Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea (16 page)

“Why, I guess not, sir.”

“Your only trouble is that you can’t sleep, and I can assure you there’s no physical reason for it. Now I can tranquilize you and give you knockout drops, and that would end the insomnia. But if the insomnia is some sort of expression or rebellion of some kind, and I shut off your ability to use it, the rebellion is going to pop out some other way.”

“Like what, sir?”

“Constipation. Warts. Impaired vision. The itch. Might be anything. Symptom-swapping. Some folks spend years swapping symptoms and treating them one at a time, never realizing that they’re just a way of hollering for help.”

“I don’t feel like a guy hollering for help, sir.”

“Well, maybe I shouldn’t put it that way. Let’s just say that Dr. Hiller can find and treat whatever it is and I can only find and treat what it does. You want to see her, or shall I dose you up?”

“I’ll see her, sir.”

“W
HAT
’
S THE
P
RESIDENT
’
S PHONE NUMBER
?”

“Now never you mind, girl. He’s already married.” Chip Morton riffled once through the technical manual, and shook his head. “You’d never think it’d take all this spaghetti to pipe one voice to one ear, would you . . .? You hear who’s going out, Cathy?”

“Not yet.”

“You mean to tell me they expect to open up that cable and find which wires go to where? How do they know they won’t get connected to the city morgue in Butte, Montana, or something?”

“The way I got it,” said Cathy Connors, “it doesn’t really matter. If they can get through to anyone at all, anywhere, the call can be patched through to the White House.”

The Executive Officer shook his head again. “I dunno. I dunno.”

“What is it, Chip?”

“Like I said, girl—I dunno. I dunno what I’d do if I was Lee. I dunno why he takes it. And I dunno why I mention it to you.”

“Well you did, so do.”

“Okay,” said Morton blandly. “I was just thinking how the Admiral says stop, we stop, he says make a phone call, we make a phone call. Lee says unlimber the deck guns, the O.O.M. says as-you-were. You know.”

“I don’t know.”

“Well hell, Cathy, he’s the Captain.”

“But Nelson’s the Admiral! He not only outranks everybody, he owns the ship, or would if he hadn’t given it to the Government.”

“Well, if I was Captain—”

“What would you do if you were Captain?” asked Cathy. There were sparks in her eyes.

Chip Morton laughed suddenly. “Like I said, girl; I dunno.”

D
R.
J
AMIESON WAS IN THE GALLEY
. All the necessities of life on a ship have their source in the galley: food, drink, and gossip. “No kidding, Cookie. A phone call. Maybe we’ll get some news.”

“I’d as soon not hear news, thank you. By me no news is good news, bad news is nowhere,” said the cook. “Doc, you really think the Admiral can shoot down that fire-belt?”

“I don’t think ‘shoot down’ is exactly the right word, Cookie, but yes, I think he can.”

“Then I’ll take no news until he does it. There just can’t be no good news until he does it. You see them Oklahoma farms on TV that day? That’s my country.” His moon face seemed to shrink, somehow, in its inner structure, so that the whole thing drooped a little. It was a hard thing to watch, this unquenchably cheerful man so fearful and sorrow-sagged. “And how’s your patient, sir?”

“Patient?” Dr. Jamieson had to stop and think for a moment. “Oh, him. Tell you a secret, he’s only in the ship’s hospital because he’s used to it and we don’t need the room. He’s fine. He’s a nut, between you and me, but otherwise healthy as a whale on wheat-germ. And how’s your patient?”

“Tambien!” called the cook, and from the small gap between the forward bulkhead and the freezer, Alvarez’ puppy came sidling and ogling. It spread its oversize feet apart near Cookie’s left shoe, stroked its chin on the deck between them, the whole time rolling its eyes sidewise up at the doctor; and it positively smiled.

“What was that you called him?”

“Tambien.” When the doctor laughed, he said defensively, “Well I asked the supercargo what his name was and Mr. Alvarez just—you know, like he does, shrugs with his nostrils, like—he didn’t exactly answer but I got the idea the pup hadn’t no name. So I was around Spanish people a lot and all the time I hear that word and whatever it means I don’t know, but I figure it’s a good name for him.”

“It’s a good name for him,” nodded the doctor. “It means ‘also’.” He ruffled the loose skin behind the dog’s ear with the toe of his shoe. “He looks good to me. Any sign of that sunburn left?”

“About all gone,” said the cook. “Only that’s just a nickname sort of. Sunburn. A dog can’t really get sunburn.”

“This dog did, and it was no nickname-type sunburn. We’re lucky to be inboard all the time or it would be a problem for us too. You know what’s burning up there—what’s called the ozone layer. It’s a kind of oxygen that usually puts a screen between us and the sun—a screen that filters out a lot of kinds of the sun’s rays. Some of ‘em penetrate pretty deep, even through the mouse-fuzz on Tambien there.”

“Well whaddaye know.” Cookie also caressed the dog with his foot. Tambien, unable to contain his ecstasy and also stand, rolled over on his back. “I . . . dunno why you call him a nut, exactly, Doc. Mr. Alvarez, I mean. ‘Course, he ain’t like the rest of us, somehow. Like he seems to love this dog all right, but whether or not the dog loves him he just don’t seem to give a damn.”

“You put your finger on it, Cookie. He doesn’t give a damn about anything or anybody in the world. He’s got bigger things to think about.”

The remark, meant sardonically, was taken with complete seriousness. “I guess he has at that, sir.”

“Talk to him, did you?”

“I drop in every once in a while. I . . . dunno why you call him a nut.” Cookie said again.

“If it makes you any happier, I’ll take it back,” smiled Jamieson. “It was two times unprofessional of me to say it anyhow—once for commenting on a more-or-less patient, and again for using non-medical language. Okay?”

“You think it really might be that God sent the fire?”

“I’ve had no messages,” said Jamieson. “Which seems to be yet another kind of communications breakdown.”

“I never know when you’re kidding, Doc.” The medical officer smiled and went to the hospital to see his more-or-less patient.

T
HE CPO,
G
LEASON, RAN HIS FINGERS
and his sharp eyes over the limp bulk of the wet-suit, whistling under his breath.

“Knock it off,” said the redheaded sailor.

“Knock what?” asked Gleason innocently.

“I’d like to punch him right in the nose,” said the sailor.

“That sounds like lezz Majesty or whatever you call it. Insubordination. It’s the Old Old Man’s nose you’re talkin’ about.”

“All the same,” said the sailor, “and just to be serious for a minute which I doubt you can, wouldn’t you say an officer, and old-time officer, has to be a little out of his mind to say right out in public that another officer once bounced a guy on his knee, for God’s sake?”

“I wouldn’t say an officer was no such a thing. I might say he was maybe a few years away from remembering what it was like to be a boot like you, but then who wants to remember a dismal thing like that?”

“I’m trying to be serious, I said. Don’t he know I’ll spend my whole life in the service hearing guys whistle that tune at me? Don’t he know I could get to be an admiral like him fifty years from now and they’ll still call me by that name?”

“It could be worse, Sonny Boy.”

Gleason was undoubtedly saved from a sample of the Admiral’s punch in the nose by the arrival of the Captain, who turned in on them from the corridor. “Find any termites or anything?”

“Not yet, sir,” said Gleason. “Are you calling for volunteers for this, sir?”

“Thanks, no,” smiled Crane, and walked forward. Jimmy Smith looked after him and said to Gleason, “I thought you told me Rule One is ‘Never volunteer’.”

“You don’t think for a minute I was going to volunteer me, do you? I was going to volunteer you.” He lifted and spread the frogman’s suit and turned it over on his knees. “But to tell you the truth, I’d like the chance to get out and walk around the block.”

“Yeah, me too . . .”

“C
OME IN.
”
THE ADMIRAL GLANCED
at the clock. The Captain entered and laid the manual down on the desk. “Right on time.” He leaned a little sidewise and tried to peer around the captain.

“Where’s your diving detail?”

“I’m the diving detail,” said Crane.

From the settle, Commander Emery chuckled quietly, “Go ahead, Nelse. Flip. I promised you you would.”

Nelson’s eyes grew dangerous. “I told you I wanted a wire communications man and a man who could muscle the armored cable and—”

“I completed a wire communications briefing on my last furlough, said Crane. “I can dive, I can handle an airsaw, and anyway, I think it’s my job.”

“You’ll tell off someone else, mister. The ship can’t afford—”

“We’re a little short on frogmen, Admiral.”

“There’s Gleason and Smith—”

“Minisub men, sir. Not much help here. And if anything happened to me, you could manage.”

“Is that a crack?”

“It’s only the truth.”

“Hell, he’s right,” said Emery. “We are light on frogmen and heavy on commanding officers.”

Needling lightly, he added, “Of course, if you don’t think the Captain can handle the job—”

“Certainly he can handle the job,” rumbled the Admiral, and then realizing he had been played, grinned and said, “Ah, shut up, Emery. All right, Lee, but be careful, will you . . .? Located the cable yet?”

“Yes, sir. Had it on the mine detectors for twelve minutes now. Ought to be on top of it—there we are,” he said as the slight shudder of engines slowed and all but stopped. “I told O’Brien to get down-current of it and head in. That way he can hold her steady against the current and somebody in the nose can direct in case I need any direction.”

“You ought to buddy up, all the same, Lee,” said Emery.

“Another man would just be in the way,” said Crane impatiently. “This job is only careful, not big. I’ll be under observation at all times and I won’t even have to use the sonarphone—I’ll be trailing wire. Sparks can patch my headset into the same wires I’ll be hooking in to the cable.”

The admiral’s desk annunciator buzzed. Nelson keyed it and spoke his own name. “O’Brien, sir,” said the intercom. “Cable in sight. We’re positioning over it now.”

“Good,” said Nelson. “Nose along it and get the best footing you can. ‘Ware eel holes and giant clams and the like.”

“Aye, sir. Looks made to order. It’s a seamount, sir; on land you’d call it a mesa. Looks like sand-silt. Lot of small coral outcrop, must be pretty solid. Cable lies free and clear.”

“Hang her in the current, then,” said the admiral, and switched off. “Looks like God’s on our side after all.”

“I hear that name mentioned pretty often around here,” Crane remarked. He meant it to sound casual, but oddly enough it did not. He shrugged when neither Emery nor the Admiral responded, and flipped open the manual with a bookmark. “I’ve sketched in where I’ll tap in red,” he said.

“Better go over it with Sparks.”

“Already have, sir. He assembled the electrical kit for me. Gleason’s getting the mechanical stuff.”

“You watch it with that torch, skipper,” said Emery. “You’ll fuse half the—”

“I think I mentioned it—I’m using an airsaw.”

“Don’t bother any more,” Nelson told Emery with amusement. “He’s already thought of everything. Okay, Lee—shove off. Come on, Emery—let’s go up to the greenhouse. We can phone from there and watch at the same time.”

They went out.

T
HE
S
EAVIEW WAS EQUIPPED WITH
more than one escape hatch, and hatches of more than one kind. There was the under-deck hatch which released the minisub from the forward turtleback, and the kelson hatch which was nothing more than a water-tight chamber with a well, a comfortable five feet in diameter, which could be opened to the sea. Entered through an adjoining lock, the chamber could be kept full of air compressed enough to keep the water-level below the rim of the well. There were, in addition, four simple locks on the fore and aft quarters, for emergency work on outside gear, and two of the torpedo tubes could fire a man out if the conditions were mild and the emergency extreme.

Crane, who would be burdened by tools, wire, and an extra tank for the saw, elected to take the well, for the sub lay almost on the bottom, and it would be a simple matter to drop out, drag over, and pop back in again. This last was a real feature for a man diving alone. No one wants to cling to a slippery hull fighting a watertight gate while, perhaps, a moray is sniffing around trying to decide between ham and a shoulder chop.

Crane went to his cabin, stripped, and got into thermal long Johns, for though they lay less than ten degrees south of the equator, and the air temperature was climbing almost two degrees a day, their depth was between two and three hundred feet, and cold lives in those dark depths and congeals a man, body and mind.

There was a sharp rap on the door and it immediately burst open.

“Cathy!”

“Lee, Lee—not you! Not you! Please—I have the most terrible feeling that something . . . something awful . . . oh Lee, don’t. Please
don’t!
”

She threw herself into his startled arms. “Honey, honey,” he murmured into her hair, “it’s all right. It’s all right. And besides, I’m not decent. And next thing you know the house detective will break down that door and then they’ll throw us right out of this establishment.”

She pulled back from him and scanned his sexless, neck-to-toe waffle-finished garment.

“Naked,” she murmured. “My God, I’m a ruined woman.” She laughed, and abruptly burst into tears and clung to him again.

“Hey, hey now,” he said gently, “That’s enough, Connors my darlin’. Shure and have you got your Irish to boilin’ within? Is it the banshee y’ve seen wailin’ and warnin’? Or is it that ye so fear the foolishness of y’r dharlin’ bhoy that ye fear he’ll fergit how to swim?”