Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea Read Free

controls. A large screen lit up, and showed a seascape, the sparkling blue-green of sunlit, deep-water. He turned a wheel, and a grid, marked in degrees, began marching past the picture. “This is how we get away from the greasy stick that hangs down in the middle of most subs,” he explained. “We have one ‘midships, of course, but this repeater magnifies the periscope image. Standing right here I can turn it any way including up, without marching around it in a circle like a blind camel pulling buckets out of a well. And if we want it to, it’ll lock on to an object by light or infra-red or radar or sonar, and keep the image right there no matter which way we jump.”
    “Must’ve cost—”
    “It did,” said the Captain with pleasure, “and it’s paid up.”
    “What’s your floor?” asked the Admiral.
    “A thousand, sir.”
    “Would that be a thousand feet?”
    “Fathoms, Mr. Parker. More than a mile.” The Congressman peered downward through the herculite and looked as if he was suddenly afraid of falling.
    “Take her down to two hundred feet,” said the Admiral. “All ahead two-thirds, course zero.”
    “That’s due North, isn’t it?” asked the psychiatrist, shaking herself awake at last.
    Chip Morton answered her; all this time he had been gazing at her in much the same way as she had been gazing at the ocean, and was apparently as bemused. “Oh you are a sailor, aren’t you?” he said fatuously, as if he were talking to an exceptionally clever five-year-old. She passed him a chill brief glance of barely aroused irritation, which only made him grin at her—a lost grin, for she was already looking the other way.
    “Two hundred feet,” said the console.
    “Trim her, then two-thirds ahead, course zero.”
    “Aye-aye, sir.”
    “And O’Brien—set loran and asdic alarms for 200 plus and 400 minus. We’ll have a roof over our heads PDQ. And hang ‘em on the mike.”
    “Aye-aye, sir.”
    “I heard what you said,” said Parker, “but what did you say?”
    “Told him to go under the ice, set our detectors to operate at anything 200 feet over us or 400 feet under, and use them to operate the mike—‘Iron Mike,’ that is—pet name for automatic pilot. She’ll run herself now until she encounters something she can’t handle. She’ll think it over for a couple of millionths of a second and then yell.”
    “This must’ve cost—”
    But this time the Captain only smiled at him.
    “Doctor . . . gentlemen . . . would you like to go on with the tour?”
    They moved aft. The captain murmured into a grille that he was leaving the bridge, and joined the group. They crossed the wardroom, rounded the TV bulkhead and went aft down the central corridor. The Admiral, in the lead, turned to a door on the starboard side and opened it. “Watch your step,” he cautioned, and went in. His warning was useful for on the other side of the usual shin-hungry high sill was a steep flight of steps, virtually a ladder, which twisted downwards into greenish dimness.
    Blinking, they found themselves in a cavernous chamber, standing on a steel catwalk which ran about six feet over what at first seemed to be a shiny floor but which, as their eyes adjusted, they were able to see was water, because there was a man on it, about chest deep, wearing a rubber suit and walking slowly. “Hey, Lu!” barked the Admiral.
    “Lu?” echoed Admiral B.J. Crawford. “That’s not—that wouldn’t be old Lucius? Lucius Emery?”
    “Well, B.J., goddam!” cried the man in the tank. “Beg pardon, ma’am. Didn’t see you.”
    “Think nothing of it,” said Dr. Hiller calmly.
    “Dr. Hiller, Commander Lucius Emery,” said Nelson. “When better ichthyologists are built, they won’t find the likes of old Lu. Come on up and shake everybody’s hand, Lu.”
    “Can’t,” said the man in the tank. “You wouldn’t want my buddy here to drown, would you?”
    Dr. Hiller bent over the catwalk rail and peered.