on the air masks that had been handed out. They looked like World War I gas masks, and could be connected to oxygen-giving metal nipples anywhere in the room. The men went around checking and rechecking them to make sure they were fastened correctly, giving the one on the unconscious Coombs extra attention.
While inspecting mine, Cowper winked at me through our foggy faceplates, and said, 'Lookin' good, sweethaht.' His gnome face was all scrunched up from the tight seal. I wanted to ask him, Are you really my father? Would you be? But I couldn't find my voice, and he moved on.
When all was in readiness, he sat down on his dais, saying, 'A-gangers, give Clyde a kick.'
'Engage diesel, aye,' Kranuski barked.
'Engaging diesel,' Robles said.
A deep rumble could be felt through the deck. The tension in the room was fierce-it was like sitting in a gas chamber. Hollow-voiced, Kranuski announced, 'Diesel engaged… sir.'
'Very good, Mr. Kranuski.'
'You want gas levels, Commander?' asked Robles.
'Nah, no smog alerts. All we need to know is if it'll kill you. Everybody keep breathing nice and steady. Don't anybody tense up and fool themselves that they can't breathe. There's good clean dedicated air coming through those pipes. Relax.'
A piercing alarm started to go off. Everyone jumped, thrashing around for the source.
'Nothing to worry about!' Cowper said loudly. 'Nothing to worry about! Carbon-monoxide detector-that's what we want.'
It was an annoying noise. Kranuski and Robles roamed the various control stations, making adjustments and conferring with quiet intensity. Long minutes passed, and the air became dense and warm, causing the light to waver.
'Mr. Cowper?' I said, indicating the remains of the Xombie. Its squashed fibers were relaxing, turning from purplish blue to bright, meaty red. He nodded, trading looks with the other men. Some of the boys made muffled sounds of disgust.
Robles said, 'Carbon monoxide above lethal concentrations, sir.'
'Thanks, Dan. We'll let it go a little while longer.'
The smooth thrumming of the engine began to stutter.
'She's starting to skip,' said Kranuski. 'Not enough air.'
'I know,' said Cowper intently.
'Going to run her until she stalls?'
The old man held up a finger, as if counting down in his head. Then he said, 'No. Hopefully that's enough. Kill it, but leave the carbon-dioxide scrubbers running.'
'Diesel off.'
'Diesel off, aye.'
'And mute that damn alarm.'
Once it was still, Cowper addressed the whole ship. His amplified voice sounded thin and distant under the mask, like an old-time radio program. 'Gentlemen, you are now surrounded by toxic gas. The gas is odorless, colorless, and tasteless, so you may be tempted to adjust your mask or scratch your nose. I advise you to refrain from this, because doing so will cause you to fall asleep and never wake up. In case some of you are wondering, this is not an attempt to smother the enemy-as far as we know, they are not vulnerable to suffocation. Quite the opposite, in fact: It's our guess that Agent X can't invade the bloodstream if there's too much oxygen present. Respiration is a buffer against the disease, which is why we don't all catch it like the flu.
'In light of that, you may be curious what we're doing. If what we think we know about Agent X is true, then flushing the boat with carbon monoxide should suppress the disease even better than oxygen does. Hopefully it'll give us a chance to retake the boat.' He hung up the mike. 'Lulu, come up here a second. Watch your air line.'
I stepped up on the periscope platform with him, and he beamed at me benevolently. I felt like a squire about to be knighted.
'Since this was your idea,' he said, 'I'd like to give you the honor of locating a Xombie.'
'… Excuse me?'
'We need you to flush out one of them for us. See if your plan worked. Charley, put a tank on her, will ya?' A man came forward bearing a stubby yellow oxygen tank.
'Alone?' I asked. I was thinking, This is a joke.
'We can't all go. What if it didn't work? We need somebody to test the waters.'
I looked around at their tired faces, some mocking, some troubled. Cowper's was the most indifferent, and for that I carelessly shouldered the heavy tank, saying, 'Okay. Where to?' At that moment I would have jumped off a cliff to spite him.
'You see that door there?' To the others he said, 'The rest of you tend goal and make damn sure nothing gets in.'
There was a brief interruption of my airflow as Albemarle switched the line. Kranuski handed me a walkie- talkie. 'Lulu, take this radio and leave it on talk, like this, so we know how you're doing. You've got twenty minutes of air, but start heading back after fifteen. You won't even need that much time. Just go forward to the radio shack and come back. It's a straight shot; you can't get lost.'
It was strange to have him call me Lulu, like he thought he had to be chummy with the condemned. 'Louise,' I muttered.
He either didn't hear or ignored me. 'You ready?' he asked.
'Just hurry up.'
Cowper signaled them to turn the wheel, which looked like a bank vault. Robles kicked the door outward, gun at the ready. I pictured a wall of water on the other side, water that became a white horizontal column, blasting these people down and drowning them so that they drifted about the flooded green room like wide-eyed statues with flowing hair. But nothing came through.
Robles patted me on the shoulder. Without irony, he said, 'Hey, good luck.' Other voices also chimed, 'Good luck,' and someone said, 'Rock on.'
I stepped in over the raised sill and helped them close it behind me.
Standing with my back to the door, breathing bottled oxygen, my first inane thought was, Call Control Data Institute-Today! I was in a tight passage through ceiling-high racks of electronics, enveloped in their soft refrigerator hum. The floor was dirt-concealing flecked beige tile. Those aisles would have been just the place to conceal lurking Xombies, too, but none appeared.
For a second, I was leery about giving myself away by speaking into the radio, but as I made myself start walking it came naturally. Talking made me feel less alone.
'Nothing so far,' I said, more loudly than necessary. 'I'm passing rows of computer equipment… checking all the doors. Nope. Now I'm passing under an escape trunk-it's closed. I'm looking into a room full of TV monitors and consoles-hello? Nobody there. Now a smaller room… the ceiling's getting low…'
I was at the end. This last room had the cramped, utilitarian look of a place behind the scenes-the front of the sub, I supposed. It was festooned with thick skeins of insulated cable that clung to the bulkhead like fossilized muscle and sinew. Fax machines and other communications gear were stuffed wherever they could fit amid gray- painted guts of ducts, pipes, wiring. Teletype paper had been dumped on the floor, but otherwise there was nothing there.
Feeling let off the hook, I dawdled to peer in every cranny. I still had fifteen minutes. What interested me was that I could see part of the actual hull there-that curved ceiling was all that kept the sea out. I noticed that the inner walls and floor did not actually contact the hull, but seemed to float within it, creating a crawl space on all sides, as if the living and work areas of the sub were a clunky, angular structure shoehorned inside the ringed shell-a ship in a bottle. It dawned on me that I had seen all this in pieces back at that great hangar. It had been a submarine factory. Duh, as the boys would say.
Crawl space. A chunky yellow flashlight hung from a hook in the corner. I took it and performed a few contortions with the tank on my back, struggling to peer into the narrow crevice along the hull.
Faces looked back at me.
