"Launch Three, calling bridge. Launch Three, calling bridge. Bridge-reply! Testing-testing." The signalman slipped a phone off one ear. "Phone's dead, sir."
"Get busy with your flags. Tell 'em to haul us in!" The officer wiped sweat from his face and straightened up. He glanced nervously at the current slap-slapping against the boat's side.
Graves touched his arm. "How about the barrel?"
"Put it over the side if you like. I'm busy. Can't you raise them, Sears?"
"I'm trying, sir."
"Come on, Bill," Graves said to Eisenberg. The two of them slipped forward in the boat, threading their way past the engine on the side away from the three men sweating over the flywheel. Graves cut the hogshead loose from its lashings, then the two attempted to get- a purchase on the awkward, unhandy object. It and its light load weighed less than two hundred pounds, but it was hard to manage, especially on the uncertain footing of heaving floorboards.
They wrestled it outboard somehow, with one smashed finger for Eisenberg, a badly banged shin for Graves. It splashed heavily, drenching them with sticky salt water, and bobbed astern, carried rapidly toward the Kanaka Pillar by the current which fed it.
"Ship answers, sir!"
"Good! Tell them to haul us in-carefully." The boat officer jumped out of the engine space and ran forward, where he checked again the secureness with which the tow-line was fastened.
Graves tapped him on the shoulder. "Can't we stay here until we see the barrel enter the column?"
"No! Right now you had better pray that that line holds, instead of worrying about the barrel-or we go up the column, too. Sears, has the ship acknowledged?"
"Just now, sir."
"Why a coir line, Mr. Parker?' Eisenberg inquired, his1 nausea forgotten in the excitement. "I'd rather depend on steel, or even good stout Manila."
"Because coir floats, and the others don't," the officer answered snappishly. "Two miles of line would drag us to the bottom. Sears! Tell them to ease the strain. We're shipping water."
"Aye, aye, sir!"
The hogshead took less than four minutes to reach the column, enter it, a fact which Graves ascertained by borrowing the signalman's glass to follow it on the last leg of its trip-which action won him a dirty look from the nervous boat officer. Some minutes later, when the boat was about five hundred yards farther from the Pillar than it had been at nearest approach, the telephone came suddenly to life. The starter of the engine was tested immediately; the engine roared into action.
The trip back was made with engine running to take the strain off the towline-at half speed and with some maneuvering, in order to avoid fouling the screw with the slack bight of the line.
The smoke signal worked-one circuit or another. The plume of smoke was sighted two miles south of the Wahini Pillar, elapsed time from the moment the vessel had entered the Kanaka column just over eight hours.
Bill Eisenberg climbed into the saddle of the exerciser in which he was to receive antibends treatment-thirty minutes of hard work to stir up his circulation while breathing an atmosphere of helium and oxygen, at the end of which time the nitrogen normally dissolved in his blood stream would be largely replaced by helium. The exerciser itself was simply an old bicycle mounted on a stationary platform. Blake looked it over. "You needn't have bothered to bring this," he remarked. "We've a better one aboard. Standard practice for diving operations these days."
"We didn't know that," Graves answered. "Anyhow, this one will do. All set, Bill?"
"I guess so." He glanced over his shoulder to where the steel bulk of the bathysphere lay, uncrated, checked and equipped, ready to be swung outboard by the boat crane. "Got the gasket-sealing compound?"
"Sure. The Iron Maiden is all right. The gunner and I will seal you in. Here's your mask."
Eisenberg accepted the inhaling mask, started to strap it on, checked himself. Graves noticed the look on his face. "What's the trouble, son?"
"Doc...
"Yes?"
"I say-you'll look out for Cleo and Pat, won't you?"
"Why, sure. But they won't need anything in the length of time you'll be gone."
"Um-m-m, no, I suppose not. But you'll look out for 'em?"
"Sure."
"O.K." Eisenberg slipped the inhaler over his face, waved his hand to the gunner waiting by the gas bottles. The gunner eased open the cut-off valves, the gas lines hissed, and Eisenberg began to pedal like a six-day racer.
With thirty minutes to kill, Blake invited Graves to go forward with him for a smoke and a stroll on the fo'c's'le. They had completed about twenty turns when Blake paused by the wildcat, took his cigar from his mouth and remarked, "Do you know, I believe he has a good chance of completing the trip."
"So? I'm glad to hear that."
"Yes, I do, really. The success of the trial with the dead load convinced me. And whether the smoke gear works or not, if that globe comes back down the Wahini Pillar, I'll find it."
"I know you will. It was a good idea of yours, to paint it yellow."
"Help us to spot it, all right. I don't think he'll learn anything, however. He won't see a thing through those ports but blue water, from the time he enters the column to the time we pick him up."
"Perhaps so."
"What else could he see?"
"I don't know. Whatever it is that made those Pillars, perhaps."
Blake dumped the ashes from his cigar carefully over the rail before replying. "Doctor, I don't understand you. To my mind, those Pillars are a natural, even though strange, phenomenon."
"And to me it's equally obvious that they are not 'natural.' They exhibit intelligent interference with the ordinary processes of nature as clearly as if they had a sign saying so hung on them."
"I don't see how you can say that. Obviously, they are not man-made."
"No."
"Then who did make them-if they were made?"
"I don't know."
Blake started to speak, shrugged, and held his tongue. They resumed their stroll. Graves turned aside to chuck his cigarette overboard, glancing outboard as he did so.
He stopped, stared, then called out: "Captain Blake!"
"Eh?" The captain turned and looked where Graves pointed. "Great God! Fireballs!"
"That's what I thought."
"They're some distance away," Blake observed, more to himself than to Graves. He turned decisively. "Bridge!" he shouted. "Bridge! Bridge ahoy!"
"Bridge, aye aye!"
"Mr. Weems-pass the word: 'All hands, below decks.' Dog down all ports. Close all hatches. And close up the bridge itself! Sound the general alarm."
"Aye aye, sir!"
"Move!" Turning to Graves, he added, "Come inside."
Graves followed him; the captain stopped to dog down the door by which they entered himself. Blake pounded up the inner ladders to the bridge, Graves in his train. The ship was filled with whine of the bos'n pipe, the raucous voice of the loud-speaker, the clomp of hurrying feet, and the monotonous, menacing cling-cling-cling! of the general alarm.
The watch on the bridge were still struggling with the last of the heavy glass shutters of the bridge when the captain burst into their midst. "I'll take it, Mr. Weems," he snapped.
In one continuous motion he moved from one side of the bridge to the other, letting his eye sweep the port side aft, the fo'c's'le, the starboard side aft, and finally rest on the fireballs-distinctly nearer and heading straight for the ship. He cursed. "Your friend did not get the news," he said to Graves.
He grasped the crank which could open or close the after starboard shutter of the bridge.
Graves looked past his shoulder, saw what he meant-the afterdeck was empty, save for one lonely figure pedaling away on the stationary bicycle. The LaGrange fireballs were closing in.
The shutter stuck, jammed tight, would not open. Blake stopped trying, swung quickly to the loud-speaker control panel, and cut in the whole board without bothering to select the proper circuit. "Eisenberg! Get
below!"
Eisenberg must have heard his name called, for be turned his head and looked over his shoulder-Graves saw distinctly-just as the fireball reached him. It passed on, and the saddle of the exerciser was empty.
The exerciser was undamaged, they found, when they were able to examine it. The rubber hose to the inhaler mask had been cut smoothly. There was no blood, no marks. Bill Eisenberg was simply gone.
'Tm going up."
"You are in no physical shape to do so, doctor."
"You are in no way responsible, Captain Blake."
"I know that. You may go if you like-after we have searched for your friend's body."
"Search be damned! I'm going up to look for him."
"Huh? Eh? How's that?"
"If you are right, he's dead, and there is no point in searching for his body. If I'm right, there is just an outside chance of finding him-up there!" He pointed toward the cloud cap of the Pillars.
Blake looked him over slowly, then turned to the master diver. "Mr. Hargreave, find an inhaler mask for Dr. Graves."
They gave him thirty minutes of conditioning against the caisson disease while Blake looked on with expressionless Silence. The ship's company, bluejackets and officers alike, stood back and kept quiet; they walked on eggs when the Old Man had that look.
Exercise completed, the diver crew dressed Graves rapidly and strapped him into the bathysphere with dispatch, in order not to expose him too long to the nitrogen in the air. Just before the escape port was dogged down Graves spoke up.
"Captain Blake."
"Yes, doctor?"
"Bill's goldfish-will you look out for them?"
"Certainly, doctor."
"Thanks."
"Not at all. Are you ready?"
"Ready."
Blake stepped forward, stuck an arm through the port of the sphere and shook hands with Graves. "Good luck." He withdrew his arm. "Seal it up."
They lowered it over the side; two motor launches nosed it half a mile in the direction of the Kanaka Pillar where the current was strong enough to carry it along. There they left it and bucked the current back to the ship, were hoisted in.
Blake followed it with his glasses from the bridge. It drifted slowly at first, then with increased speed as it approached the base of the column. It whipped into rapid motion the last few hundred yards; Blake saw a flash of yellow just above the water line, then nothing more.
Eight hours-no plume of smoke. Nine hours, ten hours, nothing. After twenty-four hours of steady patrol in the vicinity of the Wahini Pillar, Blake radioed the Bureau.
Four days of vigilance-Blake knew that the bathysphere's passenger must be dead; whether by suffocation, drowning, implosion, or other means was not important. He so reported and received orders to proceed on duty assigned. The ship's company was called to quarters; Captain Blake read the service for the dead aloud in a harsh voice, dropped over the side some rather wilted hibiscus blooms-all that his steward could produce at the time-and went to the bridge to set his course for Pearl Harbor.
On the way to the bridge he stopped for a moment at his cabin and called to his steward: "You'll find some goldfish in the stateroom occupied by Mr. Eisenberg. Find an appropriate container and place them in my cabin."
"Yes, suh, Cap'n."
When Bill Eisenberg came to his senses he was in a Place. Sorry, but no other description is suitable; it lacked features. Oh, not entirely, of course-it was not dark where he was, nor was it in a state of vacuum, nor was it cold, nor was it too small for comfort. But it did lack features to such a remarkable extent that he had difficulty in estimating the size of the place. Consider stereo vision, by which we estimate the size of things directly, does not work beyond twenty feet or so. At greater distances we depend on previous knowledge of the true size of familiar objects, usually making our estimates subconsciously-a man so high is about that far away, and vice versa.
But the Place contained no familiar objects. The ceiling was a considerable distance over his head, too far to touch by jumping. The floor curved up to join the ceiling and thus prevented further lateral progress of more than a dozen paces or so. He would become aware of the obstacle by losing his balance. (He had no reference lines by which to judge the vertical; furthermore, his sense of innate balance was affected by the mistreatment his inner ears had undergone through years of diving. It was easier to sit than to walk, nor was there any reason to walk, after the first futile attempt at exploration.)
When he first woke up he stretched and opened his eyes, looked around. The lack of detail confused him. It was as if he were on the inside of a giant eggshell, illuminated from without by a soft, mellow, slightly amber light. The formless vagueness bothered him; he closed his eyes, shook his head, and opened them again-no better.
He was beginning to remember his last experience before losing consciousness-the fireball swooping down, his frenzied, useless attempt to duck, the "Hold your hats, boys!" thought that-flashed through his mind in the long-drawn-out split second before contact. His orderly mind began to look for explanations. Knocked cold, he thought, and my optic nerve paralyzed. Wonder if I'm blind for good.
Anyhow, they ought not to leave him alone like this in his present helpless condition. "Doc!" he shouted. "Doc Graves!"
No answer, no echo-he became aware that there was no sound, save for his own voice, none of the random little sounds that fill completely the normal "dead" silence. This place was as silent as the inside of a sack of flour. Were his ears shot, too?
No, he had heard his own voice. At that moment he realized that he was looking at his own hands. Why, there was nothing wrong with his eyes-he could see them plainly!
And the rest of himself, too. He was naked.
It might have been several hours later, it might have been moments, when he reached the conclusion that he was dead. It was the only hypothesis which seemed to cover the facts. A dogmatic agnostic by faith, he had expected no survival after death; he had expected to go out like a light, with a sudden termination of consciousness. However, he had been subjected to a charge of static electricity more than sufficient to kill a man; when he regained awareness, he found himself without all the usual experience which mates up living.
Therefore-he was dead. Q.E.D.
To be sure, he seemed to have a body, but he was acquainted with the subjective-objective paradox. He still had memory, the strongest pattern in one's memory is body awareness. This was not his body, but his detailed sensation memory of it. So he reasoned. Probably, he thought, my dream-body will slough away as my memory of the object-body fades.
There was nothing to do, nothing to experience, nothing to distract his mind. He fell asleep at last, thinking that, if this were death, it was damned dull!
He awoke refreshed, but quite hungry and extremely thirsty. The matter of dead, or not-dead, no longer concerned him; he was interested in neither theology nor metaphysics.
He was hungry.
Furthermore, he experienced on awakening a phenomenon which destroyed most of the basis fur his intellectual belief in his own death-it had never reached the stage of emotional conviction. Present there with him in the Place he found material objects other than himself, objects which could be seen and touched.
And eaten.
Which last was not immediately evident, for they did not look like food. There were two sorts. The first was an amorphous lump of nothing in particular, resembling a grayish cheese in appearance, slightly greasy to the touch, and not appetizing. The second sort was a group of objects of uniform and delightful appearance. They were spheres, a couple of dozen; each one seemed to Bill Eisenberg to be a duplicate of a crystal ball he had once purchased-true Brazilian rock crystal the perfect beauty of which he had not been able to resist; he had bought it and smuggled it home to gloat over in private.
The little spheres were like that in appearance. He touched one. It was smooth as crystal and had the same chaste coolness, but it was soft as jelly. It quivered like jelly,
causing the lights within it to dance delightfully, before resuming its perfect roundness.
Pleasant as they were, they did not look like food, whereas the cheesy, soapy lump might be. He broke off a small piece, sniffed it, and tasted it tentatively. It was sour, nauseating, unpleasant. He spat it out, made a wry face, and wished heartily that he could brush his teeth. If that was food, he would have to be much hungrier.
He turned his attention back to the delightful little spheres of crystallike jelly. He balanced them in his palms, savoring their soft, smooth touch. In the heart of each he saw his own reflection, imagined in miniature, made elfin and graceful. He became aware almost for the first time of the serene beauty of the human figure, almost any human figure, when viewed as a composition and not as a mass of colloidal detail.
But thirst became more pressing than narcissist admiration. It occurred to him that the smooth, cool spheres, if held in the mouth, might promote salivation, as pebbles will. He tried it; the sphere he selected struck against his lower teeth as he placed it in his mouth, and his lips and chin were suddenly wet, while drops trickled down his chest. The spheres were water, nothing but water, no cellophane skin, no container of any sort. Water had been delivered to him, neatly packaged, by some esoteric trick of surface tension.
He tried another, handling it more carefully to insure that it was not pricked by his teeth until he had it in his mouth. It worked; his mouth was filled with cool, pure water-too quickly; he choked. But he had caught on to the trick; he drank four of the spheres.
His thirst satisfied, he became interested in the strange trick whereby water became its own container. The spheres were tough; he could not squeeze them into breaking down, nor did smashing them hard against the floor disturb their precarious balance. They bounced like golf balls and came up for more. He managed to pinch the surface of one between thumb and fingernail. It broke down at once, and the water trickled between his fingers-water alone, no skin nor foreign substance. It seemed that a cut alone could disturb the balance of tensions; even wetting had no effect, for he could hold one carefully in his mouth, remove it, and dry it off on his own skin.
The Menace From Earth Page 17
