Beth sat up in her bed in the laboratory and stared at the message Norman had given her. “Oh my God,” she said. She pushed her thick dark hair away from her face. “How can it be?” she said.
“It all goes together,” Norman said. “Just think. When did the messages start? After Harry came out of the sphere. When did the squid and the other animals first appear? After Harry came out of the sphere.”
“Yes, but-”
“-At first there were little squid, but then, when we were going to eat them, suddenly there were shrimps, too. Just in time for dinner. Why? Because Harry doesn’t like to eat squid.”
Beth said nothing; she just listened.
“And who, as a child, was terrified by the giant squid in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea?”
“Harry was,” she said. “I remember he said that.” Norman went on in a rush. “And when does Jerry appear on the screen? When Harry is present. Not at other times. And when does Jerry answer us as we talk? When Harry is in the room to hear what we’re saying. And why can’t Jerry read our minds? Because Harry can’t read our minds. And remember how Barnes kept asking for the name, and Harry wouldn’t ask for the name? Why? Because he was afraid the screen would say ‘Harry,’ not ‘Jerry.’ ”
“And the crewman…”
“Right. The black crewman. Who shows up just as Harry is having a dream of being rescued? A black crewman shows up to rescue us.”
Beth was frowning, thinking. “What about the giant squid?”
“Well, in the middle of its attack, Harry hit his head and was knocked unconscious. Immediately the squid disappeared. It didn’t come back again until Harry woke up from his nap, and told you he’d take over.”
“My God,” Beth said.
“Yes,” Norman said. “It explains a lot.”
She was silent for a while, staring at the message. “But how is he doing it?”
“I doubt if he is. At least, not consciously.” Norman had been thinking about this. “Let’s assume,” he said, “that something happened to Harry when he went inside the sphere-he acquired some kind of power while in the sphere.”
“Like what?”
“The power to make things happen just by thinking of them. The power to make his thoughts real.”
Beth frowned. “Make his thoughts real…”
“It’s not so strange,” he said. “Just think: if you were a sculptor, first you would get an idea, and then you would carve it in stone or wood, to make it real. The idea comes first, then the execution follows, with some added effort to create a reality that reflects your prior thoughts. That’s the way the world works for us. We imagine something, and then we try to make it happen. Sometimes the way we make it happen is unconscious-like the guy who just happens to go home unexpectedly at lunchtime and catches his wife in bed with another man. He doesn’t consciously plan it. It just sort of happens by itself.”
“Or the wife who catches the husband in bed with another woman,” Beth said.
“Yes, of course. The point is, we manage to make things happen all the time without thinking about them too much. I don’t think of every word when I talk to you. I just intend to say something and it comes out okay.”
“Yes…”
“So we can make complicated creations like sentences without effort. But we can’t make other complicated creations like sculptures without effort. We believe we have to do something besides simply have an idea.”
“And we do,” Beth said.
“Well, Harry doesn’t. Harry’s gone one step further. He doesn’t have to carve the statue any more. He just gets the idea, and things happen by themselves. He manifests things.”
“Harry imagines a frightening squid, and suddenly we have a frightening squid outside our window?”
“Exactly. And when he loses consciousness, the squid disappears.”
“And he got this power from the sphere?”
“Yes.”
Beth frowned. “Why is he doing this? Is he trying to kill us?”
Norman shook his head. “No. I think he’s in over his head.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well,” Norman said, “we’ve considered lots of ideas of what the sphere from another civilization might be. Ted thought it was a trophy or a message-he saw it as a present. Harry thought it had something inside-he saw it as a container. But I wonder if it might be a mine.”
“You mean, an explosive?”
“Not exactly-but a defense, or a test. An alien civilization could strew these things around the galaxy, and any intelligence that picks them up would get to experience the power of the sphere. Which is that whatever you think comes true. If you think positive thoughts, you get delicious shrimp for dinner. If you think negative thoughts, you get monsters trying to kill you. Same process, just a matter of content.”
“So, the same way a land mine blows up if you step on it, this sphere destroys people if they have negative thoughts?”
“Or,” he said, “if they simply aren’t in control of their consciousness. Because, if you’re in control of your consciousness, the sphere would have no particular effect. If you’re not in control, it gets rid of you.”
“How can you control a negative thought?” Beth said. She seemed suddenly very agitated. “How can you say to someone, ‘Don’t think of a giant squid’? The minute you say that, they automatically think of the squid in the course of trying not to think of it.”
“It’s possible to control your thoughts,” Norman said. “Maybe for a yogi or something.”
“For anybody,” Norman said. “It’s possible to deflect your attention from undesirable thoughts. How do people quit smoking? How do any of us ever change our minds about anything? By controlling our thoughts.”
“I still don’t see why Harry is doing this.”
“Remember your idea that the sphere might strike us below the belt?” Norman said. “The way the AIDS virus strikes our immune system below the belt? AIDS hits us at a level we aren’t prepared to deal with. So, in a sense, does the sphere. Because we believe that we can think whatever we want, without consequence. ‘Sticks and stones can break my bones, but names can never hurt me.’ We have sayings like that, which emphasize the point. But now suddenly a name is as real as a stick, and it can hurt us in the same way. Our thoughts get manifested-what a wonderful thing-except that all our thoughts get manifested, the good ones and the bad ones. And we simply aren’t prepared to control our thoughts. We’ve never had to do it before.”
“When I was a child,” Beth said, “I was angry with my mother, and when she got cancer, I was terribly guilty…”
“Yes,” Norman said. “Children think this way. Children all believe that their thoughts have power. But we patiently teach them that they’re wrong to think that. Of course,” he said, “there has always been another tradition of belief about thoughts. The Bible says not to covet your neighbor’s wife, which we interpret to mean that the act of adultery is forbidden. But that’s not really what the Bible is saying. The Bible is saying that the thought of adultery is as forbidden as the act itself.”
“And Harry?”
“Do you know anything about Jungian psychology?”
Beth said, “That stuff has never struck me as relevant.”
“Well, it’s relevant now,” Norman said. He explained. “Jung broke with Freud early in this century, and developed his own psychology. Jung suspected there was an underlying structure to the human psyche that was reflected in an underlying similarity to our myths and archetypes. One of his ideas was that everybody had a dark side to his personality, which be called the ‘shadow.’ The shadow contained all the unacknowledged personality aspects-the hateful parts, the sadistic parts, all that. Jung thought people had the obligation to become acquainted with their shadow side. But very few people do. We all prefer to think we’re nice guys and we don’t ever have the desire to kill and maim and rape and pillage.”
“Yes…”
“As Jung saw it, if you didn’t acknowledge your shadow side, it would rule you.”
“So we’re seeing Harry’s shadow side?”
“In a sense, yes. Harry needs to present himself as Mr. Arrogant Know-It-All Black Man,” Norman said.
“He certainly does.”
“So, if he’s afraid to be down here in this habitat-and who isn’t?-then he can’t admit his fears. But he has the fears anyway, whether he admits them or not. And so his shadow side justifies the fears-creating things that prove his fears to be valid.”
“The squid exists to justify his fears?”
“Something like that, yes.”
“I don’t know,” Beth said. She leaned back and turned her head up, and her high cheekbones caught the light. She looked almost like a model, elegant and handsome and strong. “I’m a zoologist, Norman. I want to touch things and hold them in my hands and see that they’re real. All these theories about manifestations, they just… They’re so… psychological.”
“The world of the mind is just as real, and follows rules just as rigorous, as the world of external reality,” Norman said.
“Yes, I’m sure you’re right, but…” She shrugged. “It isn’t very satisfying to me.”
“You know everything that has happened since we got down here,” Norman said. “Tell me another hypothesis that explains it all.”
“I can’t,” she admitted. “I’ve been trying, all the time you’ve been talking. I can’t.” She folded the paper in her hands and considered it for a while. “You know, Norman, I think you’ve made a brilliant series of deductions. Absolutely brilliant. I’m seeing you in a whole different light.”
Norman smiled with pleasure. For most of the time he had been down in the habitat, he’d felt like a fifth wheel, an unnecessary person in this group. Now someone was acknowledging his contribution, and he was pleased. “Thank you, Beth.”
She looked at him, her large eyes liquid and soft. “You’re a very attractive man, Norman. I don’t think I ever really noticed before.” Absently, she touched her breast, beneath the clinging jumpsuit. Her hands pressed the fabric, outlining the hard nipples. She suddenly stood and hugged him, her body close to him. “We have to stay together on this,” she said. “We have to stay close, you and I”
“Yes, we do.”
“Because, if what you are saying is true, then Harry is a very dangerous man.”
“Yes.”
“Just the fact that he is walking around, fully conscious, makes him dangerous.”
“Yes.”
“What are we going to do about him?”
“Hey, you guys,” Harry said, coming up the stairs. “Is this a private party? Or can anybody join in?”
“Sure,” Norman said, “come on up, Harry,” and he moved away from Beth.
“Was I interrupting something?” Harry said.
“No, no.”
“I don’t want to get in the way of anybody’s sex life.”
“Oh, Harry,” Beth said. She sat at the lab bench, moving away from Norman.
“Well, you two sure look all charged up about something.”
“Do we?” Norman said.
“Yeah, especially Beth. I think she gets more beautiful every day she’s down here.”
“I’ve noticed that, too,” Norman said, smiling.
“I’ll bet you have. A woman in love. Lucky you.” Harry turned to Beth. “Why are you staring at me like that?”
“I’m not staring,” Beth said.
“You are, too.”
“Harry, I’m not staring.”
“I can tell when someone is staring at me, for Christ’s sake.”
Norman said, “Harry-”
“-I just want to know why you two are looking at me like that. You’re looking at me like I’m a criminal or something.”
“Don’t get paranoid, Harry.”
“Huddling up here, whispering…”
“We weren’t whispering.”
“You were.” Harry looked around the room. “So it’s two white people and one black person now, is that it?”
“Oh, Harry…”
“I’m not stupid, you know. Something’s going on between you. I can tell.”
“Harry,” Norman said, “nothing is going on.”
And then they heard a low insistent beeping, from the communications console downstairs. They exchanged glances, and went downstairs to look.
The console screen was slowly printing out letter groups.
CQX VDX MOP IM
“Is that Jerry?” Norman asked.
“I don’t think so,” Harry said. “I don’t think he would go back to code.”
“Is it a code?”
“I would say so, definitely.”
“Why is it so slow?” Beth said. A new letter was added every few seconds in a steady, rhythmic way.
“I don’t know,” Harry said. “Where is it coming from?”
Harry frowned. “I don’t know, but the transmission speed is the most interesting characteristic. The slowness. Interesting.”
Norman and Beth waited for him to figure it out. Norman thought: How can we ever get along without Harry? We need him. He is both the most important intelligence down here, and the most dangerous. But we need him.
CQX VDX MOP LKI XXC VRW TGK PIU YQA
“Interesting,” Harry said. “The letters are coming about every five seconds. So I think it’s safe to say that we know where it’s coming from. Wisconsin.”
Norman could not have been more surprised. “Wisconsin?”
“Yeah. This is a Navy transmission. It may or may not be directed to us, but it is coming from Wisconsin.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because that’s the only place in the world it could be coming from,” Harry said. “You know about ELF? No? Well, it’s like this. You can send radio waves through the air, and, as you know, they travel pretty well. But you can’t send radio far through water. Water is a bad medium, so you need an incredibly powerful signal to go even a short distance.”
“Yes…”
“But the ability to penetrate is a function of wavelength. An ordinary radio wave is short-shortwave radio, all of that. The length of the waves are tiny, thousands or millions of little waves to an inch. But you can also make ELF, extremely low-frequency waves, which are long-each individual wave is maybe twenty feet long. And those waves, once generated, will go a very great distance, thousands of miles, through water, no problem. The only trouble is that, since the waves are long, they’re also slow. That’s why we’re getting one character every five seconds. The Navy needed a way to communicate with their submarines underwater, so they built a big ELF antenna in Wisconsin to send these long waves. And that’s what we’re getting.”
“And the code?”
“It must be a compression code-three-letter groupings which stand for a long section of predefined message. So it won’t take so long to send a message. Because if you sent a plain text message, it would literally take hours.”
CQX VDX MOP LKI XXC VRW TGK PIU YQA IYT
EEQ FVC ZNB TMK EXE MMN OPW GEW
The letters stopped.
“Looks like that’s it,” Harry said.
“How do we translate it?” Beth said.
“Assuming it’s a Navy transmission,” Harry said, “we don’t.”
“Maybe there’s a codebook here somewhere,” Beth said.
“Just hold on,” Harry said.
The screen shifted, translating groups one after another.
2340 HOURS 7-07 CHIEF CINCCOMPAC TO BARNES DEEPHAB-8
“It’s a message to Barnes,” Harry said. They watched as the other letter groups were translated.
SURFACE SUPPORT VESSELS STEAMING NANDI AND VIPATI TO YOUR LOCATION ETA 1600 HOURS 7-08 DEEP WITHDRAW AUTOSET ACKNOWLEDGE GOOD LUCK SPAULDING END
“Does that mean what I think it means?” Beth said.
“Yeah,” Harry said. “The cavalry is on the way.”
“Hot damn!” Beth clapped her hands.
“The storm must be calming down. They’ve sent the surface ships and they’ll be here in a little more than sixteen hours.”
“And autoset?”
They had the answer immediately. Every screen in the habitat flickered. In the upper right corner of each appeared a small box with numbers: 16:20:00. The numbers ran backward.
“It’s automatically counting down for us.”
“Is there some kind of countdown we’re supposed to follow for leaving the habitat?” Beth said.
Norman watched the numbers. They were rolling backward, just as they had on the submarine. Then he said, “What about the submarine?”
“Who cares about the submarine,” Harry said.
“I think we should keep it with us,” Beth said. She checked her watch. “We have another four hours before it has to be reset.”
“Plenty of time.”
“Yes.”
Privately, Norman was trying to gauge whether they could survive for sixteen more hours.
Harry said, “Well, this is great news! Why are you two so hangdog?”
“Just wondering if we’ll make it,” Norman said.
“Why shouldn’t we make it?” Harry said.
“Jerry might do something first,” Beth said. Norman felt a burst of irritation with her. Didn’t she realize that by saying that, she was planting the idea in Harry’s mind?
“We can’t survive another attack on the habitat,” Beth said.
Norman thought, Shut up, Beth. You’re making suggestions.
“An attack on the habitat?” Harry said.
Quickly, Norman said, “Harry, I think you and I should talk to Jerry again.”
“Really? Why?”
“I want to see if I can reason with him.”
“I don’t know if you can,” Harry said. “Reason with him.”
“Let’s try anyway,” Norman said, with a glance at Beth. “It’s worth a try.”
Norman knew he would not really be talking to Jerry. He would be talking to a part of Harry. An unconscious part, a shadow part. How should he go about it? What could he use?
He sat in front of the monitor screen, thinking, What do I know about Harry, really? Harry, who had grown up in Philadelphia as a thin, introverted, painfully shy boy, a mathematical prodigy, his gifts denigrated by his friends and family. Harry had said once that when he cared about mathematics, everybody else cared about slamdunking. Even now, Harry hated all games, all sports. As a young man he had been humiliated and neglected, and when he finally got proper recognition for his gifts, Norman suspected, it came too late. The damage was already done. Certainly it came too late to prevent the arrogant, braggart exterior.
I AM HERE. DO NOT BE AFRAID.
“Jerry.”
YES NORMAN.
“I have a request to make.”
YOU MAY DO SO.
“Jerry, many of our entities are gone, and our habitat is weakened.”
I KNOW THIS. MAKE YOUR REQUEST.
“Would you please stop manifesting?”
NO.
“Why not?”
I DO NOT WISH TO STOP.
Well, Norman thought, at least we got right down to it. No wasting time. “Jerry, I know that you have been isolated for a long time, for many centuries, and that you have felt alone during all that time. You have felt that nobody cared about you. You have felt that nobody wanted to play with you, or shared your interests.”
YES THIS IS TRUE.
“And now at last you can manifest, and you are enjoying this. You like to show us what you can do, to impress us.”
THIS IS TRUE.
“So that we will pay attention to you.”
YES. I LIKE IT.
“And it works. We do pay attention to you.”
YES I KNOW IT.
“But these manifestations injure us, Jerry.”
I DO NOT CARE.
“And they surprise us, too.”
I AM GLAD.
“We’re surprised, Jerry, because you are merely playing a game with us.”
I DO NOT LIKE GAMES. I DO NOT PLAY GAMES.
“Yes. This is a game for you, Jerry. It is a sport.”
NO, IT IS NOT.
“Yes, it is,” Norman said. “It is a stupid sport.”
Harry, standing beside Norman, said, “Do you want to contradict him that way? You might make him mad. I don’t think Jerry likes to be contradicted.”
I’m sure you don’t, Norman thought. But he said, “Well, I have to tell Jerry the truth about his own behavior. He isn’t doing anything very interesting.”
OH? NOT INTERESTING?
“No. You are being spoiled and petulant, Jerry.”
DO YOU DARE TO SPEAK TO ME IN THIS FASHION?
“Yes. Because you are acting stupidly.”
“Jeez,” Harry said. “Take it easy with him.”
I CAN EASILY MAKE YOU REGRET YOUR WORDS, NORMAN.
Norman was noticing, in passing, that Jerry’s vocabulary and syntax were now flawless. All pretense of naivete, of an alien quality, had been dropped. But Norman felt stronger, more confident, as the conversation progressed. He knew whom he was talking to now. He wasn’t talking to any alien. There weren’t any unknown assumptions. He was talking to a childish part of another human being.
I HAVE MORE POWER THAN YOU CAN IMAGINE.
“I know you have power, Jerry,” Norman said. “Big deal.”
Harry became suddenly agitated. “Norman. For Christ’s sake. You’re going to get us all killed.”
LISTEN TO HARRY. HE IS WISE.
“No, Jerry,” Norman said. “Harry is not wise. He is only afraid.”
HARRY IS NOT AFRAID. ABSOLUTELY NOT.
Norman decided to let that pass. “I’m talking to you, Jerry. Only to you. You are the one who is playing games.”
GAMES ARE STUPID.
“Yes, they are, Jerry. They are not worthy of you.”
GAMES ARE NOT OF INTEREST TO ANY INTELLIGENT PERSON.
“Then stop, Jerry. Stop the manifestations.”
I CAN STOP WHENEVER I WANT.
“I am not sure you can, Jerry.”
YES. I CAN.
“Then prove it. Stop this sport of manifestations.” There was a long pause. They waited for the response.
NORMAN YOUR TRICKS OF MANIPULATION ARE CHILDISH AND OBVIOUS TO THE POINT OF TEDIUM. I AM NOT INTERESTED IN TALKING WITH YOU FURTHER. I WILL DO EXACTLY AS I PLEASE AND I WILL MANIFEST AS I WISH.
“Our habitat cannot withstand more manifestations, Jerry-”
I DO NOT CARE.
“If you injure our habitat again, Harry will die.”
Harry said, “Me and everybody else, for Christ’s sake.”
I DO NOT CARE NORMAN.
“Why would you kill us, Jerry?”
YOU SHOULD NOT BE DOWN HERE IN THE FIRST PLACE. YOU PEOPLE DO NOT BELONG HERE. YOU ARE ARROGANT CREATURES WHO INTRUDE EVERYWHERE IN THE WORLD AND YOU HAVE TAKEN A GREAT FOOLISH RISK AND NOW YOU MUST PAY THE PRICE. YOU ARE AN UNCARING UNFEELING SPECIES WITH NO LOVE FOR ONE ANOTHER.
“That’s not true, Jerry.”
DO NOT CONTRADICT ME AGAIN, NORMAN.
“I’m sorry, but the unfeeling, uncaring person is you, Jerry. You do not care if you injure us. You do not care for our predicament. It is you who are uncaring, Jerry. Not us. You.”
ENOUGH.
“He’s not going to talk to you any more,” Harry said. “He’s really mad, Norman.”
And then the screen printed:
I WILL KILL YOU ALL.
Norman was sweating; he wiped his forehead, turned away from the words on the screen.
“I don’t think you can talk to this guy,” Beth said. “I don’t think you can reason with him.”
“You shouldn’t have made him angry,” Harry said. He was almost pleading. “Why did you make him angry like that, Norman?”
“I had to tell him the truth.”
“But you were so mean to him, and now he’s angry.”
“It doesn’t matter, angry or not,” Beth said. “Harry attacked us before, when he wasn’t angry.”
“You mean Jerry,” Norman said to her. “Jerry attacked us.”
“Yes, right, Jerry.”
“That’s a hell of a mistake to make, Beth,” Harry said.
“You’re right, Harry. I’m sorry.”
Harry was looking at her in an odd way. Norman thought, Harry doesn’t miss a trick, and he isn’t going to let that one go by.
“I don’t know how you could make that confusion,” Harry said.
“I know. It was a slip of the tongue. It was stupid of me.”
“I’ll say.”
“I’m sorry,” Beth said. “Really I am.”
“Never mind,” Harry said. “It doesn’t matter.”
There was a sudden flatness in his manner, a complete indifference in his tone. Norman thought: Uh-oh.
Harry yawned and stretched. “You know,” he said, “I’m suddenly very tired. I think I’ll take a nap now.”
And he went off to the bunks.
“We have to do something,” Beth said. “We can’t talk him out of it.”
“You’re right,” Norman said. “We can’t.”
Beth tapped the screen. The words still glowed: I WILL KILL YOU ALL.
“Do you think he means it?”
“Yes.”
Beth stood, clenched her fists. “So it’s him or us.”
“Yes. I think so.”
The implications hung in the air, unspoken.
“This manifesting process of his,” Beth said. “Do you think he has to be completely unconscious to prevent it from happening?”
“Yes.”
“Or dead,” Beth said.
“Yes,” Norman said. That had occurred to him. It seemed so improbable, such an unlikely turn of events in his life, that he would now be a thousand feet under the water, contemplating the murder of another human being. Yet that was what he was doing.
“I’d hate to kill him,” Beth said.
“Me, too.”
“I mean, I wouldn’t even know how to begin to do it.”
“Maybe we don’t have to kill him,” Norman said. “Maybe we don’t have to kill him unless he starts some thing,” Beth said. Then she shook her head. “Oh hell, Norman, who’re we kidding? This habitat can’t survive another attack. We’ve got to kill him. I just don’t want to face up to it.”
“Neither do I,” Norman said.
“We could get one of those explosive spear guns and have an unfortunate accident. And then just wait for our time to be up, for the Navy to come and get us out of here.”
“I don’t want to do that.”
“I don’t, either,” Beth said. “But what else can we do?” “We don’t have to kill him,” Norman said. “Just make him unconscious.” He went to the first-aid cabinet, started going through the medicines.
“You think there might be something there?” Beth said.
“Maybe. An anesthetic, I don’t know.”
“Would that work?”
“I think anything that produces unconsciousness will work. I think.”
“I hope you’re right,” Beth said, “because if he starts dreaming and then manifests the monsters from his dreams, that wouldn’t be very good.”
“No. But anesthesia produces a dreamless, total state of unconsciousness.” Norman was looking at the labels on the bottles. “Do you know what these things are?”
“No,” Beth said, “but it’s all in the computer.” She sat down at the console. “Read me the names and I’ll look them up for you.”
“Diphenyl paralene.
Beth pushed buttons, scanned a screen of dense text. “It’s, uh… looks like… something for burns.”
“Ephedrine hydrochloride.”
Another screen. “It’s… I guess it’s for motion sickness.”
“Valdomet.”
“It’s for ulcers.”
“Sintag.”
“Synthetic opium analogue. It’s very short-acting.”
“Produces unconsciousness?” Norman asked.
“No. Not according to this. Anyway, it only lasts a few minutes.”
“Tarazine.”
“Tranquilizer. Causes drowsiness.”
“Good.” He set the bottle to one side.
“ ‘And may also cause bizarre ideation.’ “
“No,” he said, and put the bottle back. They didn’t need to have any bizarre ideation. “Riordan?”
“Antihistamine. For bites.”
“Oxalamine?”
“Antibiotic.”
“Chloramphenicol?”
“Another antibiotic.”
“Damn.” They were running out of bottles. “Parasolutrine?”
“It’s a soporific…”
“What’s that?”
“Causes sleep.”
“You mean it’s a sleeping pill?”
“No, it’s-it says you can give it in combination with paracin trichloride and use it as an anesthetic.”
“Paracin trichloride… Yes. I have it here,” Norman said. Beth was reading from the screen. “Parasolutrine twenty cc’s in combination with paracin six cc’s given IM produces deep sleep suitable for emergency surgical procedures… no cardiac side effects… sleep from which the subject can be awakened only with difficulty… REM activity is suppressed…”
“How long does it last?”
“Three to six hours.”
“And how fast does it take effect?”
She frowned. “It doesn’t say. ‘After appropriate depth of anesthesia is induced, even extensive surgical procedures may be begun…’ But it doesn’t say how long it takes.”
“Hell,” Norman said.
“It’s probably fast,” Beth said.
“But what if it isn’t?” Norman said. “What if it takes twenty minutes? And can you fight it? Fight it off?”
She shook her head. “Nothing about that here.”
In the end they decided on a mixture of parasolutrine, paracin, dulcinea, and sintag, the opiate. Norman filled a large syringe with the clear liquids. The syringe was so big it looked like something for horses.
“You think it might kill him?” Beth said.
“I don’t know. Do we have a choice?”
“No,” Beth said. “We’ve got to do it. Have you ever given an injection before?”
Norman shook his head. “You?”
“Only lab animals.”
“Where do I stick it?”
“Do it in the shoulder,” Beth said. “While he’s asleep.” Norman turned the syringe up to the light, and squirted a few drops from the needle into the air. “Okay,” he said.
“I better come with you,” Beth said, “and hold him down.”
“No,” Norman said. “If he’s awake and sees both of us coming, he’ll be suspicious. Remember, you don’t sleep in the bunks any more.”
“But what if he gets violent?”
“I think I can handle this.”
“Okay, Norman. Whatever you say.”
The lights in the corridor of C Cyl seemed unnaturally bright. Norman heard his feet padding on the carpet, heard the constant hum of the air handlers and the space heaters. He felt the weight of the syringe concealed in his palm. He came to the door to the sleeping quarters.
Two female Navy crewmen were standing outside the bulkhead door. They snapped to attention as he approached. “Dr. Johnson, sir!”
Norman paused. The women were handsome, black, and muscular-looking. “At ease, men,” Norman said with a smile.
They did not relax. “Sorry, sir! We have our orders, sir!” “I see,” Norman said. “Well, carry on, then.” He started to move past them into the sleeping area.
“Beg your pardon, Dr. Johnson, sir!” They barred his way.
“What is it?” Norman asked, as innocently as he could manage.
“This area is off-limits to all personnel, sir!”
“But I want to go to sleep.”
“Very sorry, Dr. Johnson, sir! No one may disturb Dr. Adams while he sleeps, sir!”
“I won’t disturb Dr. Adams.”
“Sorry, Dr. Johnson, sir! May we see what is in your hand, sir!”
“In my hand?”
“Yes, there is something in your hand, sir!”
Their snapping, machine-gun delivery, always punctuated by the “sir!” at the end, was getting on his nerves. He looked at them again. The starched uniforms covered powerful muscles. He didn’t think he could force his way past them. Beyond the door he saw Harry, lying on his back, snoring. It was a perfect moment to inject him.
“Dr. Johnson, may we see what is in your hand, sir!”
“No, damn it, you may not.”
“Very good, Sir!”
Norman turned, and walked back to D Cyl.
“I saw,” Beth said, nodding to the monitor.
Norman looked at the monitor, at the two women in the corridor. Then he looked at the adjacent monitor, which showed the sphere.
“The sphere has changed!” Norman said.
The convoluted grooves of the doorway were definitely altered, the pattern more complex, and shifted farther up. Norman felt sure it was changed.
“I think you’re right,” Beth said. “When did that happen?”
“We can run the tapes back later,” she said. “Right now we’d better take care of those two.”
“How?” Norman said.
“Simple,” Beth said, bunching her fists again. “We have five explosive spearheads in B Cyl. I’ll go into B, get two of them, blow the guardian angels away. You run in and jab Harry.”
Her cold-blooded determination would have been chilling if she didn’t look so beautiful. There was a refined quality to her features now. She seemed to grow more elegant by the minute.
“The spear guns are in B?” Norman said.
“Sure. Look on video.” She pressed a button. “Hell.” In B Cyl the spearguns were missing.
“I think the son of a bitch has covered his bases,” Norman said. “Good old Harry.”
Beth looked at him thoughtfully. “Norman, are you feeling okay?”
“Sure, why?”
“There’s a mirror in the first-aid kit. Go look.”
He opened the white box of the kit and looked at himself in the mirror. He was shocked by what he saw. Not that he expected to look good; he was accustomed to the pudgy contours of his own face, and the gray stubble of his beard when he didn’t shave on weekends.
But the face staring back at him was lean, with a coarse, jet-black beard. There were dark circles beneath smoldering, bloodshot eyes. His hair was lank and greasy, hanging over his forehead. He looked like a dangerous man.
“I look like Dr. Jekyll,” he said. “Or, rather, Mr. Hyde.”
“Yeah. You do.”
“You’re getting more beautiful,” he said to Beth. “But I’m the man who was mean to Jerry. So I’m getting meaner.”
“You think Harry’s doing this?”
“I think so,” Norman said. Adding to himself: I hope so. “You feel different, Norman?”
“No, I feel exactly the same. I just look like hell.”
“Yes. You look a little frightening.”
“I’m sure I do.”
“You really feel fine?”
“Beth…”
“Okay,” Beth said. She turned, looked back at the monitors. “I have one last idea. We both get to A Cyl, put on our suits, get into B Cyl, and shut down the oxygen in the rest of the habitat. Make Harry unconscious. His guards will disappear, we can go in and jab him. What do you think?”
“Worth a try.”
Norman put down the syringe. They headed off toward A Cyl.
In C Cyl, they passed the two guards, who again snapped to attention.
“Dr. Halpern, sir!”
“Dr. Johnson, sir!”
“Carry on, men,” Beth said.
“Yes, sir! May we ask where you are going, sir!”
“Routine inspection tour,” Beth said.
There was a pause. “Very good, sir!”
They were allowed to pass. They moved into B Cyl, with its array of pipes and machinery. Norman glanced at it nervously; he didn’t like screwing around with the life-support systems, but he didn’t see what else they could do.
In A Cyl, there were three suits left. Norman reached for his. “You know what you’re doing?” he asked.
“Yes,” Beth said. “Trust me.”
She slipped her foot into her suit, and started zipping it up.
And then the alarms began to sound throughout the habitat, and the red lights flashed again. Norman knew, without being told, that it was the peripheral alarms.
Another attack was beginning.
They ran back through the lateral connecting corridor directly from B Cyl into D. Norman noticed in passing that the crewmen had gone. In D, the alarms were clanging and the peripheral sensor screens glowed bright red. Norman glanced at the video monitors.
I AM COMING.
Beth quickly scanned the screens.
“Inner thermals are activated. He’s coming, all right.”
They felt a thump, and Norman turned to look out the porthole. The green squid was already outside, the huge suckered arms coiling around the base of the habitat. One great arm slapped flat against the porthole, the suckers distorted against the glass.
I AM HERE.
“Harryyy!” Beth shouted.
There was a tentative jolt, as squid arms gripped the habitat. The slow, agonizing creak of metal.
Harry came running into the room. “What is it?”
“You know what it is, Harry!” Beth shouted.
“No, no, what is it?”
“It’s the squid, Harry!”
“Oh my God, no,” Harry moaned.
The habitat shook powerfully. The room lights flickered and went out. There was only flashing red now, from the emergency lights.
Norman turned to him. “Stop it, Harry.”
“What are you talking about?” he cried plaintively. “You know what I’m talking about, Harry.”
“I don’t!”
“Yes, you do, Harry. It’s you, Harry,” Norman said. “You’re doing it.”
“No, you’re wrong. It’s not me! I swear it’s not me!”
“Yes, Harry,” Norman said. “And if you don’t stop it, we’ll all die.”
The habitat shook again. One of the ceiling heaters exploded, showering fragments of hot glass and wire. “Come on, Harry…”
“No, no!”
“There’s not much time. You know you’re doing it.”
“The habitat can’t take much more, Norman,” Beth said.
“It can’t be me!”
“Yes, Harry. Face it, Harry. Face it now.”
Even as he spoke, Norman was looking for the syringe. He had left it somewhere in this room, but papers were sliding off the desktops, monitors crashing to the floor, chaos all around him…
The whole habitat rocked again, and there was a tremendous explosion from another cylinder. New, rising alarms sounded, and a roaring vibration that Norman instantly recognized-water, under great pressure, rushing into the habitat.
“Flooding in C!” Beth shouted, reading the consoles. She ran down the corridor. He heard the metal clang of bulkhead doors as she shut them. The room was filled with salty mist.
Norman pushed Harry against the wall. “Harry! Face it and stop it!”
“It can’t be me, it can’t be me,” Harry moaned. Another jolting impact, staggering them.
“It can’t be me!” Harry cried. “It has nothing to do with me!”
And then Harry screamed, and his body twisted, and Norman saw Beth withdraw the syringe from his shoulder, the needle tipped with blood.
“What are you doing?” Harry cried, but already his eyes were glassy and vacant. He staggered at the next impact, fell drunkenly on his knees to the floor. “No,” he said softly. “No…”
And he collapsed, falling face-down on the carpet. Immediately the wrenching of metal stopped. The alarms stopped. Everything became ominously silent, except for the soft gurgle of water from somewhere within the habitat.
Beth moved swiftly, reading one screen after another.
“Inner off. Peripherals off. Everything off. All right! No readings!”
Norman ran to the porthole. The squid had disappeared. The sea bottom outside was deserted.
“Damage report!” Beth shouted. “Main power out! E Cylinder out! C Cylinder out! B Cylinder…”
Norman spun, looked at her. If B Cyl was gone, their life support would be gone, they would certainly die. “B Cylinder holding,” she said finally. Her body sagged. “We’re okay, Norman.”
Norman collapsed on the carpet, exhausted, suddenly feeling the strain and tension in every part of his body.
It was over. The crisis had passed. They were going to be all right, after all. Norman felt his body relax.
It was over.
The blood had stopped flowing from Harry’s broken nose and now he seemed to be breathing more regularly, more easily. Norman lifted the icepack to look at the swollen face, and adjusted the flow of the intravenous drip in Harry’s arm. Beth had started the intravenous line in Harry’s hand after several unsuccessful attempts. They were dripping an anesthetic mixture into him. Harry’s breath smelled sour, like tin. But otherwise he was okay. Out cold.
The radio crackled. “I’m at the submarine,” Beth said. “Going aboard now.”
Norman glanced out the porthole at DH-7, saw Beth climbing up into the dome beside the sub. She was going to press the “Delay” button, the last time such a trip would be necessary. He turned back to Harry.
The computer didn’t have any information about the effects of keeping a person asleep for twelve hours straight, but that was what they would have to do. Either Harry would make it, or he wouldn’t.
Same as the rest of us, Norman thought. He glanced at the monitor clocks. They showed 1230 hours, and counted backward. He put a blanket over Harry and went over to the console.
The sphere was still there, with its changed pattern of grooves. In all the excitement he had almost forgotten his initial fascination with the sphere, where it had come from, what it meant. Although they understood now what it meant. What had Beth called it? A mental enzyme. An enzyme was something that made chemical reactions possible without actually participating in them. Our bodies needed to perform chemical reactions, but our body temperatures were too cold for most chemical reactions to proceed smoothly. So we had enzymes to help the process along, speed it up. The enzymes made it all possible. And she had called the sphere a mental enzyme.
Very clever, he thought. Clever woman. Her impulsiveness had turned out to be just what was needed. With Harry unconscious, Beth still looked beautiful, but Norman was relieved to find that his own features had returned to pudgy normalcy. He saw his own familiar reflection in the screen as he stared at the sphere on the monitor.
That sphere.
With Harry unconscious, he wondered if they would ever know exactly what had happened, exactly what it had been like. He remembered the lights, like fireflies. And what had Harry said? Something about foam. The foam. Norman heard a whirring sound, and looked out the porthole.
The sub was moving.
Freed of its tethers, the yellow minisub glided across the bottom, its lights shining on the ocean floor. Norman pushed the intercom button: “Beth? Beth!”
“I’m here, Norman.”
“What’re you doing?”
“Just take it easy, Norman.”
“What’re you doing in the sub, Beth?”
“Just a precaution, Norman.”
“Are you leaving?”
She laughed over the intercom. A light, relaxed laugh. “No, Norman. Just take it easy.”
“Tell me what you’re doing.”
“It’s a secret.”
“Come on, Beth.” This was all he needed, he thought, to have Beth crack up now. He thought again of her impulsiveness, which moments before he had admired. He did not admire it any more. “Beth?”
“Talk to you later,” she said.
The sub turned in profile, and he saw red boxes in its claw arms. He could not read the lettering on the boxes, but they looked vaguely familiar. As he watched, the sub moved past the high fin of the spacecraft, and then settled to the bottom. One of the boxes was released, plumping softly on the muddy floor. The sub started up again, churning sediment, and glided forward a hundred yards. Then it stopped again, and released another box. It continued this way along the length of the spacecraft.
“Beth?”
No answer. Norman squinted at the boxes. There was lettering on them, but he could not read them at this distance. The sub had turned now, and was coming directly toward DH-8. The lights shone at him. It moved closer and the sensor alarms went off, clanging and flashing red lights. He hated these alarms, he thought, going over to the console, looking at the buttons. How the hell did you turn them off? He glanced at Harry, but Harry remained unconscious.
“Beth? Are you there? You set off the damn alarms.”
“Push F8.”
What the hell was F8? He looked around, finally saw a row of keys on the keyboard, numbered F1 to F20. He pushed F8 and the alarms stopped. The sub was now very close, lights shining into the porthole windows. In the high bubble, Beth was clearly visible, instrument lights shining up on her face. Then the sub descended out of view.
He went to the porthole and looked out. Deepstar III was resting on the bottom, depositing more boxes from its claw hands. Now he could read the lettering on the boxes:
CAUTION NO SMOKING NO ELECTRONICS TEVAC EXPLOSIVES
“Beth? What the hell are you doing?”
“Later, Norman.”
He listened to her voice. She sounded okay. Was she cracking up? No, he thought. She’s not cracking up. She sounds okay. I’m sure she’s okay.
But he wasn’t sure.
The sub was moving again, its lights blurred by the cloud of sediment churned up by the propellors. The cloud drifted up past the porthole, obscuring his vision.
“Beth?”
“Everything’s fine, Norman. Back in a minute.”
As the sediment drifted down to the bottom again, he saw the sub, heading back to DH-7. Moments later, it docked beneath the dome. Then he saw Beth climb out, and tether the sub fore and aft.
“It’s very simple,” Beth said.
“Explosives?” He pointed to the screen. “It says here, ‘Tevacs are, weight for weight, the most powerful conventional explosives known.’ What the hell are you doing putting them around the habitat?”
“Norman, take it easy.” She rested her hand on his shoulder. Her touch was soft and reassuring. He relaxed a little, feeling her body so close.
“We should have discussed this together first.”
“Norman, I’m not taking any chances. Not any more.”
“But Harry is unconscious.”
“He might wake up.”
“He won’t, Beth.”
“I’m not taking any chances,” she said. “This way, if something starts to come out of that sphere, we can blow the hell out of the whole ship. I’ve put explosives along the whole length of it.”
“But why around the habitat?”
“Defense.”
“How is it defense?”
“Believe me, it is.”
“Beth, it’s dangerous to have that stuff so close to us.”
“It’s not wired up, Norman. In fact, it’s not wired up around the ship, either. I have to go out and do that by hand.” She glanced at the screens. “I thought I’d wait a while first, maybe take a nap. Are you tired?”
“No,” Norman said.
“You haven’t slept in a long time, Norman.”
“I’m not tired.”
She gave him an appraising look. “I’ll keep an eye on Harry, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“I’m just not tired, Beth.”
“Okay,” she said, “suit yourself.” She brushed her luxuriant hair back from her face with her fingers. “Personally, I’m exhausted. I’m going to get a few hours.” She started up the stairs to her lab, then looked down at him. “Want to join me?”
“What?” he said.
She smiled at him directly, knowingly. “You heard me, Norman.”
“Maybe later, Beth.”
“Okay. Sure.”
She ascended the staircase, her body swinging smoothly, sensuously in the tight jumpsuit. She looked good in that jumpsuit. He had to admit it. She was a good-looking woman.
Across the room, Harry snored in a regular rhythm. Norman checked Harry’s icepack, and thought about Beth. He heard her moving around in the lab upstairs.
“Hey, Norm?”
“Yes…” He moved to the bottom of the stairs, looked up.
“Is there another one of these down there? A clean one?” Something blue dropped into his hands. It was her jumpsuit. “Yes. I think they’re in storage in B.”
“Bring me one, would you, Norm?”
“Okay,” he said.
Going to B Cyl, he found himself inexplicably nervous. What was going on? Of course, he thought, he knew exactly what was going on, but why now? Beth was exerting a powerful attraction, and he mistrusted it. In her dealings with men, Beth was confrontational, energetic, direct, and angry. Seduction wasn’t her method at all.
It is now, he thought, fishing a new jumpsuit out of the storage locker. He took it back to D Cyl and climbed the ladder. From above, he saw a strange bluish light.
“Beth?”
“I’m here, Norm.”
He came up and saw her lying naked on her back, beneath a bank of ultraviolet sunlamps hinged out from the wall. She wore opaque cups over her eyes. She twisted her body seductively.
“Did you bring the suit?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Thanks a lot. Just put it anywhere, by the lab bench.”
“Okay.” He draped it over her chair.
She rolled back to face the glowing lamps, sighed. “I thought I’d better get a little vitamin D, Norm.”
“Yes…”
“You probably should, too.”
“Yeah, probably.” But Norman was thinking that he didn’t remember a bank of sunlamps in the lab. In fact, he was sure that there wasn’t one. He had spent a lot of time in that room; he would have remembered. He went back down the stairs quickly.
In fact, the staircase was new, too. It was black anodized metal. It hadn’t been that way before. This was a new descending staircase.
“Norm?”
“In a minute, Beth.”
He went to the console and started punching buttons. He had seen a file before, on habitat parameters or something like that. He finally found it:
DEEPHAB-8 MIPPR DESIGN PARAMETERS
5.024A Cylinder A
5.024B Cylinder B
5.024C Cylinder C
5.024D Cylinder D
5.024E Cylinder E
Choose one:
He chose Cyl D, and another screen appeared. He chose design plans. He got page after page of architectural drawings. He flicked through them, stabbing at the keys, until he came to the detail plans for the biological laboratory at the top of D Cyl.
Clearly shown in the drawings was a large sunlamp bank, hinged to fold back against the wall. It must have been there all the time; he just hadn’t ever noticed it. There were lots of other details he hadn’t noticed-like the emergency escape hatch in the domed ceiling of the lab. And the fact that there was a second foldout bunk near the floor entrance. And a black anodized descending staircase.
You’re in a panic, he thought. And it has nothing to do with sunlamps and architectural drawings. It doesn’t e even have to do with sex. You’re in a panic because Beth is the only one left besides you, and Beth isn’t acting like herself.
In the corner of the screen, he watched the small clock tick backward, the seconds clicking off with agonizing slowness. Twelve more hours, he thought. I’ve just got to last twelve more hours, and everything will be all right.
He was hungry, but he knew there wasn’t any food. He was tired, but there wasn’t anyplace for him to sleep. Both E and C Cylinders were flooded, and he didn’t want to go upstairs with Beth. Norman lay down on the floor of D Cyl, beside Harry on the couch. It was cold and damp on the floor. For a long time he couldn’t sleep.
The pounding, that terrifying pounding, and the shaking of the floor awakened him abruptly. He rolled over and got to his feet, instantly alert. He saw Beth standing by the monitors. “What is it?” he cried. “What is it?”
“What is what?” Beth said.
She seemed calm. She smiled at him. Norman looked around. The alarms hadn’t gone off; the lights weren’t flashing.
“I don’t know, I thought-I don’t know…” He trailed off.
“You thought we were under attack again?” she said.
He nodded.
“Why would you think that, Norman?” she said.
Beth was looking at him again in that odd way. An appraising way, her stare very direct and cool. There was no hint of seductiveness to her. If anything, she conveyed the suspiciousness of the old Beth: You’re a man, and you’re a problem.
“Harry’s still unconscious, isn’t he? So why would you think we were being attacked?”
“I don’t know. I guess I was dreaming.”
Beth shrugged. “Maybe you felt the vibration of me walking on the floor,” she said. “Anyway, I’m glad you decided to sleep.”
That same appraising stare. As if there were something wrong with him.
“You haven’t slept enough, Norman.”
“None of us have.”
“You, particularly.”
“Maybe you’re right.” He had to admit he felt better now that he had slept for a couple of hours. He smiled. “Did you eat all the coffee and Danish?”
“There isn’t any coffee and Danish, Norman.”
“I know.”
“Then why would you say that?” she asked seriously.
“It was a joke, Beth.”
“Oh.”
“Just a joke. You know, a humorous reflection on our condition?”
“I see.” She was working with the screens. “By the way, what did you find out about the balloon?”
“The balloon?”
“The surface balloon. Remember we talked about it?” He shook his head. He didn’t remember.
“Before I went out to the sub, I asked about the control codes to send a balloon to the surface, and you said you’d look in the computer and see if you could find how to do it.”
“I did?”
“Yes, Norman. You did.”
He thought back. He remembered how he and Beth had lifted Harry’s inert, surprisingly heavy body off the floor, setting him on the couch, and how they had staunched the flow of blood from his nose while Beth had started an intravenous line, which she knew how to do from her work with lab animals. In fact, she had made a joke, saying she hoped Harry fared better than her lab animals, since they usually ended up dead. Then Beth had volunteered to go to the sub, and he had said he’d stay with Harry. That was what he remembered. Nothing about any balloons.
“Sure,” Beth said. “Because the communication said we were supposed to acknowledge transmission, and that means a radio balloon sent to the surface. And we figured, with the storm abating, the surface conditions must be calm enough to allow the balloon to ride without snapping the wire. So it was a question of how to release the balloons. And you said you’d look for the control commands.”
“I really don’t remember,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“Norman, we have to work together in these last few hours,” Beth said.
“I agree, Beth. Absolutely.”
“How are you feeling now?” she said.
“Okay. Pretty good, in fact.”
“Good,” she said. “Hang in there, Norman. It’s only a few more hours.”
She hugged him warmly, but when she released him, he saw in her eyes that same detached, appraising look.
An hour later, they figured out how to release the balloon. They distantly heard a metallic sizzle as the wire unwound from the outside spool, trailing behind the inflated balloon as it shot toward the surface. Then there was a long pause.
“What’s happening?” Norman said.
“We’re a thousand feet down,” Beth said. “It takes a while for the balloon to get to the surface.”
Then the screen changed, and they got a readout of surface conditions. Wind was down to fifteen knots. Waves were running six feet. Barometric pressure was 20.9. Sunlight was recorded.
“Good news,” Beth said. “The surface is okay.”
Norman was staring at the screen, thinking about the fact that sunlight was recorded. He had never longed for sunlight before. It was funny, what you took for granted. Now the thought of seeing sunlight struck him as unbelievably pleasurable. He could imagine no greater joy than to see sun and clouds, and blue sky.
“What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking I can’t wait to get out of here.”
“Me, too,” Beth said. “But it won’t be long now.”
Pong! pong! pong! pong!
Norman was checking Harry, and he spun at the sound. “What is it, Beth?”
Pong! pong! pong! pong!
“Take it easy,” Beth said, at the console. “I’m just figuring out how to work this thing.”
Pong! pong! pong! pong!
“Work what?”
“The side-scanning sonar. False-aperture sonar. I don’t know why they call it ‘false-aperture.’ Do you know what that refers to, ‘false-aperture’?”
Pong! pong! pong! pong!
“No, I don’t,” Norman said. “Turn it off, please.” The sound was unnerving.
“It’s marked ‘FAS,’ which I think stands for ‘false-aperture sonar,’ but it also says ‘side- scanning.’ It’s very confusing.”
“Beth, turn it off!”
Pong! pong! pong! pong!
“Sure, of course,” Beth said.
“Why do you want to know how to work that, anyway?” Norman said. He felt irritable, as if she’d intentionally annoyed him with that sound.
“Just in case,” Beth said.
“In case what, for Christ’s sake? You said yourself that Harry’s unconscious. There aren’t going to be any more attacks.”
“Take it easy, Norman,” Beth said. “I want to be prepared, that’s all.”
He couldn’t talk her out of it. She insisted on going outside and wiring the explosives around the ship. It was an absolutely fixed idea in her mind.
“But why, Beth?” he kept saying.
“Because I’ll feel better after I do it,” she said.
“But there isn’t any reason to do it.”
“I’ll feel better if I do,” she insisted, and in the end he couldn’t stop her.
He saw her now, a small figure with a single glowing light from her helmet, moving from one crate of explosives to another. She opened each crate and removed large yellow cones which looked rather like the cones that highway repair trucks used. These cones were wired together, and when the wiring was completed a small red light glowed at the tip.
He saw small red lights all up and down the length of the ship. It made him uneasy.
When she left, he had said to her, “But you won’t wire up the explosives near the habitat.”
“No, Norman. I won’t.”
“Promise me.”
“I told you, I won’t. If it’s going to upset you, I won’t.”
“It’s going to upset me.”
“Okay, okay.”
Now the red lights were strung along the length of the ship, starting at the dimly visible tail, which rose out of the coral bottom. Beth moved farther north, toward the rest of the unopened crates.
Norman looked at Harry, who snored loudly but who remained unconscious. He paced back and forth in D Cyl, and then went to the monitors.
The screen blinked.
I AM COMING.
Oh God, he thought. And in the next moment he thought, How can this be happening? It can’t be happening. Harry was still out cold. How could it be happening?
I AM COMING FOR YOU.
“Beth!”
Her voice sounded tinny on the intercom.
“Yes, Norman.”
“Get the hell out of there.”
DO NOT BE AFRAID , the screen said.
“What is it, Norman?” she said.
“I’m getting something on the screen.”
“Check Harry. He must be waking up.”
“He’s not. Get back here, Beth.”
I AM COMING NOW.
“All right, Norman, I’m heading back,” she said.
“Fast, Beth.”
But he didn’t need to say that; already he could see her light bouncing as she ran across the bottom. She was at least a hundred yards from the habitat. He heard her breathing hard on the intercom.
“Can you see anything, Norman?”
“No, nothing.” He was straining to look toward the horizon, where the squid had always appeared. The first thing had always been a green glow on the horizon. But he saw no glow now.
Beth was panting.
“I can feel something, Norman. I feel the water… surging… strong…”
The screen flashed:
I WILL KILL YOU.
“Don’t you see anything out here?” Beth said.
“No. I don’t see anything at all.” He saw Beth, alone on the muddy bottom. Her light the solitary focus of his attention.
“I can feel it, Norman. It’s close. Jesus God. What about the alarms?”
“Nothing, Beth.”
“Jesus.” Her breath came in hissing gasps as she ran. Beth was in good shape, but she couldn’t exert herself like that in this atmosphere. Not for long, he thought. Already he could see she was moving more slowly, the helmet lamp bobbing more slowly.
“Norman?”
“Yes, Beth. I’m here.”
“Norman, I don’t know if I can make it.”
“Beth, you can make it. Slow down.”
“It’s here, I can feel it.”
“I don’t see anything, Beth.”
He heard a rapid sharp clicking sound. At first he thought it was static on the line, and then he realized it was her teeth chattering as she shivered. With this exertion she should be getting overheated, but instead she was getting cold. He didn’t understand.
“-cold, Norman.”
“Slow down, Beth.”
“Can’t-talking-close-”
She was slowing down, despite herself. She had come into the area of the habitat lights, and she was no more than ten yards from the hatch, but he could see her limbs moving slowly, clumsily.
And now at last he could see something swirling the muddy sediment behind her, in the darkness beyond the lights. It was like a tornado, a swirling cloud of muddy sediment. He couldn’t see what was inside the cloud, but he sensed the power within it.
“Close-Nor-”
Beth stumbled, fell. The swirling cloud moved toward her.
I WILL KILL YOU NOW.
Beth got to her feet, looked back, saw the churning cloud bearing down on her. Something about it filled Norman with a deep horror, a horror from childhood, the stuff of nightmares.
“Normannnnnn…”
Then Norman was running, not really knowing what he was going to do, but propelled by the vision he had seen, thinking only that he had to do something, he had to take some action, and he went through B into A and looked at his suit but there wasn’t time and the black water in the open hatch was spitting and swirling and he saw Beth’s gloved hand below the surface, flailing, she was right there beneath him, and she was the only other one, and without thinking he jumped into the black water and went down.
The shock of the cold made him want to scream; it tore at his lungs. His whole body was instantly numb, and he felt a second of hideous paralysis. The water churned and tossed him like a great wave; he was powerless to fight it; his head banged on the underside of the habitat. He could see nothing at all.
He reached for Beth, throwing his arms blindly in all directions. His lungs burned. The water spun him in circles, upended him.
He touched her, lost her. The water continued to spin him. He grabbed her. Something. An arm. He was already losing feeling, already feeling slower and stupider. He pulled. He saw a ring of light above him: the hatch. He kicked his legs but he did not seem to move. The circle came no closer.
He kicked again, dragging Beth like a dead weight. Perhaps she was dead. His lungs burned. It was the worst pain he had ever felt in his life. He fought the pain, and he fought the angry churning water and he kept kicking toward the light, that was his only thought, to kick to the light, to come closer to the light, to reach the light, the light, the light…
The light.
The images were confusing. Beth’s suited body clanging on the metal, inside the airlock. His own knee bleeding on the metal of the hatch, the drops of blood spattering. Beth’s shaking hands reaching for her helmet, twisting it, trying to get the helmet unlocked. Hands shaking. Water in the hatch, sucking, surging. Lights in his eyes. A terrible pain somewhere. Rust very close to his face, a sharp edge of metal. Cold metal. Cold air. Lights in his eyes, dimming. Fading. Blackness.
The sensation of warmth was pleasant. He heard a hissing roar in his ears. He looked up and saw Beth, out of her suit, looming large above him, adjusting the big space heater, turning the power up. She was still shivering, but she was turning up the heat. He closed his eyes. We made it, he thought. We’re still together. We’re still okay. We made it. He relaxed.
There was a crawly sensation over his body. From the cold, he thought, his body warming from the cold. The crawly sensation was not pleasant. And the hissing was not pleasant, either; it was sibilant, intermittent.
Something slithered softly under his chin as he lay on the deck. He opened his eyes and saw a silvery white tube, and then he focused and saw the tiny beady eyes, and the flicking tongue. It was a snake.
A sea snake.
He froze. He looked down, moving only his eyes. His entire body was covered with white snakes.
The crawly sensation came from dozens of snakes, coiling around his ankles, sliding between his legs, over his chest. He felt a cool slithering motion across his forehead. He closed his eyes, feeling horror as the snake body moved over his face, down his nose, brushed over his lips, then moved away.
He listened to the hissing of the reptiles and thought of how poisonous Beth had said they were. Beth, he thought, where is Beth?
He did not move. He felt snakes coiling around his neck, slipping over his shoulder, sliding between the fingers of his hands. He did not want to open his eyes. He felt a surge of nausea.
God, he thought. I’m going to throw up.
He felt snakes under his armpit, and felt snakes slipping past his groin. He burst into a cold sweat. He fought nausea. Beth, he thought. He did not want to speak. Beth…
He listened to the hissing and then, when he couldn’t stand it any more, he opened his eyes and saw the mass of coiling, writhing white flesh, the tiny heads, the flicking forked tongues. He closed his eyes again.
He felt one crawling up the leg of his jumpsuit, moving against his bare skin.
“Don’t move, Norman.”
It was Beth. He could hear the tension in her voice. He looked up, could not see her, only her shadow.
He heard her say, “Oh God, what time is it?” and he thought, The hell with the time, who cares what time it is? It didn’t make any sense to him. “I have to know the time,” Beth was saying. He heard her feet moving on the deck. “The time…”
She was moving away, leaving him!
The snakes slid over his ears, under his chin, past his nostrils, the bodies damp and slithering.
Then he heard her feet on the deck, and a metallic clang as she threw open the hatch. He opened his eyes to see her bending over him, grabbing the snakes in great handfuls, throwing them down the hatch into the water. Snakes writhed in her hands, twisted around her wrists, but she shook them off, tossed them aside. Some of the snakes didn’t land in the water and coiled on the deck. But most of the snakes were off his body now.
One more crawling up his leg, toward his groin. He felt it moving quickly backward-she was pulling it out by the tail!
“Jesus, careful-”
The snake was out, flung over her shoulder.
“You can get up, Norman,” she said.
He jumped to his feet, and promptly vomited.
He had a murderous, pounding headache. It made the habitat lights seem unpleasantly bright. And he was cold. Beth had wrapped him in blankets and had moved him next to the big space heaters in D Cyl, so close that the hum of the electrical elements was very loud in his ears, but he was still cold. He looked down at her now, as she bandaged his cut knee.
“How is it?” he said.
“Not good,” she said. “It’s right down to the bone. But you’ll be all right. It’s only a few more hours now.”
“Yes, I-ouch!”
“Sorry. Almost done.” Beth was following first-aid directions from the computer. To distract his mind from the pain, he read the screen.
MINOR MEDICAL (NON-LETHAL) COMPLICATIONS
7.113 Trauma
7.115 Microsleep
7.118 Helium Tremor
7.119 Otitis
7.121 Toxic Contaminants
7.143 Synovial Pain
Choose one:
“That’s what I need,” he said. “Some microsleep. Or better yet, some serious macrosleep.”
“Yes, we all do.”
A thought occurred to him. “Beth, remember when you were pulling the snakes off me? What was all that you were saying about the time of day?”
“Sea snakes are diurnal,” Beth said. “Many poisonous snakes are alternately aggressive and passive in twelve-hour cycles, corresponding to day and night. During the day, when they’re passive, you can handle them and they will never bite. For example, in India, the highly poisonous banded krait has never been known to bite during the day, even when children play with them. But at night, watch out. So I was trying to determine which cycle the sea snakes were on, until I decided that this must be their passive daytime cycle.”
“How’d you figure that?”
“Because you were still alive.” Then she had used her bare hands to remove the snakes, knowing that they wouldn’t bite her, either.
“With your hands full of snakes, you looked like Medusa.”
“What is that, a rock star?”
“No, it’s a mythological figure.”
“The one who killed her children?” she asked, with a quick suspicious glance. Beth, ever alert to a veiled insult.
“No, that’s somebody else. That was Medea. Medusa was a mythical woman with a head full of snakes who turned men to stone if they looked at her. Perseus killed her by looking at her reflection in his polished shield.”
“Sorry, Norman. Not my field.”
It was remarkable, he thought, that at one time every educated Western person knew these figures from mythology and the stories behind them intimately-as intimately as they knew the stories of families and friends. Myths had once represented the common knowledge of humanity, and they served as a kind of map of consciousness.
But now a well-educated person such as Beth knew nothing of myths at all. It was as if men had decided that the map of human consciousness had changed. But had it really changed? He shivered.
“Still cold, Norman?”
“Yeah. But the worst thing is the headache.”
“You’re probably dehydrated. Let’s see if I can find something for you to drink.” She went to the first-aid box on the wall.
“You know, that was a hell of a thing you did,” Beth said. “Jumping in like that without a suit. That water’s only a couple of degrees above freezing. It was very brave. Stupid, but brave.” She smiled. “You saved my life, Norman.”
“I didn’t think,” Norman said. “I just did it.” And then he told her how, when he had seen her outside, with the churning cloud of sediment approaching her, he had felt an old and childish horror, something from distant memory.
“You know what it was?” he said. “It reminded me of the tornado in The Wizard of Oz. That tornado scared the bejesus out of me when I was a kid. I just didn’t want to see it happen again.”
And then he thought, Perhaps these are our new myths. Dorothy and Toto and the Wicked Witch, Captain Nemo and the giant squid…
“Well,” Beth said, “whatever the reason, you saved my life. Thank you.”
“Any time,” Norman said. He smiled. “Just don’t do it again.”
“No, I won’t be going out again.”
She brought back a drink in a paper cup. It was syrupy and sweet.
“What is this?”
“Isotonic glucose supplement. Drink it.”
He sipped it again, but it was unpleasantly sweet. Across the room, the console screen still said I WILL KILL YOU NOW. He looked at Harry, still unconscious, with the intravenous line running into his arm.
Harry had been unconscious all this time.
He hadn’t faced the implications of that. It was time to do it now. He didn’t want to do it, but he had to. He said, “Beth, why do you think all this is happening?”
“All what?”
“The screen, printing words. And another manifestation coming to attack us.”
Beth looked at him in a flat, neutral way. “What do you think, Norman?”
“It’s not Harry.”
“No. It’s not.”
“Then why is it happening?” Norman said. He got up, pulling the blankets tighter around him. He flexed his bandaged knee; it hurt, but not too badly. Norman moved to the porthole and looked out the window. In the distance he could see the string of red lights, from the explosives Beth had set and armed. He had never understood why she had wanted to do that. She had acted so strangely about the whole thing. He looked down toward the base of the habitat.
Red lights were glowing there, too, just below the porthole. She had armed the explosives around the habitat.
“Beth, what have you done?”
“Done?”
“You armed the explosives around DH-8.”
“Yes, Norman,” she said. She stood watching him, very still, very calm.
“Beth, you promised you wouldn’t do that.”
“I know. I had to.”
“How are they wired? Where’s the button, Beth?”
“There is no button. They’re set on automatic vibration sensors.”
“You mean they’ll go off automatically?”
“Yes, Norman.”
“Beth, this is crazy. Someone is still making these manifestations. Who is doing that, Beth?”
She smiled slowly, a lazy, cat smile, as if he secretly amused her. “Don’t you really know?”
He did know. Yes, he thought. He knew, and it chilled him. “You’re making these manifestations, Beth.”
“No, Norman,” she said, still calm. “I’m not doing it. You are.”
He thought back years ago, to the early days of his training, when he had worked in the state hospital at Borrego. Norman had been sent by his supervisor to make a progress report on a particular patient. The man was in his late twenties, pleasant and well educated. Norman talked to him about all sorts of things: the Oldsmobile Hydramatic transmission, the best surfing beaches, Adlai Stevenson’s recent presidential campaign, Whitey Ford’s pitching, even Freudian theory. The man was quite charming, although he chain-smoked and seemed to have an underlying tension. Finally Norman got around to asking him why he had been sent to the hospital.
The man didn’t remember why. He was sorry, he just couldn’t seem to recall. Under repeated questioning from Norman, the man became less charming, more irritable. Finally he turned threatening and angry, pounding the table, demanding that Norman talk about something else.
Only then did it dawn on Norman who this man was: Alan Whittier, who as a teenager had murdered his mother and sister in their trailer in Palm Desert, and then had gone on to kill six people at a gas station and three others in a supermarket parking lot, until he finally turned himself in to the police, sobbing, hysterical with guilt and remorse. Whittier had been in the state hospital for ten years, and he had brutally attacked several attendants during that time.
This was the man who was now enraged, standing up in front of Norman, and kicking the table, flinging his chair back against the wall. Norman was still a student; he didn’t know how to handle it. He turned to flee the room, but the door behind him was locked. They had locked him in, which is what they always did during interviews with violent patients. Behind him, Whittier lifted the table and threw it against the wall; he was coming for Norman. Norman had a moment of horrible panic until he heard the locks rattling, and then three huge attendants dashed in, grabbed Whittier, and dragged him away, still screaming and swearing.
Norman went directly to his supervisor, demanded to know why he had been set up. The supervisor said to him, Set up? Yes, Norman had said, set up. The supervisor said, But weren’t you told the man’s name beforehand? Didn’t the name mean anything to you? Norman replied that he hadn’t really paid attention.
You better pay attention, Norman, the supervisor had said. You can’t ever let down your guard in a place like this. It’s too dangerous.
Now, looking across the habitat at Beth, he thought: Pay attention, Norman. You can’t let down your guard. Because you’re dealing with a crazy person and you haven’t realized it.
“I see you don’t believe me,” Beth said, still very calm. “Are you able to talk?”
“Sure,” Norman said.
“Be logical, all of that?”
“Sure,” he said, thinking: I’m not the crazy one here.
“All right,” Beth said. “Remember when you told me about Harry-how all the evidence pointed to Harry?”
“Yes. Of course.”
“You asked me if I could think of another explanation, and I said no. But there is another explanation, Norman. Some points you conveniently overlooked the first time. Like the jellyfish. Why the jellyfish? It was your little brother who was stung by the jellyfish, Norman, and you who felt guilty afterward. And when does Jerry speak? When you’re there, Norman. And when does the squid stop its attack? When you were knocked unconscious, Norman. Not Harry, you.”
Her voice was so calm, so reasonable. He struggled to consider what she was saying. Was it possible she was right? “Step back. Take the long view,” Beth said. “You’re a psychologist, down here with a bunch of scientists dealing with hardware. There’s nothing for you to do down here-you said so yourself. And wasn’t there a time in your life when you felt similarly professionally bypassed? Wasn’t that an uncomfortable time for you? Didn’t you once tell me that you hated that time in your life?”
“Yes, but-”
“When all the strange things start to happen, the problem isn’t hardware any more. Now it’s a psychological problem. It’s right up your alley, Norman, your particular area of expertise. Suddenly you become the center of attention, don’t you?”
No, he thought. This can’t be right.
“When Jerry starts to communicate with us, who notices that he has emotions? Who insists we deal with Jerry’s emotions? None of us are interested in emotions, Norman. Barnes only wants to know about armaments, Ted only wants to talk science, Harry only wants to play logical games. You’re the one who’s interested in emotions. And who manipulates Jerry-or fails to manipulate him? You, Norman. It’s all you.”
“It can’t be,” Norman said. His mind was reeling. He struggled to find a contradiction, and found it. “It can’t be me-because I haven’t been inside the sphere.”
“Yes, you have,” Beth said. “You just don’t remember.”
He felt battered, repeatedly punched and battered. He couldn’t seem to get his balance, and the blows kept coming.
“Just the way you don’t remember that I asked you to look up the balloon codes,” Beth was saying in her calm voice. “Or the way Barnes asked you about the helium concentrations in E Cyl.”
He thought, what helium concentrations in E Cyl? When did Barnes ask me about that?
“There’s a lot you don’t remember, Norman.”
Norman said, “When did I go to the sphere?”
“Before the first squid attack. After Harry came out.”
“I was asleep! I was sleeping in my bunk!”
“No, Norman. You weren’t. Because Fletcher came to get you and you were gone. We couldn’t find you for about two hours, and then you showed up, yawning.”
“I don’t believe you,” he said.
“I know you don’t. You prefer to make it somebody else’s problem. And you’re clever. You’re skilled at psychological manipulation, Norman. Remember those tests you conducted? Putting unsuspecting people up in an airplane, then telling them the pilot had a heart attack? Scaring them half to death? That’s pretty ruthless manipulation, Norman.
“And down here in the habitat, when all these things started happening, you needed a monster. So you made Harry the monster. But Harry wasn’t the monster, Norman. You are the monster. That’s why your appearance changed, why you became ugly. Because you’re the monster.”
“But the message. It said ‘My name is Harry.’ ”
“Yes, it did. And as you yourself pointed out, the person causing it was afraid that the real name would come out on the screen.”
“Harry,” Norman said. “The name was Harry.”
“And what’s your name?”
“Norman Johnson.”
“Your full name.”
He paused. Somehow his mouth wasn’t working. His brain was blank.
“I’ll tell you what it is,” Beth said. “I looked it up. It’s Norman Harrison Johnson.”
No, he thought. No, no, no. She can’t be right.
“It’s hard to accept,” Beth was saying in her slow, patient, almost hypnotic voice. “I understand that. But if you think about it, you’ll realize you wanted it to come to this. You wanted me to figure it out, Norman. Why, just a few minutes ago, you even told me about The Wizard of Oz, didn’t you? You helped me along when I wasn’t getting the point-or at least your unconscious did. Are you still calm?”
“Of course I’m calm.”
“Good. Stay calm, Norman. Let’s consider this logically. Will you cooperate with me?”
“What do you want to do?”
“I want to put you under, Norman. Like Harry.”
He shook his head.
“It’s only for a few hours, Norman,” she said, and then she seemed to decide; she moved swiftly toward him, and he saw the syringe in her hand, the glint of the needle, and he twisted away. The needle plunged into the blanket, and he threw it off and ran for the stairs.
“Norman! Come back here!”
He was climbing the stairs. He saw Beth running forward with the needle. He kicked with his foot, got upstairs into her lab, and slammed the hatch down on her.
“Norman!”
She pounded on the hatch. Norman stood on it, knowing that she could never lift his weight. Beth continued to pound.
“Norman Johnson, you open that hatch this minute!”
“No, Beth, I’m sorry.”
He paused. What could she do? Nothing, he thought. He was safe here. She couldn’t get to him up here, she couldn’t do anything to him as long as he remained here.
Then he saw the metal pivot move in the center of the hatch between his feet. On the other side of the hatch, Beth was spinning the wheel.
Locking him in.
The only lights in the laboratory shone on the bench, next to a row of neatly bottled specimens: squid, shrimps, giant squid eggs. He touched the bottles absently. He turned on the laboratory monitor and punched buttons until he saw Beth, downstairs, on the video. Beth was working at the main D Cyl console. To one side, he saw Harry, still lying unconscious.
“Norman, can you hear me?”
He said aloud, “Yes, Beth. I hear you.”
“Norman, you are acting irresponsibly. You are a menace to this entire expedition.”
Was that true? he wondered. He didn’t think he was a menace to the expedition. It didn’t feel true to him. But how often in his life had he confronted patients who refused to acknowledge what was happening in their lives? Even trivial examples-a man, another professor at the university, who was terrified of elevators but who steadfastly insisted he always took the stairs because it was good exercise. The man would climb fifteen-story buildings; he would decline appointments in taller buildings; he arranged his entire life to accommodate a problem he would not admit he had. The problem remained concealed from him until he finally had a heart attack. Or the woman who was exhausted from years of caring for her disturbed daughter; she gave her daughter a bottle of sleeping pills because she said the girl needed a rest; the girl committed suicide. Or the novice sailor who cheerfully packed his family off on a sailing excursion to Catalina in a gale, nearly killing them all.
Dozens of examples came to mind. It was a psychological truism, this blindness about self. Did he imagine that he was immune? Three years ago, there had been a minor scandal when one of the assistant professors in the Psychology Department had committed suicide, sticking a gun in his mouth over the Labor Day weekend. There had been headlines for that one: “PSYCH PROF KILLS SELF, Colleagues Express Surprise, Say Deceased Was ‘Always Happy.’ ”
The dean of the faculty, embarrassed in his fund-raising, had berated Norman about that incident, but the difficult truth was that psychology had severe limitations. Even with professional knowledge and the best of intentions, there remained an enormous amount you never knew about your closest friends, your colleagues, your wives and husbands and children.
And your ignorance about yourself was even greater than that. Self-awareness was the most difficult of all. Few people attained it. Or perhaps nobody attained it.
“Norman, are you there?”
“Yes, Beth.”
“I think you are a good person, Norman.”
He said nothing. He just watched her on the monitor.
“I think you have integrity, and that you believe in telling the truth. This is a difficult moment for you, to face the reality about yourself. I know your mind is struggling now to find excuses, to blame someone else. But I think you can do it, Norman. Harry couldn’t do it, but you can. I think you can admit the hard truth-that so long as you remain conscious, the expedition is menaced.”
He felt the strength of her conviction, heard the quiet force of her voice. As Beth spoke, it felt almost as if her ideas were clothing being draped over his body. He began to see things her way. She was so calm, she must be right. Her ideas had such power. Her thoughts had such power…
“Beth, have you been in the sphere?”
“No, Norman. That’s your mind, trying to evade the point again. I haven’t been in the sphere. You have.”
He honestly couldn’t remember going into the sphere. He had no recollection at all. And when Harry had been in the sphere, he remembered afterward. Why would Norman forget? Why would he block it?
“You’re a psychologist, Norman,” she was saying. “You, of all people, do not want to admit you have a shadow side. You have a professional stake in believing in your own mental health. Of course you will deny it.”
He didn’t think so. But how to resolve it? How to determine if she was right or not? His mind wasn’t working well. His cut knee throbbed painfully. At least there was no doubt about that-his injured knee was real.
Reality testing.
That was how to resolve it, he thought. Reality testing. What was the objective evidence that Norman had gone to the sphere? They had made tapes of everything that occurred in the habitat. If Norman had gone to the sphere many hours ago, somewhere there was a tape showing him in the airlock, alone, getting dressed, slipping away. Beth should be able to show him that tape. Where was that tape?
In the submarine, of course.
It would long ago have been taken to the submarine. Norman himself might have taken it, when he made his excursion to the sub.
No objective evidence.
“Norman, give up. Please. For all our sakes.”
Perhaps she was right, he thought. She was so sure of herself. If he was evading the truth, if he was putting the expedition in jeopardy, then he had to give himself up and let her put him under. Could he trust her to do that? He would have to. There wasn’t any choice.
It must be me, he thought. It must be. The thought was so horrible to him-that in itself was suspicious. He was resisting it so violently-not a good sign, he thought. Too much resistance.
“Norman?”
“Okay, Beth.”
“Will you do it?”
“Don’t push. Give me a minute, will you?”
“Sure, Norman. Of course.”
He looked at the video recorder next to the monitor. He remembered how Beth had used this recorder to play the same tape, again and again, the tape in which the sphere had opened by itself. That tape was now lying on the counter beside the recorder. He pushed the tape into the slot, clicked the recorder on. Why bother to look at it now? he thought. You’re just delaying. You’re wasting time.
The screen flickered, and he waited for the familiar image of Beth eating cake, her back to the monitor. But this was a different tape. This was a direct monitor feed showing the sphere. The gleaming sphere, just sitting there.
He watched for a few seconds, but nothing happened. The sphere was immobile, as always. Polished, perfect, immobile. He watched a while longer, but there was nothing to see.
“Norman, if I open the hatch now, will you come down quietly?”
“Yes, Beth.”
He sighed, sat back in the chair. How long would he be unconscious? A little less than six hours. It would be okay. But in any case, Beth was right, he had to give himself up. “Norman, why are you watching that tape?”
He looked around quickly. Was there a video camera in the room allowing her to see him? Yes: high up in the ceiling, next to the upper hatch.
“Why are you watching that tape, Norman?”
“It was here.”
“Who said you could watch that tape?”
“Nobody,” Norman said. “It was just here.”
“Turn the tape off, Norman. Turn it off now.”
She didn’t sound so calm any more. “What’s the matter, Beth?”
“Turn that damned tape off, Norman!”
He was about to ask her why, but then he saw Beth enter the video image, stand next to the sphere. Beth closed her eyes and clenched her fists. The convoluted grooves of the sphere parted, revealing blackness. And as he watched, Beth stepped inside the sphere.
And the door of the sphere closed behind her.
“You goddamned men,” Beth said in a tight, angry voice. “You’re all the same; you can’t leave well enough alone, none of you.”
“You lied to me, Beth.”
“Why did you watch that tape? I begged you not to watch that tape. It could only hurt you to watch that tape, Norman.” She wasn’t angry any more; now she was pleading, near tears. She was undergoing rapid emotional shifts. Unstable, unpredictable.
And she was in control of the habitat.
“Beth.”
“I’m sorry, Norman. I can’t trust you any more.”
“Beth.”
“I’m turning you off, Norman. I’m not going to listen to-”
“-Beth, wait-”
“-you any more. I know how dangerous you are. I saw what you did to Harry. How you twisted the facts so that it was Harry’s fault. Oh yes, it was Harry’s fault, by the time you got through. And now you want to make it Beth’s fault, don’t you? Well, let me tell you, Norman, you won’t be able to do it, because I have shut you off, Norman. I can’t hear your soft, convincing words. I can’t hear your manipulation. So don’t waste your breath, Norman.”
He stopped the tape. The monitor now showed Beth at the console in the room below.
Pushing buttons on the console.
“Beth?” he said.
She didn’t reply; she just went on working at the console, muttering to herself.
“You’re a real son of a bitch, Norman, do you know that? You feel so terrible that you need to make everybody else just as low as you are.”
She was talking about herself, he thought.
“You’re so big on the unconscious, Norman. The unconscious this, the unconscious that. Jesus Christ, I’m sick of you. Your unconscious probably wants to kill us all, just because you want to kill yourself and you think everybody else should die with you.”
He felt a shuddering chill. Beth, with her lack of self-esteem, her deep core of self-hate, had gone inside the sphere, and now she was acting with the power of the sphere, but without stability to her thoughts. Beth saw herself as a victim who struggled against her fate, always unsuccessfully. Beth was victimized by men, victimized by the establishment, victimized by research, victimized by reality. In every case she failed to see how she had done it to herself. And she’s put explosives all around the habitat, he thought.
“I won’t let you do it, Norman. I’m going to stop you before you kill us all.”
Everything she said was the reverse of the truth. He began to see the pattern now.
Beth had figured out how to open the sphere, and she had gone there in secret, because she had always been attracted to power-she always felt she lacked power and needed more. But Beth wasn’t prepared to handle power once she had it. Beth still saw herself as a victim, so she had to deny the power, and arrange to be victimized by it.
It was very different from Harry. Harry had denied his fears, and so fearful images had manifested themselves. But Beth denied her power, and so she manifested a churning cloud of formless, uncontrolled power.
Harry was a mathematician who lived in a conscious world of abstraction, of equations and thoughts. A concrete form, like a squid, was what Harry feared. But Beth, the zoologist who dealt every day with animals, creatures she could touch and see, created an abstraction. A power that she could not touch or see. A formless abstract power that was coming to get her.
And to defend herself, she had armed the habitat with explosives. It wasn’t much of a defense, Norman thought. Unless you secretly wanted to kill yourself.
The horror of his true predicament became clear to him. “You won’t get away with this, Norman. I won’t let it happen. Not to me.”
She was punching keys on the console. What was she planning? What could she do to him? He had to think. Suddenly, the lights in the laboratory went off. A moment later, the big space heater died, the red elements cooling, turning dark.
She had shut off the power.
With the heater turned off, how long could he last? He took the blankets from her bed, wrapped himself in them. How long, without heat? Certainly not six hours, he thought grimly.
“I’m sorry, Norman. But you understand the position I’m in. As long as you’re conscious, I’m in danger.”
Maybe an hour, he thought. Maybe I can last an hour.
“I’m sorry, Norman. But I have to do this to you.”
He heard a soft hiss. The alarm on his chest badge began to beep. He looked down at it. Even in the darkness, he could see it was now gray. He knew immediately what had happened.
Beth had turned off his air.
Huddled in the darkness, listening to the beep of his alarm and the hiss of the escaping air. The pressure diminishing rapidly: his ears popped, as if he were in an airplane taking off.
Do something, he thought, feeling a surge of panic.
But there was nothing he could do. He was locked in the upper chamber of D Cyl. He could not get out. Beth had control of the entire facility, and she knew how to run the life-support systems. She had shut off his power, she had shut off his heat, and now she had shut off his air. He was trapped.
As the pressure fell, the sealed specimen bottles exploded like bombs, shooting fragments of glass across the room. He ducked under the blankets, feeling the glass rip and tug at the cloth. Breathing was harder now. At first he thought it was tension, and then he realized that the air was thinner. He would lose consciousness soon.
Do something.
He couldn’t seem to catch his breath.
Do something.
But all he could think about was breathing. He needed air, needed oxygen. Then he thought of the first-aid cabinet. Wasn’t there emergency oxygen in the cabinet? He wasn’t sure. He seemed to remember… As he got up, another specimen bottle exploded, and he twisted away from the flying glass.
He was gasping for breath, chest heaving. He started to see gray spots before his eyes.
He fumbled in the darkness, looking for the cabinet, his hands moving along the wall. He touched a cylinder. Oxygen? No, too large-it must be the fire extinguisher. Where was the cabinet? His hands moved along the wall. Where?
He felt the metal case, the embossed cover with the raised cross. He pulled it open, thrust his hands inside.
More spots swam before his eyes. There wasn’t much time. His fingers touched small bottles, soft bandage packs. There was no air bottle. Damn! The bottles fell to the floor, and then something large and heavy landed on his foot with a thud. He bent down, touched the floor, felt a shard of glass cut his finger, paid no attention. His hand closed over a cold metal cylinder. It was small, hardly longer than the palm of his hand. At one end was some fitting, a nozzle…
It was a spray can-some kind of damn spray can. He threw it aside. Oxygen. He needed oxygen!
By the bed, he remembered. Wasn’t there emergency oxygen by every bed in the habitat? He felt for the couch where Beth had slept, felt for the wall above where her head would have been. Surely there was oxygen nearby. He was dizzy now. He wasn’t thinking clearly.
No oxygen.
Then he realized this wasn’t a regular bed. It wasn’t intended for sleeping. They wouldn’t have placed any oxygen here. Damn! And then his hand touched a metal cylinder, clipped to the wall. At one end was something soft. Soft…
An oxygen mask.
Quickly he pushed the mask over his mouth and nose. He felt the bottle, twisted a knurled knob. He heard a hissing, breathed cold air. He felt a wave of intense dizziness, and then his head cleared. Oxygen! He was fine!
He felt the shape of the bottle, gauging its size. It was an emergency bottle, only a few hundred cc’s. How long would it last? Not long, he thought. A few minutes. It was only a temporary reprieve.
Do something.
But he couldn’t think of anything to do. He had no options. He was locked in a room.
He remembered one of his teachers, fat old Dr. Temkin. “You always have an option. There is always something you can do. You are never without choice.”
I am now, he thought. No choices now. Anyway, Temkin had been talking about treating patients, not escaping from sealed chambers. Temkin didn’t have any experience escaping from sealed chambers. And neither did Norman.
The oxygen made him lightheaded. Or was it already running out? He saw a parade of his old teachers before him. Was this like seeing your life running before you, before you died? All his teachers: Mrs. Jefferson, who told him to be a lawyer instead. Old Joe Lamper, who laughed and said, “Everything is sex. Trust me. It always comes down to sex.” Dr. Stein, who used to say, “There is no such thing as a resistant patient. Show me a resistant patient and I’ll show you a resistant therapist. If you’re not making headway with a patient, then do something else, do anything else. But do something.”
Do something.
Stein advocated crazy stuff. If you weren’t getting through to a patient, get crazy. Dress up in a clown suit, kick the patient, squirt him with a water pistol, do any damned thing that came into your head, but do something.
“Look,” he used to say. “What you’re doing now isn’t working. So you might as well do something else, no matter how crazy it seems.”
That was fine back then, Norman thought. He’d like to see Stein assess this problem. What would Dr. Stein tell him to do?
Open the door. I can’t; she’s locked it.
Talk to her. I can’t; she won’t listen.
Turn on your air. I can’t; she has control of the system.
Get control of the system. I can’t; she is in control.
Find help inside the room. I can’t; there is nothing left to help me.
Then leave. I can’t; I-
He paused. That wasn’t true. He could leave by smashing a porthole, or, for that matter, by opening the hatch in the ceiling. But there was no place to go. He didn’t have a suit. The water was freezing. He had been exposed to that freezing water for only a few seconds and he had nearly died. If he were to leave the room for the open ocean, he would almost surely die. He’d probably be fatally chilled before the chamber even filled with water. He would surely die.
In his mind he saw Stein raise his bushy eyebrows, give his quizzical smile. So? You’ll die anyway. What have you got to lose?
A plan began to form in Norman’s mind. If he opened the ceiling hatch, he could go outside the habitat. Once outside, perhaps he could make his way down to A Cyl, get back in through the airlock, and put his suit on. Then he would be okay.
If he could make it to the airlock. How long would that take? Thirty seconds? A minute? Could he hold his breath that long? Could he withstand the cold that long?
You’ll die anyway.
And then he thought, You damn fool, you’re holding an oxygen bottle in your hand; you have enough air if you don’t stay here, wasting time worrying. Get on with it.
No, he thought, there’s something else, something I’m forgetting…
Get on with it!
So he stopped thinking, and climbed up to the ceiling hatch at the top of the cylinder. Then he held his breath, braced himself, and spun the wheel, opening the hatch.
“Norman! Norman, what are you doing? Norman! You are insa-” he heard Beth shout, and then the rest was lost in the roar of freezing water pouring like a mighty waterfall into the habitat, filling the room.
The moment he was outside, he realized his mistake. He needed weights. His body was buoyant, tugging him up toward the surface. He sucked a final breath, dropped the oxygen bottle, and desperately gripped the cold pipes on the outside of the habitat, knowing that if he lost his grip, there would be nothing to stop him, nothing to grab onto, all the way to the surface. He would reach the surface and explode like a balloon.
Holding the pipes, he pulled himself down, hand over hand, looking for the next pipe, the next protrusion to grab. It was like mountain-climbing in reverse; if he let go, he would fall upward and die. His hands were long since numb. His body was stiff with cold, slow with cold. His lungs burned.
He had very little time.
He reached the bottom, swung under D Cyl, pulled himself along, felt in the darkness for the airlock. It wasn’t there! The airlock was gone! Then he saw he was beneath B Cyl. He moved over to A, felt the airlock. The airlock was closed. He tugged the wheel. It was shut tight. He pulled on it, but he could not move it.
He was locked out.
The most intense fear gripped him. His body was almost immobile from cold; he knew he had only a few seconds of consciousness remaining. He had to open the hatch. He pounded it, pounded the metal around the rim, feeling nothing in his numb hands.
The wheel began to spin by itself. The hatch popped open. There must have been an emergency button, he must have-He burst above the surface of the water, gasped air, and sank again. He came back up, but he couldn’t climb out into the cylinder. He was too numb, his muscles frozen, his body unresponsive.
You have to do it, he thought. You have to do it. His fingers gripped metal, slipped off, gripped again. One pull, he thought. One last pull. He heaved his chest over the metal rim, flopped onto the deck. He couldn’t feel anything, he was so cold. He twisted his body, trying to pull his legs up, and fell back into the icy water.
No!
He pulled himself up again, one last time-again over the rim, again onto the deck, and he twisted, twisted, one leg up, his balance precarious, then the other leg, he couldn’t really feel it, and then he was out of the water, and lying on the deck.
He was shivering. He tried to stand, and fell over. His whole body was shaking so hard he could not keep his balance.
Across the airlock he saw his suit, hanging on the wall of the cylinder. He saw the helmet, “JOHNSON” stenciled on it. Norman crawled toward the suit, his body shaking violently. He tried to stand, and could not. The boots of his suit were directly in front of his face. He tried to grip them in his hands, but his hands could not close. He tried to bite the suit, to pull himself up with his teeth, but his teeth were chattering uncontrollably.
The intercom crackled.
“Norman! I know what you’re doing, Norman!”
Any minute, Beth would be here. He had to get into the suit. He stared at it, inches from him, but his hands still shook, he could not hold anything. Finally he saw the fabric loops near the waist to clip instruments. He hooked one hand into the loop, managed to hold on. He pulled himself upright. He got one foot into the suit, then the other.
“Norman!”
He reached for the helmet. The helmet drummed in a staccato beat against the wall before he managed to get it free of the peg and drop it over his head. He twisted it, heard the click of the snap-lock.
He was still very cold. Why wasn’t the suit heating up? Then he realized, no power. The power was in the tank pack. Norman backed up against the tank, shrugged it on, staggered under the weight. He had to hook the umbilicus-he reached behind him, felt it-held it-hook it into the suit-at the waist-hook it
He heard a click.
The fan hummed.
He felt long streaks of pain all over his body. The electrical elements were heating, painful against his frozen skin. He felt pins and needles all over. Beth was talking-he heard her through the intercom-but he couldn’t listen to her. He sat heavily on the deck, breathing hard.
But already he knew that he was going to be all right; the pain was lessening, his head was clearing, and he was no longer shaking so badly. He had been chilled, but not long enough for it to be central. He was recovering fast.
The radio crackled.
“You’ll never get to me, Norman!”
He got to his feet, pulled on his weight belt, locked the buckles.
“Norman!”
He said nothing. He felt quite warm now, quite normal. “Norman! I am surrounded by explosives! If you come anywhere near me, I will blow you to pieces! You’ll die, Norman! You’ll never get near me!”
But Norman wasn’t going to Beth. He had another plan entirely. He heard his tank air hiss as the pressure equalized in his suit.
He jumped back into the water.
The sphere gleamed in the light. Norman saw himself reflected in its perfectly polished surface, then saw his image break up, fragmented on the convolutions, as he moved around to the back.
To the door.
It looked like a mouth, he thought. Like the maw of some primitive creature, about to eat him. Confronted by the sphere, seeing once again the alien, unhuman pattern of the convolutions, he felt his intention dissolve. He was suddenly afraid. He didn’t think he could go through with it.
Don’t be silly, he told himself. Harry did it. And Beth did it. They survived.
He examined the convolutions, as if for reassurance. But there wasn’t any reassurance to be obtained. Just curved grooves in the metal, reflecting back the light.
Okay, he thought finally. I’ll do it. I’ve come this far, I’ve survived everything so far. I might as well do it.
Go ahead and open up.
But the sphere did not open. It remained exactly as it was, a gleaming, polished, perfect shape.
What was the purpose of the thing? He wished he understood its purpose.
He thought of Dr. Stein again. What was Stein’s favorite line? “Understanding is a delaying tactic.” Stein used to get angry about that. When the graduate students would intellectualize, going on and on about patients and their problems, he would interrupt in annoyance, “Who cares? Who cares whether we understand the psychodynamics in this case? Do you want to understand how to swim, or do you want to jump in and start swimming? Only people who are afraid of the water want to understand it. Other people jump in and get wet.”
Okay, Norman thought. Let’s get wet.
He turned to face the sphere, and thought, Open up.
The sphere did not open.
“Open up,” he said aloud. The sphere did not open.
Of course he knew that wouldn’t work, because Ted had tried it for hours. When Harry and Beth went in, they hadn’t said anything. They just did something in their minds.
He closed his eyes, focused his attention, and thought, Open up.
He opened his eyes and looked at the sphere. It was still closed.
I am ready for you to open up, he thought. I am ready now.
Nothing happened. The sphere did not open.
Norman hadn’t considered the possibility that he would be unable to open the sphere. After all, two others had already done it. How had they managed it?
Harry, with his logical brain, had been the first to figure it out. But Harry had only figured it out after he had seen Beth’s tape. So Harry had discovered a clue in the tape, an important clue.
Beth had also reviewed the tape, watching it again and again, until she finally figured it out, too. Something in the tape…
Too bad he didn’t have the tape here, Norman thought. But he had seen it often, he could probably reconstruct it, play it back in his mind. How did it go? In his mind he saw the images: Beth and Tina talking. Beth eating cake. Then Tina had said something about the tapes being stored in the submarine. And Beth said something back. Then Tina had moved away, out of the picture, but she had said, “Do you think they’ll ever get the sphere open?”
And Beth said, “Maybe. I don’t know.” And the sphere had opened at that moment.
Why?
“Do you think they’ll ever get the sphere open?” Tina had asked. And in response to such a question, Beth must have imagined the sphere open, must have seen an image of the open sphere in her mind
There was a deep, low rumble, a vibration that filled the room.
The sphere was open, the door gaping wide and black.
That’s it, he thought. Visualize it happening and it happens. Which meant that if he also visualized the sphere door closed-
With another deep rumble, the sphere closed.
–or open-
The sphere opened again.
“I’d better not press my luck,” he said aloud. The door was still open. He peered in the doorway but saw only deep, undifferentiated blackness. It’s now or never, he thought. He stepped inside.
The sphere closed behind him.
There is darkness, and then, as his eyes adjust, something like fireflies. It is a dancing, luminous foam, millions of points of light, swirling around him.
What is this? he thinks. All he sees is the foam. There is no structure to it and apparently no limit. It is a surging ocean, a glistening, multifaceted foam. He feels great beauty and peace. It is restful to be here.
He moves his hands, scooping the foam, his movements making it swirl. But then he notices that his hands are becoming transparent, that he can see the sparkling foam through his own flesh. He looks down at his body. His legs, his torso, everything is becoming transparent to the foam. He is part of the foam. The sensation is very pleasant.
He grows lighter. Soon he is lifted, and floats in the limitless ocean foam. He puts his hands behind his neck and floats. He feels happy. He feels he could stay here forever.
He becomes aware of something else in this ocean, some other presence.
“Anybody here?” he says.
I am here.
He almost jumps, it is so loud. Or it seems loud. Then he wonders if he has heard anything at all.
“Did you speak?”
No.
How are we communicating? he wonders.
The way everything communicates with everything else.
Which way is that?
Why do you ask if you already know the answer?
But I don’t know the answer.
The foam moves him gently, peacefully, but he receives no answer for a time. He wonders if he is alone again.
Are you there?
Yes.
I thought you had gone away.
There is nowhere to go.
Do you mean you are imprisoned inside this sphere?
No.
Will you answer a question? Who are you?
I am not a who.
Are you God?
God is a word.
I mean, are you a higher being, or a higher consciousness?
Higher than what?
Higher than me, I suppose.
How high are you?
Pretty low. At least, I imagine so.
Well, then, that’s your trouble.
Riding in the foam, he is disturbed by the possibility that God is making fun of him. He thinks, Are you making a joke?
Why do you ask if you already know the answer?
Am I talking to God?
You are not talking at all.
You take what I say very literally. Is this because you are from another planet?
No.
Are you from another planet?
No.
Are you from another civilization?
No.
Where are you from?
Why do you ask if you already know the answer?
In another time, he thinks, he would be irritated by this repetitive answer, but now he feels no emotions. There are no judgments. He is simply receiving information, a response. He thinks, But this sphere comes from another civilization.
Yes.
And maybe from another time.
Yes.
And aren’t you a part of this sphere?
I am now.
So, where are you from?
Why do you ask if you already know the answer?
The foam gently shifts him, rocking him soothingly.
Are you still there?
Yes. There is nowhere to go.
I’m afraid I am not very knowledgeable about religion. I am a psychologist. I deal with how people think. In my training, I never learned much about religion.
Oh, I see.
Psychology doesn’t have much to do with religion.
Of course.
So you agree?
I agree with you.
That’s reassuring.
I don’t see why.
Who is I?
Who indeed?
He rocks in the foam, feeling a deep peace despite the difficulties of this conversation.
I am troubled, he thinks.
Tell me.
I am troubled because you sound like Jerry.
That is to be expected.
But Jerry was really Harry.
Yes.
So are you Harry, too?
No. Of course not.
Who are you?
I am not a who.
Then why do you sound like Jerry or Harry?
Because we spring from the same source.
I don’t understand.
When you look in the mirror, who do you see?
I see myself.
I see.
Isn’t that right?
It’s up to you.
I don’t understand.
What you see is up to you.
I already know that. Everybody knows that. That is a psychological truism, a cliche.
I see.
Are you an alien intelligence?
Are you an alien intelligence?
I find you difficult to talk to. Will you give me the power?
What power?
The power you gave to Harry and Beth. The power to make things happen by imagination. Will you give it to me?
No.
Why not?
Because you already have it.
I don’t feel as if I have it.
I know.
Then how is it that I have the power?
How did you get in here?
I imagined the door opening.
Yes.
Rocking in the foam, waiting for a further response, but there is no response, there is only gentle movement in the foam, a peaceful timelessness, and a drowsy sensation.
After a passage of time, he thinks, I am sorry, but I wish you would just explain and stop speaking in riddles.
On your planet you have an animal called a bear. It is a large animal, sometimes larger than you, and it is clever and has ingenuity, and it has a brain as large as yours. But the bear differs from you in one important way. It cannot perform the activity you call imagining. It cannot make mental images of how reality might be. It cannot envision what you call the past and what you call the future. This special ability of imagination is what has made your-species as great as it is. Nothing else. It is not your ape-nature, not your tool-using nature, not language or your violence or your caring for young or your social groupings. It is none of these things, which are all found in other animals. Your greatness lies in imagination.
The ability to imagine is the largest part of what you call intelligence. You think the ability to imagine is merely a useful step on the way to solving a problem or making something happen. But imagining it is what makes it happen.
This is the gift of your species and this is the danger, because you do not choose to control your imaginings. You imagine wonderful things and you imagine terrible things, and you take no responsibility for the choice. You say you have inside you both the power of good and the power of evil, the angel and the devil, but in truth you have just one thing inside you-the ability to imagine.
I hope you enjoyed this speech, which I plan to give at the next meeting of the American Association of Psychologists and Social Workers, which is meeting in Houston in March. I feel it will be quite well received.
What? he thinks, startled.
Who did you think you were talking to? God?
Who is this? he thinks.
You, of course.
But you are somebody different from me, separate. You are not me, he thinks.
Yes l am. You imagined me.
Tell me more.
There is no more.
His cheek rested on cold metal. He rolled onto his back and looked at the polished surface of the sphere, curving above him. The convolutions of the door had changed again.
Norman got to his feet. He felt relaxed and at peace, as if he had been sleeping a long time. He felt as if he had had a wonderful dream. He remembered everything quite clearly.
He moved through the ship, back to the flight deck, and then down the hallway with the ultraviolet lights to the room with all the tubes on the wall.
The tubes were filled. There was a crewman in each one. Just as he thought: Beth had manifested a single crewman-a solitary woman-as a way of warning them. Now Norman was in charge, and he found the room full.
Not bad, he thought.
He looked at the room and thought: Gone, one at a time. One by one, the crew members in the tubes vanished before his eyes, until they were all gone.
Back, one at a time.
The crew members popped back in the tubes, materializing on demand.
All men.
The women were changed into men.
All women.
They all became women.
He had the power.
“Norman.”
Beth’s voice over the loudspeakers, hissing through the empty spacecraft.
“Where are you, Norman? I know you’re there somewhere. I can feel you, Norman.”
Norman was moving through the kitchen, past the empty cans of Coke on the counter, then through the heavy door and into the flight deck. He saw Beth’s face on all the console screens, Beth seeming to see him, the image repeated a dozen times.
“Norman. I know where you’ve been. You’ve been inside the sphere, haven’t you, Norman?”
He pressed the consoles with the flat of his hand, trying to turn off the screens. He couldn’t do it; the images remained.
“Norman. Answer me, Norman.”
He moved past the flight deck, going toward the airlock. “It won’t do you any good, Norman. I’m in charge now. Do you hear me, Norman?”
In the airlock, he heard a click as his helmet ring locked; the air from the tanks was cool and dry. He listened to the even sound of his own breathing.
“Norman.” Beth, on the intercom in his helmet. “Why don’t you speak to me, Norman? Are you afraid, Norman?” The repetition of his name irritated him. He pressed the buttons to open the airlock. Water began to flood in from the floor, rising swiftly.
“Oh, there you are, Norman. I see you now.” And she began to laugh, a high, cackling laugh.
Norman turned around, saw the video camera mounted on the robot, still inside the airlock. He shoved the camera, spinning it away.
“That won’t do any good, Norman.”
He was back outside the spacecraft, standing by the air lock. The Tevac explosives, rows of glowing red dots, extended away in erratic lines, like an airplane runway laid out by some demented engineer.
“Norman? Why don’t you answer me, Norman?”
Beth was unstable, erratic. He could hear it in her voice. He had to deprive her of her weapons, to turn off the explosives, if he could.
Off, he thought. Let’s have the explosives off and disarmed.
All the red lights immediately went off.
Not bad, he thought, with a burst of pleasure. A moment later, the red lights blinked back on.
“You can’t do it, Norman,” Beth said, laughing. “Not to me. I can fight you.”
He knew she was right. They were having an argument, a test of wills, turning the explosives on and off. And the argument couldn’t ever be resolved. Not that way. He would have to do something more direct.
He moved toward the nearest of the Tevac explosives. Up close, the cone was larger than he had thought, four feet high, with a red light at the top.
“I can see you, Norman. I see what you’re doing.”
There was writing on the cone, yellow letters stenciled on the gray surface. Norman bent to read it. His faceplate was slightly fogged, but he could still make out the words.
DANGER - TEVAC EXPLOSIVES
U.S.N. CONSTRUCTION/DEMOLITION USE ONLY
DEFAULT DETONATE SEQUENCE 20:00
CONSULT MANUAL USN/VV/512-A
AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY
DANGER-TEVAC EXPLOSIVES
There was still more writing beneath that, but it was smaller, and he couldn’t make it out.
“Norman! What’re you doing with my explosives, Norman?”
Norman didn’t answer her. He looked at the wiring. One thin cable ran into the base of the cone, and a second cable ran out. The second cable went along the muddy bottom to the next cone, where there were again just two cables-one in, and one out.
“Get away from there, Norman. You’re making me nervous.
One cable in, and one cable out.
Beth had wired the cones together in series, like Christmas-tree bulbs! By pulling out a single cable, Norman would disconnect the entire line of explosives. He reached forward and gripped the cable in his gloved hand.
“Norman! Don’t touch that wire, Norman!”
“Take it easy, Beth.”
His fingers closed around the cable. He felt the soft plastic coating, gripped it tightly.
“Norman, if you pull that cable you’ll set off the explosives. I swear to you-it’ll blow you and me and Harry and everything to hell, Norman.”
He didn’t think it was true. Beth was lying. Beth was out of control and she was dangerous and she was lying to him again.
He drew his hand back. He felt the tension in the cable.
“Don’t do it, Norman…
The cable was now taut in his hand. “I’m going to shut you down, Beth.”
“For God’s sake, Norman. Believe me, will you? You’ll kill us all!”
Still he hesitated. Could she be telling the truth? Did she know about wiring explosives? He looked at the big gray cone at his feet, reaching up to his waist. What would it feel like if it exploded? Would he feel anything at all?
“The hell with it,” he said aloud.
He pulled the cable out of the cone.
The shriek of the alarm, ringing inside his helmet, made him jump. There was a small liquid-crystal display at the top of his faceplate blinking rapidly: “EMERGENCY”… “EMERGENCY”…
“Oh, Norman. God damn it. Now you’ve done it.”
He barely heard her voice over the alarm. The red cone lights were blinking, all down the length of the spacecraft. He braced himself for the explosion.
But then the alarm was interrupted by a deep, resonant male voice that said, “Your attention, please. Your attention, please. All construction personnel clear the blast area immediately. Tevac explosives are now activated. The countdown will begin… now. Mark twenty, and counting.”
On the cone, a red display flashed 20:00. Then it began counting backward: 19:59… 19:58…
The same display was repeated on the crystal display at the top of his helmet.
It took him a moment to put it together, to understand. Staring at the cone, he read the yellow lettering once again: U.S.N. CONSTRUCTION/DEMOLITION USE ONLY.
Of course! Tevac explosives weren’t weapons, they were made for construction and demolition. They had built-in safety timers-a programmed twenty-minute delay before they went off, to allow workers to get away.
Twenty minutes to get away, he thought. That would give him plenty of time.
Norman turned, and began striding quickly toward DH-7 and the submarine.
He walked evenly, steadily. He felt no strain. His breath came easily. He was comfortable in his suit. All systems working smoothly.
He was leaving. “Norman, please…” Now Beth was pleading with him, another erratic shift of mood. Norman ignored her. He continued on toward the submarine. The deep recorded voice said, “Your attention, please. All Navy personnel clear the blast area. Nineteen minutes and counting.”
Norman felt an enormous sense of purposefulness, of power. He had no illusions any more. He had no questions. He knew what he had to do.
He had to save himself.
“I don’t believe you’re doing this, Norman. I don’t believe you’re abandoning us.”
Believe it, he thought. After all, what choice did he have? Beth was out of control and dangerous. It was too late to save her now-in fact, it was crazy to go anywhere near her. Beth was homicidal. She’d already tried to kill him once, and had nearly succeeded.
And Harry had been drugged for thirteen hours; by now he was probably clinically dead, brain-dead. There was no reason for Norman to stay. There was nothing for him to do.
The sub was close now. He could see the fittings on the yellow exterior.
“Norman, please… I need you.”
Sorry, he thought. I’m getting out of here.
He moved around beneath the twin propellor screws, the name painted on the curved hull, Deepstar III. He climbed the footholds, moving up into the dome.
“Norman-”
Now he was out of contact with the intercom. He was on his own. He opened the hatch, climbed inside the submarine. He unlocked his helmet, pulled it off.
“Your attention, please. Eighteen minutes and counting.” Norman sat in the pilot’s padded seat, faced the controls. The instruments blinked on, and the screen directly before him glowed.
DEEPSTAR III - COMMAND MODULE
Do you require help?
Yes No Cancel
He pressed “YES.” He waited for the next screen to flash up.
It was too bad about Harry and Beth; he was sorry to leave them behind. But they had both, in their own ways, failed to explore their inner selves, thus making them vulnerable to the sphere and its power. It was a classic scientific error, this so-called triumph of rational thought over irrational thought. Scientists refused to acknowledge their irrational side, refused to see it as important. They dealt only with the rational. Everything made sense to a scientist, and if it didn’t make sense, it was dismissed as what Einstein called the “merely personal.”
The merely personal, he thought, in a burst of contempt. People killed each other for reasons that were “merely personal.”
DEEPSTAR III - CHECKLIST OPTIONS
Descend Ascend
Secure Shutdown
Monitor Cancel
Norman pressed “ASCEND.” The screen changed to the drawing of the instrument panel, with the flashing point. He waited for the next instruction.
Yes, he thought, it was true: scientists refused to deal with the irrational. But the irrational side didn’t go away if you refused to deal with it. Irrationality didn’t atrophy with disuse. On the contrary, left unattended, the irrational side of man had grown in power and scope.
And complaining about it didn’t help, either. All those scientists whining in the Sunday supplements about man’s inherent destructiveness and his propensity for violence, throwing up their hands. That wasn’t dealing with the irrational side. That was just a formal admission that they were giving up on it.
The screen changed again:
DEEPSTAR III - ASCEND CHECKLIST
1. Set Ballast Blowers To: On
Proceed To Next Cancel
Norman pushed buttons on the panel, setting the ballast blowers, and waited for the next screen.
After all, how did scientists approach their own research? The scientists all agreed: scientific research can’t be stopped. If we don’t build the bomb, someone else will. But then pretty soon the bomb was in the hands of new people, who said, If we don’t use the bomb, someone else will.
At which point, the scientists said, those other people are terrible people, they’re irrational and irresponsible. We scientists are okay. But those other people are a real problem.
Yet the truth was that responsibility began with each individual person, and the choices he made. Each person had a choice.
Well, Norman thought, there was nothing he could do for Harry or Beth any longer. He had to save himself.
He heard a deep hum as the generators turned on, and the throb of the propellors. The screen flashed:
DEEPSTAR III - PILOT INSTRUMENTS ACTIVATED
Here we go, he thought, resting his hands confidently on the controls. He felt the submarine respond beneath him. “Your attention, please. Seventeen minutes and counting.” Muddy sediment churned up around the canopy as the screws engaged, and then the little submarine slipped out from beneath the dome. It was just like driving a car, he thought. There was nothing to it.
He turned in a slow arc, away from DH-7, toward DH-8. He was twenty feet above the bottom, high enough for the screws to clear the mud.
There were seventeen minutes left. At a maximum ascent rate of 6.6 feet per second-he did the mental calculation quickly, effortlessly-he would reach the surface in two and a half minutes.
There was plenty of time.
He moved the submarine close to DH-8. The exterior habitat floodlights were yellow and pale. Power must be dropping. He could see the damage to the cylinders-streams of bubbles rising from the weakened A and B Cylinders; the dents in the D; and the gaping hole in E Cyl, which was flooded. The habitat was battered, and dying.
Why had he come so close? He squinted at the portholes, then realized he was hoping to catch sight of Harry and Beth, one last time. He wanted to see Harry, unconscious and unresponsive. He wanted to see Beth standing at the window, shaking her fist at him in maniacal rage. He wanted confirmation that he was right to leave them.
But he saw only the fading yellow light inside the habitat. He was disappointed.
“Norman.”
“Yes, Beth.” He felt comfortable answering her now. He had his hands on the controls of the submarine, ready to make his ascent. There was nothing she could do to him now. “Norman, you really are a son of a bitch.”
“You tried to kill me, Beth.”
“I didn’t want to kill you. I had no choice, Norman.”
“Yeah, well. Me, too. I have no choice.” As he spoke, he knew he was right. Better for one person to survive. Better than nothing.
“You’re just going to leave us?”
“That’s right, Beth.”
His hand moved to the ascent-rate dial. He set it to 6.6 feet. Ready to ascend.
“You’re just going to run away?” He heard the contempt in her voice.
“That’s right, Beth.”
“You, the one who kept talking about how we had to stay together down here?”
“Sorry, Beth.”
“You must be very afraid, Norman.”
“I’m not afraid at all.” And indeed he felt strong and confident, setting the controls, preparing for his ascent. He felt better than he had felt for days.
“Norman,” she said.
“Please help us. Please.”
Her words struck him at some deep level, arousing feelings of caring, of professional competence, of simple human kindness. For a moment he felt confusion, his strength and conviction weakened. But then he got a grip on himself, and shook his head. The strength flew back into his body.
“Sorry, Beth. It’s too late for that.”
And he pressed the “ASCEND” button, heard the roar as the ballast tanks blew, and Deepstar III swayed. The habitat slipped away below him, and he started toward the surface, a thousand feet above.
Black water, no sense of movement except for the readings on the glowing green instrument panel. He began to review the events in his mind, as if he were already facing a Navy inquiry. Had he done the right thing, leaving the others behind?
Unquestionably, he had. The sphere was an alien object which gave a person the power to manifest his thoughts. Well and good, except that human beings had a split in their brains, a split in their mental processes. It was almost as if men had two brains. The conscious brain could be consciously controlled, and presented no problem. But the unconscious brain, wild and abandoned, was dangerous and destructive when its impulses were manifested.
The trouble with people like Harry and Beth was that they were literally unbalanced. Their conscious brains were overdeveloped, but they had never bothered to explore their unconscious. That was the difference between Norman and them. As a psychologist, Norman had some acquaintance with his unconscious. It held no surprises for him.
That was why Harry and Beth had manifested monsters, but Norman had not. Norman knew his unconscious. No monsters awaited him.
No. Wrong.
He was startled by the suddenness of the thought, the abruptness of it. Was he really wrong? He considered carefully, and decided once again that he was correct after all. Beth and Harry were at risk from the products of their unconscious, but Norman was not. Norman knew himself; the others did not.
“The fears unleashed by contact with a new life form are not understood. The most likely consequence of contact is absolute terror.”
The statements from his own report popped into his head. Why should he think of them now? It had been years since he had written his report.
“Under circumstances of extreme terror, people make decisions poorly.”
Yet Norman wasn’t afraid. Far from it. He was confident and strong. He had a plan, he was carrying it out. Why should he even think of that report? At the time, he’d agonized over it, thinking of each sentence… Why was it coming to mind now? It troubled him.
“Your attention, please. Sixteen minutes and counting.” Norman scanned the gauges before him. He was at nine hundred feet, rising swiftly. There was no turning back now. Why should he even think of turning back?
Why should it enter his mind?
As he rose silently through black water, he increasingly felt a kind of split inside himself, an almost schizophrenic internal division. Something was wrong, he sensed. There was something he hadn’t considered yet.
But what could he have overlooked? Nothing, he decided, because, unlike Beth and Harry, I am fully conscious; I am aware of everything that is happening inside me.
Except Norman didn’t really believe that. Complete awareness might be a philosophical goal, but it was not really attainable. Consciousness was like a pebble that rippled the surface of the unconscious. As consciousness widened, there was still more unconsciousness beyond. There was always more, just beyond reach. Even for a humanistic psychologist.
Stein, his old professor: “You always have your shadow.”
What was Norman’s shadow side doing now? What was happening in the unconscious, denied parts of his own brain? Nothing. Keep going up.
He shifted uneasily in the pilot’s chair. He wanted to go to the surface so badly, he felt such conviction…
I hate Beth. I hate Harry. I hate worrying about these people, caring for them. I don’t want to care any more. It’s not my responsibility. I want to save myself. I hate them. I hate them.
He was shocked. Shocked by his own thoughts, the vehemence of them.
I must go back, he thought. If I go back I will die.
But some other part of himself was growing stronger with each moment. What Beth had said was true: Norman had been the one who kept saying that they had to stay together, to work together. How could he abandon them now? He couldn’t. It was against everything he believed in, everything that was important and human.
He had to go back.
I am afraid to go back.
At last, he thought. There it is. Fear so strong he had denied its existence, fear that had caused him to rationalize abandoning the others.
He pressed the controls, halting his ascent. As he started back down, he saw that his hands were shaking.
The sub came to rest gently on the bottom beside the habitat. Norman stepped into the submarine airlock, flooded the chamber. Moments later, he climbed down the side and walked toward the habitat. The Tevac explosives’ cones with their blinking red lights looked oddly festive.
“Your attention, please. Fourteen minutes and counting.” He estimated the time he would need. One minute to get inside. Five, maybe six minutes to dress Beth and Harry in the suits. Another four minutes to reach the sub and get them aboard. Two or three minutes to make the ascent.
It was going to be close. He moved beneath the big support pylons, under the habitat.
“So you came back, Norman,” Beth said, over the intercom.
“Yes, Beth.”
“Thank God,” she said. She started to cry. He was beneath A Cyl, hearing her sobs over the intercom. He found the hatch cover, spun the wheel to open it. It was locked shut.
“Beth, open the hatch.”
She was crying over the intercom. She didn’t answer him.
“Beth, can you hear me? Open the hatch.”
Crying like a child, sobbing hysterically. “Norman,” she said. “Please help me. Please.”
“I’m trying to help you, Beth. Open the hatch.”
“I can’t.”
“What do you mean, you can’t?”
“It won’t do any good.”
“Beth,” he said. “Come on, now…”
“I can’t do it, Norman.”
“Of course you can. Open the hatch, Beth.”
“You shouldn’t have come back, Norman.”
There was no time for this now. “Beth, pull yourself together. Open the hatch.”
“No, Norman, I can’t.”
And she began crying again.
He tried all the hatches, one after another. B Cyl, locked. C Cyl, locked. D Cyl, locked.
“Your attention, please. Thirteen minutes and counting.” He was standing by E Cyl, which had been flooded in an earlier attack. He saw the gaping, jagged tear in the outer cylinder surface. The hole was large enough for him to climb through, but the edges were sharp, and if he tore his suit…
No, he decided. It was too risky. He moved beneath E Cyl. Was there a hatch?
He found a hatch, spun the wheel. It opened easily. He pushed the circular lid upward, heard it clang against the inner wall.
“Norman? Is that you?”
He hauled himself up, into E Cyl. He was panting from the exertion, on his hands and knees on the deck of E Cyl. He shut the hatch and locked it again, then took a moment to get his breath.
“Your attention, please. Twelve minutes and counting.”
Jesus, he thought. Already?
Something white drifted past his faceplate, startling him. He pulled back, realized it was a box of corn flakes. When he touched it, the cardboard disintegrated in his hands, the flakes like yellow snow.
He was in the kitchen. Beyond the stove he saw another hatch, leading to D Cyl. D Cyl was not flooded, which meant that he must somehow pressurize E Cyl.
He looked up, saw an overhead bulkhead hatch, leading to the living room with the gaping tear. He climbed up quickly. He needed to find gas, some kind of tanks. The living room was dark, except for the reflected light from the floodlights, which filtered in through the tear. Cushions and padding floated in the water. Something touched him and he spun and saw dark hair streaming around a face, and as the hair moved he saw part of the face was missing, torn away grotesquely.
Tina.
Norman shuddered, pushed her body away. It drifted off, moving upward.
“Your attention, please. Eleven minutes and counting.” It was all happening too fast, he thought. There was hardly enough time left. He needed to be inside the habitat now. No tanks in the living room. He climbed back down to the kitchen, shutting the hatch above. He looked at the stove, the ovens. He opened the oven door, and a burst of gas bubbled out. Air trapped in the oven.
But that couldn’t be right, he thought, because gas was still coming out. A trickle of bubbles continued to come from the open oven.
A steady trickle.
What had Barnes said about cooking under pressure? There was something unusual about it, he couldn’t remember exactly. Did they use gas? Yes, but they also needed more oxygen. That meant
He pulled the stove away from the wall, grunting with exertion, and then he found it. A squat bottle of propane, and two large blue tanks.
Oxygen tanks.
He twisted the Y-valves, his gloved fingers clumsy. Gas began to roar out. The bubbles rushed up to the ceiling, where the gas was trapped, the big air bubble that was forming.
He opened the second oxygen tank. The water level fell rapidly, to his waist, then his knees. Then it stopped. The tanks must be empty. No matter, the level was low enough.
“Your attention, please. Ten minutes and counting.” Norman opened the bulkhead door to D Cyl, and stepped through, into the habitat.
The light was dim. A strange green, slimy mold covered the walls.
On the couch, Harry lay unconscious, the intravenous line still in his arm. Norman pulled the needle out with a spurt of blood. He shook Harry, trying to rouse him.
Harry’s eyelids fluttered, but he was otherwise unresponsive. Norman lifted him, put him over his shoulder, carried him through the habitat.
On the intercom, Beth was still crying. “Norman, you shouldn’t have come.”
“Where are you, Beth?”
On the monitors, he read:
DETONATION SEQUENCE 09:32.
Counting backward. The numbers seemed too to move fast.
“Take Harry and go, Norman. Both of you go. Leave me behind.”
“Tell me where you are, Beth.”
He was moving through the habitat, from D to C Cyl. He didn’t see her anywhere. Harry was a dead weight on his shoulder, making it difficult to get through the bulkhead doors.
“It won’t do any good, Norman.”
“Come on, Beth…”
“I know I’m bad, Norman. I know I can’t be helped.”
“Beth…” He was hearing her through the helmet radio, so he could not locate her by the sound. But he could not risk removing his helmet. Not now.
“I deserve to die, Norman.”
“Cut it out, Beth.”
“Attention, please. Nine minutes and counting.”
A new alarm sounded, an intermittent beeping that became louder and more intense as the seconds ticked by.
He was in B Cyl, a maze of pipes and equipment. Once clean and multicolored, now the slimy mold coated every surface. In some places fibrous mossy strands hung down. B Cyl looked like a jungle swamp.
“Beth…”
She was silent now. She must be in this room, he thought. B Cyl had always been Beth’s favorite place, the place where the habitat was controlled. He put Harry on the deck, propped him against a wall. But the wall was slippery and Harry slid down, banged his head. He coughed, opened his eyes.
“Jesus. Norman?”
Norman held his hand up, signaling Harry to be quiet.
“Beth?” Norman said.
No answer. Norman moved among the slimy pipes.
“Beth?”
“Leave me, Norman.”
“I can’t do that, Beth. I’m taking you, too.”
“No. I’m staying, Norman.”
“Beth,” he said, “there’s no time for this.”
“I’m staying, Norman. I deserve to stay.”
He saw her.
Beth was huddled in the back, wedged among pipes, crying like a child. She held one of the explosive-tipped spear guns in her hand. She looked at him tearfully.
“Oh, Norman,” she said. “You were going to leave us…”
“I’m sorry. I was wrong.”
He started toward her, holding out his hands to her. She swung the spear gun around. “No, you were right. You were right. I want you to leave now.”
Above her head he saw a glowing monitor, the numbers clicking inexorably backward: 08:27… 08:26…
He thought, I can change this. I want the numbers to stop counting.
The numbers did not stop.
“You can’t fight me, Norman,” she said, huddled in the corner. Her eyes blazed with furious energy.
“I can see that.”
“There isn’t much time, Norman. I want you to leave.” She held the gun, pointed firmly toward him. He had a sudden sense of the absurdity of it all, that he had come back to rescue someone who didn’t want to be rescued. What could he do now? Beth was wedged back in there, beyond his reach, beyond his help. There was barely enough time for him to get away, let alone to take Harry…
Harry, he thought suddenly. Where was Harry now? I want Harry to help me.
But he wondered if there was time; the numbers were clicking backward, there was hardly more than eight minutes, now…
“I came back for you, Beth.”
“Go,” she said. “Go now, Norman.”
“But, Beth-”
“-No, Norman! I mean it! Go! Why don’t you go?” And then she began to get suspicious; she started to look around; and at that moment Harry stood up behind her, and swung the big wrench down on her head, and there was a sickening thud, and she fell.
“Did I kill her?” Harry said.
And the deep male voice said, “Attention, please. Eight minutes and counting.”
Norman concentrated on the clock as it ticked backwards. Stop. Stop the countdown.
But when he looked again, the clock was still ticking backwards. And the alarm: Was the alarm interfering with his concentration? He tried again.
Stop now. The countdown will stop now. The countdown has stopped.
“Forget it,” Harry said. “It won’t work.”
“But it should work,” Norman said.
“No,” Harry said. “Because she’s not completely unconscious.”
On the floor at their feet, Beth groaned. Her leg moved. “She’s still able to control it, somehow,” Norman said. “She’s very strong.”
“Can we inject her?”
Norman shook his head. There was no time to go back for the syringe. Anyway, if they injected her and it didn’t work, it would be time wasted-
“Hit her again?” Harry said. “Harder? Kill her?”
“No,” Norman said.
“Killing her is the only way-”
“-No,” Norman said, thinking, We didn’t kill you, Harry, when we had the chance.
“If you won’t kill her, then you can’t do anything about that timer,” Harry said. “So we better get the hell out.”
They ran for the airlock.
“How much time is left’?” Harry said. They were in the A Cyl airlock, trying to put the suit on Beth. She was groaning; blood was matted on the back of her head. Beth struggled a little, making it more difficult.
“Jesus, Beth-how much time, Norman?”
“Seven and a half minutes, maybe less.”
Her legs were in; they quickly pushed her arms in, zipped up the chest. They turned on her air. Norman helped Harry with his suit.
“Attention, please. Seven minutes and counting.”
Harry said, “How much time you figure to get to the surface?”
“Two and a half minutes, after we get inside the sub,” Norman said.
“Great,” Harry said.
Norman snapped Harry’s helmet locked. “Let’s go.” Harry descended into the water, and Norman lowered Beth’s unconscious body. She was heavy with the tank and weights.
“Come on, Norman!”
Norman plunged into the water.
At the submarine, Norman climbed up to the hatch entrance, but the untethered sub rolled unpredictably with his weight. Harry, standing on the bottom, tried to push Beth up toward Norman, but Beth kept bending over at the waist. Norman, grabbing for her, fell off the sub and slid to the bottom.
“Attention, please. Six minutes and counting.”
“Hurry, Norman! Six minutes!”
“I heard, damn it.”
Norman got to his feet, climbed back on the sub, but now his suit was muddy, his gloves slippery. Harry was counting: “Five twenty-nine… five twenty-eight… five twentyseven…” Norman caught Beth’s arm, but she slipped away again.
“Damn it, Norman! Hold on to her!”
“I’m trying!”
“Here. Here she is again.”
“Attention, please. Five minutes and counting.”
The alarm was now high-pitched, beeping insistently. They had to shout over it to be heard.
“Harry, give her to me-”
“Well, here, take her-”
“Missed-”
“Here-”
Norman finally caught Beth’s air hose in his hand, just behind the helmet. He wondered if it would pull out, but he had to risk it. Gripping the hose, he hauled Beth up, until she lay on her back on the top of the sub. Then he eased her down into the hatch.
“Four twenty-nine… four twenty-eight…”
Norman had trouble keeping his balance. He got one of Beth’s legs into the hatch, but the other knee was bent, jammed against the lip of the hatch. He couldn’t get her down. Every time he leaned forward to unbend her leg, the whole submarine tipped, and he would start to lose his balance again.
“Four sixteen… four fifteen…”
“Would you stop counting and do something!”
Harry pressed his body against the side of the submarine, countering the rolling with his weight. Norman leaned forward and pressed Beth’s knee straight; she slid easily into the open hatch. Norman climbed in after her. It was a one-man airlock, but Beth was unconscious, and could not work the controls.
He would have to do it for her.
“Attention, please. Four minutes and counting.”
He was cramped in the airlock, his body pressed up against Beth, chest to chest, her helmet banging against his. With difficulty he pulled the hatch closed over his head. He blew out the water in a furious rush of compressed air; unsupported by the water, Beth’s body now sagged heavily against him.
He reached around her for the handle to the inner hatch. Beth’s body blocked his way. He tried to twist her around sideways. In the confined space, he couldn’t get any leverage on the body. Beth was like a dead weight; he tried to shift her body around, to get to the hatch.
The whole submarine began to sway: Harry was climbing up the side.
“What the hell’s going on in there?”
“Harry, will you shut up!”
“Well, what’s the delay?”
Norman’s hand closed on the inner latch handle. He shoved it down, but the door didn’t move: the door was hinged to swing inward. He couldn’t open it with Beth in the hatch with him. It was too crowded; her body blocked the movement of the door.
“Harry, we’ve got a problem.”
“Jesus Christ… Three minutes thirty.”
Norman began to sweat. They were really in trouble now.
“Harry, I’ve got to pass her out to you, and go in alone.”
“Jesus, Norman…”
Norman flooded the airlock, opened the upper hatch once again. Harry’s balance atop the submarine was precarious. He grabbed Beth by the air hose, dragged her up.
Norman reached up to close the hatch.
“Harry, can you get her feet out of the way?”
“I’m trying to keep my balance here.”
“Can’t you see her feet are blocking-” Irritably, Norman pushed Beth’s feet aside. The hatch clanged down. The air blasted past him. The hatch pressurized.
“Attention, please. Two minutes and counting.”
He was inside the submarine. The instruments glowed green.
He opened the inner hatch.
“Norman?”
“Try and get her down,” Norman said. “Do it as fast as you can.”
But he was thinking they were in terrible trouble: at least thirty seconds to get Beth into the hatch, and thirty seconds more for Harry to come down. A minute all together-
“She’s in. Vent it.”
Norman jumped for the air vent, blew out the water.
“How’d you get her in so fast, Harry?”
“Nature’s way,” Harry said, “to get people through tight spaces.” And before Norman could ask what that meant, he had opened the hatch and saw that Harry had pushed Beth into the airlock head first. He grabbed her shoulders and eased her onto the floor of the submarine, then slammed the hatch shut. Moments later, he heard the blast of air as Harry, too, vented the airlock.
The submarine hatch clanged. Harry came forward. “Christ, one minute forty,” Harry said. “Do you know how to work this thing?”
“Yes.”
Norman sat in the seat, placed his hands on the controls. They heard the whine of the props, felt the rumble. The sub lurched, moved off the bottom.
“One minute thirty seconds. How long did you say to the surface?”
“Two thirty,” Norman said, cranking up the ascent rate. He pushed it past 6.6, to the far end of the dial.
They heard a high-pitched shriek of air as the ballast tanks blew. The sub nosed up sharply, began to rise swiftly.
“Is this as fast as it goes?”
“Yes.”
“Jesus.”
“Take it easy, Harry.”
Looking back down, they could see the habitat with its lights. And then the long lines of explosives set over the spaceship itself. They rose past the high fin of the spacecraft, leaving it behind, seeing only black water now.
“One minute twenty.”
“Nine hundred feet,” Norman said. There was very little sensation of movement, only the changing dials on the instrument panel to tell them they were moving.
“It’s not fast enough,” Harry said. “That’s a hell of a lot of explosive down there.”
It is fast enough, Norman thought, correcting him.
“The shock wave will crush us like a can of sardines,” Harry said, shaking his head.
The shock wave will not harm us.
Eight hundred feet.
“Forty seconds,” Harry said. “We’ll never make it.”
“We’ll make it.”
They were at seven hundred feet, rising fast. The water now had a faint blue color: sunlight filtering down.
“Thirty seconds,” Harry said. “Where are we? Twenty-nine… eight…”
“Six hundred twenty feet,” Norman said. “Six ten.”
They looked back down the side of the sub. They could barely discern the habitat, faint pinpricks of light far beneath them.
Beth coughed. “It’s too late now,” Harry said. “I knew from the beginning we’d never make it.”
“Yes we will,” Norman said.
“Ten seconds,” Harry said. “Nine… eight… Brace yourself!”
Norman pulled Beth to his chest as the explosion rocked the submarine, spinning it like a toy, upending it, then righting it again, and lifting it in a giant upward surge.
“Mama!” Harry shouted, but they were still rising, they were okay. “We did it!”
“Two hundred feet,” Norman said. The water outside was now light blue. He pushed buttons, slowing the ascent. They were going up very fast.
Harry was screaming, pounding Norman on the back. “We did it! God damn it, you son of a bitch, we did it! We survived! I never thought we would! We survived!”
Norman was having trouble seeing the instruments for tears in his eyes.
And then he had to squint as bright sunlight streamed into the bubble canopy as they surfaced, and they saw calm seas, sky, and fluffy clouds.
“Do you see that?” Harry cried. He was screaming in Norman’s ear. “Do you see that? It is a perfect goddamned day!”
Norman awoke to see a brilliant shaft of light, streaming through the single porthole, shining down on the chemical toilet in the corner of the decompression chamber. He lay on his bunk and looked around the chamber, a horizontal cylinder fifty feet long: bunks, a metal table and chairs in the center of the cylinder, toilet behind a small partition. Harry snored in the bunk above him. Across the chamber, Beth slept, one arm flung over her face. Faintly, from a distance, he heard men shouting.
Norman yawned, and swung off the bunk. His body was sore but he was otherwise all right. He walked to the shining porthole and looked out, squinting in the bright Pacific sun.
He saw the rear deck of the research ship John Hawes: the white helicopter pad, heavy coiled cables, the tubular metal frame of an underwater robot. A Navy crew was lowering a second robot over the side, with a lot of shouting and swearing and waving of hands; Norman had heard their voices faintly through the thick steel walls of the chamber.
Near the chamber itself, a muscular seaman rolled a large green tank marked “Oxygen” alongside a dozen other tanks on the deck. The three-man medical crew which supervised the decompression chamber played cards.
Looking through the inch-thick glass of the porthole, Norman felt as if he were peering into a miniature world to which he had little connection, a kind of terrarium populated by interesting and exotic specimens. This new world was as alien to him as the dark ocean world had once seemed from inside the habitat.
He watched the crew slap down their cards on a wooden packing crate, watched them laugh and gesture as the game proceeded. They never glanced in his direction, never looked at the decompression chamber. Norman didn’t understand these young men. Were they supposed to be paying attention to the decompression? They looked young and inexperienced to Norman. Focused on their card game, they seemed indifferent to the huge metal chamber nearby, indifferent to the three survivors inside the chamber-and indifferent to the larger meaning of the mission, to the news the survivors had brought back to the surface. These cheerful Navy cardplayers didn’t seem to give a damn about Norman’s mission. But perhaps they didn’t know.
He turned back to the chamber, sat down at the table. His knee throbbed, and the skin was swollen around the white bandage. He had been treated by a Navy physician during their transfer from the submarine to the decompression chamber. They had been taken off the minisub Deepstar III in a pressurized diving bell, and from there had been transferred to the large chamber on the deck of the ship-the SDC, the Navy called it, the surface decompression chamber. They were going to spend four days here. Norman wasn’t sure how long he had been here so far. They had all immediately gone to sleep, and there was no clock in the chamber. The face of his own wristwatch was smashed, although he didn’t remember it happening.
On the table in front of him, someone had scratched “U.S.N. SUCKS” into the surface. Norman ran his fingers over the grooves, and remembered the grooves in the silver sphere. But he and Harry and Beth were in the hands of the Navy now.
And he thought: What are we going to tell them?
“What are we going to tell them?” Beth said.
It was several hours later; Beth and Harry had awakened, and now they were all sitting around the scarred metal table. None of them had made any attempt to talk to the crew outside. It was, Norman thought, as if they shared an unspoken agreement to remain in isolation a while longer.
“I think we’ll have to tell them everything,” Harry said.
“I don’t think we should,” Norman said. He was surprised by the strength of his conviction, the firmness of his own voice.
“I agree,” Beth said. “I’m not sure the world is ready for that sphere. I certainly wasn’t.”
She gave Norman a sheepish look. He put his hand on her shoulder.
“That’s fine,” Harry said. “But look at it from the standpoint of the Navy. The Navy has mounted a large and expensive operation; six people have died, and two habitats have been destroyed. They’re going to want answers-and they’re going to keep asking until they get them.”
“We can refuse to talk,” Beth said.
“That won’t make any difference,” Harry said. “Remember, the Navy has all the tapes.”
“That’s right, the tapes,” Norman said. He had forgotten about the videotapes they had brought up in the submarine. Dozens of tapes, documenting everything that had happened in the habitat during their time underwater. Documenting the squid, the deaths, the sphere. Documenting everything.
“We should have destroyed those tapes,” Beth said.
“Perhaps we should have,” Harry said. “But it’s too late now. We can’t prevent the Navy from getting the answers they want.”
Norman sighed. Harry was right. At this point there was no way to conceal what had happened, or to prevent the Navy from finding out about the sphere, and the power it conveyed. That power would represent a kind of ultimate weapon: the ability to overcome your enemies simply by imagining it had happened. It was frightening in its implications, and there was nothing they could do about it. Unless-
“I think we can prevent them from knowing,” Norman said.
“How?” Harry said.
“We still have the power, don’t we?”
“I guess so.”
“And that power,” Norman said, “consists of the ability to make anything happen, simply by thinking it.”
“Yes…”
“Then we can prevent the Navy from knowing. We can decide to forget the whole thing.”
Harry frowned. “That’s an interesting question: whether we have the power to forget the power.”
“I think we should forget it,” Beth said. “That sphere is too dangerous.”
They fell silent, considering the implications of forgetting the sphere. Because forgetting would not merely prevent the Navy from knowing about the sphere-it would erase all knowledge of it, including their own. Make it vanish from human consciousness, as if it had never existed in the first place. Remove it from the awareness of the human species, forever.
“Big step,” Harry said. “After all we’ve been through, just to forget about it…”
“It’s because of all we’ve been through, Harry,” Beth said. “Let’s face it-we didn’t handle ourselves very well.” Norman noticed that she spoke without rancor now, her previous combative edge gone.
“I’m afraid that’s true,” Norman said.”The sphere was built to test whatever intelligent life might pick it up, and we simply failed that test.”
“Is that what you think the sphere was made for?” H said. “I don’t.”
“Then what?” Norman said.
“Well,” Harry said, “look at it this way: Suppose you were an intelligent bacterium floating in space, and you came upon one of our communication satellites, in orbit around the Earth. You would think, What a strange, alien object this is, let’s explore it. Suppose you opened it up and crawled inside. You would find it very interesting in there, with lots of huge things to puzzle over. But eventually you might climb into one of the fuel cells, and the hydrogen would kill you. And your last thought would be: This alien device was obviously made to test bacterial intelligence and to kill us if we make a false step.
“Now, that would be correct from the standpoint of the dying bacterium. But that wouldn’t be correct at all from the standpoint of the beings who made the satellite. From our point of view, the communications satellite has nothing to do with intelligent bacteria. We don’t even know that there are intelligent bacteria out there. We’re just trying to communicate, and we’ve made what we consider a quite ordinary device to do it.”
“You mean the sphere might not be a message or a trophy or a trap at all?”
“That’s right,” Harry said. “The sphere may have nothing to do with the search for other life forms, or testing life, as we might imagine those activities to occur. It may be an accident that the sphere causes such profound changes in us.”
“But why would someone build such a machine?” Norman said.
“That’s the same question an intelligent bacterium would ask about a communications satellite: Why would anyone build such a thing?”
“For that matter,” Beth said, “it may not be a machine. The sphere may be a life form. It may be alive.”
“Possible,” Harry said, nodding.
Beth said, “So, if the sphere is alive, do we have an obligation to keep it alive?”
“We don’t know if it is alive.”
Norman sat back in the chair. “All this speculation is interesting,” he said, “but when you get down to it, we don’t really know anything about the sphere. In fact, we shouldn’t even be calling it the sphere. We probably should just call it ‘sphere.’ Because we don’t know what it is. We don’t know where it came from. We don’t know whether it’s living or dead. We don’t know how it came to be inside that spaceship. We don’t know anything about it except what we imagine-and what we imagine says more about us than it does about the sphere.”
“Right,” Harry said.
“Because it’s literally a sort of mirror for us,” Norman said.
“Speaking of which, there’s another possibility,” Harry said. “It may not be alien at all. It may be man-made.” That took Norman completely by surprise. Harry explained.
“Consider,” Harry said. “A ship from our own future went through a black hole, into another universe, or another part of our universe. We cannot imagine what would happen as a result of that. But suppose there were some major distortion of time. Suppose that ship, which left with a human crew in the year 2043, actually has been in transit for thousands and thousands of years. Couldn’t the human crew have invented it during that time?”
“I don’t think that’s likely,” Beth said.
“Well, let’s consider for a moment, Beth,” Harry said gently. Norman noticed that Harry wasn’t arrogant any more. They were all in this together, Norman thought, and they were working together in a way they never had before. All the time underwater they had been at odds, but now they functioned smoothly together, coordinated. A team.
“There is a real problem about the future,” Harry was saying, “and we don’t admit it. We assume we can see into the future better than we really can. Leonardo da Vinci tried to make a helicopter five hundred years ago; and Jules Verne predicted a submarine a hundred years ago. From instances like that, we tend to believe that the future is predictable in a way that it really isn’t. Because neither Leonardo nor Jules Verne could ever have imagined, say, a computer. The very concept of a computer implies too much knowledge that was simply inconceivable at the time those men were alive. It was, if you will, information that came out of nowhere, later on.
“And we’re no wiser, sitting here now. We couldn’t have guessed that men would send a ship through a black hole-we didn’t even suspect the existence of black holes until a few years ago-and we certainly can’t guess what men might accomplish thousands of years in the future.” “Assuming the sphere was made by men.”
“Yes. Assuming that.”
“And if it wasn’t? If it’s really a sphere from an alien civilization? Are we justified in erasing all human knowledge of this alien life?”
“I don’t know,” Harry said, shaking his head. “If we decide to forget the sphere…”
“Then it’ll be gone,” Norman said.
Beth stared at the table. “I wish we could ask someone,” she said finally.
“There isn’t anybody to ask,” Norman said.
“But can we really forget it?” Beth said. “Will it work?”
There was a long silence.
“Yes,” Harry said, finally. “There’s no question about it. And I think we already have evidence that we will forget about it. That solves a logical problem that bothered me from the beginning, when we first explored the ship. Because something very important was missing from that ship.”
“Yes? What?”
“Any sign that the builders of the ship already knew travel through a black hole was possible.”
“I don’t follow you,” Norman said.
“Well,” Harry said, “the three of us have already seen a spaceship that has been through a black hole. We’ve walked through it. So we know that such travel is possible.”
“Yes…”
“Yet, fifty years from now, men are going to build that ship in a very tentative, experimental way, with apparently no knowledge that the ship has already been found, fifty years in their past. There is no sign on the ship that the builders already know of its existence in the past.”
“Maybe it’s one of those time paradoxes,” Beth said. “You know, how you can’t go back and meet yourself in the past…”
Harry shook his head. “I don’t think it’s a paradox,” he said. “I think that all knowledge of that ship is going to be lost.”
“You mean, we are going to forget it.”
“Yes,” Harry said. “And, frankly, I think it’s a much better solution. For a long time while we were down there, I assumed none of us would ever get back alive. That was the only explanation I could think of. That’s why I wanted to make out my will.”
“But if we decide to forget…”
“Exactly,” Harry said. “If we decide to forget, that will produce the same result.”
“The knowledge will be gone forever,” Norman said quietly. He found himself hesitating. Now that they had arrived at this moment, he was strangely reluctant to proceed. He ran his fingertips over the scarred table, touching the surface, as if it might provide an answer.
In a sense, he thought, all we consist of is memories. Our personalities are constructed from memories, our lives are organized around memories, our cultures are built upon the foundation of shared memories that we call history and science. But now, to give up a memory, to give up knowledge, to give up the past…
“It’s not easy,” Harry said, shaking his head.
“No,” Norman said. “It’s not.” In fact he found it so difficult he wondered if he was experiencing a human characteristic as fundamental as sexual desire. He simply could not give up this knowledge. The information seemed so important to him, the implications so fascinating… His entire being rebelled against the idea of forgetting.
“Well,” Harry said, “I think we have to do it, anyway.”
“I was thinking of Ted,” Beth said. “And Barnes, and the others. We’re the only ones who know how they really died. What they gave their lives for. And if we forget…”
“When we forget,” Norman said firmly.
“She has a point,” Harry said. “If we forget, how do we handle all the details? All the loose ends?”
“I don’t think that’s a problem,” Norman said. “The unconscious has tremendous creative powers, as we’ve seen. The details will be taken care of unconsciously. It’s like the way we get dressed in the morning. When we dress, we don’t necessarily think of every detail, the belt and the socks and so on. We just make a basic overall decision about how we want to look, and then we get dressed.”
“Even so,” Harry said. “We still better make the overall decision, because we all have the power, and if we imagine different stories, we’ll get confusion.”
“All right,” Norman said. “Let’s agree on what happened. Why did we come here?”
“I thought it was going to be an airplane crash.”
“Me, too.”
“Okay, suppose it was an airplane crash.”
“Fine. And what happened?”
“The Navy sent some people down to investigate the crash, and a problem developed-”
“-Wait a minute, what problem?”
“The squid?”
“No. Better a technical problem.”
“Something to do with the storm?”
“Life-support systems failed during the storm?”
“Yes, good. Life-support systems failed during the storm.”
“And several people died as a result?”
“Wait a minute. Let’s not go so fast. What made the lifesupport systems fail?”
Beth said, “The habitat developed a leak, and sea water corrupted the scrubber canisters in B Cyl, releasing a toxic gas.”
“Could that have happened?” Norman said.
“Yes, easily.”
“And several people died as a result of that accident.”
“Okay.”
“But we survived.”
“Yes.”
“Why?” Norman said.
“We were in the other habitat?”
Norman shook his head. “The other habitat was destroyed, too.
“Maybe it was destroyed later, with the explosives.”
“Too complicated,” Norman said. “Let’s keep it simple. It was an accident which happened suddenly and unexpectedly. The habitat sprang a leak and the scrubbers failed, and as a result most of the people died, but we didn’t because-”
“We were in the sub?”
“Okay,” Norman said. “We were in the sub when the systems failed, so we survived and the others didn’t.”
“Why were we in the sub?”
“We were transferring the tapes according to the schedule.”
“And what about the tapes?” Harry said. “What will they show?”
“The tapes will confirm our story,” Norman said. “Everything will be consistent with the story, including the Navy people who sent us down in the first place, and including us, too-we won’t remember anything but this story.”
“And we won’t have the power any more?” Beth said, frowning.
“No,” Norman said. “Not any more.”
“Okay,” Harry said.
Beth seemed to think about it longer, biting her lip. But finally she nodded. “Okay.”
Norman took a deep breath, and looked at Beth and Harry. “Are we ready to forget the sphere, and the fact that we once had the power to make things happen by thinking them?”
They nodded.
Beth became suddenly agitated, twisting in her chair. “But how do we do it, exactly?”
“We just do it,” Norman said. “Close your eyes and tell yourself to forget it.”
Beth said, “But are you sure we should do it? Really sure?” She was still agitated, moving nervously.
“Yes, Beth. You just… give up the power.”
“Then we have to do it all together,” she said. “At the same time.”
“Okay,” Harry said. “On the count of three.”
They closed their eyes.
“One…”
With his eyes closed, Norman thought, People always forget that they have power, anyway.
“Two…”Harry said.
And then Norman focused his mind. With a sudden intensity he saw the sphere again, shining like a star, perfect and polished, and he thought: I want to forget I ever saw the sphere.
And in his mind’s eye, the sphere vanished.
“Three,” Harry said.
“Three what?” Norman said. His eyes ached and burned. He rubbed them with his thumb and forefinger, then opened them. Beth and Harry were sitting around the table in the decompression chamber with him. They all looked tired and depressed. But that was to be expected, he thought, considering what they had all been through.
“Three what?” Norman said again.
“Oh,” Harry said, “I was just thinking out loud. Only three of us left.”
Beth sighed. Norman saw tears in her eyes. She fumbled in her pocket for a Kleenex, blew her nose.
“You can’t blame yourselves,” Norman said. “It was an accident. There was nothing we could do about it.”
“I know,” Harry said. “But those people suffocating, while we were in the submarine… I keep hearing the screams… God, I wish it had never happened.”
There was a silence. Beth blew her nose again.
Norman wished it had never happened, too. But wishing wasn’t going to make a difference now.
“We can’t change what happened,” Norman said. “We can only learn to accept it.”
“I know,” Beth said.
“I’ve had a lot of experience with accident trauma,” he said. “You simply have to keep telling yourself that you have no reason to be guilty. What happened happened-some people died, and you were spared. It isn’t anybody’s fault. It’s just one of those things. It was an accident.”
“I know that,” Harry said, “but I still feel bad.”
“Keep telling yourself it’s just one of those things,” Norman said. “Keep reminding yourself of that.” He got up from the table. They ought to eat, he thought. They ought to have food. “I’m going to ask for food.”
“I’m not hungry,” Beth said.
“I know that, but we should eat anyway.”
Norman walked to the porthole. The attentive Navy crew saw him at once, pressed the radio intercom. “Do anything for you, Dr. Johnson?”
“Yes,” Norman said. “We need some food.”
“Right away, sir.”
Norman saw the sympathy on the faces of the Navy crew. These senior men understood what a shock it must be for the three survivors.
“Dr. Johnson? Are your people ready to talk to somebody now?”
“Talk?”
“Yes, sir. The intelligence experts have been reviewing the videotapes from the submarine, and they have some questions for you.”
“What about?” Norman asked, without much interest. “Well, when you were transferred to the SDC, Dr. Adams mentioned something about a squid.”
“Did he?”
“Yes, sir. Only there doesn’t seem to be any squid recorded on the tapes.”
“I don’t remember any squid,” Norman said, puzzled. He turned to Harry. “Did you say something about a squid, Harry?”
Harry frowned. “A squid? I don’t think so.”
Norman turned back to the Navy man. “What do the videotapes show, exactly?”
“Well, the tapes go right up to the time when the air in the habitat… you know, the accident…”
“Yes,” Norman said. “I remember the accident.”
“From the tapes, we think we know what happened. Apparently there was a leak in the habitat wall, and the scrubber cylinders got wet. They became inoperable, and the ambient atmosphere went bad.”
“I see.”
“It must have happened very suddenly, sir.”
“Yes,” Johnson said. “Yes, it did.”
“So, are you ready to talk to someone now?”
“I think so. Yes.”
Norman turned away from the porthole. He put his hands in the pockets of his jacket, and felt a piece of paper. He pulled out a picture and stared at it curiously.
It was a photograph of a red Corvette. Norman wondered where the picture had come from. Probably a car that belonged to someone else, who had worn the jacket before Norman. Probably one of the Navy people who had died in the underwater disaster.
Norman shivered, crumpled the picture in his fist, and tossed it into the trash. He didn’t need any mementos. He remembered that disaster only too well. He knew he would never forget it for the rest of his life.
He glanced back at Beth and Harry. They both looked tired. Beth stared into space, preoccupied with her own thoughts. But her face was serene; despite the hardships of their time underwater, Norman thought she looked almost beautiful.
“You know, Beth,” he said, “you look lovely.”
Beth did not seem to hear, but then she turned toward him slowly. “Why, thank you, Norman,” she said.
And she smiled.