Ocean on Top

Then Bert came back. He was carrying what looked like an ordinary clipboard, but when he held it up to the port I saw that the sheets on it weren’t paper. He scratched on the top one with a stylus, which left a mark. Then he lifted the top sheet, and the mark disappeared. I’d seen toys of that sort years ago; apparently he’d spent some time improvising this one. It seemed a good and obvious solution to the problem of writing under water, and I wondered why none of the others had thought of it.

He had to print fairly large letters in order for me to read clearly, so even with the aid of the pad our communication was slow. I started by asking what the whole business was about, which didn’t help speed, either. Bert cut me off on that one.

“There isn’t time to give you the whole story now,” he wrote. ‘You have a decision to make before you run out of air — at least twenty hours before, in fact. It has to do with whether you go back to the surface.”

I was surprised and made no secret of it. ‘You mean they’d let me go back? Why did they go to all that trouble to get me down here? I was already at the surface.”

“Because your decision and its details will affect a lot of people, and you should know who and how. They didn’t know you were a Board official until I told them, but it was obvious your story when you got back would get to the Board anyway. It’s rather important just what the Board hears about this place.”

“I suppose it’s a case of being released if I promise to tell nothing. You know I couldn’t do that.”

“Of course not. I couldn’t either. That’s not what they expect. They realize you couldn’t go back without telling; there would be no rational explanation of where you’d been or why. You can tell everything that’s happened to you and that you’ve seen, but there are other things they want to be sure you include. We must make sure you know them.”

I jumped on the pronoun.

“You switched from «they» to «we». Does that mean you’ve chosen to stay down here yourself?”

“Yes.” This was a nod, not a written word. ‘For a while, anyway,” he added with the stylus.

“Then you’ve managed to stomach the morals of a bunch of people who waste thousands of kilowatts just lighting up the sea bottom? Have you forgotten your upbringing, and why — ‘

He interrupted me with a violent shake of his head and began to write.

“It’s not like that. I know it looks terrible, but it’s no more wasting power than the Board is wasting the sunlight that falls on the Sahara. Maybe there’ll be time to explain more before you decide, but you’re enough of a physicist to see that analogy or you wouldn’t be a Board worker in the first place.”

I spent some time digesting that one. The Sahara point was understandable. The Board has always resented having to let all that solar energy go unused. Their stock difficulty, of course, is deciding when it’s worthwhile to put energy into a project in the hope of getting more back. It’s been the standard belief for decades that man’s only real hope lies in hydrogen fusion, and most of the authorized speculative expenditure is for research in this direction. From time to time, though, a very eloquent plea for a solar-energy project comes in. Sometimes an especially promising one gets approved, and one or two of these have even paid off since I’ve been working for the outfit.

I couldn’t see, though, how natural sunlight shining on a desert could compare with artificial light shining on the sea bottom. I said so.

He shrugged, and began to write.

“The energy here comes from below the crust — straight heat, though I can’t properly call it volcanic heat. If they don’t keep their working fluid circulating down to the collector and get the heat out of it when it comes back up, the hot end of the unit will melt. Your real complaint, if you must have one, is that they don’t tie into the planetary power net and observe the rationing rules like everyone else. The reasons they don’t are very good, but there isn’t time to give them now — they call for a lot of history and technology which would take forever by this scribble-board. What I’m supposed to tell you is what you have to know if you go back up.”

“I take it that Joey and Marie decided to stay down here.”

“Joey hasn’t been here. Marie doesn’t believe me when I tell her that and is still arguing. No decision has been made in her case.”

“But if Marie is still here with her future unsettled, why did you say I have to make up my mind in thirty hours or so? She’s been down here for weeks. Obviously you have facilities to take care of us.”

“We don’t «have» them. They were made especially for her, as far as food and air are concerned. She’s still living in her sub. It would take more work to get supplies into your tank, which doesn’t have locks or air-charging valves. Besides, you’re not in quite as good a position as Marie to have people go out of their way for your convenience.”

“Why not?”

“You’re neither female nor good-looking.” I had no answer to that.

“All right,” was all I could say. ‘Tell me the official word, then. What am I supposed to know if I go back?”

“You’re to make sure your boss on the Board knows that we do have a large energy supply down here — ”

“That I’d tell him anyway.”

“ — and that it isn’t being rationed.”

“That’s also pretty obvious. Why do you want those points stressed? I can’t think of any better way to get this place raided.”

“Believe me, it wouldn’t be. If the Board thought this was just another bunch of powerleggers you’d be right, of course; but fifteen thousand people don’t make a gang. They make a nation, if you remember the word.”

“Not pleasantly.”

“Well, never mind that phase of history. The point is that

the Board has hushed up this thing in the past and can be counted on to do it again if they know what they’re doing.”

“Hush it up? You’re crazy. They’d do just one thing to an operating power plant, even if it was illegally built. They’d tie it into the network. The idea that they’d let it go on ru

“Why do you suppose you never heard of this place before? It’s been here eighty years or more.”

“I would suppose because nobody’s found it. That’s likely enough. The bottom of the Pacific isn’t the most thoroughly covered real estate on the planet.”

“It’s been found many times. Several in the past year, if you’ll stop to remember. Twelve times that I’ve heard of since this place was built it has been reported to the Board as a finished, operating project. Nothing further has come of it”

“You mean the Board knows where this thing is and still lets me come looking for you and — ”

“They may not know the location. I’m not sure the present Board knows anything; I don’t know what was done with the earlier records by their predecessors. The last time was over fifteen years ago.”

“You know all this for fact?”

“Objectively, no. I’ve read it in what seem credible reports. I’m not qualified as a historical researcher and didn’t make professional tests. It all seems very probable to me.”

“It doesn’t to me. Have you told all this to Marie?”

“Yes.”

“Does she believe it?”

“She doesn’t believe anything I say since I told her that Joey has never been here. She claims I’m a dirty liar and a traitor to mankind and an immoral skunk and that we disposed of Joe because he wouldn’t swallow our ridiculous falsehood.”

“Would I be able to talk to her?”

“You’d have my blessing, but I don’t see how. She’s a long way from here, since her sub arrived at a different entrance. I don’t think it would be possible to get your tank there without taking you outside again; it would take longer than you can spare, and I’d have trouble finding enough people to get you carried.”

“Can’t whoever runs this place assign a crew?”