The Watch Below (4 page)
Authors: James White
At least, he added silently to himself,
not very quickly
. . . .
Aloud, he went on, ". . . And that the hull is buoyant at a depth which is
too small for us to be in any great danger from pressure. All the tanks
are dry inside -- not a sprung seam or a sweating rivet anywhere. We are
in no immediate danger, and anyone who has been adrift in an open boat
in this weather might consider us lucky. But there is still the problem
of getting off the ship."
Perhaps he sounded too bright and confident, Wallis thought suddenly, and
perhaps he was talking this way to reassure himself as much as any of the
others. It was likely that the doctor was aware of this self-deception,
too, judging by the sardonic twist of his mouth. Dickson was holding
one of the lamps in his good hand, directing the beam upwards, so that
very little light reached his own face. Wallis could tell nothing from
the first officer's expression beyond the fact that his eyes were open.
Wallis continued, "There are three possibilities here. The first is that
we devise some means of signaling our predicament to someone on the surface.
Second is the possibility of our being towed home. The Trader is a very
valuable ship and if the anti-submarine patrols report us several times
as in a derelict but not sinking condition they might send tugs and an
escort vessel to tow us home. The third possibility is that we drift
aground on sand or shelving shoreline with our superstructure exposed -- "
"Suppose we run aground on rocks," Dickson cut in. "The west coast of Ireland
. . . has stretches . . . that could tear the bottom out."
"That is a possibility, too," said Wallis.
"And another," Radford put in softly, "is that we won't run aground at all,
and will continue to drift indefinitely. There is the matter of food,
water, and air, sir. How long before our air goes stale?"
Wallis had been devoting a good deal of thought to these questions,
and he said carefully, "Let's consider the worst that can happen,
that we drift submerged without being spotted or running aground for
a very long time. First off, food is not and never will be a problem:
we have hundreds of tons of the stuff. As for air, well, this is a
large ship with a lot of empty space in its tanks. You might liken it
to being locked in a cathedral with all the doors and windows sealed,
and ask yourselves how long it would be before the air grew stuffy.
Then as well as the air in the tanks there are the cylinders of compressed
oxygen used with the oxyacetylene gear. I don't know how many there are
exactly, we'll have to make an inventory of these and similar useful items
as soon as possible, but the forward tanks are littered with them.
"However," Wallis continued more seriously, "while there is no immediate
danger from shortage of air, we must take steps to see that it lasts
as long as possible. There must be no wastage in the shape of fires for
warmth or for heating meals. Instead of direct heating to keep warm we
will have to exercise and/or insulate ourselves against the cold. Perhaps
you, Doctor, will be able to suggest a high-calorie diet to help us in
this when we have a better idea of how the food cargo is made up -- "
Dickson raised his good arm suddenly, making Wallis break off. The first
officer said, "You're talking as if we had all the time in the world.
I don't think we're as watertight as you think, sir. There is a leak up
top somewhere. It's small, but it could get worse, and there may be others
like it. The sound of the drip kept me awake. . . ."
Obviously the thought of the leak was bothering Dickson so much that
he had practically forgotten about his ribs. He had only stopped for
breath twice.
Wallis said, "I know about that drip. It bothered me as well until I
tracked it down. There is a section of piping, cut off and sealed at both
ends during the modifications, going to the aft pump room. It projects
about four feet from the forward wall of this tank at a height of about
sixteen feet. The water dripping from it is gritty but not salty, which
means that it is caused by condensation. . . ."
When Lieutenant Radford had asked for another sick bay to be set up below
decks, a corner of Number Ten had been partitioned off for him. This had
been done by wedging wooden uprights between the metal floor and ceiling
of the tank, lacing ropes between the uprights and hanging sacking and
old tarps from the ropes so that the new sick bay would have a measure of
soundproofing as well as be able to retain most of its heat. Now that the
residual heat from the ship's engine room had long since been sucked away
by the frigid ocean, the sick bay was the warmest place in the ship. The
reason for this was the body heat and respiration of the five people in
the compartment, but since the projecting pipe was at the much lower,
outer-hull temperature and since the ship was down by the stern, their
hot little breaths were condensing on it and dripping off the end.
". . . which brings us back to our most serious supply problem, that of
drinking water," Wallis continued. "That pipe, when we clean off the
rust and dirt so as to make the process a little more hygienic, will be
an important means of reclaiming lost water. Perhaps the doctor will
be able to suggest other methods for reclaiming water when he has had
a chance to think about them -- "
"I
am
thinking about some of them," Radford broke in, his tone and
expression reflecting extreme distaste. "We would have to be very thirsty
to use them."
"We probably will be," said Wallis.
There was a long silence after that, during which the quiet background
noises from the ship seemed to grow in volume until they became downright
obtrusive: the muffled clanking and creaking of loose deck gear and plating,
the gurgle of water from the bilges and storage compartments where air was
still trapped, and the soft sighing of the slow underwater waves running
the length of the ship. It was so quiet that the breathing of the two girls
at the other side of the compartment could be plainly heard, while the
breathing of the men was visible as well as audible as it hung in the air
between them, outlining the tiny beam of the flashlight so sharply that
it looked like a miniature searchlight.
Suddenly the doctor spoke. He said, "Distillation is the simplest method,
but it has the disadvantage of requiring heat, which means wasting oxygen.
However, we know that there were several large drums of water placed
down here for the use of the men working on the modifications, because
these tanks are not connected to the ship's hot and cold water system,
and the men had to have fresh water for cooking and washing when the mess
deck up top became overcrowded. We don't know how much there is left,
exactly, but whatever is left can be stretched.
"There is a level of salinity at and beyond which water becomes an emetic
and undrinkable," Radford went on, "while below this level the salt content
does no harm. Since there is plenty of sea water available I propose diluting
the drinking water with it so as to . . . What's wrong, Mr. Dickson?"
Dickson was moaning and holding his chest with his good arm. It was a
few seconds before he was able to say, "The thought of watering down
the water . . . I mean, you oughtn't to make me laugh, it hurts my chest."
"I didn't think it was funny," said the doctor.
"You haven't got broken ribs," said Dickson.
Radford spent a few seconds groping perplexedly for some connecting
thread of logic in this peculiar dialogue; then he smiled and said,
"Or a sense of humor, either. . . ." They were both grinning at each
other now, and one of Wallis's worries began to fade. Morale among the
survivors promised to be good.
Dryly, Wallis said, "I think you should take greater care not to make
Mr. Dickson laugh, Doctor. Your Hippocratic oath demands no less. However,
there is a serious side to this business, and the first step is to make
a detailed inventory of our resources. This we will begin at once. The
doctor and I will work together, both for the sake of increased efficiency
and to conserve flashlight batteries.
"You, Mr. Dickson," he went on, "can keep an eye on the patients. I'll find
you something so that you can bang on the deck for the doctor if any of them
need attention. All right?"
Dickson whispered that it was all right and so a few minutes later they
left him with a heavy spanner and a flashlight placed conveniently on
his chest to begin the long job of taking stock.
They started in Number One and they intended working aft from there,
systematically listing everything they found which might conceivably be of
use. But the inadequate lighting and the fact that the storm had jumbled
together the contents of many of the tanks tended to slow the work, and
several times they came to crates or other containers which could not be
examined without moving a lot of overlying stuff. Rather than waste time
during the early part of the search on these items, they noted their size,
shape, and position so that they could ask Dickson about them later.
As Trader's first mate Dickson had had access to the cargo manifest. When
questioned, however, he admitted to reading the manifest but said that he
could not at the moment remember it in detail, adding that his knock on the
head had probably brought on temporary amnesia. The doctor disagreed with
this diagnosis, pointing out gravely that the head in question was in good
shape physically and that the trouble might stem from one or more forms
of congenital idiocy. Radford was going into this subject in detail when
Wallis firmly directed the conversation back to the subject of the cargo.
It wasn't that he did not want to give the two men the pleasure of
verbally cutting each other to pieces, but the airy persiflage would
have to be tamped down to a minimum until some of the more important
matters were settled.
It was some time later that the doctor said, "One of the things I don't
understand is why they gave us so many electric light bulbs. There must
be hundreds of the things. Extra welding gear and tools I can understand,
and nonperishable food in the shape of sacks of dried beans, powdered eggs,
and tins of Spam. But light bulbs!"
Wallis said, "You must realize that in time of war it's sometimes easier
to route large quantities of material to any given destination than small
and that, say, two dozen spare bulbs is below the permissible minimum.
Another factor is that they practically gave us this ship and carried
out the major structural alterations before we joined it at Houston,
and generally have been overgenerous with material and assistance. They
are friends who have just recently become allies, you see, and it's my
idea that a lot of these friends feel they should have become allies
much sooner and this is their way of telling us how they feel. . . ."
"That's true," said Dickson seriously, and then he added, "except for
the Spam. I think the Spam is their way of telling us that they have
not quite forgiven us for the War of 1812. . . ."
The persiflage, Wallis thought,
refused to be tamped down
.
Shortly afterwards they ate a freezingly cold meal, made the patients as
comfortable as possible, and prepared to sleep. All the available blankets
had been used to keep Dickson and the girls warm, so the doctor and Wallis
slept bundled together under a heap of sacking. They lay back to back,
knees drawn up tightly against their stomachs, completely covered by
the sacking and breathing through two lengths of piping. In this way
they were able both to pool their body heat and to warm themselves with
their own expelled breath.
But the sacking was coarse and stank of oil, the end of the pipe was
shockingly cold even with his handkerchief wrapped around it, and the warm
stale air he exhaled gave him a headache as well. When the doctor moved,
either because one of the patients needed attention or simply because
he was a born wriggler in bed, an icy draught breached the tiny cocoon
of warmth which Wallis was trying to build around himself and he would
feel like committing murder. And if the doctor did not move he would
lie cold and miserable and angry because Radford was asleep and he wasn't.
At such times he would stare into the blackness of his cocoon, thinking
about the absolute blackness of the compartment outside it, of the utter
darkness of the ship around it, and of the dark ocean beyond that --
a sort of triple distilled blackness. It never occurred to him at such
times that sunlight might be glinting off the waves a few feet above
them. Rocked gently but not lulled to sleep by the wave action on the
deck below him he would stare and watch the mind pictures which formed
on this perfect, utterly black screen, and he would try to think.
The wave action seemed much less marked than it had been the last time
Wallis had tried to sleep. He had a mind picture of the ocean's surface
grown strangely calm and he knew that the picture was an unusual one
indeed for the North Atlantic in February. A second and more believable
picture formed of the great ship, buoyant but in a state of unstable
equilibrium, sinking imperceptibly beyond the influence of the waves,
drifting slowly deeper as water forced its way into the isolated pockets
of air trapped in odd corners of the ship which were not quite so watertight
as were the main tanks. He would try to think of some way of dealing with
this problem, and if no answer was forthcoming he would shelve it temporarily
and think of other problems.
He couldn't sleep and there was nothing better to do.
V
In another ship adrift in an immeasurably vaster ocean, there was also
a captain who was trying desperately to find an answer. The problems
were similar in that they were both in the life-and-death category,
different in that in Deslann's case death, if it came, would touch each
and every being in the entire Unthan fleet.
Deslann's initial anger towards Captain Gunt had changed to a feeling of
angry sympathy, with sympathy predominating. He had come to realize the
full extent and implications of their dilemma together with the desperate
attempts his co-commander had made at finding a solution. Not that Gunt
had so forgotten the rules that he had left a personal message for Deslann,
but the private log contained a tremendous quantity of material on the
problem since it had first been brought to his predecessor's attention
a little over a year ago -- all listed in the approved, impersonal manner.
These were Gunt's thoughts on the subject. He did not ask Deslann to do
anything about it, but at the same time the data made it very clear that
Gunt had reached the stage where he had to go cold in favor of the other
captain.
not very quickly
. . . .
Aloud, he went on, ". . . And that the hull is buoyant at a depth which is
too small for us to be in any great danger from pressure. All the tanks
are dry inside -- not a sprung seam or a sweating rivet anywhere. We are
in no immediate danger, and anyone who has been adrift in an open boat
in this weather might consider us lucky. But there is still the problem
of getting off the ship."
Perhaps he sounded too bright and confident, Wallis thought suddenly, and
perhaps he was talking this way to reassure himself as much as any of the
others. It was likely that the doctor was aware of this self-deception,
too, judging by the sardonic twist of his mouth. Dickson was holding
one of the lamps in his good hand, directing the beam upwards, so that
very little light reached his own face. Wallis could tell nothing from
the first officer's expression beyond the fact that his eyes were open.
Wallis continued, "There are three possibilities here. The first is that
we devise some means of signaling our predicament to someone on the surface.
Second is the possibility of our being towed home. The Trader is a very
valuable ship and if the anti-submarine patrols report us several times
as in a derelict but not sinking condition they might send tugs and an
escort vessel to tow us home. The third possibility is that we drift
aground on sand or shelving shoreline with our superstructure exposed -- "
"Suppose we run aground on rocks," Dickson cut in. "The west coast of Ireland
. . . has stretches . . . that could tear the bottom out."
"That is a possibility, too," said Wallis.
"And another," Radford put in softly, "is that we won't run aground at all,
and will continue to drift indefinitely. There is the matter of food,
water, and air, sir. How long before our air goes stale?"
Wallis had been devoting a good deal of thought to these questions,
and he said carefully, "Let's consider the worst that can happen,
that we drift submerged without being spotted or running aground for
a very long time. First off, food is not and never will be a problem:
we have hundreds of tons of the stuff. As for air, well, this is a
large ship with a lot of empty space in its tanks. You might liken it
to being locked in a cathedral with all the doors and windows sealed,
and ask yourselves how long it would be before the air grew stuffy.
Then as well as the air in the tanks there are the cylinders of compressed
oxygen used with the oxyacetylene gear. I don't know how many there are
exactly, we'll have to make an inventory of these and similar useful items
as soon as possible, but the forward tanks are littered with them.
"However," Wallis continued more seriously, "while there is no immediate
danger from shortage of air, we must take steps to see that it lasts
as long as possible. There must be no wastage in the shape of fires for
warmth or for heating meals. Instead of direct heating to keep warm we
will have to exercise and/or insulate ourselves against the cold. Perhaps
you, Doctor, will be able to suggest a high-calorie diet to help us in
this when we have a better idea of how the food cargo is made up -- "
Dickson raised his good arm suddenly, making Wallis break off. The first
officer said, "You're talking as if we had all the time in the world.
I don't think we're as watertight as you think, sir. There is a leak up
top somewhere. It's small, but it could get worse, and there may be others
like it. The sound of the drip kept me awake. . . ."
Obviously the thought of the leak was bothering Dickson so much that
he had practically forgotten about his ribs. He had only stopped for
breath twice.
Wallis said, "I know about that drip. It bothered me as well until I
tracked it down. There is a section of piping, cut off and sealed at both
ends during the modifications, going to the aft pump room. It projects
about four feet from the forward wall of this tank at a height of about
sixteen feet. The water dripping from it is gritty but not salty, which
means that it is caused by condensation. . . ."
When Lieutenant Radford had asked for another sick bay to be set up below
decks, a corner of Number Ten had been partitioned off for him. This had
been done by wedging wooden uprights between the metal floor and ceiling
of the tank, lacing ropes between the uprights and hanging sacking and
old tarps from the ropes so that the new sick bay would have a measure of
soundproofing as well as be able to retain most of its heat. Now that the
residual heat from the ship's engine room had long since been sucked away
by the frigid ocean, the sick bay was the warmest place in the ship. The
reason for this was the body heat and respiration of the five people in
the compartment, but since the projecting pipe was at the much lower,
outer-hull temperature and since the ship was down by the stern, their
hot little breaths were condensing on it and dripping off the end.
". . . which brings us back to our most serious supply problem, that of
drinking water," Wallis continued. "That pipe, when we clean off the
rust and dirt so as to make the process a little more hygienic, will be
an important means of reclaiming lost water. Perhaps the doctor will
be able to suggest other methods for reclaiming water when he has had
a chance to think about them -- "
"I
am
thinking about some of them," Radford broke in, his tone and
expression reflecting extreme distaste. "We would have to be very thirsty
to use them."
"We probably will be," said Wallis.
There was a long silence after that, during which the quiet background
noises from the ship seemed to grow in volume until they became downright
obtrusive: the muffled clanking and creaking of loose deck gear and plating,
the gurgle of water from the bilges and storage compartments where air was
still trapped, and the soft sighing of the slow underwater waves running
the length of the ship. It was so quiet that the breathing of the two girls
at the other side of the compartment could be plainly heard, while the
breathing of the men was visible as well as audible as it hung in the air
between them, outlining the tiny beam of the flashlight so sharply that
it looked like a miniature searchlight.
Suddenly the doctor spoke. He said, "Distillation is the simplest method,
but it has the disadvantage of requiring heat, which means wasting oxygen.
However, we know that there were several large drums of water placed
down here for the use of the men working on the modifications, because
these tanks are not connected to the ship's hot and cold water system,
and the men had to have fresh water for cooking and washing when the mess
deck up top became overcrowded. We don't know how much there is left,
exactly, but whatever is left can be stretched.
"There is a level of salinity at and beyond which water becomes an emetic
and undrinkable," Radford went on, "while below this level the salt content
does no harm. Since there is plenty of sea water available I propose diluting
the drinking water with it so as to . . . What's wrong, Mr. Dickson?"
Dickson was moaning and holding his chest with his good arm. It was a
few seconds before he was able to say, "The thought of watering down
the water . . . I mean, you oughtn't to make me laugh, it hurts my chest."
"I didn't think it was funny," said the doctor.
"You haven't got broken ribs," said Dickson.
Radford spent a few seconds groping perplexedly for some connecting
thread of logic in this peculiar dialogue; then he smiled and said,
"Or a sense of humor, either. . . ." They were both grinning at each
other now, and one of Wallis's worries began to fade. Morale among the
survivors promised to be good.
Dryly, Wallis said, "I think you should take greater care not to make
Mr. Dickson laugh, Doctor. Your Hippocratic oath demands no less. However,
there is a serious side to this business, and the first step is to make
a detailed inventory of our resources. This we will begin at once. The
doctor and I will work together, both for the sake of increased efficiency
and to conserve flashlight batteries.
"You, Mr. Dickson," he went on, "can keep an eye on the patients. I'll find
you something so that you can bang on the deck for the doctor if any of them
need attention. All right?"
Dickson whispered that it was all right and so a few minutes later they
left him with a heavy spanner and a flashlight placed conveniently on
his chest to begin the long job of taking stock.
They started in Number One and they intended working aft from there,
systematically listing everything they found which might conceivably be of
use. But the inadequate lighting and the fact that the storm had jumbled
together the contents of many of the tanks tended to slow the work, and
several times they came to crates or other containers which could not be
examined without moving a lot of overlying stuff. Rather than waste time
during the early part of the search on these items, they noted their size,
shape, and position so that they could ask Dickson about them later.
As Trader's first mate Dickson had had access to the cargo manifest. When
questioned, however, he admitted to reading the manifest but said that he
could not at the moment remember it in detail, adding that his knock on the
head had probably brought on temporary amnesia. The doctor disagreed with
this diagnosis, pointing out gravely that the head in question was in good
shape physically and that the trouble might stem from one or more forms
of congenital idiocy. Radford was going into this subject in detail when
Wallis firmly directed the conversation back to the subject of the cargo.
It wasn't that he did not want to give the two men the pleasure of
verbally cutting each other to pieces, but the airy persiflage would
have to be tamped down to a minimum until some of the more important
matters were settled.
It was some time later that the doctor said, "One of the things I don't
understand is why they gave us so many electric light bulbs. There must
be hundreds of the things. Extra welding gear and tools I can understand,
and nonperishable food in the shape of sacks of dried beans, powdered eggs,
and tins of Spam. But light bulbs!"
Wallis said, "You must realize that in time of war it's sometimes easier
to route large quantities of material to any given destination than small
and that, say, two dozen spare bulbs is below the permissible minimum.
Another factor is that they practically gave us this ship and carried
out the major structural alterations before we joined it at Houston,
and generally have been overgenerous with material and assistance. They
are friends who have just recently become allies, you see, and it's my
idea that a lot of these friends feel they should have become allies
much sooner and this is their way of telling us how they feel. . . ."
"That's true," said Dickson seriously, and then he added, "except for
the Spam. I think the Spam is their way of telling us that they have
not quite forgiven us for the War of 1812. . . ."
The persiflage, Wallis thought,
refused to be tamped down
.
Shortly afterwards they ate a freezingly cold meal, made the patients as
comfortable as possible, and prepared to sleep. All the available blankets
had been used to keep Dickson and the girls warm, so the doctor and Wallis
slept bundled together under a heap of sacking. They lay back to back,
knees drawn up tightly against their stomachs, completely covered by
the sacking and breathing through two lengths of piping. In this way
they were able both to pool their body heat and to warm themselves with
their own expelled breath.
But the sacking was coarse and stank of oil, the end of the pipe was
shockingly cold even with his handkerchief wrapped around it, and the warm
stale air he exhaled gave him a headache as well. When the doctor moved,
either because one of the patients needed attention or simply because
he was a born wriggler in bed, an icy draught breached the tiny cocoon
of warmth which Wallis was trying to build around himself and he would
feel like committing murder. And if the doctor did not move he would
lie cold and miserable and angry because Radford was asleep and he wasn't.
At such times he would stare into the blackness of his cocoon, thinking
about the absolute blackness of the compartment outside it, of the utter
darkness of the ship around it, and of the dark ocean beyond that --
a sort of triple distilled blackness. It never occurred to him at such
times that sunlight might be glinting off the waves a few feet above
them. Rocked gently but not lulled to sleep by the wave action on the
deck below him he would stare and watch the mind pictures which formed
on this perfect, utterly black screen, and he would try to think.
The wave action seemed much less marked than it had been the last time
Wallis had tried to sleep. He had a mind picture of the ocean's surface
grown strangely calm and he knew that the picture was an unusual one
indeed for the North Atlantic in February. A second and more believable
picture formed of the great ship, buoyant but in a state of unstable
equilibrium, sinking imperceptibly beyond the influence of the waves,
drifting slowly deeper as water forced its way into the isolated pockets
of air trapped in odd corners of the ship which were not quite so watertight
as were the main tanks. He would try to think of some way of dealing with
this problem, and if no answer was forthcoming he would shelve it temporarily
and think of other problems.
He couldn't sleep and there was nothing better to do.
V
In another ship adrift in an immeasurably vaster ocean, there was also
a captain who was trying desperately to find an answer. The problems
were similar in that they were both in the life-and-death category,
different in that in Deslann's case death, if it came, would touch each
and every being in the entire Unthan fleet.
Deslann's initial anger towards Captain Gunt had changed to a feeling of
angry sympathy, with sympathy predominating. He had come to realize the
full extent and implications of their dilemma together with the desperate
attempts his co-commander had made at finding a solution. Not that Gunt
had so forgotten the rules that he had left a personal message for Deslann,
but the private log contained a tremendous quantity of material on the
problem since it had first been brought to his predecessor's attention
a little over a year ago -- all listed in the approved, impersonal manner.
These were Gunt's thoughts on the subject. He did not ask Deslann to do
anything about it, but at the same time the data made it very clear that
Gunt had reached the stage where he had to go cold in favor of the other
captain.
Other books
Envy by Kathryn Harrison
2 Pushing Luck by Elliott James
The Winning Summer by Marsha Hubler
Love Finds the One (Sully Point Book 2) by Smith, Nicole
Frog Power by Beverly Lewis
Andy Squared by Jennifer Lavoie
Fabuland by Jorge Magano
Blue Bloods of Bois D’Arc by Brown,Dick
Shepherd's Moon by Stacy Mantle
Taking Tessa by Aria Cole
