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."Abandon ship!" he ordered.And that was the end of the Dolphin.We clustered in the emergency pressure-lock for afinal council of war.Roger said commandingiy: "We'reonly a706few miles from Jason Craken's sea-mount.David,you lead the way.We'll have to conserve power, so onlyone of us will use his suit floodlamps at a time.Staytogether! If anyone lags behind, he's lost.Therewon't be any chance of rescue.And we'll have tomove right along.The air in the suits may not lastfor more than half an hour.The suit batteries are old;they have a lot of pres-sure to fight off.They may notlast even as long as the air.Understand?"We all nodded, looking around at each other.We checked our depth armor, each inspecting theoth-ers'.The suits were fragile-seeming things, ofaluminum and plastic.Only the glowing edenite filmwould keep them from collapsing instantly and asRoger said, there wasn't much power to keep the edeniteglowing."Seal helmets!" Roger ordered.As we closed the faceplates, the edenite film on eachsuit of armor sprang into life, rippling faintly as wemoved. Roger waved an arm.Laddy Angel, nearest the lockvalves, gestured his understanding of the order, andsprang to the locks.The hatch behind us closed and locked.The intake ports irised open and spewed fiercelydriven jets of deep-sea water against the baffles.Even the ricocheting spray nearly knocked us off ourfeet, but in a moment the lock was filled.The outer hatch opened.And we stepped out into the ancient sludge ofthe Tonga Trench, under four miles of water.Behind us the hull of the Dolphin coruscatedbrightly.It seemed to light up the whole sea-bottomaround us.I glanced back once.Shadows were chasingthemselves over the edenite film sure sign that thepower was failing, that it was only a matter of time.And then I had to look ahead.We formed in line and started off, following DavidCraken.It took us each a few moments of trial-and-errorto adjust our suits for a pound or two of weightcarefully balancing weight against buoyancy bevalving107off air so that we could soar over the sludgy seabottom in great, floating, slow-motion leaps.And then we really began to cover ground.In a moment the Dolphin behind us was a vagueblur of bluish color.In another moment, it was only a faint, distant glow.Yet still there was light!I cried: "What in the world!" forgetting, for themo-ment, that no one could hear.It was incredible!Light four miles down!And more incredible still, there were things growingthere.The bottom of the sea is bare, blackmuck nearlyevery square foot of it.Yet here there was vegetation.Ashining forest of waving sea-fronds, growing strangelyoutof the rocky slope before us.Their thin, pliant stemsroseupward, out of sight, snaking up into the shadowsabove.They carried thick, odd-shaped leaves -----And the leaves and trunks, the branches and curiousflowers every part of them glowed with soft greenlight!I bounded ahead and tapped David Craken onthe shoulder.The edenite films on my gauntlet and hisshoul-derpiece flared brightly as they touched; hecould not have felt my hand, but must have seen theglow out of the corner of his eye.He turned stiffly,his whole body swinging around.I could see, dimlyand murkily, his face behind the edenite-filmed plasticvisor.I waved my arm wordlessly at the glowing forest. He nodded, and his lips shaped words but Icouldn't make them out.Yet one thing came across this was no surpriseto him.And then I remembered something: The strangewater-color Laddy Angel had showed me, hanging overDavid's bed at the Academy.It had portrayed aforest like this one, a rocky slope like this oneAnd it had also shown something else, I remembered.A saurian, huge and hideous, plunging through thesubmarine forest.I had written off the submarine forest as a crazy fan-tasy yet here it sprawled before my eyes.And thesaurians?708I turned my mind to safer grounds there wasplenty of trouble right in front of us, without looking formore to worry about!David seemed at home.We leaped lazily through theunderwater glades in file, like monstrousslow-motionkangaroos on the Moon.After a few minutes, Davidsignaled a halt.Gideon came up from his secondplace inthe file to join David; Gideon's suit-lamps went onandRoger, who had led the procession with David,switchedoff his lights and fell back.It was a necessaryprecaution; the suit-lamps were blindingly bright and terriblyex-pensive of our hoarded battery power.We had toequalizethe drain on our batteries else one of us, with lessreserve than the others, would sooner or later hear awarning creak of his flimsy suit armor as the edenite filmflickered and faltered -----And that would be the last sound he heard onearth.On and on.Perhaps it had been only a few miles but itseemed endless.I began to feel queerly elated, faintly dizzy -----It took a moment for me to realize the cause: Theold oxygen tanks were running low [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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."Abandon ship!" he ordered.And that was the end of the Dolphin.We clustered in the emergency pressure-lock for afinal council of war.Roger said commandingiy: "We'reonly a706few miles from Jason Craken's sea-mount.David,you lead the way.We'll have to conserve power, so onlyone of us will use his suit floodlamps at a time.Staytogether! If anyone lags behind, he's lost.Therewon't be any chance of rescue.And we'll have tomove right along.The air in the suits may not lastfor more than half an hour.The suit batteries are old;they have a lot of pres-sure to fight off.They may notlast even as long as the air.Understand?"We all nodded, looking around at each other.We checked our depth armor, each inspecting theoth-ers'.The suits were fragile-seeming things, ofaluminum and plastic.Only the glowing edenite filmwould keep them from collapsing instantly and asRoger said, there wasn't much power to keep the edeniteglowing."Seal helmets!" Roger ordered.As we closed the faceplates, the edenite film on eachsuit of armor sprang into life, rippling faintly as wemoved. Roger waved an arm.Laddy Angel, nearest the lockvalves, gestured his understanding of the order, andsprang to the locks.The hatch behind us closed and locked.The intake ports irised open and spewed fiercelydriven jets of deep-sea water against the baffles.Even the ricocheting spray nearly knocked us off ourfeet, but in a moment the lock was filled.The outer hatch opened.And we stepped out into the ancient sludge ofthe Tonga Trench, under four miles of water.Behind us the hull of the Dolphin coruscatedbrightly.It seemed to light up the whole sea-bottomaround us.I glanced back once.Shadows were chasingthemselves over the edenite film sure sign that thepower was failing, that it was only a matter of time.And then I had to look ahead.We formed in line and started off, following DavidCraken.It took us each a few moments of trial-and-errorto adjust our suits for a pound or two of weightcarefully balancing weight against buoyancy bevalving107off air so that we could soar over the sludgy seabottom in great, floating, slow-motion leaps.And then we really began to cover ground.In a moment the Dolphin behind us was a vagueblur of bluish color.In another moment, it was only a faint, distant glow.Yet still there was light!I cried: "What in the world!" forgetting, for themo-ment, that no one could hear.It was incredible!Light four miles down!And more incredible still, there were things growingthere.The bottom of the sea is bare, blackmuck nearlyevery square foot of it.Yet here there was vegetation.Ashining forest of waving sea-fronds, growing strangelyoutof the rocky slope before us.Their thin, pliant stemsroseupward, out of sight, snaking up into the shadowsabove.They carried thick, odd-shaped leaves -----And the leaves and trunks, the branches and curiousflowers every part of them glowed with soft greenlight!I bounded ahead and tapped David Craken onthe shoulder.The edenite films on my gauntlet and hisshoul-derpiece flared brightly as they touched; hecould not have felt my hand, but must have seen theglow out of the corner of his eye.He turned stiffly,his whole body swinging around.I could see, dimlyand murkily, his face behind the edenite-filmed plasticvisor.I waved my arm wordlessly at the glowing forest. He nodded, and his lips shaped words but Icouldn't make them out.Yet one thing came across this was no surpriseto him.And then I remembered something: The strangewater-color Laddy Angel had showed me, hanging overDavid's bed at the Academy.It had portrayed aforest like this one, a rocky slope like this oneAnd it had also shown something else, I remembered.A saurian, huge and hideous, plunging through thesubmarine forest.I had written off the submarine forest as a crazy fan-tasy yet here it sprawled before my eyes.And thesaurians?708I turned my mind to safer grounds there wasplenty of trouble right in front of us, without looking formore to worry about!David seemed at home.We leaped lazily through theunderwater glades in file, like monstrousslow-motionkangaroos on the Moon.After a few minutes, Davidsignaled a halt.Gideon came up from his secondplace inthe file to join David; Gideon's suit-lamps went onandRoger, who had led the procession with David,switchedoff his lights and fell back.It was a necessaryprecaution; the suit-lamps were blindingly bright and terriblyex-pensive of our hoarded battery power.We had toequalizethe drain on our batteries else one of us, with lessreserve than the others, would sooner or later hear awarning creak of his flimsy suit armor as the edenite filmflickered and faltered -----And that would be the last sound he heard onearth.On and on.Perhaps it had been only a few miles but itseemed endless.I began to feel queerly elated, faintly dizzy -----It took a moment for me to realize the cause: Theold oxygen tanks were running low [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]