From the Ocean from teh Stars (31 page)

"There she is," said the pilot of the sub, pointing to the image forming at the edge of the sonar screen. "On hard rock eleven hundred feet down. In a couple of minutes we'll be able to make out the details."

"How's the water clarity—can we use TV?"

"I doubt it. That gas geyser is still spouting—there it is—that fuzzy echo. It's stirred up all the mud for miles around."

Franklin stared at the screen, comparing the image forming there with the plans and sketches on the desk. The smooth ovoid of the big shallow-water sub was partly obscured by the wreckage of the drills and derrick—a thousand or more tons of steel pinning it to the ocean bed. It was not surprising that, though it had blown its buoyancy tanks and turned its jets on to full power, the vessel had been unable to move more than a foot or two.

"It's a nice mess," said Franklin thoughtfully. "How long will it take for the big tugs to get here?"

"At least four days.
Hercules
can lift five thousand tons, but she's down at Singapore. And she's too big to be flown here; she'll have to come under her own steam. You're the only people with subs small enough to be airlifted."

That was true enough, thought Franklin, but it also meant that they were not big enough to do any heavy work. The only hope was that they could operate cutting torches and carve up the derrick until the trapped sub was able to escape.

Another of the bureau's scouts was already at work; someone, Franklin told himself, had earned a citation for the speed with which the torches had been fitted to a vessel not designed to carry them. He doubted if even the Space Department, for all its fabled efficiency, could have acted any more swiftly than this.

"Captain Jacobsen calling," said the loud-speaker. "Glad to have you with us, Mr. Franklin. Your boys are doing a good job, but it looks as if it will take time."

"How are things inside?"

"Not so bad. The only thing that worries me is the hull between bulkheads three and four. It took the impact there, and there's some distortion."

"Can you close off the section if a leak develops?"

"Not very well," said Jacobsen dryly. "It happens to be the middle of the control room. If we have to evacuate that, we'll be completely helpless."

"What about your passengers?"

"Er—they're fine," replied the captain, in a tone suggesting that he

was giving some of them the benefit of a good deal of doubt. "Senator
Chamberlain would like a word with you."

"Hello, Franklin," began the senator. "Didn't expect to meet you
again under these circumstances. How long do you think it will take to get
us out?"

The senator had a good memory, or else he had been well briefed. Franklin had met him on not more than three occasions—the last time in Canberra, at a session of the Committee for the Conservation of Natural
Resources. As a witness, Franklin had been before the C.C.N.R. for
about ten minutes, and he would not have expected its busy chairman to
remember the fact.

"I can't make any promises, Senator," he answered cautiously. "It
may take some time to clear away all this rubbish. But we'll manage all
right—no need to worry about that."

As the sub drew closer, he was not so sure. The derrick was over two
hundred feet long, and it would be a slow business nibbling it away in
sections that the little scoutsubs could handle.

For the next ten minutes there was a three-cornered conference be
tween Franklin, Captain Jacobsen, and Chief Warden Barlow, skipper
of the second scoutsub. At the end of that time they had agreed that the
best plan was to continue to cut away the derrick; even taking the most pessimistic view, they should be able to finish the job at least two days before the
Hercules
could arrive. Unless, of course, there were any unexpected snags; the only possible danger seemed to be the one that Cap
tain Jacobsen had mentioned. Like all large undersea vessels, his ship
carried an air-purifying plant which would keep the atmosphere breathable for weeks, but if the hull failed in the region of the control room all the sub's essential services would be disrupted. The occupants might retreat behind the pressure bulkheads, but that would give them only a temporary reprieve, because the air would start to become foul immedi
ately. Moreover, with part of the sub flooded, it would be extremely dif
ficult even for the
Hercules
to lift her.

Before he joined Barlow in the attack on the derrick, Franklin called
Base on the long-range transmitter and ordered all the additional equip
ment that might conceivably be needed. He asked for two more subs to
be flown out at once, and started the workshops mass producing buoyancy
tanks by the simple process of screwing air couplings onto old oil drums.
If enough of these could be hitched to the derrick, it might be lifted with
out any help from the submarine salvage vessel.

There was one other piece of equipment which he hesitated for some
time before ordering. Then he muttered to himself: "Better get too much

than too little," and sent off the requisition, even though he knew that the Stores Department would probably think him crazy.

The work of cutting through the girders of the smashed derrick was tedious, but not difficult. The two subs worked together, one burning through the steel while the other pulled away the detached section as soon as it came loose. Soon Franklin became completely unconscious of time; all that existed was the short length of metal which he was dealing with at that particular moment. Messages and instructions continually came and went, but another part of his mind dealt with them. Hands and brain were functioning as two separate entities.

The water, which had been completely turbid when they arrived, was now clearing rapidly. The roaring geyser of gas that was bursting from the sea bed barely a hundred yards away must have sucked in fresh water to sweep away the mud it had originally disturbed. Whatever the explanation, it made the task of salvage very much simpler, since the subs' external eyes could function again.

Franklin was almost taken aback when the reinforcements arrived. It seemed impossible that he had been here for more than six hours; he felt neither tired nor hungry. The two subs brought with them, like a long procession of tin cans, the first batch of the buoyancy tanks he had ordered.

Now the plan of campaign was altered. One by one the oil drums were clipped to the derrick, air hoses were coupled to them, and the water inside them was blown out until they strained upward like captive balloons. Each had a lifting power of two or three tons; by the time a hundred had been attached, Franklin calculated, the trapped sub might be able to escape without any further help.

The remote handling equipment on the outside of the scoutsub, so seldom used in normal operations, now seemed an extension of his own arms. It had been at least four years since he had manipulated the ingenious metal fingers that enabled a man to work in places where his unprotected body could never go—and he remembered, from ten years earlier still, the first time he had attempted to tie a knot and the hopeless tangle he had made of it. That was one of the skills he had hardly ever used; who would have imagined that it would be vital now that he had left the sea and was no longer a warden?

They were starting to pump out the second batch of oil drums when Captain Jacobsen called.

"I'm afraid I've got bad news, Franklin," he said, his voice heavy with apprehension. "There's water coming in, and the leak's increasing.

At the present rate, we'll have to abandon the control room in a couple
of hours."

This was the news that Franklin had feared. It transformed a straight
forward salvage job into a race against time—a race hopelessly handi
capped, since it would take at least a day to cut away the rest of the derrick.

"What's your internal air pressure?" he asked Captain Jacobsen.

"I've already pushed it up to five atmospheres. It's not safe to put it
up any farther."

"Take it up to eight if you can. Even if half of you pass out, that
won't matter as long as someone remains in control. And it may help to
keep the leak from spreading, which is the important thing."

"I'll do that—but if most of us are unconscious, it won't be easy to
evacuate the control room."

There were too many people listening for Franklin to make the obvious reply—that if the control room had to be abandoned it wouldn't
matter anyway. Captain Jacobsen knew that as well as he did, but some
of his passengers might not realize that such a move would end any
chance of rescue.

The decision he had hoped he would not have to make was now
upon him. This slow whittling away of the wreckage was not good enough;
they would have to use explosives, cutting the fallen derrick at the center,
so that the lower, unsupported portion would drop back to the sea bed
and its weight would no longer pin down the sub.

It had been the obvious thing to do, even from the beginning, but
there were two objections: one was the risk of using explosives so near
the sub's already weakened hull; the other was the problem of placing
the charges in the correct spot. Of the derrick's four main girders, the
two upper ones were easily accessible, but the lower pair could not be reached by the remote handling mechanisms of the scoutsubs. It was the
sort of job that only an unencumbered diver could do, and in shallow
water it would not have taken more than a few minutes.

Unfortunately, this was not shallow water; they were eleven hundred
feet down—and at a pressure of over thirty atmospheres.

☆
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

I
t's too great a risk, Franklin. I won't allow it."
It was not often, thought Franklin, that one had a chance of arguing with a senator. And if necessary he would not merely argue; he would
defy.

"I know there's a danger, sir," he admitted, "but there's no alterna
tive. It's a calculated risk—one life against twenty-three."

"But I thought it was suicide for an unprotected man to dive below
a few hundred feet."

"It is if he's breathing compressed air. The nitrogen knocks him out
first, and then oxygen poisoning gets him. But with the right mixture it's quite possible. With the gear I'm using, men have been down fifteen hun
dred feet."

"I don't want to contradict you, Mr. Franklin," said Captain Jacob-sen quietly, "but I believe that only one man has reached fifteen hun
dred—and then under carefully controlled conditions.
And he
wasn't at
tempting to do any work."

"Nor am I; I just have to place those two charges."

"But the pressure!"

"Pressure never makes any difference, Senator, as long as it's bal
anced. There may be a hundred tons squeezing on my lungs—but I'll
have a hundred tons inside and won't feel it."

"Forgive me mentioning this—but wouldn't it be better to send a
younger man?"

"I won't delegate this job, and age makes no difference to diving ability. I'm in good health, and that's all that matters." Franklin turned
to his pilot and cut the microphone switch.

"Take her up," he said. "They'll argue all day if we stay here. I want
to get into that rig before I change my mind."

He was wrestling with his thoughts all the way to the surface. Was he
being a fool, taking risks which a man in his position, with a wife and
family, ought never to face? Or was he still, after all these years, trying
to prove that he was no coward, by deliberately meeting a danger from
which he had once been rescued by a miracle?

Presently he was aware of other and perhaps less flattering motives.
In a sense, he was trying to escape from responsibility. Whether his mis
sion failed or succeeded, he would be a hero—and as such it would not
be quite so easy for the Secretariat to push him around. It was an interesting problem; could one make up for lack of moral courage by proving
physical bravery?

When the sub broke surface, he had not so much resolved these questions as dismissed them. There might be truth in every one of the charges
he was making against himself; it did not matter. He knew in his heart
that what he was doing was the right thing, the only thing. There was no
other way in which the men almost a quarter of a mile below him could
be saved, and against that fact all other considerations were meaningless.