Frederik Pohl & Jack Williamson - Undersea 02 - Undersea Fleet

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UNDERSEA FLEET

Frederik Pohl

and

Jack Williamson

DEL RSY

A Del Rey Book

BALLANT1NE BOOKS • NEW YORK

A Del Rey Book

Published by Ballantine Books

Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York,

and simultaneously in Canada by Ballantine Books of Canada,

Ltd., Toronto, Canada.

ISBN 0-345-25618-2

Manufactured in the United States of America

First Edition: April 1971

Second Printing: July 1977

Cover art by H. R. Van Dongen

CONTENTS

/the raptures of the depths 1

2the looters of the sea 9

3dive for record! 17

4"the tides don't wait!** 27

5visitor from the sea 35

6the pearly eyes 44

7back from the deeps 52

8the half men 58

9sargasso dome 68

10 tencha of tonga trench 75

11 graduation week 82

12 rustbucket navy 88

13 the followers of the deeps 94

14 sub-sea skirmish 100

15 abandon ship! 106

16 hermit of the tonga trench 112

17 craken of the sea-mount 118

18 the fight for tonga trench 125

19 sub-sea stampede! 131

20 "the molluscans are ripe!" 136

21 aboard the killer whale 143

22 "panic is the enemy!" 148

The Raptures of the Depths

We marched aboard the gym ship at 0400.

It was long before dawn. The sea was a calm,

black mirror, rolling slowly under the stars. Standing at

sharp attention, out of the corner of my eye I could

see the distant docks of the Sub-Sea Academy, a

splash of light against the low dark line of Bermuda.

Cadet Captain Roger Fairfane rapped out:

"Cadets! Ten-hut!"

We snapped to attention, the whole formation of

us. The gym ship was a huge undersea raft, about as

lively and graceful as an iceberg. The sub-sea tugs

were nuz-zling around it like busy little porpoises,

hauling and pulling us around, getting us out to sea.

We were still on the surface, standing roll-call

formation on the deck of the gym ship, but already the

raft was beginning to pitch and wallow in the swells of

the open sea.

I was almost shivering, and it wasn't only the wind

that came in from the far Atlantic reaches. It was

tingling excitement. I was back at the Sub-Sea

Academy! As we fell in I could sense the eagerness

in Bob Eskow, beside me. Both of us had given up all

hope of ever being on the cadet muster rolls again. And

yet—here we were!

Bob whispered: "Jim, Jim! It gets you, doesn't it?

I'm

beginning to hope ---- "

He stopped abruptly, as the whole formation fell

sud-denly silent. But he didn't have to finish the

sentence; I knew what he meant.

Bob and I—Jim Eden is my name, cadet at the

Sub-

Sea Academy—had almost lost hope for a while.

Out of the Academy, in disgrace—but we had fought

our way back and we were full-fledged cadets again.

A new year was beginning for us with the traditional

qualifying skin-dive tests. And that was Bob's

problem, for there was something in his makeup that

he fought against but could not quite defeat,

something that made skin-diving as diffi-cult for him as,

say, parachute-jumping would be for a man afraid of

heights. It wasn't fear. It wasn't weakness. It was just

a part of him. "Count off!"

Captain Fairfane gave the order, and the whole long

line of us roared out our roll-call. In the

darkness—it was still far from dawn—I couldn't see

the far end of the line, but I could see Cadet

Captain Fairfane by the light of his flash-tipped

baton. It was an inspiring sight, the rigid form of the

captain, the braced ranks of cadets fading into the

darkness, the dully gleaming deck of the gym ship,

the white-tipped phosphorescence of the waves. We

were the men who would soon command the Sub-

Sea Fleet!

Every one of us had worked hard to be where we

were. That was why Bob Eskow, day after day,

grimly went through the tough, man-killing schedule of

tests and work and study. The deep sea is a drug—so

my uncle Stewart Eden used to say, and he gave his

whole life to it. Sometimes it's deadly bitter. But

once you've tasted it, you can't live without it.

Captain Fairfane roared: "Crew commanders,

report!" "First crew, allpresentandaccountedforSIR!"

"Second crew, allpresentandaccountedforSIR!"

"Third crew, allpresentandaccountedforSIR!" The

cadet captain returned the salutes of the three crew

commanders, whirled in a stiff about-face and

saluted Lieutenant Blighman, our sea coach.

"Allpresentandac-countedforSIR!" he rapped out.

Sea Coach Blighman returned the salute from

where he stood in the lee of the bow superstructure.

He strode swiftly forward, in the easy, loose-limbed gait

of an old underseaman. He was a great, brown,

rawboned man with the face of a starving shark. He

was only a shadow to us in the ranks—the first

pink-and-purple glow was barely

beginning to show on the horizon—but I could feel

his hungry eyes roving over all of us. Coach Blighrnan

was known through the whole Academy as a tough,

exacting officer. He would spend hours, if necessary, to

make sure every last cadet in his crews was drilled to

perfection in every move he would have to make

under the surface of the sea. His contempt for

weaklings was a legend. And in Blighman's eyes,

anyone who could not match his own records for

depth and endurance was a weakling.

Fifteen years before, his records had been

unsurpassed in all the world—which made it hard

to match them! When he talked, we listened.

"At ease!" he barked at us. "Today you're

going-down for your depth qualification dives. I

want every man on the raft to pass the first time.

You're all in shape—the medics have told me that.

You all know what you have to do—and I'll go

through it again, one more time, in case any of you

were deaf or asleep. So there's no excuse for not

qualifying!

"Skin-diving is a big part of your Academy

training. Every cadet has to qualify in one sub-sea

sport in order to graduate; and you can't qualify for

sports if you don't qualify to dive, right here and now

this morning."

He stopped and looked us over. I could see his

face now, shadowy but strongly marked. He said:

"Maybe you think our sub-sea sports are rough. They

are. We make them that way. What you learn in

sports here at the Academy may help you save lives

some day. Maybe it will be your own life you save!

"Sea sports are rough because the sea is rough. If

you've ever seen the sea pound in through a hull leak, or

a pressure-flawed city dome—well, then you know! If

you haven't, take my word for it—the sea is rough.

"We have an enemy, gentlemen. The enemy's name is

'hydrostatic pressure.' Every minute we spend under

the sea is with that enemy right beside us—always

deadly, always waiting. You can't afford to make

mistakes when you're two miles down! So if you've

got any mistakes to make—if you're going to cave in

under pressure—take my advice and do it here

today. When you're in the Deeps, a mistake means

somebody dies!

"Hydrostatic pressure! Never forget it. It amounts

nearly half a pound on every square inch, for every foot

you submerge. Figure it out for yourselves! At one mile

down—and a mile's nothing, gentlemen, it's only the

beginning of the Deeps!—that comes to more than a ton

pressing on every square inch. Several thousand tons on

the surface of a human body.

"No human being has ever endured that much

punish-ment and lived to talk about it. You can't do it

without a pressure suit, and the only suit that will

take it is one made of edenite." Beside me, Bob Eskow

nudged me. Edenite! My own uncle's great invention.

I stood straighter than ever, listening, trying not to

show the pride I felt.

There still was very little light, but Lieutenant

Blighman's eyes missed nothing; he glanced sharply

at Bob Eskow before he went on. "We're trying

something new," he said. "Today you lubbers are going

to help the whole fleet. We're reaching toward greater

depths—not only with edenite suits, but in skin-diving.

Not only are we constantly improving our equipment,

the sea medics are trying to improve us!

"Today, for instance, part of your test will

include trying out a new type of depth-adaptation

injection. After we dive, you will all report to the

surgeon for one of these shots. It is supposed to help

you fight off tissue damage and narcosis—in simple

words, it makes you stronger and smarter! Maybe it will

work. I don't know. They tell me that it doesn't always

work. Sometimes, in fact, it works the other way....

"Narcosis! There's the danger of skin-diving, men!

Get below a certain level, and we separate the real sea

cows from the jellyfish. For down below fifty fathoms

we come across what they call 'the rapture of the depths.'

"The rapture of the depths." He paused and stared

at us seriously. "It's a form of madness, and it kills.

I've known men to tear off their face masks down below.

I've asked them why—the ones that lived through

it—-and they've said things like 'I wanted to give the

mask to a fish!' Madness! And these shots may help

you fight against it. Anyway, the sea medics say it will

help some of you jellyfish. But some of you will find

that the shots may 4

backfire—may even make you more sensitive instead of

less!"

I heard Bob Eskow whisper glumly to himself, beside

me: "That's me. That's my luck!"

I started to say something to encourage him, but

Blighman's hungry eyes were roving toward our end

of the formation; I took a brace.

He roared: "Listen—and keep alive! Some men

can take pressure and some can not. We hope to

separate you today, if there are any among you who

can't take it. If you can't—watch for these warning

signs. First, you may feel a severe headache. Second,

you may see flashes of color. Third, you may have what

the sea medics call 'auditory hallucinations'—bells

ringing below the sea, that sort of thing.

"If you get any of these signs, get back to the locks at

once. We'll haul you inside and the medics will pull you

out of danger.

"But if you ignore these signals .. ,n

He paused, with his cold eyes on Bob Eskow.

Bob stood rigidly silent, but I could feel him tensing up.

"Remember," the coach went on, without finishing his

last sentence, "remember, most of you can find berths on

the commercial lines if you fail the grade here. We don't

want any dead cadets."

He looked at his watch.

"That's about all. Captain Fairfane, dismiss your

men!"

Cadet Captain Fairfane came front-and-center, barked

out: "Break for breakfast! The ship dives in forty

minutes, all crews will fall in for depth shots before

putting on gear. Formation dis-MISSED!"

We ate standing and hurried up the ladder, Bob and I.

Most of the others were still eating, but Bob and I

weren't that much interested in chow. For one thing, the

Acad-emy was testing experimental depth rations with a

faint-ly bilgy taste; for another, we both wanted to see

the sun rise over the open sea.

It was still a long way off; the stars were still bright

overhead, though the horizon was all edged with

color now. We stood almost alone on the long, dark

deck. We walked to the side of the ship and held the rail

with both

hands. At the fantail a tender was unloading two

fathom-eters to measure and check our dives from the

deck of the sub-sea raft itself. A working crew was

hoisting one of them onto the deck; both of them would

be installed there and used, manned by upperclassmen in

edenite pressure suits to provide a graphic, permanent

record of our qual-ifications.

The tender chugged away and the working crew began

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UNDERSEAFLEETFrederikPohlandJackWilliamsonDELRSYADelReyBookBALLANT1NEBOOKS•NEWYORKADelReyBookPublishedbyBallantineBooksCopyright©1956byFrederikPohlandJackWilliamsonAllrightsreservedunderInternationalandPan-AmericanCopyrightConventions.PublishedintheUnitedStatesbyBallantineBooks,adivisionofRandomHous...

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