The survivor (14 page)

Guns lowered his head slowly and looked around. "'Say?*" he asked, surprised, "what is there to say? The lieutenant's a lieutenant, isn't he?"

TEDE ESCAPE TRUNK of the Submarine was a small steel cylinder set into the ceiling of the torpedo room and extending up through the deck. You got into this cylinder by climbing up through a round opening with a steel door in the floor of it. Another door, set low in the side of the cylinder, opened out to the sea.

Under ordinary conditions, with the submarine functioning properly, a man would go into tlie escape trunk, close the bottom door (which led into the submarine), and then, by turning on the high pressure air, he could equalize the pressure inside and outside the trunk. When these pressures

were equal, it was possible to open the side door and escape into the sea.

Now the chief turned from a bank of valves and looked at Adam. "You're lucky, Lieutenant If you want to call it that. There's enough high-pressure air in the emergency bottle to get it on the bottom."

The chief made his way through the water to the handle which locked the bottom door of the escape trunk. He opened it, letting it swing down into the torpedo room.

Adam looked at the four marines—Guns, Rebel, Jason, the tech sergeant Strings—as they stood waiting. They had put on the yellow Mae Wrests they were to have worn in the rubber boat to and from the atoll. They had not yet inflated these life preservers, but Adam had showed them the lanyards which, when pulled, would punctm*e the CO2 bottles and inflate the rubber vests. All of them were wearing the two-piece green fatigues under the Mae Wests, but had on nothing else. No shoes, no helmets—none of the combat gear.

There had been a small argument about the rifles. Strings had insisted on taking his gun and ammo chps, but Adam had finally persuaded him not to: they had a long way to go, and they didn't want any more friction between them and the water than they had to have.

"All right," Adam said, "I guess were ready to go. Just remember the one big thing. You're going out into the water with fifteen, maybe twenty times as much air as you're going to need. No matter what you feel like doing, no matter what

you think you ought to do, don't stop blowing air out. Hold your head back, with your mouth open, and keep that air coming out—all the way up"

He looked at them and saw their fear and felt his. ("Oh, Thorenson,*' Adam prayed, "please be right.") He tried now to sound Hke Thorenson; sound as though he really knew what he was talking about. "If you don't keep pushing air out, f^— will—kill—you. Okay?"

Strings pointed with his thumb up at the escape trunk, which was only a dark hole above their heads. "Once we're inside that thing we've got to go-right?"

"Yes," Adam said. "So let's decide now how we go out—who goes first?"

"That's one good thing about the Marine Corps," the Rebel said. "Fall in line. You, being a lieutenant, go first, then Guns, then me, then Strings, then Jason."

"Then let's go," Adam said.

They did not move, but stood in the water not looking at him, nor at anyone else. They just stood there as though they were all alone in the whole world.

Then Guns spat into the water and reached up over his head and began climbing up into the escape trunk.

They went up one by one until only Adam was left. 'Tell me again, chief. What do I do?"

The chief told him, slowly, counting off each procedure. He was to close and dog the lower hatch. Next, he was to undog the lateral hatch and

take it oflF the latch, but not open it. Then he was to admit water—slowly—through the sea valve. This, the chief thought, would take about a minute. When the water was above the top of the lateral door, Adam was to pound on the walls as a signal for the chief to open the emergency high-pressure bottle.

**Wnien the inside and outside pressure are the same, the lateral door should open by itself. If it doesn't, pull it open."

"Thanks, chief."

Suddenly the chief stuck out his hand. "Good luck. Lieutenant," he said. Then he raised his head and looked at the faces of the four marines looking down into the submarine. "To all of you," the chief said. Then he added, "You're not going to make it, but it's as good a way to go as this. . . ." He patted the black gun in his belt

Adam pulled himself up into the escape trunk, the marines helping him.

Down in the submarine the chief pushed the heavy, round steel door up toward the floor of the escape trunk,

Adam watched the oily steel rim of the door moving upward, and as it moved it kept cutting oflE the view of the torpedo room, foot by foot.

It was, he thought, as though the world were being closed off from him, leaving him . . . where?

Adam, with hardly room to move, stooped and caught the moving door and pulled it all the way closed. Then he spun the dogging handle, feeling

the dogs sliding out of the door and into the steel mortises in the deck.

The heavily lensed lights in the trunk had imploded, the lenses and bulbs bursting inward, but the battery-operated battle lanterns, which were not airtight and whose bulbs were spherical, still worked, throwing a dim and eerie blue light down on Adam and the marines crowded together in the steel cylinder.

Adam started to reach for the hatch latch but stopped. The marines had not said a word and were just standing there, the yellow of the Mae Wests looking bilious in the blue hght. Adam straightened and looked at Jason. "What do the Marines say when they finally get into a fight?^ he asked.

^Tou mean 'committed?"* Jason asked, his voice breaking a little.

"All right," Adam said, "when we let the water in we're committed. Until then we can ... go back into the boat."

The marines didn't say anything, but they glanced at one another—quick, furtive glances, as though each one was afraid the other would see his fear.

"Then here it comes," Adam said, easing the dogs and taking the latch off.

As it had in the torpedo room, water began pouring in around the edges of the door. They stood watching it rapidly rising up the walls, rising up them.

'That stuff going to stop?" the tech asked.

"It should," Adam said.

"Theoretically," the Rebel said.

"I want it to stop right below my mustache," Jason said.

They looked at him and it made Guns laugh.

The water kept rising, but finally stopped about eight inches above the top of the lateral door.

"We're about as ready as we're going to get," Adam said. "When you go, go fast. Duck down and move out of the door. Be careful not to snag the Mae West or let your clothes hang up on anything. When you're outside the boat I guess you'd better hang on to it until you get the lanyards pulled and the Mae West inflates. Then turn loose and go."

He stopped and thought a minute. There would be no change of pressure until they moved upward. "While you're getting out the door and inflating the Mae West you won't have to let your breath out, but once you start up, start letting it out."

Jason's voice sounded far away and very small. "How long is it going to take, Adam?"

Adam remembered times in the water. Times when he had been wiped out on a surfboard and buried in the wave, and his movement upward toward the surface had seemed infinitely slow. Then other times, coming up from a free dive, he had seemed to move very fast. But he did not know how fast they would move now. The expanding air in their lungs would make them buoyant and the Mae West would help.

"I don't know,'* Adam said. "It'll take a while."

"Like forever," the tech said.

"Maybe. I don't know. But weTl have enough air in our lungs to stay under for . . ." What had Thorenson claimed? And he remembered the kid yelling that, if he could get enough oxygen in his lungs, he could stay under water with only one breath for fifteen minutes. ". . . fifteen minutes," Adam said.

"I never heard of anything like that," Guns said.

"Let's go," Adam said. "Before you go under take a few breaths. Not too deep or they'll make you dizzy. Just slow, ordinary breaths. Then, don't rush anything—don't panic. Just move. But move."

"I can't swim very well," the Rebel said.

"No swimming!" Adam said, again remembering Thorenson's Theory, this one about the viscosity of water. "Stay finned out. Except keep your hands straight up above your head. Keep your legs together and your feet pointed down. Try to shape up like a fish. We'll go up faster."

"You ever done anything like this, Lieutenant?" the tech asked.

"Not yet," Adam admitted.

"Well, I'm going to be in a hurry. So I'm going to help myself out a httle. I'm going to swim."

"No," Adam said. "Don't do anything you have to think about, because I think it's going to take about all you've got to keep the air coming out of your lungs. I think you'U go up faster not swimming."

"You go your way, I'll go mine," the tech said.

"Okay. You know exactly as much about all this as I do—as anybody does." Adam turned away toward the lateral hatch and began breathing slowly and regularly. He didn't want to hyperventilate. As nervous as he already was, it might really spin him in, so he breathed only in shallow breaths.

In his mouth he could taste the stale, dead air which had already been used by four men and would be used again.

And it suddenly struck him that they would have to go up through the sea a distance longer than two football fields laid end to end; they would have to go almost an eighth of a mile . . . without taking a breath.

What if Thorenson was wrong and, somewhere along the way, they exhausted all the air in their lungs? What then? Adam knew, from feeling it many times, that the impulse to breathe in was almost insurmountable. Your entire body strained to take that breath. Only, they would be . . . where? With a hundred feet still to go? Fifty? It would be sad, he thought, if Thorenson turned out to be wrong during the last ten feet. That they would run out of air when they could see the sun shining down through the water.

And then Adam remembered a dog he'd had when he was a kid. A comical pooch who had picked up the name Barnstable.

And the high cliff in Pacific Palisades, a straight-up-and-down cliff which, if you were brave enough, you could go, on hands and knees, to the edge of and look down at the antlike cars moving

on the Coast Highway far below. He remembered now, in this escape trunk with four marines, the shaking fear he had had as he edged his way out to the edge of that cHff.

But Barnstable was absolutely fearless and would go galloping past Adam to the very edge of the cHfiF and stand there wagging that nothing tail of his while he looked down in deHght at the highway far below.

Adam turned and looked at Jason and was surprised to find Jason looking back at him. And Jason was scared. Adam could see that in his eyes. And Guns was scared. And the Rebel And the tech.

"Listen,** Adam said, "think the way a dog does. Don't think about what might happen. Just think about what is happening. That's the way dogs think."

Their eyes, looking at him, didn't change.

"Well, I guess I'll go," Adam said, turning away from them.

He lowered himself, bending his knees, and felt the water moving up his chest, up along his neck. To his chin, his mouth. He breathed once more lightly through his nose and went on down, the water closing over his head with a httle swishing sound.

He was shocked to find that it was pitch-dark. He could not even see the outHne of the opening in the side of the trunk, but had to feel for it with his hands.

He moved out through the small opening and

then caught the rim of the hatch to hold himself down. He did not yet begin exhaling, and would not until he started up and the pressure changed.

It was not quite so dark out in the sea. There was a dim, faint, sourceless green glow all around him. He seemed to be inside the light itself, not outside with it shining on him.

He could see very httle of the submarine beyond the conning tower, but it looked as though it had been broken apart just behind the forward torpedo room.

Now the marines were coming out. In the dim light he could not see their faces but recognized their shapes.

Guns came first, and Adam could see one hand moving as the other gripped the side of the door. Adam reached out to him and found one of the lanyards and pulled it, hard. The Mae West began to swell, a dull yellow blob, and then Guns suddenly streamed up past him and disappeared.

The tech came then, his Mae West inflating almost before he got clear of the doorway. Then the Rebel. Finally Jason.

When Adam saw Jason's Mae West filling he pulled his own lanyards, feeling the hard, upward tug as the CO2 exploded into the rubber sacks.

Adam let go and was instantly surprised at the speed with which he suddenly moved upward.

However, in a moment, the feeling of movement stopped.

Until now Adam had been afraid, but he had been too busy to give it time. Now there was time,

and this sudden sensation of being motionless in the water, caught in it, brought a fear greater than anything he had ever known. A fear which enveloped him with darkness—which seemed to wipe out everything: thought, feeling, sight, everything.

Adam came out of it to find himself rigid in a strained position, his hands and arms straight up above his head, the palms together the way a girl holds them to dive. His head was back, his eyes open, his Ups open, but his teeth were clenched together. His body, from shoulders to toes, was stiff as a board.

Then he reahzed, with a relief which made him want to yell, that something was moving. Air was gushing out from between his teeth, billowing in moving grayish white clouds over his face—he could feel the touch of the bubbles against his skin. Then the air was streaming down past his neck.

For a second Adam lowered his head and looked down. The whole front of his body was covered with the foam of his exhahng.

He was movingl If he were not, then the bubbles would be going up, not down.

And he was moving fast. From somewhere—not from No Marbles Marble, not even from Thorenson —an item dropped into his mind: bubbles come up about sixty feet a minute.