From the Ocean from teh Stars (32 page)

of the cargo plane had made a landing, though his machine was not intended for amphibious operations. One of the scoutsubs was floating on
the surface while her crew wrestled with the next batch of buoyancy
tanks to be sunk. Men from the plane were helping them, working in
collapsible boats that had been tossed into the water and automatically
inflated.

Commander Henson, the Marine Division's master diver, was waiting
in the plane with the equipment. There was another brief argument before the commander capitulated with good grace and, Franklin thought,
a certain amount of relief. If anyone else was to attempt this mission,
there was no doubt that Henson, with his unparalleled experience, was
the obvious choice. Franklin even hesitated for a moment, wondering if
by stubbornly insisting on going himself, he might not be reducing the
chances of success. But he had been on the bottom and knew exactly
what conditions were down there; it would waste precious time if Henson
went down in the sub to make a reconnaissance.

Franklin swallowed his pH pills, took his injections, and climbed into the flexible rubber suit which would protect him from the near-zero tem
perature on the sea bed. He hated suits—they interfered with movement
and upset one's buoyancy—but this was a case where he had no choice.
The complex breathing unit, with its three cylinders—one the ominous
red of compressed hydrogen—was strapped to his back, and he was low
ered into the sea.

Commander Henson swam around him for five minutes while all the
fittings were checked, the weight belt was adjusted, and the sonar trans
mitter tested. He was breathing easily enough on normal air, and would
not switch over to the oxyhydrogen mixture until he had reached a depth
of three hundred feet. The change-over was automatic, and the demand
regulator also adjusted the oxygen flow so that the mixture ratio was cor
rect at any depth. As correct as it could be, that is, for a region in which
man was never intended to live. . . .

At last everything was ready. The explosive charges were securely attached to his belt, and he gripped the handrail around the tiny conning
tower of the sub. 'Take her down," he said to the pilot. "Fifty feet a
minute, and keep your forward speed below two knots."

"Fifty feet a minute it is. If we pick up speed, I'll kill it with the
reverse jets."

Almost at once, daylight faded to a gloomy and depressing green. The water here on the surface was almost opaque, owing to the debris thrown
up by the oil well. Franklin could not even see the width of the conning
tower; less than two feet from his eyes the metal rail blurred and faded

into nothingness. He was worried; if necessary, he could work by touch
alone, but he knew that the water was much clearer on the bottom.

Only thirty feet down, he had to stop the descent for almost a minute
while he cleared his ears. He blew and swallowed frantically before the comforting "click" inside his head told him that all was well; how humil
iating it would have been, he thought, had he been forced back to the
surface because of a blocked Eustachian tube! No one would have blamed
him, of course; even a mild cold could completely incapacitate the best
diver—but the anticlimax would have been hard to live down.

The light was fading swiftly as the sun's rays lost their battle with the turbid water. A hundred feet down, he seemed to be in a world of misty moonlight, a world completely lacking color or warmth. His ears were
giving him no trouble now, and he was breathing without effort, but he
felt a subtle depression creeping over him. It was, he was sure, only an
effect of the failing light—not a premonition of the thousand feet of de
scent that still lay ahead of him.

To occupy his mind, he called the pilot and asked for a progress report.
Fifty drums had now been attached to the derrick, giving a total lift of
well over a hundred tons. Six of the passengers in the trapped sub had
become unconscious but appeared to be in no danger; the remaining seventeen were uncomfortable, but had adapted themselves to the increased pressure. The leak was getting no worse, but there were now three inches
of water in the control room, and before long there would be danger of
short circuits.

"Three hundred feet down," said Commander Henson's voice. "Check
your hydrogen-flow meter—you should be starting the switch-over now."

Franklin glanced down at the compact little instrument panel. Yes, the automatic change-over was taking place. He could detect no difference in
the air he was breathing, but in the next few hundred feet of descent most
of the dangerous nitrogen would be flushed out. It seemed strange to
replace it with hydrogen, a far more reactive—and even explosive—gas,
but hydrogen produced no narcotic effects and was not trapped in the
body tissues as readily as nitrogen.

It seemed to have grown no darker in the last hundred feet; his eyes
h*A
accustomed themselves to the low level of illumination, and the water
was slightly clearer. He could now see for two or three yards along the
smooth hull he was riding down into the depths where only a handful of
unprotected men had ever ventured—and fewer still returned to tell the
story.

Commander Henson called him again. "You should be on fifty per
cent hydrogen now. Can you taste it?"

"Yes—a metallic sort of flavor. Not unpleasant, though."

"Talk as slowly as you can," said the commander. "It's hard to under
stand you—your voice sounds so high-pitched now. Are you feeling quite
O.K.?"

"Yes," replied Franklin, glancing at his depth gauge. "Will you increase my rate of descent to a hundred feet a minute? We've no time to
waste."

At once he felt the vessel sinking more swiftly beneath him as the ballast tanks were flooded, and for the first time he began to feel the
pressure around him as something palpable. He was going down so quickly
that there was a slight lag as the insulating layer of air in his suit adjusted to the pressure change; his arms and legs seemed to be gripped as if by a
huge but gentle vice, which slowed his movements without actually re
stricting them.

The light had now nearly gone, and as if in anticipation of his order
the pilot of the sub switched on his twin searchlights. There was nothing
for them to illumine, here in this empty void midway between sea bed and
sky, but it was reassuring to see the double nimbus of scattered radiance
floating in the water ahead of him. The violet filters had been removed, for
his benefit, and now that his eyes had something distant to focus upon he
no longer felt so oppressively shut in and confined.

Eight hundred feet down—more than three quarters of the way to the
bottom. "Better level off here for three minutes," advised Commander
Henson. "I'd like to keep you here for half an hour, but we'll have to make
it up on the way back."

Franklin submitted to the delay with what grace he could. It seemed incredibly long; perhaps his time sense had been distorted, so that what was really a minute appeared like ten. He was going to ask Commander
Henson if his watch had stopped when he suddenly remembered that he
had a perfectly good one of his own. The fact that he had forgotten some
thing so obvious was, he realized, rather a bad sign; it suggested that he
was becoming stupid. However, if he was intelligent enough to know that
he was becoming stupid things could not be too bad. . . . Luckily the
descent started again before he could get too involved in this line of argu
ment.

And now he could hear, growing louder and louder each minute, the
incessant roar of the great geyser of gas belching from the shaft which inquisitive and interfering man had drilled in the ocean bed. It shook the sea around him, already making it hard to hear the advice and comments
of his helpers. There was a danger here as great as that of pressure itself;
if the gas jet caught him, he might be tossed hundreds of feet upward in

a matter of seconds and would explode like a deep-sea fish dragged sud
denly to the surface.

"We're nearly there," said the pilot, after they had been sinking for
what seemed an age. "You should be able to see the derrick in a minute;
I'll switch on the lower lights."

Franklin swung himself over the edge of the now slowly moving sub
and peered down the misty columns of light. At first he could see nothing;
then, at an indeterminate distance, he made out mysterious rectangles and
circles. They baffled him for a moment before he realized that he was
seeing the air-filled drums which were now straining to lift the shattered
derrick.

Almost at once he was able to make out the framework of twisted girders below them, and presently a brilliant star—fantastically out of place in this dreary underworld—burst into life just outside the cone of
his searchlights. He was watching one of the cutting torches at work, ma
nipulated by the mechanical hands of a sub just beyond visual range.

With great care, his own vessel positioned him beside the derrick, and
for the first time he realized how hopeless his task would have been had
he been compelled to rely on touch to find his way around. He could see
the two girders to which he had to attach his charge; they were hemmed
in by a maze of smaller rods, beams, and cables through which he must
somehow make his way.

Franklin released his hold of the sub which had towed him so effort
lessly into the depths, and with slow, easy strokes swam toward the derrick.
As he approached, he saw for the first time the looming mass of the
trapped sub, and his heart sank as he thought of all the problems that must
still be solved before it could be extricated. On a sudden impulse, he swam
toward the helpless vessel and banged sharply on the hull with a pair of
wire cutters from his little tool kit. The men inside knew that he was
here, of course, but the signal would have an altogether disproportionate
effect on their morale.

Then he started work. Trying to ignore the throbbing vibration which
filled all the water around him and made it difficult to think, he began a
careful survey of the metal maze into which he must swim.

It would not be difficult to reach the nearest girder and place the
charge. There was an open space between three I beams, blocked only by
a loop of cable which could be easily pushed out of the way (but he'd have to watch that it didn't tangle in his equipment when he swam past
it). Then the girder would be dead ahead of him; what was more, there
was room to turn around, so that he could avoid the impleasant necessity
of creeping out backward.

He checked again, and could see no snags. To make doubly sure, he
talked it over with Commander Henson, who could see the situation almost as well on the TV screen of the sub. Then he swam slowly into the
derrick, working his way along the metal framework with his gloved hands.
He was quite surprised to find that, even at this depth, there was no short
age of the barnacles and other marine growths which always make it dan
gerous to touch any object which had been underwater for more than a
few months.

The steel structure was vibrating like a giant tuning fork; he could feel
the roaring power of the uncapped well both through the sea surrounding
him and through the metal beneath his hands. He seemed to be imprisoned
in an enormous, throbbing cage; the sheer noise, as well as the awful
pressure, was beginning to make him dull and lethargic. It now needed a positive effort of will to take any action; he had to keep reminding
himself that many lives besides his own depended upon what he was
doing.

He reached the girder and slowly taped the flat package against the metal. It took a long time to do it to his satisfaction, but at last the explo
sive was in place and he felt sure that the vibration would not dislodge it. Then he looked around for his second objective—the girder forming the
other edge of the derrick.

He had stirred up a good deal of dirt and could no longer see so clearly,
but it seemed to Franklin that there was nothing to stop him crossing the
interior of the derrick and completing the job. The alternative was to go
back the way he had come, and then swim right around to the other side of the wreckage. In normal circumstances that would have been easy
enough—but now every movement had to be considered with care, every expenditure of effort made grudgingly only after its need had been estab
lished beyond all doubt.

With infinite caution, he began to move through the throbbing mist. The glare of the searchlights, pouring down upon him, was so dazzling that it pained his eyes. It never occurred to him that he had only to speak into his microphone and the illumination would be reduced instantly to
whatever level he wished. Instead, he tried to keep in whatever shadow
he could find among the confused pile of wreckage through which he was
moving.

He reached the girder, and crouched over it for a long time while he
tried to remember what he was supposed to be doing here. It took Com
mander Henson's voice, shouting in his ears like some far-off echo, to call
him back to reality. Very carefully and slowly he taped the precious slab
into position; then he floated beside it, admiring his meaningless handi-