CV

47

On the bridge of Bluefields, Commander Leonard W. Markey watched in the television screens as the copter turned back from the submerging vessel. Beside him was the Executive Officer, Glenn Pugliese. The speaker crackled: "Returning to ship. ”

"Roger."

"What the hell do they think they’re up to?” Markey said.

Pugliese, who knew his captain, did not reply.

“Send the pilot up for debriefing as soon as he gets here. No, belay that. Hell! I’m going to my cabin.”

Bliss waited half an hour and then gave the order to surface. Presently the helicopter came out again. "Down to plus ten," said Bliss. The helicopter circled, dropped something, and went back to the carrier. “What is that?” said Bliss.

“Dye marker,” Ferguson replied.

“Oh, I see. Well. That’s a pity.”

Twice more they surfaced, and the copter came over, and twice more they submerged. Bliss could imagine the messages flying back and forth between here and Washington.

The yellow stain spread out around them; gradually they left it behind. In the late afternoon the copter came over again and renewed it. After dinner, which he ate in blessed tranquillity. Bliss came back to the Control Center. Deputy Davis was on duty. The stars were bright over the ocean.

“Submerge to minus three hundred, Mr. Davis,” he said.

“Three hundred, sir.” The cub gave him a worshipful look.

“Keep her there until twenty hundred hours tomorrow. Log it.”

"Yes, sir.”

And now he was counting boxes in a storeroom, good lord, when was that? Seventy-nine or eighty, probably, his freshman year in college, a summer job, pure monotony, but the boxes were absolutely real now, he could even read the printing on the brown cardboard, “tektronix Decoupler, Model 105, 4920-29." He hadn’t thought of that in years, and certainly hadn’t remembered the lettering on the boxes, but he knew it was right. He could see his own hand with the pencil, and the clipboard, and he could see the dust motes swimming in the sunlight from the one high window.

Now the bright sparks were streaming past him, not dust motes anymore, and there was a wet smell in his nostrils, a clean cold underwater smell as familiar as bacon and eggs, and he felt his jaws snap as something came by. And now a fish swam up to him in the water that was colorless and pure as air; its scales were like multicolored armor, and it turned to look at him with one round idiot eye, then flicked away and swam to the other end of the tank.

Newland woke without knowing that he had been asleep. His body hurt all over. It was dark outside; he was very thirsty. He managed to get out of the pilot’s seat and into his wheelchair; he drove it back down the aisle, found a water fountain, and drank. He thought that he probably ought to eat something. He could see the food-storage lockers over the microwave ovens, but they were out of his reach.