Ocean on Top Read online

  Ocean on Top

  Hal Clement

  The world’s energy was limited… and with overpopulation and a high level of technology, the Power Board had virtually become the real government of the world. Power was rationed, it was guarded, it was sacred. Thus when three of the Power Board’s agents disappeared at sea, and there was evidence that something irregular was happening to the energy quota in that area, it was cause for real alarm.

  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 running Loran check until she drifted as close to Point X as she was going to. This turned out to be about half a mile. When I saw I was going on past the key spot I blew the squibs, and poor little Pugnose started to come apart amidships.

  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.

  Some
of my friends have shown a tendency to solve problems by doing nothing until the last possible moment. I’ve outlived most of them. Once I’d noticed the tumbling, it took me about five seconds to run through the possible actions. I could cut loose from the wreckage right now, exposing the nearly spherical form of the tank to anyone who was watching with a good sonar — though no one had been so far. I could turn on the lights so as to see the bottom before I hit and, hopefully, still separate in time if it proved necessary; that would also be inconsistent with the concealment plan. I could sit and hope I would land in the right attitude in spite of the tumbling — that is, do nothing. That might mean that I would have to argue for my life with the laws of nature, which are harder to convince than most human opponents.

  The first two choices meant — well, maybe Bert and Joey and Marie were still alive. I reached for the light switch.

  I didn’t touch it, though. All of a sudden I could see the bottom anyway.

  At least, it looked as though it ought to be the bottom. It was in the right direction — I could still tell up from down — and it seemed flat. And it was visible.

  Chapter Two

  I didn’t believe it, of course. I’m a very conservative person who likes even his fiction realistic, and this was too much to swallow. I had to stop reading The Maracot Deep when I was young because it described a luminous ocean bottom. I know Conan Doyle had never been down and needed the light for story purposes and didn’t have very high standards of consistency anyway, but it still bothered me. I knew he was wrong for the same reason everyone does — the bottom just isn’t bright.

  Only now it was.

  The tumbling wreck was swinging me upward away from the light, and I had time to decide whether I should believe my eyes or not. I could still read instruments. The pressure dial gave a direct depth of four thousand eight hundred eighty feet; a quick mental correction from the record tape of the thermograph added another two hundred or so. I certainly should be near the bottom, somewhere on the northern slopes of the mountain whose peaks are Rapanui.

  I swung gently over the top and back down the other side, and my line of sight pointed downward again. Whether I wanted to believe my eyes or not, they insisted there was light in that direction. It was a gentle yellow-green glow — just the sort of thing you use in lighting effects to give the impression of an underwater scene. At first it looked uniform and smooth; then, a few turns later and two hundred feet lower, it showed a pattern. The pattern was of squares, with their corners just a little brighter than the rest of the area. It didn’t cover the whole bottom; its edge was almost below me, and it extended toward what I thought was the north, though my compass wasn’t reacting too well to the tumbling.

  In the other direction was the normal comforting and frightening darkness — that was real enough.

  Two things happened at almost the same instant. It became evident that I was going to come down pretty close to the edge of the light area, and it also became obvious what the light area was. The second realization got to me. For three or four seconds I was so furious and disgusted that I couldn’t plan, and as a result I almost didn’t get around to telling this story.

  The light was artificial. Believe it if you can.

  I realize that for a normal person it’s hard. Wasting watts to light up the outdoors is bad enough, but sometimes it’s a sad necessity. Spending power to illuminate the sea bottom, though — well, as I say, for a few moments I was too furious to think straight. My job has brought me into contact with people who were careless with energy, with people who stole it, and even with people who misused it; but this was a brand-new dimension! I was lower now and could see acres and acres of light stretching off to the north, east, and west until it blurred out of sight. Acres and acres lighted by things suspended a few yards above the level bottom, things visible only as black specks in the center of slightly brighter areas. At least, whoever was responsible for this display had some sense of economy; he was using reflectors.

  Then I got my anger under control, or maybe my fear did it for me. I suddenly realized that I was only a few dozen yards above the lights. I was not going to come down among them, but a little to the south. I couldn’t say safely to the south. I couldn’t say safely anything, because my assemblage of Pugnose-bow and safety tank was turning over slowly enough to let me predict the attitude it would have when it hit bottom, and it looked pretty certain that the open end of the hull would be underneath.

  Quite aside from the fact that I wouldn’t be able to see anything from under the wreckage, there was the likelihood that I wouldn’t be able to do anything either — such as get back to the surface. This time I did reach the controls.

  Since the whole idea hinged on concealment, the separators used springs rather than squibs. I waited until the spin put the hulk between me and the light and punched the button. The push was light enough to make me wonder for a few seconds whether I mightn’t be in even worse trouble than I’d supposed. Then light began to come in through ports which had been covered by the hull, and that worry ended. The springs had kicked the tank away from the lighted region, so I could see Pugnose’s bow outlined against the luminescence. The separation had slowed our fall very slightly with the wreckage now going just a trifle faster than I was. At least something was going as planned; the wreck would hit first, so there should be no chance of my getting trapped under it.

  I hadn’t expected to see it hit bottom, of course. I would certainly never have expected to see what happened when it did.

  For the most part, level stretches of sea bottom tend to be on the gooey side. They may call it globigerina ooze or radiolarian ooze, but it’s usually ooze. You can meet with coral and sand and other firm stuff in shallow water and honest rock at times on slopes, but where it’s level you expect something like a cross between ordinary mud and the top couple of inches of a stagnant pond. When something hard and heavy lands on it, even gently, you don’t expect the bottom to give it much support. You may sometimes be surprised on this matter, but you never count on anything bouncing off the sea bottom.

  Pugnose didn’t exactly bounce, I have to admit, but she certainly didn’t behave properly. She hit the lighted surface thirty or forty yards from the edge, and perhaps twice as far from me. I could see easily. She touched, as expected, and sank in as expected. There was no swirl of silt, though — no sign of the slow-motion splash you normally see when something lands in the ooze. Instead, the bow section disappeared almost completely into the smooth surface while a circular ripple grew around it and spread away from the point of impact. Then the wreckage eased gently back up until it was half uncovered, then back down again, still in slow motion. It oscillated that way three or four times before coming to rest, and each rebound sent another ripple spreading out from the spot for a dozen yards or so.

  By the time that stopped, so had my tank. I felt it hit something hard — rock, for a bet, and I’d have won. Then it began to roll very, very gently toward the light. I couldn’t see the surface I was on at all clearly, but it seemed evident that it was a solid slope which would deliver me beside the Pugnose in two or three minutes if I didn’t do something about it. Fortunately, there was something I could do.

  The tank had what we’d come to call legs, six-foot-long telescoping rods of metal which could be extended by springs and retracted again by solenoids. I was still hoping not to have to use magnets, but it seemed that the legs were in order; I propped out four of them in what I hoped were reasonable directions. Enough of the guesses were right to stop the rolling, and for the first time I had a steady observing platform. Naturally, I concentrated on the area I could see.

  I was now below the level of the lights themselves. They appeared to be strung on lines at intervals of about twenty yards, with the same spacing between lines. That was a guess, though, since I couldn’t actually see any supports. Their regularity bolstered the guess, though the fact that the wreck had come down just about on a line between two of the lights without
appearing to disturb them counted rather against it. I wasn’t too surprised to see nothing growing or moving on the flat surface they illuminated, though of course I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a few tracks or holes scattered around.

  At least, I wouldn’t have been surprised at them if I’d not seen the Pugnose’s landing. With that to go by, it was perfectly clear that whatever I was looking at was not sea bottom. It was more like a rubber sheet stretched like a tent roof over everything more than about ten feet down slope from me. The wreck had dented it but hadn’t punctured it, and the stuff was strong enough to hold up the comparatively small submerged weight of metal and plastic.

  This, I reflected, could be useful. I had no idea why whoever was under the tent wanted to light up the outside, but unless the fabric were completely opaque they could hardly help seeing the shadow and the dent in their ceiling. That should bring people to investigate, and they would be easy to see without my having to use lights of my own and giving myself away. All I needed was one clear view of unauthorized human beings at the bottom of the Pacific; that, plus the scale of energy wastage I could already detail, would be all my report would need — a major control expedition would do the rest. No one expected me to arrest a group large enough to set up an installation like this, and I had no ambition that way either. To put it mildly, the tank wasn’t maneuverable enough to serve as a police car; I was in no position to arrest a passing shrimp. All I asked was a good look at a work sub, or a suit of pressure armor, or even a handling robot under remote control — anything that would show that this setup was being actively managed — one good look, and I’d be ready to drop ballast.

  I wouldn’t do it too hastily, of course, for two good reasons. A sonarman might reasonably dismiss a sinking object as a piece of a wrecked ship, or even a dead whale, and not be too curious; but he would be most unlikely to feel the same indifference toward something rising. I’d have to take some time to evaluate the sonar danger. It was nice, but not conclusive, that there had been no sign of it so far.