The frogmen Read Free

horn itself is, only it can't close the circuit as long as the body of the screw is in the

    hole. Your mistake, Wainwright, was in unscrewing it far enough to let the plunger operate/'
    "Very clever," Amos said, "but how was I supposed to know that there was a plunger in there?"
    "There's a way," the chief said. "But this thing killed three of my best friends before we figured it out."
    He looked up at them. "We weren't smart. You see, in this metal plate there are four holes, but the side of this fourth hole has been cut away so all you have to do is loosen the screw and you can slide the plate out from under it, without letting the plunger move. You shouldVe noticed that, Wainwright.
    "That's lesson number one," the chief said, "and I hope you got the message. We're up against some very smart people.
    "The second thing I hope you learned is that when you start to disarm something, you look at it. And I mean look. Because everything you see has a reason. Like that cutaway screw hole. The only way you can spot that is to put your face right down on the mine. If we had done that and stopped right then and studied it until we figured out the reason for it, there would be three men alive today instead of dead.
    "From now on," the chief said, "I'm going to give you things to disarm. There's going to be a trick in every one of them. Not simple tricks like that screw. Real tricks. If you figure 'em out, okay. If you don't, a hundred and ten volts are going to knock you right

    on your can. You make a mistake and you're really going to know it."
    The chief smiled sweetly at them. "From now on, you are I are enemies. I'm going to zap you every time I can and every way I can. I'm going to get you people so psyched out you'll be scared to pick up a bottle of beer. So fall in and pair off."
    No one seemed to want to work with Amos. The chief petty officers paired off together, as did the two Master Divers, and the rest of them all seemed to know each other. At last there were only two men left, a motor machinist's mate, second, named Carl Reeder, whom no one liked, and the radioman, John Nash.
    Amos saw Nash glance at Reeder and then look over at him. He was surprised that Nash seemed shy, looking at him and then away. "You mind working with me, Mr. Wainwright?" Nash asked.
    "Fine," Amos said.
    "Okay," the chief bawled. "Reeder, you work by yourself."
    "That suits me right down to the ground," Reeder said. "I don't want anybody else fouling up my work."

    Day after day in Death Row the two-man teams stood at the heavy tables trying to disarm the exploders the Hangman rigged up for them. There was no way to tell when that no-volt current was going to zap you, and you waited all day long for the crushing, jerking jolt of it when you made a mistake.
    There was seldom an hour when, from one or the other of the workbenches, a howl of pain and outrage and defeat didn't rise. The rest of the students would watch the victim tear himself loose from the current and stand there shaking, but no one ever laughed again as they had laughed at Amos.

    As the terrible days went on, the students began to recognize and then reluctantly admire the enemy's skill. From the simple plunger in the wall of the screw hole they went on to more intricate ways the enemy had devised to keep their exploders from being disarmed. The enemy built tricks within tricks; when you were feeling good because you had figured one of them out, you got zapped by a secret within a secret.
    The timed mechanisms were the real horrors. As you worked on the device, you could hear the clock inside, ticking away the seconds you had left to make it stop. Because if you couldn't make the clock stop and it stopped because your time had run out, then it zapped you. And even then you never knew how long after that last tick the enemy had set the thing for. It might be only seconds before it zapped you, or it might be minutes. You never knew.
    It soon became apparent to everybody in the class