While J.J. was thinking this over, Bradley tried a new gambit. He switched on the external sound transducer.
‘J.J.,’ he said. ‘Can you hear me?’
‘Yes,’ the robot answered promptly.
‘Do you recognize me?’
‘Yes, Mr. Bradley.’
Good, thought Bradley. We’re getting somewhere. . . .
‘Do you have any problems?’
‘No. All systems are normal.’
‘We have sent you a recall — Subprogram 999. Have you received it?’
‘No. I have not received it.’
Well, thought Bradley, whatever science fiction writers may have pretended, robots won’t lie — unless they’re programmed to do so. And no one’s played that dirty trick on J.J. — I hope. . . .
‘One has been sent out. I repeat: Obey Code 999. Acknowledge.’
‘I acknowledge.’
‘Then execute.’
‘Command not understood.’
Damn. We’re going around in circles, Bradley realized. And we could do that, literally, until we both run out of power — or patience.
While Bradley was considering his next step, Explorer interrupted the dialogue.
‘Deep Jeep — sorry you’re having no luck so far. But we’ve an update for you — and a message from the Prof.’
‘Go ahead.’
‘You’re missing some real fireworks. There’s been a — well, blowout’s the only word — around forty west, fifty north. Much too deep to do any serious damage to the offshore rigs, luckily — but hydrocarbon gas is bubbling up by the millions of cubic meters. And it’s ignited — we can see the glare from here — forget the aurora! You should see the Earthsat images: looks as if the North Atlantic’s on fire.’
I’m sure it’s very spectacular, thought Bradley. But how does it affect me?
‘What’s that about a message from Dr. Zwicker?’
‘He asked us to tell you Tommy Gold was right. Said you’d understand.’
‘Frankly, I’m not interested in proving scientific theories at the moment. How long before I must come up?’
Bradley felt no sense of alarm — only of urgency. He could drop his remaining ballast and blow his tanks in a matter of seconds, and be safely on his way up long before any submarine avalanche could overwhelm him. But he was determined to complete his mission, for reasons which were now as much personal as professional.
‘Latest estimate is one hour — you may have more. Plenty of time before it gets here — if it does.’
An hour was ample; five minutes might be enough.
‘J.J.,’ he commanded. ‘I am giving you a new program. Command Five Two Seven.’
That was main power cutoff, which should leave only the backup systems running. Then J.J. would have no choice but to surface.
‘Command Five Two Seven accepted.’
Good — it had worked! J.J.’s external lights flickered, and the little attitude-control propellers idled to a halt. For a moment, J.J. was dead in the water. Hope I haven’t overdone it, Bradley thought.
Then the lights came on again, and the props started to spin once more.
Well, it was a nice try. Nothing had gone wrong this time, but it was impossible to remember everything, in a system as complex as J.J.’s. Bradley had simply forgotten one small detail. Some commands only worked in the lab; they were disabled on operational missions. The override had been automatically overridden.
That left only one option. If gentle persuasion had failed, he would have to use brute force. Deep Jeep was much stronger than J.J. — which in any case had no limbs with which to defend itself. Any wrestling match would be very one-sided.
But it would also be undignified. There was a better way.
Bradley put Deep Jeep into reverse, so that the submersible no longer blocked J.J. The robot considered the new situation for a few seconds, then set off again on its rounds. Such dedication was indeed admirable, but it could be overdone. Was it true that archaeologists had found a Roman sentry still at his post in Pompeii, overwhelmed by the ashes of Vesuvius because no officer had come to relieve him of his duty? That was very much what J.J. now seemed determined to do.
‘Sorry about this,’ Bradley muttered as he caught up with the unsuspecting machine.
He jammed Deep Jeep’s manipulator arm into the main prop, and pieces of metal flew off in all directions. The auxiliary fans spun J.J. in a half circle, then slowed to rest.
There was only one way out of this situation, and J.J. did not stop to argue.
The intermittent beacon signal switched over to the continuous distress call — the robot Mayday — which meant ‘Come and get me!’
Like a bomber dropping its payload, J.J. released the iron ballast weight which gave it neutral buoyancy, and started its swift rise to the surface.
‘J.J.’s on the way up,’ Bradley reported to Explorer. ‘Should be there in twenty minutes.’
Now the robot was safe; it would be tracked by half a dozen systems as soon as it broke water, and would be back in the moon pool well before Deep Jeep.
‘I hope you realize,’ Bradley muttered as J.J. disappeared into the liquid sky above, ‘that hurt me much more than it hurt you.’
40 TOUR OF INSPECTION
Jason Bradley was just preparing to drop his own ballast and follow J.J. up to the surface when Explorer called again.
‘Nice work, Jason — we’re tracking J.J. on the way up. The inflatables are already waiting for him.
‘But don’t drop your weights yet. There’s a small job the N-T group would like you to do — it will only take a minute or five.’
‘Do I have that long?’
‘No problem, or we wouldn’t ask. A good forty minutes before the thing hits — it looks like a weather front on our computer simulations. We’ll give you plenty of warning.’
Bradley considered the situation. Deep Jeep could easily reach the Nippon-Turner site within five minutes, and he would like to have one last look at Titanic — both sections, if possible. There was no risk; even if the arrival estimate was wildly in error, he would still have several minutes of warning time and could be a thousand meters up before the avalanche swept past below.
‘What do they want me to do?’ he asked, swinging Deep Jeep around so that the ice-shrouded stern was directly ahead on his sonar scan.
‘Maury has a problem with its power cables — can’t haul them up. May be snagged somewhere. Can you check?’
‘Will do.’
It was a reasonable request, since he was virtually on the spot. The massive, neutral-buoyancy conductors which had carried down their enormous amperages to the wreck cost millions of dollars; no wonder the submarines were trying to winch them up. He assumed that Peter the Great had already succeeded.
He had only Deep Jeep’s own lights to illuminate the ice mountain still tethered to the seabed, awaiting a moment of release that now might never come. Moving cautiously, to avoid the wires linking it with the straining oxy-hydrogen balloons, he skirted the mass until he came to the pair of thick power cables running up to the submarine far above.
‘Can’t see anything wrong,’ he said. ‘Just give another good pull.’
Only seconds later, the great cables vibrated majestically, like the strings of some gigantic musical instrument. It seemed to Bradley that he should feel the wave of infrasound spreading out from them.
But the cables remained defiantly taut.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Nothing I can do. Maybe the shock wave jammed the release mechanism.’
‘That’s the feeling up here. Well, many thanks. Better come home — you’ve still plenty of time, but the latest estimate is that half a billion tons of mud is heading your way. They say it’s like the Mississippi in full spate.’
‘How many minutes before it gets here?’
‘Twenty — no, fifteen.’
I’d like to visit the prow, Bradley thought wistfully, but I won’t press my luck. Even if I do miss the chance of being the very last man ever to set eyes on Titanic.
Reluctantly, he jettisoned Number 1 ballast weight, and Deep Jeep started to rise. He had one final glimpse of the immense ice-encrusted framework as he lifted away from it; then he concentrated on the pair of cables glimmering in his forward lights. Just as the anchor chain of his boat gives reassurance to a scuba diver, they also provided Bradley with a welcoming link to the world far above.
He was just about to drop the second weight, and increase his rate of ascent, when things started to go wrong.
Maury was still hopefully jerking on the cables, trying to retrieve its expensive hardware, when something finally gave way. But not, unfortunately, what was intended.
There was a loud ping from the anticollision sonar, then a crash that shook Deep Jeep and threw Bradley against his seat belt. He had a brief glimpse of a huge white mass soaring past him, and up into the heights above.
Deep Jeep started to sink. Bradley dropped the remaining two ballast weights.