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the nose can direct in case I need any direction."
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"You ought to buddy up, all the same, Lee," said Emery.
"Another man would just be in the way," said Crane impatiently. "This job is only careful, not
big. I'll be under observation at all times and I won't even have to use the sonarphone I'll be trailing
wire. Sparks can patch my headset into the same wires I'll be hooking in to the cable."
The admiral's desk annunciator buzzed. Nelson keyed it and spoke his own name. "O'Brien, sir,"
said the intercom. "Cable in sight. We're positioning over it now."
"Good," said Nelson. "Nose along it and get the best footing you can. 'Ware eel holes and giant
clams and the like."
"Aye, sir. Looks made to order. It's a seamount, sir; on land you'd call it a mesa. Looks like sand-
silt. Lot of small coral outcrop, must be pretty solid. Cable lies free and clear."
"Hang her in the current, then," said the admiral, and switched off. "Looks like God's on our side
after all."
"I hear that name mentioned pretty often around here," Crane remarked. He meant it to sound
casual, but oddly enough it did not. He shrugged when neither Emery nor the Admiral responded, and
flipped open the manual with a bookmark. "I've sketched in where I'll tap in red," he said.
"Better go over it with Sparks."
"Already have, sir. He assembled the electrical kit for me. Gleason's getting the mechanical
stuff."
"You watch it with that torch, skipper," said Emery. "You'll fuse half the "
"I think I mentioned it I'm using an airsaw."
"Don't bother any more," Nelson told Emery with amusement. "He's already thought of
everything. Okay, Lee shove off. Come on, Emery let's go up to the greenhouse. We can phone
from there and watch at the same time."
They went out.
THE SEAVIEW WAS EQUIPPED WITH MORE than one escape hatch, and hatches of more than
one kind. There was the under-deck hatch which released the minisub from the forward turtleback,
and the kelson hatch which was nothing more than a water-tight chamber with a well, a comfortable
five feet in diameter, which could be opened to the sea. Entered through an adjoining lock, the
chamber could be kept full of air compressed enough to keep the water-level below the rim of the
well. There were, in addition, four simple locks on the fore and aft quarters, for emergency work on
outside gear, and two of the torpedo tubes could fire a man out if the conditions were mild and the
emergency extreme.
Crane, who would be burdened by tools, wire, and an extra tank for the saw, elected to take the
well, for the sub lay almost on the bottom, and it would be a simple matter to drop out, drag over, and
pop back in again. This last was a real feature for a man diving alone. No one wants to cling to a
slippery hull fighting a watertight gate while, perhaps, a moray is sniffing around trying to decide
between ham and a shoulder chop.
Crane went to his cabin, stripped, and got into thermal long Johns, for though they lay less than
ten degrees south of the equator, and the air temperature was climbing almost two degrees a day, their
depth was between two and three hundred feet, and cold lives in those dark depths and congeals a
man, body and mind.
There was a sharp rap on the door and it immediately burst open.
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"Cathy!"
"Lee, Lee not you! Not you! Please I have the most terrible feeling that something...
something awful... oh Lee, don't. Please don't!"
She threw herself into his startled arms. "Honey, honey," he murmured into her hair, "it's all
right. It's all right. And besides, I'm not decent. And next thing you know the house detective will
break down that door and then they'll throw us right out of this establishment."
She pulled back from him and scanned his sexless, neck-to-toe waffle-finished garment.
"Naked," she murmured. "My God, I'm a ruined woman." She laughed, and abruptly burst into tears
and clung to him again.
"Hey, hey now," he said gently, "That's enough, Connors my darlin'. Shure and have you got
your Irish to boilin' within? Is it the banshee y've seen wailin' and warnin'? Or is it that ye so fear the
foolishness of y'r dharlin' bhoy that ye fear he'll fergit how to swim?"
"Oh, cut the blarney," she said into his shoulder, and heaved a shuddering sigh; then she looked
up at him with an expression he had seen before, and sworn never to describe to her, such a power it
would give her over him if she knew: her eyes bright, wide, and wet, her brows tilted up in the middle
and down at the ends and worried wrinkles to carry them there, and her lower lip wet and bright too,
protruding a little in her appeal, and a little swollen to boot, having just been bitten as the anxiety
came on her. "I just have this awful feeling "
He cut the blarney altogether, and said to her in a voice gravelled with stubbornness, "Cathy, the
more you or anyone convinced me of a danger, the less I could send another man. Did you come in
here to make sure I'd go, then? Because that's the way to do it."
She looked at him for a long time in that way he'd never describe to her, until he had to hold
himself steady by all his muscles, for she was melting his bones. Then she nodded and dropped her
eyes. "Very well, Lee." She would have turned away, but he held her hard with one hand and put the
other over the intercom call, and said urgently, "Sweetheart, when the knights of old went out to do
battle with the heathens and the dragons and such trash, they'd fly milady's kerchief for a pennant, or
wear milady's girdle about their brows."
She blinked her eyes rapidly and responded with a light-hearted voice and a full-hearted bravery
that made him hurt inside. "Puh-leez!" she intoned with mock schoolgirl shock, "Her girdle? On his
head?"
"It was a belt, silly, and don't interrupt or I'll give you one. Anyway, I'm not carrying a spear this
trip, and "
"I will not lend you a "
"Sh. and so the best I can do is this: what's your favorite color?"
"Blue. You know that."
Crane flipped the button. "Now hear this! Now hear this! Diving gear detail: I'll use the blue suit.
Repeat, the blue suit. Over." He turned off the switch and rubbed her nose with his. "There now.
That's as much as I can do to wrap myself up in you in an emergency situation. Beat it."
"Lee..." she whispered hoarsely, hugged him savagely and ran away.
Crane gave her a moment and then stepped out into the corridor; no sewing circle since bone-
splinters first pierced an untanned fur could out-gossip any crew of any ship any time. He padded aft
in his waffle-clad feet, and found Dr. Jamieson, Dr. Hiller, Gleason, Jimmy Smith, Hodges and Chip
Morton clustered around the hatch to the well-chamber.
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A number of possible responses to this reeled past Crane's inner eye amusement, anger, even a
modicum of embarrassment, for uniform-of-occasion or no, what he wore was still underwear. He
chose the rifle-crack voice and the direct order: "Smith! Gleason! Stand by to assist me. The rest of
you get back on duty or go forward to the grandstand; you have no business here." It was the kind of
voice which caused movement before thought, and the crowd broke up and disappeared, except for
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