Fletcher gave them gas masks; Norman’s kept slipping down his forehead, obscuring his vision. By the time [[229]] they reached D Cylinder, the smoke was dense. They coughed and stumbled, banged into the consoles.
“Stay low,” Tina shouted, dropping to her knees. She was leading the way; Fletcher had stayed behind in B.
Up ahead, an angry red glow outlined the bulkhead door leading to E. Tina grabbed an extinguisher and went through the door, Norman right behind her. At first he thought the entire cylinder was burning. Fierce flames licked up the side padding; dense clouds of smoke boiled toward the ceiling. The heat was almost palpable. Tina swung the extinguisher cylinder around, began to spray white foam. In the light of the fire Norman saw another extinguisher, grabbed it, but the metal was burning hot and he dropped it to the floor.
“Fire in D,” Fletcher said over the intercom. “Fire in D.” Jesus, Norman thought. Despite the mask, he coughed in the acrid smoke. He picked the extinguisher off the floor and began to spray; it immediately became cooler. Tina shouted to him, but he heard nothing except the roar of the flames. He and Tina were getting the fire out, but there was still a large burning patch near one porthole. He turned away, spraying the floor burning at his feet.
He was unprepared for the explosion, the concussion pounding his ears painfully. He turned and saw that a firehose had been unleashed in the room, and then he realized that one of the small portholes had blown or burned out, and the water was rushing in with incredible force.
He couldn’t see Tina; then he saw she had been knocked down; she got to her feet, shouting something at Norman, and then she slipped and slid back into the hissing stream of water. It picked her up bodily and flung her so hard against the opposite wall that he knew at once she must be dead, and when he looked down he saw her floating face-down in the water rapidly filling the room. The back of her head was cut open; he saw the pulpy red flesh of her brain.
Norman turned and fled. Water was already trickling over the lip of the bulkhead as he slammed the heavy door shut, spun the wheel to lock it.
He couldn’t see anything in D; the smoke was worse than before. He saw dim patches of red flame, hazy through the [[230]] smoke. He heard the hiss of the extinguishers. Where was his own extinguisher? He must have left it in E. Like a blind man he felt along the walls for another extinguisher, coughing in the smoke. His eyes and lungs burned, despite the mask.
And then, with a great groan of metal, the pounding started, the habitat rocking under jolts from the squid outside. He heard Fletcher on the intercom but her voice was scratchy and unclear. The pounding continued, and the horrible wrenching of metal. And Norman thought, We’re going to die. This time, we’re going to die.
He couldn’t find a fire extinguisher but his hands touched something metal on the wall and Norman felt it in the smoky darkness, wondering what it was, some kind of protrusion, and then two million volts surged through his limbs into his body and he screamed once, and fell backward.
AFTERMATH
He was staring at a bank of lights in some odd, angled perspective. He sat up, feeling a sharp pain, and looked around him. He was sitting on the floor in D Cylinder. A faint smoky haze hung in the air. The padded walls were blackened and charred in several places.
There must have been a fire here, he thought, staring at the damage in astonishment. When had this happened? Where had he been at the time?
He got slowly to one knee, and then to his feet. He turned to E Cylinder, but for some reason the bulkhead door to E was shut. He tried to spin the wheel to unlock it; it was jammed shut.
He didn’t see anybody else. Where were the others? Then he remembered something about Ted. Ted had died. The [[231]] squid swinging Ted’s body in the airlock. And then Fletcher had said to get back, and she had thrown the power switch. …
It was starting to come back to him. The fire. There had been a fire in E Cylinder. He had gone into E with Tina to put out the fire. He remembered going into the room, seeing the flames lick up the side of the walls. … After that, he wasn’t sure.
Where were the others?
For an awful moment he thought he was the only survivor, but then he heard a cough in C Cyl. He moved toward the sound. He didn’t see anybody so he went to B Cyl.
Fletcher wasn’t there. There was a large streak of blood on the metal pipes, and one of her shoes on the carpet. That was all.
Another cough, from among the pipes.
“Fletcher?”
“Just a minute …”
Beth emerged, grease-streaked, from the pipes. “Good, you’re up. I’ve got most of the systems going, I think. Thank God the Navy has instructions printed on the housings. Anyway, the smoke’s clearing and the air quality is reading all right—not great, but all right—and all the vital stuff seems to be intact. We have air and water and heat and power. I’m trying to find out how much power and air we have left.”
“Where’s Fletcher?”
“I can’t find her anywhere.” Beth pointed to the shoe on the carpet, and the streak of blood.
“Tina?” Norman asked. He was alarmed at the prospect of being trapped down here without any Navy people at all. “Tina was with you,” Beth said, frowning.
“I don’t seem to remember,” Norman said.
“You probably got a jolt of current,” Beth said. “That would give you retrograde amnesia. You won’t remember the last few minutes before the shock. I can’t find Tina, either, but according to the status sensors E Cyl is flooded and shut down. You were with her in E. I don’t know why it flooded.”
“What about Harry?”
“He got a jolt, too, I think. You’re lucky the amperage [[232]] wasn’t higher or you’d both be fried. Anyway, he’s lying on the floor in C, either sleeping or unconscious. You might want to take a look at him. I didn’t want to risk moving him, so I just left him there.”
“Did he wake up? Talk to you?”
“No, but he seems to be breathing comfortably. Color’s good, all that. Anyway, I thought I better get the life-support systems going.” She wiped grease on her cheek. “I mean, it’s just the three of us now, Norman.”
“You, me, and Harry?”
“That’s right. You, me, and Harry.”
Harry was sleeping peacefully on the floor between the bunks. Norman bent down, lifted one eyelid, shone a light in Harry’s pupil. The pupil contracted.
“This can’t be heaven,” Harry said.
“Why not?” Norman said. He shone the light in the other pupil; it contracted.
“Because you’re here. They don’t let psychologists into heaven.” He gave a weak smile.
“Can you move your toes? Your hands?”
“I can move everything. I walked up here, Norman, from down in C. I’m okay.”
Norman sat back. “I’m glad you’re okay, Harry.” He meant it: he had been dreading the thought of an injury to Harry. From the beginning of the expedition, they had all relied on Harry. At every critical juncture, he had supplied the breakthrough, the necessary understanding. And even now, Norman took comfort in the thought that, if Beth couldn’t figure out the life-support systems, Harry could.
“Yeah, I’m okay.” He closed his eyes again, sighed. “Who’s left?”
“Beth. Me. You.”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah. You want to get up?”
“Yeah, I’ll get in the bunk. I’m real tired, Norman. I could sleep for a year.”
[[233]] Norman helped him to his feet. Harry dropped quickly onto the nearest bunk.
“Okay if I sleep for a while?”
“Sure.”
“That’s good. I’m real tired, Norman. I could sleep for a year.”
“Yes, you said that—”
He broke off. Harry was snoring. Norman reached over to remove something crumpled on the pillow beneath Harry’s head.
It was Ted Fielding’s notebook.
Norman suddenly felt overwhelmed. He sat on his bunk, holding the notebook in his hands. Finally he looked at a couple of pages, filled with Ted’s large, enthusiastic scrawl. A photograph fell onto his lap. He turned it over. It was a photo of a red Corvette. And the feelings just overwhelmed him. Norman didn’t know if he was crying for Ted, or crying for himself, because it was clear to him that one by one, they were all dying down here. He was very sad, and very afraid.
Beth was in D Cyl, at the communications console, turning on all the monitors.
“They did a pretty good job with this place,” she said. “Everything is marked; everything has instructions; there’re computer help files. An idiot could figure it out. There’s just one problem that I can see.”
“What’s that?”
“The galley was in E Cyl, and E Cyl is flooded. We’ve got no food, Norman.”
“None at all?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Water?”
“Yes, plenty of water, but no food.”
“Well, we can make it without food. How much longer have we got down here?”
“It looks like two more days.”
“We can make it,” Norman said, thinking: Two days, Jesus. Two more days in this place.
[[234]] “That’s assuming the storm clears on schedule,” Beth added. “I’ve been trying to figure out how to release a surface balloon, and see what it’s like up there. Tina used to punch some special code to release a balloon.”
“We can make it,” Norman said again.
“Oh sure. If worse comes to worst, we can always get food from the spaceship. There’s plenty over there.”
“You think we can risk going outside?”
“We’ll have to,” she said, glancing at the screens, “sometime in the next three hours.”
“Why?”
“The minisub. It has that automatic surfacing timer, unless someone goes over and punches the button.”
“The hell with the sub,” Norman said. “Let the sub go.” “Well, don’t be too hasty,” Beth said. “That sub can hold three people.”
“You mean we could all get out of here in it?”
“Yeah. That’s what I mean.”
“Christ,” Norman said. “Let’s go now.”
“There are two problems with that,” Beth said. She pointed to the screens. “I’ve been going over the specs. First, the sub is unstable on the surface. If there are big waves on the surface, it’ll bounce us around worse than anything we’ve had down here. And the second thing is that we have to link up with a decompression chamber on the surface. Don’t forget, we still have ninety-six hours of decompression ahead of us.”
“And if we don’t decompress?” Norman said. He was thinking, Let’s just go to the surface in the sub and throw open the hatch and see the clouds and the sky and breathe some normal earth air.
“We have to decompress,” Beth said. “Your bloodstream is saturated with helium gas in solution. Right now you’re under pressure, so everything is fine. But if you release that pressure suddenly, it’s just the same as when you pop the top off a soda bottle. The helium will bubble explosively out of your system. You’ll die instantly.”
“Oh,” Norman said.
[[235]] “Ninety-six hours,” Beth said. “That’s how long it takes to get the helium out of you.”
“Oh.”
Norman went to the porthole and looked across at DH-7, and the minisub. It was a hundred yards away. “You think the squid will come back?”
She shrugged. “Ask Jerry.”
Norman thought, No more of that Geraldine stuff now. Or did she prefer to think of this malevolent entity as masculine?
“Which monitor is it?”
“This one.” She flicked it on. The screen glowed.
Norman said, “Jerry? Are you there?”
No answer.
He typed, JERRY? ARE YOU THERE?
There was no response.
“I’ll tell you something about Jerry,” Beth said. “He can’t really read minds. When we were talking to him before, I sent him a thought and he didn’t respond.”
“I did, too,” Norman said. “I sent both messages and images. He never responded.”
“If we speak, he answers, but if we just think, he doesn’t answer,” Beth said. “So he’s not all-powerful. He actually behaves as if he hears us.”
“That’s right,” Norman said. “Although he doesn’t seem to be hearing us now.”
“No. I tried earlier, too.”
“I wonder why he isn’t answering.”
“You said he was emotional. Maybe he’s sulking.”
Norman didn’t think so. Child kings didn’t sulk. They were vindictive and whimsical, but they didn’t sulk.
“By the way,” she said, “you might want to look at these.” She handed him a stack of printouts. “They’re the record of all the interactions we’ve had with him.”
“They may give us a clue,” Norman said, thumbing through the sheets without any real enthusiasm. He felt suddenly tired.
“Anyway, it’ll occupy your mind.”
“True.”
“Personally,” Beth said, “I’d like to go back to the ship.”
[[236]] “What for?”
“I’m not convinced we’ve found everything that’s there.”
“It’s a long way to the ship,” Norman said.
“I know. But if we get a clear time without the squid, I might try it.”
“Just to occupy your mind?”
“I guess you could say that.” She glanced at her watch. “Norman, I’m going to get a couple of hours of sleep,” she said. “Then we can draw straws to see who goes to the submarine.”
“Okay.”
“You seem depressed, Norman.”
“I am.”
“Me, too,” she said. “This place feels like a tomb—and I’ve been prematurely buried.”
She climbed the ladder to her laboratory, but apparently she didn’t go to sleep, because after a few moments, he heard Tina’s recorded voice on videotape saying, “Do you think they’ll ever get the sphere open?”
And Beth replied, “Maybe. I don’t know.”
“It scares me.”
The whirr of rewinding and a short delay, then: “Do you think they’ll ever get the sphere open?”
“Maybe. I don’t know.”
“It scares me.”
The tape was becoming an obsession with Beth.
He stared at the printouts on his lap, and then he looked at the screen. “Jerry?” he said. “Are you there?”
Jerry did not answer.
THE SUB
She was shaking his shoulder gently. Norman opened his eyes.
“It’s time,” Beth said.
“Okay.” He yawned. God, he was tired. “How much time is left?”
“Half an hour.”
Beth switched on the sensory array at the communications console, adjusted the settings.
“You know how to work all that stuff?” Norman said. “The sensors?”
“Pretty well. I’ve been learning it.”
“Then I should go to the sub,” he said. He knew Beth would never agree, that she would insist on doing the active thing, but he wanted to make the effort.
“Okay,” she said. “You go. That makes sense.”
He covered his surprise. “I think so, too.”
“Somebody has to watch the array,” she said. “And I can give you warning if the squid is coming.”
“Right,” he said. Thinking, Hell, she’s serious. “I don’t think this is one for Harry,” Norman said.
“No, Harry’s not very physical. And he’s still asleep. I say, let him sleep.”
“Right,” Norman said.
“You’ll need help with your suit,” Beth said.
“Oh, that’s right, my suit,” Norman said. “The fan is broken in my suit.”
“Fletcher fixed it for you,” Beth said.
“I hope she did it right.”
“Maybe I should go instead,” Beth said.
“No, no. You watch the consoles. I’ll go. It’s only a hundred yards or so, anyway. It can’t be a big deal.”
“All clear now,” she said, glancing at the monitors.
“Right,” Norman said.
[[238]] His helmet clicked in place, and beth tapped his faceplate, gave him a questioning look: was everything all right?
Norman nodded, and she opened the floor hatch for him. He waved goodbye and jumped into the chilly black water. On the sea floor, he stood beneath the hatch for a moment and waited to make sure he could hear his circulating fan. Then he moved out from beneath the habitat.
There were only a few lights on in the habitat, and he could see many thin lines of bubbles streaming upward, from the leaking cylinders.
“How are you?” Beth said, over the intercom. “Okay. You know the place is leaking?”
“It looks worse than it is,” Beth said. “Trust me.” Norman came to the edge of the habitat and looked across the hundred yards of open sea floor that separated him from DH-7. “How does it look? Still clear?”
“Still clear,” Beth said.
Norman set out. He walked as quickly as he could, but he felt as if his feet were moving in slow motion. He was soon short of breath; he swore.
“What’s the matter?”
“I can’t go fast.” He kept looking north, expecting at any moment to see the greenish glow of the approaching squid, but the horizon remained dark.
“You’re doing fine, Norman. Still clear.”
He was now fifty yards from the habitat-halfway there. He could see DH-7, much smaller than their own habitat, a single cylinder forty feet high, with very few portholes. Alongside it was the inverted dome, and the minisub.
“You’re almost there,” Beth said. “Good work.”
Norman began to feel dizzy. He slowed his pace. He could now see markings on the gray surface of the habitat. There were all sorts of block-printed Navy stencils.
“Coast is still clear,” Beth said. “Congratulations. Looks like you made it.”
He moved under the DH-7 cylinder, looked up at the hatch. It was closed. He spun the wheel, pushed it open. He couldn’t see much of the interior, because most of the lights [[239]] were out. But he wanted to have a look inside. There might be something, some weapon, they could use.
“Sub first,” Beth said. “You’ve only got ten minutes to push the button.”
“Right.”
Norman moved to the sub. Standing behind the twin screws, he read the name: Deepstar III. The sub was yellow, like the sub that he had ridden down, but its configuration was somewhat different. He found handholds on the side, pulled himself up into the pocket of air trapped inside the dome. There was a large acrylic bubble canopy on top of the sub for the pilot; Norman found the hatch behind, opened it, and dropped inside.
“I’m in the sub.”
There was no answer from Beth. She probably couldn’t hear him, surrounded by all this metal. He looked around the sub, thinking, I’m dripping wet. But what was he supposed to do, wipe his shoes before entering? He smiled at the thought. He found the tapes secured in an aft compartment. There was plenty of room for more, and plenty of room for three people. But Beth was right about going to the surface: the interior of the sub was crammed with instruments and sharp edges. If you got banged around in here it wouldn’t be pleasant.
Where was the delay button? He looked at the darkened instrument panel, and saw a single flashing red light above a button marked “TIMER HOLD.” He pressed the button.
The red light stopped flashing, and now remained steadily on. A small amber video screen glowed:
Timer Reset – Counting 12:00:00
As he watched, the numbers began to run backward. He must have done it, he thought. The video screen switched off. Still looking at all the instruments, a thought occurred to him: in an emergency, could he operate this sub? He slipped into the pilot’s chair, faced the bewildering dials and switches of the instrument array. There didn’t seem to be any steering [[240]] apparatus, no wheel or joystick. How did you work the damned thing?
The video screen switched on:
DEEPSTAR III – COMMAND MODULE
Do you require help?
Yes No Cancel
Yes, he thought. I require help. He looked around for a “YES” button near the screen, but there wasn’t any that he could see. Finally he thought to touch the screen, pressing “YES.”
DEEPSTAR III – CHECKLIST OPTIONS
Descend Ascend
Secure Shutdown
Monitor Cancel
He pressed “ASCEND.” The screen changed to a small drawing of the instrument panel. One particular section of the drawing blinked on and off. Beneath the picture were the words: