Ocean on Top

Hal Clement

Ocean on Top

Chapter One

I’ve never met a psychiatrist professionally and don’t much want to, but just then I rather wished there was one around to talk to. It wasn’t that I felt like cracking up; but when you have something profound to say, you like to have it appreciated, and it would have taken a professional really to appreciate the remark I wanted to make at that moment.

There’s a word for people who can’t stand being out in the open with crowds staring at them, and there’s another one for those who get all in a dither from being cramped into a small space. They’re both common enough ailments, but I would have liked to place a bet that no one before had ever suffered from agoraphobia and claustrophobia simultaneously.

With a name like mine, of course, I’ve never exactly sought the public eye, and usually I resist the temptation even to make bright remarks in company. Just then, though, I was wishing there was someone to hear that diagnosis of my feelings.

Or maybe I was just wishing there was someone.

I couldn’t hear the storm any more. The Pugnose had broken up almost where she was supposed to. She had hit the heavy weather just where the metro office had said she would, and her fuel had run out within five minutes of that time — that even I could have predicted; trust a Board boss to make sure that no more stored energy than could possibly be helped went down with her. There was some battery power left, though, and I had kept a ru

She’d never been intended for any other purpose, and I hadn’t fallen in love with her as some people might have, but I didn’t like the sight just the same. It seemed wasteful. I didn’t spend any time brooding over it, though. I ducked into the tank and sealed it and let nature take its course. By now, if static pressure instruments could be trusted, the tank and I were eight hundred feet down.

It was very, very quiet. I knew water was going by because the depth was increasing about two feet a second, but I couldn’t hear it. Any loose pieces of the boat were long gone, floatables being scattered over the Pacific and sinkables mostly preceding me toward the bottom. I’d have been disturbed as well as surprised to hear anything solid bump against my particular bit of wreckage. The silence was good news, but it still made me uncomfortable.

I’d been in space once — a waste investigation at one of the Board’s fusion research stations — and there was the same complete lack of sound. I hadn’t liked it then; it gave me the impression that the universe was deliberately snubbing me until the time would come to sweep up my remains. I didn’t like it now, though the feeling was different — this time it was as though someone were watching carefully to see what I was up to and was trying to make up his mind when to do something about it. A psychiatrist wouldn’t have been much help with that notion, of course, because there was a good chance that it was true.

Bert Whelstrahl had disappeared in this volume of water a year before. Joey Elfven, as competent an engineer and submariner as could be found on Earth, had been lost track of ten months later in the same neighborhood. They were both friends of mine, and I was bothered by their vanishing.

Six weeks ago, Marie Wladetzki had followed the other two. This was much worse from my point of view. She was not an investigator, of course — the Board, as personified by its present boss whose name I’ll leave out of this account, doesn’t believe women are objective enough — but that didn’t mean she couldn’t be curious. Also, she’d been as interested in Joey as I was in her. Being Marie, she hadn’t actually broken the letter of any regulations when she took out a Board sub at Papeete, but she most certainly strained the spirit of most of them. She hadn’t said where she was going and had last checked in between Pitcairn and Oejo a thousand miles from where I was now sinking with the remains of Pugnose; but no one who knew her had any doubts about where to look first.

The boss was human enough to volunteer me for the look-see. My own inclination would have been to do just that — take a sub and see what had happened; but brains won out. Bert’s disappearance could have been an accident, although there were already grounds for suspicion about the Easter Island area. Joey’s vanishing within half a dozen miles of the same spot could conceivably have been coincidence — the sea can still outguess man on occasion. After Marie’s loss, though, only a very stupid person would have gone charging into the region any more obviously than he could help.

Therefore, I was now a thousand feet below the top of the Pacific and several times as far above the bottom, camouflaged as part of a wrecked boat.

I didn’t know exactly how much water was still below me; even though my last fix on the surface had been pretty good and I’d acquired an excellent knowledge of the bottom contours north of Rapanui, I couldn’t be sure I was going straight down. Currents near an island are not the smooth, steady things suggested by those little arrows on small-scale maps of the Pacific.

I might, of course, have tried echo-sounding, but to control that temptation I had no emission instruments in the tank except floodlights; and I had no intention of using even those until I had some assurance that I was alone. See without being seen was the current policy. The assurance would come, if ever, very much later, after I had reached the bottom and spent a good, long time listening.

In the meantime I watched the pressure gauge, which told how the water was piling up above me, and the sensors which would let me know if anyone else was using sonar gear in the neighborhood. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted them to react or not. If they did, it would be progress; I’d know someone was down here who shouldn’t be — but it might be the same sort of progress the other three had made. It might not be grounds for too much worry, since fifteen or twenty feet of smashed hull would show on any sonar scope for just what it was, and supposedly the tank inside would not. Of course, some sonarmen are harder to fool than others.

I could look out, of course. The tank had ports, and a couple of them faced the opening where Pugnose’s stern used to be. I could even see things at times. There were flecks of phosphorescence drifting upward and streaks of luminosity not quite bright enough to identify in color which sometimes whipped past and vanished in the gloom and sometimes drifted for minutes in front of a port as though they marked the position of something which was trying curiously to look in. I was tempted — not very strongly, but tempted — to turn on my lights once or twice to see what the things were.

The wreckage was tumbling slowly. I had been assured that this wouldn’t happen — that weight had been distributed so that the sharp prow would always point down and leave the tank on top when I hit bottom — but there was no one to complain to. There also seemed to be nothing to do about it, and I began to wonder just what I could accomplish if the tank wound up in bottom ooze, or even on hard rock, with the wreckage on top of it. The thing had little enough maneuverability as it was. With very much extra weight, dropping ballast might not be enough to start me back toward the surface.

I couldn’t shift my own weight enough to affect the tumbling at all. The tank’s inside diameter was only about six feet, and much of that volume was taken up by fixed apparatus.