and said, “Ready for the black, Mr. Demerest?”
Demerest nodded. He towered over the other as he did over most of the men of Earth. They were thick, all of them, and took their short, low steps with ease. He himself had to feel his footsteps, guide them through the air; even the impalpable bond that held him to the ground was textured.
“I’m ready,” he said. He took a deep breath and deliberately repeated his earlier glance at the Sun. It was low in the morning sky, washed out by dusty air, and he knew it wouldn’t blind him. He didn’t think he would ever see it again.
He had never seen a bathyscaphe before. Despite everything, he tended to think of it in terms of prototypes, an oblong balloon with a spherical gondola beneath. It was as though he persisted in thinking of space flight in terms of tons of fuel spewed backward in fire, and an irregular module feeling its way, spiderlike, toward the Lunar surface.
The bathyscaphe was not like the image in his thoughts at all. Under its skin, it might still be buoyant bag and gondola, but it was all engineered sleekness now.
“My name is Javan,” said the ferry pilot. “Omar Javan.”
“Javan?”
“Queer name to you? I’m Iranian by descent; Earthman by persuasion. Once you get down there, there are no nationalities.” He grinned and his complexion grew darker against the even whiteness of his teeth. “If you don’t mind, we’ll be starting in a minute. You’ll be my only passenger, so I guess you carry weight.”
“Yes,” said Demerest dryly. “At least a hundred pounds more than I’m used to.”
“You’re from the Moon? I thought you had a queer walk on you. I hope it’s not uncomfortable.”
“It’s not exactly comfortable, but I manage. We exercise for this.”
“Well, come on board.” He stood aside and let Demerest walk down the gangplank. “I wouldn’t go to the Moon myself.”
“You go to Ocean-Deep.”
“About fifty times so far. That’s different.”
Demerest got on board. It was cramped, but he didn’t mind that. It might be a space module except that it was more—well, textured. There was that word again. There was the clear feeling everywhere that mass didn’t matter. Mass was held up; it didn’t have to be hurled up.
They were still on the surface. The blue sky could be seen greenishly through the clear thick glass. Javan said, “You don’t have to be strapped in. There’s no acceleration. Smooth as oil, the whole thing. It won’t take long; just about an hour. You can’t smoke.”
“I don’t smoke,” said Demerest.
“I hope you don’t have claustrophobia.”
“Moon-men don’t have claustrophobia.”
“All that open—”
“Not in our cavern. We live in a”—he groped for the phrase—“a Lunar-Deep, a hundred feet deep.”
“A hundred feet!” The pilot seemed amused, but he didn’t smile. “We’re slipping down now.”
The interior of the gondola was fitted into angles but here and there a section of wall beyond the instruments showed its basic sphericity. To Javan, the instruments seemed to be an extension of his arms; his eyes and hands moved over them lightly, almost lovingly.
“We’re all checked out,” he said, “but I like a last-minute look-over; we’ll be facing a thousand atmospheres down there.” His finger touched a contact, and the round door closed massively inward and pressed against the beveled rim it met.
“The higher the pressure, the tighter that will hold,” said Javan. “Take your last look at sunlight, Mr. Demerest.”
The light still shone through the thick glass of the window. It was wavering now; there was water between the Sun and them now.
“The last look?” said Demerest.
Javan snickered. “Not the last look. I mean for the trip . . . suppose you’ve never been on a bathyscaphe before.”
“No, I haven’t. Have many?”
“Very few,” admitted Javan. “But don’t worry. It’s just an underwater balloon. We’ve introduced a million improvements since the first bathyscaphe. It’s nuclear-powered now and we can move freely by water jet up to certain limits, but cut it down to basics and it’s still a spherical gondola under buoyancy tanks. And it’s still towed out to sea by a mother ship because it needs what power it carries too badly to waste it on surface travel. Ready?”
“Ready.”
The supporting cable of the mother ship flicked away and the bathyscaphe settled lower; then lower still, as sea water fed into the buoyancy tanks. For a few moments, caught in surface currents, it swayed, and then there was nothing. The bathyscaphe sank slowly through a deepening green.
Javan relaxed. He said, “John Bergen is head of Ocean-Deep. You’re going to see him?”
“That’s right.”
“He’s a nice guy. His wife’s with him.”
“She is?”
“Oh, sure. They have women down there. There’s a bunch down there, fifty people. Some stay for months.”
Demerest put his finger on the narrow, nearly invisible seam where door met wall. He took it away and looked at it. He said, “It’s oily.”
“Silicone, really. The pressure squeezes some out. It’s supposed to. . . . Don’t worry. Everything’s automatic. Everything’s fail-safe. The first sign of malfunction, any malfunction at all, our ballast is released and up we go.”
“You mean nothing’s ever happened to these bathyscaphes?”
“What can happen?” The pilot looked sideways at his passenger. “Once you get too deep for sperm whales, nothing can go wrong.”
“Sperm whales?” Demerest’s thin face creased in a frown.
“Sure, they dive as deep as half a mile. If they hit a bathyscaphe—well, the walls of the buoyancy chambers aren’t particularly strong. They don’t have to be, you know. They’re open to the sea and when the gasoline, which supplies the buoyancy, compresses, sea water enters.”
It was dark now. Demerest found his gaze fastened to the viewport. It was light inside the gondola, but it was dark in that window. And it was not the darkness of space; it was a thick darkness.
Demerest said sharply, “Let’s get this straight, Mr. Javan. You are not equipped to withstand the attack of a sperm whale. Presumably you are not equipped to withstand the attack of a giant squid. Have there been any actual incidents of that sort?”
“Well, it’s like this—”
“No games, please, and don’t try ragging the greenhorn. I am asking out of professional curiosity. I am head safety engineer at Luna City and I am asking what precautions this bathyscaphe can take against possible collision with large creatures.”
Javan looked embarrassed. He muttered, “Actually, there have been no incidents.”
“Are any expected? Even as a remote possibility?”
“Anything is remotely possible. But actually sperm whales are too intelligent to monkey with us and giant squid are too shy.”
“Can they see us?”
“Yes, of course. We’re lit up.”
“Do you have floodlights?”
“We’re already past the large-animal range, but we have them, and I’ll turn them on for you.”
Through the black of the window there suddenly appeared a snow-storm, an inverted upward-falling snowstorm. The blackness had come alive with stars in three-dimensional array and all moving upward.
Demerest said, “What’s that?”
“Just crud. Organic matter. Small creatures. They float, don’t move much, and they catch the light. We’re
