Ocean on Top

Nearly an hour passed according to my watch, before anyone appeared (the watch itself was a solid-state radioactive-powered affair which had not been designed with sea-bottom pressure in mind, but had come through the change perfectly). I spent most of the time cursing myself — not for making the change, but for failing to take advantage of the time between decision and action by getting more information from Bert.

The new arrival was young and quite decorative — but I didn’t fall in love with her. The response was mutual. She waved me back to the cot and examined my dressings with an air of competence.

When she finished, I tried to call her attention to my lack of swimming ballast. She may have understood, since she paid courteous attention to me and nodded agreeably after I’d finished my gestures, but she left without doing anything constructive about the matter. I hoped she was going to call Bert.

Whether she did or not, he was the next to enter. He had no extra ballast with him, but he did have the writing pad. This was even better. I reached for it and buckled down to work.

I’d been restricted to communicating only by written note before, but not since leaving grammar school. In those days it had had a certain thrill, being an illicit activity in study hall; now it proved to be purest nuisance.

In something over two hours, we settled:

That I was a fully naturalized citizen of this place, and entitled to go where I pleased and do what I wanted short of obvious conflict with the interests of others;

That I was not only permitted to examine the power-generating units, but was expected to familiarize myself with them as soon as possible;

That I could visit Marie at her submarine whenever I felt like it, and I had the blessing of the Council and the rest of the population in arguing with her; and

That I would be expected to support myself by farming until I demonstrated some different and at least equally useful way of contributing to the general welfare.

That was all. Often in the past I’d held a lengthy conversation with someone, and after he was out of sight had remembered other things I’d wanted to say; but down here this sort of thing wasn’t an incident, it was a habit.

It wasn’t so much that one forgot to bring up some point or other. As a rule there wasn’t time to cover even the ones remembered. I’ve never appreciated the gift of speech so much in my life. Those of you who feel, after finishing this report, that I should have learned certain key facts sooner than I did will please remember this difficulty. I don’t say I shouldn’t have been quicker, but I do claim some excuse for failure.

The whole thing was not merely a

I had no real enthusiasm for farming, though I was curious about how it would be conducted on the sea bottom. I did want to learn about the power plant, but even that item I postponed. I asked Bert first of all to guide me to Marie’s sub. He nodded and started swimming.

The trip was made without conversation. Maybe Bert was used enough to swimming by this time so that he could have written and read while doing it, like a city secretary doing a crossword puzzle as she strolls out to lunch, but I certainly was not. I simply looked around as I followed him, noting everything I possibly could.

The tu

street sign, I failed to spot it. There were all sorts of color patterns on the walls, but I couldn’t tell whether they meant something or were merely decoration. Everything was brightly lighted.

The place wasn’t just tu

I never got good at judging distances in swimming, and some of the corridors had their traffic assisted by a pump-driven current, so I don’t know how far we went before reaching the submarine. As a matter of fact, I still have only the vaguest notion of the size of the whole place. At any rate, we finally emerged from a narrow corridor into one of the big chambers under an ocean entrance, crossed beneath the circle of blackness which gave on a mile of salt water, went on down a much larger passageway for perhaps two hundred yards, and found ourselves at the entrance to a fair-sized room in which one ordinary Board work sub, loaded with external ballast slugs as my tank had been, lay cradled on the floor.

Bert stopped just outside the entrance and began to write. I read over his shoulder as he produced ‘I’d better stay outside. She’s firmly convinced that I’m Judas Iscariot, Benedict Arnold, and Vidkun Quisling all rolled into one. You’ll have enough trouble appearing as you are without me beside you. Have you decided what excuse to offer for making the change?1

I nodded, seeing no need to waste time writing out details more than once, and took the pad and stylus. Bert looked a little expectant, but I waved farewell to him and headed for the sub. When I looked back, just before reaching it, he was gone. I then remembered that sometime fairly soon I was going to need ordinary food and presumably, even more seriously, the oxygen food. I still didn’t know where to get them.

Chapter Thirteen

I couldn’t see anyone through the ports of the sub as I approached, though I circled all the way around it. Apparently Marie was asleep. I wasn’t sure it would be sound policy to wake her up, but I finally decided to take a chance. I tapped on the hull.

“If that’s Bert, clear out. I’m busy thinking!” The words were clear and understandable, but they didn’t sound at all like Marie’s voice. I can’t describe just what they did sound like. There are overtones produced by the human vocal cords which don’t usually get through the impedance-matching equipment of the listener’s middle ear — one of the reasons one’s own voice sounds so unfamiliar in a recording. Being immersed in a fluid which carries sound at about the same speed as water does, and having that fluid on both sides of the eardrum, makes an even greater difference. As I say, I personally lack the words to describe the exact result.

I tapped again. The second response was equally clear, but I’ve promised Marie not to quote it. I got a

A man can stand the explosion of a stick of dynamite a hundred feet away, in air, quite easily. The noise is uncomfortable but not by itself dangerous. If he’s swimming at that distance from the same stick when its detonates under water, though, he can count on being killed.

My fist didn’t pack the energy of a stick of dynamite, but things might have been less painful if it had. At least I’d have been comfortably dead. My eardrums didn’t actually break when the shock wave hit them, but the sensations can’t have been much different. I was long in recovering to permit