point. Then blow her out, and up she comes."
"Up she comes you hope, sir. Or she'll blow up, with the internal pressure. Explode, I mean."
"There are holes in the fuselage aft, the holes through which the water entered in the first place."
"Then we have to seal them, Mr. Grimes."
"That shouldn't be necessary, Chief. As far as I can see, they're on the bottom of the hull."
"Very good, sir. But what if she topples? If I were you, I'd seal those holes and fit 'em with non-return valves."
"You aren't me. And don't forget that the brute was designed to fly this way up. Surely she'll float this way up."
Stiffly, "I'm not qualified in aerodynamics, sir."
"But you are in hydrodynamics. All right, then. Do you think she'll topple once she starts to lift?"
Anderson, leaving the tool case and the weighted ends of the hoses with Grimes, swam slowly around the wreck. "No," he admitted when he returned. "She shouldn't topple." He stayed by the fore end of the dynosoar, stood in the silt and tried to lift one of the parts of the open canopy. It moved but with extreme reluctance. Grimes heard the man, a massive, black-glistening giant in his suit, grunt with effort.
"I thought of running lines down from the boat," he said.
"And pull the boat over, or under? No, sir. That wouldn't do at all."
No, thought Grimes. It wouldn't. Not if he hoped to get any shore leave on this planet.
"We'll have to cut the flaps and then weld them back into place."
"Now you're talking, sir. With your permission?" he asked, then paused.
"Of course. Carry on, Chief."
"Jones, Willoughby, Antonetti. Down here, on the double. Bring the cutting torches, a bundle of sheeting and that bundle of metal strip. Jump to it!"
"And a spear gun," added Grimes. "If we have one." He had a feeling that the knife at his belt would be inadequate. Helplessly, he looked at the huge, silvery torpedo shape that was approaching them, that was staring at them from glassy eyes as big as dinner plates.
Then, even through his helmet, he heard the muffled whirring of machinery and laughed. "Don't worry, Chief," he said. "Just remember what the Captain told us all and comport yourself like a gentleman. You're on camera."
Chapter 13
After a while Grimes decided to leave the frogmen to it. It was obvious that Anderson and his team knew what they were doing. The Lieutenant had tried to lend a hand; he had realized quite soon that any attempt at supervision by himself would lead only to confusion, but the C. P. O. had made it quite plain, without actually saying so, that he was just being a bloody nuisance. So he said, in his best offhand manner, "Carry on, Chief. I'll take a dekko at this submarine camera of theirs. Let me know if you want me."
"That'll be the sunny Friday!" he heard somebody mutter. He could not identify the voice.
He put the busy scene—the flaring torches, the exploding bubbles of steam, the roiling clouds of disturbed silt—behind him, swam slowly toward the robot midget submarine. And was it, he wondered, called a watchfish? At first he thought that the thing was ignoring him; its two big eyes remained fixed on the salvage operations. And then he noticed that a small auxiliary lens mounted on a flexible stalk was following his every movement. He thumbed his nose at it, the rude gesture giving him a childish satisfaction.
Then he swam on lazily. He should, he realized, have brought a camera with him. One of Anderson's team had one, he knew; but he knew, too, that all the footage of film would be devoted to the raising of the dynosoar. Shots of the underwater life of this lake would have made an interesting addition to Aries' film library. More than a score of worlds must have contributed their share of fresh water fauna. There were graceful shapes, and shapes that were grotesque, and all of them brightly colored. Some were fish and some were arthropods and some—he mentally christened them "magic carpets"—defied classification. And there were plants, too, a veritable subaqueous jungle that he was approaching, bulbous trunks, each crowned with a coronal of spiky branches. If they were plants. Grimes decided that he didn't like the look of them, changed course and paddled toward a grove of less menacing appearance, long green ribbons stretching from the muddy bottom to just below the silvery surface. Among the strands and fronds flashing gold and scarlet, emerald and blue, darted schools of the smaller fishes. And there was something larger, much larger, pale and glimmering, making its slow way through the shimmering curtains of waving water weed. The Lieutenant's right hand went to the knife at his belt.
It, whatever it was, was big. And dangerous? It wasn't a fish. It had limbs and was using them for swimming. It undulated gracefully through the last concealing screen of vegetation, swam towards Grimes.
It was a woman.
It was, he saw without surprise (now that the initial surprise had passed) Marlene von Stolzberg.
He looked at her. She was wearing a scuba outfit not unlike his own, with the exception of the skintight suit. Her own golden skin was covering enough. And she was carrying what looked like a spear gun, although it was much stubbier than the weapons of that kind with which he was vaguely familiar.
He said, "Dr. Livingstone, I presume . . ."
He saw a frown darken her mobile features, clearly visible in the transparent helmet. From his own speaker came her voice, "That was neither original nor funny, Mr. Grimes." Then, as she saw his expression of astonishment, "It wasn't much trouble for us to find out what frequency you people are using."
"I suppose not. Your Highness."
"I hope, Mr. Grimes, that you don't mind my engaging in my usual activities. I promise to keep well clear of the salvage operations."
"It's your lake," he said. "And you don't seem to have any watchbirds with you this time."
"No," she agr
eed. "But . . ." She gestured with a slim arm. Grimes saw, then, that she was not alone, that she was attended by two things like miniature torpedoes. The analogy came into his mind, like a shark with pilot fish. But she was no shark, and pilot fish are mere scavengers.
To Prime the Pump Page 6
