Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea Part 10

Crane said at last, "You can have'm. By me, Alvarez is useless, which is all you need from supercargo anyway, and nuts, which is all right as long as it doesn't come off on any of the crew. What was it you called me in for, sir?"

Emery laughed outright. "The skipper's had it!"

"I like a G.o.d-seeking bull-session," said the Captain, "but we're just not fitted out for one here.

Make a couple of changes and I'm with you. Get us a dim corner in a college-town tavern and a few gallons of weak beer, and leave us all be from eighteen to twenty-two years old. While you're arranging that-what's the business at hand, sir?"

The Admiral waited until Emery had stopped hooting, and then said, "We've got to get in touch with the President."

"Yes, sir."

"Radio, even tight-beam satellite transfer, is out of the question now."

"Yes, sir. Any luck with the loran?"

"Brilliant idea Sparks had there. Unfortunately, he had it too late. He's been sending Morse by our heaviest loran gear for days on end-sometimes twenty hours in one day, till I made him knock off. But it would seem that n.o.body ash.o.r.e has had the same bright idea, and n.o.body's listening.

There'll be a lot of high-priced communications men and SigCor officers who'll kick themselves for not thinking about it, when we get back and tell 'em.

"All right, not having any carrier pigeons, and being fresh out of holy men who can walk on the water, how do you suppose we can get through?"

"I... don't think we can, sir."

"Sure we can. We call him up on the telephone."

"Sir?"

"Now I'm just going to sit back and let you think," said the Admiral professorially.

Telephone! Crane looked at Nelson and at the grinning Emery.

Telephone. Transceiver and wires between. Wires, not ship to sh.o.r.e. Sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e. He looked up. "The submarine cable."

"How much?" Nelson asked Emery.

Emery opened the hands he held on his lap and uncovered a watch. A stopwatch. "Twelve seconds."

"d.a.m.n," said the admiral. "I said he could do it in ten." He fished in his pocket and tossed a dollar across to Emery, who pocketed it happily. "All right, Captain. We need a frogman and somebody who has a wire communications rating and somebody with beef enough to saw through the armor and get in to the wires, and know-how enough to make a halfway decent repair afterward."

"Yes, sir."

"Whaddaye mean, yes sir? Have we got a squad like that aboard?"

"Yes, sir."

"I'll take your word for it. Now here-" he unrolled a chart-"is the new Natal-Freetown coaxial cable. And here we are. And right here, just southeast of Fernando de Noronha, is a shelf where the cable drops off into the first Deep. It lies in about forty fathoms-yeah, here, it's marked: 230 feet.

We should reach there in about six hours. And here-" He opened a drawer and pulled out a ma.s.sive loose-leaf binder full of technical data-"here's the specs of that cable from smelting the ores clear down to what they had for chow aboard the cable-layer that put it there. Round up your squad, brief 'em, see that they're all rested as much as possible, and report here in five hours; that'll be about fifteen hundred."

Crane took the book and the map. "Aye-aye, sir. Will that be all for now, sir? I'd like to get cracking on this."

"Shove off."

When the Captain had gone, Emery laughed. "What are you cackling about now?"

"Just how big a squad do you think he'll pick?"

"Up to him."

"You'll flip when he brings it."

"I don't flip easy."

Emery just put his feet up on the settle, leaned back, and grinned.

"GET DRESSED," SAID DR. JAMIESON.

Hodges, the third officer, obeyed. He was a spare, taut young man with deepset black eyes and black hair. "What's wrong, sir?"

"Not a thing," said Jamieson. He removed the stethoscope from his neck and put it on a shelf, and found his pipe.

"Not a thing, sir? Do you mean I'm cracking up like this for nothing?"

"You're not cracking up," said the doctor, somewhat sharply, "and when I said not a thing, I meant not a thing in my department. Would you mind very much talking to Dr. Hiller?"

"Why, I guess not, sir."

"Your only trouble is that you can't sleep, and I can a.s.sure you there's no physical reason for it.

Now I can tranquilize you and give you knockout drops, and that would end the insomnia. But if the insomnia is some sort of expression or rebellion of some kind, and I shut off your ability to use it, the rebellion is going to pop out some other way."

"Like what, sir?"

"Constipation. Warts. Impaired vision. The itch. Might be anything. Symptom-swapping. Some folks spend years swapping symptoms and treating them one at a time, never realizing that they're just a way of hollering for help."

"I don't feel like a guy hollering for help, sir."

"Well, maybe I shouldn't put it that way. Let's just say that Dr. Hiller can find and treat whatever it is and I can only find and treat what it does. You want to see her, or shall I dose you up?"

"I'll see her, sir."

"WHAT'S THE PRESIDENT'S PHONE NUMBER?"

"Now never you mind, girl. He's already married." Chip Morton riffled once through the technical manual, and shook his head. "You'd never think it'd take all this spaghetti to pipe one voice to one ear, would you...? You hear who's going out, Cathy?"

"Not yet."

"You mean to tell me they expect to open up that cable and find which wires go to where? How do they know they won't get connected to the city morgue in b.u.t.te, Montana, or something?"

"The way I got it," said Cathy Connors, "it doesn't really matter. If they can get through to anyone at all, anywhere, the call can be patched through to the White House."

The Executive Officer shook his head again. "I dunno. I dunno."

"What is it, Chip?"

"Like I said, girl-I dunno. I dunno what I'd do if I was Lee. I dunno why he takes it. And I dunno why I mention it to you."

"Well you did, so do."

"Okay," said Morton blandly. "I was just thinking how the Admiral says stop, we stop, he says make a phone call, we make a phone call. Lee says unlimber the deck guns, the O.O.M. says as-you-were. You know."

"I don't know."

"Well h.e.l.l, Cathy, he's the Captain."

"But Nelson's the Admiral! He not only outranks everybody, he owns the ship, or would if he hadn't given it to the Government."

"Well, if I was Captain-"

"What would you do if you were Captain?" asked Cathy. There were sparks in her eyes.

Chip Morton laughed suddenly. "Like I said, girl; I dunno."

DR. JAMIESON WAS IN THE GALLEY. ALL THE necessities of life on a ship have their source in the galley: food, drink, and gossip. "No kidding, Cookie. A phone call. Maybe we'll get some news."

"I'd as soon not hear news, thank you. By me no news is good news, bad news is nowhere," said the cook. "Doc, you really think the Admiral can shoot down that fire-belt?"

"I don't think 'shoot down" is exactly the right word, Cookie, but yes, I think he can."

"Then I'll take no news until he does it. There just can't be no good news until he does it. You see them Oklahoma farms on TV that day? That's my country." His moon face seemed to shrink, somehow, in its inner structure, so that the whole thing drooped a little. It was a hard thing to watch, this unquenchably cheerful man so fearful and sorrow-sagged. "And how's your patient, sir?"

"Patient?" Dr. Jamieson had to stop and think for a moment. "Oh, him. Tell you a secret, he's only in the ship's hospital because he's used to it and we don't need the room. He's fine. He's a nut, between you and me, but otherwise healthy as a whale on wheat-germ. And how's your patient?"

"Tambien!" called the cook, and from the small gap between the forward bulkhead and the freezer, Alvarez' puppy came sidling and ogling. It spread its oversize feet apart near Cookie's left shoe, stroked its chin on the deck between them, the whole time rolling its eyes sidewise up at the doctor; and it positively smiled.

"What was that you called him?"

"Tambien." When the doctor laughed, he said defensively, "Well I asked the supercargo what his name was and Mr. Alvarez just-you know, like he does, shrugs with his nostrils, like-he didn't exactly answer but I got the idea the pup hadn't no name. So I was around Spanish people a lot and all the time I hear that word and whatever it means I don't know, but I figure it's a good name for him."

"It's a good name for him," nodded the doctor. "It means 'also'." He ruffled the loose skin behind the dog's ear with the toe of his shoe. "He looks good to me. Any sign of that sunburn left?"

"About all gone," said the cook. "Only that's just a nickname sort of. Sunburn. A dog can't really get sunburn."

"This dog did, and it was no nickname-type sunburn. We're lucky to be inboard all the time or it would be a problem for us too. You know what's burning up there- what's called the ozone layer. It's a kind of oxygen that usually puts a screen between us and the sun-a screen that filters out a lot of kinds of the sun's rays. Some of 'em penetrate pretty deep, even through the mouse-fuzz on Tambien there."

"Well whaddaye know." Cookie also caressed the dog with his foot. Tambien, unable to contain his ecstasy and also stand, rolled over on his back. "I... dunno why you call him a nut, exactly, Doc.

Mr. Alvarez, I mean. 'Course, he ain't like the rest of us, somehow. Like he seems to love this dog all right, but whether or not the dog loves him he just don't seem to give a d.a.m.n."

"You put your finger on it, Cookie. He doesn't give a d.a.m.n about anything or anybody in the world. He's got bigger things to think about."

The remark, meant sardonically, was taken with complete seriousness. "I guess he has at that, sir."

"Talk to him, did you?"

"I drop in every once in a while. I... dunno why you call him a nut." Cookie said again.

"If it makes you any happier, I'll take it back," smiled Jamieson. "It was two times unprofessional of me to say it anyhow-once for commenting on a more-or-less patient, and again for using non-medical language. Okay?"

"You think it really might be that G.o.d sent the fire?"

"I've had no messages," said Jamieson. "Which seems to be yet another kind of communications breakdown."

"I never know when you're kidding, Doc." The medical officer smiled and went to the hospital to see his more-or-less patient.

THE CPO, GLEASON, RAN HIS FINGERS AND HIS sharp eyes over the limp bulk of the wet-suit, whistling under his breath.

"Knock it off," said the redheaded sailor.

"Knock what?" asked Gleason innocently.

"I'd like to punch him right in the nose," said the sailor.

"That sounds like lezz Majesty or whatever you call it. Insubordination. It's the Old Old Man's nose you're talkin' about."

"All the same," said the sailor, "and just to be serious for a minute which I doubt you can, wouldn't you say an officer, and old-time officer, has to be a little out of his mind to say right out in public that another officer once bounced a guy on his knee, for G.o.d's sake?"

"I wouldn't say an officer was no such a thing. I might say he was maybe a few years away from remembering what it was like to be a boot like you, but then who wants to remember a dismal thing like that?"

"I'm trying to be serious, I said. Don't he know I'll spend my whole life in the service hearing guys whistle that tune at me? Don't he know I could get to be an admiral like him fifty years from now and they'll still call me by that name?"

"It could be worse, Sonny Boy."

Gleason was undoubtedly saved from a sample of the Admiral's punch in the nose by the arrival of the Captain, who turned in on them from the corridor. "Find any termites or anything?"

"Not yet, sir," said Gleason. "Are you calling for volunteers for this, sir?"

"Thanks, no," smiled Crane, and walked forward. Jimmy Smith looked after him and said to Gleason, "I thought you told me Rule One is 'Never volunteer'."

"You don't think for a minute I was going to volunteer me, do you? I was going to volunteer you." He lifted and spread the frogman's suit and turned it over on his knees. "But to tell you the truth, I'd like the chance to get out and walk around the block."

"Yeah, me too..."

"COME IN." THE ADMIRAL GLANCED AT THE clock. The Captain entered and laid the manual down on the desk. "Right on time." He leaned a little sidewise and tried to peer around the captain.

"Where's your diving detail?"

"I'm the diving detail," said Crane.