Hal Clement: Ocean on Top

He came close enough to touch the equipment — so close that I could no longer see everything he was doing. I told myself that it couldn’t be anything very drastic, considering what the tank was built to take, but I’d still have been much happier if I could have seen his hands all the time. He was certainly fooling with things; I could feel the casing quiver occasionally as he pushed something particularly hard.

He drew away again and swam twice more all around the tank, never taking his eyes from it. Then he settled down to the tent roof and pushed his head against it, as though he were trying to swim through.

I didn’t dare shift my weight quickly enough to look through one of the lower ports while he was still in that position, so I couldn’t tell whether his helmet stretched the fabric enough to let him see through — it was, after all, a lot smaller than my tank. I did let myself down very gingerly, so as not to move my container noticeably, but by the time my eyes had reached one of the lower ports he had risen again — at least, I could see nothing against the fabric except his shadow. He seemed to have started swimming away, and I took a chance and straightened up quickly. The shadow had told the truth. He was heading back in the direction from which he had come.

This time I was much more careful with the clock. He was back with another man in just under eight minutes. His companion was carrying either the cylinder that had been used in moving the wreck, or one just like it; the first man was also carrying something, but I couldn’t make out what it was right away. It looked like a rather untidy bundle of rope.

When he stopped above the tank and shook it out, however, it turned out to be a cargo net, which he began to work around the tank. Apparently he had decided on his first inspection that the natural irregularities of his find didn’t offer much hold to a rope. I couldn’t exactly blame him for that conclusion, but I very much wished he hadn’t reached it. I wasn’t sure how strong the net might be, but unless it were grossly defective in manufacture it would hold my ballast slugs. If it were fastened around tank and slugs both, releasing the latter would become a pointless gesture. It was definitely time to go, and I reached for the master ballast release.

Then I had another thought. Dropping the lead would presumably give my presence away, assuming they hadn’t already guessed there was someone inside. That cat was out of the bag, and nothing else I could do would tell them any more. I might as well, therefore, try something else which might keep that net from enfolding me until I was over bare rock again and stood a chance of dropping the transponder effectively. There seemed nothing to lose by it, so I extended all the legs at once.

Neither of the swimmers was actually hit, but they were very startled. The one with the net had been touching the tank at the time, and may have thought that something he had done was responsible for releasing the springs. At any rate, neither of them seemed to feel that any more haste than before was needed, as they should have done if they’d suspected a man was inside. They simply went about the job of attaching the lifting device as they had to the other wreck; there were plenty of things to fasten lines to now that the legs were out, and it would have been hard or impossible to get the net around the new configuration. That was all to the good.

The technique was the same as before. I assumed the cylinder contained a chemical gas generator, considering the pressure the balloon was expanding against. That was just a fleeting thought, though. It was much more interesting to watch the two swimmers pushing me toward the edge of the roof even before my container had lifted entirely clear of the fabric. Things were certainly looking up; only two people, bare rock coming up — no, don’t be too hasty; maybe they’ll push you right to that entrance you want to find. Wait it out, boy. I pulled my fingers away from the panel, and locked them together for extra safety.

Just as had been done with Pugnose, the tank was moved away from the tent and then along parallel with its edge. The motion was slow — even with a weightless load there was plenty of water to push out of the way — and we were more than fifteen minutes on the trip. I kept watching for some sign of the entrance, expecting a break of some sort in the fabric itself, but that wasn’t the arrangement I finally saw.

After a quarter of an hour my porters aimed away from the lights again and headed up the slope which I assumed was still to our right. About two hundred yards in this new direction brought us to the lip of another bowl or gully, apparently much like the one I had almost been trapped in a few hours before, but larger. The center of this depression was even more brightly lighted than the roof of the tent, and the entrance was in the very middle of the bright region.

I didn’t take a very good look at it; I acted too fast. I glimpsed what seemed to be a smooth-walled pit about forty feet across with ladders going down at a couple of dozen points around its rim. Most of the light came from some point in the pit below my line of vision. Between me and the opening were a dozen or more swimming figures, and it was the sight of these that made me act. If I were to be surrounded by a whole school of swimmers, my chances of dropping a transponder unnoticed would be negligible; and without spending any more time in thought, I dropped the ballast and one of the sounders simultaneously. I instantly realized that might be a mistake, since each of the lead slabs was heavy enough even under water to smash the instrument, and as I felt the tank lurch upward I dropped another of the little machines. There was a good chance that my company had been distracted by the ballast — a much better one than I realized, as I found later.

I heard the lead hit the rock. So, evidently, did the swimmers around the hole. It took them a few seconds to spot the source of the racket. A man judges sound direction partly from the difference in arrival time of the wave at his two ears; and with the high speed of sound in water, the fact that the disturbance was also being carried by the rock, and the helmets they were all wearing it was impossible for them to get more than a vague notion of where the sound had originated. When they did start coming my way it was in response to a flashlight which one of my carriers was shining toward them.

The two original swimmers were hanging onto my legs — the tank’s I should say. They couldn’t hold me down, of course. It takes more than a couple of almost-floating human bodies to replace several tons of lead. They were staying with me, though, and guiding the others.

That didn’t worry me at first, since there weren’t enough people in sight to hold me down, and if there had been they couldn’t all have found room to get hold. The only real cause for anxiety was the possibility that there might be work subs with outside handling equipment somewhere around. Even from these, though, I’d be fairly safe if they’d just put off their appearance for a few more minutes. They’d have to hunt me with sonar once I was out of sight, and I was beginning to feel pretty certain that the last thing this bunch would do was send out sonar waves. The darned things travel too far and can be recognized too easily. I still didn’t know what these folks were up to, but there was enough obviously illegal about it to suggest that secrecy would be high on their policy list.

The ones who were holding on to me would have to drop off soon. There isn’t an underwater breathing rig made that will let a man rise at three feet a second or so for more than a few hundred feet without running into decompression trouble. I didn’t care what gas mixture these characters were breathing; there are laws of physics and human bodies have to obey them.