A Science Fiction Novel

Sons of the Ocean Deeps

by BRYCE WALTON

Jacket illustration by Paul Orban Endpaper design by Alex Schomburg

Cedle Matschat, Editor Carl Carmer, Consulting Editor

THE JOHN C. WINSTON COMPANY Philadelphia • Toronto

Copyright, 1952 By BBYCE WALTON

Copyright in Great Britain and in the British Dominions

and Possessions Copyright in the Republic of the Philippines

FIRSTEDITION

Made in the United States of America L. C. Card # 52-8973

To My Daughter

KRISSTA   KAY

Tomorrow's Pioneer

Sons of the Ocean Deeps

11 jhile writing Sons of the Ocean Deeps, many high-ILL flying thoughts came to me as they do to all writers i| of science fiction. Speculation in this field, how-11 ever, even when dealing with those fascinating theories concerning the sea, must have as its background accepted scientific theory.

Precisely when the necessary elements combined in exact proportion to kindle the spark of life, no one can say. But that basic substance is supposedly protoplasm. Its principal ingredients are carbon combined with oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen. A specialized form, chlorophyll, characteristic of plants, adds chlorine which imparts the familiar green to grass and trees. This form also occurs in some primitive single-cellular organisms which were life's earliest forms and which still swim in the seas in countless numbers. Supposedly even the intricate life forms that populate the earth today came from this basic protoplasm, changing over centuries and moving from the sea to the land and into the air, remaining in the process amphibious for many years.

Our whale, however, did not like the land and so went back to the sea again. Many forms of life have never left the sea, which even today contains more varieties and a greater abundance of life than does the

land. Insects, for example, show no such contrasts in size and shape as the marine PhylumCoelenterata, with its few thousand corals, anemones and jellyfish, all of which help to make the sea the heart of life on the earth.

Thus it becomes a most pleasant fancy to conjure for the future man's return to the sea. He will probably not evolve over many years like the whale but will adapt to the sea by miracles of science.

It is man's nature to be ever moving. He needs frontiers. His last frontier on earth is the ocean with its unexplored and mysterious wonderlands teeming with life more varied than any ever known on lands of the earth.

SONS OF THE OCEAN DEEPS is a speculative journey into that realm. Man would find room for expansion, plenty of it, as he moved into the unexplored vastness of the world's oceans which consist of two-thirds of the earth's surface and sustain life to a depth of seven miles! and most of the sea has never been exploredl We know more about other planets than we do about the seas of our own planet.

By incorporating much of what little is known, I have tried in SONS OF THE OCEAN DEEPS to draw a probable and accurate picture of man's future exploration and settlement of the deeps.

All of the life forms in this book are but variations and exaggerations of known forms. Strange creatures are known to dwell in the deeps—creatures unlike anything we know, which have been washed ashore.

To conquer the ocean, man will be involved in a great struggle. How will this struggle turn out? No one knows. But the readers and writers of speculative fiction have a lot of fun guessing.

Contents

CHAPTER                                                                                             PAGE

Sons of the Ocean Deeps .....      v

1.    The Test....................................................................       1

2.    Into the Deeps.........................................................       9

3.    A Creep in the Deep............................................... ...... 20

4.    Trapped.....................................................................        36

5.    A Brave Man Volunteers..................................... ...... 50

6.    City Under the Sea.................................................       64

7.      Down to Nowhere..................................................       77

8.    Hero Too Late......................................................... ..... 89

9.    Project X...................................................................       101

10.    To Save a Continent............................................. ..... Ill

11.    Lost in the Deeps...................................................       123

12.    No Way Back..........................................................       131

13.    ColdLiglxt...............................................................       140

14.    Light of Hope..........................................................       148

15.    The Borers................................................................ ..... 158

16.    "I Need West!"....................................................... ..... 167

17.    Terrors of the Deeps.............................................. .... 176

18.    Tide Into Darkness................................................. ... 189

19.    Courage of the Deeps............................................. ... 201

20.    Deep Traits End.......................................................     210

vii

Chapter ƒ The

I

HE briefing was over. Major Russell said, with a misleading kind of happy casualness, "All right, cadets, let's go to the moon! Ready, gentlemen?" As the major s squat importance waddled through the blockhouse door, Steve Yeager winked behind the officer's back at Jon West and whispered, "Hey, chum, we're beginning to ratel Gentlemen!"

Jon West tried, with only a slight success, to grin at Yeager's nervous attempt at humor. Jon had hardly been listening to the pompous major anyway. He had said his good-bys. To his parents a few minutes ago. To his brother, Carson, at the spaceport half an hour before. His brother was now almost ready to blast off for Mars.

He had his brother as an image to take with him on this big test. His brother standing there in the shadow of the big spaceship in his scarlet uniform, tall and straight, with his shiny new first lieutenant's bars. That was enough to give a guy courage. Jon would need it.

"Don't worry, kid," Carson had said. "You re a West!"

Emotion burned strong in Jon's eyes as he followed the others to the waiting jeep. He got in the back beside Yeager. Russell was up front with the driver. The jeep jumped flealike down the strip of macadam, across the hot sand toward the waiting test-flight rocket. Jon stared fixedly at it, his future, pointing at the day-

hidden stars like a giant finger. The sun, blazing a reflection from the rocket's hundred-foot-diameter, dun-metal base, blinded Jon.

They parked, waited in the rocket's shadow. The major glanced at his wrist chrono, then leisurely lit his Pipe-

The big crane was straddling the rocket, adjusting its nose to the correct angle of flight. The rocket, Jon knew, had to be exactly at vertical. If it were the least bit off when it blasted, the result would be disastrous.

"What a sight!" breathed Yeager. "To the moon and back, and then we're space cadets, Jon! Another year and we'll be heading for Mars, Venus—"

"If we don't wash out," Jon interrupted.

"You should worry, chum," Yeager grinned. "You're a West!"

Jon knew he was a West. That his dad owned the controlling stock in Earth-Moon Freight. That his dad had built and rocketed the first spaceship to the moon back in the old days, with its hulls held together with chewing gum and spit. That his brother was a scarlet-suited spaceman. He knew all that. He'd heard it often enough.

"That test rocket looks a lot different now," Jon said uneasily. "Bigger."

"Yeah, and a lot less like a metal cigar. More like something that could cause a couple of novices a lot of headache."

And Jon was thinking—statistics are against a guy. Too many eager-eyed aspirants wash out. Practically everybody does. Only a few can wear the scarlet uniform.

Major Russell puffed happily on his pipe. The driver put his foot up on the side of the jeep, pushed his hat back over a bald pate. Jon said under his breath, "Stevie, I've lived, eaten, slept, dreamed, talked nothing but rockets. When I was just old enough to play with my toesies, I thought they were rocket jets. All during those months at the academy, all the preliminary headaches—calculus, chemistry, history, the basic stufl—I was studying rockets. Waiting, just waiting to volunteer for space duty when the basic training was over. On the side—studying astrogation, solar dynamics, the works. And now here we are, facing the big test. And it seems as though I'd never seen a rocket before!"

"Up to now it's been just a lot of dreamy fireworks going off in our heads, Jon. But why worry? The United Nations Service has a lot of other cozy branches for washouts."

Jon whispered. "But I've got to make the grade! I've gotto!"

Yeager frowned. His fat face, which somehow resembled a fair-skinned basketball with a yellow bristled whisk broom attached to the top, was suddenly very serious. He gripped Jon's arm. "You're a cinch to make it."

"I know, because I'm a West. But you can't know until you're up there. You can only be tested by making the run. After you're up there, you either have it or you don't. The rockets don't ask you your name before they black you out. There's no second chance."

"Ah, but it runs in your family, chum. Your dad, your brother. Now Carson's made first lieuy. Boy, what a uniform! Will I be glad to get out of these olive-drab monkey suits and into an outfit like that!"

"All I ask, Stevie, is to be just half as good a spaceman as Carson is. Ten flights! Think of it! Ten nights to Mars!"

"So stop worrying, chum. It's in your blood. I'm the one to get the willies. Uncle Desedarious flunked out of cadet school the first week. My brother washed out on the spaceflight test. My dad has stomach convulsions just looking at a gyrocar."

The steel-shelled hangar slid away from the rocket completely. Dwarfed, the men in the jeep looked up past the Molybdenum steel of the half-moon entrance-way, awed at the ship's bulk resting on its stern, its torpedo-like shape soaring above the supporting wide tracks of steel. Thick columns of its metal "knees" shifted as the crane adjusted the angle of blast.

Major Russell beamed. "We blast in a few minutes. Better relax. Makes a lot of difference when the acceleration turns on."

"Doing my best, sir," Jon said. Russell had seen so many cadets wash out that it didn't matter much to him any more, not out where it would show.

"If I relax any more, sir," Yeager said, "they'll have to hoist me up with that crane."

"I know how you boys feel," Russell said paternally. "This weaning job's rough. Got to resign yourselves to expecting failure, and looking forward to success as a lucky break. In my day we were broken in on the super-jet jobs, six hundred miles an hour. We called it 'checking out/ and I'll never forget the day I checked out for my big test." He paused. "That's a day, I guess, nobody could ever forget." For once, the major sounded almost human. "Well," he said then. "Let's go!"

Yeager and Jon stood shoulder to shoulder. Yeager, aged eighteen, was short, round, a year older than Jon. Jon was tall for his age, heavy through all the upper part of his body. He looked over the surrounding terrain—the blockhouses, experimental buildings, radar stations all set up to receive data on the flight—the trackers, telemeters: the rocket's telephone back to earth—five big trucks with special cameras for recording take-offs and early flight history. A hundred and fifty miles of wasteland north of El Paso, the big United Nations proving and testing grounds for space missiles and personnel.

They sure went to a lot of trouble to test out a couple of guys, Jon thought. The world invested a lot of time and money and trouble in its trainees to keep the peace and keep the world rolling smoothly in its space socket. Facing the challenge of the UN Academy was a big thing. Jon suddenly felt lots younger than seventeen.

A loud-speaker sounded. "All aboard No. 87 who are going aboard. All aboard ..."

Swarms of mechanics went flylike up various ladders to platforms, where opened doors led into compartments so that instrument specialists could install equipment. Now Russell, Yeager, and Jon were climbing too. Jon felt like a man sleepwalking. Up past the thick rings of rocket chambers, then the second ring of fire chambers toward the door, five feet in diameter through a foot-thick hull, through the outer, then inner skin of the rocket.

Then the doors opening and closing. Locks closing to nurture the synthetic atmosphere that would support life inside the rocket, keep out the terrible cold of space. Inner doors and locks opened and closed. Through the tubular, mesh-grid floored passage into the control room where an instrument board dominated. It was a metal-mounted bank of glowing tubes, shining mechanism, dozens of control levers under an opaque observation dome. There were the shock-absorbing chairs with two pilots already seated.

"Strap down," Russell said casually, following his own advice.

Jon and Yeager did this. Yeager's face was pale.

"You've been thoroughly briefed," the major said. "Any last minute questions, now's the time for them."

Jon didn't have any questions. He knew everything there was to know about rockets and spaceflight, everything you could learn without actual experience. But one thing you couldn't know—whether you could stand the strain or not. No preliminary tests, even in the big centrifuges, could tell you. No substitute tests could approximate the real thing.

Perspiration coated Jon's upper hp. Yeager managed a wink. These hydraulic chairs set into cylinders would lower during blast-off, take away some of the shock of acceleration. Mostly though, it was up to inherent qualities of body, mind and nervous system. Yeager tried a smile that spread erratically like a scratchy pencil mark.

"H minus ten" the loud-speaker blared. At zero, the rocket would blast. Russell turned. "This means an awfully lot to you, doesn't it, West?"

"I guess it means a lot to anyone, sir."

"H minus eight."

"But more to some than to others. Your family name, the West tradition, your father's and brother's reputations. Tradition's a tough master, West."

"H minus six."

Jon whispered. "It means a lot all right. I've thought sometimes that—if I flunked this, I'd—I'd quit the UN Service, quit the whole business."

"West-"

"Well, sir, after being set on being a spaceman, what else could be worth-while?"

"H minus four.*'

Jon's body stiffened. He forgot Russell. He thought about the pressure that did it. A red-out. A blackout. You either had the resistance or you didn't. Gravity. The force of "G," that's what science called the crushing, distorting power. "Ten G's," or ten gravities, was considered about the limit of human endurance. It wasn't speed that did it. Everyone on earth was moving at a speed of about 500,000 miles an hour, combining the rotating and orbital speeds of the earth, the movement of the solar system within the galaxy, and the movement of the galaxy itself.

In acceleration and deceleration, the trouble had to do with the sudden change—

"H minus three."

—as when an elevator stops or starts quickly. There was a terrible kind of agony, a distortion of blood tissue. Blackouts because of blood thrown away from the brain. Red-outs with the brain drowned in too much blood. A pool of ice water formed in Jon's stomach.

"H minus two."

What made some resistant, others not? Nobody knew. Difference in cellular structure. Different center of gravity. Brain waves different in some during acceleration. Maybe the autonomic nervous system functioned more freely in some during acceleration. Nobody knew. Until they had the answer, the only way you could be tested was to do it.

The West name. Tradition. He couldn't let them down. Carson—

"H minus one"

Jon stared at the control board. The pilot's hands moved. "Blast!"

At first Jon felt nothing. He seemed to be outside the ship, watching. How easy, slow, harmless it seemed from the outside. And inside, a man could be dying. The fire of the jets hurling down into the pits, the rocket's nose barely rising at first, seeming almost to stand still. It would seem unbelievable that the rocket, burning thirty thousand pounds of explosive fuel, would be capable of this leisurely, almost hesitating rise.

Inside. Switches clicking, pointers set rigid, needles dancing, dials spinning.

Outside. A huge projectile rising with fantastic slowness, a metal flower blooming up from thunderous sound, blossoming white flame.

Outside. A torpedo-shaped object drifting up from the horizon, fire pouring from its stern, rays of sun singing on its metal skin.

Inside. Flesh squeezing under tremendous pressure.

Outside. A dun cigar leaping into the sky.

Inside. Jon tried to open his mouth, but the awful pressure seemed to flatten his face, force out his breath, squeeze his throat, bulge his eyes, press his nose flat. The control panel blurred, then seemed to spin. White and red dots swam out of nowhere.

"Don't worry, kid. You re a West."

Carson! CARSON-

He fought against a dark tide seeking to drown him. Sharp pain exploded in his head. Something gagged in his throat. He felt a growing, impotent rage at the pain. Rage against darkness and against pain. He fought it like a man grappling in the dark but the dark was too heavy, and it was everywhere.

It covered him over like black water.

Chapter 2 Into the Deeps

[RELUCTANTLY, Jon opened his eyes.  His head throbbed. He felt clean white sheets around him, saw a white ceiling over him. He wasn't on the moon. He wasn't in a big rocket hurtling beyond the speed of sound up there beyond the blue where the earth lost its face beyond vapor veils, where the last adventurers were conquering the darkness of the void —man's last frontier.

His father bent over him. A good strong face. The face that so many times knew what was right, but never seemed to admit there could be anything wrong. Wisdom in the tanned face, graying hair, the sharply molded face. But not so much feeling sometimes.

Behind him, Jon saw his mother. She took a few steps toward him, then impulsively came to kiss him. He turned his face away. He didn't want them to see him cry. He didn't want sympathy, pity. He'd have to live with his own misery and failure. He didn't want to share it.

"I'm glad you're all right now," his mother said.

Sure. She only cares about that. She doesn't understand what it means. She's a woman, and all she cares about is whether or not I'm all right. But she couldn't understand how, sometimes, a man would rather be dead than just all right.

"Jon—you know what's happened?" his father said, straight to the point.

"Sure." Jon was sick. Washed out. Why wouldn't they go way, leave him alone?

"Go ahead, cry," his father said. "Before you get your stripes in the service, you'll see better men than we are, cry their hearts out."

"I washed out," Jon whispered.

"Didn't know you'd take it so hard, son. My fault I guess. Always harping on the West tradition."

"Well, the tradition ends with me, Dad. We don't have to talk about it any more."

"Now listen," his father said. "You washed out. You won't be a spaceman. You won't ever get to Mars, or whatever lies on the other side of it. But what did you join the UN Academy for? Your own glory? So you could wear a scarlet uniform? The UN's bigger than that. You listening?"

"You should talk," Jon said. "Space is the only part of the service worth being in. How would YOU liked to have washed out?"

"I wouldn't have liked it. But I didn't. You did, and you're blaming yourself. What causes a man to wash out? Nobody knows what it is that a body's got or hasn't got! Some of the best officers in the UN never could take a rocket blast!"

"I know," Jon said. He wished they would just go away.

"You wanted glory, that's all. But that isn't what a man goes through the UN Academy for. A real UN man does what's best for the service. Not for himself. There are a hundred and fifty other branches. Any one of them's as important to the world as jockeying a rocket!"

Jon stared at the ceiling.

"Son, being a spaceman's a great honor. But it's a greater privilege than an honor."

"All right," Jon said. "It's okay." Maybe if he pretended he was filled with joy at having washed out, they would let him alone. "Carson get off all right?"

"Sure. He left this note for you."

Jon's fingers nervously opened the note. The letters danced like crazy figures in a ballet, then stood still.

"When you read this, kid, I'll be a long way from earth. It'll be a year before I get back to see how you made out. You're a West, and your chances are good. But if you've washed out, remember, kid—it takes a good man to fly a rocket, but it takes a better one to take some of the disappointments fate dishes out. So good luck. See you in a year."

Jon crumpled the paper tight in his fist. His father stood up. His mother was crying. "Let's go now, Barton. Let's leave him to himself. I think he'd like that better."

Jon thought of his brother, a million miles away or so. On his way to Mars.

When they left, Steve Yeager bounced in like an India rubber ball. Jon was glad to see Yeager. He would understand. Parents never understood anything. They forgot how it had been, and they never bothered to remember. Trouble with parents, they were always parents. Why couldn't they just be people for a change?

Yeager seemed embarrassed. His face was very serious. His uniform was wrinkled. But no uniform ever fit Yeager. He shoved a candy bar out and Jon munched at it dejectedly. It tasted like dried grass, or perhaps like damp cardboard.

"Well," Yeager finally said. "What's out there anyway, but a lot of empty space?"

"I washed out," Jon said. "You're always lucky, Stevie."

"You kidding? Chum, I blacked out so fast I thought I was trapped inside a fountain pen!" "What? I figured-'

"Stevie Yeager will do his rocketeering vicariously through the pages of science fiction stories." "But I thought—"

Yeager pulled nervously at his collar. "So what? Remember Dunstall, biggest fullback the academy ever had. Made ten runs against the Indonesian Wild Cats! He washed out! We're in the best of company, chum."

"Ah, knock it off," Jon growled. "There's nothing left for us, you know it."

"Knock it off yourself! You'll pity yourself right into sick bay. There's a spot for every guy in this outfit somewhere. Ever think about undersea duty?"

Jon laughed humorlessly. "You mean the ocean-bottom goonies? You think I'd be one of those poor fish? You're crazy!"

"Am I?" Yeager said. "Was just talking to an old undersea dog. Name of Thompson. He was trying to interest me in undersea duty. It's all voluntary, you know. Says they have some pretty exciting times down there. They're not much for publicity or glamour, but I understand there's big doings in the basement of Neptune's realm."

"You're kidding."

"At a time like this? Listen—one of those hydrodomes on the bottom of the Pacific, it's supposed to have over a thousand people in it! Think of that! Cities sprouting up over the sea bottoms like mushrooms! There's a future all right. It's something to think about."

"You're crazy!" Jon almost yelled. "Nothing but forgotten men down there. It's like being cooped up in a prison, being in exile. Only guys who wash out of everything else, including their right minds, and a lot of old beaten-out prospectors, adventurers and fools go into the Deeps! What kind of career is that for someone who wants to be a spaceman?"

Yeager shrugged. "Okay, Buck Flashgordon Rogers! You've got to go somewhere. We're not taking any more rocket rides. We have to make up our so-called minds, or we'll be drafted into the Palace Guard and end up bodyguarding a bunch of stripe-suited diplomats! Undersea duty's a lot better than being a lousy, polished Palace Guard isn't it? How'd you like being stuck with that for twenty years? You're retired. What do you tell your grandchildren?"

"I don't have any," Jon grunted.

Yeager started for the door. "Very funny. I'll see you later. But get this. I'm enlisting in undersea duty. We've been pals a long time, Jon. I hope you decide to join me."

Jon stared at the blank of the closed door. The thought of breaking up that buddyship was hard to take. They had been buddies all during those years at the academy. A funny kind of friendship anyway. Something spontaneous and immediate, and lasting. And that, even though their social status was miles apart. Yeager came from a poor family, had gotten into the academy because of hard work and exceptional ability, without any pull. Quite the opposite with Jon, whose family had millions to throw around in the right places. Jon didn't make friends easily. He had always buried himself in books. But it hadn't been necessary to work at this friendship with Steve Yeager. It couldn't end like this! It was ridiculous.

Jon felt sick at heart, desperate. He got up, got an okay to leave from the orderly. He dressed, washed, jan a razor experimentally over his face, and felt a certain satisfaction in discovering the suggestions of manly beard manifesting itself.

It ended up with Jon being decisive about it. He made a choice. It simply didn't matter where he went from here, so why not under the sea? He called. He got interviews. Then he called up Yeager, who was working out over at the academy gym. Poor Yeager, always trying to trim himself down to something not resembling a junior blimp.

"Okay, Stevie, let's volunteer for undersea duty." The words almost choked in his throat. Like anticipating a juicy steak and having to order mush.

"Great, great! But we have to shake it up."

"What's the rush?"

"Sub's leaving for Mid-Pacific Hydrodome Headquarters in the morning. Won't be another for a month. You want to hang around for another month?"

"No!" He couldn't face his relatives, the other cadets at the academy. He couldn't face anyone now that he had failed. Being a failure justified sea duty. That was where all the real washouts and failures usually ended up!

"I knew you'd see it," Yeager yelled over the telviso-phone. His round face beamed like a Halloween pumpkin. "Meet you in ten minutes down at Personnel. Get a move on, chum!"

Jon called his parents. They didn't argue. Pretty good joes at that, his parents. He told them good-by and didn't see them again before he left. He had a lot to do, and he had to make that morning sub.

There was no trouble. The UN Service was highly selective, with a certain percentage selected from each nation each year according to that nation's population. You served two years of basic training, taking general courses regardless of what special career you intended to follow. During those two years, a rigid course was compulsory. At two years' end, you could volunteer for any desired branch of the service.

You didn't study in a classroom for that. The branch of the service selected was its own school. You didn't learn by written lessons and memorizing by rote, or studying a second- or third-hand reality out of a book or from a microfilm projection.

You learned by doing, not by theory. The old educative methods were as dead in the year 2039 as the fumbling minds that had devised them back in the Middle Ages.

The placement officer made a speech. It was thoroughly boring to the uninterested Jon who caught only parts of it.

"You understand that undersea duty is unique among the branches of UN Service. It requires a special psychological attitude. There's complete isolation from the surface world and most familiar things for long periods of time. The only thing comparable to it is, of course, space duty."

That was a laugh, comparing the black Deeps with the grandeur of space. Still, every branch suffered from chauvinism. Every branch thought it was the only one.

"—so it's the most dangerous of all the services, yet it's the most unpublicized. Of course, you know what undersea duty means or you wouldn't have volunteered for it. There's a special tradition in the Deeps, cadets. But it's something you'll have to learn by experience."

Said statement canceling out the necessity of your ever having made the rest of the speech, thought Jon. He wondered how much of the UN Service's time was spent by young officers, puffed to the danger point with a sense of their own importance, making long-winded speeches.

The next morning, as Yeager and Jon approached the sub base and the vast expanse of blue Pacific falling away beyond the clean, white neatness of San Diego, Yeager said, "You don't really go for this at all, do you, chum?"

"Sure, why not?"

"If you can't be a hot-shot space gyrene, then the Devil take the rest, eh? Nothing else matters?"

"Sure, Stevie. Farming clams on the bottom of the sea, that matters."

"It takes a tough constitution to stand the Deeps."

"That's right," a sharp voice cut in from behind. "You said it, fatso."

Yeager turned, his fists clinched. He was sensitive about references to his lack of resemblance to a gazelle.

"Relax, fatso. A good heart like yours, you need a lot of padding to protect it."

"Okay," Yeager said. "But from now on the name's Steve Yeager, or you may have to learn to say it without all your teeth!"

"All right, Yeager. My name's Marlin Sprague. A guy who likes the Deeps, I like him."

"Glad to meet you," Yeager was grinning now. His temper died as quickly as it flared.

The lad named Sprague didn't seem to know Jon was around. He had scanned Jon quickly with the air of a movie usher seeing a picture for the hundredth time.

He was tall and gaunt, built like a slim but steely wedge. His thin, angular, dark face had a cynical twist in the narrow lips, but the black eyes were almost abnormally bright. His voice was sardonic. A red scar crossed his left cheek like a deep, premature wrinkle and pulled his nose slightly to one side.

"Your friend here doesn't seem to love the Deeps, Yeager."

Jon felt hostility, tense in the air.

"My friend just had a rude awakening from a very pleasant dream," Yeager said. "So did I."

Sprague looked at Jon. He wasn't a cadet. He wore the plain gray of a civilian apprentice. "Why are you volunteering then, ocey?"

The word "ocey" was delivered with bitterness and some contempt. It took Jon a half a minute to realize that it was a reference to his intending to become an officer someday, an OC, officer's candidate. Evidently Sprague didn't like the idea.

"I'll tell you, slim," Jon said. "I'm volunteering because I want to dig clams and find big rich pearls to make necklaces for rich dowager's necks. Something with a real future."

When Sprague spoke, nothing much happened around his mouth except that it opened and closed. Always there was a defensive insolence about him.

"If they put you to digging clams in the Deeps, ocey, you'll be lucky. That's about your speed, I'd say."

Jon grinned. "I'll tell the truth. I'm a washout, a failure. That's why I'm volunteering for Deep duty. So I'll be among friends. Get the idea, civilian?"

"Yeah," Sprague growled. "Only trouble with washed-out oceys is—they can never really admit that under the bright uniform, they're really just bums. A man who gets a year in the Deeps, bud, needs a lot of guts. More guts than you get by having a pair of rocket pants taken away from you."

"Right," Jon said. "Anybody who lives down there at all deserves a medal. They used to hand out prizes for flagpole sitting too."

Sprague's voice was thick. "You got a year coming down there, ocey. You'd better get a different slant."

"Okay, civilian. I'll be a good creep in the Deep."

"Why you—"

Jon laughed. "A Wizard of Ooze—"

Sprague's lips whitened around the edges, then quickly he walked away from Jon and Yeager.

"He doesn't like me," Jon said.

"He wouldn't sacrifice his life for you," Yeager said, worriedly. "I've heard about this feuding between cadets and civilian apprentices, but never ran into it before. Guess we can expect plenty of it in the Deeps."

"Why in the Deeps especially?"

"Because that's where most of the younger apprentices go. Chances for advancement better, more pay. Also, the Deeps is where most of the flunkies end up. They're the ones that don't make it through the academy. Nothing more bitter than an academy washout. I'd say this guy Sprague is a flunkie. They're rough. Man, do they hate officer candidates!"

A few minutes later, together with several other passengers, they were piped aboard the big, gray-hulled, sleek-metaled sub. Up through the eye of the closing hatch, Jon took a last nostalgic look at the blue California sky. The eye of the hatch closed slowly, shutting out a vision of millions of miles of unexplored space and strange planets still to be discovered.

An hour later, the sub pulled out of the big aluminal sea shed and submerged. Jon lay on his bunk and stared up at the smooth metal shell of the ceiling. He thought of Carson heading out, free and far away, toward Mars. And Jon—going the other way, down into the ocean Deeps.

Jon closed his eyes. He couldn't have the clear unhampered vastness of space. He could have the other extreme, and go the other way. Down into darkness, where there was no sun, no sky, no stars at all. Away from the condescending looks of friends and relatives who would always have to be polite, but always showing, underneath, their painful awareness of his failure.

A guy could bury himself. They would forget him. And maybe he could forget too, what had been waiting for him beyond earth's gravity, up there among the stars where a thousand suns waited, and countless nameless planets waited for names they would never get from him.

Chapter 3

A Creep inthe Deep

etween chow-calls, Jon lay on his bunk saying little, feeling despondent and lethargic. His body was unmoved by the surging power of the huge sub's drive into the Deeps. There was a long, long sequence in which time was as elastic and measureless as it is in a dream.

At times, Jon felt as though he could crawl into some nice cool mausoleum and forget the whole lousy deal of living. At other times, he just didn't care, and it was all some kind of cruel joke. When he first went into the detergent spray room to refresh himself, he stood and watched the soiled water like a manifestation of his old self going down the drain.

There were the others in the compartment, besides Yeager and Marlin Sprague. An old Deeps-veteran, Sam Thompson, a lean, wiry, little man with bright eyes, sparse gray hair and a penchant for spinning tall tales.

A delicate Cuban youth named Ayala. Short, dark, smooth, with a soft musical kind of speech, always casual as though talking in a small-town, street corner conversation on a hot day.

There was an African named Marsimba, six feet three inches tall, with a voice like soft deep drum notes and wide eager eyes of an extraordinary catlike roundness, brilliance and intensity.

An Irishman named Kenneth O'Hara, who had bright green eyes in a pinkish-tanned face, with short brown hair that stood up in curls on an intelligent head. In his wide eyes there was always a quality of ex-plosiveness, high charge, waiting for the fuse to be lit.

A Canadian named Robertson, who had a puckish face with an upturned nose and petulant mouth, and his short light hair stood up straight on his head. He looked as though he wanted to be friendly, but had to go through a routine of defiance before he could let himself. O'Hara and Robertson were civilian apprentices. Marsimba and Ayala were spaceflight washouts.

Commander Darrel Moxson was in charge of this particular detail of personnel. He was dominant, but not a strict disciplinarian. He wore glasses with yellow-gold rims of an unusual shape, through which shone wide, alert, probing and intense eyes. His expression and tone of voice gave an effect of surgical passion, of coldly ardent precision, a kind of sympathetic mastery, Jon thought, something like a lion-tamer's love of his work.

If Jon could be said to have taken to any of them particularly, in his morbid frame of mind, it was old Sam Thompson. Behind that wrinkled, leathery face was a wily sharpness of mind, a wiseness that came only with experience. There was a deep understanding and sympathy and tolerance in old Sam Thompson.

And Jon came across a small, pitiful guy who was always running around trying to help everybody. He was trying so hard to be "one of the gang" that he immediately became a pathetic pest whom nobody had the heart to tell that he was a pest. Someone had put the humiliating label of jerk on this rabbity do-gooder. He was a feverish little guy in whom the need for love had fairly blistered his lips and turned his eyes into black begging holes. He had spent most of his life in an orphanage and had volunteered for Deep duty. Evidently, Jon figured, because he wouldn't have been tolerated any place else.

All the civilian apprentices gathered around Sprague worshipfully. This, Jon found ironically amusing. It only showed what you were expected to look up to in the Deeps.

When introductions had gone around, Sprague had refused to shake hands with Jon. This set the tone of the relationship. From then on, all the civilian apprentices looked upon Jon as some sort of alien. He didn't mind. He felt like one anyway. The more he was left alone, he figured, the easier it would be to take a year's exile under the sea.

The compartment was forward and port. Mesh-grid floor, spherical walls, everything made of the newest lukenite metal, a radio-isotopic product of atomic fission. It could withstand the terrific strain of the Deep's pressure. Narrow, pneumatic mattressed bunks, with lockers attached.

Commander Moxson made a speech and distributed mimeographed sheets which, he explained, were very important and should be studied immediately. Jon forgot his. Lectures, Moxson said, would begin shortly.

"All pertinent information you will find on these mimeographed sheets. Any questions, ask Lieutenant Guthrie when he comes around. You can ask Sam Thompson and Marlin Sprague questions too. They've lived in the Deeps almost all their lives. And what they don't know you'll find always available on film spools, memory disks and the like.

"You'll be living under the sea for a year. It's pretty alien environment. There's plenty to learn. A lot of it has to be learned fast. Actually, the Deeps are as foreign to anything you're familiar with as would be life on another planet; in fact, more so. Mars isn't much different than surface life on earth. But this world under here's completely new. It's earth's last frontier. And it's the toughest man's ever been up against.

"Any kind of trouble, come see me. There's not much formality down here. When the main idea in a group is just to survive, discipline isn't often necessary to see that the rules are carried out."

Moxson's eyes studied each of them carefully as he talked, his eyes probing skillfully through those peculiarly shaped glasses. Then he abruptly left the compartment. Moxson impressed Jon in spite of himself. Moxson used a speech to say something.

"Well," Yeager said from the bunk next to Jon's. "We're on our way."

"Sure," Jon mumbled sleepily. "I can hardly wait to get there."

They had put on the soft, weightless nylon undersea uniforms of a dark green texture. One-piece union-all rigs that zipped up the front. Jon noted the fact that down here all wore practically the same uniforms. It was impossible to tell who was a cadet, an OC, a junior officer, or a civilian apprentice.

Everyone was studying his memo-sheet eagerly. Everyone but Sam Thompson. He sat there eying everybody happily as though they were his special family, and he had adopted them all and was so proud of it that he could only sit there feeling happy about the whole thing.

"That commander sure gave us the once-over and - not lightly," boomed Marsimba.

"He's got us all down in his book," said Ayala softly. "That was a good speech."

"Sure," Jon said. He sat up. "You can take his word for it. We're going right out of this world."

Sprague moved in long nervous strides across the floor. His voice was tight. "Fellas, get a load of our big-shot friend here. His name's Jon West, of the Big-Wheel Wests. The poor guy washed out. You can call him Crying Towel West."

They stared at Jon. Marsimba looked uneasy. Ayala shrugged. O'Hara grinned.

Jon dropped down from his bunk to the floor.

"Have you fellas heard about poor West? Has he poured his troubles all over any of you yet?"

"What are they supposed to have heard about me, Sprague?"

Sprague looked speculatively at Jon. Sam Thompson stood against the opposite wall, his sharp eyes watching the scene curiously. Yeager looked concerned. The jerk tried to say something funny because he wanted to help everybody, but his voice died in his throat.

Sprague, jabbing his finger at West, said to the others, "You should've heard big shot here talk about how he loves undersea duty. Tell them, West. These people all volunteered because they like the Deeps a lot. They'll appreciate what you think about it."

Jon was wide-awake now. "What I think is my own business, civilian."

Sprague stepped closer. The scar on his face was white. "You come from the big West family. The famous Wests. Your old man could buy this sub and every hydrodome and hydrofarm from here to the China Seas. He's got so much dough he can even buy his kid's way into the academy. But even your old man couldn't buy your way into space, could he, shavetail?"

Jon was trying to put a damper on the hot rage that was beginning to boil.

"Why all the chips on your shoulders, slim? What have I ever done to you?"

"Your kind's done plenty to me and mine. I just want everybody here to know what you think of the Deeps, and the kind of guys that live in the Deeps, that's all. I thought they'd like to know."

"Go ahead and tell them then," Jon said. "If it would make them any happier. They need something to cheer them up down here."

Sprague told them what Jon had said up there before they had boarded the sub.

To Jon, he said. "You deny saying those things?"

"No," Jon said. "I'll even elaborate a little, just to make everybody a little happier. They don't look too happy yet."

The compartment stirred and rustled with uneasiness and hostility.

Sprague's fists clenched. "We're all a bunch of hicks, creeps, poor fish, wizards of ooze, huh? Listen, ocey! You're here because you washed out. Because you don't care where you are and you think you're too good for anything but jockeying a pretty rocket. You think the only outfit good enough for you is a pair of fancy rocket pants! But a lot of us down here are guys who didn't have the dough or pull to be academy bums. We're here because we like it. Some of our fathers and grandfathers were pioneers down here! We're proud of it, West!"

"Hurrah," Jon yelled.

"Break it up," Sam Thompson said easily. But Sprague didn't hear him.

"I'm sick of your kind, West. I got a bellyful of you. My old man was a Deep-vet. He never went to school. He mined down here, like old Sam there did, back when they didn't have lukenite metal. He was killed because of your lousy military stupidity, rules made topside by guys who never got their toesies wet! We're proud of the Deeps. You'd better wise up, ocey, or you'll find the Deeps a lot tougher sledding than it is, and it's a lot rougher than spacell ever be!"

"You're crazy," Jon yelled. "Nobody ever bought my way anywhere!"

"Not much," scoffed Sprague. "My dad never made a fortune to push me with. He died too young."

"So what?"

"He was an ooze-mucker, that's what they called him, because he had to crawl around on the sea bottom. He had guts, real guts."

"And my dad flew to the moon in a tub," Jon said. "What's that got to do with us? I'm a washout. I admit it. I like the Deeps too. It's a good place for guys like us to get lost in."

Sprague managed a cold grin. "You're a snob, a stuck-up snob. Even your family's millions under you couldn't get you off the earth. You can't buy enough guts to stay down here, West. Ill bet every cent I make out of this haul that you don't last two months."

Jon barely resisted the impulse to smash Sprague's sardonic face. "Why blame your own failure on me, Sprague? Get some other whipping boy, because I won't stand still for it. Admit you're a failure, like I do. Why try to make a hero out of yourself?"

Sprague's face paled. He grabbed Jon's collar.

"Ocey," he whispered tightly. "My dad died in the Deeps because a lousy officer who didn't know water pressure from water wings gave out an order nobody but an idiot would have given. So my dad had to die. Crushed to a pulp by millions of tons of water pressure, so even his best friends couldn't tell who he was. I hate the military and you jerks who can buy a uniform and all the authority that goes with it. And that goes for that stuck-up brother of yours—"

Jon ripped free of Sprague's grip, stepped in hard behind the blow aimed at Sprague's jaw. The civilian slipped easily out of the way. As Jon's fist flailed empty air, Sprague started to swing, then froze. Moxson's voice.

"That'll be enough nursery games, children."

Jon stood at attention. Under the knives of Moxson's eyes, all the plaster fell away from his ego. He felt red shame creeping up all over him. But Moxson didn't seem angry. Just a kind of disappointment shone there, as though a prize pupil had made a bad showing on an exam. It was worse than if Moxson had been mad.

"What's the reason for the temper tantrum?" Moxson asked.

Jon offered no explanation. He felt too ashamed and mad to say anything. Besides, there was nothing really to say.

"West and I were just having a little disagreement," Sprague mumbled.

Moxson walked across the compartment, pressed a button. A large panel slid back, revealing an opaque port looking into the dark waters. A deep, darkening green swirled past the curved lucinate, a semiplastic form of lukenite, which would bear almost as much strain as the metal itself.

"That's the world we re going to live in," Moxson said. He adjusted his yellow-gold glasses. "As we go deeper, it will get darker. Finally there will be no sunlight at all. No sunlight, consequently no vegetation which needs sunlight in order to live. So all the organic life forms are carnivorous by necessity. They live on one another, hunt and are hunted from the egg to the grave. Down here are monsters bigger and more ferocious than any ever encountered on this earth by man. The swallowers. Sea vipers. Dragonfish. Black gulpers. And a thousand or so other monsters with like names."

Moxson paused. "Men, we have other motivations for being down here other than to ape those monsters, and weaken ourselves and devour our own efficiency by bickering and fighting among ourselves.

"There are dangers here greater than most dangers faced in the past by pioneers. A world where pressure will be millions of tons to the square inch. And the most precious thing a man has is simply breathable air."

Moxson turned abruptly. "You, West."

"Yes, sir."

"A cadet's looking forward to becoming an officer, a leader. He expects hardships, dangers. If you can't have space, West, you'll have to take second best. However, I must warn you—the Deeps constitute a far greater challenge to human courage than space."

Jon was glad when Moxson's eyes shifted.

"And you, Sprague—you claim to respect the traditions of the Deeps?"

"I do, sir."

"Then you know the unwritten laws of the Deeps?" "Yes, sir."

"Co-operation. Tolerance. Understanding. Always united against a thousand dangers and ten thousand new ones for every one that's known. You say you're aware of these things?" "Sir, you see—"

"You have a deeply personal reason for this excessive enthusiasm about the Deeps. Something bigger and more psychological than patriotic fervor. Sprague— you'd better report to my quarters in an hour. No. Come with me right now. We'll have a little talk."

Sprague's face was white. He stood straight, nodded once, then went out of the compartment. Moxson, without looking at anyone, went out after Sprague.

Sam Thompson sighed and sat down and tried to ease things by spinning a yarn about how he was once trapped by a big shellfish and hid himself out somehow and escaped by some fabulous trick.

Jon sat and looked out into the darkening water. The others ignored him, talking heatedly among themselves. The jerk came over and looked timidly at Jon. Jon managed a smile. The jerk couldn't stand for anyone to be unfriendly with him, even Jon.

"How'd you like to have a candy bar or something?" the youth said. His eyes wandered eagerly over Jon's face, looking for acceptance.

"What's your real name?" Jon finally said. "If you don't mind, I'd rather not call you jerk."

The boy stared, then blushed, and looked furtively at the others. "Everybody's always just called me— jerk."

"Your mother didn't," Jon said.

"No—she didn't. But at the orphanage, everywhere, always I was called a jerk."

"Okay," Jon said. "But I don't like that name, not even-when it's stuck on somebody else. What's your real name?"

"Clarence."

Several bits of laughter drifted around the compartment.

Jon said. "Clarence what?" "Clarence Arlington Buchanan." "Okay, Buck," Jon said. "Sure, dig us up a candy bar some place."

The boy stood there a while and Jon was suddenly embarrassed to see tears in the eyes of Clarence Arlington Buchanan. Then Clarence turned and ran out.

Jon looked at the others in the compartment, and finally he said softly, "The guy's name is Clarence Arlington Buchanan. Buck for short."

Nobody said anything.

Yeager leaned over, "Never a dull moment, huh?"

"Not yet," Jon said, "but we've got a long time to go."

"Yeah!" Yeager stood up, admiring himself in his new nylon suit. "It fits me! These monkey suits look better than those academy zoot-suits! But I'll admit they don't look much like those crimson jobs the spacemen wear."

"Lay off," Jon said. "It isn't a gag any more."

"But as Shakespeare didn't exactly say, 'What's in a suit?'"

Old Sam Thompson chuckled. "Kiddos, the commander let something slip out I don't think he intended to let slip."

"What's that," Ayala said, "his better judgment? He picked on the wrong guy."

"He knows what he's doing," Thompson said. "Anyway, his tongue slipped. That's for sure. Remember, he said we'd be down where the water'd be million of tons per square inch?"

"Sure," Yeager said. "I read somewhere that down under such pressure, even the big blue whale feels as if he were in a vise."

"That's right," Thompson said.

"But that," Jon said, "should worry only the whale. Not us."

"The guy's equipped with a sense of humor," Ayala said casually, "in addition to a swelled head."

"Well, laddies," Thompson said, ignoring Ayala. His voice lowered to a mysterious whisper. "There's only one place in the Pacific where you can go deep enough to hit that kind of pressure. That's in the Mindanao Deeps by the Philippines. That's really deep, kiddies I That's close to seven miles down!"

"Seven miles!" gasped O'Hara. "Is the ocean that deep?" His green eyes bugged. "Seven miles of water on top of you! Whew!"

"So what?" Jon said. "Lukenite metal can stand any kind of pressure. As long as we're buried under water, what does it matter how deep it is?"

"Ah, pipe it off!" growled O'Hara. "You're about as cheerful as a sergeant's grin!"

"Now," drawled old Sam, "it ain't the pressure, but the place. The commander let it slip out, see." His voice was a tense whisper. "It's Project X, laddies! Project X!"

"What's that," Jon said, "the biggest clam ever discovered?"

"It's the biggest thing ever to challenge a Deepman's courage, that's what Project X is."

"Why're these secret projects always called X?" Jon asked. "Why not M, Y, Z, B, or something?"

"Because X is the end-all," Yeager said. "The penultimate. The end of the alphabet. The final project. Right, Sam?"

Soberly, Sam nodded. "You said it! You boys keep it under your hats now, but I been hearin' plenty of scuttlebutt about Project X. It has to do with the Mindanao Deeps—"

"Hey, look," bellowed Marsimba. "The water's getting real dark."

"Yeah, like a coal cellar," exclaimed O'Hara. "Burrrrr. It looks cold."

They all looked through the lucinate. "Sure," Sam said. "The two characteristics of the real Deeps are terrific pressure and coal-cellar blackness. Ain't you guys noticed how the fight's been fading? First the red rays went at the end of the first two hundred feet and with them all the orange and yellow warmth of ol* Sol. Then the greens faded. Then around the thousand-foot mark, we got the deep dark blue. Now we're deeper. Now—no sunlight at all. This is the hunting grounds of the big and ferocious monsters! It's like the commander said. They have to be big and especially equipped to eat one another, 'cause there ain't nothin' else to eat. It's like turning a bunch of rabbits loose in a sand pit and after a few million years what have you got? Evolution's made them into tigers, meat-eaters."

"No light down here at all," whispered Yeager.

"Oh, there's light. Artificial stuff, man-made light. Then there's phosphorescence, luminescent light thrown off by radioactive rocks and deep-sea monsters. They have their own cold light, like lightning bugs up topside. Some of 'em lit up so they can find their way around, though most of 'em ain't got any more of an eye in their bodies than a dead bat. Most of 'em lit up to attract prey into their gullets. That's about all mother nature's set on doing down here—thinkin' up new ways for monsters to drag one another into each other's gullets. Hey, this is luck. Look at that, laddies!"

They looked. A bluish glow drifted within the framework of the port. A huge pulsating light like a giant erratic light bulb.

"What is it?" Marsimba said.

"That, laddies, is what is called a Lamprotoxu. It's self-luminous. That blue glow attracts other fish to it. You can see, it's got a barbel several times longer than its body attached to its under jaw, which it thrusts before it like an insect's antennae." Old Sam sounded like a new professor proudly but somewhat self-consciously giving his first classroom lecture.

Suddenly the monster was gone, leaving a solid wall of blackness.

After a while, Ayala said. "Hey, Marsimba, what does your name mean in Africanese?"

Marsimba looked at Ayala. "Why you want to know, friend?"

"Just curious," Ayala said casually. He winked at Yeager. "I know it must mean something real interesting. What is it? Swahili?"

"Mazai," Marsimba said. He stood up to his full height. His broad shoulders straightened. "Okay, I'll tell you. If you laugh, I'll break your head."

"Then break it now," Ayala said. "Because something's bound to get a rise out of me before a year's up."

"I mean at me," Marsimba said. "Well, Marsimba means, The-Man-Who~Laughs-at-Lions"

"Thanks," Ayala said. "That name's been bothering me."

Marsimba grinned. "It's safe now. All the lions in Africa are on reservations."

"Hey, don't you guys want to hear about Project X?" yelled Sam Thompson. "Sure," everyone chorused.

"WeD, nobody knows what it is, not exactly. Supposed to be the most dangerous project ever to go on in the Deeps. That makes it plenty dangerous. All I can say is," he lowered his voice, "that it's got something to do with protecting the whole darned North American Continent from some awful disaster. Something to do with stopping some terrible earthquake threat!"

Jon lay back down. The old codger was carried away by his sense of the dramatic. Pretty soon they'd have Deepmen saving the world and then the entire universe. He still hadn't read the mimeographed sheet, but everyone else had. Ah, well, he'd get to it later. He wanted to laugh at old Sam's Project X fantasy. But then he didn't. No one else was laughing.

Thompson was an old experienced vet who had volunteered again for sea duty after an illness and recuperation topside. Thompson might be a kind of lovable and slightly crazy old duck. And maybe not. He seemed to know his business. And he seemed deadly serious.

Project X. To save the whole North American Continent from disaster. Jon felt a tingle run down his back. He stared through the observation port at the blackness swirling endlessly. A darkness broken occasionally by the weird, multicolored flames of phosphorescence.

Grotesque shapes began to appear more frequently. Some appeared like gigantic floating logs. Some with lights along their sides like small submarines with portholes. Others lit up, and with long snaky tentacles that writhed futilely and hungrily against the lucinate.

Jon shivered. He rolled over, closed his eyes. Maybe,

at least, this year of exile wouldn't bore him to death. Evidently there were a lot of faster ways a man could die in the Deeps.

Dimly, through a veil of sleepiness, he heard old Sam Thompson chanting some old Deepman's song:

"We'll never get a suntan, boys, Or dance beneath the stars. And we'll probably die in jail, boys, Behind a GULPER'S bars.

We're sons of the Ocean Deeps, boys, And many a widow will weep, boys, For men who fight in the dark lands low Where no sun sets and no winds blow."

Chapter 4 Trapped

I

IEUTENANT GUTHRTE was a young, eager jg. Even when he was standing still, he seemed to be jumping with the sheer enthusiasm of living. His face beamed. His teeth shone. His eyes sparkled. His voice vibrated. He looked briskly about the compartment. "If you'll come with me, friends, we'll take a look at the hydrosuits. The first thing you must learn, and fast, is how to make a hydrosuit say uncle. You'll spend a great deal of this coming year inside of a hydrosuit."

Jon crawled, half-asleep, to the floor. Sprague came in, but he didn't look at Jon. He created an embarrassed silence, but Sprague had nothing to say to anyone.

Lieutenant Guthrie said, "Sprague, you're acquainted with the Deeps. In many respects, more so than I am. You and Mr. Thompson will serve as guides, so to speak, whenever possible. Much has to be learned rapidly."

Many worshipful and envious gazes were thrown to Sprague's ego for immediate and grateful consumption. Jon felt a tinge of jealousy. But the tension was gone, and he was glad of that.

"Professor Sprague," grinned Marsimba, "someone mentioned a while back, that we had left the continental shelf. Tell me, Professor Sprague, sir, what is a continental shelf?"

"That's where old soldiers go when they've bought their way into the high-paying armchair jobs and won't die, so they're retired. Civilians pay for the upkeep." He didn't look at Jon, but the implication was clear enough.

"Ah, no kidding," Marsimba said. "What is it?"

Sprague changed to a serious and eager answer. "The continental shelves outline the continents, and they are shelves. They slope down away from the coast. A kind of series of sea prairies. At the outer edge, the shelves suddenly end and plunge down to a terrific depth. Most undersea farming and most of the hydro-dome cities and stations are on the shelves. Most of the extracting of minerals, farming, oil-drilling and the like are also on the shelves. But there are still quite a lot of hydrodomes, hydrofarms, oceanographic stations and such far out in the Deeps."

"Thanks, Prof," grinned Marsimba.

"Tell me, Professor Sprague, sir," said O'Hara. "What is a mermaid?"

"A mermaid," Sprague said, "is a maid who is merely a maid and nothing more."

Everybody laughed but Jon. Jon just grinned thinly. The guy had a way about him.

"Just a word about the canyons," Lieutenant Guthrie said. "We're passing over one of the deepest canyons on earth, right now."

"Canyons?" gasped Clarence Buchanan, who came bursting in with an arm loaded with boxes of candy bars. Everyone grabbed a candy bar and no one mentioned the word jerk. There were exclamations in which only the name Buck was used. The boy looked with wordless appreciation at Jon.

Yeager, to Jon's surprise, jumped in with a little lecture of his own. "The Deeps have a lot of huge canyons. Plateaus too. And giant shallows. Ridges that influence the flow of currents, temperature, and salinity—that's salt, fellas. There are mountains in the Deeps higher than any on land."

"Sure," Sprague said. "Nothing can hold a canyon to this one we're passing over now. It's deeper and bigger than the Grand Canyon of the Colorado!"

"You would, I presume," said Ayala, "be speaking of Mauna Kea in Hawaii, Steve, when you speak of mountains higher—?"

"That's right," Yeager said. "Mauna Kea. Partly submerged, it still goes up to thirty thousand feet above the ocean floor. The Deeps are cut by big inward folds of the earth's crust, buckled into peaks, basins, troughs, trenches and plateaus."

"Fine," grinned Lieutenant Guthrie. "I see you fellows haven't been wasting time. To fight a new environment and conquer it, you must keep informed of its secrets." He opened the observation panel. "There, you can get an idea what it's like!"

Jon hung back. Yeager dragged him over there.

An intense pathway of fight bored downward from the sub's hyperbeam. A giant shark plunged away like a shot of bluish metal. Schools of multicolored fish seemed momentarily paralyzed by the powerful beam. They hung in a brilliant frozen cloud, then swung out of sight. Jon was amazed at the great variety of life here just within his narrow range of vision.

What a tremendous abundance of life must exist here if one included all the vast area of the world that was water. In addition to visible life forms, both vegetable and animal, the sea swarmed with invisible small forms of both. The waters were thick with small microscopic plankton for example, found everywhere in the sea. So thick that four hundred and twenty million had been found in a single gram of mud.

How strange, he thought, remembering something Sam had said. Ephemeral, invisible creatures with a brief span of life, the plankton, dying, rained slowly down to the sea bottom, in their leisurely transit helping to nourish other dwellers of the dark, while the residue added continuously to bottom sediments, living carpets of the sea.

At the other end of the scale of size, were gigantic nameless creatures weighing many tons, tough, fibrous some of them—others of them tenuous and drifting like layers of silk through the depths.

Strange, varied, grotesque, and beautiful was life in the sea.

"Look, kiddies," Thompson said reverently, "that's the beginning of the mother of canyons 1"

The hyperbeam swung along, following the edge of the tremendous abyss. Jon couldn't see much. But the mere suggestive blackness of that gigantic trench was enough to give him the shakes.

"Now the lecturing ends here," Lieutenant Guthrie said briskly. "We've got to get thoroughly briefed on these hydrosuits. Remember the three characteristics of the Deeps: darkness, pressure, and —you can't breathe water without gills."

"But what could happen to this sub?" Ayala inquired.

"Many things known, a lot more unknown. We're only starting to conquer the Deeps. By comparison, we're about where we were when we started exploring space in a smoke-filled balloon."

As "they filed into the passageway, Lieutenant

Guthrie went on. "Remember this—every branch of the service requires a special set of qualifications. In the Deeps, the most important quality is—adaptability. Inventiveness. The ability to adapt to some entirely new kind of threat, to utilize any means at hand to survive."

Jon followed the others down the long tubular passage.

"Why all the concern over the hydrosuits?" he whispered to Yeager. "You'd think any minute we'd have to go hitch-hiking out there."

"Well, if we do, I'd rather be in a hydrosuit," Yeager said. "The pressure out there's so great it'd smash you flatter than a newlywed's griddle cake."

Jon pondered this vivid comparison.

"That wouldn't be so bad," Yeager said. "But think of not having any oxygen to breathe I Under here, a hydrosuit is a man's best friend."

After a few more steps, Yeager said, "And take it easy with that chump Sprague. He's sick. A couple of cogs are loose in his upper echelon."

"What do you expect to find down here in the basement, Stevie? Geniuses?"

"He's a good Deepman, I understand. And a good Deepman's a rare item. So they'll nurse him along, try to exploit his potentialities. He was up topside getting psychiatric treatment for a while. So take it easy with him."

"They just transferred the dope from one squirrel cage to another," Jon said. "The only guy who wouldn't stand a chance down here is a normal one."

"Then why worry?" Yeager said.

"Well, I'm not taking any guff, even from a high-grade flip!"

"All right, but don't say I didn't warn you."

"Hey, Stevie—what about this old guy, Thompson? He's all right?"

"Then why worry about that either? Is it a sin, to like at least one guy down here besides Jon West?"

"I don't mean that, Stevie. It's this—he must be at least sixty. And he's not an officer. Still, he probably knows more about these crazy Deeps than Neptunus Rex himself."

"I guess he does."

"Well, what's his status? I mean he treats Moxson like an old muckraker. Yet he's no officer. He chats with officers like brothers. Yet he bunks with cadets and apprentices. I don't get that."

"They have real democracy down here," Yeager said. "Well, look at it this way. You never read any of the stories of the old Western frontier? Cowboy and Indian stuff?"

"Buffalo Bill and Wild Bill Hickock?"

"Yeah. Well, as I see it, old Sam's a lot like the old Indian scouts or guides the Indian-fighting armies used to hire to work for them. They didn't usually have any real rank in the army. But they were more valuable than any officer. They knew more. They'd been out in the frontier long before anybody else. They knew the Indians, the trails, where the water holes were, and the easiest way through a range of mountains. Well, that's old Sam. An undersea scout, you might say. He was down here prospecting for pearls before they'd hardly stopped thinking the bathosphere was the last word in diving equipment. I guess Sprague's dad, and even Sprague himself, are in that category too."

"That makes sense," Jon said. "Hey, how come you know so much about the Deeps? You argue me into volunteering. Now that we're here, you suddenly start lecturing."

"Oh, I've always been interested in the Deeps. Like a hobby. Stamps."

"How come you know so much about Thompson and Sprague?"

"Well, judge—an accident. Met Thompson at a lecture topside just before we left. He was trying to recruit men for undersea duty. Guess he was one of the first to prospect the Deeps. Did océanographie work, and hydrography and cartography, map-making to you, chum. He prospected for oil, chemical deposits, radioactive pools, and the like."

"Okay," Jon said, still suspicious, but of what he couldn't quite say. "Be hepped up about it. I still can't see why anybody'd be steamed up about burying themselves in a perpetual blackout."

"The fish like it, Jon. And look at the whales! They started out in the ocean a few million years back. They moved onto the land. They didn't like it. They came back to the sea again. Maybe humans'U do likewise, all come back to the sea, back where they came from."

Jon shook his head sadly. Yeager was going off his rocker with sea madness.

They were filing into another large spherical compartment. The panel closed. The huge metal hydro-suits hung suspended from the ceiling by rollers hooked to long steel rails that disappeared through a closed water lock.

Thompson looked at his wrist chrono. "We're over three miles down, laddies. If we're on schedule."

"Think of the pressure!" Marsimba said. "Without that lukenite metal, we'd never get down over a few .hundred feet."

"That's right," Sprague said, then elaborated. "Up topside, at sea level, the air pressure on our bodies is about one atmosphere—fifteen pounds to the square inch of surface. As you drop into the Deeps, the pressure increases by one atmosphere for every thirty-five feet. Before lukenite metal, the limit for a diving helmet was about forty-five pounds on every square inch of a man's body. At a thousand fathoms, the pressure is 2,700 pounds to the square inch. It doubles with every additional mile. And so you can see what it is at three miles. And at seven, at the bottom of the Mindanao Trench—millions of tons—"

"But how can fish stand it?" CHara piped up.

Jon was feeling a little upstaged by Sprague, so he stepped into the intellectual free-for-all. "I can explain that. The pressure inside a deep-sea fish's tissues is the same as that on the outside. And as long as the balance is kept, the fish is okay. That is, if you like fish."

"Correct," Lieutenant Guthrie said. "But what about adjustment to changing pressure? Most of these deep-sea creatures stay at about the same level, they don't move very far up and down. It's the abrupt change in pressure that's bad. What about the ones that move regularly up and down through hundreds of thousands of feet of vertical change, like small shrimp and plank-tonic creatures, and even the giant whale?"

Everybody looked puzzled.

"Sprague, you know the answer to that?"

"Nobody does," Sprague said.

"All right then," said Jon. "Let's throw in a quick theory for the scientists to juggle. Listen, sir, that doesn't make sense. The whale you say, sir? How deep can it go?"

"Well, that's a miracle. And Sprague's right. There is no answer. Take whales and seals. No one knows definitely how they can take the pressure changes involved in dives of hundreds of fathoms. They're warm-blooded animals, like we are. What happens when our bodies have to undergo rapid pressure change, Jon?"

"Caisson disease," Jon said. "It's caused by rapid accumulation of nitrogen bubbles in the blood because the pressure in the body is quickly lessened. It used to kill human divers if they were brought up too fast from a depth of—say—two hundred feet."

"Correct. Yet a baleen whale can dive vertically for over a mile. There the pressure for every square inch of its body is up in the tons. It returns almost immediately to the surface. It doesn't suffer from caisson disease. Nobody knows why."

"So let's figure it out quickly," Jon said. He grinned at Sprague. "Let's say that the diver had to have air pumped to him while under water. But the whale has in its own body the limited supply it carries down with it. So maybe it doesn't have enough nitrogen in its blood to do it much serious harm."

Lieutenant Guthrie stared at Jon a moment. "Say, maybe that's it! Well, anyway, we can't know for sure unless we can build a laboratory around a whale and experiment on him. Meanwhile, we don't have whatever a whale has. So let's get the low-down on these hydrosuits."

Two hours later, Jon knew about all there was to know about hydrosuits that could be learned without actual practice.

The hydrosuits were huge. They were like those bounce-up-again clowns with the bottoms leaded so that they always swing back erect. The suit had no legs —it was shaped like a pyramid with a rounded top fitted with lucinate. It had various mechanical arms—pincers, hooks, grapples, suction disks and tentacles and appendages that could be manipulated from the control panel inside by electronic means. At the base, it was six feet across. It was maneuvered by jet propulsion.

The jets were necessary. A man couldn't walk about in any kind of actual "suit" in the Deeps, because of the tremendous pressure. Small submarines weren't maneuverable enough. Small, compact, highly efficient and extremely potent power units turned turbines. Water ejected at pressures that could be regulated furnished motive power.

The hydrosuits were complete units, containing even instrument panels and sonar (sound through water). It was an all-enclosing shelter weighing a thousand pounds, with atmosphere pressure, temperature control, mobility, electric, electronic and hydraulic power. Each suit had its own small power plant, reprocessing continuously the precious air breathed by the occupant, putting it back into circulation again after enriching it. It was packed with food concentrates in diathermic canisters. But because of mobility, power storage had to be sacrificed—leaving the suit with a very limited range.

It was easy to learn all about the hydrosuits exteriorly. It was something else, Jon was to learn, to acquire the skills necessary to move one around in the Deeps.

At lunch, a regular 800 calorie, 4 ration-point meal, precooked and processed by the big diathermic ranges, Jon was sitting next to Thompson. He commented on the similarity between hydrosuits and space suits.

"Uh-huh," grunted Thompson. "Last frontiers of man are outer space, and the ocean Deeps. Both places, a man can live only by artificial means. Both places, a man has to manufacture his own oxygen, and it's cold, and dark. But there's one big difference, as I see it." "What's that?"

Sam's eyes got a faraway, dreamy look. "Outer space is dead. But the sea's full of life. Sea's part of the earth, the mother of life. Scientists say that's where life began, in the sea. Some first essential bit of protoplasm was cooked up by the early steaming, salty sea. It's deadly, but after a while you get to like it. Pretty soon there gets to be something warm about it, something makes a man feel he belongs here. The scientists say ocean water and human blood's about the same, so that maybe our blood calls us back to the stuff our blood was made from in the beginning. Sometimes I feel like I'd come back here to a place I should never have left—"

"You kidding!" howled O'Hara. "You ain't THAT old!"

Sprague looked up. "My dad used to talk that way. I always felt I knew what he was talking about. I guess the biochemists may find out the secret of life down here by probing into the nature of protoplasms. They've got their labs set up for it. The sea was the beginning of it. Somewhere in it might be the answer to the mechanism of fife itself."

"Hah," grunted Marsimba. "Get a load of the genius speculating on the nature of life itself!"

"Anyway," Sprague said, glancing at Jon, "I don't feel so big that the sea is too little for me."

Jon wanted to crack something back, but he held the impulse in check by cramming his mouth full of broiled squid-tentacle which tasted far better than it looked.

Then it happened.

A sound began. It started low and grew until it absolutely sawed on Jon's nerves. It seemed to come from everywhere at once, getting higher, higher. Jon, everybody, was on their feet. Thompson ran to the panel into the passage, threw it open. The droning loudened.

"Emergency!" yelled Sam. "That's the emergency alarm! Bad too. That's a warning red!"

"What's hit us?" yelled Buchanan in a loud wail.

Sprague ran to Thompson's side. The lights suddenly went out. "Light that emergency battery lantern somebody," yelled Sam. "What do you guys think you're in —a tunnel of love?"

Sprague got the battery lamp lit. It burned palely, fearfully. Sam said. "The power's off. All of it. The sub's deader'n a cooked carp! Get flashlights out of your lockers!"

They did that. Jon stood against the wall, waiting. His chest felt thick. There was an oyster-like twitching in his stomach.

"Stand fast for orders and info!" Thompson said tightly. "Stay calm, kiddies."

"But what's happening!" came Buchanan's quavering voice.

"Buck, we'll know in a sec. Sub's power's shut off. Could mean several things, none of them meaning we've stopped to have a picnic out on the ocean floor."

"We didn't crash or anything," Sprague said.

Thompson got fast across the compartment. The panel slid back to reveal a weird scene.

The water wasn't black, not now. A frightening glow lit up the Deeps. It crept in and filtered through the compartment shadows. A kind of terribly bright bluish-white luminescence that Jon knew wasn't man-made.

A cold gnawing light eating away into the swirling purplish darkness of the sea.

Sweat itched down Jon's neck, causing a nervous flush. The door panel opened. Lieutenant Guthrie's face was drawn. "Everybody into compartment five!"

Jon hadn't read the memo-sheet. He didn't know anything about the sub's layout. He didn't know where compartment five was. AXIOM: read all memos, even if they bore you.

"Steve!" he whispered. He gripped Steve's arm.

"What's happened?" Thompson asked the Lieutenant.

"Netfish," Lieutenant Guthrie said. "To compartment five at once!"

They followed Thompson out into the dark passageway, continued along it slowly.

He heard Thompson's drawl. "Netfish! Bad, boys, bad! A species of jellyfish. But only found at great depth. This one must be a real whopper! It was throwing out a lot of candle power."

He explained further. The netfish was one of the Deeps' most dreaded threats. Its body, a mass of attenuated tentacles and inter-looping nets. It drifted along, spreading its translucent form over an extent of ocean that sometimes measured a quarter of a mile.

"Should've been some way of knowing it was in front of us," Ayala said. Even his calm, musical voice seemed tense.

"Sonar can't bounce off anything that thin and wispy," Thompson said. "It goes right through. It wasn't lit up until we ran into it. So there was no way of being warned."

At this depth, a lot of undersea animals were practically transparent, thin, filmy, like silk. The netfish had

lit up only after being rammed by the sub which had then became entangled in its vast, intricate folds.

In compartment five, the entire crew and all the passengers were assembled.

Moxson said grimly, "We're wrapped up in this netfish, trapped I Our great danger lies in the thing's millions of strands of threadlike cilia; its gills and rudimentary eyes. The stuff's like hair. We're entangled in it.

"And the stuff's electrified, like the electric eel, only with enough power to short-circuit our power system and blow up this sub like a stick of dynamite. One drawback to Iukenite, as you know, is that, although it stands the pressure, you can't insulate it under water without getting a much weaker metal. So we've had to shut off all the power.

"We're so tangled up in its cilia that even the net-fish couldn't release us if it wanted to. Our power being shut off, we can't use sonar to signal for help. We can't renew our oxygen supply. Though that won't worry us for a while, it won't last forever."

Moxson's eyes sharpened to a brilliant intensity behind his peculiarly shaped glasses. "We'll have to go out there with magnesium guns and burn ourselves free!"

Chapter 5

A Brave Man Volunteers

ATTERY lanterns touched with a pale glow the taut faces of men. But there was no fear, Jon noticed, anywhere. The sub was a powerless helpless shell of metal caught in the nets of its defeat. Jon stood against the compartment wall. He noticed that everyone else had moved into a circle around the compartment's center. He felt left out, but too proud to move in there and make another segment of the circle without being called upon to do so. That didn't seem likely. Only the passengers were here. The crew were standing by stations.

Moxson called off several names: "Thompson. Anders. Guthrie. Lieber. Azula. Sprague. Wotanof-sky..."

The men named stepped into the circle's center. Yeager then moved back near Jon, but didn't look at him. Jon felt an uneasy flame begin to flicker in his stomach. He had a hypersensitive stomach. An ulcer-stomach. He'd have to get an anti-ulcer shot, he thought, soon as this is over.

There was something wrong. Something other than danger from the netfish. Surely the netfish should be enough. The idea of a monster a quarter of a mile long, electrified, drifting through the water like a big net, was sufficient to give anyone nightmares for a month. Or even a lifetime.

Moxson said. "You take charge, Lieutenant Guthrie." "Yes, sir. Men, into your hydrosuits! Sprague, take care of the extra magnesium charges!" "Yes, sir."

Those elected for immediate action hurried past Jon. Sprague, in passing, sneered. "Better grab yourself a sedative, chicken-gut, or you'll die of heart failure."

Jon lunged toward him. But Sprague was gone with the others.

"Stay clear!" a voice yelled from the shadowed passageway. "Everyone not of the fighting detail, stay clear!"

Jon waited a while. His nerves were scratchy. Soon he was alone in the compartment. Being alone anywhere in the sub right now was unpleasant for Jon, so he edged into the passageway and into the hydrosuit compartment. No one noticed him.

The members of the fighting detail were crawling through the round openings of the hydrosuits. An attendant then screwed the openings shut, then pushed the loaded hydrosuits along their rails and into the water lock. The lock door closed, shutting the hydro-suits from view. As soon as the water lock filled with water, the hydrosuits would, when the outer lock door opened, jet out onto the ocean floor.

A junior officer named Stauffer, who had a face even more sour than his disposition, barked at Jon. "You there, buster, get to the observation room! Might learn something there by watching what's going on!"

Stauffer had red hair, a blunt, callous jaw, and a good officer's aggressive spirit that was apparent in his brusque, third-degree voice, his swinging stride.

"Yes, sir."

Embarrassed, Jon had to check his memo-sheet

again, trying to figure out how to reach the observation room. After locating it on the sub plan painfully drawn out on the memo-sheet, he still managed to lose himself several times. Already there were Yeager, Ayala, O'Hara, Marsimba, several crew officers, and Clarence, who was handing out candy bars to everybody.

Jon slipped in, where he could get a good view of the big three-dimensional rotary screen. As he looked, Jon became less and less aware of there being anyone else in the observation room.

That powerful, cold, bluish-gray glow turned the faces to a corpse-color as it filtered through. The net-fish's luminescence pulsed with a regular rhythm, higher, lower, dimmer, brighter. It was like thousands of interlaced neon-tubes being tapped by a pulsing power drag. It was as though a vast thick net of glowing electric wires and tubes had wrapped in multitudinous skeins about the sub. The stuff twisted and writhed in the ocean currents. Tentacles, flame-bright, explored hungrily over the lucinate.

In the screen, Jon saw the outer door of the water lock open directly into the netfish's folds. A tremendous white glare shot out from the opening water lock. Still, none of the hydrosuits emerged. A fierce white and blinding flame flooded the area, blazing and searing the eyes. Water boiled, bubbled, seethed. Another whiter, hotter glare followed the first.

"They're clearing the area around the water lock," Stauffer said, "so they can come out. They can't stand much of that kind of heat out there."

"What are they doing?"

"They're firing the magnesium guns out through the water lock, clearing that space."

Someone else whispered. "Guess this is about the most dangerous job there is down here. If their suits touch this thing's cilia, they'll short-circuit, explode, or burn. The bodies inside'll fry, like oysters! And they're in danger from their own magnesium guns. That can burn 'em up too!"

Magnesium, specially treated, uniting with the water, created these huge pools of liquid fire.

As the area around the water lock cleared, hydrosuits shot out before the pressure of water jets. Pressure jets on both sides, on top, on the bottom and in the front of a hydrosuit. They could be controlled separately or alternately or in any kind of combination, simply, from the inside control panel. Blurred faces were visible through the lucinate of the rounded pyramid tops. The suits moved at various levels from the bottom and into a semicircular arrangement that broadened as it shifted cautiously out away from the water lock.

Now, as far in any direction as Jon could see around the sub, the fine network of electrified cilia writhed, jerked, twisted like a huge pit of electrified eels of endless, intertwining length.

"The devil's feeling it now all right!" Stauffer shouted.

"What a monster!" breathed Jon.

"You think this is a monster, buster!" Stauffer said. "Wait'Il you see what's coming up when we hit the real Deeps!"

"I'll wait," Jon said.

The compartment lit up and died slightly in brightness, then flared again as the cilia pulsed and the magnesium flared.

Stauffer yelled hoarsely. "That's Guthrie! It's got Guthrie!" Stauffer rushed at the screen, stopped, bent forward, his hands quivered.

Under his breastbone, Jon could feel his heart grinding painfully. An awful feeling of helplessness, useless-ness pervaded him. He couldn't do anything. And out there Guthrie was going to die. He jumped up from where he'd been sitting in the corner. His knees trembled.

The picture that came through to him etched itself into his brain with an acid of horror, etched itself there to stay. Guthrie's hydrosuit was at an angle, its jets spurting helplessly, desperately in all directions. It was surrounded by a tight network of cilia that writhed and then lifted the hydrosuit higher off the ocean floor. It hung suspended, its jets driving futilely in all directions.

"They can't stop it!" Stauffer screamed crazily. "They can't help him now. He'll go!"

Jon heard a shivering roar. It ground into his nerves like coarse cloth over teeth. He was staring then at a bright white flash that was retained on his retinas for a long time. He sank down on the aluminal bench and covered his face with his hands. He tried to swallow, but something gagged in his throat. He was afraid of retching. He had never seen anyone die before. And anyway—there are different ways a man can die. This wasn't the way, not out there in that awful dark stillness, away from the sun-He sat there a long time. He wasn't aware of the others leaving the observation room.

A voice filtered down to him. "Well, the netfish's burned out. The sub's free!"

Jon didn't look up. He felt a hand on his shoulder. He raised his eyes then. It was Stauffer. The sub's lights were back on. Jon could feel power throbbing subtly like blood under his feet.

"Cadet West?" Jon nodded.

"Better report to your compartment." "Okay, sir."

He got up. His knees felt as though they were held together with rubber bands. Stauffer said in a not unkindly voice, but one tinged with the callousness of experience. "A lot of men have died in the Deeps, West."

"And for what?"

A long silence. "For what? West, that's something no one can answer but you."

Jon saluted loosely and left. He didn't look out through the lucinate before he left. It was dark out there. And anyway, there wasn't anything out there he particularly wanted to see. He immediately felt the tension in his compartment. He went to his locker, started digging refresher stuff out. He always felt better after making even a pretense at shaving.

All the others sat silently in their bunks. Yeager lay flat on his back looking at the ceiling. He didn't look at Jon when he came in or afterward.

Sprague came over to Jon, his dark face darker with triumph.

"I guess we put on a good show for you, huh, West?"

A coolness came over Jon. He'd had enough.

"What's eating you now, civilian?"

"I'm proud of being civilian. I wouldn't be a lousy parasite officer even if I could throw you to rot in a brig for the rest of your life!"

"Don't worry about it," Jon said. "You haven't a chance."

"You little monkey-suited snob—"

"Ah, lay off him," O'Hara said. "You can't change his stripes anyway. His ... he was born with."_

"You didn't wash out on that spaceflight test, Jonnie boy."

^What did I do?"

"You chickened out!"

"You're crazy!" Jon yelled.

"Money won't buy guts, Jonnie. Folding stuff can cover up a yella' belly, but it's still there!"

"What are you talking about?"

"A uniform can cover up the yellow stripes on your back, but they're still there."

Jon stepped toward Sprague. "I'm already tired of the Deeps, civilian. I'm tired of a lot of things. But I'm more tired of your lip than anything else."

"Big words and hot air don't cover up anything either."

"An accused man has a right to know what he's charged with, and why!"

"Why's he yellow?" Sprague laughed as he looked at the others. He looked at Jon again. "Who knows why? Probably runs in the family, contrary to rumor. Maybe a psychologist could dig it out, in about twenty years, if he didn't vomit doing it."

"Why am I yellow?" Jon insisted.

"You didn't volunteer."

"Volunteer? For what?"

"Playing dumb. That'd be your way."

"Volunteer for what?"

"Maybe everybody here's wrong. Maybe you did volunteer to fight the netfish."

Jon's fists clenched. A dull ache threatened his chest. So that's what had been going on in compartment five? The circle gathering.

"Your kind doesn't belong down here, Jonnie. Get wise."

"I didn't hear any call for volunteers," Jon whispered. His voice didn't sound very convincing even to himself. "All I heard was Moxson calling off the names of those he'd selected. I didn't hear—"

"You're not that dumb!" Sprague sneered. "Any dangerous jobs down here—everybody volunteers! That's an unwritten code of the Deeps. If you stand there telling me you didn't know that, I'm calling you a naked-faced liar!"

Nobody said anything. Not even Yeager.

"Well, here's the truth," Jon said. "I don't care if anybody believes it or not. I didn't know anything about codes, written or otherwise. I was standing in there and all at once Moxson was calling names. I didn't know what it was about."

"He's no liar, no coward either."

Jon turned. A sense of relief, a warmth washed over him. It was Yeager, and he got down from his bunk.

"Jon here's always had his heart set on being a rock-etman. Never interested in the Deeps at all. Never thought about undersea service. He never even read the memo-sheet. If you have any more dirty names to throw around, you're throwing them at me too."

"And me too!" Clarence Buchanan, formerly the jerk, stood beside Yeager. Fear and defiance trembled on the boy's face that was as lean and angular as an Egyptian death mask. His enormous hungry eyes shone with a new, half-fearful, half-bold intensity. His figure that seemed to be boned with brittle glass rods shivered as he stood up to the tall, powerful litheness of Sprague.

Sprague laughed. "You too, jerk!"

"My name ain't jerk! It's Clarence Buchanan. Buck to my friends."

"A friend of the snob is no friend of mine, jerk."

"Why don't you go in and take a shower, Sprague?" Yeager said.

"So there's three of you," Sprague laughed. "Three of your kind don't add up to anything in my book except more of the same."

Sam Thompson shuffled toward them. "You guys should relax before you blow your gaskets. What Jon said, that's logical, ain't it? Give a man benefit of the doubt."

Sprague looked hurt. He had a tremendous respect for the old man, and had considered him an ally, a civilian who would always side with Sprague against the hated symbol of militarism, against which Sprague had a pathological hatred.

"A brave man," Sprague said doggedly, "always volunteers. And the big academy boy here didn't."

"I swear I didn't know," Jon said.

Sprague's hand moved in a quick, contemptuous flip, and cracked across Jon's face. There seemed to be two Jon Wests. The part of him that moved to the attack. The other part, the cool reserved part that looked at it all and thought with an ironic laugh-well, I've washed myself out of the one thing I wanted so I might as well do a good fat job and finish myself here too.

With a sharp whine of rage, Jon dived at Sprague's lean tigerish length. He was driven back against the wall by Sprague's powerful, short chopping left. He crashed into a bunk with Sprague's lithe eager hostility swarming all over him. He felt Sprague's bony fist like a hamrner chopping at his face. Blood ran into his eyes. He heard Thompson yell:

"Stand back, kiddies. These jokers aren't playing this for laughs."

Jon felt himself slipping down the wall. Again and again he felt those fists battering, chopping, slashing ...

"Around the wall, around the wall, dance away from him!" It was Yeager yelling through a fine red mist, yelling hoarsely.

Jon slid along the wall. He wiped the red film from his eyes. He'd boxed and he'd been good at it. But Sprague was playing strictly for keeps and not to get a loving cup for his pains. This was ugly. He glared as Sprague moved in slowly, his dark face twisted by the old scar, his eyes brilliant with hate, his mouth slightly open.

Jon stood, chest heaving and then caution moved in and checked his blind rage. He tried to remember boxing rules, tactics. Sprague wasn't a skilled boxer. He was just naturally greased-lightning fast, and pushed with fanatical rage. As he rushed in again, head down, arms swinging, Jon grabbed Sprague's neck in his right hand, held the youth's head down, brought his right fist up hard, brought it up again.

Sprague stumbled back. Blood dripped from his nose. One eye was closing.

He smiled bitterly and rushed in again. Jon stepped aside and Sprague rammed the wall. As Sprague spun, off balance, Jon clipped him again. This time on the knock-out button, on the chin a little to the left of center.

The shock ran up Jon's arm, down his body, seemed to nail him to the mesh-grid deck. He struck again, felt Sprague's washboard stomach suddenly turn flabby and give. Sprague's eyes spun. His face turned white. He weaved, but he kept on standing. He refused to bend. He refused to fall. Sickened, Jon knew that a man would have to kill Sprague to defeat him. Jon's stomach was no longer in the game.

A tough one, Jon thought, a real, hard, stubborn, sick mule of a guy. He wouldn't fall. He twisted, managed to lean forward. His arm jerked at Jon's neck and they were rolling, gouging, mauling over the floor to be brought up hard against the bulkhead.

"Get up!"

It was Moxson.

Jon got up and leaned against the bulkhead, saluted. Sprague dragged himself up slowly holding onto the bunk with one hand. He somehow managed to stand straight, supporting himself with one hand, saluting with the other.

"Lieutenant Guthrie died out there," Moxson said. His probing, intense eyes were wide and unblinking and magnified through the thick-lensed glasses. "There's a rough year ahead for everybody. Under the most favorable circumstances a lot of us will be lucky to be alive a year from now. Dissension in the ranks of the Deeps is the most inexcusable and sad of all our enemies. Sprague, report to my quarters at 0500. West, I'll see you at 0600."

"Yes, sir," Sprague whispered.

"Yes, sir," Jon said. He saluted.

Moxson left them. Sprague went into the detergent room. He came out looking somewhat better, except for his eye that was turning blue and was almost swollen shut. He went out without saying anything to anyone, without looking at anyone.

Jon lay on his bunk nursing his battered face. His mouth didn't work right. His teeth didn't fit together properly.

"Stevie," he said painfully, "how come you knew about this unwritten code? You know about a lot of other unwritten codes of the Deeps too. How come?"

"Well-"

"Maybe you've always been strong for undersea duty. You said it was just a hobby, that you just dug around in a few books about it."

"Well, sure, it was just a hobby, chum."

Clarence Buchanan sat next to Jon's bunk. He had changed. He wasn't running around crazy to be everybody's friend, not any more. He didn't look so desperate now, and there was a certain amount of self-satisfaction and inner strength apparent in the way he sat there. He was Jon's friend and Yeager's friend. He had alienated everyone else in the compartment, and he didn't care.

"Well," Jon said, "you sure seem to know a lot about something that's just a hobby."

"I used to know a lot about stamps too," Yeager said, "until they started licking me. I never intended to make a life's work out of stamps."

"Why not?" Jon said. "What's the matter with collecting stamps all your life? Any worse than collecting clams or seaweed? Stevie, be honest! How come you know so much about undersea duty? You wanted to be a spaceman didn't you?"

"Everybody did—once—" said Clarence. "I used to think how I'd be a spaceman. But I couldn't even get through high school. I had to go to work."

"Ah, forget it," Jon said to Yeager. "If you want to have an interesting conversation about stamps, clams or something, come visit me in the brig."

<£They don't have brigs in die Deeps, chum," Yeager said. "When you're naughty, they make you sing old sea chanties, and weave hair shirts for yourself out of dry seaweed."

Jon went out, started for Moxson's quarters at a little before 0600. When he reached there, the door was locked. There didn't seem to be anyone around. The sub seemed unusually quiet.

He inquired of a passing steward the whereabouts of Commander Moxson. He was aware that the sub had stopped.

"At the services of course, dopehead!"

"What? Hey, mess boy, that's no way to talk to a future officer."

"I know it, dopehead," the steward grinned and went on.

Jon stared after him, disgusted, then wandered around and found out about the services. The sub was resting on the bottom, a shelf of blue mud. A few pulsating lights in the darkness indicated the presence of some kinds of monsters. But none of them came close. Jon stood among the others of the crew and passengers who were at attention before a long observation section.

A barren underwater cliff rose up in the light of the sub's hyperbeam. Under the cliff, six hydrosuits were moving before slow and solemn jets. They were supporting a metallic coffin. The coffin was placed on the bottom. Big bladed appendages worked and dug a grave and the coffin was lowered into it. A shiny metal marker was erected in the blue mud under the cliff that cast no shadow.

The hydrosuits returned slowly to the sub. The sub's beam held its light on the grave marker that remained out there, very lonely and isolated and still. Very alone, Jon thought, Guthrie is now. His chest felt funny. The awful sense of loneliness was in the air like dust.

He heard the soft chant of hushed voices:

"Well never get a suntan, boys, Or dance beneath the stars. And we'll probably die in jail, boys, Behind a GULPER'S bars.

"We're sons of the ocean Deeps, boys, And many a widow will weep, boys, For men who fight in the dark lands low Where no sun sets, and no winds blow."

Jon swallowed hard. His eyes felt hot, and he blinked them and thought with a hard determined emphasis: No matter what happens from here on in, I'll always volunteer!

Chapter 0 afyUnder fhe Se°

J

ON expected only the worst from Moxson. Not that he was exactly afraid. More of a do-your-worst-I've-had-mine attitude. He saluted, stood before the small metalline desk in a corner of the comparatively small, barren cabin. Moxson didn't look up from the tridimensional maps he was studying. "Sit down, West."

"Thank you, sir." Jon sat down. This informality was certainly unexpected. It didn't seem right, under the circumstances. Jon started feeling suspicious. Moxson could make you feel as though he were some kind of tiger. A hungry tiger. But smiling.

"I've talked with Sprague. He won't be in your compartment during the rest of the run to hydrodome headquarters. After that, there'll be more room, more people, less friction."

"I'm sorry about that volunteering oversight," Jon said. "I didn't know."

Moxson finally looked up. That strange kind of sympathetic mastery shone in his eyes. He adjusted his peculiarly shaped glasses.. "That's hardly the point, West. This is mostly Sprague's problem, not yours. When someone, out of their own inward-turned hate and resentment, finds a whipping boy upon which to vent his sickness, we don't blame the whipping boy.

We try to help the whipper and get the whipping boy out of the way. You see what I mean?" "Yes, sir."

"Potentially, we think Sprague's a really good Deep-man, and they're not plentiful. He might make a good officer too, if he could get rid of old resentments and prejudice. We have hopes for Sprague. He's smart, courageous, highly able. But he's sick. Sickness can be cured. Hate and resentment can be cured, the same as a diseased lung or heart or a decaying tooth can be cured. But it isn't as easy to find the cause of psychological sickness as most physical ailments. We've tried therapy on Sprague, topside, in psychiatric clinics. Some improvement. But not enough. If Sprague's ever to become the man he can be, it will have to be down here in the Deeps. This is his life, his world. Most of his cure will be up to him, in the long run. But he can be helped by the rest of us." Moxson paused. "And, West—you'll have to admit that you did ask for it."

"Well, sir, I merely spoke my mind."

"I know. Your record's generally excellent. We can overlook an incident like this. But just being smart doesn't make a good Deepman. It's the attitude. I guess you know that yours isn't good."

"I wanted to be a spaceman, sir."

"So did I," Moxson said. "If everybody who wanted to be a spaceman succeeded, there wouldn't be anybody left on the earth but idiots and babies and the very old. Whether you like the Deeps or not—that's up to you. But I'll say this, West, you get yourself better straightened out, or you'll never like anything, including yourself. You keep on with this attitude, and you'll be another Sprague."

Jon didn't say anything.

"Meanwhile, West, I want you to stay clear of- Apprentice Sprague. Don't tangle with him, no matter what the provocation. I want your word of honor as a cadet on that!"

Jon hesitated, then said rather hesitantly, "Yes, sir, you have my word."

"With help, Sprague can come through this in fine shape. Otherwise, he'll be sent back topside, this time on a one-way trip. And I guess you have some idea what that would mean to him, to be put topside for good. Worse than prison. Worse than exile. It's partly up to you, West."

Jon saw a lot of unpleasantness ahead.

"West—if I could send you topside, I would. I don't want anyone serving down here who doesn't like it. It's rough enough when you have the heart for it. Soon as we get to hydrodome headquarters, you put in a request for transfer—that is if you can think up any place else you'd rather be. Maybe a supply sub will take you back if and when orders approving the transfer come through. Meanwhile, you'd better make the best of what's ahead of you."

"I will, sir."

"Very well. You may go."

Back in the compartment, the others, except Clarence Buchanan and Yeager, avoided him. Clarence seemed a little doubtful of his choice of a friend, particularly when he had alienated everyone else in the compartment.

"Well," Yeager said. "I expected to find you writing '1 was a naughty boy,' five thousand times."

"Commander Moxson's okay. An all-right guy."

"What about Sprague? He's moved out of here."

"I know. I've got to keep away from him. If Sprague makes trouble, I've got to smile. If he socks me, I've got to feel sorry—for him."

"Z don't have to," Yeager growled loyally.

"I don't have to either," Clarence said.

"Let us handle him for you," Yeager urged.

"You guys do that, and I'll bat your ears down. No one else's fighting my battles."

"He called me fatso once."

"And he still calls me jerk!"

Jon shrugged, turned to Thompson. "When do we get to hydrodome headquarters, Sam?"

"Another couple of days." Sam looked at Sprague's bunk, shook his head. "That Sprague's got the makings of a real Deepman. He's smart enough."

"Why'd he flunk out of the academy then?"

"He was born in the Deeps. His dad was an oT prospector. I knew him well. His mother died when Marlin was a kid—out a thousand miles from nowhere on the ocean floor in a leaky sieve of a hydrodome. But Marlin was smart, wanted to be a cadet.

"But he was a misfit at the academy. He'd never had other kids to play with, them livin' down there in the Deeps, away from everybody. So he had a tough time at the academy for that reason. Then he'd never forgot that business about his dad dying—about how a military blunder caused the death. All that resentment flared up when he didn't get along at the academy. He fired back at everybody. He got to hating the academy and anything military. Finally they kicked him out. He came back, worked a while down here as a hydrofarmer, getting iodine from kelp. Then he got sick. Was sent topside for a cure. He doesn't seem to be much better off."

Thompson got up and stretched. "His dad and I prospected the Selemar Deeps together twenty years back. Him an' fifty others died when a hydrodome cracked. It cracked 'cause an officer wouldn't send in a repair crew. Some red tape. Some report said the hydrodome was okay. Millions of tons of water came in an' Sprague's dad died trying to save lives. Real hero, he was. But there ain't any plaque anywhere honoring his memory. He was just an' ol' ooze-mucker that's all."

Thompson stared at the wall. "I'll miss the lad. Don't reckon any kid his age knows the Deeps as well."

As the sub moved on toward hydrodome headquarters, the port was left open most of the time. The hyperbeam pointed out interesting features of the Deeps like a big lecturer's finger.

The next day, Jon saw his first hydrodome. It was really a very small hydrofarm, containing a small processing plant and packing facilities. It was a small, palely glowing dome on the edge of an undersea canyon. A hundred yards in diameter, it shone in the darkness like a gray mound of perfectly formed shell. The area was dotted with these hydrofarms and factories. And a number of domes served as oceanographic stations and cartographic stations, scientific research centers of many kinds, observation points, supply bases and the like. This particular hydrofarm was extracting chemical from a kind of shell thick in this area. However, most of the farms were much higher, on the shelves and where undersea vegetation flourished.

Thirty kinds of marine vegetation were being used as staple food products by the United Nations. Dried kelp was a source of potash, and a valuable source of iodine, a powerful germicide and antidote for goiter.

Because the world's population had grown tremendously, and since so many people were forced to live on so few acres of land, harvesters had turned to the vast areas of the sea. Fish was a principal source of protein. Beef was a luxury.

Seaweed, too, had a lot of food value, and there were the big oyster beds high up on the continental shelves. Chemicals. Pearl fisheries. A cubic mile of sea water contained 93,000,000 dollars' worth of gold. With new extracting methods, the Deeps had become a rich source of minerals and chemicals.

Sea water contains over fifty of the ninety-odd known elements, including radium. Water is the universal solvent; the earth and sky had been emptying its treasures into the seas to be dissolved since the earth began. Lime from shells, resulting in magnesium chloride. Magnesium. Calcium chloride, used in cements, plastics and building materials. Insecticides, germicides, fungicides, and bromine of which twenty-five hundred gallons of sea water yields a pound. Aluminum compounds form most of the red clay of the Pacific Deeps, and iron and manganese give the characteristic colors.

Miraculous new methods of farming and mineral extraction were being used in the Deeps. Jon learned about them all as his duty continued. Electrolysis was opening up new fields in chemical research down there. And there was the mysterious "heavy water" found in the very bottom-most Deeps. Pressure did that. Water that was not quite ordinary water in composition, but with new atomic and electronic formations which made it different and was contributing much to natural atomic power research. And many new raw radioactive pools" were also being opened up in the Deeps. Research was moving along to harness these sources of limitless power.

Jon learned about the big projects. There was one designed to break down some of the big undersea ridges and banks and divert the huge undersea currents that could change the temperature of whole continents. Another was designed to locate the fabulous lost continents of Mu and Atlantis. There were still others that interested Jon in spite of himself.

Project X, for example. It was supposed to be more important and dangerous than all the others. And Thompson had said that perhaps many members of this group might become a part of Project X.

Hydrodome headquarters suddenly loomed up through the lucinate. The hyperbeam shone on the huge dome that glowed with a dim opaqueness through the absolute darkness. Between the sub and the dome there were all sorts and conditions of jellyfish, some of gossamer texture. Giant squids drifted lazily, many and bizarre, entangled in a maze of attenuated tentacles. There were Pteropoda with winglike shells darting about like dragonflies, while arrow-worms of vivid scarlet swept by in troops. Other weird spots of autoluminescence blinked off and on.

"We're four miles down," Yeager breathed harshly. "That's a lot of water!"

Jon knew one thing now for sure. No one in the Deeps ever forgot that tremendous pressure always above them, held away by a thin shell of lukenite.

Jon kept staring, awed, at his first sight of hydro-dome headquarters in mid-Pacific, one of the first real cities under the sea.

"Greatest engineering feat in history," whispered Thompson. "Think of what it took to build a thing like that at this depth! I never thought they'd go this far. But I guess they're only starting."

"Sure," O'Hara said. His pinkish-tanned face was wide with open wonder at the dome rising out of the clay and ooze. "Someday there'll be big neon-lighted cities all over the ocean floor, strung together with super tubeways. There'll be tourists and vacationers down here by the millions!"

Thompson snorted. "Then I take a powder, boys."

"Where'll you powder to?" Yeager said. "This is earth's last frontier."

Thompson looked puzzled. "Don't rightly know. Not outer space. Too old to get out of earth's gravity. Takes young bones for that. Ah, well, I guess when that day comes, O'Hara, I'll be too old to care."

"You're like a squid!" O'Hara grinned. "An' ol' sea squid. They live to be hundreds of years old."

"Yeah, but they keep growing all the time," said Marsimba. "But ol' Sam here, he keeps shrinking."

The sub's intercom said, "Prepare to enter hydro-dome!"

Slowly, the sub moved through the big water lock opening that appeared and then the outer lock door closed. Lights came on. Water was pumped into the vast shed, and the passengers and crew disembarked through interlocking locks into the dome itself.

They were met by a junior officer named Donalds, a small man who was wiry and tough and who smiled with tired, sharp lips. He was generally disliked by strangers. He'd spent a long time doing this kind of work because he got results. He didn't like to be pushed around, and he didn't like folderol. He took them on a short tour of the hydrodome and showed them their barracks, bunks, etc.

It was a short tour, but Jon was impressed. An artificial sun of cold luciferin light burned overhead, suspended at the top and center of the hydrodome. It never dimmed, or grew warmer or brighter. They saw the big hydroponic beds which grew most of the food and kept the atmosphere fresh and clear. The buildings were one-storied, all metal, built in simple boxlike style in sections that could be easily put up and dismantled. They circled the hydrodome. Two rows of buildings split the center of it. Moving slidewalks and small fast electro-scooters furnished fast transportation around the area.

The routine was strict. During the following month of indoctrination, Jon had little time to concern himself with his own plight, or about the attitude of the others toward him. He saw Sprague now and then, in the barracks, at lectures. But there was no trouble.

Jon kept pretty much to himself, spending every bit of spare time studying. When he wasn't at a lecture or demonstration, he was delving through the thousands of record spools in the microfilm library and running them off. When he wasn't doing any of these things, he was listening to old Sam Thompson. His motivation for this frenzied kind of learning routine was revenge. He would show them all!

Sprague had been spreading the word about Jon's snobbery, his cowardice, his dependency upon "pull."

The hostility between the civilians and the military was usually a healthy conflict, coming out in greater efforts in classrooms and lectures and in the greater fields of experience. But each had their champions, and the champion of the civilians was, of course, Marlin Sprague. He was as smart as any cadet—at the same time, he was contemptuous of the military and all it represented. He classified himself as a free man. A man who could do what he liked, go where he liked, as long as it was commensurate with the welfare of all.

Jon learned a great deal, and he learned it fast. But he kept his knowledge largely to himself. He was supposed to be smarter than most, because he was going to become an officer. But Jon found out that, usually, this meant he had to be a superman. There weren't any supermen. But Jon, with his reputation as a coward and a snob and a phony, had to work twice as hard. Still, as far as winning him the friendship of the barracks, it did him no good. So he told himself he didn't care, avoided everybody, crammed his head with inert facts known as knowledge, and hoped the year would pass quickly.

Jon scored the highest on the quarterly general exam given to fifty cadets and civilian apprentices. The notice, with list and ratings, was posted on the bulletin board outside the barracks building. He saw Yeager's junior blimp profile at the outer edge of the crowd. He was waving his arms wildly, his face beaming like a spotlight. As Jon walked toward Yeager, he heard Sprague's cutting sarcasm.

"How did Jonnie do it? That's easy, fellas. With his old man's influence, a low-grade moron could become a lieutenant commander."

Jon forced himself to ignore Sprague, all of them. Perspiration ran down under his collar as the rage sizzled like steam under a valve. Yeager threw an arm over his shoulder. "I'm up there too, chum! And Ayala, and O'Hara and Marsimba—and even the Jer—Clarence is up there! That kid's not as dumb as he looks."

"Nobody is," Jon said.

"You make me feel like a chump, champ. I ought to dig into those learning spools more, or I'll be demerited for being only a fifth-rater."

They stepped onto a slidewalk that wound past the big hydroponic beds along the Dome's south-east-by-east wall.

"Listen, Jon, let me take care of that Sprague goon!"

"It'd only make things worse, if they can be."

"But he makes things too tough. And you get all the dirt. With all his loose wires, you'll notice he was sixth on that list. He's got a brain behind that goblin's mask!"

Clarence ran up. He was so excited the tears were almost coming out of his tragic eyes. "I'm on the list too!"

"Why not?" Jon said.

"But—but I never thought—"

"Look, Clarence," Jon said. "You're getting meat on your bones. You're finding out you got something between your ears besides a vacuum. Because some guys called you a jerk, you got to believing it. Forget it."

Proudly, Clarence fell into line with them.

That noon, arbitrary time (there is no night or day in a hydrodome), the call went out for a group of cadets and apprentices who were going to be taken out onto the ocean floor for the real thing. Moxson himself was taking them, the twenty-five highest on the exam returns. As they prepared to begin the trip, he made a speech. Speeches came as regularly as lunch hours, but were not nearly so palatable to Jon. This one was to the point.

"This is your first trip onto the ocean floor. There'll be plenty of outside work from now on. We've got to become experts maneuvering hydrosuits, and on the use of undersea tools, tractors, drills, pressure guns, weapons and so forth. It's the most dangerous branch of the service, as I've said before; but I don't want any of you getting careless and forgetting that fact. Forgetting out there can be disastrous. Be alert out there all the time."

They crawled inside the hydrosuits hanging from the ceiling on rollers inside the specified water lock. An attendant screwed the openings fast and for the first time, Jon found himself inside a hydrosuit, ready to move out under his own power into the Deeps.

He ran his hands over the small but intricate control panel. Even though the suit weighed almost a thousand pounds, still there wasn't much room inside. He started up the power unit, a compact, noiseless, small but powerful electri-electronic and turbine rig.

The small levers that moved both horizontally and vertically and circularly controlled the mechanical arms, pincers, grappling hooks and jets. Buttons and switches controlled the pressure guns, weapon barrels, magnesium charge ejectors, safety cables, magnetic hooks, power adjustment, oxygen control, and so on.

Water swirled up around the hydrosuits as it rushed in to fill the water lock. Yeager winked broadly at Jon as the water churned up past the opaque top.

Jon looked into the froth of bubbling spray. His suit chilled. He adjusted the thermos. Then suddenly he started to sweat. He adjusted it again.

The pressure indicator began climbing. He watched the needle slowly creep up to the desired atmospheres, then stop. The sonar receiving device inside Jon's hydrosuit emitted a tiny, metallic voice.

Radio transmission is, of course, not possible in the Deeps. Sonar (sound through water) utilized sound vibration directly. Water is a wondrous conductor of sound. The vibrophones and receivers (vibrocones) installed in the hydrosuits sent out human voices, and the delicate vibrocones attached to the top of the suits, attuned to the same frequency as the human voice, received the voice direct, merely having to amplify it. The phones made the projection of sound waves directional, f unneling the sound in any desired direction.

But a voice received this way was an anonymous one. All voices had the same thin, metallic, almost unreal quality. And one was hardly distinguishable from another.

"This is Moxson. We're cabled together now. I'll move out and the rest of you will be held by the rollers until we're out onto the ocean floor. Ready?"

Jon swung his beam, found Yeager's and Ayala's faces. They appeared dim and blurred behind the luci-nate. He saw Sam too, who was cabled right behind Jon and was the last in line. He saw the opening appear in the water lock. An immense and suffocating sense of darkness and cold and pressure moved in around him. He tensed, felt a flicker of fear, as a powerful jet of pressure pushed Moxson along the overhead railing toward the opening. The cable tightened. Moxson pulled the line of men snaking out through the opening and onto the ocean bottom.

And suddenly, then, Jon realized why he felt fear and this extraordinary tension. It seemed out of proportion to the actual potential danger of the situation, as great as that was. He felt much the same now as he had felt aboard that rocket just before the big spaceflight test. This was a second big test. He knew that now. Somehow or other it had gotten to the point where this was just as important to him as had been that spaceflight test which he had never passed.

He couldn't wash out on this one too.

Chapter 7

Down to Nowhere

DULL glow radiated outward from the hydrodome. J It cast a hazy twilight for several hundred feet. Jon felt the cable's pull. Ahead of him, Ayala swung dangerously, the bottom of his hydrosuit rising. A spurt from Ayala's left jet straightened the suit. The line swung in a long arc through the murk, then in a large circle. Moxson was now stationary against the hydrodome's base, a pivot pulling the others around, like a curving spoke on a hub.

Jon found that it was fairly easy to maintain an upright position, but he knew this was deceptive. It was true only because of the tension of the cable swinging him around. Actually, co-ordinating a hydrosuit was precarious business.

Now they were spaced evenly in a line along the hydrodome's base. Here and there, Jon could see the firefly glow of some denizen of the dark. Moxson's voice. "Uncable!" Jon uncabled from Thompson; Ayala, from Jon. "One at a time—we're going to move out a hundred yards from the dome, come back. Remember, you'll always sink, but the pressure surrounding us is so great that sinking is a slow process. Unless you force yourself lopsided by jetting wrongly, or a big ocean current hits you, you'll not have much trouble staying in any chosen position, or moving freely around.

Moxson started them off.

The apprentices and cadets went out a hundred feet, and returned.

The first one, Marsimba, made it fine. Sprague moved out fast and straight, his jets balancing him nicely. He swung in a graceful arc, remaining always the same distance from the ooze, and returned. Just before reaching the dome's base, his left jet let go with a powerful thrust, spun him abruptly so that he was suddenly flat against the dome, facing out.

Yeager took off. Either because of his overenthusi-asm, or some kind of miscalculation, he shot straight to the right, ramming into O'Hara, then careening in a wild, spin-wheeling whirl. His jets shot crazily in all directions as he attempted desperately to right himself. Finally he stopped jetting and hung woefully suspended. The bottom of his hydrosuit stuck straight up, and he began drifting down headfirst into the ooze.

"In a circus, you would look good, Yeager." It wasn't Moxson's voice, but the junior officer, Donalds, who had a cynical wit.

"Concentrate on those jets and come back," Moxson said.

This time, Yeager was indeed cautious. A gentle spurt turned him slowly right end up. Another from the right jet worked against the left jet and slowed him to perpendicular. He shot on ahead then to the hundred-yard mark, moved around slowly and returned.

"West."

Jon took a deep breath, released the rear jet slowly, felt himself moving up a little and knew he was rising too fast. He angled the rear jet slightly upward, straightened it gently, slightly increasing his speed. He neared the hundred-yard mark, knowing he was doing well. He wavered and teetered, but managed to stay upright and on his course. He felt good now, confident. He angled the rear jet slightly more to the left, swung in a long easy circle, headed back. He hoped he was judging it correctly. He'd watched Sprague carefully, forced to respect the youth's skill, watched the distance and checked the speeds. At what he hoped was the right moment, he threw on plenty of jet power, felt his body jerk around. He straightened the jet and felt his back slap against the suit as it hit the dome.

"Good, West. That was your first time, wasn't it?"

"Yes, sir," Jon said.

"All right, all of you recable. In pairs only."

They moved out in twos, following Moxson who was pared off with about twenty feet of cable to the junior officer, Donalds. Their beams probed about as they moved. Two enormous masses, casting phosphorescent gleams, edged in toward Jon.

His blood froze. Two giant sharks, with enormous tails and dull glassy stares, came close, the phosphorescent matter ejected from holes pierced around their muzzles. They flashed away, revealing silver bellies, huge mouths bristling with teeth.

Under them, as the group moved on, the ooze shone with the impalpable dust of millions of years of tiny shells that constantly fell through the darkness like never-ending snowstorms.

Schools of strange creatures drifted just beyond the range of the beams. Some came close; Japanese salamanders. Spider lampreys. Serpents six feet long with eyes small and eager, and huge mouths bristling with teeth.

Fish of all shapes and sizes rose under them like birds out of wild grass.

The ooze drifted down into impenetrable fractures, deep grottos, and unfathomable holes, at the bottom of which formidable creatures might be seen. Jon's blood curdled as he saw enormous antennae rising, or some frightful claw.

Millions of luminous spots shone brightly in the midst of darkness. The eyes of giant Crustacea crouched in their holes; giant lobsters setting themselves up like ancient halberdiers, and moving their claws with the clicking sound of pincers which the vibrocones picked up; titanic crabs, pointed like guns on carriages; and frightful looking polyps interweaving their tentacles like a living nest of serpents.

There was absolutely no plant life. Yet there wasn't a total absence of color, even when no aquabeam was on. The blackness had a kind of purplish cast. The bottom was mostly blue clay, sometimes red, covered with ooze of varied degrees of thickness. In some places, moved by an extra strong channel of current, the ooze had cleared, showing the lines of colored clay and rock.

And everywhere constantly that great ferocious abundance of life!

And all carnivorous, as Thompson had said, because there was no vegetation to feed on. They had to feed upon one another. And they were equipped by nature with fantastic methods of eating, or avoiding being eaten. Such as the phylum, with its giant cable to catch its gargantuan victims of prey, the tips of the cable deadly radioactive. Giants that looked like rocks, that suddenly opened to reveal themselves to be all mouth.

Creatures with electrified spines longer than their bodies.

Giant crabs that lay buried in the sediment awaiting passing prey, with huge deadly sea anemones on each claw which it used with its stinging tentacles to kill victims. Sea spiders with bodies so attenuated that their stomachs extended into elongated legs. Giant mollusks with tongues coated with chitinized teeth like a rasp with which they drill and countersuck holes in other shells as accurately as a mechanic and with terrible swiftness.

There were also the colossal hghtaing charging sawfish that mowed down victims with spiked and horny snouts. Torpedo and electric eels that paralyzed their prey. Creatures that lived for protection in strong boxes that bristled with bayonets.

Once the ocean abysses had been believed to be as lifeless as outer space. Yet here was a world abounding with life. A much different life than any Jon had been familiar with. Life fantastic, frightful and grotesque, and sometimes beautiful. But always dangerous.

Behind him, the hydrodome was barely visible, a dim dull glow like a fading fight bulb in a dark room. Then abrupdy it blinked off.

"We follow the contours of the shallow," Moxson said.

Jon knew that the shallows divided the ocean floor into great compartments. On his right, he saw the rising wall of rock. A giant cliff rising straight up, a dark forbidding mass of gray rock. He felt the solid steady pushing of a powerful current against his back. He checked his speedometer, looked to either side, saw that he was about even with the others, only he was far out on the end of the line away from the cliff.

Presently, on orders from Moxson, they halted. There followed intense practice manipulating the reverse pressure gun, tools, weapons, diggers, cutters, etc. And later, for three hours, Jon found himself learning to run one of the five big hydrotractors that appeared.

The tractors were big streamlined bullets. A hydro-suit fitted into the top in special compartments like pegs in holes and control arms on the suits plugged into the tractor. A hydrosuit actually "rode" the tractor, held in place by special magno-hooks. The tractors were amphibious, capable of limited activity off the ocean floor. But they were primarily designed, with deep treads, for work directly on the bottom.

There was also work with the mari-drills (marine drills), and the blasting equipment.

Jon's body ached with fatigue. His nerves were frayed as he later worked with the junior officer, Donalds, who was showing him the tricks of using a mari-drill. He had noticed a particularly bright glow that seemed to fade in and out some distance away up the face of the cliff. There were many other lights, like lightning bugs swarming through a summer night, so he hardly placed any importance on that extra bright glow at first. Then it began to make him uneasy as its intensity increased, and it became a streak of increasingly powerful flame.

He hesitated about mentioning it. He didn't want Donalds to assume that he was overly anxious and be given a gimmick with which to needle him. But the glow brightened. Suddenly, with appalling swiftness, the flame shot toward them like a rocket flare. Jon yelled, swung one of the suit's metal arms against Donalds' suit.

Donalds twisted. Through the opaque lucinate, his face turned a deathly white. His mouth dropped open. He didn't move. His mouth remained open, his eyes staring. Sweat on his face like frozen drops of tears.

The thing was close. Half-blinded by its brilliance, Jon saw the wormlike shape, at least thirty feet long, curving in powerful lunging dives. It seemed to be of reddish color under the glaring flame that heightened like a powerful neon tube. It tapered from a large, arrow-like head to the other end that graduated into a tenuous thread. It was a huge, animated and red-hot spear.

Jon moved. Donalds stood frozen, his hydrosuit fixed in the ooze like a monument to the power of fear over an otherwise brave man.

Jon released a full magnesium charge, calculating automatically the flow of the current so it wouldn't carry the charge back into their hydrosuits. The flaring intensity blinded him momentarily. He saw the thing writhing up and up its white-hot brilliance fading slowly as it died.

After a while Donalds whispered. "Thanks—I—I —something happened to me, West. I froze up."

"Forget it. What was that thing?"

"Tha—it was a Chaetognatha! Look here, West, don't say anything about this, will you? I mean—"

"Of course not. What in the Deeps is a Chaetog—?"

"Chaetognatha. Something that should never've been bom. A sea worm to you. To me, pal, a nightmare! It froze me, I tell you! I couldn't blink an eyelash! West—thanks again. You saved our skins. That was good thinking—"

"That thing was really dangerous, huh?"

"Whew! Ignorance is bliss. But what you don't know can sure hurt you down here, pal. Though in this case, it was the other way around. That sea worm's one of the worst characters ever spawned out of salt water. Animated torches, that's what they are. They generate terrific heat. Contacting metal, even a hydrosuit, they could bake a guy in ten seconds! Bake him like a prawn in its shell!" Jon didn't say anything.

"But they usually dart around in big schools, light up the Deeps for thousands of yards. That's why I didn't notice. Ah, well, no excuses for junior. All I can say is—thanks, pal."

Jon had never realized how abruptly a guy could start singing a different tune. From that time on, the tough Donalds was a sugar-sweet guy.

A few minutes later, they were cabled up again in pairs and moving along the edge of an abyss. It seemed to have no farther side, and no bottom. Thompson was cabled to Jon. "There's a real trench," he said. "Kiddo, maybe there's no bottom at all to that trench."

The others drifted farther away as Jon and Thompson continued along the brink of the abyss.

The ocean bottom, divided as it was into compartments by enormous ridges or submerged plateaus alternating with areas of planes, was unpredictable in topography, and only partially mapped. The hydro-dome was built on the precise center of a huge plateau. The compartments created by these giant ridges and plateaus influenced the flow of currents, temperature and salinity even where the outlet or sill was relatively deep.

Whatever was topside, Jon thought, they had in the Deeps—but always more so. Its mountains were higher. Its valleys were deeper. Its undersea rivers far bigger. And this trench to their left must be of tremedous depth. It made him think of the Mindanao Trench, and of the mysterious Project called X. Seven miles deep. Were Mount Everest dumped into such an enormous sink, a mile or more of water would cover its crest. And

Moxson might select a few from this group to be a part of Project X.

Well, he'd put in for transfer anyway. Maybe it would come through. Then he wouldn't worry any more about any of their crazy projects. He'd be transferred back to the sunlight.

No erosion had deepened these abysses. On the contrary, they were slowly filling up, steep cliffs and rugged valleys were few. Ridges were smooth and gently sloping and sometimes straight up, but never jagged. Enormous planes and gentle rises. For down here was no erosion, no wind. But only forever a vast unbroken calm.

Everywhere around was the multicolored sediment, the dust of aeons, settled undisturbed upon the sea bottom: terrigenous sediment, or the wastage of continents. And pelagic sediment, the remains of numberless dead sea things. But what fascinated Jon most were the unceasing snowstorms.

Sam said it was caused by the minute foraminifera, though Sam hadn't used that scientific term. Jon had looked it up in the film library. The foraminifera swam about in surface waters by the uncountable millions. Their fairylike shells fluttered downward like showers or snowflakes. In the depths, all these ever-falling shells had disintegrated into a creamy paste that overlaid layers of firmer texture.

Sometimes they moved through lakes of sticky ooze that varied in hue from pure white to deep brown, gray, blue and sometimes a dull alien kind of green. Though there was never color without light refraction to bring the color out.

Jon's interest was growing. It was another world of spacious beauty and abysses where forms of uncanny brilliance and others of incredible ferocity had evolved in darkness and cold. Sea snakes more venomous-than cobras. Killers more terrible than tigers.

Sam had pointed out that the sea had more room to develop more varieties and strange forms of life than the surface world. Life up there was confined within a shallow envelope scarcely a hundred feet in depth. But the seas, which covered nearly three-quarters of the globe, supported living forms even in their profoundest depths. Hence the space they offered for the development of life was roughly three hundred times that of the surface areas.

Structural problems were simpler in the sea. Beyond a certain size, gravity imposed breaking strain upon bone and tissue up on the surface on the lands. The huge, extinct dinosaur had had to be semiaquatic to withstand the terrific pull of gravity. But the sea curbed gravity with buoyancy. Sharks, with only rubbery skeletons, sometimes exceeded fifty feet in length. The great blue whale sometimes grew beyond a hundred feet and weighed three hundred thousand pounds. Though several times larger than the largest dinosaur that ever existed on land, the whale roamed easily in the buoyant sea for thousands of miles. Also, for this reason, the sea developed tenuous forms such as the dread netfish and jellyfish and arrowworms, that couldn't exist apart from their buoyancy and moisture.

Sam had a lot of arguments to prove that the sea was the best place on earth to live.

"Still," Jon said suddenly, without thinking, "this isn't like flying to Mars!"

"Isn't it, kiddo?" Sam said.

"No. It might not be hard to sell a guy on the Deeps —if he hadn't had his heart set on the stars."

"Mars, stars, liars," rasped Sam. "Stars are mostly in a dreamer's head."

"Mars, Venus. Jupiter and her moons—"

"And all of 'em put together, Jon, don't have the scenery of the Deeps, nor its monsters, nor dangers, nor beauties. Anyway, my idea is to explore our own back yard before we go blunderin' off across the universe into other people's sand piles . . . Hey! By the Deeps—look at that mollusk!"

Jon saw a huge graying mound that was visible because it gave off a soft yet penetrating glow of auto-luminescence, a kind of bluish light that was like a giant Christmas tree bulb.

"A real mollusk!" Sam yelled hoarsely. "Same family as the snail. This one would feed fifty million Frenchmen for a year! And if—say—if there was a pearl—I'd be rich! Crazy rich! A multimillionaire!"

It did look like a snail. But a snail as big as a house.

"Listen, boy, I'm uncabling. This is illegal, so you keep my secret will you? I'll swing past that baby and intercept you up ahead away. We'll meet them over there. They're swingin' around in an arc."

"What are you going to do?"

"Stick this mari-drill into its neck when it sticks it out too far! Kill it an' leave it. In a month something will have eaten the meat out of the shell. Then I can hike back an' see if'n I got myself a pearl!"

"I'll go along, Sam. Maybe you'll need some help."

"Moxson wouldn't like it. You just keep mum about this, see. That mollusk's dangerous. They got a tongue coated with chitin like a rasp. They can bore through a hydrosuit like a high-speed drill. An' that phosphorescence is deadly."

"Okay, Sam. I won't tell."

Sam uncabled, drifted off in smooth jetting toward the mollusk. Jon envied him, in a way, his freedom as a civilian. Jon wouldn't tell.

Whatever went wrong, it happened fast. Sam was near the mollusk. He was moving warily, his mari-drill poised. Suddenly, the mollusk's glow brightened. A mass of phosphorescent flesh surged into view. A tentacle snaked out with eye-blurring speed, and he heard Sam's voice through the vibrocone crack in a tinny and prolonged scream of pain.

Then with awful abruptness, a blinding blur of gray, like a sudden dust storm on the surface, blinded Jon. A force, tremendous, overwhelming, swept him down. Jon knew in a blind and senseless panic what had hit him. He turned on the jets full. But the weight carried him on. A gray swirling wall pushed, blinded, buried. The mudslip carried him over into the abyss.

He drifted down. His jets were turned on full. But he kept dropping. Nothing was visible. He turned the beam around. There was nothing other than a thick, grayish-red smear around him. He knew which way was up. The gauge told him that. His right side was up. So he turned up the left side jet to full capacity. His fall diminished only slightly.

Only enough oxygen for a few days. Only enough power for a short time.

He wondered if even the hydrosuit could stand such pressure as might exist down toward the bottom of this abyss. That depth plus who knew how many tons of clay like lead? And even if he could stand such pressure—how would they ever find him? How would they find someone, somewhere at the bottom of a terrible abyss, beneath untold depths of sediment and clay?

Chapter 8 Hero To°Lafe

J

ON remembered what a mudslip was. He shouldVe known better than walk along die side of an abyss with a cliff rising so near to the right. The weight of sediment drifting down grew over the centuries. Suddenly, under its own weight and the pressure above, the layer of thick ooze and clay slipped toward the trench. No one knew when this would happen. It was one of those dangers of the Deeps against which there was little defense, except caution.

Men had remained buried under a mudslip for a long time before they were ever found and dug out. Many never had been found. He was still sinking. Until he actually hit bottom, the clay couldn't bury him.

He forced a degree of calmness. He never knew how, except that he remembered advice from an academy instructor who had always had advice on everything: "In an emergency when there seems no way out, remember—panic cuts off higher centers of concentration. Think clearly! Maybe there will be a way out!" Think clearly. That was a matter of degree. Can't think with utter clarity. But THINK!

He was turning chaotically, sometimes end over end as the clay, crumbling and falling in great slabs like gigantic layers from a peeled orange, tumbled him to one side then the other, spinning him with them.

It seemed that it was all in some kind of fantastic

slow motion. A slow drifting down and down through

a bluish dark, spinning, twisting, and it all seemed un-

real; maybe that was why he didn't seem to feel quite

so scared now. It was like a movie he had seen. Alice

in Wonderland. Everything falling and spinning slowly

round and round and into a crazy nowhere. A pleasant

kind of not-caring, a dreaminess, a wonderfully re-

laxed tiredness, drifted through him. His eyes

fluttered closed, remained closed for longer periods________

Voices. His father's voice. His mother's face. Those times, those years with the experimental rocket models. Those years with his brother before Carson had become a spaceman. That spaceflight test. He felt the pain, the darkness again, that awful hand pressing him down, the throbbing darkness choking, binding. . . .

A voice was yelling, awakening him. He was vaguely surprised to learn it was his own. He snapped into fearful, shivery wakefulness. He grabbed, twisted, then sucked at the new release of fresh oxygen. In a frantic earlier movement, he had twisted the valve, shut off his own oxygen.

At that moment, brain sharpened by shock, he remembered the reverse pressure gun. He was twisting slowly. On either side, huge peeled layers of red and blue clay spun. Something monstrous and luminescent seemed to peer out of an eyeless head the color of dun metal, then lunge away between peels of a giant's orange.

Jon's feet slanted down. He tilted slightly, saw that there was a narrow opening of water between turning masses of clay. He threw the pressure gun on full reverse power.

A dull, sickening smashing concussion pounded him.

The shock of smashing into the downward plunging clay buffeted him, ground him round and round. Again and again he plowed upward against the falling chunks. The continued impact was like diving repeatedly into only a partially resistant wall.

Somehow he held on to consciousness.

In principle, he was "falling" upward with terrific driving, reversed pressure. Millions of tons of pressure per square inch caused a greater and greater compression at this depth. The reverse pressure gun reconverted this compression, forced objects upward.

So great was the pressure in the Deeps that water, though nearly incompressible, is squeezed into reduced volume. Were this not so, the surface of the ocean would rise nearly a hundred feet to inundate vast areas of land. This means there is a great potential upward pressure, held down by volumes of overhead pressure. The reverse pressure gun, forerunner in principle of the great antigravity discoveries of 2500, utilized this potential upward force.

When Jon contacted a falling chunk of clay-peeling as big as a house, his upward "falling" hydrosuit continued to exert ever-increasing pressure. If the weight of the clay were too heavy, the result was agony as the pressures ground against one another. The clay was forced to one side or the other, rolling Jon until he was free to plunge forward or upward again.

The reverse pressure gun was dangerous, not easily controlled, unpredictable. For emergency use only.

He plunged upward through a swarm of giant hag-fish, or slime eels, as through a cloud of crazily flashing lights hooked up in spasmodic, alternating automatic current. With the reverse pressure gun operating at full, Jon realized that he was in somewhat the same situation as some of the deep-sea denizens that sometimes were found floating dead on the surface.

Most deep life, even the most fragile, is readily adjusted to pressure. But sometimes that balance of buoyancy was broken. Sometimes deep-sea fish, venturing too near the surface, came within the deadly surge of buoyancy and "fell" upward, their swimming bladders forced through gaping mouths.

But in this case, the buoyancy change affected only his suit, not him. The suit plunged up into more falling masses of clay with tremendous impact, stunning him. Sometimes the upward pressure of his suit and the downcoming clay's weight and pressure canceled out so that both remained locked in dread suspension. Then the ordinary jets served gradually to push and roll him to one side or the other, like a metal shaving being pushed across the surface of a magnet.

He checked the fathometer. He yelled. He was up there!

He was about on a level with the edge of the trench. But he couldn't see the edge, he could see only the darkness of the Deeps. He tried the beam, still he could see nothing but water. He adjusted buoyancy so he could stay approximately at that level, then turned slowly.

He turned the vibrocone until he caught the strongest undersea vibratory impulses: the grinding of shells against rocks, the grinding of rocks together. This indicated the nearest expanse of the plateau. He headed that way and a few hundred yards away, he found the edge of the trench. He dropped the hydrosuit on its flat and cushiony ooze. He hadn't known his position when the mudslip caught him, so he couldn't get a line on that now to determine his present position.

He started calling out SOS via sonar, angling the vibrocone slowly in all directions, rotating it in a slow circle. The Deeps looked the same in all directions. The only familiar sights anyway would have been the tractors or hydrosuits. Even the intermittent blinking of autoluminescence from undersea life gave the abyss a strange similarity. It was as though someone, depending on finding his way at night by the stars, suddenly saw all the stars begin to move around aimlessly and blink off and on.

Then he saw it. A faint glow to his left. Desperately he angled the cone for sending and receiving sonar.

"Commander Moxson! Jon West calling Commander Moxson!"

The answer came back tinnily and almost at once. "We're here, West. Watch for our signal."

Several lights blinked on in a row, flashing in a familiar code. Jon jetted toward it. Soon he was there where Moxson and the others were gathered around the giant mollusk.

Jon stared at the chrono. Onlyten minutes had passed!

Moxson and Sprague were close in to Thompson's hydrosuit. A mountain of inert flesh, pinkish and glowing, lay beside the mollusk's shell. The mollusk was obviously dead. Jon, with a catch in his throat, wondered if Thompson was.

Moxson was saying. "Is that hole patched up all right, Sprague?"

"Yes, sir. Thompson's still unconscious. He looks bad, sir."

"Everyone cable up! Marsimba and Sprague are responsible for Thompson. Back to the hydrodome at once, at full speed!"

As they moved back through the darkness Moxson said. "West, what happened to you?"

"A mudslip, sir. It carried me over the edge of the trench."

"What?"

"I forgot the reverse pressure gun for a while, sir, and I almost made a one-way trip." "Well, give me a full report soon as we get back." "Yes, sir."

Moxson seemed about as concerned about Jon's mishap as if Jon had misplaced a fork during chow-call.

Back at the hydrodome, no one mentioned West's absence during the rescue of Thompson and the killing of the mollusk. He had only been gone ten minutes. Evidently no one had been aware of what had happened to him.

Jon knew. He knew, and he was quite sure he would never forget.

After de-suiting, during the return to the barracks, Jon found out what the tension was about. And what had happened to Thompson.

The mollusk had punctured his suit with its chitin rasp, and he was very sick, maybe dying, due to phosphorescent poisoning. Moxson had said one thing to West after their return to the hydrodome: "Report to my office at 0700."

From the tone of Moxson's voice, it was obvious to Jon that he wasn't being invited to receive a medal for valor, or even a cozy chat over hot chocolate.

Steve stood beside Jon on the slidewalk, seeming to avoid Jon's eyes. He hadn't said anything. They passed the big research shed next to the hydroponic beds; the other buildings housing the big chemical and mineral-ogical labs, the power station and the cartographic station where men were busy building up relief maps of the Deeps.

They passed the museum where huge tanks contained living specimens of undersea life few people on the surface of the world would ever see.

"What's the matter now, Stevie?"

"Nothing,"

"I thought you'd be a little bit interested in how I almost took a one-way ride to the earth's core."

"Sure, I'm interested," Yeager said dully. "What happened?"

"Well, this mudslip." He stopped. Obviously, Yeager wasn't interested. He seemed embarrassed. "Well, okay then, Stevie. Forget it."

"I can't forget how Sam looked," Yeager said. "Face swollen and green. And that slug that came out of the shell—ugh!" Yeager shook his head slowly. "I hope Sam pulls out of it. Doesn't seem possible that Sam—"

"I saw the mollusk going for him," Jon said. "Just then this mudslip takes me over into the trench. How did you guys kill the mollusk anyway?" He didn't even want to think about Sam maybe dying.

"Sure, big shot!" an all-too-familiar voice said at Jon's elbow. "Now you're interested! But then you just couldn't get over there in time to add your big brain to the rescue party."

Sprague had stepped onto the slidewalk noiselessly, had overheard some of the conversation. Ayala, O'Hara and Marsimba were with him. They were combining their attitudes to give Jon one big, solid, cold stare of disapproval, if not downright contempt.

"That's right," Jon said. He was trying desperately to hold back rage.

"I hate to seem skeptical," Sprague grinned thinly, "but I find that hard to wear." "Why?"

"Your story's interesting," O'Hara said, "but nobody believes it."

"So what?" Jon said. "So you don't believe it." He stepped off the slidewalk and watched them go away from him. It was a pleasant sight, watching them go away from him. Knowing they would stay away would be even a lot more pleasant. Too pleasant a thought ever to come true.

The rest of the evening, Sprague stayed hepped up on accusations, sneers and derogatory generalizations, and specific insults. Most of the others, largely civilians, backed him up. Only Yeager and Clarence Buchanan kept out of the baiting.

Jon's nerves were scratchy. His patience had worn too thin to take much more of this. He wondered how long he could go on carrying out his promise to Moxson.

"You hid out deliberately," Sprague yelled, as they waited for chow-call. "Why not admit you were scared silly by that mollusk, ocey?"

"I've already explained it," Jon said. "Look, Sprague —why take out your resentments on me?"

"Because it's guys like you," snarled O'Hara, "who make it tough for honest guys to get into the academy, and too easy for them to get out of the academy."

"Then blame the academy, the system," Jon said. "Not me. I didn't organize the way the military operates. It was here thousands of years before I came along."

"You didn't volunteer," Marsimba said slowly. "You hid out when the mollusk went after old Sam."

Yeager was facing away from them. "I've explained how it was," Jon said again. "You guys—"

"What a coincidence," Sprague sneered. "Just as Sam gets grabbed by a mollusk, a mudslip conveniently takes West away for ten minutes, just long enough for us to take care of everything."

"Ah, let's go eat," Ayala said.

Their voices carried through the barracks. In case anyone else didn't know the details about Jon's reputed character, they sure would know about it now.

Jon started to walk away. He felt Sprague's powerful grip dig into his shoulder, spin him around. He jerked away, his fists clenched. His chest seemed heavy and leaded. He had difficulty breathing. He sighed resignedly then, got a place picked out where he would enjoy letting Sprague have it most. This was it, fellow noble adventurers and pioneers of the briny Deeps— this was the end of a lousy stay.

Jon's lips were tight and bloodless. "You've asked for it once too many times," he whispered.

"Yeah. I'm right here, ocey. Any time you say." Sprague began unzipping his shirt. He was going to take it off, leave his torso free for fighting.

"When I do," Jon said tautly, "you won't have time to take off your shirt."

"Talk's big," Sprague grinned, still pulling at his shirt. His movements were insolent, as though he was merely proving Jon's cowardice.

Jon started for him, would have hit him while Sprague's arms were still tangled in his shirt sleeve, but something stopped him. Partly his conscience. Partly Moxson's words about Sprague's sickness. But a guy could take only so much.

Then Yeager was in there all at once. And Clarence, his bony arms poised for fighting, he was in there too. Yeager opened his arms in front of Jon.

"You guys," he said, "better take it easy, or there'll really be trouble." Then he turned. Jon heard a grunt, saw the slightly bent form of Yeager. Sprague stumbled back and Yeager drove in. Jon grabbed Yeager's collar, spun him back around. "Not for me," he said tensely. "Lay off."

Sprague rubbed a reddening jaw and yelled. "What are you, Yeager? His man Friday?"

Yeager waddled back stubbornly toward Sprague. Clarence stood ready to back him up. There was a hardness, a lot of strength under Yeager's fat. He had been a four-letter man at the academy.

"You crumb," he said to Sprague, softly. Then his voice got louder, rang down between the bunks. "You take your own personal little gripes out on West. You know why he isn't belting you down to size, toughie? Because Commander Moxson told him to lay off. Sure, that's it! Ask Moxson. Get Moxson to give West the okay and see how long that grin stays on your crazy map!"

"Shut up!" Jon yelled.

But Yeager didn't. "You've had it tough, Sprague. So've a lot of others. Including guys with dough and social pull written all over their birth certificates. You'll never do yourself any good slapping West. Go take your squawks to Moxson. Get permission from him. Tell him you want permission from him to let West smack you down to size!"

Yeager turned his back on Sprague who stood there breathing heavily, his face white and drawn. He leaned heavily, wearily, against the head of his bunk.

"Come on, chum," Yeager said. "Let's go get some chow."

"Yeah, fatso, you need it!" Sprague said desperately.

Yeager laughed. "You're getting your own goat, toughie, not mine."

"You too," yelled Sprague to Clarence. "You too, jerk!"

With a little whine, like a hungry dog, Clarence's bony frame threw itself forward. His fist shot up, cracked across Sprague's cheekbone. Blood ran in a thread following the groove of Sprague's older scar. Sprague stared, incomprehending for a moment.

Clarence, still whining and jumping up and down, screamed up at Sprague. "Call me jerk again! Call me jerk again an' I'll kill you!"

"Come on! Come on, kid," Yeager said. He grabbed Clarence around the chest, hauled him backward, still kicking and struggling and clawing to get at Sprague.

Sprague stood there, still staring, looking at the blood on his fingers.

On their way to the mess hall, Clarence quieted down.

"Thanks," Jon said. "But don't you guys do it again. Stay out."

"He calls me jerk, I'll do worse next time," said Clarence.

"Yeah, I can't stand to see him stabbing at you all the time, Jon, when you can't do anything."

"That's my worry," Jon said.

They sat down. The junior officer in charge of their table nodded. Jon whispered. "And anyway, Stevie, that's not all that's bothering you. Maybe you're beginning to fall for all that stuff now yourself."

Yeager's mouth tightened, then he concentrated on the food. They didn't say any more. Jon ate mechanically, not tasting anything except the bitter acid of his own futile circumstances.

Well, there's no way out of trouble, he thought, but through it. That truism was especially true down in the Deeps, where everyone and everything were so interdependent, everyone tightly walled up together in a communal system, with survival and hard work about the only conceivable rewards. And death the only payment for failure.

He finished eating, saluted the junior officer, and left to see Commander Moxson. Did Moxson suspect him also now? He had ten minutes before the audience with Moxson. He went by to see Sam Thompson at sick bay. He realized now how much Sam really meant to him. Maybe old Sam would die.

Jon hurried now, ran toward the slidewalk leading to sick bay.

Chapter 9 ***** *

S

AM lay there on the hospital bed and managed a weak laugh. Then he whispered to Jon, "Say, reckon you didn't tell on me, did you? You didn't tell 'em about me looking for trouble with that mollusk?"

"Sure," said Jon, "as soon as we got back, I ran around blabbing to everybody!"

Sam coughed a little. "I apologize for doubtin' you." He looked bad, Jon thought. There was a greenish look under the sick grayness. "I want to make that Project X. Moxson's an old pal, but he might take Project X away from me."

"I had a little trouble with Sprague," Jon said. "But I didn't tell. Sprague won't bother me any more."

"What's the trouble now?"

Jon hesitated. Sam insisted. "Ah, he's smearing me again. Telling everyone I was afraid to help you when you ran into the mollusk. Saying I was afraid."

"Hum-m-m-m-m. By the Deeps, that puts us both on a spot! Wait now, I'll straighten that story out! I saw that mudslip get you. Once I get out of here, I'll set that story straight."

"You can't tell the truth, Sam!"

"Why not?"

"You'll get yourself in trouble. If you tell them you

saw the mudslip get me—well—they'll want to know how come you and I were uncabled. They'll want to know how it was that you were away over there and I was someplace else."

Sam's eyes widened. "Yeah," he said. "That's right, ain't it?"

"If you tell them you saw the mudslip get me, they'll know you deliberately uncabled and went over after the mollusk. You see, Sam?"

"And if I don't tell 'em, they'll be calling you a coward."

"So what? They've been doing that all along."

"I'll have to tell 'em the truth," sighed Sam. "You think I'd let you take a rap for me?"

"Now look, Sam. No matter what you say or I say, they'll still be riding me just the same. Those civilians don't like me, and they're not going to drop the ball until they've dribbled me into so many demerits I'll be sent topside with a dishonorable dischargel That's what they're after. No matter what you tell them, it won't make any difference!"

"Your career's at stake," Sam said. He sat up straighter, groaned a little. "You're going to be an officer. I ain't got anything to lose. I been in Dutch too many times to take this to heart. Nope, boy, I'm going to set them straight."

"You have Project X to lose," Jon said.

"So, I lose it—" Sam waved his arm lightly, but his voice didn't come out very strong. Then his eyes wandered, and he didn't seem to be talking to Jon at all. "Even if I was an ol' squid like O'Hara says, still I don't reckon I got much time left. Project X— ah, but there's a lot of other things a lot more important."

"Not to you," Jon whispered. "I'm sticking to the story they've cooked up for me. I don't have to say anything. I don't have to lie. If I denied the accusations, it wouldn't do me any good. If they want to think I uncabled from you and hid out because I was afraid of the mollusk, fine! And even if I could prove it wasn't so, then they'd find something else to throw."

"I'll tell them the facts," Sam said. "They'll believe me.

"They wouldn't," Jon grinned bitterly. "They'd rather believe me wrong. They'd rather think I was a coward. They want to believe that so much—well, who do you think they'd believe, you or me?

"Sam, you tell them the truth, and they'll think it's a lie anyway. They'll think you're just trying to make things easy for me. So you go ahead, Sam, and tell them the straight story. They won't believe it. If I told the truth, they wouldn't believe that either. You'll be a part of Project X, no matter what you say."

Jon turned, broke the electronic circuit that slid open the door panel. "So long, Sam. It's a cinch I won't be a part of Project X. So here's wishing you luck on it."

He went out and shut the door. His throat felt constricted and hot. If there were more guys like old Sam, it wouldn't be such a lousy world. Even the Deeps wouldn't be so bad if there were a lot more guys like old Sam Thompson.

He was resigned to his fate by the time he got over to Moxson's office. He'd gotten started off wrong, he figured, and that was the way it was going to be-right on through to the end. Maybe he didn't have much to blame but himself.

He stood stiffly before Moxson's desk.

"Having more trouble with Sprague?"

"No more than usual, sir."

"No fights or anything?"

"Nothing to speak of."

"But he's still having trouble with you?"

"It would seem so, sir."

"What happened to you there, West? You said you were in a mudslip."

Jon thought of old Sam. Sam getting old, maybe thinking he'd never live long enough to be a part of another Project like X. Maybe he was dying now. Jon said, "Sir, it's as good a story as any other, isn't it?"

Moxson's bright intense eyes, strangely magnified, studied Jon for a while. "West, the rumor's going around that you were afraid to face the mollusk. You uncabled. Hid out. Left old Sam to die."

"That's the rumor all right, sir. I've heard it enough times, sir, that I am fully aware of its existence."

"Well?"

"Well what, sir?"

"You don't deny the rumors then? You don't say much of anything about it now." "I guess that's right, sir."

Moxson leaned forward. His forehead wrinkled. "Old Sam has an obsession about pearls. Used to be a pearler back in the old days. He can't usually pass up a shell that might have a pearl in it. Now tell me— do you think it remotely possible that old Sam might have gone over there deliberately and attacked that mollusk just to find a great big pearl inside?"

"Sir," Jon whispered, "I guess you would have to ask old Sam about that."

"That's all you have to say, West?"

I—yes, sir.

Moxson stood up. "One thing we don't do in the Deeps, West—issue orders to, or discipline a man's conscience. You've had an excellent record, West. Too bad it has to be broken by a disgusting incident such as this!"

"Thank you, sir."

"You may go."

Jon saluted, turned to the door, then he turned back slowly toward his superior. "Yes?"

"Sir, just for the record, I'd like to submit my request for admission to Project X."

Moxson stared. "I suppose you know that your doing this is just a formality. With a thing like this on your record—"

"I know it's just a useless formality, sir. But still, I want it known that I volunteered." "All right, West."

As Jon left Moxson's office, he felt like a man walking from an oasis out into a desert without a map, without water or provisions, on a one-way trip to nowhere.

For long weary weeks Jon stayed to himself, avoiding conversations, studying far into the nights. He didn't see much of Yeager either. Yeager was specializing in hydroengineering and was over in the power station most of the time. Jon's specialty was oceanography, a more general, over-all and very comprehensive major, something most officers had to go through.

But Jon had learned a great deal, more than one usually expected to learn, even under the most favorable circumstances. Though the motivation for learning was one of revenge and hostility, still it. was effective. It got results. A thesis was coming up too, but he figured he wouldn't be ready for it for at least three more months. If ever. He was going to transfer out.

He finally resigned himself to being transferred out. He gave up, threw in the towel. Realizing his sick, neurotic motivations for wanting so desperately to succeed, he decided to quit trying, just relax and await transfer. Higher and higher marks wouldn't do him any good. In fact, the better he did, the louder Sprague hollered. To Sprague and his civilian gang, Jon's high marks were only another example of favoritism. No matter what he did, he couldn't win. The only thing left to do was to get out.

Listlessly, Jon went out of the barracks and stood on the low metal platform and looked up at the synthetic sun. It shone up there against the domes top, unmoving, unchanging. Hydrotractors and scooters darted here and there. A few students came out of the museum, others went into the big science building. He looked at the observation stations jutting out from the dome into the sea, their presence indicated by slightly brighter patches of light through the opaque curve of the lucinate.

A band of engineers were being carted into a water lock from somewhere, looking like weird, other-world creatures in their rounded pyramid hydrosuits. A tractor followed them into one of the water locks and then the inner lock door closed tight.

Maybe, he thought, it wouldn't have been so bad after all, if things had gotten off to a better start. But who had started things off badly? Jon West. And

Sprague had been around just to carry the ball. If it hadn't been Sprague, Jon guessed it would have been someone else.

He started for the personnel office.

Yeager yelled at him, ran to his side. "Where you heading, chum? Long time no see."

"I'm heading out of here for good. Topside. Where the sun rises and sets. Where the stars come out at night, and the moon shines on top of a nice quiet lake somewhere, and the fish are all smaller than I am."

Yeager frowned. "Ah," he whispered, "you're quitting! Not you!"

"Me. I never really started."

Jon managed a tight, cynical smile. Inside of him, emotion welled hard against the walls of a wavering poise. "My volunteering for this job was a mistake. It was running away from people. I put in for transfer and I'm going to check on it now, try to push it faster."

"You won't let yourself see what a big thing this is," Yeager said regretfully.

"I've seen too much of it, Stevie. I—I wish I could stay though, in a way."

"You got so you even doubted my friendship," Yeager said.

"Okay, forget it."

"I thought this self-pity and everything would dry up after a while."

"With Sprague and his country cousins riding me all the time! Fat chance." He gripped Yeager's arm. "If I stayed, I'd pop a cork. It would be Sprague or me. I don't blame anyone now. I'm just getting out."

"So you're letting Sprague throw you, huh?"

"You can say it that way."

"Well, you're throwing yourself, Jon. Listen," Yeager pleaded, "I've seen you ride worse toboggans than this. You're one of my oldest pals, one of the few real close friends I've got. I don't want you to quit!"

"That makes it tough all right."

"Don't kill your own chances. No one else can hurt you. I figured that by this time—"

Jon shook his head. "You like undersea duty. I don't know why, but I guess you always had a yen for it. You were studying it on the sly. But—well, I guess you never felt about spaceflight the way I did—"

Yeager's face sagged woefully. "All right, chum. I see how it is. Maybe in a way, Sprague's right. You're spoiled. You wanted the service for the gloryl It's like you've had everything you've wanted all your life. And here's the service all set up—just for old Jon West to be a hero in it. So you couldn't have a nice big candy-coated rocket to ride, while the band played, 'Hail, Jon West, the Conquering Hero!' All right, chum! So long and good luck!"

"Hey, Stevie!" Jon yelled. "Wait a minute—"

But Yeager was out of sight.

"Gosh," a voice behind him said, "pretty soon even you are going to stop being your best friend."

Jon turned slowly. Casually, as always, Ayala stood there, picking at a tooth.

"Well," Jon yelled, "what do you want?"

"Nothing, nothing at all. An even break maybe, that's about all. I couldn't help overhearing that little conversation with your friend."

"Maybe you didn't hear everything, Ayala. You want me to go over it again?"

"I'm not really interested, West. But there is one thing I'd like to get across to you. Something about your friend Yeager."

Jon grinned. "You can't hurt Yeager. He came from a poor family. He didn't have any pull, anywhere along the line, except his own."

"This is something pretty good, something you don't know. Probably won't understand it after I've told you. Maybe you're okay, West, if you were down off your high horse. I don't know. But Stevie's okay, that I know for sure. Anyway, he's sure a good buddy of yours. You see, West—I happen to know he didn't wash out on his spaceflight test."

"What?"

"I say, he didn't wash out. He passed that test."

Jon shook his head slowly, and for a moment he didn't understand it. Ayala walked away. "It seems, West, as though Stevie turned down a chance to be a space cadet, just so you two could stick together. That's real friendship, I guess."

Stevie, Jon thought. OY Stevie Yeager. He could have been a space cadet. Stevie hadn't cared about spaceflight, not more than friendship. Jon walked in a kind of daze toward the barracks, and he kept thinking about what Yeager had done.

A crowd was gathered around the bulletin board. All the familiar faces were there, and excitement crackled. No one seemed to be noticing Jon or Sprague either and the latter usually was the center of an admiring group.

The center of interest now was a list of those being taken to the Mindanao Trench.

Project X!

Somehow it didn't seem to matter much to Jon that

his name wasn't on the list. He had known it wouldn't be there. Moxson had been right. His volunteering had only been a gesture.

He kept thinking about Yeager, and what he had done. Jon tried to imagine himself doing what Yeager had—giving up something that meant as much as spaceflight, never mentioning it, making the most of some other duty. Just because of friendship.

Jon scarcely heard the voices droning around him. He scarcely saw the others tightening in around the bulletin board. He kept thinking of Yeager. Somehow, it made him feel good. Somehow, Jon knew that he was beginning to understand what Yeager had done. Not completely. But there was just a feeling as though he might be beginning to understand.

He knew that if he could understand fully what Yeager had done, he could understand a lot of other things too. He would understand guys like Sprague, and Clarence Buchanan. And maybe he would understand himself too. And if he had understood from the first what Yeager had felt and done, then Jon knew that he would never have had any trouble in the Deeps.

"And I'd be a part of Project X," he thought, "if I could feel whatever Yeager felt when he did what he did—"

CV I\J To Save a Continent

PRAGUE'S voice filtered through the haze of mixed feelings as Jon stood there at the edge of the crowd. "Well, there's big-wheel West. Congratulations, ocey!" Even for Sprague, the bitterness was deep.

The other voices died out. Jon shook his head. He didn't get it at all.

Sprague laughed bitterly. "You see, fellas, here's a guy who's been proven incompetent, a coward, and a liar. He's been called on a very soft carpet, just for the sake of appearance. But when the list's made up for Project X, and the big trip to the Mindanao Trench, who's included, friends? One guess. None other than Mr. West's prize gift to the United Nations, Jonnie boy. There he is, friends. Ask him. Ask him how much it cost his old man!"

Jon pushed through.

"Now he pretends it's a big surprise. That he didn't know a thing about it."

Jon kept staring at the list. All he knew was that his name was up there. It made no sense at all. Under the circumstances, he could hardly blame Sprague for being suspicious. Sprague's name was there. Ayala. Marsimba. Yeager. O'Hara. And—Jon leaned closer— 'way down on the list, even Clarence Buchanan's name.

But Sam Thompson's wasn't there.

Sprague's voice rose to a hoarse yell. "Even the jerk's there. Why? Because he's West's man Friday!"

Jon forced his way out of the crowd. He didn't hear them as he walked away like a man in a trance. He didn't talk to anyone about it, not for a while. He knew that he would have to find out the answer. Maybe Sprague was right. Maybe, unknown to Jon, strings were being pulled from somewhere on top.

He tried to see Sam, but there was no time. They were moving out.

And in a short time a special sub left for the far deep trench of Mindanao and Project X. En route, they were briefed as to the nature of Project X. The information was astounding and fully justified the build-up that rumor and Old Sam Thompson had given it. Old Sam who wouldn't be a part of it.

Jon stayed in his compartment, mostly on his bunk, studying the briefing bulletins carefully. But Sam Thompson's face kept superimposing itself over the bulletins. It was very distracting. Impulsively, Jon jumped down to the mesh-grid deck.

"Where you off to now, chum?" Yeager said. He yawned sleepily.

"To see Moxson. I've got to know why I was selected."

"You're with us," Yeager said. "Better let well enough lie, or whatever the saying is."

"Sleeping dogs lie. Well enough alone. Anyway, I've got to know what really happened."

"We're on our way now, why worry? Let it alone!"

Jon ignored Yeager arid went out into the passageway. As he made his way slowly, somewhat reluctantly, toward Moxson's quarters, he felt the incredible nature of Project X stirring like fever in his blood.

The Project's purpose was to prevent a series of earthquakes that otherwise would strike disastrously at the North American Continent. That most earthquakes originated somewhere on the vast ocean floors had long been suspected by seismographers. Now it was a known fact. The cause was known. Project X would remove the cause.

The great historical quakes which had brought such destruction to the North American Continent had found their origins in the colossal lakes of molten lava and radioactivity under the ocean floor, in the general area of which the dread Mindanao Trench was the center. There was great urgency involved, a rigid time factor. The most devastating earthquakes in history were due within three months. The seismographic experts had known that fact for some time, ever since the beginning of Project X. All previous earthquakes, as bad as they had been, were only preliminary tremors compared with what was to come—unless prevented by Project X.

Canada, North America from the west coast to the Rockies, and South America to the Andes would be devastated. Cities would turn to rubble. Millions would die. And the worst part of the disaster would center on the West Coast of the United States. The San Andreas fault, which had revealed itself during the terrible California quakes of the past, would fault again. But this time, the fault would be one of those earth-wrenchings that had changed the face of the world, that had caused continents to sink and others to rise, that had turned inland areas into seas and seas into deserts.

The San Andreas fault cut across California at an angle. During the next and final climactic quake, this fault would split farther. So far that a large part of Southern California would be cracked completely away from the mainland and be set adrift, a crumbling mass of death and smoking ruin.

Project X would definitely prevent this disaster. If the Project could be finished in time.

He had to wait five minutes outside Moxson's door. A light there warned him that Moxson's quarters were being sterilized by ultraviolet light floods. Then he went in.

Moxson turned slowly away from the observation port and looked at Jon.

"Sir, I volunteered for Project X. I felt there was no chance at all that my request would even be considered. Here I am. I would like to know why, sir."

"Why? Listen, West, maybe you yourself are beginning to think maybe someone topside is pulling some wires for you."

"I don't know, sir. But it bothers me. And I've been thinking about Sam—"

"Wondering if Sam told me the facts, huh? Yes, he told me the facts."

"Not facts, sir. But his explanation. That's what I'm interested in."

"He told me the truth, including facts. He verified your original story about the mudslip." Moxson smiled. Jon had never seen him smile before. It made him look almost human.

"Old Sam will never grow up. Maturity isn't a matter of age. And Sam's a good example of that fact. But he has a greater knowledge of the Deeps than any man I know. There's something to be said for a man never growing up. Plato said that the only true philosophers were youths. And I think the same thing's true largely of pioneers. The spirit of adventure drives men to new frontiers. But growing up usually drowns that spirit. I think the frontiers belong to the young, and to the older people who never grow up. Ah, what do you think about that, West?"

"There's truth in what you say, sir, no doubt about it. But Sam deserved Project X more than anyone else I know. A lot more than I deserve it, sir."

"No one in the service ever got a demerit for loyalty," Moxson said. "Whether you like it or not, there is a chance you might turn into a first-rate Deepman."

"Thank you, sir. But—but about Sam. It meant so much to him. The idea of his being left behind—"

"The old codger got what he deserved, West. You worry about yourself for a while. Logically and intelligently, that is."

The tone of Moxson's voice was now one of dismissal. He handed a paper to Jon. "On your way back to your compartment, will you drop this off at compartment eight? Give it to the compartment chief."

"Yes, sir." Jon saluted and left.

As he broke the electronic circuit to open the hatch into compartment eight, the voice rolled loudly past his ears. But it didn't sound real. It couldn't be real! He was having hallucinations! Or maybe a tape-recording—

"Roll on, oh deep and dark blue ocean, roll! Ten thousand fleets sweep over you in vain; Man marks the earth with ruin—his control Stops with the shore—"

"Sam!" Jon yelled. He ran across the compartment. Sam gripped Jon's shoulders. His prominent Adam's

apple bobbed in a chuckle. He stepped back. "Well, kiddo, see you made it. Here's my hand!"

Jon gripped the hand hard. "But, Sam, I thought you—you were back at hydrodome headquarters, exiled for your sins."

"Ah, Moxson couldn't face Project X without me. He figured this was the easiest way for him, that I'd stow away or something desperate. Here, I'll take that paper, kiddo. I'm the compartment chief you're looking for." Sam winked.

"Hey, what is this anyway?"

"It's simple," Sam said. "I promised to be a good civilian from now on. And I gave him my word you'd be a good Deepman. Oh, I had to talk a blue streak all right! But I finally convinced him. But let me warn you! You an' I are strictly on probation. We've got to measure up this time, and no mistake about it!"

Jon sat down. "Well, I'll be! Say, Moxson must really be a great guy!"

"There's none better. Listen, kiddo. I was a guide for an océanographie expedition once. Moxson was a little ol' shavetail lieuy. Young punk with topsoil in his ears and sunlight in his eyes. We got trapped by an undersea drift and pocketed in a coral cave alongside a squid big enough to smoke this sub like a cigar.

"Well, Moxson was sayin' his prayers. But I had this chemical gun. This gadget wasn't even in official use yet, so no officer would even admit there was such a thing. It was something us ol' prospectors had rigged up.

"Well, I let go with this chemical charge, and it ate that squid right up! It combined with the monster's own infernal juices! Needless to say, kiddo, Moxson was impressed with civilian genius. 'Specially mine."

Sam gazed at the wall. But to him, Jon knew, it wasn't a plate of lukenite, but a wall of the past and Sam was looking through it. "01* Moxson an' I've had our times in the Deeps. I guess he ain't forgot."

Jon said after a while, "Thanks, Sam, for telling the truth. You still took a big chance. Guess we're pals again then, huh, Sam?"

"Sons of the ocean Deeps," Sam said.

Ten hours later they contacted the hydrodome. Jon rushed to his compartment's observation panel.

"We're here!" yelled Ayala, showing some excitement for the first time that Jon could remember.

"Think of it!" Marsimba said in his deep basso. "At the bottom of the Mindanao Trench. Seven miles down!"

Jon saw the familiar dull glow of the hydrodome. Here man was deeper into the bowels of the earth than he had ever been. Flickering spots of light blinked off and on in that familiar pattern. Even at this awful depth there was life. Flashes of brighter flame arced. Jon realized that a lot of this light out there wasn't natural to the Deeps. It was man-made.

There were indications of a lot of activity surrounding this hydrodome. A stream of hydrotractors, and loaded marine vans, and hydrosuits moved in a steady stream in and out of the water locks.

"Project X," Jon whispered. "And we're in it. To save a continent."

He felt the atmosphere and general tone of this new hydrodome a lot different than that at headquarters. Here was an intense, unceasing, feverish activity. The same suspended synthetic sun shone. Men worked in unending shifts around a clock of arbitrary time. Here

there was only sleeping time, study time, and working time. There were facilities for relaxation: a theater, gymnasium, music-spool and film libraries. But few took advantage of these. There were fifteen hundred workers in this center of Operation X. They had been a year on the job. And the dome, originally built for observation purposes, had been built five years before.

Most of the workers were experienced men. The new arrivals from hydrodome headquarters were soon apprenticed off to veterans.

Jon quickly absorbed the full and incredible magnitude of Project X.

The apprentices and cadets were taken on field trips, given quick surveys of the entire project, then separated into specialized groups where the rest of the orientation was gained through actual experience.

Jon, Ayala and Clarence Buchanan were being shown the tricks of manipulating a remote-reacting Geiger. It was one of those shafts which had already been completed, and it was out of sight of the hydro-dome. The shaft, which was a giant hole drilled down through the rock bottom of the Trench, was bordered by a metal fence located near the edge of a small dome about twenty feet across. Inside were the three youths and an officer named Martinique.

Martinique was a small, nervous individual who filled the precious artificial air of the small dome with the smoke of an ill-smelling black cigar.

"We've sunk three hundred of these shafts," Martinique said. "I guess it's the biggest engineering job in history. First we had to get through the ooze and the clay, expose the rock, then drill the shafts. Three hundred shafts in a big circle."

Jon and the others already knew why.

Much radioactive rock had been found in the Deeps. It was also found that under the clay and ooze was a thin shell of rock. Beneath this rock were molten seas of boiling seething stuff, and churning lakes of radioactivity. These masses of molten stuffs built-up tremendous pressures that had to have an outlet, like steam compressing in a colossal boiler. The result was giant subterranean explosions. Explosions that ran off under the world through hidden conduits, seeking outlets through volcanos, manifesting themselves eventually and inevitably in earthquakes.

It had long been known that the faulting of the earth's surface had caused the destruction during an earthquake. Various theories had been advanced as to what caused the faults. Now the cause was known. Pools of molten rocks, lakes of lava, seas of hidden radioactive stuff building up pressure over the aeons. And finally they had to seek and find an outlet.

It had been known that a great proportion of the worlds earthquakes had been traced, through seismo-graphic research, to sources under the oceans. Nearly the entire continental rim of the Pacific basin is aquiver with underwater volcanos, some frequently active, some extinct. And Deepmen had traced the source of most of North America's destructive earthquakes to this area under the Pacific.

Here, the hidden rock layer under the clay and ooze, though denser and heavier than that on land, was much closer to the molten seas of destruction underneath than was any other spot in the world. In fact, at no place other than the bottom of the Mindanao Trench could these hidden seas of molten stuff be tapped. The bottom of the Mindanao Trench was the basement floor of creation. So—three hundred shafts drilled through the basement floor. Three hundred shafts forming a circle two miles in diameter.

"Atomic bombs will be placed at the bottom of each shaft," Martinique was saying. "The result will be a hole through the floor of the Trench, when the atomic bombs are fissioned. The hole will be two miles across. Millions of years of pent-up pressure under us right now. Earthquakes that have bothered the continents up to this time have been mere tremors.

"The big ones are to come—but we're going to release the energy right here, harmlessly. When the atomic bombs fission, the result will be the forming of a giant well here, that will tap this subterranean, suboceanic sea of pent-up destruction.

"The released molten mass of rock, radioactivity and steam will be dissipated relatively harmlessly into the thousands of miles of Pacific Ocean. And much of it will remain right here in the Mindanao Deep."

"How about tidal waves?" Ayala asked.

"A big tidal wave will result all right," Martinique said. "But the continents will be warned of that. Precautions taken to reduce the damage as much as possible. Preparations are already being made. At worst, the damage will be only a fraction of what the earthquake would cause."

They were inside the small dome near the shaft. Control lights flickered through a bank of dials and levers, gauges and meters. They were, of course, out of their hydrosuits which, in this instance, connected directly to the surface of the dome, by an interconnecting water lock, allowing the youths to crawl into the dome and back out again into the suits. The emptied hydrosuits waited outside, fastened to the dome, like sentinels.

"We sink the shafts," Martinique was saying, "and the danger lies in the radioactivity below. We don't drill all the way through of course. We leave a safe margin of rock thickness. And that thickness varies. Hence the remote-reacting Geigers. We judge our depth by the intensity of radiation from below. And we know when to stop drilling. We leave a skin of rock strong enough to restrain the pressure below, but thin enough so that the atomic bomb explosions will shatter through it."

"What would happen," Jon said, "if you accidentally drilled one shaft too deep?"

Martinique shook his head, expelled an obnoxious cloud of smoke. "It would be the end of Project X, of you and me and the hydrodome. We've got to be a long way from here when the timing mechanism sets off these atomic bombs. We still have a number of shafts to drill. And we're running short of time. They know when the big quakes are due to come off. We've got to beat mother nature to the punch."

Sure, Jon thought. The whole idea in science was to learn enough about nature and the forces of environment to control them. To predict and then control. But this seemed to Jon to be a little too big. How big could man be? How vast could be the reaches of his control?

They crawled through the interconnecting lock, back into their hydrosuits.

They on-cabled, started for the hydrodome.

Darkness swirled around them, a solid wall of eternal night. The awful feeling of isolation pressed in hard from all sides.

He heard the warning from Ayala—a metallic scream out of darkness.

"There! Santa Maria, look!"

Jon heard the sonar warning.

"Allworkers into nearest dome! All workers into nearest dome! Tidal wave! All workers—"

They were trying to jet around, back toward the small dome, when the tidal wave hit.

Somewhere near, under the sea, an earthquake had faulted the ocean bottom. Through the darkness, a wall of illimitable force rushing.

A roaring sounded in Jon's head. A roaring, twisting darkness. Up against the lucinate was a roily, reddish-black mass. He was lifted, dropped, lifted, hurled in blind bullet-speed. His head pounded against the lucinate. Red and white lights exploded before his eyes, and furry wheels turned dully in his skull.

The lights receded, getting smaller and smaller.

Then there was only darkness.

CkaptCt // lost in fne Deeps

n BLUE glow faded round, back and forth and then strengthened. Jon groaned and blinked his eyes.

I The hydrosuit was still. Over it was the silent dark. He yelled. He didn't get any answer except his own voice echoing thunderously through the interior of the hydrosuit. He couldn't see Ayala out there anywhere. But Clarence Buchanan was still cabled to him. As far as Jon could see in any direction, even with the beam's aid, there was nothing but darkness.

He tugged at the cable. He moved nearer, and behind the lucinate, Clarence's thin face drooped white and still, the eyes closed. He could be dead in there!

He might be. But how could you tell?

The emergency oxygen control valve was outside the suit. The gauge was there too. Clarence's oxygen supply was all right. He watched Clarence's thin chest intently. Finally he saw a slight movement. Clarence was alive. But he sure seemed seriously hurt. There should be some way to try to revive him, but there was none. Again, he probed about with the beam. Nothing familiar to indicate where he might be in the Deeps. No sign of the hydrodome, or of the Project's works. Nothing.

He tapped one of the hydrosuit's appendages against Clarence's suit. He repeated the youth's name over and over. No response. He turned the vibrocone slowly

in a circle, sent out a sonar SOS. He did this for twenty minutes.

There was no response.

To get one's bearings on the ocean floor, you had to have a reference point, relative and known in relationship to the point to be determined. And whatever direction the hydrodome was from here—well, any kind of high ridge would block sonar.

"Jon—"

He pushed close. Clarence's eyes blinked. Then the boy stared, incomprehending, then he managed a weak smile. Jon saw the blood then. A little line of it unthreading from the corner of Clarence's mouth.

"You hurt bad?"

"Don't know," Clarence gasped. "Think maybe I— I am."

"I can't get in there to help. I can't do much." "You've done plenty for me, Jon. Listen, where are we?"

"Can't tell. No way to tell." Jon pushed hard against threatening panic. "Can't get bearings. No idea how far we were carried, or in which direction. I'd say we kept on going east. Remember—they said the wave was coming from the west."

"A tidal wave—"

Clarence coughed fitfully. Jon pretended not to notice it. "Yeah. You never know when one's coming until they're on top of you. Small quake around here somewhere did it. Section of the ocean floor lifted maybe ten or twenty feet. Millions of tons of water seeking its own level. We got it that's all. We sure got it!"

"Easy, Jon," Clarence said softly.

Jon fiddled with the controls. He noticed the broken wire dangling, the cracked glass, the lifeless gauges. Grimly he tested the jets. Then he stopped testing and stared through the lucinate at Clarence.

"This hydrosuit's shot to pieces. Oxygen works okay. Only two jets work, and they're jammed so you can't angle them at all. When I try the other two, power just leaks out and fouls up the atmosphere in here. Two jets—and they're not maneuverable. My reverse pressure gun's broken, Listen, Clarence, we're really in a jam! No joke!"

He made a few trial efforts. It was more than awkward. It was practically impossible. It was something like a fly with one wing. He could jet in big jumps, coast with momentum a ways, and fall to the ocean floor slowly. He couldn't control direction. Balancing in sustained movement was impossible.

He came back to Clarence. "Buck—you too weak to work your jets?"

Sweat shone on Clarence's thin face. He finally whispered apologetically, "I can't move, Jon. I'm sorry— I—I can't move. It—it hurts—"

"Don't move, then! Don't! Forget it! Okay, Buck, we've been carried about five miles. My speedometer's been working. It's measured off five miles. That's not so bad, if we only knew what direction. If we could only get a sonar signal!"

"You've tried to contact the hydrodome? Sure you did. I can't figure out—"

"I can't either. Maybe a ridge blocking off sonar. It won't go through rock."

"What can we do, Jon? I—I'm no help." A funny little laugh came out of the boy's bleeding mouth. "I owe you so much, pal. And now I can't pay off. Can't pay off at all."

"Forgetit, will you? It isn't your fault! We can manage some way. Buck, I'm cabling you on my back. The added weight won't matter. Okay—"

Clarence'sthin lips moved wordlessly. Then he coughed. The sound racked in Jon's suit. "Here goes, Buck."

Hemanipulated the pinchers with the skill he had developed, ran the cable through the gravetic hooks on Clarence's hydrosuit, drew the cable taut and set the clamp. A sharp, suppressed groan came from Clarence.

"Youokay?" Jon couldn't look back. Clarence was now cabled tightly against his back.

"Sure,"Clarence whispered. "I'm fine. But now— which way?"

"Whenwe're kids," Jon said, "they say some of us have a natural ability—that we know about direction, I mean. Primitive instinct, or something."

"Instinct—maybe.But one of your profs would hate a word like that."

"Theycan't disprove instinct. Its something to depend on when there's nothing else. But I used to spin myself like a bottle. And then I could always tell the direction."

"Sure,Jon, way back ten years ago when we were kids. We remember things we'd like to think happened. But I-"

"Anyway,Buck, I'm going in the direction I think the hydro dome is."

"Ifyou're wrong, we'll go a long way before we have to stop."

"Notso far. These hydrosuits aren't made to stay out in the Deeps long. We run out of power and oxygen before we get too tired going in the wrong direction."

"Better than staying here." "That's right." "So let's go!"

"Instinct," Jon said. "Maybe away back when people were living in caves, or before that, when there weren't any compasses or anything, a man had an extra sense that told him which way to go."

"Back then, a man didn't have to go anyplace much," Clarence said. "And anyway, he had the sun and the stars."

Jon didn't say anything for a moment. He was thinking about the pest, the lonely, frightened kid everyone had called jerk. He was smart. He had shown plenty of ability. All he'd needed was a chance. Must be a lot of guys like that around, Jon thought.

"Loqk there," he said. "That wall of rock! It goes straight up and we can't see the top. Maybe it's just a ridge a few hundred feet high. But I've got a hunch it's the side of the Trench. If that's true, then it's a cinch we go in the opposite direction."

Jon bounced sonar from the rise of rock, checked the distance. "That's several thousand feet up," he yelled in triumph. "That must be the wall of the Trench!"

"Well, then we do go in the opposite direction, Jon!" "Okay. Let's jet!"

He threw in his right jet, tried to control it somewhat with the other jet that worked. He went up, up and curved through darkness and then a swarm of flaming eyes as a school of life drifted by. He had his sonar sender and receiver rotating constantly, sending out SOS, tuned to catch any hint of the presence of the hydrodome. The vibroreceiver was set at maximum sensitivity. This resulted in his picking up much of the weird, constant sounds of life under the sea: buzzings, growlings, grindings.

The jet was never in control. The suit started rotating round and round. He killed the jet and arched down again.

"We made a hundred feet," Jon said. "Here we go again."

It was heartbreaking business. After three more gyrating, zigzagging hops, Clarence didn't say anything. Jon called his name. No answer. They settled quickly and quietly to the bottom. Finally Clarence whispered weakly: "I can't take it! I passed out! Something broken loose inside me somewhere—I—I can't take it—"

"You can take it, Buck. Any idea what's the matter?" "I—I can't tell—it hurts—"

"You'll be okay. We'll find the hydrodome. We've got food concentrates, oxygen and plenty of power to last—well—long enough."

"Wish I could help, Jon. I can't—can't even move—"

Jon stared through the lucinate. An enormous mass, phosphorescent and pulsating, moved toward him. His blood froze and he recognized two gigantic devilfish. They were gone suddenly, leaving him in a cold sweat.

A burst of cold bluish flame was around him then. Millions of luminous spots shone brightly.

Jon blasted again, arched through the sudden and inexplicable gathering of creatures. Then the suit sat there on the bottom. And Jon stared, momentarily paralyzed, by the sight of the monster drifting toward them.

"A gulper!" he whispered.

It was all mouth. It was glowing, heavily lighted up to attract some meal from the darkness. Its body was twenty feet long, but ninety percent of that body was mouth that gaped and yawned. And inside was a ghastly row of teeth, so big that the mouth could never close altogether—a kind of prison with the teeth as bars.

"... and we'll probably die in jail, boys, Behind a GULPER'S bars

Now and then the mouth shut on some large fish which was then trapped alive, still visible behind the gulper's teeth. Then the thing's expanding stomach absorbed its prey leisurely. More and more fish swam into the mouth that swept along like a huge trough. And as it did so, the expandable stomach grew larger and larger until finally the incredibly hungry monster was out of sight.

"Did you see that one!" gasped Jon.

"You mean did I have a nightmare? Yes."

"Everything down here's made to eat something else, and that's all."

"And now," Clarence said, "we're part of the setup."

"All right, brace yourself, Buck. Here we go again!"

And the thing came suddenly out of the interminable blackness.

It was there with an awful and total suddenness. And they were caught up in the trap made by eight arms as big around as average-sized trees.

Jon jetted full power, felt the arms slide away. He jetted wildly again, knowing that if the great cuttlefish ever wrapped him up in those eight arms, he was finished. Like almost all creatures of the Deeps, this particular form of cuttlefish was electrified.

"Keep going, keep going!" Clarence yelled over and over.

As Jon's hydrosuit spun aimlessly, unable to maintain any balance, he saw the cuttlefish in pursuit. It was fifty feet long, swimming crossways, watching with enormous phosphorescent green eyes. Its eight arms were fixed to its head. That gave the name of cephalopod to it, but Jon thought, who really cares. The arms, or feet, were twice as long as its body, twisted like a Fury's hair. One could see the three hundred or so airholes in the inner side of the electrified tentacles that were hot enough, when the juice was full, to fry a man inside a hydrosuit. The tiling's mouth was shaped like a parrot's beak, but horned and enormous. When it opened vertically, its tongue, a great lump-covered substance with several rows of pointed teeth, came quivering out from this veritable pair of shears. Its spindle-like body formed an expanse of fleshy area, varying in color that changed rapidly as it moved.

"It's gaining!" Clarence screamed.

Chapter 12 w°yBack

ON was trying to remember something, something very important. But his mind wasn't operating so

y

well. If only the jets worked, just for a while, then he would be a long way from that cuttlefish in short order. But they didn't work. And whatever it was he was trying to remember—it had nothing to do with jets. He jetted again, shot fifty feet. The cuttlefish gained ten feet.

This time, Jon didn't let the hydrosuit drop to the bottom. He kept jetting. When any part of his suit rotated around in such a position that one of the two operating jets pointed somewhat toward the cuttlefish, Jon let go with full power. It worked, kept him away from the monster, for a while. But he couldn't maintain a direction straight away from it. It kept gaining rapidly. Sweat streamed down his face. His stomach knotted. There was a pain in his throat like a hot cauter there, and he felt that pressing glacial fever of terror and aloneness. Icy and empty and alone and all around that interminable darkness—

"Jon—it's almost got us!"

Jon knew that, lie was trying to remember something. That story Sam had told him, that was it! One of a thousand yarns—Jon yelled. He did remember.

But everyone said Sam's yarns were mostly fiction.

Jon had never doubted the authenticity of Sam's "tall" stories. He only hoped now they weren't lies. He would test the truth of one of them. If he lived long enough.

The cuttlefish, too, was afraid. Eat to live—the motto of the Deeps. But live so you can go on eating—that was another.

No matter how gigantic and ferocious a monster of the Deeps was—there was always another bigger, more ferocious.

The squid, Sam had said! The squid! It was the most formidable creature of the Deeps.

But the squid feared the blue whale which dived down miles to feed upon the squid. And the whale, in turn, was killed by man.

And even the giant cuttlefish, eventually, unless it was very lucky, became a prey for something else. And now Jon remembered what it was.

The giant lobster!

The fifty-foot lobster of the sea bottom that always waited for the cuttlefish. Its great pincers that could sever a cuttlefish's arms like scissors cutting thread!

Jon looked about desperately. Frantically, he shot with the jets in all directions, barely avoiding the cuttlefish's snaking arms. The monster's phosphorescent bluish radiance grew brighter, more intense with its hunger and rage. Jon saw one then. He'd seen plenty of them before. But now, when the need was so great, he considered himself lucky to find even one. Doubts sent an awful emptiness swirling through him as he managed one powerful push of the jets that sent him arching toward his goal.

It was all based on Sam's tale. It might never work for anyone else. Maybe it had never really worked for Sam either.

It wasn't anything to think about now. It was the one last chance. If it didn't work, there wouldn't be another.

By maneuvers that were mostly accidental, like a crazed dog-fighting aircraft from the first big war, Jon managed to gain about fifty yards on the cuttlefish. He had the hydrosuit twisting slowly as it settled so that the jets would be aiming in every possible direction enabling him again to jet toward the lobster. This time he settled near it.

The red chitin shell of the thing towered up in a graceful curve, high and mottled and covered with crusted coral, like a big suit of crimson armor.

"Buck. You hear me?"

"Sure—"

"We've got a minute maybe to tiy this. We're in position for it. Try your best—one little blast with that back jet! Just one—"

"I'll try."

The hungry luminescence of the cuttlefish brightened. The giant arms wriggled. The beak yawed. "Hurry! Buck—" "I—I'm trying—"

Jon had the right angle. He could see the opening in the side of the lobster's shell. He blinked sweat from his eyes.

"Buck-"

"I'm—trying—"

"Now—Buck—hurry! Now! NOW!"

Jon felt the blast, grabbed. He tore at the slitted opening, raked down with the metal arms of his hydro-suit. The steel hooks tore, ripped. He got the opening widened.

"Again—" he pleaded. "One more—"

"Sure—" came Clarence's small fading voice. "Sure-one—one more—"

The cuttlefish loomed over him. Its shadow from its own phosphorescence clouded the light from the interior of the hydrosuit. Its huge disk-eyes blazed. The beak gaped wider. The horned tongue licked out. Jon sobbed as the jet pushed again, gently at first, then with a sudden, powerful thrust that hurled both of them against the opening in the lobster's shell.

Darkness.

"Buck! We made it! We're through the wall!" He kept the beam off. "Buck, now let's pray that the idea works! No light—" Clarence didn't answer. "You okay, Buck?"

Outside the dark interior of the shell, the cuttlefish's luminescence increased in intensity. Then he heard Clarence's whisper. "Dark—I'm—blind—"

"We're all right—so far, Buck!"

"Where are we?"

"Inside a lobster's shell."

"What?"

"The cuttlefish's afraid of lobsters. A lobster can kill a cuttlefish and eat it in seconds flat. Now I'm hoping the cuttlefish will shy away from here and leave us alone."

"Inside a lobster's shell," Clarence whispered. "You sure we aren't inside a lobster?"

"Sure I'm sure! Got the idea from old Sam. This chitin shell's like iron. You see these giant lobsters' bodies grow, but their shells don't. So they have to shed their shells periodically. Maybe you've noticed that the sea bottom's covered with a lot of lobsters, all sizes."

"But how could you be sure this one was empty?"

"It's color's lighter. I only hope the cuttlefish can't tell the difference, like Sam said, and gets scared and goes away."

Suddenly the intense light around the lobster was gone.

"There it goes," Jon said. "We did it!" "Let's go too," Clarence said. "Maybe the inside of the lobster will come back for a visit." "They don't do that."

"Maybe lobsters never heard of that phrase,. . you can't go home again.'"

"We'd better move along, just in case," Jon said.

A few experimental pushes and the jet pushed them out of the lobster's shell. Then they began the series of awkward, arching leaps through the darkness.

"I've been thinking," Jon said, "about why we can't get any sonar through. Maybe there's no rock barrier at all. Maybe the hydrodome's in some kind of trouble."

"Could be. But what?"

"Anything. Anything can happen in the Deeps."

They went on, in that slow, awkward, seemingly futile way. They went on for a long time. It seemed as good a direction as any. Better than none at all. Jon didn't talk with Clarence any more, and that silence also went on for a long time. Once in a while, Clarence whispered weakly, but Jon only mumbled a reply. Talking wouldn't help the kid conserve his strength.

Finally Clarence brought up the subject of oxygen and power again. "It isn't going to last much longer, Jon. It can't last much longer!"

"I know that!" Jon shouted. "Don't I know that?"

"I'm sorry. I guess you'd know that . . . same as I know it."

Jon yelled. The yawning maw of the abyss had opened abruptly under him like a waiting mouth.

Wildly, he threw in the side jet. This turned his body even as it hurled him to the right. As his body spun, he threw the power on again, and barely managed to reach the edge, a foot from the brink into which he might have plunged.

"That was close," Clarence said.

Jon flashed his beam, then killed it. "No sign of any farther side. So it's well over a hundred yards across. Now for a sounding."

He got a sounding with sonar. "Buck—it's several thousand feet deep and it slopes down. That means we're in a real spot."

"We were anyway."

"If my jets all worked, we could move right across. And if the pressure gun worked, we wouldn't have to worry, even with the jets the way they are."

"Or if I could do you some good, Jon. I never did anybody much good."

"Take it easy now, Buck. We're not licked. We could drop to the bottom of this chasm, go across and up the other side. But we'd never get anywhere in time to do ourselves any good. That's too long a trip. I can't control movement enough to try to jet across. We'd end up down in there somewhere. We've got to figure a way."

"Long as we don't know for sure which way to go, why not just follow the edge of this trench?" "Might as well."

"We'll still be going—somewhere." "Buck, can you manage to eat some of those food concentrates?"

"I've—tried to. I can't make it! I can't move, I tell youl" Clarence stifled a groan. "Maybe we could build a magnesium fire, have broiled lobster."

"Sure, lobster thermidor" Jon said. "Only the water-into-champagne converter isn't working. You have to have that with lobster thermidor."

"Never thought of that."

Neither of them spoke for what seemed hours. Jon thought about their position, and he thought about a lot of other things too. It was a time for the mind to run aimlessly over things, touching important facets of a hundred fading memories lightly, then passing on. It was the kind of chaotic stream of consciousness that a dying man might indulge himself in, Jon thought. But it didn't seem to mean anything as far as solving this enigma was concerned. It was, he thought, a kind of frantic attempt to relive the past to make up for a short future. But also it was a desperate attempt to think of a way out.

He thought about Carson, who had made it to Mars by now. Maybe he was starting back to earth, millions of miles out in clean, clear space. They could die out there in space too, but maybe it wouldn't be so bad dying out there—where a man could see the earth, the moon and sun and a few million stars and the magnificent promise of man's future.

But this—it was like being buried alive. Under a million miles of thick darkness. Out in space a man could die, and sometimes, maybe after a long time to be sure, but sometime—they could find him. But here—

Jon felt rage—at himself. Self-pity. That was what they had said about him. Selfish. Spoiled. Down here crying because he was in a tough spot. Crying because things weren't working out just right for Jon West.

A lot of men had died in space, in the Deeps, in the service. Why should be consider himself any differently? If he could get out of this, if he could survive this, fine—but if he couldn't—well—just because his name was West, that didn't make him any more immortal than anyone else.

To his knowledge, there weren't immortals around these days.

What had he joined the UN Services for anyway? He had been asked that. He hadn't joined so he would have a nice, warm, safe, comfortable berth to die in, that was for sure! So they had been partially right at least. That was all he had wanted: adventure. A flashy crimson unifonn. The bands playing when he came flashing in from Mars.

In a way, yes, Sprague had been right.

Finally Clarence said, "I've got an idea."

"Fine."

"We float up to the surface. Only seven miles. Maybe we'd be spotted by a ship, or maybe we'll come out close to some islands. We've got some jet power. We can move a little up there."

"How do we get up there, Buck?"

"Just—float up." Clarence laughed a little. It was a twisted, wild kind of laugh. "We'll be spotted by a ship, or maybe come out close to some islands . . . oh, I said that. . . and then ... up there lying on an island . . . when I was little ... in the orphanage, I used to think of being on a tropical island some day ... on white sand in the sun . . . coconuts . . . bananas . . . dancing girls . . . and whether we found an island or not . . . sunlight . . . warm winds . . . under a blue sky . .."

"We can't get up there," Jon said. "Reverse pressure gun doesn't work. Our jets won't work any better

getting us straight up seven miles, than straight ahead down here. We'd just end up suspended somewhere between Hades and heaven. And then after it was all over, we'd gradually float back down—to here."

"Well—anyway, I always thought, ever since I was a kid ... about an island . . ."

"This is where we're serving, Buck. So this is where we'll fight it out."

"You're right. Sure you're right. I was just dreaming. I used to dream a lot. Everybody made fun of me, so I'd go off by myself and dream, read books, poetry— that's funny—I used to read poetry and books, all kinds of books...."

"Listen, Buck. We've got to forget poetry, books, islands. We've got to figure something out!"

"What?"

"I don't know. But something. Or this is where two short careers come to an end."

"All right, Jon. Let's figure something out. What'll we figure out?"

"I don't know," Jon said. "I don't know."

Chapter 13 c°«

DAY went by. A Deep day. A day measured by a jj chronometer, but which had no kind of beginning or end. The sea around them always looked the same. It made the hopeless seem more hopeless, this fact that the scenery never changed. It emphasized the feeling of going nowhere, having been nowhere. That their awkward, blind moving ahead wasn't moving at all, but some kind of illusion.

Clarence lost consciousness a number of times. Each time his consciousness came back, it seemed less eager to go on. His voice got weaker and farther away.

Jon used the antifatigue pills more and more to keep himself going. The pills were of a synthetic product called pregnenolone•■, a by-product of the excessive activity of the adrenal cortex gland, made from cholesterol. It made a lot of difference.

You couldn't breathe it though. They had no substitute for air.

Ten more hours passed. Clarence never complained. Clarence's spunk kept Jon going. He never said anything in all that time, but he was still alive. "Buck—how's it going?"

Jon's hydrosuit was motionless on the bottom of the sea. After a while, Clarence said, very weakly. "Fine. Little toothache, that's all. .. about all... we're about ... out of power . .."

"Another eight hours or so."

A little later, Jon heard the low monotonous voice, dazed and not sounding like Clarence at all. " 'Five fathoms five my father lies . . .' I used to read Shakespeare a lot too. '. . . he sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan . .. without a grave .. . unknelled . . . uncoffined and . . . alone

Clarence was not making much sense at all any more, even when he did say anything. A shiver ran down Jon's back. "Buck, listen to me—1"

"Buck? Who's Buck?"

"You—Buck, listen to me. Get hold of yourself 1"

"Oh, sure, I'm not the jerk any more. I'm Buck now. What's in a name, huh? Pretty funny, that is, what's in a name? Plenty... that's what's in a name. Everything ... and everything and nothing... that's in a name ... all your life... jerk, and after while... that's what you are... just a jerk... just a little jerk playing hero under the sea..."

"Shut up that babbling! Listen to me, Buck!"

"Sure . . . sure why not? You're a great guy, Jonnie boy. Don't let anybody ever call you a jerk. Hit 'em the first time. Don't let it go. It'll grow and grow and finally it's like a leech an' you can't get rid of it,"

"You going to listen to me, Buck?"

"Sure . . . said I would. How wrong Sprague was about you—I guess he'll never know now how wrong he was. You took the label off me, Jon. You'll never know what it meant. Since I got the name of Buck— I've been alive. I've been a human being. Maybe I haven't lived long... not in hours, weeks, or months or years. But listen—I've lived more just since I was Buck than all those other years when I was just a jerk."

"Forget that stuff! Listen now. You listening?"

"Sure, I'm listening."

"This trench has curved sharply in the same direction as I started out to go in the first place. So in a roundabout way, we've been going according to my first hunch."

" 'The gaudy, blabbing and remorseless day,'" Clarence whispered, "'. . , is crept into the bosom of the sea

"Okay," Jon said. "I'd rather talk to a resurrected Shakespeare than to myself. Buck, I've got another hunch. I think we're pretty close to that hydrodome. I still can't get any sonar connection. But I'm sure we're close to it. There couldn't be that much of a block-off of sonar. I'm sure there's something wrong at the hydrodome, and that's why we can't contact them with sonar. You hear that, Buck?"

"I hear you."

"So here we are. I don't know exactly which direction to go. My instinct isn't that good. If it's any good at all. But we're close, and I'm sure of it. But how can we let them know?"

Clarence muttered something unintelligible.

"If we could signal someway—"

Some denizen of the Deep swept down for a meal. It was like a train rushing past through the night, a series of bright lighted windows.

Jon stopped talking. The hydrosuit settled to the bottom. There was no use going on any farther, without having some idea which direction to go. A man could hunt through this darkness for the few remaining hours they had left without one chance in a million of finding the hydrodome.

He uncabled Clarence from his back.

"Jon—I've been wanting to suggest this—but—I kept thinking—thinking I might pull out of it. But I'm not pulling out. I know it now." "Suggest what?"

"That you should drop me. I'll die anyway. Take my oxygen tank. That'll give you a few more hours. . . ."

"Hey, don't talk like a moron!" yelled Jon. "Don't talk that way any more. Buck, you're sounding better. You know what? You were quoting Shakespeare. You know that?"

"Yeah? Well, I used to read everytlung. I wanted to be a poet once. I think I was a pretty good poet. But everybody thought that was pretty funny. A jerk wanting to be a poet."

Clarence's pinched, sick face was like a white mask behind the blue-glowing lucinate. "What you doing, Jon? I thought you were going to leave me. That's what you ought to do."

"Don't be a jerk," Jon grinned. "You were one too long. Don't revert to it. But I just got an idea. We're within signaling distance of that hydrodome. I know it. Or at least I've got to believe we are, which is about as good as knowing it."

"What's the idea?"

"To signal."

"But the sonar—"

"I don't mean sonar. Fire! Fire signals!"

"Magnesium? We don't have enough."

"I don't mean magnesium either."

"Sure, sure!" Clarence laughed wildly. "Let's build a big bonfire! Collect us a bunch of logs and start a big roaring fire. How about smoke signals? Like the Ol' Indians—?"

"Light signals, not fire exactly. Light."

"Light-"

"Watch, Buck. Well get out of this yet! It'll work. It's got to!"

Jon didn't feel nearly as optimistic as he tried to sound, for Clarence's failing benefit. But—it might work. That is, it might if the hydrodome were within signaling distance. That was probably about as big an ""if" as you could expect to find in the history of "ifdom." Jon went to work.

He jetted chaotically in all directions, covering haphazardly a radius of a mile or so around Clarence. He hooked cables, appendages, pincers, every available tool on his hydrosuit to the crustaceans that were thick among the rocks and troughs and pockets of the rough bottom. He dragged them back to a point within a hundred yards of Clarence, He kept on doing this, working frantically against time.

He didn't have much power left. This was his last chance. The final gamble. On each foray he collected as many crustaceans as he could fasten to his suit.

Crustacea referred to a prime division of aquatic, water-breathing invertebrates, including crabs, smaller lobsters, shrimps, barnacles, and so on. Of all the creatures of the Deeps, they were the most luminescent, having made this extreme adaptation which distinguished them from their brothers of the more shallow areas.

"I see what you're doing now!" whispered Clarence, his voice rising slightly. "A genius!"

"I won't flatter myself by answering that directly."

He released twenty crustaceans into the huge and growing pile. Already the mound was throwing out an amazing amount of light. The area within a radius of several hundred yards was lighted up as though by giant floodlights.

Most of these creatures of the Deeps generated their own light. A so-called phosphorescence, like the light of fireflies. The name was from Phosphor, the morning star. This was a misnomer. For it suggested the wrong substance, phosphorus, the stuff that ignites matches. A more accurate term would be luminescence, or rather bioluminescence, or biological light. Light from living organisms.

The source of the light was luciferin, a diffusable, compound, heatless light, undergoing oxidation, promoted by the enzyme luciferase. It was either manifested in these creatures as a steady glow. Or it was explosive like sparks from a battery, and could be turned off and on by the creatures* will. Sometimes, this composite luminescence, up near the surface, could be so brilliant that the stars faded by comparison, and the sky became a cavernous black.

Here, the luminescence was to conquer darkness and to attract prey. There was one creature that Jon had read about here. One with a section under each eye filled with luminous bacteria which were operated in the dark like lanterns by a fold of tissue manipulated at will. Natives in the Pacific Islands had once used them for fish bait and for lanterns.

Bioluminescence, though usually a ghostly white, ranged through red, yellow, green, blue, and purple. One curious fish Sam had pointed out to Jon, carried red light bulbs. Another had parallel rows of lights along the body like the blazing portholes of a great ocean liner. Others suspended tiny bulbs in long streamers. All were for the purpose, not of seeing, for few of these creatures had eyes, but of attracting prey.

Jon kept at it, jetting everywhere in the area in an intent stubborn search. He started feeling blinded by

what he was creating, but he kept at it until the sea around him was like a blazing inferno.

He decided finally that if it were possible to signal from here to the hydrodome, this was enough light to do it. He went back to Clarence.

"What a light! It's blinding!"

"I hope someone else thinks so," Jon said. "That's a light they'll know is man-made. No creature under the sea throws out that much light."

"A lot of light," Clarence said.

"One of these Crustacea," Jon said, "has enough light in a section of its body to raise four hundred million volumes of sea water to the range of visibility."

"And there's hundreds and hundreds of them around here now!"

Neither of them said anything for a while. Now and then, Jon sneaked a look into the brilliant glare. Dark shapes were beginning to silhouette themselves against the light.

"It's attracting every kind of monster in the sea over here," whispered Clarence.

"I only hope it brings human beings."

Jon closed his eyes. He needed rest. Even the effects of the antifatigue pills were wearing thin. He murmured something, he didn't remember what.

Dimly, far away, he heard Clarence saying, "You're okay, Jon. . . . Thanks . . . thanks again ... I wish I could tell you how much ... how much it... meant..."

Swarms and clouds of giant denizens came in, drawn on by the stupendous glow. Jon watched for brief periods after he woke up. The power unit was very weak now. The oxygen was about gone. The juice had been turned off from everything else. They couldn't move now. They had enough power to keep some breathable oxygen around for a little while. That was all.

Clarence's face was deathly white, his eyes closed. Jon didn't know now whether he was alive or not. There was no sign of breathing. There was hardly even the panic left for Jon now. The lowered oxygen had made his metabolism sluggish, his blood heavy, his brain dull, his nerves lethargic. Dimly, he thought—if he had to die, this wasn't such a bad way to go. No fear, no pain. It was like the old stories of the Far North, a man dying pleasantly in the snow, freezing slowly, happy, not feeling anything but drowsiness.

The outside gauge on Clarence's suit showed that his oxygen was very low.

Jon turned up the gauge. He figured that Clarence needed a little more oxygen. Of course, it wouldn't last as long now. But he figured that Clarence would die anyway, before any help came—if it came—without more oxygen.

Jon didn't move as the long-glowing shape drifted toward him. He couldn't move.

Not only couldn't he move, but he didn't particularly care any more. He felt too sleepy to care. Maybe Clarence was already dead. So maybe, in a way, Clarence was lucky.

The giant eel-like shape with its many electrified cilia sparkling on and off, drifted past him a few hundred feet. Then it stopped. With a slight undulating movement, it held its own with the current.

Then it came slowly back toward Jon.

Chapter 14 m* of H0pe

s the nightmare shape moved toward him, Jon heard |J himself chuckling at it. It had a very funny face. Its cilia could short-circuit, blow his hydrosuit up too. That was pretty funny. Everything was funny, if you looked at things right. Why not fight it though? He had a little oxygen left. Why not use the little left and fight the monster? That was the way a hero died. He died fighting the foe! But it was such a funny monster, it seemed a shame to waste time killing it.

Still, why not fight it? A sporting event. Look at it that way. A couple of denizens of the Deeps. Man versus Monster. Or Monster versus Monster. Down here, who cared about little distinctions? Eat or be eaten. A nice meal to the winner. Not a bad kind of sport at that.

The correct way was to go out fighting. All heroes did it.

But it all seemed like a silly dream anyway. And it probably was. The fight blazing through the ocean Deeps in a thousand coruscating hues. The swarms of nightmare shapes in schools and swirling swarms. The endless, cold, black world where even a blazing light was cold-Sure, that's it, Jon laughed. All a dream. Like one of the old fairy tales. And you wake up and there it is, all a dream. So don't worry.

I'm dreaming. I'm really up in a big spaceship, hurtling beyond the speed of sound. I blacked out. And I'm dreaming this, and pretty soon I'll wake up and I'll look out of the observation port and there'll be a thousand little asteroid worlds drifting by, instead of eyeless fish and lobsters big as ships. And there'll be earth, a million or so miles away.

Sure, you blacked out, Jon. That was Major Russell speaking! But that doesn't make any difference. It isn't an incurable failing. Plenty of our best spacemen blacked out the first time.

You've passed the first spaceflight test, Cadet West. Congratulations!

Congratulations, West. A nice flight to Mars!

Lieutenant West...

Lieutenant-Commander West . . .

Commander West. . .

Captain West. . .

Admiral West. . .

Vice-Admiral West. . .

"Cadet West-Calling Cadet West-"

Jon thought vaguely—Cadet—how'd I do that? How could a Vice-Admiral be broken clear back down to Cadet?

Which was the dream? Which was reality? Only in a dream could a thing like that happen. . . .

"Commander Moxson calling Jon West. Can you hear me? Calling Jon West—Commander Moxson calling Clarence Buchanan. Can you hear me?"

Dream and reality all mixed up. But the eel thing-it was nearer, nearer, glowing brighter and brighter—

But the flame! There was a different flame. It wasn't bioluminescent! It was white, bright boiling white!

Magnesium!

He yelled hoarsely. A boiling white-hot flame, and the eel thing was gone.

"Commander Moxson calling Jon West and Clarence Buchanan. Can you hear me?"

Jon whispered. He had thought he had yelled. But he couldn't yell. He could only whisper.

"Jon West — this is West. I — I hear you, Commander—"

Dimly, he saw the figures then, and he knew they were part of no dream. Maybe he would never wake up, but this was no dream. Shadows then, figures, giant hydrosuits moving like pyramids, blue light bathing lucinated heads. Two big hydrotractors, small water locks opening, appendages stretching like welcoming arms, and dragging in his suit and Clarence's.

A dim outline of Yeager, Moxson, Marsimba. Familiar voices filtering vaguely in and out. Then a voice that was all too familiar.

"Leave it to old ocey West to foul things up. Leave it to the big wheel."

Jon tried to laugh. Sprague never gave up. Sprague was in their socking away all the time. Instead of laughing, Jon went back to sleep. . . .

Jon woke up to face several unpleasant truths about the hydrodome.

He was lying comfortably on a pneumatic mattress on a sick-bay bunk. An intern told him he was suffering from mild shock and should rest a while, but that otherwise he was in surprisingly good shape.

Yeager was there, and old Sam. They had congratulated him on being alive and for his narrow escape. While unconscious, Jon had apparently blabbed about everything he had done, because Yeager and Sam knew all about it. Or Clarence had told everything.

"How's it feel to be a hero?" Yeager grinned.

"It feels good to have enough oxygen," Jon said. Old Sam's leathery face wrinkled up until it had even more of a resemblance than usual to a dried prune.

"I always said, kiddo, that you'd make a real Deep-man."

"Ah, knock that stuff off," grunted Jon. "I wanted to keep on living, that's all." He sat up in bed. "How's Buck?"

Yeager slowly moistened his lips. He didn't say anything. Sam scratched his neck and then rubbed his bearded chin. He didn't say anything either.

"How is he?" Jon said, louder. He grabbed Yeager's arm. "He's bad, huh?"

"He was," Yeager said. "But not any more."

Jon settled back. His stomach felt hollow. "Gone huh?"

"He was gone when we picked you both up," Yeager said. "They never found Ayala either."

After a while, Jon said, "We didn't know one another long, Buck and I didn't. But we got to be good friends."

"An odd guy," Yeager said softly. "They found a lot of poetry in his personal belongings. Stuff he'd written. Who would've thought he was a poet?"

"Poet or not," Jon said, "he had more guts than any guy I ever heard of."

Yeager held up a small sheet of luminal paper. The stuff, available inside the hydrosuits on small rollers, was to make any necessary notes. "We found this in his hydrosuit. It's for you."

Jon looked at it. "You read it," he said.

Yeager read. "So long, Jon. As William said, 'By my troth, I care not: a man can die but once; we owe God a death ... and let it go which way it will, he that dies this year is quit for the next/ I know you'll make it, Jon. Thanks for playing Sinbad to my Old Man of the Mountain."

"Who was William?" Old Sam said.

"William Shakespeare," Jon whispered. "Guess Buck was a poet, and a scholar too. Only the stuff he read, none of us read much any more. And maybe we should."

"What is this Sinbad business?" Yeager asked.

"From a story," Jon said, half to himself. "Sinbad the Sailor. He had to carry this Old Man of the Mountain around on his back."

"Oh," Yeager said, puzzled. "Well, Buck was a good guy. But now he's dead. We go on from here."

"I know," Jon said. He didn't say anything for a while. And finally he asked about Ayala. But Ayala was gone too. They would never find him now. Carried away by the tidal wave, and left somewhere in the dark.

"What about the hydrodome?" Jon asked then. "You're burning battery fight. No power. Is that why I couldn't make sonar contact? What's the matter?"

Yeager looked worried. His mouth twitched at one corner. Sweat stood out on Sam's forehead.

"What happened?" Jon yelled. He was out of bed. They tried to restrain him, but he threw them away from him, started getting into his uniform. The nurse came in, his eyes wide. "Get out!" Jon yelled at the nurse. "You think I'm taking a vacation or something?" He turned. "You guys, tell me what's happened!"

"Tell him," Sam said. His eyes crinkled as he watched Jon. "This lad can stand to hear the truth, I reckon."

"Well, the quake hit twice," Yeager said nervously. "Same one that caused the tidal wave. It almost finished the hydrodome. It wrecked the powerhouse. The foundation structure crumbled, and nobody can figure out how that could have happened. Tractors wrecked in their sheds. A lot of valuable equipment destroyed. Some valuable stuff needed to finish Project X—it was smashed!"

"What?" Jon stared, trying to comprehend the gravity of this fact.

"A lot of it, too. Delicate electronic equipment. Project X is stopped until the equipment can be repaired. If it can be repaired. Ten men died out there-Project's stopped! It looks awful bad. And it's probably worse even than it looks."

"It can't be," Sam said.

"Things can always get worse in the Deeps."

When they got outside, the situation was clearer to Jon. There was a hurried, intense activity. The artificial sun no longer lighted up the dome. Instead, comparatively weak battery lanterns threw eerie shadows under the pressing blackness.

"There's a meeting at the hall in a few minutes," Sam said. "Moxson's making another speech."

"Then come on!" Jon said tautly. "What are we standing here gabbing for?"

"All right, all right!" Yeager said. "What's eating you anyway?"

"We've got to DO something! Project X has to be finished, doesn't it? Doesn't it!"

"Sure, sure. But take it easy, Jon. We three can't finish it. We'll need a little help."

But Jon was mnning toward a slidewalk. Yeager stared after him, then followed. Sam chuckled to himself.

Tension hung heavily over the shadowed hall. Mox-son's speech was brief, to the point.

"We can't repair the equipment. New parts have to be brought in. Another sub won't be in here for three weeks. By then, it will be too late as far as Project X is concerned. Our sonar's wrecked. We can't signal out. The oxygen's taken care of, no worry there. We've got plenty of food. However, we're not down here to breathe and eat primarily, but to finish Project X."

"Better precautions should have been taken with so vital a project," a voice yelled. Jon saw a civilian, his face dark with an outraged sense of military stupidity.

There were murmurs of agreement.

"It might appear so," Moxson said. "But these domes have been tested under every conceivable kind of stress. There's some fault in the dome's structure somewhere. Whatever it is, it's against all conceivable rules of logic. We can't figure it out. It couldn't be anticipated, so the so-called lack of preparedness is not a valid criticism. However, we're not here to throw blame around, but to figure out how we can finish this project. Anybody wanting to argue about how we got into this mess, raise his hand. He'll be excused to carry on a little private session of his own, while we get down to more serious business."

No hands raised.

"All right. Has anyone any suggestions as to a course of action?"

On the platform with Moxson, Jon saw the other officers. They all looked more than worried; they looked desperate.

A man ran down the aisle. His voice croaked.

"Sir-"

"Yes, what is it?"

"There's a crack— a crack in the dome, sir—"

A chilled wind seemed to blow across the wavering shadows of the hall.

A rustle of fear shivered from wall to wall. Every face automatically looked up—suddenly and terribly aware of the pressure up there. The incredible waiting pressure of millions of tons per square inch, and between them and that pressure, a thin layer of lukenite. And it was cracking.

A crack had appeared in the south-west-by-west sector. The crack was spreading. There were leaks.

But in the hall, there was no panic. Moxson called for volunteers. He selected officers, leaders and crews to work in shifts. Some outside the dome. Others inside.

On their way to the water lock and the hydrosuits, they saw the leak.

A small group gathered. There was a thin, pencil-thin, stream of water. The hole, an officer said, was only a sixteenth of an inch in diameter. But the pressure was so great that it sent a stream of water clear across the hydrodome in a thin, destructive line. It looked more like a length of cable, or spun cord, than a stream of water. It was moving with the tremendous force of a steel projectile and was pounding away with its incredible hydraulic pressure at a building three hundred feet away.

They ran on toward the water lock.

"Mush," Yeager said. "That's what it'll be in here. Like an inverted bowl of mush!"

Every experienced man paired off with one rela-

tively inexperienced one. Jon was with an old veteran named Paul Franklin. They formed a line and worked their way up the dome, looking for main sources of the leak, and any threatening new ones. The idea was to find the main structural weakness and to work from there. It was Moxson's theory that some kind of unknown chemical action had weakened the entire structure of the dome. Otherwise, the quakes would not have found the dome vulnerable. Manual pumps could take care of the water getting into the dome now. If it got much worse, nothing could be done.

Try to find the source of the dome's structural faults first. If more leaks appeared, then repair them at once.

The dome was incrusted with five years of barnacle-like growth, mixed in with sediment from above, fine phosphorescent slime mixed with millions of tiny particles of shells, plankton, stuff that was like the numberless grains of sand in the foundations of the world above.

Some of the growth was porous and like rock. Some of it was pointed and sharp and metal hard. Ooze and slime filled the crevices, and there were signs of life scuttling about in the holes.

"This crack didn't start in the bottom," Franklin said. He was a hard, thin veteran, with a thin metallic voice. "It's beginning is up there somewhere. These gold-braided fools! Once every year they should scrape down these domes. Any fool would know that, so they're worse than fools! No, they say. The luke-nite's strong enough to stand more weight than could pile up here in fifty years. They're morons! Ought to be kept scraped clean all the time. Special details should be put on that job, do nothing else but scrape down. These guys don't know all there is to know

about lukenite, nor what crazy new kinds of chemistry can do down here!"

Franklin had been jetting slowly up ahead. He held his big lukenite-wieldergun in one of the hydrosuit's "hands." He was some distance away from the nearest Deepman, excepting Jon, of course, who was right behind him. Suddenly, Franklin stopped.

His hydrosuit hung suspended. He raised an appendage in the warning circular motion.

"What's the matter?" Jon asked.

Franklin's voice was high. It rose higher and broke in a strangling cry of fear.

"The borers!"

"The what?"

"Borers! We're in for it now all right! Let's get out of herel"

Franklin was jetting backward, turning wildly.

"Lukenite. They know all about it do they? Well, by the Deeps, the borers aren't stopped by it They can go through it all right! They've done it already! They're doing it right now!"

Jon followed Franklin in a wild jetting drive down the dome.

"They're turning this dome into a great big siever

Chapter J5*»

T was an officers' meeting, but Jon had entered with the civilian veteran, Franklin. No one had said anything, so Jon had remained in the room, back in the shadows by the entrance.

"I've never run up against 'em personally before," Franklin was saying. "But I've heard some of the older vets talk about 'em. I knew, soon as I saw one of them up there, what we was up against. We've got to get equipment out there. Every man who can fight. And we've got to clean up this dome! Maybe it's too late."

"What are these borers?" One of the lieutenant commanders asked.

"The quake didn't hurt this dome, not directly," Franklin said. "The borers did it. Don't even know whether we can lick the things or not. Maybe there're too many of them. Nobody knows how many there are. They come in swarms, thousands and thousands at a time. They move in these thick swarms once they're started, like lemmings. An' if they ever attack a man's hydrosuit, he's done for in short order!"

"Get an order out at once!" Moxson said to a lieutenant, junior grade. "Every man not needed for vital duty inside the dome is needed out there to fight the borers. Magnesium charges. Warn them about the borers' ability to penetrate hydrosuits,"

"Yes, sir," said the lieutenant jg.

"Now, Mr. Franklin," said Moxson as he tried to hide his impatience. "What are the borers?"

"I heard of 'em first fifteen years ago. Maybe it was eighteen. I was livin' in a small dome off Haiti, pearlin'. We went over to get supplies from a dome fifty miles away. There wasn't much left of the dome. Half of it was gone. There was one survivor. He said the borers had been there. I didn't see any. I've never heard of any since then until now. I figured maybe that survivor was crazy. These borers are a species of sponge."

"Sponge!"

"Yes, sir. Sponge. An' they can bore right through steel an' concrete. And now I see, even lukenite. You've heard of the ordinary small boring sponge you run up against topside? Well, these sponges are giants. An' they can bore right through lukenite, if they're given enough time, if they're workin' away on it long enough without anyone knowing about it.

"This dome's eaten away like some kind of acid had been at it. An' I don't know in how many places. The under-structure's probably weakened too. Like a structure topside that looks all right, but is eaten away inside by insects. There's thousands of borers up there now. There'll probably be more."

"How can anything organic bore through lukenite?" an officer asked. "That's ridiculous!"

"They've got tongues," Franklin said. "Long boring tongues coated with chitin teeth like a giant rasp. Hard by comparison with lukenite, like diamonds with ordinary metal. Lukenite's made to withstand this pressure, but it's a metal even chemists don't know too much about. You can't insulate it. It's porous too, more so than some forms of weaker metal. Anyway, once the borers start, and are given time, they get the job done."

Moxson stood up. "All right. I want the same crew as were up there before to go back to repair work. We'll put electronic tracers to work, from the inside. It'll trace any faults in the metal, throw them onto photo-electric plates for analysis. A complete fault-map of the dome will soon be available, with a thorough tracing in depth of any faults in the dome. The others who are taking care of the borers will be responsible for protecting the repair crews from attack. Watches will be on duty at all times to keep a lookout for the approach of other borers."

"Yes, sir," the lieutenant jg said.

A few minutes later, Jon was again with Franklin high up on the sloping dome. The light was eerie—like a weird twilight—caused by the faint light seepage through the lucinate. It filtered through in faint patches and streamers, and the growth that had enveloped the dome turned the light into many colors.

Magnesium flares shone here and there all over the dome as boring sponges were tracked down and burned. It made a strange, unreal scene, with the hy-drosuits jetting about, silhouetted against the bright hot flame of the magnesium.

Jon got out of the way as Franklin directed the big scraper toward him. It came, grinding and scooping and slicing at the growth that obstructed examination of the lukenite. It ground down into the encrusted stuff like a small but high-powered bulldozer. A hydro-suited face was poised above the blade, magnesium gun ready to burn any borer in sight.

Every man kept an eye on the one nearest him, in case he might be attacked unawares by a sponge.

"There's one!" Franklin yelled. One of his appendages pointed. Jon looked.

It was hard to distinguish it from the other stuff which the scraper hadn't gotten into yet.

"It's chameleon," Franklin said. "It can blend, make its color and shape fit in with wherever it is. Like a chameleon lizard topside. That's why they haven't been spotted till now."

Jon readied his magnesium discharger, then moved in toward it with a cautious spurt of his jets.

Camouflage. Protective form and coloration. It was a rule among the creatures of the Deeps. Like those others, topside, that Jon remembered. Like the green grasshopper or katydid among the leaves; the warty brown toad on the pebbly ground; the gray caterpillar, shaped and colored like a twig; the meadow lark with its striped and mottled back among the dry grass and weeds.

Marked, colored, formed by nature to imitate or blend with their natural surroundings. Most of the creatures of the Deeps were remarkably indistinct against their natural environment. The entire dome was covered with dull grayish and brown and this was the color of the coundess creatures haunting it. Every creature that hunted among the rocky, barnacle-like, coral-like growths of the dome was marked with brown, gray and black exactly like the surface.

But in addition, these creatures were also rough, like the surface and covered with little ridges and knobs so that they appeared to be merely nodules of stone. All perfect imitations of the rocks among which they hunted and dwelt. But this sponge was huge, about six feet across. It wasn't the soft bath sponge by any means, but a mass of hard woody stuff which no one would ever recognize as a sponge.

Jon got close. It seemed harmless enough, porous

and bulky, and heavily fixed there among the rocks, which thousands of falling shells and sediment had formed across the dome. Behind him, Jon was conscious of Franklin working with the big, bullet-shaped lukenite-wielder.

The giant sponge had no eyes. But it was extra sensitive to vibration which warned it of an enemy approach. Now Jon could see it shivering a little, expanding and contracting.

He glanced around. Magnesium guns were burning and boiling in white-hot brilliance. Intersprinkled with this, were the blue flares of the wielders.

Things seemed to be going well. Jon didn't know then, but found out later, that already several men had died. That a number of others had suffered attacks by borers, and were being treated for the quick-striking and deadly poison of its rasping tongue.

Suddenly the wooden mass moved. It moved with incredible speed, expanding to twice its size, then contracting, shooting outward. Jon fired frantically. A brilliant nimbus flickered around the periphery of the sponge, then it was no longer there.

He heard Franklin's yell. "Come on, West! Let's get out of here! There's more comin'! Thousands of em!"

Jon looked up. Slightly phosphorescent, like countless numbers of gigantic glowworms, clouds of boring sponges were descending. "We don't have enough charges to stay," Franklin screamed. "Come on! We'll load up with charges and come back! This is suicide!"

They started down the dome, each facing away from the other, clearing the way with magnesium charges. Magnesium flares were thicker now, all around, and men were dying under the clouds of borers.

It was all there in one sharp burning picture for

Jon to see: the great odds man and his work faced here on earth's last frontier. Clouds of glowing sponges dropped toward them as they spurted desperately toward the nearest water lock. Jon fired the last magnesium charges to keep the way clear as the water lock doors closed behind them.

They were safe—if to be under a hydrodome eaten away to a sievelike weakness was safety.

The memory was burned into Jon's mind to stay, he knew that. Hydrosuits weighed down by boring sponges and caught in their own magnesium flares. The screams of death rattling tinnily inside his own suit.

The officers sat around the table. Franklin rushed in; Jon behind him. There was no formality at all now.

"Thousands of 'em," Franklin stammered. "I don't think we got a chance."

"I think we have," Moxson said. "What do you think, West?"

Jon's heart swelled. "I think we can lick them, sir."

"All right, then we can!" Franklin yelled. "But this dome's eaten through. At the right moment, the strain'll be just right—it'll fold up like a rusty hinge!"

There were circles under Moxson's eyes. But through the oddly shaped glasses, his eyes shone no less bright and penetrating. He didn't say anything.

"They've done plenty, sir, in the time they've had."

"We've analyzed a specimen of the sponge," Moxson said. "They have sharp, clawlike blades on their probosci. Their shells are far softer than steel, let alone lukenite. It would be impossible for them to drill lukenite as it would be for a man to attempt to do so with brass.

"Very probably these boring shells have a powerful

solvent which they excrete and which cuts or softens even lukenite. This means one thing good—if we get out of this, well be able to analyze that solvent. We'll know a lot more about lukenite, and a lot more about chemistry, and knowledge of one of the greatest solvents ever discovered."

"Yeah, sure, but how do we get out?"

Moxson said quietly. "I'm asking for volunteers. We've got to be rescued. We're in distress. But no-bodyll come to our rescue unless they know we're in distress. We're going to send out men to contact the nearest hydrodomes and hydrofarms. Someplace that can start a relay sonar message to hydrodome headquarters."

"In what?" gasped Franklin. "Hydrosuits? Impossible!"

Moxson spoke to the Admiral. "I suggest, sir, four parties to be sent out in hydrosuits at once! Each party will follow a prescribed course, each destined for a particular hydrodome or farm or station. Someone among the four parties might get through."

Admiral Mutrie, tall, thin, hawk-faced and imperious, stood up. "It's very probable that no one will get through. We're at the bottom of the Mindanao Trench. Hydrosuits aren't equipped for long-distance travel. There must be some other way—"

"Perhaps you can suggest another way."

Admiral Mutrie slowly sat down. His shoulders slumped. He didn't say anything.

Moxson said, "It's the most dangerous assignment ever handed to anyone—even in the Deeps. The selected list will be posted in ten minutes. Will you please make known the nature of this assignment, and ask for volunteers?"

"Yes, sir," said the lieutenant jg. He saluted and left. Franklin said, "I would like to head one of these parties, sir."

"Very likely you will," Moxson said. He sat there, his head in his hands, not looking up.

Jon swallowed hard. "And I too, sir, would like to volunteer."

"You're volunteering for everything, aren't you?" "If I know about it, yes sir."

"So maybe it's just a neurotic habit, a compulsion with you, West. Maybe you have to volunteer, just so nobody will ever be able to accuse you of being a coward. Maybe it doesn't mean what's it's supposed to mean."

"Maybe it doesn't, sir," Jon said. "But anyway, I'm volunteering."

"I'll consider it, West." "Thank you, sir."

He wanted to express the hot denial of Moxson's indirect accusation. But he held back the impulse. Now, no matter what he said, maybe no one would believe him.

Later, when they gathered around the bulletin board in the ominous flickering gloom of the battery-lighted dome, all the familiar faces were there. All but Ayala and Clarence Buchanan.

Jon's name wasn't on the list. Nor was Yeager's. In Yeager's case it was understandable, and it wouldn't matter to him. He was needed here in the dome. He was working with the electronic circuit device, finding faults in the lukenite.

Yeager put an arm on Jon's shoulder. Jon felt ill at Moxson's denial of his desire to be one of the rescue parties.

Sprague laughed. "So they finally caught up with you, huh, ocey? They can't take a chance on messing this one up. This is one time when even your old man can't help you. It's sure tough, ocey. I'm crying for you."

"Your name isn't there either," Yeager said.

"That's right. It isn't. I didn't expect it to be."

Jon hurried away and he didn't look back. Why had they rejected him? He'd done a good job, out there with Buchanan. He walked faster, jumped onto one of the fast-moving slidewalks.

He headed for the water lock. He would go out and fight the sponges anyway. That was to be expected. He tried to see things clearly. After all, he kept repeating over and over to himself, everyone can't be a hero.

Who wants to be a hero? That wasn't the real reason for his wanting to be included in one of those rescue parties. Or was it?

He didn't think it was true of himself any more.

You did what was best for the hydrodome, for Project X and the service, and you were glad to do your part, no matter how small it seemed. That was the way it was with him now.

They could think he was a snob, a coward, a guy who had gotten ahead only with pull, family name and prestige of a social register background. All right— what they thought wasn't important any more.

He didn't care, he thought. It was what you thought of yourself that really counted. But he did care. No use trying to kid himself. He cared a lot about being rejected by Moxson. He'd never cared about anything so much in his life as he did about being included in one of those rescue parties. Not even about spaceflight, he thought, did I care so much.

Chaptet 16     Need West!'

|»|EST, hey, boy!" Jon was ready to enter the water 111 lock. He turned at the sound of Sam's yell. Thomp-W W son was puffing a little. His eyes wrinkled like sharp I I bright raisins as he grabbed Jon's arm.

"Where you going in such a rush, kiddo?"

"To fight the borers, what else?"

"You come with me," Sam said. He tugged. Jon didn't budge.

"What for?"

"To have a confab with Moxson. I want you there when I see him." "Why?"

"We don't have time to debate about it!" snapped Sam. He was showing genuine irritation for the first time since Jon had known him. "We gotta hurry."

"Well, if it's a favor to you—"

"Call it that then, Jon. I got to convince that thickheaded Moxson that I need you, Jon. I'm heading one of those rescue parties."

"You are? You are, Sam!"

"Sure! Me! Old Sam Thompson, all at once a big shot! He needs vets to head this kind of job, an' he knows it. So I've got influence now. I'm in a position of power!"

"Don't want any wires pulled for me," Jon said. "Had enough of that stuff."

"No wires. I'm telling him facts. Facts, that's all." Jon shrugged. "Okay, why not? I can't lose, anything." "Then come on!"

Moxson looked like a man who hadn't slept for a week. He hadn't shaved. His eyes were dark and sunken.

"I'm busy, Thompson," he said wearily. "Rescue parties are leaving in half an hour." "I know, sir."

"This is a devil of a time to come barging in here!" "I got good reasons," Sam said. "It's about West here."

"What about him?"

"You read the report I submitted to you on what he did out there when the tidal wave caught him an* young Buchanan?"

"I read it."

"West volunteered. He should be accepted."

"I didn't include him though, Sam. So that's that."

"But West would be a real asset to one of these parties. It's not that I'm going against your judgment, sir. I jus' figured I could point out some things that maybe you never thought of—your being under all this pressure and—"

"Pressure! That's a devil of a subject to talk about!" "Yes, sir. Anyway, I'd like to emphasize West's record—"

"He's a cadet," Moxson said. "He's too young and inexperienced for a job like this! I haven't included any apprentices. He can't assume any such position of responsibility as this! Sam, you know that! Why should West be an exception?"

"He shouldn't be. Age doesn't mean anything. Several of the young men should be in on this. Not just to be bighearted or anything. But because we need them. Especially men like West."

Jon felt a little like falling through the floor. He felt good, sure, but also very embarrassed. He was also afraid for Sam, who certainly seemed to be sticking his neck out. But even old Sam wouldn't do this just for the sake of friendship. He meant what he was saying.

Moxson stood up. "Sam, you know what this thing means. This job will probably be too much, even for the most experienced men—including you, Sam. That's final."

Sam's face wore a very stubborn look. "Sir, Jon's proved more capable than a lot of vets. He's proved liimself adaptable. He's got the land of imagination, the ability to invent a way out, using the means at hand, that means survival in the Deeps. That's the quick thinking, the kind of minds we need down here. The kind that used that lobster to get away from the squid, the kind that thought of those crustaceans to signal for help. You've read the report, sir—"

"I usually read the reports, Sam."

"Well, sir, West would be a real worth-while addition to my crew. Sure, we're a bunch of old vets, loaded with experience. But set in our ways too. We need young new blood, guys who can come up with new ideas. I doubt if many of the older vets could've pulled himself and someone else out of a jam the way West did. I'm making a personal request for West to be included in my crew. Naturally, I'll take personal responsibility for whatever happens—"

After what seemed an hour, a very long hour, Moxson said, "Tell me, Cadet West, why do you want to be included in Sam's crew?"

Jon's voice was barely audible. "I want to do what I can for Project X, and the service."

He meant it. He didn't care much though, not any more, whether anyone else knew he meant it or not.

Moxson said, "I'll think it over. But I still think this is too dangerous for an inexperienced man."

It was a dismissal. It could mean anything, or nothing. This idea of Sam's had been crazy anyway, Jon thought, as he went with Sam back outside the administration building.

"Hope for the best, kiddo," Sam said. "I've got to go and start briefing my crew. If any crew gets through, it'll be mine!"

"Okay, I'll be seeing you, Sam. And thanks for the compliments, and trying to get me a break."

"Don't put it in the past tense," Sam winked. "Let's just think about how oY Moxson's in there getting a beadache, because he knows what I was telling him is true. An' if he don't come through, there's more than enough work here for everybody. This dome's got to be held up till we get help in here. But I hope you'll be with me."

Jon walked into the deeper shadows and stood alone. Above, he could see the faint flashing lights as the magnesium charges flared.

The idea of Moxson accepting Sam's suggestion was absurd. Jon shrugged his shoulders, started again for the water lock. A terrific battle was raging out there, and he wanted to help. Sprague was leaning against the metallic doorway next to the water lock. He was leaning casually, that wry, sarcastic grin on his lean, dark face. Jon started past him without comment. Hey, ocey.

"Yeah."

"You don't get to play hero this time. As I said, that's real tough."

"Sorry to disappoint you, Sprague."

"It renews my faith in justice. It shows money won't buy everything, not quite."

"Guess it won't, Sprague. If it would buy you out of my way, I'd have put it to that use a long time back."

Jon still didn't want trouble, but his promise to Mox-son seemed to be wearing thin. Other things seemed to be overshadowing Jon's and Sprague's running feud. He wouldn't take any more from Sprague—Moxson or no Moxson. A promise like that—it wasn't intended to last a lifetime.

Sprague seemed to realize this. He grinned with expectancy broadening his dark face. He moved in warily toward Jon.

"Hero stuff, West! That stuff you were supposed to have pulled out there with the jerk! Convenient—having him die for you, I mean. Now—nobody knows the truth. You can build it up anyway you want—"

Jon's blow caught Sprague by surprise. It came up all the way from Jon's knees and ended against Sprague's chin. The tall youth swayed dizzily. His knees crumbled. He sagged against the wall. He held onto the wall, his eyes slightly crossed and he wouldn't let go, wouldn't let himself hit the ground.

Jon stepped in. Rage, long suppressed, was a red mist and he started to hit Sprague again.

Yeager's yell turned him around.

Yeager was there all at once, pounding Jon on the back. "Chum, you're in! Get going!"

"Where?"

"Don't waste time! Report to Sam. He sent me over to get you!"

"What-"

Yeager grinned at Sprague. "What's the matter with you, sour face? You don t look so good."

"Neither will you, fatso," Sprague mumbled.

"Any time," Yeager said. He gave Jon a shove. "Go on, scram! You want to be left?"

Jon started to run. He stopped as he heard Sprague's hoarse, wild yell. "This is it! I'm not taking any more! You lousy politicians!"

Jon turned. "What's eating you now?"

"I was wrong," Sprague almost screamed. The scar shone a livid white down his face. His eyes were wild. "About money not being everything."

"Listen, friend," Jon said. "You've got to see—"

Sprague ran past him. 'Til see Moxson! I'll see that phony Sam too! They can't get away with this deal! They can court-martial me—send me topside—anything— "

Yeager said after the retreating figure, "That guy's finally flipped for sure. I knew it would happen."

"I feel almost sorry for the guy now," Jon said. "Ill admit a lot of this could look like favoritism."

"Forget all that and get going," Yeager said. He gripped Jon's hand. He said softly, "So long, chum. Good luck."

"Same to you." Jon ran and left Yeager standing there. There was a lot more he would have liked to have said to ol* Stevie, but it wasn't necessary to say anything. There was a good fat chance of their never seeing each other again.

Jon got a few personal belongings together. Not much. His identification disk. His antifatigue tablets. A few personal papers he wanted to keep. His last note from Carson, the note from Buchanan. A couple of pictures of his parents. Then he ran over to where Thompson was briefing his crew, in a small room just off the administration building. Jon recognized only two out of the five of them. They were all vets, ex-prospectors, guides, and one officer. There were supposed to be six, but there were only five. But as Sam talked, Sprague came in, silently and sullenly and sat down. What, Jon thought, did THAT mean?

"We all know what we're up against," Sam said. "We're taking different routes, each crew is. Each makin' a beeline for one of the nearer ports a' call. We've got a long way to go considering we got to make the trip in hydrosuits. Such a trip's never been tried before, not to my knowledge.

"Dangers? Well, they're too many to bother mentioning. Our first big jump will be to get out of the Trench. I don't mind telling you guys now—this crew's going to get throughl"

He looked around, then asked if there were any questions.

There weren't any.

"Well, kiddos, I guess that's it. Our main bugaboo will be oxygen. Power units won't last forever. We got to think of conserving power all the time."

He checked his wrist chrono. "We meet in water lock No. 8 in ten minutes."

Jon felt the deep intense feeling of fellowship. It was something new. It was a warm powerful feeling and for the first time he knew what it meant. Maybe a man could never have a greater feeling than this identity with others in a big mutual cause. To have it, he knew now, you didn't have to be in any special place, or with any special rank or kind of uniform. You didn't have to be in space, or wearing a scarlet suit. You could get that feeling anywhere. Even on the bottom of the sea.

The others left and Jon said to Sam, "Sprague in this crew?"

"Reckon he wasn't sitting in here just to spend a last few minutes alone with the ones he loves." "But I don't get it! Why?"

"Why not? He knows his business. Anyway, he raised such yelling tarnation with Moxson and me, we had to include him, I guess. One of my men took sick at the last minute. So I substituted Sprague."

Jon stared. He tried to conceal his resentment. Or was it jealousy?

"Don't let it bother you, son. Sprague's a good man, like I said, and we need every really experienced man we got. But I'll say this—we got to work together on this jaunt. No two ways about it."

"I hope we can get along," Jon said; he said it very doubtfully.

"You've got to, son. For the cause of Project X, for the lives of a thousand men. This'U be Sprague's last chance too, you can be sure of that. Moxson, I guess, felt even Sprague deserved another chance. But he won't get another if he fluffs this one."

After a while, Sam said, "Well, Jon, what do you say?"

"What do I say? Does it matter?"

"Sure it does. Getting through is the important thing now, not Sprague's salvation. If you think you two won't get along, that there'll be real trouble, say so. I'll drop Sprague. Get someone else."

Finally, Jon said, "Okay. I sure wouldn't keep a guy out. Even Sprague."

Fifteen minutes later, Thompson's crew left the hydrodome.

Behind them, Jon could see the bright flares of magnesium as the men fought the borers around and on top of the dome.

As they pulled away, Jon saw the small graveyard with steel markers rising up from the ocean floor. A strange sight, as though the graves might have been thousands of years old, might have been there when this had been land, long before some awful cataclysm had buried the land in flood.

It seemed unreal that men should be buried here, seven miles under the sea, hidden from sunlight forever, in a region of perpetual darkness and cold. But then—these men had wanted to serve in the Deeps. Probably they would have preferred to have died here. They would want to be buried here too.

Would a sailor who had loved the sea want to be buried on the land?

Didn't the older spacemen, when they died, want to be let out in a metal coffin to float in space, to rotate forever around some distant world or star?

They left the hydrodome behind.

The darkness closed in suddenly, all-pervading, ever-threatening.

Chapter ƒ 7

Terrors of the Deeps

S

ix men in the middle of nowhere. Six men paired off. Maybe it was a plot, Jon thought. A plot on Sam's part. But he had paired Jon off with Sprague. Sam's voice came back to Jon and Sprague. "You two novices bringing up the rear. More kid-stuff from you guys, and you both go back to the hydrodome. We work together, kiddos, or we carve our already slim chances down to zero. Is that clear?" "Yes, sir," Jon said.

Sprague's voice was sarcastic. "I understand that, Sammy. And when you put on a uniform, instead of that patched up prospector's union suit of yours, I'll salute you an' say 'sir,' like this aspiring palace guardsman here."

Jon twisted his directional cone, lowered intensity so that only Sprague could hear. "Sam went to bat for us. Let's take it easy." Sure.

"I don't know why he did it."

"I do, ocey. Because he had pull with Moxson. Power. An' because they knew I'd raise even more Cain than I already have. They knew if they didn't give me a break, I'd tell the facts. That I'd raise a stink they could smell clear up there among the brass hats in Washington!"

"Okay," Jon said with resignation. "You win. I'm not arguing. We promised Sam we'd co-operate."

About five hours out, they were attacked by a swarm of slime-eels.

The veteran officer, Lieutenant Dave Sands, spotted them first. His warning crackled in five hydrosuits like static electricity.

Jon grinned. Time, experience, they sure changed a guy. How relative danger was. Once, not so long ago, he would've been scared silly by a swarm of slime-eels.

In half an hour, they had attacked and most of them had been destroyed by magnesium charges. But one got through to the vet named Lars Lowenskoldt. In two minutes, before it could be burned away, its hideous mouth fastened to one of the vulnerable parts of his hydrosuit, where one of the appendages worked in its ball-and-socket joint; it bore a hole through.

Lars was slightly hysterical by the time they finally burned the monster away. For some unknown reason, the thing hadn't used its capacity for electrification in the attack.

"It thought I was a big shellfish!" screamed Lars. "It bores holes in shells and sucks out living flesh!"

"Take it easy," Sam said. "You've had run-ins with worse freaks than a slime-eel, you crazy Norwegian."

"No, never!" howled Lars. "I been up again' everything in the Deeps. 'Ceptin' them things! I always been allergic to snakes, see! Them diings jus' like big snakes! Biggest snakes ever was, like sea serpents! I got a' allergy to jus' little snakes. Think how I felt havin' that comin' for me!"

An hour later they came under the dark shadow of the Mindanao Trench.

Thompson called a halt. The hydrosuits sank down expertly in a tight circle around the old leader. Jon threw his aquabeam upward.

"Turn it off, kiddo," Sam said. "You'll need that power for something else besides sight-seeing."

The only light then was the faint bluish glow from the interior of the suits.

"We start up now," Sam said. "About seven miles. Some places we rise straight. Sometimes there'll be deep cut ins, plateaus, ridges, outcroppings."

"Climb?" Jon said. "All we have to do is use the reverse pressure guns and—"

"Save it," Sam said. "This is elementary stuff. But you ought to know. Say we shoot straight up. We don't think about the shape of this wall or where it is. We get maybe four miles up an' there's nothing around in any direction but water, black water. An' then let's say something goes wrong with the power or something. Then where are we?"

Jon didn't answer.

"So we have to stay close to this rise, no matter where it takes us. We can use reverse pressure once in a while. We'll be using the javelins a lot too. But we stay in close, within javelin shot of the wall. That clear? If it ain't clear, don't admit it, anybody. I'd rather not know who would be such a dunderhead. Let's lift!"

"You should've been an officer!" Sprague yelled. Sam's answer was a derisive cough.

They practiced using their javelins before the need came up to use them out of necessity—in case anyone had lost the technique. Using them was an art. A javelin shot out, trailing a thin line of unwinding wire of great tensile strength. The javelin's point drove deep into whatever it hit, ooze or mud. The point unfolded, holding the javelin fast. Pressure downward on the shaft folded the points together again, allowing it to be withdrawn. After shooting it, much like a whaler had once shot harpoons, one could pull oneself in the desired direction, with the aid of jets.

Jon felt a lot better, being within javelin-distance of the wall. What lay to the left, that vast expanse of cold and darkness, chilled him, made him feel threatened by a dark abyss in which one could get lost forever.

Seven miles.

Jon found out what a relative thing time is. How relative a term seven miles can be. You could measure seven miles, and it was the same, no matter where it was. That is, if you measured it in meters, or fathoms.

But that seven miles up the side of Mindanao Trench was surely the longest seven miles anywhere, anywhere at all, in the whole universe. No spaceship would ever find ten million miles that long.

They had to follow the ragged contours of the rise. They had to stay within javelin-range of that solidity. It meant a long fight, and the necessity of covering a much greater distance than if they could have risen straight.

Thompson and Lieutenant Sands had the lead. Jack Norton was in the center. Jon, Sprague with Lowens-koldt cabled to his back, were the last in line. On the bottom.

Jon started to know what real fear was. He couldn't get the thought out of his mind of dying under millions of tons of pressure, in darkness and cold. Or with his air going until he lay dying, gasping like a fish out of water.

He hated himself for being afraid. He felt that he was no vet at all. That he never would be a vet. He felt that perhaps some inherent weakness would always make him afraid. Maybe Sprague had been right. He wondered if Sprague was afraid.

Why not ask him?

"Sure I am," Sprague said. "Only a nut wouldn't be afraid in the Deeps."

Jon felt a little better—for a while. Sprague was probably right. The Deeps made up too abnormal an environment for men. They would always be afraid in it. Never be secure in it. Then Jon saw it.

Back in a deep fissure of darkness in the wall of the Deep, he saw the faint pulsing glow. Then the sharp thrusting power.

An ar row worm 1 He yelled. Sprague saw it. They were on a level with it, the others above them.

"Break out charges!" Sprague said.

It speared the Deeps like a giant and glowing spear, huge and beautifully colored like an anemone or coral, a nemertean species, reaching a length of a hundred feet. Like a flaming projectile it plunged.

Norton's scream sounded piercing and fluttering inside Jon's suit. The arrowworm struck before anyone could move to prevent it.

Jon was frozen. Sprague wasn't.

Sprague plunged upward to the rescue, his jets frodring. It took fast movement, an unthinking reaction. Jon knew what would happen to Norton if the arrowworm were given only a few seconds' time. The giant chaetognatha's torchlike form generated that terrific heat that was the one ever-present threat of the marine world below. It could kill a man in seconds.

Jon got his own jets in action, co-ordinated with Sprague's who was in there first. His magnesium guns sent out their lethal charges.

The charge burned three-quarters of the worm. The rest of it faded up and away into the dark heights, its glow dying like a lamp burning out.

"Nice going, Sprague boy," Sam said. "Norton. You okay?"

"Yeah," Norton whispered. Up close, Jon could see Norton's round bald head, the face twisted in agony, the eyes bulging, the lips bloodless and grimly held in a line. "Jus' shaken up a bit that's all, Cap'n."

"Sure?"

"Sure. Let's lift!"

Sprague and Jon dropped back and the six lifted, Jon was beginning to wonder if there was a top to the Trench anywhere at all.

"Two miles," Sam said. "We're making time, kiddos."

"Seems like we've been lifting for a week," muttered Lowenskoldt weakly.

"So what?" Sam yelled. "We're always going up, ain't we? That's what's good about being on the bottom, boys, the basement floor of creation! You move at all, you gotta' go UP!"

"But we got a long way to go," Lars Lowenskoldt said.

"Sure, but you got to be optimistic," Sam said. "Like the ladder that leads to success. The lower you start, the higher you can go—even if it takes a little longer."

"Ol' Sam Thompson," Lowenskoldt said, "the poor man's philosopher."

"How you feeling now, Norwegian?"

"Poorly. That thing got me for good. I may not last.

But don't worry about it, Sammy. I'm getting old anyway."

"You'll make it," Sam said. "You'll make it fine. Hey, boys, look up ahead. We'll get out the word before any of the other crews. An' we'll all get medals and ribbons an' a two weeks' leave topside! There'll be pretty girls, an' movies every night, an' we can take trips out in glass-bottomed boats and look at interesting life under the sea!"

"You got a lousy sense of humor," Sprague said.

And they went on up past the dark crevices, ridges and giant caves and flats that broke the rise of the wall. Lights glowed, different hues and shapes and sizes and many different intensities of light. They were eyes, and bodies.

Then it became a running battle as things darted out of the sides of the abyss.

Swarms of life surging out of darkness, every shape and size and land of huge, hideous, grotesque monster. Giant crabs lay in wait in the sediment for passing prey, their huge pincers champing, powerful enough even to crush steel. Like falcons of the deeps with deadly radioactive sea anemones on each claw. There was a rock, that lived, that wasn't a rock at all. Jon brushed past it, an innocent-looking, grayish mass, slimy and covered with barnacles, indistinguishable from the surrounding rock. Then the mouth opened. He threw in full jet power. The mouth closed. His arm and shoulder were partly inside the maw. A crazy thudding was in his ears, his blood throbbing past his temples. The circular opening was filled with bony mouth parts called Aristotle's lantern. Funny how you remember little pedantic items like that, Jon thought, when it means nothing. The thing terminated in long teeth that met at a point. His shoulder and arm were between the sides of two teeth, each longer than his suit was tall. He was trapped as in a vise. He could feel the hungry pulsations of the creature through his suit's walls. He couldn't free his magnesium gun. He could see Sprague, a blurred face that seemed miles away. And then he was blinded by the magnesium boiling and burning white-hot and seething through the watery night.

"Thanks," he said to Sprague after he was free.

Sprague only grinned, a twisted sardonic grin.

Then they were engaged in that lifting ever-running battle. The attacks increased. Sea worms, broad and fiat and huge, with their giant cables whipping out to catch prey, tipped with electric power like fire-whips.

Clouds of Nereis, or clamworms, thirty feet long, with giant beaks like beetles, voracious, blind, attracted by vibration, attacked in clouds, dropping down from the gray gloom of overhanging rock.

Torpedo and electric eels sought to paralyze their prey.

There were the thick darting schools of hagfish.

He heard Sam's voice, like a voice drifting through the static of a short-wave radio, like some old comedian in a revival of an old, old play:

"So close behind some promontory lie

The huge Leviathans to attend their prey, And give no chance, but swallow in the fry Which through their gaping jaws, mistake the way.. "

Nothing scared Sam Thompson.

Jon fired wildly into the face of the giant charging sawfish that mowed down victims with its spiked and bony snout.

Thompson kept on singing. A real Deepman, Jon thought. Maybe the only real Deepmen were guys raised in the Deeps, like Thompson. Or like Sprague.

"You got him," Sprague yelled. "Good going, Norton."

"This is easy," Norton said. "We'll only have to kill a few million monsters before we get over the top."

"No griping," Sam yelled. "I don't remember anybody ever claiming the Deeps was just a picnic ground."

"Maybe not, but we'll make a good lunch before we're through," whispered Lars Lowenskoldt.

And then the swarm of sea mice darted out, seemingly from nowhere.

"Full charge on those babies!" Sam hollered. "They can break into different parts, an' keep right on coming, each part as deadly as the rest."

Jon knew about them too. They had developed a more elaborate nervous system and sense organs which foreshadowed a superior type of life. A sea mouse's body segments contained complete and separate sets of organs. One broke off, another developed. And any one of the segments could act individually, with as much efficiency as the whole body. They could discard segments at will!

The sea mice were seven feet long, and three broad, the flattened bodies covered with cilia. The cilia were iridescent. The sea mouse was called Aphrodite, the goddess of beauty. It glowed with iridescent brilliance. Jon had never seen anything that he thought less beautiful.

As quickly as a part of the sea mouse's body was blasted, that segment broke off. The remaining parts came charging in, swirling, dipping, diving and twisting. Difficult targets, and you had to burn all of one with one charge, or the other parts continued to attack with renewed ferocity.

Where there had been originally maybe twenty sea mice, there were now three times as many that had broken away from the original number.

Sweat stung and blinded him as Jon kept firing magnesium charges. The area was one bright searing flame against the lucinate. The crew wasn't lifting now, but had formed a circle, held in position by a steady controlled jet pressure, all firing outward into the wriggling maelstrom.

Lowenskoldt screamed as a segment got into him, into his suit, and the heat seared. The scream reechoed through Jon's suit. He fired again and again, driven with a violent hatred for the sea mice. The water boiled, blinded, bubbled, seethed. Jon's body got hot inside the suit. He didn't have time to adjust any air-conditioning.

He burned the segment of sea mouse away from Lowenskoldt. He could see the big Norwegian's face, limp, lax, deathly white, the eyes closed, the head sagging limp. But there were no more sea mice. A few carcasses twisted lifelessly away into the darkness.

"Lift!" Sam said. "You, West!"

"Yes, sir—"

"Lars really got it this time?" "I think so. He's unconscious." "Sprague!" "Yes, Sam?"

"Transfer Lowenskoldt to West's back. You can use the wielder. While we move up, you throw a quick repair job on Lars's suit. Keep his oxygen up.". "Yes, Sam."

Jon felt the added weight as he got the cable clamped tight that would hold Lars fast.

It was Thompson's wild yell that announced the victory. Jon, dazed with fatigue, hardly believed it.

"We're over the top!"

A chorus of shouts sounded.

They found themselves in a somewhat lighter and seemingly friendly area and they were out of the Mindanao Trench!

They gathered in a tight intimate circle, their suits almost touching. They were surrounded by a grove of what seemed to be strange tall and slightly wavering palm trees.

"We've come a long ways, even though it was mostly just up," Sam said. "Now we can catch a little shut-eye, and push on."

"I could sleep for a year," said Lieutenant Sands.

"Lars is still asleep," Sprague said. "Maybe he'll keep right on sleeping. Maybe he's dead."

"Then his worries are over," Sam said. "But he's alive yet. Still out though. Nothing we can do but wait. We can't get in there to help him."

Jon changed die subject. "Sam, I thought there was no vegetation at this depth—there isn't any sunlight."

"That's right, kiddo."

"But we're resting in a grove of trees."

"Are we? Don't judge things too quick down here. These things are crinoids, sea lilies. Look like trees, but ain't. In fact, sometimes it's hard to tell, even topside in a laboratory, what's vegetable and what's animal. These things are rooted in a way. But they're kin to the starfish an* sand crab. Very old things in a' evolution sense. But they're alive, see. Like any other organic kind of life. An' here's one for the scrapbook: they can dig themselves out of the ooze, an' move-plant themselves somewhere else!"

"Ugh," Jon said. "That's worse than coming right out and saying you're a sea monster."

"Plants that can move around," Norton whispered. "If they had them things topside, it'd save farmers a lot of trouble. Crops could just get up and walk to market."

"Let's get out of here!" said Lieutenant Sands.

"These things never hurt nobody," Sam said, "not to my knowledge."

"But you can never tell," Sprague said. "So let's watch out."

"I'm worried about Lars," Jon said.

"We can't do anything for him," Sam said. "We jus' keep him supplied with oxygen, an* leave the rest to his constitution. It's as near to iron as it can get, even if it is a little rusty. He showin' any sign of snap-pin' out of it yet?"

"Nope," Sprague said. "But he's not dead."

"All right," Thompson said. "We're out of the Trench. That's a big step. But we're just startin'. It'll be faster from now on. We can make a beeline, if the cartographic boys know their cartography. Our power's good for four days. We've got to conserve power. A good chance now, if our luck holds. Conserve power. Keep heating units low. Don't waste jet. Keep your beams off. Let's go!"

"We was gonna' take a nap," howled Norton in outrage.

"Jus' wanted to see if you guys had any sense,"

Sam said. "We don't waste time doing that, not that way. We sleep in shifts. While one of a pair sleeps, the other jets. That way we don't lose any time."

They did that, one sleeping, the other pulling him with his cable.

Sam's a good leader, Jon thought, probably one of the best. He didn't need a uniform or a rank to pull either. What was good leadership? A man who knew his business. A crew all of whom wanted to get the job done as badly as the leader.

They had traveled a long way. They were feeling good. And then it happened.

Jon knew, before it happened, what it was. He had experienced it before. It was an experience you didn't forget. He felt it in the water, a part of that vast expanse of darkness through which he moved like a pyramid of metal with a life of its own. He had known it before, and some inner sense born of the bitterest of experience was prepared this time. His hair fluttered. He felt the cold wash of terror that comes with utter helplessness before illimitable power. He opened his mouth to yell a warning. No sound came out. His throat seemed paralyzed. Then a yell did break, a kind of choking sound that ripped apart in a piping scream.

"Tidal wave—"

He yelled it once again. He was still yelling as he felt the trembling, the earth-shaking quaver, the tremendous vibration the quake made in the wondrous sound-conducting stuff that water is.   *

Then the dark mountain struck.

Chapter JS Tide Into Darkness

AM THOMPSON'S voice was fading away and away. "Heads up, boys! Get a bearing—" But Jon wasn't getting a bearing. The hydrosuit was whirling, out of control. Instruments swirled and blurred. As Sam's voice faded out for good, Jon thought what a good old guy Sam was. None of them were anything but good guys. Even Sprague probably wasn't such a bad guy—now that he was fading away and probably would never be seen or heard from again.

"So long, Sam!" he yelled frantically. "Sam—you hear me?" No answer.

He could feel the violent pull of the cable. Sprague was still with him.

But Jon couldn't see anything through the lucinate except a heaving tide, blackened with ooze and slime and hurtling with its immeasurable weight great rocks over the ocean floor, mingled with creatures caught helplessly in its coils, and giant shells nipping open and closing in spasmodic and futile attempts to fight back at the remorseless sea.

But everything was caught up and swept away by the millions of tons of indomitable force.

The conclusion was something Jon was dimly aware of, but hardly felt. A dull blackness, darker than the Deeps, smashed in through the lucinate, smashed the

machinery around him. A cracking and a roaring filled his head and he saw the flash of sparks, the tearing of wires. Dials spun crazily, then whirled away into the darkness, growing smaller and smaller. . . .

And the sea rolled him unconscious over the chart-less Deeps.

Sometime later, he was aware of a gende rocking motion. It was soothing. He didn't care to change anything for a while. His right shoulder had a dull ache, and his head throbbed. A sticky warmth ran down behind his left ear, and he knew it was blood.

Well, he was still alive. Funny—he guessed it was funny—but after a while in the Deeps it got to be quite a triumph, just being alive. His heating unit still worked okay. But around him lay a tangled web of wire. Several of the gauges were dead. He turned his head. A vague shimmering glow came through the opaque lucinate. Then he saw the glint of metal. And then there was Sprague's thin sardonic face. Only now there was some indication of concern in it.

He nodded. Sprague nodded back. His face seemed strange and distant through two layers of lucinate. Then the face fixed itself in a set and stony stare. He was a real tough guy, Jon thought. He knows we're cooked, but he'd never show that he cared. One thing Jon was sure of—no matter what the pressure, nothing could ever break Sprague's nerve. Maybe he would always be a louse. But he would never crack.

"You okay, West?"

"Guess so. I can breathe, talk, even move a little. My shoulder's sprained. I got a bump on the head."

"Lars has come out of it. Say something, Lars."

Lars whispered, "We been taken for a long wild ride."

"Yah," Sprague said. "But I got a position worked out. I got a bearing and set the charter. I know how far we've come, just about where we are. It means we can get a line on this hydrofarm. Okay, I've got that. Only trouble is—the farm isn't just around the corner."

Jon looked at the oxygen gauge. Wasn't much left. Power unit wouldn't last much longer. "How far?"

"About three days, ocey. That tide carried us a long way, in a big circle. Actually we're still not much farther from that hydrofarm than we were when the tide got us. But now our line on it is from a completely new angle. Our oxygen's low. Power's about used up. We've wasted time, but we're no nearer. We'll have to manufacture more oxygen. This will cut down our power reserve even more. Friends—I don't think we can make it."

"Maybe we can," Jon said. "So let's not stand here gabbing away valuable time."

"Right," Lars said weakly. "One of you'll have to keep on carrying me."

"I'll carry you, pard," Sprague said. "Poor oT West here had to carry the jerk, and it gave him a complex."

"Ah, pipe that stuff off," Lars said. "I don't know what you guys' feud is. But you'd better forget it. Bury it somewhere."

"What's the direction?" Jon asked.

Sprague gave him the figures. Jon shook his head. "My charter's broken. It won't work."

"Then you'll have to stick with me," Sprague grinned.

"We ought to make more oxygen now," Lars whispered.

"We ought to, pard. But we can't."

"Cant? Why?"

"Why not!" Sprague laughed. "He wants to know."

"We make oxygen out of water," Jon yelled. "I guess we got plenty of water."

"Sure," Sprague said, as they jetted away through the dark. "You know why we can't, ocey. You're a scholar. You tell Lars. Why can't we make any oxygen?"

Jon switched on the beam, then switched it off fast. He studied the gauges, and noticed for the first time that little light—warning red! The hydrosuits had the facilities to test water, show the resulting figures on a gauge. Prognosis strictly negative.

For one moment, blind panic took away Jon's voice.

"Well," Sprague said. "Genius, you know the answer? You been through the academy, an' you're going to be an officer someday and tell everybody else how to act, where to go, when to live, when to drop dead. You tell Lars here why we can't make any oxygen."

"Because," Jon whispered, "we're surrounded by poison!"

"Water, that's all," Lars protested weakly. "Water—"

"But it's more poison than it is water," Jon said.

"Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to breathe!" Sprague yelled.

"You're both nuts!" Lars gasped. "Both of you— booby-hatch fodder. Extract oxygen from sea water. It's easy. Liquids, gases, come together, an' a liter of sea water on the average has 18.7 cubic centimeters of gas. Thirty-four per cent of this is oxygen. In fact, water absorbs oxygen better than air does.

"Lot of oxygen in the Deeps. It drifts down from topside, fellas. You guys can't kid me. I'm as good a moron as most people are—"

"Take it easy," Sprague warned. "You'll live longer."

"Our hydrosuits," Jon said, "are equipped with very fine converters. We can filter almost anything and make oxygen. We can make oxygen out of practically mud. But not out of pure poison. I've read about this. We're stuck, a real trap! If that stuff ever gets inside these suits, we're finished! And our converter units won't filter this stuff enough to keep it from poisoning us. If they were working well, weren't banged up and we had plenty of excess power, we might manage it. But this way—we're stuck!"

"I don't get it," Lars said.

"You will, if you get any of that stuff into your suit, you'll get it," Sprague said. "But good, you'll get it."

"AH right, so we're surrounded by poison," Lars whined. "But I don't understand it."

Jon talked. His voice didn't come out very well. "The tidal wave washed us into a deep trench, a hole, a pocket. One that isn't drained by any undersea rivers or channels or currents of any kind, see? No current flows in or out of this pocket. It's deep. And we're on die bottom of it."

"But it's still water. I'll bet it's wet."

"But it's never been drained, maybe not for millions of years. An isolated Deep. Just a stagnant area, no life of any kind. You'll notice out there. No fish, no lights, no nothing. No oxygen. It's nothing but sulphide."

"The quote," Sprague said sarcastically, "'gaseous herald of decay and death' end quote." "So?" whispered Lars.

"This hole is like a human limb," Jon said. "Rotting away with gangrene because there's no circulation. That's what it's like."

So they went on. The darkness was absolute now, unbroken even by the glows of light from living matter.

"Whether we live or not," Lars finally said, "depends on how far we have to go to get out of this pocket."

"Partly," Sprague said. "We can't take a chance on making oxygen while we're in it. Let's say we finally get out of here. Let's be optimistic, like ocey here. Then well still have to make oxygen. That'll take up a lot of our power. Then we'll still have to reach the hydrofarm." After a pause, he finished, "I don't tliink we can make it."

"We're still alive," Jon said.

Lars said, "Suppose we stop gabbing. That'll conserve power."

"Okay," Jon said.

They cut down their oxygen too. And they stopped talking for what seemed a long time. Jon sucked in the thin stale stuff he was breathing and calling air, forcing his eyes to stay open, and his brain to remain alert enough to keep the jets functioning with some degree of balance.

Sprague had the lead. He still carried Lars Lowen-skoldt on his back.

"It isn't just lowered oxygen that's making us tired," Jon finally said. It seemed stranger than ever, this talking into darkness, always afraid there wasn't really anyone else out there, and then getting a voice back. Sometimes it merely seemed like an echo of your own voice. "We're really tired. We ought to rest."

"How about you, Lars," Sprague said. "Your vote counts. Think we should rest?"

"I got no vote. You guys are doing the work. I'm just along for the ride. I can doze off any time. I've napped more than once. It's up to you guys."

"All right. Then let's settle here and sleep for an hour or so." Sprague hesitated. "We have to. We'll drop off anyway while we're jetting, and that'll be as bad as dying later on."

The jets stopped. The two suits sank down so that Jon and Sprague were in a reclining position parallel to the bottom. Jon closed his eyes against the faint luminescent glow from the hydrosuit's interior.

Nothing else mattered except his own weariness. Even what faced him when he woke up again made no difference. You can get so tired that nothing matters except sleep.

The silence pressed in. It was worse than any amount of sleep-destroying noise, and then he realized that something else did matter, that he wasn't dropping off to sleep the way he'd thought he would.

He needed noise. Just a little noise. There is a silence at the bottom of the world too deep for sleeping.

He increased the sensitivity of his vibroreceiver. The weird, unearthly sounds of the Deeps grew loud inside the suit.

The extraordinary uproar caused by porpoises, fish, shrimp and a thousand and one other nameless creatures of the Deeps carried from far, far places. Strange mewing sounds. Shrieks and ghostly moans. A sound that kept repeating itself like a high-speed chill. A steady croaking like frogs and a background of drumming, crackling, sizzling, as of dry twigs burning or fat frying—beds of snapping shrimp, forever snapping the joints of claws together. Thousands of such snaps made that collective noise known as "shrimp crackle." . . .

"West! Wake up!"

"Hey, what's matter?"

"Lars—he isn't with us any more."

Sprague's voice rang high and bitter. It came from under the hard surface, a thing that even Sprague's poise couldn't conceal. "What?"

"Turn on your beam a minute."

Lars's hydrosuit had been uncabled from Sprague's back. It lay on the ocean floor horizontal and still. Jon jetted a little. He looked through the Iucinate at Lars's face.

There was no mistaking the face of a dead man. Jon slowly licked his lips. Suddenly he felt icy and empty and alone. His throat felt dry and his chest ached. A trickle of sweat slid past his eye and outlined his cheek. It loosened a nervous flush along his back that prickled painfully. But Lais didn't look unhappy. He seemed contented. His face was peaceful and his eyes closed as diough grateful for a long sleep.

"He died because he didn't have enough oxygen," Sprague said.

"But he did."

"No—" emotions, subtle and conflicting, flowed behind the surface of Sprague's hard face. "Lars was a hero. You ever heard of heroes? They're supposed only to be up in space, wearing bright uniforms, driving rockets! They're not supposed to be down here in the stinking Deeps! But here's one. 01' Lars Lowenskoldt, who wouldn't know what a medal was if you stuffed one in his mouth!

"A guy who could never wear a uniform if he was freezing to death. Who never went to any academy. But he's a hero."

Jon stared.

"He turned off all his own oxygen. So we could have the tank. We can take it out now. Now that he's dead, we can take out the oxygen tank and we can use it and we'll live a little longer. I don't know why he did it—except that he's a hero."

All the water in Jon's body seemed to rush to the surface. Sweat dripped steadily, automatically, from his chin, the top of his nose, from his brow into his eyes. Finally he said softly:

"He did it for Project X. To save a few million people who'll die if Project X isn't finished in time. For us—not so much. So he'll have died for nothing, Sprague, if we don't get through."

"We don't want his dying not to mean anything do we, genius?" Sprague looked bitter. He didn't believe Jon's apparent feelings were sincere.

"We've got to make it."

"Sure, but how?" Sprague said. He looked down at Lowenskoldt. "Maybe a pretty spaceman in his red uniform could be a bigger hero than 6Y Lars Lowenskoldt here, huh? No bands to play for him, no one to cry an' bring pretty flowers to his grave. Just Lars Lowenskoldt, a lousy mucking Deepman who died in a poisoned hole!"

"That's right," Jon said.

They stood there and looked down at Lars.

Then they went about the gruesome business of opening the hydrosuit and removing the oxygen tank.

"You take the oxygen tank," Jon said. "If either of us gets through, it'll probably be you. You're more experienced."

Sprague stared, unbelieving, then shrugged.

Neither of them wanted to look at what the pressure had done to Lowenskoldt. But they had to. Because Jon insisted on burying what was left of the old man.

"We can't waste time," Sprague objected. His face was green. Millions of tons of pressure per square inch had reduced Lowenskoldt to something hardly resembling a human being.

"I think he'd want to be buried," Jon said.

"He's dead now, ocey. He doesn't care about anything any more."

"I think he does."

"The pressure, the dark—but none of that stuff can hurt what's left of Lars. Those things can't hurt a man's spirit!"

"You go on then," Jon said. "But I'm staying here. I'm burying him."

"You're crazy, ocey! Lars killed himself so we'd live a little longer! You think he'd want us to waste time just to throw some slime over himl"

"I don't know what he wants," Jon said. "But I know what I have to do."

Sprague mumbled. But he agreed.

With their appendage blades, they dug a hole. They sealed up the hydrosuit with what was left of Lowenskoldt inside of it, and they put him under the ocean floor. Jon insisted on taking a little more time.

On a giant limpet's shell, Jon burned an epitaph with the wielder. And with the aid of the jets, he plowed the limpet shell through the ooze and put it over the place where the man was buried.

HERE LIES LARS LOWENSKOLDT, DEEPMAN

He died during the month of February (exact day unknown) in the year 2039, that others might live.

"Okay, that's enough for a posterity that'll never be around to read it," yelled Sprague. "Let's get out of here!"

"In a minute," Jon said. He kept on working with the wielder.

"The Heavens, thronged with constellations and the sea strewn with their images."

Jon looked at it a minute. He thought of Carson. He thought of Ayala, and Buchanan and Lars Lowen-skoldt.

"Now are you ready, ocey? Or do you want to write the story of his life on there too?" "I'm ready."

"What's that stuff, about the sea strewn with constellations?"

"A poet. His name was Montgomery." "You like poetry?"

"Not ordinarily. I just happened to remember it."

"I get it. The stars from the sky fall and they settle on the bottom of the sea!"

"I guess that's it. I guess it's time to move too. So long, Lars."

They moved on.

Sprague got a high nervous pitch to his voice. He talked fast, not even seeming to think much of what he was saying.

"Nothing ever changes down here, ocey. If it does, it's so slow . . . what's the difference? And all this— where Lars lies—there'll never be much change. No currents, no light, no different dark . . . nothing different . . .

"This floor's probably as old as the sea. Hundreds of millions of years since it was made . . . just like this. Topside, the wind and rain, it changes things .. . levels off whole mountains . . . carries topsoil down to the sea . . . builds it up again. But here . . . it's like it was .,. who knows how many millions of years back?

"It gets me, ocey! Unless some catastrophe happens . . . ol' Lars'Il stay there . . . him and his suit and his limpet shell . . . just like it is now . . . forever . . . everything just like it is now . . . ten . . . twenty . . . thirty ... a hundred million years from now."

There was an abnormal intensity in Sprague's voice coming ghostily out of the dark.

"I thought of that," Jon said. "Lars has a big private tomb all his own. One that'll never change. Guess that's something not many others have ever had."

He guessed the only thing comparable to it would be space. Somewhere out in deep space between the worlds somewhere ... no air ... no light . . . nothing . . . just dark emptiness going off in all directions. A man out there would float forever in a tomb all his own, and nothing would ever change.

He looked back at the darkness hiding Lars Lowen-skoldt.

This hole had been just like it was now, when the Appalachians were thrust up, two hundred million years ago and it hadn't changed. But the Appalachians had worn down to mere wrinkles on the earth's face.

This place that was Lowenskoldt's tomb must have been old a hundred million years back, when the Himalayas and the Rockies and the Andes rose to their awesome heights. And it would still be as it was now when those, too, crumbled away.

Chapter J 9

Courage of the Deeps

ON found out that there is a place, a condition, where you don't measure time by clocks or any mechan-

U

ical means. You measure it with anxiety, loneliness, darkness and fear. You measure it with an oxygen indicator that registers less and less. You measure it by a power unit that is running out of power.

A rugged slope rose up, colorless in the darkness. There was no feeling any more. But only a numb moving forward and upward, pushed by a stubborn flame of hope that never quite burned out.

Jon fought almost hysterically, like a man grappling in the dark, pitching with an invisible opponent down an endless flight of stairs. Keep going.

They had reached finally a slope. And after a while they realized that it would take them up out of the poisonous deep. Keep going.

Jon felt sweat coursing down his face in separate extended streams like the lines formed by tears.

He felt the start of his limbs. He felt his own face, pinched and tense. His throat was tight, almost swelling, and he watched the vague shimmer of Sprague's hydrosuit up ahead with a dumb absorption. His strength, his will, seemed going out with his sweat. And the foul air in the suit seemed no longer worth breathing. He moved stupidly, sweat blinding his eyes, tongue clapped against a dry, enraged palate.

Sensations washed through to him through a kind of filter of near delirium. He could feel his wound throbbing and in his mind he saw a horn boring into his head, pausing, then boring again.

A vortex of nausea resolved itself in his stomach, and he retched emptily, obtaining a mild relief from the coldness of his sweat.

They kept rising. They kept moving.

Jon was gasping, taking deep, useless breaths of the foul air. Every minute or two a wave of faintness would glide through him, darkening his sight and pocking his back with icy perspiration.

He felt dizzy and his hands had the spongy, powerless sensation of a man awakening in the morning, unable to grasp anything.

Sprague's voice came, faint and stiff, but with a quivering emotion underneath that even Sprague couldn't hide. "Ocey! We've made it!"

"Made it—?"

"We're over the edge!"

"I see—" Jon whispered. Their hydrosuits sank slowly to rest.

Once again he could see the familiar blinkings and glowing and fadings of undersea life. And the lighter hue to the surrounding water that meant it was fresh. That there was life again.

He saw Sprague's face through the lucinate. It had drawn back so that his cheekbones stood out and the nose was beaklike. His irises had become bright, painful dark spots in the reddened ovals of his eyes, and his slight growth of blond beard looked red and brown and dirty. "You don't look so good, Sprague."

"You don't either, ocey. You look like something to scare goblins."

"Thanks," Jon said. "So we're out of the pocket. But now we can't convert the fresh water into oxygen. We don't have enough power."

"That's right, ocey," Sprague grinned tighdy. "We use the power, we have the oxygen, but no more power to go anyway. We go some place, we don't have any oxygen to breathe."

"But we don't have to go far. Maybe we can make it on the oxygen we have left."

"Lars's dying didn't do the trick, ocey. We've used his oxygen. We still can't make it."

"I think we can still make it," Jon whispered. "I know we can still try it."

"You don't give up, do you, ocey? It's tough, looking forward to never wearing that pretty uniform and dishing out orders to the jerks. Okay, let's go. We can only die once—twice between us, genius." Lets go.

"I still think you'll crack, ocey. I still don't think you've got the gut for it!"

"You think so, so let's get moving."

"You're really too soft, genius. I always knew it. I know your kind. You can buy your way in, but not out! Who you kidding, ocey? Nobody. Not me, not the Deeps, nobody. Not even yourself. The pressure's coming, ocey, and you'll crack! You'll crack! I tell you, you'll crack!"

Sprague's face twitched. His voice got higher and higher and broke in a kind of whispered scream.

"Easy!" Jon yelled. "Stop it!" He yelled it again. "Stop it, go on! You're wasting time. Jet!"

Sprague jetted.

Sometimes, Jon could hear the suppressed groans from Sprague's hydrosuit. Emotions, hates, fears that had been building up for so long in Sprague were boiling over. But still he held it partly in check by his stubborn and grimly determined will. Sometime it had to boil over, Jon knew, the way a volcano builds and builds and finally erupts.

Jon wanted to help, say something. He couldn't do anything. It was Sprague's battle. Only Sprague's. The Deeps had brought it to a finish. It would resolve itself in Sprague and no other place.

Sometimes he yelled wildly, hysterically, at Jon:

"And if we get out of this, what's in it for me? Someday I'll have to take orders from you, and guys like you. Just because you had the dough and the pull to go through the academy! Now you'll wear a gold-trimmed uniform, and I'll have to salute you and call you sir! Well, that's out for me. I've made up my mind! We won't get out! But if we did get out, I'd be getting out in more ways than one! Clear out of the service, see! This time I'd get out and I wouldn't be back again—"

"You always yelled at me about how you liked the Deeps, Sprague. What are you thinking of now? The Deeps or yourself?"

"Sure—I used to think of what Deep service meant. What it was supposed to be. But that isn't what it is. I know that now. That's why I'm getting out!"

"I was wrong, Sprague, but now I see how it is. Lars Lowenskoldt and men like him, they showed me how it is. You need something bigger than yourself, Sprague. The service is big enough to take all we can give for as long as we can give anything. The service will always be there. Lars had to die some time. But the service is still going, and now the service is a little bigger, a little stronger, because it's got

a little bit of Lars Lowenskoldt in it. You see what I mean, Sprague?"

Sprague didn't say anything. Not for what seemed a long time.

And then Sprague's voice stabbed back. It sounded like the old Sprague, but with a difference. Jon couldn't say exactly what the difference was, but it was good. A kind of strength that was real and not just a pretended thing.

"We'll make it, ocey! The hydrofarml It's over that way—'bout ten miles!"

"Hey, there's no sonar response!"

"We can't signal. There's a ridge of mountain runs right across the approach. But it isn't far."

"I told you we'd make it," Jon yelled. "We've got enough power! We can make it all right—"

They jetted fast, shooting through the high-pressured darkness that seemed to change subtly as they moved.

It became lighter because of the rising slope and their approach nearer the sun.

From the darkness, they rose through a deep and brilliant blue, then into a kind of jade green. The colors of marine animals take on a tone relative to the depth zone in which they live. Here, below the diatom meadows and drifting sargassum weed, the creatures were changing to shades of green.

There were the hordes of blue-green glass worms, comb jellies and larvae of many fish hanging like clouds.

Some vegetative life began to appear, nourished by the filtered sun's life-giving breath. Light networks of marine plants appeared, of that inexhaustible family of seaweeds. Long ribbons of floating fucus, and palmatae resembling the fans of a cactus. At this depth, though, most of the plants had a reddish tone..

"I wonder if we might not be the only ones—" Sprague began, then stopped.

"No, that's impossible," Jon said. "Probably a lot of them got through. Maybe most of them. Hard luck wouldn't hit all oi them like it did us."

Sprague's hydrosuit slowed, settled to the ocean floor. Jon's suit swung around on the tightened cable, then settied also among the tubipores, meandrines, stars and fungi, and caryophyllidae that formed a carpet of flowers sown with dazzling gems.

Several porpoises were acting like clowns, and some swordfish ten feet long drifted by. Smaller fish floated in thick schools, the variegated balista, the leaping mackerel, and wolf-thorntails and a hundred others which striped the slightly luminous water sphere.

"Nice scenery," Jon said. "But maybe this isn't the time to study it."

"Listen!" Sprague said tensely.

Jon listened. It came faintly at first, then louder. An SOS.

A vibrophone, on automatic, rotating slowly, repeating an SOS over and over. It continued sending out a call of distress even during sleep or moments of unconsciousness. The SOS faded in and out slowly.

"I've got a direction on it," Sprague said. "Straight that way. I'd say a half a mile."

"We've got to help him. Someone's stuck and can't signal the hydrodome because of the mount."

Sprague didn't say anything. He was thinking the same thing Jon was thinking. Both of them couldn't go. They didn't have enough oxygen to allow for any detours.

Jon made sonar contact with the distressed unknown. The answer came back.

"Sam Thompson—in shell. Bring tractor—'

"Sam!" Jon yelled. "It's of Sam!"

"Yeah. Maybe he's gone after his last big pearl," Sprague said.

"One of us has to help him. Maybe he's so bad off it'll be too late to help him if we both go on to the hydrofarm."

"That's right, ocey," Sprague said.

"If we both went to help Sam, neither of us, and probably Sam either, would ever get to the hydro-farm. That means—well that means we can't do it that way."

"You're so right," Sprague said. "So good-by, and happy jetting, ocey . . ."

But Jon didn't wait to argue. He had his jets on full before Sprague had gotten the sentence out and was shooting away toward Sam. He heard Sprague's fading yell: "You're crazy! What're you trying to prove, ocey? You don't have the experience—"

Jon kept on going. Sprague had the experience. He'd have a better chance making it to the hydrofarm anyway. Someone had to get the word through. And maybe—just maybe—there was no one else left out of those four crews that had left the hydrodome, except Sprague and Sam and Jon West.

Sprague couldn't argue now, couldn't follow. He had to go on toward the hydrofarm.

If it occurred to Jon that Sprague would never make it to the hydrofarm, he didn't allow his mind to dwell on the obvious.

He was close to the source of that SOS, but he couldn't see Sam.

"It's me, West! Sam, it's me!" The voice was very faint. "Jon West! Thank the powers of the Deeps—" "Where are you, Sam?" "It's really you! Old Kid West!" "Where are you? I can't see you!" "You alone, kiddo?" "Just me."

"Go on to the hydrofarm! I figured to contact several men, maybe a tractor. You go on, boy! You get help, come back! I know you couldn't have much juice left-"

"You inside this, Sam?"

Jon stared at the huge shell.

"You go on, you crazy kid! Don't be a dumbhead!"

"Sam—you're in here!"

"Sure, sure, where you think I am?"

It was a giant belonging to the genus Tridacna, or giant clam common in the Pacific. A man-eater that at this depth had grown far beyond anything ever encountered in shallower waters. Six, maybe eight hundred pound clams had been found. But this one was at least fifteen feet across and weighed many tons.

It had closed on Sam Thompson, except for a narrow crack where the hinged shell-halves had not quite met. Through this narrow opening, Sam had been sending his sonar signals.

Jon figured that Sam couldn't have been trapped in there very long. The Tridacna's chemical properties were powerful and would have killed Sam if he'd been in there more than an hour. In any case, Sam couldn't stay in there much longer! The thing had closed on Sam with a tremendous strength. Jon thought of the power that an ordinary little quohog or oyster had when it closed its small shell on a finger. By comparison, this giant Tridacna could sever a man's torso with one snap of its shell. Where its shell came together there were sharp, toothlike edges. Its outside was covered with sea growth, barnacles, green algae and fungus, which meant that it had sunk from a somewhat higher level.

"You hurt?" Jon was saying.

"Not yet, boy. Go on—get going! You must be low on oxygen. I can hold out till you get a tractor back here!"

"I've got enough oxygen," Jon said. "Hold your shell, Sam, and you'll soon be out."

"No—" Sam protested weakly. Jon didn't pay any attention. Once he burned Sam out of that shell, he'd never have enough oxygen to go any farther. But somehow Jon didn't think about that any more.

He went to work.

He couldn't use the magnesium charges he had left. The heat would fry Sam inside the shell. He had to take it slow, burn through the tough cartilage of the shell. That would take longer. But the fact that it would be too long for Jon— that wasn't the thing which bothered him.

He went to work cutting with the torch, cutting through the leathery, horny mass, the huge hinge of the shell. When it was burned through enough, it would part, the shell would have no tensile strength to remain clamped together. It could be forced open easily with the pressure still in his jets.

Maybe he would have just enough power left for that.

Chapter 20

Deep Trail's End

E worked stubbornly. A kind of mist settled round him. Reality consisted only of the torch, and the fibrous toughness of the Tridacna. He gasped, took deep useless breaths of the leaden air. All his extremities were quivering. A bright light lanced like splinters into the tender flesh of his eyeballs.

He concentrated furiously on the torch and then on the stuff he was burning. And then on his quivering fingers that were manipulating the control panel, moving the appendages that held the torch. And then his attention would be buried for what seemed minutes in the agony of trying to draw another breath. He stopped.

The stuff was burned through and his hydrosuit stood exhausted on the ocean bottom. He couldn't use his jets to open the shell that had been unhinged. Not enough power left. Not even oxygen left. He was breathing his own poison.

"Sam," he whispered. "Jet yourself out of there. .. ."

He had a few minutes to live, he thought. His face contorted, unconscious tears squeezed out of his eye sockets, raced down his temples to become lost in his blood-soaked uniform. His features hung slack, his mouth open, his lower lip drooping. He breathed with a regular gasping rhythm.

Dimly, he saw the shell lifting slowly, sliding, dropping away, and Sam's hydrosuit emerged from the mass of die Tridaena's body. A blurred image of the suit dripping a yellowish slime that streamed with phosphorescent fires like streamers of colored sparks as the variegated animal with its fringed mande was exposed.

Sam's white face was close.

"Boy-"

He tried to grin at Sam, tried to tell him everything was okay.

He felt his eyes closing, his head falling. He didn't feel much of anything then except a reluctance, a regret about going.

Through the lucinate, he saw the deep green jade of the fighter deeps swirling past and, in his mind's eye, it seemed to take on the look of a blue sky in summer.

He hadn't served long, he thought dully. But a lot had happened in a short time. Project X, and all that it meant. You couldn't measure a thing like that by calendars, or by weeks, or months, or years.

Sam sat by the bed grinning broadly.

"You sure I'm not dead, Sam?" Jon asked again.

"You ought to feel peppy. They fed you plenty of oxygen, filled your withered veins with glucose an' dextrose and who knows what else."

Jon turned, looked out the small window. The air smelled good. It had a dried salt tang from the farmed marine vegetation he could see out there under the small hydrofarm dome, drying on the big racks.

"But I was out of oxygen and power," Jon said slowly. "I didn't have a minute to live."

"OF Sprague to the rescue," Sam said. "He didn't even take time to contact this hydrofarm. He just ups and grabs onto a hydrotractor and flags right back to where we were. Reckon if he'd taken a couple minutes longer, it'd have been too long."

After a silence, Sam said hoarsely, "Jon—reckon we're the only ones that got through."

Jon didn't say anything.

"No reports on any of the others. Some of 'em might turn up yet though—somewhere."

"What were you doing in that shell, Sam. Pearlin'?"

Sam scowled. "With Project X at stake! That thing grabbed me that's all, afore I knew it was there."

"What about Project X, Sam?" He still looked out the window at the beautiful sight the green hydro-ponic beds made under the synthetic sun.

"The message we brought in was relayed right on to headquarters hydrodome. They've sent out a big fleet of supply subs, equipment an' manpower. Enough to finish Project X before the deadline."

"Sure they'll finish it in time?"

"Sure they will! We contacted a hydrodome that managed to send over a repair crew to that sponge-eaten wreck. They repaired their sonar, so they could get messages out."

Jon tensed. Sprague's lean body was striding purposefully toward him across the compound. Jon turned slowly. He got up, stood, weakly at first, then more strongly, facing the door. Sam stared, bug-eyed.

The door opened. Sprague moved in and stood in front of Jon. His lean, dark face was expressionless.

Suddenly, he stuck out his hand, held it there, a little embarrassed. But the hand was steady.

"Will you shake, West?" he said.

Jon stared at, then grabbed the hand. "West, I'd like to bury the hatchet. It was mostly mine anyway. But I can't bury it without your help." Jon didn't say anything.

"I was wrong, West. And that's that. Take it or leave it."

"It's buried, Sprague."

Ol' Sam did a jig around the room. "I know'd you boys would hit it off sooner or later. That's why I talked so hard to get you guys on my crew."

"Why you scheming hunk of kelp!" yelled Sprague. "It was a plot!"

Sam chuckled. "We all figured you two had it in you. I figured if cabling you two together didn't clear things up, nothing ever would."

Sprague looked at Jon. "When I found out how wrong I was about you, I found out how wrong I was about a lot of other things too."

"You saved my neck," Jon said,

"It's no debt. Way back there somewhere I'd have thrown in the towel. You wouldn't let me. Anyway, I hoped you'd forget the things I've said, the rough time I gave you."

"You forget it too," Jon said. "I have." He looked at the papers in Sprague's other hand. "What's that? Letters from home?"

"Ah—almost forgot. Sonar stuff. Came in from a sub out of hydrodome headquarters. For you."

"Me?" Jon grabbed the papers. He stared at the first one, then his throat tightened up. He pushed it out. "Sam, you read it. I'm—I'm not in very good voice."

"Sure." Sam grinned, held up the paper, squinted, dien read slowly:

FROM: COMMANDANT, UN PACIFIC AREA DEEPS

Headquarters of the Commander in Chief TO:     Cadet Jon West and Civilian Apprentice

Marlin Sprague VIA:   Acting Commander, Hydrodome

Headquarters, Mid-Pacific Deeps. SUBJ: Commendation.

I wish personally to commend Cadet Jon West and Civilian Apprentice Marlin Sprague for outstanding bravery in the execution of Project X.   Further commendations to follow immediately upon official sanction by UN Department of Personnel.

Sam looked up, wide-eyed. "Special commendation from the commandant! Jumping squid-eyes!"

Sam shuffled through the papers. "An' that ain't all, kiddos. Listen to this: there's all that 'to,' and 'from' and 'via' gobbledegook, an' then it says: 'Jon West is hereby granted the commission of Ensign— "

Jon's eyes burned. He didn't hear the rest of the message. The rest of it didn't matter.

Sprague gripped Jon's shoulder. There was a funny look on his face. "Congrats, West." Then his body stiffened. He stepped back. His arm snapped up in a brisk salute. His jaw quivered slightly.

"Hey, wait, here's some more," Sam said. He read, " 'Marlin Sprague, Civilian Apprentice, will report to hydrodome headquarters as soon as transportation is available, for immediate transfer topside . . .'!"

"What?" Jon whispered.

Sprague's face turned white. He shifted his body as though it had suddenly gotten too heavy to move easily. Jon reached out to tear the paper from Sam's hand.

"Take it easy," Sam said. "Wait till I finish. Now it goes on to say: 'For admission as a cadet in the UN Academy. . . .'"

Jon and Sprague stood and stared at each other. Then Jon grabbed Sprague's hand. There were tears in Sprague's eyes. "Me," he whispered, "a shavetail."

Sam laughed.

"Sprague, you'll address your superior officers as sir," Jon said, and grinned.

Sprague snapped a salute. "Yes, sir."

"As you were, Cadet Sprague."

Sam ran for the door. "This place is getting too stuffy for me, kiddos!" He slammed the door.

Sprague went to the window and looked out. He turned slowly.

"There's a new bulletin just out. It's over there on the bulletin board now. A general call. They're accepting applications on a volunteer basis. Seems there's a project to find the Lost Continent of Atlantis,"

"That's not in the Pacific!"

"If you qualify, they'll transfer you to the UN Atlantic Command. But we've got to act fast, West, if we want in on it."

"Then let's act, pal! What are we waiting on?"

The excitement was already beginning to stir Jon's blood.

Atlantis, the ancient Atlantis of Plato. Island of long ago which some terrible catastrophe had buried under the sea somewhere beyond the Pillars of Hercules.

Jon was heading for the door. "Come on!" he said, and then he stopped. "Wait a minute, Sprague," he said soberly. "You can't volunteer!"

"Why not?"

"You're going topside to the academy! Man, you're going to be an officer!"

Sprague shoved Jon aside, stepped into the synthetic sunlight and took a deep breath. There was an odd huskiness in his voice.

"I'm a free man, West. An officer—I don't want it any more. Not for the same reasons though. I don't have the old resentments against you guys any more. It isn't that. But I know where I belong. And it isn't in a fancy uniform. I like it this way."

"But, Sprague—"

"Some people are cut out to be officers, and some aren't. I'm one of those who aren't."

Jon stared, trying to understand the complexity behind that face. No resentment there, that was true. Just an open admission of someone who had found out the truth about himself.

Jon shrugged. "Okay, civilian, let's volunteer."

Sprague's eyes twinkled oddly. "Yes, sir," he said.

Sprague was right behind him, as Jon headed for the personnel office.

Somewhere in the Deeps they would find it. Atlantis, lost city of legend. They would link forgotten epochs of history, tread the mountains of lost continents. And they would touch with their hands the fabulous ruins of cities a thousand generations old.