Isaac Asimov - The Bicentennial Man and Other Stories

“Yes, and you’ll be getting it now, Mr. Bergen, won’t you?”

“I hope so, but what makes you so sure?”

“Mr. Bergen, let’s not play around. You know very well that Earth is committed to spending a fixed amount of money on expansion projects—on programs designed to expand the human habitat—and that it is not a terribly large amount. Earth’s population is not going to lavish resources in an effort to expand either outer space or inner space if it thinks this will cut into the comfort and convenience of Earth’s prime habitat, the land surface of the planet.”

Annette broke in. “You make it sound callous of Earthmen, Mr. Demerest, and that’s unfair. It’s only human, isn’t it, to want to be secure? Earth is overpopulated and it is only slowly reversing the havoc inflicted on the planet by the Mad Twentieth. Surely man’s original home must come first, ahead of either Luna City or Ocean-Deep. Heavens, Ocean-Deep is almost home to me, but I can’t want to see it flourish at the expense of Earth’s land.”

“It’s not an either-or, Mrs. Bergen,” said Demerest earnestly. “If the ocean and outer space are firmly, honestly, and intelligently exploited, it can only redound to Earth’s benefit. A small investment will be lost but a large one will redeem itself with profit.”

Bergen held up his hand. “Yes, I know. You don’t have to argue with me on that point. You’d be trying to convert the converted. Come, let’s eat. I tell you what. We’ll eat here. If you’ll stay with us overnight, or several days for that matter—you’re quite welcome—there will be ample time to meet everybody. Perhaps you’d rather take it easy for a while, though.”

“Much rather,” said Demerest. “Actually, I want to stay here. . . . I would like to ask, by the way, why I met so few people when we went through the units.”

“No mystery,” said Bergen genially. “At any given time, some fifteen of our men are asleep and perhaps fifteen more are watching films or playing chess or, if their wives are with them—”

“Yes, John,” said Annette.

“—And it’s customary not to disturb them. The quarters are constricted and what privacy a man can have is cherished. A few are out at sea; three right now, I think. That leaves a dozen or so at work in here and you met them.”

“I’ll get lunch,” said Annette, rising.

She smiled and stepped through the door, which closed automatically behind her.

Bergen looked after her. “That’s a concession. She’s playing woman for your sake. Ordinarily, it would be just as likely for me to get the lunch. The choice is not defined by sex but by the striking of random lightning.”

Demerest said, “The doors between units, it seems to me, are of dangerously limited strength.”

“Are they?”

“If an accident happened, and one unit was punctured—”

“No meteorites down here,” said Bergen, smiling.

“Oh yes, wrong word. If there were a leak of any sort, for any reason, then could a unit or a group of units be sealed off against the full pressure of the ocean?”

“You mean, in the way that Luna City can have its component units automatically sealed off in case of meteorite puncture in order to limit damage to a single unit.”

“Yes,” said Demerest with a faint bitterness. “As did not happen recently.”

“In theory, we could do that, but the chances of accident are much less down here. As I said, there are no meteorites and, what’s more, there are no currents to speak of. Even an earthquake centered immediately below us would not be damaging since we make no fixed or solid contact with the ground beneath and are cushioned by the ocean itself against the shocks. So we can afford to gamble on no massive influx.”

“Yet if one happened?”

“Then we could be helpless. You see, it is not so easy to seal off component units here. On the Moon, there is a pressure differential of just one atmosphere; one atmosphere inside and the zero atmosphere of vacuum outside. A thin seal is enough. Here at Ocean-Deep the pressure differential is roughly a thousand atmospheres. To secure absolute safety against that differential would take a great deal of money and you know what you said about getting money out of PPC. So we gamble and so far we’ve been lucky.”

“And we haven’t,” said Demerest.

Bergen looked uncomfortable, but Annette distracted both by coming in with lunch at this moment.

She said, “I hope, Mr. Demerest, that you’re prepared for Spartan fare. All our food in Ocean-Deep is prepackaged and requires only heating. We specialize in blandness and non-surprise here, and the non-surprise of the day is a bland chicken a la king, with carrots, boiled potatoes, a piece of something that looks like a brownie for dessert, and, of course, all the coffee you can drink. “

Demerest rose to take his tray and tried to smile. “It sounds very like Moon fare, Mrs. Bergen, and I was brought up on that. We grow our own micro-organismic food. It is patriotic to eat that but not particularly enjoyable. We hope to keep improving it, though.”

“I’m sure you will improve it.”

Demerest said, as he ate with a slow and methodical chewing, “I hate to ride my specialty, but how secure are you against mishaps in your air-lock entry?”

“It is the weakest point of Ocean-Deep,” said Bergen. He had finished eating, well ahead of the other two, and was half through with his first cup of coffee. “But there’s got to be an interface, right? The entry is as automatic as we can make it and as fail-safe. Number one: there has to be contact at every point about the outer lock before the fusion generator begins to heat the water within the lock. What’s more, the contact has to be metallic and of a metal with just the magnetic permeability we use on our ’scaphes. Presumably a rock or some mythical deep-sea monster might drop down and make contact at just the right places; but if so, nothing happens.

“Then, too, the outer door doesn’t open until the steam has pushed the water out and then condensed; in other words, not till both pressure and temperature have dropped below a certain point. At the moment the outer door begins to open, a relatively slight increase in internal pressure, as by water entry, will close it again.”

Demerest said, “But then, once men have passed through the lock, the inner door closes behind them and sea water must be allowed into the lock again. Can you do that gradually against the full pressure of the ocean outside?”

“Not very.” Bergen smiled. “It doesn’t pay to fight the ocean too hard. You have to roll with the punch. We slow it down to about one-tenth free entry but even so it comes in like a rifle shot-louder, a thunderclap, or waterclap, if you prefer. The inner door can hold it, though, and it is not subjected to the strain very often. Well, wait, you heard the waterclap when we first met, when Javan’s ’scaphe took off again. Remember?”

“I remember,” said Demerest. “But here is something I don’t understand. You keep the lock filled with ocean at high pressure at all times to keep the outer door without strain. But that keeps the inner door at full strain. Somewhere there has to be strain.”

“Yes, indeed. But if the outer door, with a thousand-atmosphere differential on its two sides, breaks down, the full ocean in all its millions of cubic miles tries to enter and that would be the end of all. If the inner door is the one under strain and it gives, then it will be messy indeed, but the only water that enters Ocean-Deep will be the very limited quantity in the lock and its pressure will drop at once. We will have plenty of time for repair, for the outer door will certainly hold a long time.”

“But if both go simultaneously—”