Involution Ocean

death’s sake!”

“Really, Newhouse. Your language! Fve made a long study of subsurface conditions. You needn’t succumb to hysteria. You need some oxygen, that’s all.”

“I cant understand why I didn’t thinlr of this before,” I said. “Your insanity must have infected us all.” My last words were lost in a long dry groaning of ribs under pres­sure. The whaleskin glued over the slash in the sub’s side was forming a herniated bulge as it dimpled inwards.

“This is absurd,” I said, coughing. “I won’t be involved in your suicide. I’m going to cut my way out.” I picked my way across the tangled ballast toward Desperandum’s axe. With an effort I managed to hoist the huge, double- bladed axe to one shoulder. I moved shakily toward the bulging skin, where it would be easiest to cut. The flooring boomed uneasily under my feet.

“I wouldn’t do that at this depth if I were you,” Desper­andum said. “The rush of dust would knock you to a pulp.”

I hesitated. “We’re not that deep yet.”

In answer Desperandum moved the fins and we dived again. I nearly fell down. I set the axe down quickly.

“Now return to your post,” he said flatly. I went, pulling my mask back on. The dust in the air and the stench inside the whale were making my nose run. It was impossible to tell our depth. Even the increasing pressure was not a reli­able indication, because Desperandum had the oxygen tank open and running. Dust ran thickly by the plugs. My mind raced frantically, trying to squirm out from under a lower­ing weight of despair. After a while I felt a fatalistic inertia settling into the cores of my bones.

“The air’s getting so heavy,” I said. “I feel numb all over.” I stared out.

“Come get some oxygen then. I’ve never felt better,” Desperandum said.

A small amorphous something slid past the glass. “Wait a minute,” I said. “I saw something move just now!”

“What? What was it?” Desperandum said eagerly.

“I don’t know,” I said. “It was small and wiggly-looldng. I think I’d better get some air. I feel drunk.”

Desperandum inhaled hugely. “Wonderful, isn’t it? Tell you what, my lad. You take over navigation for a while, get some good air in your lungs. Let’s see what my trained eyes can make of it.”

I stumbled over the ballast, took a fiery gulp of oxygen, and grabbed the levers. I had an absurdly light feeling as I took the levers in my hands, the oxygen mask half-dangling from the snout of my dustmask. Now I could slowly and subtly direct us upward again. Desperandum released the levers, and I immediately knew that the levers were far be­yond my strength.

“Captain! Captain!” I said, but my dustmask was on, and the muffled sounds were quickly lost in the drumlike booms of fhe flooring under Desperandum’s boots. It was a silent, desperate struggle then. I put my full weight against the levers and pulled till my wrists ached and cramps bit the insides of my biceps. It was no use. They escaped me, the ends of fhe levers sweeping violently upward and crack­ing my dustmask’s right lens. We went into an immediate nosedive. Desperandum was crouching at the port eye plug and he fell over immediately. Then the tangled mass of bal­last slid onto him like an avalanche. I heard his scream and a yowl of feedback as his speakers shorted out Then he was lost beneath it all.

I would have fallen on him if I had not been holding the starboard finlever. As it was I dangled about ten feet above him, my feet just above the treacherous, unstable heap of metal and cable and crates. The smell of preserving fluid went through the dry musty air like a knife.

Hie oxygen tank had taken its mask attachment with it when it tumbled free. The engine, though, was secured to the sub’s skeleton, and it had stayed in place. It was still running. Painfully, I pulled myself up the length of the lever until I could wrap my legs around it. Then I pulled off my mask.

“I’m so sorry I came down here,” I said. “Tm really, really sorry I did it and it wasn’t my idea at all, and if I ever get away from here I’ll never, ever let this happen again—'

“Newhouse ...”

“—to me or anyone else, ever, ever again. ...”

“Newhouse. Turn off the engines. Turn them off!”

“Captain! Captain Desperandum!”

“Turn off the engines, Newhouse,” came Desperandum’s reasonable voice. “I think I hear something down here.”

Tears were running down my face. “I don’t know if I can do it Captain,” I said. “There’s something wrong with filie.”

“It’s nitrogen narcosis, my lad. We’re too deep, far too deep. You’ll have to turn off the engine. I can’t do it. I can’t feel my legs.”

I shuddered. “All right Captain. I’ll try.” I inched my way up the lever, dug my feet and fingers into the stinking, dessicated flesh around the ribs, and leapt. The whirling propeller shaft almost brushed against my face, but I wrapped my arms around the bulk of the engine. I kicked once, twice against the switch, and the engine shut down with a moan and a mumble.

Then there was silence. I heard the crunch and rustle of Desperandum moving amid the rubble. “I can just see out the eyehole,” he said. “There. Do you hear that?”

I got up on top of the engine block, and it groaned a little. The whole belly of the hollow whale was bulging in­ward at my back. “I don’t hear anything, Captain. Just the dust . . . I think.”

“I see them moving out there,” Desperandum said matter-of-factly. “They’re quite small. And they’re shin­ ing—sort of an amorphous glow. There are hundreds of them. I can see them strung off into the distance.”

“Captain,” I said. “Captain, how are we going to get back to the surface? We can’t navigate while the ship is standing on its head like this.” I burst into feeble giggles. It was half the nitrogen poisoning, half the pure deadly ludicrousness of the situation.

“That’s not important now, Newhouse. But it’s vital that you come down here and confirm this sighting. We’re mak­ing scientific history.”

“No.” I said. “I’m not going to look at them. They have a right to their privacy. God I wish I had some clean air. I feel so weak.”

Desperandum was silent for a while. Then he said coaxingly, “The oxygen’s down here with me. I can hear it hiss­ing. You’ll pass out in a little while if you don’t get some, you know. And maybe you could get these pipes off my legs. I think they’re bleeding, but it might just be the pre­servative fluid. Then you could have a look. Just a little one. What do you have to lose?”

“No!” I said more urgently, my fogged brain stung a little now with panic. “I don’t want to look at them. I don’t think they want me to.”

“For stability’s sake!” Desperandum said, resorting to Nullaquan profanity in his final crisis. “Don’t you have a shred of plain human curiosity? Just think how interesting they arel I never realized they were so small! And the way they move is so fascinating, almost a kind of dance. Like little colored lights. See how they move away to the sides now! And—Oh my God!”

Desperandum began to scream. “Look at that thing! Look at the size of it! It’s coming closer! It’s coming too close! It’s coming too close to us! Don’t! Don’t do it!”

There was a jar that nearly knocked me loose from the engine. Then a hideous cracking and crumbling. Something was squeezing us. Big dimpled indentations, like troughs, appeared in the back and belly of the whale— five of them. There were four of them across the back and a big thumb­like one almost directly behind me. The great dry bones added their screaming to the captain’s. There was a crunch, a scream, a great rupturing sound at the savage bursting of our vessel, a rush and roar of exploding air—grayness— and blackness.

Chapter 15 The Dream

The sky was that blackness, and I was in the sky, float­ing weightless, disembodied. Far below me, baked in