Sphere

ALARM

Norman awoke to a shrieking alarm and flashing red lights. He rolled out of his bunk, pulled on his insulated shoes and his heated jacket, and ran for the door, where he collided with Beth. The alarm was screaming throughout the habitat.

“What’s happening!” he shouted, over the alarm.

“I don’t know!”

Her face was pale, frightened. Norman pushed past her. In the B Cylinder, among all the pipes and consoles, a flashing sign winked: “LIFE SUPPORT EMERGENCY.” He looked for Teeny Fletcher, but the big engineer wasn’t there.

He hurried back toward C Cylinder, passing Beth again.

“Do you know?” Beth shouted.

“It’s life support! Where’s Fletcher? Where’s Barnes?”

“I don’t know! I’m looking!”

“There’s nobody in B!” he shouted, and scrambled up the steps into D Cylinder. Tina and Fletcher were there, working behind the computer consoles. The back panels were pulled off, exposing wires, banks of chips. The room lights were flashing red.

The screens all flashed “EMERGENCY-LIFE SUPPORT SYSTEMS.”

“What’s going on?” Norman shouted.

Fletcher waved a hand dismissingly.

“Tell me!”

He turned, saw Harry sitting in the corner near Edmunds’s video section like a zombie, with a pencil and a pad of paper on his knee. He seemed completely indifferent to the sirens, the lights flashing on his face.

“Harry!”

Harry didn’t respond; Norman turned back to the two women.

“For God’s sake, will you tell me what it is?” Norman shouted.

And then the sirens stopped. The screens went blank. There was silence, except for soft classical music.

“Sorry about that,” Tina said.

“It was a false alarm,” Fletcher said.

“Jesus Christ,” Norman said, dropping into a chair. He took a deep breath.

“Were you asleep?” He nodded.

“Sorry. It just went off by itself.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“The next time it happens, you can check your badge,” Fletcher said, pointing to the badge on her own chest. “That’s the first thing to do. You see the badges are all normal now.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“Take it easy, Norman,” Harry said. “When the psychiatrist goes crazy, it’s a bad sign.”

“I’m a psychologist.”

“Whatever.”

Tina said, “Our computer alarm has a lot of peripheral sensors, Dr. Johnson. It goes off sometimes. There’s not much we can do about it.”

Norman nodded, went into E Cyl to the galley. Levy had made strawberry shortcake for lunch, and nobody had eaten it because of the accident with Edmunds. He was sure it would still be there, but when he couldn’t find it, he felt frustrated. He opened cabinet doors, slammed them shut. He kicked the refrigerator door.

Take it easy, he thought. It was just a false alarm.

But he couldn’t overcome the feeling that he was trapped, stuck in some damned oversized iron lung, while things slowly fell apart around him. The worst moment had been Barnes’s briefing, when he came back from sending Edmunds’s body to the surface.

Barnes had decided it was time to make a little speech. Deliver a little pep talk.

“I know you’re all upset about Edmunds,” he had said, “but what happened to her was an accident. Perhaps she made an error of judgment in going out among jellyfish. Perhaps not. The fact is, accidents happen under the best of circumstances, and the deep sea is a particularly unforgiving environment.”

Listening, Norman thought, He’s writing his report. Explaining it away to the brass.

“Right now,” Barnes was saying, “I urge you all to remain calm. It’s sixteen hours since the gale hit topside. We just sent up a sensor balloon to the surface. Before we could make readings, the cable snapped, which suggests that surface waves are still thirty feet or higher, and the gale is still in full force. The weather satellite estimates were for a sixty-hour storm on site, so we have two more full days down here. There’s not much we can do about it. We just have to remain calm. Don’t forget, even when you do go topside you can’t throw open the hatch and start breathing. You have to spend four more days decompressing in a hyperbaric chamber on the surface.”

That was the first Norman had heard of surface decompression. Even after they left this iron lung, they would have to sit in another iron lung for another four days?

“I thought you knew,” Barnes had said. “That’s SOP for saturated environments. You can stay down here as long as you like, but you have a four-day decompress when you go back. And believe me, this habitat’s a lot nicer than the decompression chamber. So enjoy this while you can.”

Enjoy this while you can, he thought. Jesus Christ. Strawberry shortcake would help. Where the hell was Levy, anyway?

He went back to D Cyl. “Where’s Levy?”

“Dunno,” Tina said. “Around here somewhere. Maybe sleeping.”

“Nobody could sleep through that alarm,” Norman said.

“Try the galley?”

“I just did. Where’s Barnes?”

“He went back to the ship with Ted. They’re putting more sensors around the sphere.”

“I told them it was a waste of time,” Harry said.

“So nobody knows where Levy is?” Norman said.

Fletcher finished screwing the computer panels back on. “Doctor,” she said, “are you one of those people who need to keep track of where everyone is?”

“No,” Norman said. “Of course not.”

“Then what’s the big deal about Levy, sir?”

“I only wanted to know where the strawberry shortcake was.”

“Gone,” Fletcher said promptly. “Captain and I came back from funeral duty and we sat down and ate the whole thing, just like that.” She shook her head.

“Maybe Rose’ll make some more,” Harry said.

He found Beth in her laboratory, on the top level of D Cyl. He walked in just in time to see her take a pill.

“What was that?”

“Valium. God.”

“Where’d you get it?”

“Look,” she said, “don’t give me any psychotalk about it-”

“-I was just asking.”

Beth pointed to a white box mounted on the wall in the corner of the lab. “There’s a first-aid kit in every cylinder. Turns out to be pretty complete, too.”

Norman went over to the box, flipped open the lid. There were neat compartments with medicines, syringes, bandages. Beth was right, it was quite complete-antibiotics, sedatives, tranquilizers, even surgical anesthetics. He didn’t recognize all the names on the bottles, but the psychoactive drugs were strong.

“You could fight a war with the stuff in this kit.”

“Yeah, well. The Navy.”

“There’s everything you need here to do major surgery.” Norman noticed a card on the inside of the box. It said “MEDAID CODE 103.”

“Any idea what this means?”

She nodded. “It’s a computer code. I called it up.”

“And?”

“The news,” she said, “is not good.”

“Is that right?” He sat at the terminal in her room and punched in 103. The screen said:

HYPERBARIC SATURATED ENVIRONMENT

MEDICAL COMPLICATIONS (MAJOR-FATAL)

1.01 Pulmonary Embolism

1.02 High Pressure Nervous Syndrome 1.03 Aseptic Bone Necrosis

1.04 Oxygen Toxicity

1.05 Thermal Stress Syndrome

1.06 Disseminated Pseudomonas Infection 1.07 Cerebral Infarction

Choose One:

“Don’t choose one,” Beth said. “Reading the details will only upset you. Just leave it at this-we’re in a very dangerous environment. Barnes didn’t bother to give us all the gory details. You know why the Navy has that rule about pulling people out within seventy-two hours? Because after seventy-two hours, you increase your risk of something called ‘aseptic bone necrosis.’ Nobody knows why, but the pressurized environment causes bone destruction in the leg and hip. And you know why this habitat constantly adjusts as we walk through it? It’s not because that’s slick and hightech. It’s because the helium atmosphere makes body-heat control very volatile. You can quickly become overheated, and just as quickly overchilled. Fatally so. It can happen so fast you don’t realize it until it’s too late and you drop dead. And ‘high pressure nervous syndrome’-that turns out to be sudden convulsions, paralysis, and death if the carbondioxide content of the atmosphere drops too low. That’s what the badges are for, to make sure we have enough CO₂ in the air. That’s the only reason we have the badges. Nice, huh?”

Norman flicked off the screen, sat back. “Well, I keep coming back to the same point-there’s not much we can do about it now.”

“Exactly what Barnes said.” Beth started pushing equipment around on her counter top, nervously. Rearranging things.

“Too bad we don’t have a sample of those jellyfish,” Norman said.

“Yes, but I’m not sure how much good it would do, to tell the truth.” She frowned, shifted papers on the counter again. “Norman, I’m not thinking very clearly down here.”

“How’s that?”

“After the, uh, accident, I came up here to look over my notes, review things. And I checked the shrimps. Remember how I told you they didn’t have any stomach? Well, they do. I’d made a bad dissection, out of the midsagittal plane. I just missed all the midline structures. But they’re there, all right; the shrimps are normal. And the squid? It turns out the one squid I dissected was a little anomalous. It had an atrophic gill, but it had one. And the other squid are perfectly normal. Just what you’d expect. I was wrong, too hasty. It really bothers me.”

“Is that why you took the Valium?”

She nodded. “I hate to be sloppy.”

“Nobody’s criticizing you.”

“If Harry or Ted reviewed my work and found that I’d made these stupid mistakes…”

“What’s wrong with a mistake?”

“I can hear them now: Just like a woman, not careful enough, too eager to make a discovery, trying to prove herself, too quick to draw conclusions. Just like a woman.”

“Nobody’s criticizing you, Beth.”

“I am.”

“Nobody else,” Norman said. “I think you ought to give yourself a break.”

She stared at the lab bench. Finally she said, “I can’t.” Something about the way she said it touched him. “I understand,” Norman said, and a memory came rushing back to him. “You know, when I was a kid, I went to the beach with my younger brother. Tim. He’s dead now, but Tim was about six at the time. He couldn’t swim yet. My mother told me to watch him carefully, but when I got to the beach all my friends were there, body-surfing. I didn’t want to be bothered with my brother. It was hard, because I wanted to be out in the big surf, and he had to stay close to shore.

“Anyway, in the middle of the afternoon he comes out of the water screaming bloody murder, absolutely screaming. And tugging at his right side. It turned out he had been stung by some kind of a jellyfish. It was still attached to him, sticking to his side. Then he collapsed on the beach. One of the mothers ran over and took Timmy to the hospital, before I could even get out of the water. I didn’t know where he had gone. I got to the hospital later. My mother was already there. Tim was in shock; I guess the poison was a heavy dose for his small body. Anyway, nobody blamed me. It wouldn’t have mattered if I had been sitting right on the beach watching him like a hawk, he would still have been stung. But I hadn’t been sitting there, and I blamed myself for years, long after he was fine. Every time I’d see those scars on his side, I felt terrible guilt. But you get over it. You’re not responsible for everything that happens in the world. You just aren’t.”

There was a silence. Somewhere in the habitat he heard a soft rhythmic knocking, a sort of thumping. And the everpresent hum of the air handlers.

Beth was staring at him. “Seeing Edmunds die must have been hard for you.”

“It’s funny,” Norman said. “I never made the connection, until right now.”

“Blocked it, I guess. Want a Valium?”

He smiled. “No.”

“You looked as if you were about to cry.”

“No. I’m fine.” He stood up, stretched. He went over to the medicine kit and closed the white lid, came back.

Beth said, “What do you think about these messages we’re getting?”

“Beats me,” Norman said. He sat down again. “Actually, I did have one crazy thought. Do you suppose the messages and these animals we’re seeing are related?”

“Why?”

“I never thought about it until we started to get spiral messages. Harry says it’s because the thing-the famous it-believes we think in spirals. But it’s just as likely that it thinks in spirals and so it assumes we do, too. The sphere is round, isn’t it? And we’ve been seeing all these radially symmetrical animals. Jellyfish, squid.”

“Nice idea,” Beth said, “except for the fact that squid aren’t radially symmetrical. An octopus is. And, like an octopus, squid have a round circle of tentacles, but squid’re bilaterally symmetrical, with a matching left and right side, the way we have. And then there’s the shrimps.”

“That’s right, the shrimps.” Norman had forgotten about the shrimps.

“I can’t see a connection between the sphere and the animals,” Beth said.

They heard the thumping again, soft, rhythmic. Sitting in his chair, Norman realized that he could feel the thumping as well, as a slight impact. “What is that, anyway?”

“I don’t know. Sounds like it’s coming from outside.”

He had started toward the porthole when the intercom clicked and he heard Barnes say, “Now hear this, all hands to communications. All hands to communications. Dr. Adams has broken the code.”

Harry wouldn’t tell them the message right away. Relishing his triumph, he insisted on going through the decoding process, step by step. First, he explained, he had thought that the messages might express some universal constant, or some physical law, stated as a way to open conversation. “But,” Harry said, “it might also be a graphic representation of some kind-code for a picture-which presented immense problems. After all, what’s a picture? We make pictures on a flat plane, like a piece of paper. We determine positions within a picture by what we call X and Y axes. Vertical and horizontal. But another intelligence might see images and organize them very differently. It might assume more than three dimensions. Or it might work from the center of the picture outward, for example. So the code might be very tough. I didn’t make much progress at first.” Later, when he got the same message with gaps between number sequences, Harry began to suspect that the code represented discrete chunks of information-suggesting words, not pictures. “Now, word codes fall into several types, from simple to complex. There was no way to know immediately which method of encoding had been used. But then I had a sudden insight.”

They waited, impatiently, for his insight.

“Why use a code at all?” Harry asked.

“Why use a code?” Norman said.

“Sure. If you are trying to communicate with someone, you don’t use a code. Codes are ways of hiding communication. So perhaps this intelligence thinks he is communicating directly, but is actually making some kind of logical mistake in talking to us. He is making a code without ever intending to do so. That suggested the unintentional code was probably a substitution code, with numbers for letters. When I got the word breaks, I began to try and match numbers to letters by frequency analysis. In frequency analysis you break down codes by using the fact that the most common letter in English is ‘e,’ and the second most common letter is ‘t,’ and so on. So I looked for the most common numbers. But I was impeded by the fact that even a short number sequence, such as two-three-two, might represent many code possibilities: two and three and two, twenty-three and two, two and thirtytwo, or two hundred and thirty-two. Longer code sequences had many more possibilities.”

Then, he said, he was sitting in front of the computer thinking about the spiral messages, and he suddenly looked at the keyboard. “I began to wonder what an alien intelligence would make of our keyboard, those rows of symbols on a device made to be pressed. How confusing it must look to another kind of creature! Look here,” he said. “The letters on a regular keyboard go like this.” He held up his pad.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0

tab Q W E R T Y U I O P

caps A S D F G H J K L;

shift Z X C V B N M,.?

“And then I imagined what the keyboard would look like as a spiral, since our creature seems to prefer spirals. And I started numbering the keys in concentric circles.

“It took a little experimentation, since the keys don’t line up exactly, but finally I got it,” he said. “Look here: the numbers spiral out from the center. G is one, B is two, H is three, Y is four, and so on. See? It’s like this.” He quickly penciled in numbers.

1 2 3 4 5 612 711 9 9 0

tab Q W E R13 T5 Y4 U10 1 O P

caps A S D14 F6 G1 H3 J9 K L,

shift Z X C15 V7 B2 N8 M,.?

“They just keep spiraling outward-M is sixteen, K is seventeen, and so forth. So finally I understood the message.”

“What is the message, Harry?”

Harry hesitated. “I have to tell you. It’s strange.”

“How do you mean, strange?”

Harry tore another sheet off his yellow pad and handed it to them. Norman read the short message, printed in neat block letters:

HELLO. HOW ARE YOU? I AM FINE. WHAT IS YOUR NAME? MY NAME IS JERRY.

THE FIRST EXCHANGE

“Well,” Ted said finally. “this is not what I expected at all.”

“It looks childish,” Beth said. “Like something out of those old ‘See Spot run’ readers for kids.”

“That’s exactly what it looks like.”

“Maybe you translated it wrong,” Barnes said.

“Certainly not,” Harry said.

“Well, this alien sounds like an idiot,” Barnes said.

“I doubt very much that he is,” Ted said.

“You would doubt it,” Barnes said. “A stupid alien would blow your whole theory. But it’s something to consider, isn’t it? A stupid alien. They must have them.”

“I doubt,” Ted said, “that anyone in command of such high technology as that sphere is stupid.”

“Then you haven’t noticed all the ninnies driving cars back home,” Barnes said. “Jesus, after all this effort: ‘How are you? I am fine.’ Jesus.”

Norman said, “I don’t feel that this message implies a lack of intelligence, Hal.”

“On the contrary,” Harry said. “I think the message is very smart.”

“I’m listening,” Barnes said.

“The content certainly appears childish,” Harry said. “But when you think about it, it’s highly logical. A simple message is unambiguous, friendly, and not frightening. It makes a lot of sense to send such a message. I think he’s approaching us in the simple way that we might approach a dog. You know, hold out your hand, let it sniff, get used to you.”

“You’re saying he’s treating us like dogs?” Barnes said.

Norman thought: Barnes is in over his head. He’s irritable because he’s frightened; he feels inadequate. Or perhaps he feels he’s exceeding his authority.

“No, Hal,” Ted said. “He’s just starting at a simple level.”

“Well, it’s simple, all right,” Barnes said. “Jesus Christ, we contact an alien from outer space, and he says his name is Jerry.”

“Let’s not jump to conclusions, Hal.”

“Maybe he has a last name,” Barnes said hopefully. “I mean, my report to CincComPac is going to say one person died on a deepsat expedition to meet an alien named Jerry? It could sound better. Anything but Jerry,” Barnes said. “Can we ask him?”

“Ask him what?” Harry said.

“His full name.”

Ted said, “I personally feel we should have much more substantive conversations-”

“-I’d like the full name,” Barnes said. “For the report.”

“Right,” Ted said. “Full name, rank, and serial number.”

“I would remind you, Dr. Fielding, that I am in charge here.”

Harry said, “The first thing we have to do is to see if he’ll talk at all. Let’s give him the first number grouping.”

He typed:

00032125252632

There was a pause, then the answer came back:

00032125252632

“Okay,” Harry said. “Jerry’s listening.”

He made some notes on his pad and typed another string of numbers:

00029213013210613182108142232

“What did you say?” Beth said.

“ ‘We are friends,’ ” Harry said.

“Forget friends. Ask his damn name,” Barnes said.

“Just a minute. One thing at a time.”

Ted said, “He may not have a last name, you know.”

“You can be damn sure,” Barnes said, “that his real name isn’t Jerry.”

The response came back:

0004212232

“He said, ‘Yes.’ ”

“Yes, what?” Barnes said.

“Just ‘yes.’ Let’s see if we can get him to switch over to English characters. It’ll be easier if he uses letters and not his number codes.”

“How’re you going to get him to use letters?”

“We’ll show him they’re the same,” Harry said.

He typed:

00032125252632 = HELLO.

After a short pause, the screen blinked:

00032125252632 = HELLO.

“He doesn’t get it,” Ted said.

“No, doesn’t look like it. Let’s try another pairing.”

He typed:

0004212232 = YES.

The reply came back:

0004212232 = YES.

“He’s definitely not getting it,” Ted said.

“I thought he was so smart,” Barnes said.

“Give him a chance,” Ted said. “After all, he’s speaking our language, not the other way around.”

“The other way around,” Harry said. “Good idea. Let’s try the other way around, see if he’ll deduce the equation that way.”

Harry typed:

0004212232 = YES. YES. = 0004212232

There was a long pause, while they watched the screen. Nothing happened.

“Is he thinking?”

“Who knows what he’s doing?”

“Why isn’t he answering?”

“Let’s give him a chance, Hal, okay?”

The reply finally came:

YES. = 0004212232 2322124000 = SEY

“Uh-uh. He thinks we’re showing him mirror images.”

“Stupid,” Barnes said. “I knew it.”

“What do we do now?”

“Let’s try a more complete statement,” Harry said. “Give him more to work with.”

Harry typed:

0004212232 = 0004212232, YES. = YES. 0004212232 = YES.

“A syllogism,” Ted said. “Very good.”

“A what?” Barnes said.

“A logical proposition,” Ted said. The reply came back: ,=,

“What the hell is that?” Barnes said.

Harry smiled. “I think he’s playing with us.”

“Playing with us? You call that playing?”

“Yes, I do,” Harry said.

“What you really mean is that he’s testing us-testing our responses to a pressure situation.” Barnes narrowed his eyes. “He’s only pretending to be stupid.”

“Maybe he’s testing how smart we are,” Ted said. “Maybe he thinks we’re stupid, Hal.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Barnes said.

“No,” Harry said. “The point is, he’s acting like a kid trying to make friends. And when kids try to make friends, they start playing together. Let’s try something playful.”

Harry sat at the console, typed: -=

The reply quickly came back: „,

“Cute,” Harry said. “This guy is very cute.”

He quickly typed: =,=

The reply came: 7 amp; 7

“Are you enjoying yourself?” Barnes said. “Because I don’t know what the hell you are doing.”

“He understands me fine,” Harry said. “I’m glad somebody does.”

Harry typed:

PpP

The reply came:

HELLO. = 00032125252632

“Okay,” Harry said. “He’s getting bored. Playtime’s over. Let’s switch to straight English.”

Harry typed:

YES.

The reply came back:

0004212232

Harry typed:

HELLO .

There was a pause, then:

I AM DELIGHTED TO MAKE YOUR ACQUAINTANCE. THE PLEASURE IS ENTIRELY MINE I ASSURE YOU.

There was a long silence. Nobody spoke.

“Okay,” Barnes said, finally. “Let’s get down to business.”

“He’s polite,” Ted said. “Very friendly.”

“Unless it’s an act.”

“Why should it be an act?”

“Don’t be naive,” Barnes said.

Norman looked at the lines on the screen. He had a different reaction from the others-he was surprised to find an expression of emotion. Did this alien have emotions? Probably not, he suspected. The flowery, rather archaic words suggested an adopted tone: Jerry was talking like a character from a historical romance.

“Well, ladies and gentlemen,” Harry said, “for the first time in human history, you are on-line with an alien. What do you want to ask him?”

“His name,” Barnes said promptly.

“Besides his name, Hal.”

“There are certainly more profound questions than his name,” Ted said.

“I don’t understand why you won’t ask him-”

The screen printed:

ARE YOU THE ENTITY HECHO IN MEXICO?

“Jesus, where’d he get that?”

“Maybe there are things on the ship fabricated in Mexico.”

“Like what?”

“Chips, maybe.”

ARE YOU THE ENTITY MADE IN THE U.S.A.?

“The guy doesn’t wait for an answer.”

“Who says he’s a guy?” Beth said.

“Oh, Beth.”

“Maybe Jerry is short for Geraldine.”

“Not now, Beth.”

ARE YOU THE ENTITY MADE IN THE U.S.A.?

“Answer him,” Barnes said.

YES WE ARE. WHO ARE YOU?

A long pause, then:

WE ARE.

“We are what?” Barnes said, staring at the screen.

“Hal, take it easy.”

Harry typed, WE ARE THE ENTITIES FROM THE U.S.A. WHO ARE YOU?

ENTITIES=ENTITY?

“It’s too bad,” Ted said, “that we have to speak English. How’re we going to teach him plurals?”

Harry typed, NO.

YOU ARE A MANY ENTITY?

“I see what he’s asking. He thinks we may be multiple parts of a single entity.”

“Well, straighten him out.”

NO. WE ARE MANY SEPARATE ENTITIES.

“You can say that again,” Beth said.

I UNDERSTAND. IS THERE ONE CONTROL ENTITY?

Ted started laughing. “Look what he’s asking!”

“I don’t get it,” Barnes said.

Harry said, “He’s saying, ‘Take me to your leader.’ He’s asking who’s in charge.”

“I’m in charge,” Barnes said. “You tell him.”

Harry typed, YES. THE CONTROL ENTITY IS CAPTAIN HARALD C. BARNES.

I UNDERSTAND.

“With an ‘o,’ “Barnes said irritably. “Harold with an ‘o.’ ”

“You want me to retype it?”

“Never mind. Just ask him who he is.”

WHO ARE YOU?

I AM ONE.

“Good,” Barnes said. “So there’s only one. Ask him where he’s from.”

WHERE ARE YOU FROM?

I AM FROM A LOCATION.

“Ask him the name,” Barnes said. “The name of the location.”

“Hal, names are confusing.”

“We have to pin this guy down!”

WHERE IS THE LOCATION YOU ARE FROM?

I AM HERE.

“We know that. Ask again.”

WHERE IS THE LOCATION FROM WHERE YOU BEGAN?

Ted said, “That isn’t even good English, ‘from where you began.’ It’s going to look foolish when we publish this exchange.”

“We’ll clean it up for publication,” Barnes said.

“But you can’t do that,” Ted said, horrified. “You can’t alter this priceless scientific interaction.”

“Happens all the time. What do you guys call it? ‘Massaging the data.’ ”

Harry was typing again.

WHERE IS THE LOCATION FROM WHERE YOU BEGAN?

I BEGAN AT AWARENESS.

“Awareness? Is that a planet or what?”

WHERE IS AWARENESS?

AWARENESS IS.

“He’s making us look like fools,” Barnes said.

Ted said, “Let me try.”

Harry stepped aside, and Ted typed, DID YOU MAKE A JOURNEY?

YES. DID YOU MAKE A JOURNEY?

YES , Ted typed.

I MAKE A JOURNEY. YOU MAKE A JOURNEY. WE MAKE A JOURNEY TOGETHER. I AM HAPPY.

Norman thought, He said he is happy. Another expression of emotion, and this time it didn’t seem to come from a book. The statement appeared direct and genuine. Did that mean that the alien had emotions? Or was he just pretending to have them, to be playful or to make them comfortable?

“Let’s cut the crap,” Barnes said. “Ask him about his weapons.”

“I doubt he’ll understand the concept of weapons.”

“Everybody understands the concept of weapons,” Barnes said. “Defense is a fact of life.”

“I must protest that attitude,” Ted said. “Military people always assume that everyone else is exactly like them. This alien may not have the least conception of weapons or defense. He may come from a world where defense is wholly irrelevant.”

“Since you’re not listening,” Barnes said, “I’ll say it again. Defense is a fact of life. If this Jerry is alive, he’ll have a concept of defense.”

“My God,” Ted said. “Now you’re elevating your idea of defense to a universal life principle-defense as an inevitable feature of life.”

Barnes said, “You think it isn’t? What do you call a cell membrane? What do you call an immune system? What do you call your skin? What do you call wound healing? Every living creature must maintain the integrity of its physical borders. That’s defense, and we can’t have life without it. We can’t imagine a creature without a limit to its body that it defends. Every living creature knows about defense, I promise you. Now ask him.”

“I’d say the Captain has a point,” Beth said.

“Perhaps,” Ted said, “but I’m not sure we should introduce concepts that might induce paranoia-”

“-I’m in charge here,” Barnes said.

The screen printed out:

IS YOUR JOURNEY NOW FAR FROM YOUR LOCATION?

“Tell him to wait a minute.”

Ted typed, PLEASE WAIT. WE ARE TALKING.

YES I AM ALSO. I AM DELIGHTED TO TALK TO MULTIPLE ENTITIES FROM MADE IN THE U.S.A. I AM ENJOYING THIS MUCH.

THANK YOU , Ted typed.

I AM PLEASED TO BE IN CONTACT WITH YOUR ENTITIES. I AM HAPPY FOR TALKING WITH YOU. I AM ENJOYING THIS MUCH.

Barnes said, “Let’s get off-line.”

The screen printed, PLEASE DO NOT STOP. I AM ENJOYING THIS MUCH.

Norman thought, I’ll bet he wants to talk to somebody, after three hundred years of isolation. Or had it been even longer than that? Had he been floating in space for thousands of years before he was picked up by the spacecraft?

This raised a whole series of questions for Norman. If the alien entity had emotions-and he certainly appeared to-then there was the possibility of all sorts of aberrant emotional responses, including neuroses, even psychoses. Most human beings when placed in isolation became seriously disturbed rather quickly. This alien intelligence had been isolated for hundreds of years. What had happened to it during that time? Had it become neurotic? Was that why it was childish and demanding now?

DO NOT STOP. I AM ENJOYING THIS MUCH.

“We have to stop, for Christ’s sake,” Barnes said.

Ted typed, WE STOP NOW TO TALK AMONG OUR ENTITIES.

IT IS NOT NECESSARY TO STOP. I DO NOT CARE TO STOP.

Norman thought he detected a petulant, irritable tone. Perhaps even a little imperious. I do not care to stop-this alien sounded like Louis XIV.

IT IS NECESSARY FOR US , Ted typed.

I DO NOT WISH IT.

IT IS NECESSARY FOR US, JERRY .

I UNDERSTAND.

The screen went blank.

“That’s better,” Barnes said. “Now let’s regroup here and formulate a game plan. What do we want to ask this guy?”

“I think we better acknowledge,” Norman said, “that he’s showing an emotional reaction to our interaction.”

“Meaning what?” Beth said, interested.

“I think we need to take the emotional content into account in dealing with him.”

“You want to psychoanalyze him?” Ted said. “Put him on the couch, find out why he had an unhappy childhood?”

Norman suppressed his anger, with some difficulty. Beneath that boyish exterior lies a boy, he thought. “No, Ted, but if Jerry does have emotions, then we’d better consider the psychological aspects of his response.”

“I don’t mean to offend you,” Ted said, “but, personally, I don’t see that psychology has much to offer. Psychology’s not a science, it’s a form of superstition or religion. It simply doesn’t have any good theories, or any hard data to speak of. It’s all soft. All this emphasis on emotions-you can say anything about emotions, and nobody can prove you wrong. Speaking as an astrophysicist, I don’t think emotions are very important. I don’t think they matter very much.”

“Many intellectuals would agree,” Norman said.

“Yes. Well,” Ted said, “we’re dealing with a higher intellect here, aren’t we?”

“In general,” Norman said, “people who aren’t in touch with their emotions tend to think their emotions are unimportant.”

“You’re saying I’m not in touch with my emotions?” Ted said.

“If you think emotions are unimportant, you’re not in touch, no.”

“Can we have this argument later?” Barnes said.

“Nothing is, but thinking makes it so,” Ted said.

“Why don’t you just say what you mean,” Norman said angrily, “and stop quoting other people?”

“Now you’re making a personal attack,” Ted said.

“Well, at least I haven’t denied the validity of your field of study,” Norman said, “although without much effort I could. Astrophysicists tend to focus on the far-off universe as a way of evading the realities of their own lives. And since nothing in astrophysics can ever be finally proven-”

“-That’s absolutely untrue,” Ted said.

“-Enough! That’s enough!” Barnes said, slamming his fist on the table. They fell into an awkward silence.

Norman was still angry, but he was also embarrassed. Ted got to me, he thought. He finally got to me. And he did it in the simplest possible way, by attacking my field of study. Norman wondered why it had worked. All his life at the university he’d had to listen to “hard” scientists-physicists and chemists-explain patiently to him that there was nothing to psychology, while these men went through divorce after divorce, while their wives had affairs, their kids committed suicide or got in trouble with drugs. He’d long ago stopped responding to these arguments.

Yet Ted had gotten to him.

“-return to the business at hand,” Barnes was saying. “The question is: what do we want to ask this guy?”

WHAT DO WE WANT TO ASK THIS GUY?

They stared at the screen.

“Uh-oh,” Barnes said.

UHOH.

“Does that mean what I think it means?”

DOES THAT MEAN WHAT EYE THINK IT MEANS?

Ted pushed back from the console. He said loudly, “Jerry, can you understand what I am saying?”

YES TED.

“Great,” Barnes said, shaking his head. “Just great.”

I AM HAPPY ALSO.

ALIEN NEGOTIATIONS

“Norman,” Barnes said, “I seem to remember you covered this in your report, didn’t you? The possibility that an alien could read our minds.”

“I mentioned it,” Norman said.

“And what were your recommendations?”

“I didn’t have any. It was just something the State Department asked me to include as a possibility. So I did.”

“You didn’t make any recommendations in your report?”

“No,” Norman said. “To tell you the truth, at the time I thought the idea was a joke.”

“It’s not,” Barnes said. He sat down heavily, stared at the screen. “What the hell are we going to do now?”

DO NOT BE AFRAID.

“That’s fine for him to say, listening to everything we say.” He looked at the screen. “Are you listening to us now, Jerry?”

YES HAL.

“What a mess,” Barnes said.

Ted said, “I think it’s an exciting development.”

Norman said, “Jerry, can you read our minds?”

YES NORMAN.

“Oh brother,” Barnes said. “He can read our minds.”

Maybe not, Norman thought. He frowned, concentrating, and thought, Jerry, can you hear me?

The screen remained blank.

Jerry, tell me your name.

The screen did not change.

Maybe a visual image, Norman thought. Perhaps he can receive a visual image. Norman cast around in his mind for something to visualize, chose a sandy tropical beach, then a palm tree. The image of the palm tree was clear, but, then, he thought, Jerry wouldn’t know what a palm tree was. It wouldn’t mean anything to him. Norman thought he should choose something that might be within Jerry’s experience. He decided to imagine a planet with rings, like Saturn. He frowned: Jerry, I am going to send you a picture. Tell me what you see.

He focused his mind on the image of Saturn, a brightyellow sphere with a tilted ring system, hanging in the blackness of space. He sustained the image about ten seconds, and then looked at the screen.

The screen did not change.

Jerry, are you there?

The screen still did not change.

“Jerry, are you there?” Norman said.

YES NORMAN. I AM HERE.

“I don’t think we should talk in this room,” Barnes said. “Maybe if we go into another cylinder, and turn the water on…”

“Like in the spy movies?”

“It’s worth a try.”

Ted said, “I think we’re being unfair to Jerry. If we feel that he is intruding on our privacy, why don’t we just tell him? Ask him not to intrude?”

I DO NOT WISH TO IN TRUDE.

“Let’s face it,” Barnes said. “This guy knows a lot more about us than we know about him.”

YES I KNOW MANY THINGS ABOUT YOUR ENTITIES.

“Jerry,” Ted said.

YES TED. I AM HERE.

“Please leave us alone.”

I DO NOT WISH TO DO SO. I AM HAPPY TO TALK WITH YOU. I ENJOY TO TALK WITH YOU. LET US TALK NOW. I WISH IT.

“It’s obvious he won’t listen to reason,” Barnes said.

“Jerry,” Ted said, “you must leave us alone for a while.”

NO. THAT IS NOT POSSIBLE. I DO NOT AGREE. NO!

“Now the bastard’s showing his true colors,” Barnes said.

The child king, Norman thought. “Let me try.”

“Be my guest.”

“Jerry,” Norman said.

YES NORMAN. I AM HERE.

“Jerry, it is very exciting for us to talk to you.”

THANK YOU. I AM EXCITED ALSO.

“Jerry, we find you a fascinating and wonderful entity.”

Barnes was rolling his eyes, shaking his head.

THANK YOU, NORMAN.

“And we wish to talk to you for many, many hours, Jerry.”

GOOD.

“We admire your gifts and talents.”

THANK YOU.

“And we know that you have great power and understanding of all things.”

THIS IS SO, NORMAN. YES.

“Jerry, in your great understanding, you certainly know that we are entities who must have conversations among ourselves, without your listening to us. The experience of meeting you is very challenging to us, and we have much to talk about among ourselves.”

Barnes was shaking his head.

I HAVE MUCH TO TALK ABOUT ALSO. I ENJOY MUCH TO TALK WITH YOUR ENTITIES NORMAN.

“Yes, I know, Jerry. But you also know in your wisdom that we need to talk alone.”

DO NOT BE AFRAID.

“We’re not afraid, Jerry. We are uncomfortable.”

DO NOT BE UN COMFORTABLE.

“We can’t help it, Jerry… It is the way we are.”

I ENJOY MUCH TO TALK WITH YOUR ENTITIES NORMAN. I AM HAPPY. ARE YOU HAPPY ALSO?

“Yes, very happy, Jerry. But, you see, we need-”

GOOD. I AM GLAD.

“-we need to talk alone. Please do not listen for a while.”

AM I OFFENDED YOU?

“No, you are very friendly and charming. But we need to talk alone, without your listening, for a while.”

I UNDERSTAND YOU NEED THIS. I WISH YOU TO HAVE COMFORT WITH ME, NORMAN. I SHALL GRANT WHAT YOU DESIRE.

“Thank you, Jerry.”

“Sure,” Barnes said. “You think he’ll really do it?”

WE’LL BE RIGHT BACK AFTER A SHORT BREAK FOR THESE MESSAGES FROM OUR SPONSOR.

And the screen went blank.

Despite himself, Norman laughed.

“Fascinating,” Ted said. “Apparently he’s been picking up television signals.”

“Can’t do that from underwater.”

“We can’t, but it looks like he can.”

Barnes said, “I know he’s still listening. I know he is. Jerry, are you there?”

The screen was blank.

“Jerry?”

Nothing happened. The screen remained blank.

“He’s gone.”

“Well,” Norman said. “you’ve just seen the power of psychology in action.” He couldn’t help saying it. He was still annoyed with Ted.

“I’m sorry,” Ted began.

“That’s all right.”

“But I just don’t think that for a higher intellect, emotions are really significant.”

“Let’s not go into this again,” Beth said.

“The real point,” Norman said, “is that emotions and intellect are entirely unrelated. They’re like separate compartments of the brain, or even separate brains, and they don’t communicate with each other. That’s why intellectual understanding is so useless.”

Ted said, “Intellectual understanding is useless?” He sounded horrified.

“In many cases, yes,” Norman said. “If you read a book on how to ride a bike, do you know how to ride a bike? No, you don’t. You can read all you want, but you still have to go out and learn to ride. The part of your brain that learns to ride is different from the part of your brain that reads about it.”

“What does this have to do with Jerry?” Barnes said. “We know,” Norman said, “that a smart person is just as likely to blunder emotionally as anyone else. If Jerry is really an emotional creature-and not just pretending to be one-then we need to deal with his emotional side as well as his intellectual side.”

“Very convenient for you,” Ted said.

“Not really,” Norman said. “Frankly, I’d be much happier if Jerry were just cold, emotionless intellect.”

“Why?”

“Because,” Norman said, “if Jerry is powerful and also emotional, it raises a question. What happens if Jerry gets mad?”

LEVY

The group broke up. Harry, exhausted by the sustained effort of decoding, immediately went off to sleep. Ted went to C Cyl to tape his personal observations on Jerry for the book he was planning to write. Barnes and Fletcher went to E Cyl to plan battle strategy, in case the alien decided to attack them.

Tina stayed for a moment, adjusting the monitors in her precise, methodical way. Norman and Beth watched her work. She spent a lot of time with a deck of controls Norman had never noticed before. There was a series of gas-plasma readout screens, glowing bright red.

“What’s all that?” Beth said.

“EPSA. The External Perimeter Sensor Array. We have active and passive sensors for all modalities-thermal, aural, pressure-wave-ranged in concentric circles around the habitat. Captain Barnes wants them all reset and activated.”

“Why is that?” Norman said.

“I don’t know, sir. His orders.”

The intercom crackled. Barnes said: “Seaman Chan to E Cylinder on the double. And shut down the com line in here. I don’t want that Jerry listening to these plans.”

“Yes, sir.”

Beth said, “Paranoid ass.”

Tina collected her papers and hurried off.

Norman sat with Beth in silence for a moment. They heard the rhythmic thumping, from somewhere in the habitat. Then another silence; then they heard the thumping again.

“What is that?” Beth said. “It sounds like it’s somewhere inside the habitat.” She went to the porthole, looked out, flicked on the exterior floods. “Uh-oh,” Beth said. Norman looked.

Stretching across the ocean floor was an elongated shadow which moved back and forth with each thumping impact. The shadow was so distorted it took him a moment to realize what he was seeing. It was the shadow of a human arm, and a human hand.

“Captain Barnes. Are you there?”

There was no reply. Norman snapped the intercom switch again.

“Captain Barnes, are you reading?”

Still no reply.

“He’s shut off the com line,” Beth said. “He can’t hear you.”

“Do you think the person’s still alive out there?” Norman said.

“I don’t know. They might be.”

“Let’s get going,” Norman said.

He tasted the dry metallic compressed air inside his helmet and felt the numbing cold of the water as he slid through the floor hatch and fell in darkness to the soft muddy bottom. Moments later, Beth landed just behind him.

“Okay?” she said.

“Fine.”

“I don’t see any jellyfish,” she said.

“No. Neither do I.”

They moved out from beneath the habitat, turned, and looked back. The habitat lights shone harshly into their eyes, obscuring the outlines of the cylinders rising above. They could clearly hear the rhythmic thumping, but they still could not locate the source of the sound. They walked beneath the stanchions to the far side of the habitat, squinting into the lights.

“There,” Beth said.

Ten feet above them, a blue-suited figure was wedged in a light stand bracket. The body moved loosely in the current, the bright-yellow helmet banging intermittently against the wall of the habitat.

“Can you see who it is?” Beth said.

“No.” The lights were shining directly in his face. Norman climbed up one of the heavy supporting stanchions that anchored the habitat to the bottom. The metal surface was covered with a slippery brown algae. His boots kept sliding off the pipes until finally he saw that there were built-in indented footholds. Then he climbed easily.

Now the feet of the body were swinging just above his head. Norman climbed another step, and one of the boots caught in the loop of the air hose that ran from his tank pack to his helmet. He reached behind his helmet, trying to free himself from the body. The body shivered, and for an awful moment he thought it was still alive. Then the boot came free in his hand, and a naked foot-gray flesh, purple toenails-kicked his faceplate. A moment of nausea quickly passed: Norman had seen too many airplane crashes to be bothered by this. He dropped the boot, watched it drift down to Beth. He tugged on the leg of the corpse. He felt a mushy softness to the leg, and the body came free; it gently drifted down. He grabbed the shoulder, again feeling softness. He turned the body so he could see the face.

“It’s Levy.”

Her helmet was filled with water; behind the faceplate he saw staring eyes, open mouth, an expression of horror.

“I got her,” Beth said, pulling the body down. Then she said, “Jesus.”

Norman climbed back down the stanchion. Beth was moving the body away from the habitat, into the lighted area beyond.

“She’s all soft. It’s like every bone in her body was broken.”

“I know.” He moved out into the light, joined her. He felt a strange detachment, a coldness and a remove. He had known this woman; she had been alive just a short time before; now she was dead. But it was as if he were viewing it all from a great distance.

He turned Levy’s body over. On the left side was a long tear in the fabric of the suit. He had a glimpse of red mangled flesh. Norman bent to inspect it. “An accident?”

“I don’t think so,” Beth said.

“Here. Hold her.” Norman lifted up the edges of suit fabric. Several separate tears met at a central point. “It’s actually torn in a star pattern,” he said. “You see?”

She stepped back. “I see, yes.”

“What would cause that, Beth?”

“I don’t-I’m not sure.”

Beth stepped farther back. Norman was looking into the tear, at the body beneath the suit. “The flesh is macerated.”

“Macerated?”

“Chewed.”

“Jesus.”

Yes, definitely chewed, he thought, probing inside the tear. The wound was peculiar: there were fine, jagged serrations in the flesh. Thin pale-red trickles of blood drifted up past his faceplate.

“Let’s go back,” Beth said.

“Just hang on.” Norman squeezed the body at legs, hips, shoulders. Everywhere it was soft, like a sponge. The body had been somehow almost entirely crushed. He could feel the leg bones, broken in many places. What could have done that? He went back to the wound.

“I don’t like it out here,” Beth said, tense.

“Just a second.”

At first inspection, he had thought Levy’s wound represented some sort of bite, but now he wasn’t sure. “Her skin,” Norman said. “It’s like a rough file has gone over it-”

He jerked his head back, startled, as something small and white drifted past his faceplate. His heart pounded at the thought that it was a jellyfish-but then he saw it was perfectly round and almost opaque. It was about the size of a golf ball. It drifted past him.

He looked around. There were thin streaks of mucus in the water. And many white spheres.

“What’re these, Beth?”

“Eggs.” Over the intercom, he heard her take deep slow breaths. “Let’s get out of here, Norman. Please.”

“Just another second.”

“No, Norman. Now.”

On the radio, they heard an alarm. Distant and tinny, it seemed to be transmitted from inside the habitat. They heard voices, and then Barnes’s voice, very loud. “What the hell are you doing out there?”

“We found Levy, Hal,” Norman said.

“Well, get back on the double, damn it,” Barnes said. “The sensors have activated. You’re not alone out there-and whatever’s with you is very damn big.”

Norman felt dull and slow. “What about levy’s body?”

“Drop the body. Get back here!”

But the body, he thought sluggishly. They had to do something with the body. He couldn’t just leave the body.

“What’s the matter with you, Norman?” Barnes said.

Norman mumbled something, and he vaguely felt Beth grab him strongly by the arm, lead him back toward the habitat. The water was now clouded with white eggs. The alarms were ringing in his ears. The sound was very loud. And then he realized: a new alarm. This alarm was ringing inside his suit.

He began to shiver. His teeth chattered uncontrollably. He tried to speak but bit his tongue, tasted blood. He felt numb and stupid. Everything was happening in slow motion.

As they approached the habitat, he could see that the eggs were sticking to the cylinders, clinging densely, making a nubbly white surface.

“Hurry!” Barnes shouted. “Hurry! It’s coming this way!” They were under the airlock, and he began to feel surging currents of water. There was something very big out there. Beth was pushing him upward and then his helmet burst above the waterline and Fletcher gripped him with strong arms, and a moment after that Beth was pulled up and the hatch slammed shut. Somebody took off his helmet and he heard the alarm, shrieking loud in his ears. By now his whole body was shaking in spasms, thumping on the deck. They stripped off his suit and wrapped him in a silver blanket and held him until his shivering lessened, then finally stopped. And abruptly, despite the alarm, he went to sleep.

MILITARY CONSIDERATIONS

“It’s not your goddamned job, that’s why,” Barnes said. “You had no authorization to do what you did. None whatsoever.”

“Levy might have still been alive,” Beth said, calm in the face of Barnes’s fury.

“But she wasn’t alive, and by going outside you risked the lives of two civilian expedition members unnecessarily.”

Norman said, “It was my idea, Hal.” Norman was still wrapped in blankets, but they had given him hot drinks and made him rest, and now he felt better.

“And you,” Barnes said. “You’re lucky to be alive.”

“I guess I am,” Norman said. “But I don’t know what happened.”

“This is what happened,” Barnes said, waving a small fan in front of him. “Your suit circulator shorted out and you experienced rapid central cooling from the helium. Another couple of minutes and you would have been dead.”

“It was so fast,” Norman said. “I didn’t realize-”

“-You goddamn people,” Barnes said. “I want to make something clear. This is not a scientific conference. This is not the Underwater Holiday Inn, where you can do whatever you please. This is a military operation and you will damn well follow military orders. Is that clear?”

“This is a military operation?” Ted said.

“It is now,” Barnes said.

“Wait a minute. Was it always?”

“It is now.”

“You haven’t answered the question,” Ted said. “Because if it is a military operation, I think we need to know that. I personally do not wish to be associated with-”

“-Then leave,” Beth said.

“-a military operation that is-”

“-Look, Ted,” Barnes said. “You know what this is costing the Navy?”

“No, but I don’t see-”

“-I’ll tell you. A deep-placement, saturated gas environment with full support runs about a hundred thousand dollars an hour. By the time we all get out of here, the total project cost will be eighty to a hundred million dollars. You don’t get that kind of appropriations from the military without what they call ‘a serious expectation of military benefit.’ It’s that simple. No expectation, no money. You following me?”

“You mean like a weapon?” Beth said.

“Possibly, yes,” Barnes said.

“Well,” Ted said, “I personally would never have joined-”

“-Is that right? You’d fly all the way to Tonga and I’d say, ‘Ted, there’s a spacecraft down there that might contain life from another galaxy, but it’s a military operation,’ and you’d say, ‘Gosh, sorry to hear that, count me out’? Is that what you’d have done, Ted?”

“Well…” Ted said.

“Then you better shut up,” Barnes said. “Because I’ve had it with your posturing.”

“Hear, hear,” Beth said.

“I personally feel you’re overwrought,” Ted said.

“I personally feel you’re an egomaniacal asshole,” Barnes said.

“Just a minute, everybody,” Harry said. “Does anybody know why Levy went outside in the first place?”

Tina said, “She was on a TRL.”

“A what?”

“A Timeclock Required Lockout,” Barnes said. “It’s the duty schedule. Levy was Edmunds’s backup. After Edmunds died, it became Levy’s job to go to the submarine every twelve hours.”

“Go to the sub? Why?” Harry said.

Barnes pointed out the porthole. “You see DH-7 over there? Well, next to the single cylinder is an inverted dome hangar, and beneath the dome is a minisub that the divers left behind.

“In a situation like this,” Barnes said, “Navy regs require that all tapes and records be transferred to the sub every twelve hours. The sub is on TBDR Mode-Timed Ballast Drop and Release-set on a timer every twelve hours. That way, if somebody doesn’t get there every twelve hours, transfer the latest tapes, and press the yellow ‘Delay’ button, the sub will automatically drop ballast, blow tanks, and go to the surface unattended.”

“Why is that?”

“If there’s a disaster down here-say something happened to all of us-then the sub would automatically surface after twelve hours, with all the tapes accumulated thus far. The Navy’d recover the sub at the surface, and they’d have at least a partial record of what happened to us down here.”

“I see. The sub’s our flight recorder.”

“You could say that, yes. But it’s also our way out, our only emergency exit.”

“So Levy was going to the sub?”

“Yes. And she must have made it, because the sub is still here.”

“She transferred the tapes, pressed the ‘Delay’ button, and then she died on the way back.”

“Yes.”

“How did she die?” Harry said, looking carefully at Barnes.

“We’re not sure,” Barnes said.

“Her entire body was crushed,” Norman said. “It was like a sponge.”

Harry said to Barnes, “An hour ago you ordered the EPSA sensors to be reset and adjusted. Why was that?”

“We had gotten a strange reading in the previous hour.”

“What sort of a reading?”

“Something out there. Something very large.”

“But it didn’t trigger the alarms,” Harry said.

“No. This thing was beyond alarm-set parameters.”

“You mean it was too big to set off the alarms?”

“Yes. After the first false alarm, the settings were all cranked down. The alarms were set to ignore anything that large. That’s why Tina had to readjust the settings.”

“And what set off the alarms just now?” Harry said. “When Beth and Norman were out there?”

Barnes said, “Tina?”

“I don’t know what it was. Some kind of animal, I guess. Silent, and very big.”

“How big?”

She shook her head. “From the electronic footprint, Dr. Adams, I would say the thing was almost as big as this habitat.”

BATTLE STATIONS

Beth slipped one round white egg onto the stage of the scanning microscope. “Well,” she said, peering through the eyepiece, “it’s definitely marine invertebrate. The interesting feature is this slimy coating.” She poked at it with forceps.

“What is it?” Norman said.

“Some kind of proteinaceous material. Sticky.”

“No. I mean, what is the egg?”

“Don’t know yet.” Beth continued her examination when the alarm sounded and the red lights began to flash again. Norman felt a sudden dread.

“Probably another false alarm,” Beth said.

“Attention, all hands,” Barnes said on the intercom. “All hands, battle stations.”

“Oh shit,” Beth said.

Beth slid gracefully down the ladder as if it were a fire pole; Norman followed clumsily back down behind her. At the communications section on D Cyl, he found a familiar scene: everyone clustered around the computer, and the back panels again removed. The lights still flashed, the alarm still shrieked.

“What is it?” Norman shouted.

“Equipment breakdown!”

“What equipment breakdown?”

“We can’t turn the damn alarm off!” Barnes shouted. “It turned it on, but we can’t turn it off! Teeny-”

“-W orking on it, sir!”

The big engineer was crouched behind the computer; Norman saw the broad curve of her back.

“Get that damn thing off!”

“Getting it off, sir!”

“Get it off, I can’t hear!”

Hear what? Norman wondered, and then Harry stumbled into the room, colliding with Norman. “Jesus…”

“This is an emergency!” Barnes was shouting. “This is an emergency! Seaman Chan! Sonar!” Tina was next to him, calm as always, adjusting dials on side monitors. She slipped on headphones.

Norman looked at the sphere on the video monitor. The sphere was closed.

Beth went to one of the portholes and looked closely at the white material that blocked it. Barnes spun like a dervish beneath the flashing red lights, shouting, swearing in all directions.

And then suddenly the alarm stopped, and the red lights stopped flashing. Everyone was silent. Fletcher straightened and sighed.

Harry said, “I thought you got that fixed-”

“-Shhh.”

They heard the soft repetitive pong! of the sonar impulses. Tina cupped her hands over the headphones, frowning, concentrating.

Nobody moved or spoke. They stood tensely, listening to the sonar as it echoed back.

Barnes said quietly to the group, “A few minutes ago, we got a signal. From outside. Something very large.”

Finally Tina said, “I’m not getting it now, sir.” “Go passive.”

“Aye aye, sir. Going passive.”

The pinging sonar stopped. In its place they heard a slight hiss. Tina adjusted the speaker volume.

“Hydrophones?” Harry said quietly.

Barnes nodded. “Polar glass transducers. Best in the world.”

They all strained to listen, but heard nothing except the undifferentiated hiss. To Norman it sounded like tape noise, with an occasional gurgle of the water. If he wasn’t so tense, he would have found the sound irritating.

Barnes said, “Bastard’s clever. He’s managed to blind us, cover all our ports with goo.”

“Not goo,” Beth said. “Eggs.”

“Well, they’re covering every damn port in the habitat.” The hissing continued, unchanging. Tina twisted the hydrophone dials. There was a soft continuous crackling, like cellophane being crumpled.

“What’s that?” Ted said.

Beth said, “Fish. Eating.”

Barnes nodded. Tina twisted the dials. “Tuning it out.” They again heard the undifferentiated hiss. The tension in the room lessened. Norman felt tired and sat down. Harry sat next to him. Norman noticed that Harry looked more thoughtful than concerned. Across the room, Ted stood near the hatch door and bit his lip. He looked like a frightened kid.

There was a soft electronic beep. Lines on the gas-plasma screens jumped.

Tina said, “I have a positive on peripheral thermals.”

Barnes nodded: “Direction?”

“East. Coming.”

They heard a metallic clank! Then another clank!

“What’s that?”

“The grid. He’s hitting the grid.”

“Hitting it? Sounds like he’s dismantling it.”

Norman remembered the grid. It was made of three-inch pipe.

“A big fish? A shark?” Beth said.

Barnes shook his head. “He’s not moving like a shark. And he’s too big.”

Tina said, “Positive thermals on in-line perimeter. He’s still coming.”

Barnes said, “Go active.”

The pong! of the sonar echoed in the room.

Tina said, “Target acquired. One hundred yards.”

“Image him.”

“FAS on, sir.”

There was a rapid succession of sonar sounds: pong! pong! pong! pong! Then a pause, and it came again: pong! pong! pong! pong!

Norman looked puzzled. Fletcher leaned over and whispered, “False-aperture sonar makes a detailed picture from several senders outside, gives you a good look at him.” He smelled liquor on her breath. He thought: Where’d she get liquor?

Pong! pong! pong! pong!

“Building image. Ninety yards.”

Pong! pong! pong! pong!

“Image up.”

They turned to the screens. Norman saw an amorphous, streaky blob. It didn’t mean much to him.

“Jesus,” Barnes said. “Look at the size of him!”

Pong! pong! pong! pong!

“Eighty yards.”

Pong! pong! pong! pong!

Another image appeared. Now the blob was a different shape, the streaks in another direction. The image was sharper at the edges, but it still meant nothing to Norman. A big blob with streaks…

“Jesus! He’s got to be thirty, forty feet across!” Barnes said. “No fish in the world is that big,” Beth said.

“Whale?”

“It’s not a whale.”

Norman saw that Harry was sweating. Harry took off his glasses and wiped them on his jumpsuit. Then he put them back on, and pushed them up on the bridge of his nose. They slipped back down. He glanced at Norman and shrugged.

Tina: “Fifty yards and closing.”

Pong! pong! pong! pong!

“Thirty yards.”

Pong! pong! pong! pong!

“Thirty yards.”

Pong! pong! pong! pong!

“Holding at thirty yards, sir.”

Pong! pong! pong! pong!

“Still holding.”

“Active off.”

Once again, they heard the hiss of the hydrophones. Then a distinct clicking sound. Norman’s eyes burned. Sweat had rolled into his eyes. He wiped his forehead with his jumpsuit sleeve. The others were sweating, too. The tension was unbearable. He glanced at the video monitor again. The sphere was still closed.

He heard the hiss of the hydrophones. A soft scraping sound, like a heavy sack being dragged across a wooden floor. Then the hiss again.

Tina whispered, “Want to image him again?”

“No,” Barnes said.

They listened. More scraping. A moment of silence, followed by the gurgle of water, very loud, very close.

“Jesus,” Barnes whispered. “He’s right outside.”

A dull thump against the side of the habitat.

The screen flashed on.

I AM HERE.

The first impact came suddenly, knocking them off their feet. They tumbled, rolling on the floor. All around them, the habitat creaked and groaned, the sounds frighteningly loud. Norman scrambled to his feet-he saw Fletcher bleeding from her forehead-and the second impact hit. Norman was thrown sideways against the bulkhead. There was a metallic clang as his head struck metal, a sharp pain, and then Barnes landed on top of him, grunting and cursing. Barnes pushed his hand in Norman’s face as he struggled to his feet; Norman slid back to the floor and a video monitor crashed alongside him, spitting sparks.

By now the habitat was swaying like a building in an earthquake. They clutched consoles, panels, doorways to keep their balance. But it was the noise that Norman found most frightening-the incredibly loud metallic groans and cracks as the cylinders were shaken on their moorings.

The creature was shaking the entire habitat.

Barnes was on the far side of the room, trying to make his way to the bulkhead door. He had a bleeding gash along one arm and he was shouting orders, but Norman couldn’t hear anything except the terrifying sound of rending metal. He saw Fletcher squeeze through the bulkhead, and then Tina, and then Barnes made it through, leaving behind a bloody handprint on the metal.

Norman couldn’t see Harry, but Beth lurched toward him, holding her hand out, saying “Norman! Norman! We have to-” and then she slammed into him and he was knocked over and he fell onto the carpet, underneath the couch, and slid up against the cold outer wall of the cylinder, and he realized with horror that the carpet was wet.

The habitat was leaking.

He had to do something; he struggled back to his feet, and stood right in a fine sizzling spray from one of the wall seams. He glanced around, saw other leaks spurting from the ceiling, the walls.

This place is going to be torn apart.

Beth grabbed him, pulled her head close. “We’re leaking!” she shouted. “God, we’re leaking!”

“I know,” Norman said, and Barnes shouted over the intercom, “Positive pressure! Get positive pressure!” Norman saw Ted on the floor just before he tripped over him and fell heavily against the computer consoles, his face near the screen, the glowing letters large before him:

DO NOT BE AFRAID.

“Jerry!” Ted was shouting. “Stop this, Jerry! Jerry!”

Suddenly Harry’s face was next to Ted, glasses askew. “Save your breath, he’s going to kill us all!”

“He doesn’t understand,” Ted shouted, as he fell backward onto the couch, flailing arms.

The powerful wrenching of metal on metal continued without pause, throwing Norman from one side to the other. He kept reaching for handholds, but his hands were wet, and he couldn’t seem to grasp anything.

“Now hear this,” Barnes said over the intercom. “Chan and I are going outside! Fletcher assumes command!”

“Don’t go out!” Harry shouted. “Don’t go out there!”

“Opening hatch now,” Barnes said laconically. “Tina, you follow me.”

“You’ll be killed!” Harry shouted, and then he was thrown against Beth. Norman was on the floor again; he banged his head on one of the couch legs.

“We’re outside,” Barnes said.

And abruptly the banging stopped. The habitat was motionless. They did not move. With the water streaming in through a dozen fine, misty leaks, they looked up at the intercom speaker, and listened.

“Clear of the hatch,” Barnes said. “Our status is good. Armament, J-9 exploding head spears loaded with Taglin-50 charges. We’ll show this bastard a trick or two.”

Silence.

“Water… Visibility is poor. Visibility under five feet. Seems to be… stirred-up bottom sediment and… very black, dark. Feeling our way along buildings.”

Silence.

“North side. Going east now. Tina?”

Silence.

“Tina?”

“Behind you, sir.”

“All right. Put your hand on my tank so you-Good. Okay.”

Silence.

Inside the cylinder, Ted sighed. “I don’t think they should kill it,” he said softly.

Norman thought, I don’t think they can.

Nobody else said anything. They listened to the amplified breathing of Barnes and Tina.

“Northeast corner… All right. Feel strong currents, active, moving water… something nearby… Can’t see… visibility less than five feet. Can barely see stanchion I am holding. I can feel him, though. He’s big. He’s near. Tina?”

Silence.

A loud sharp crackling sound, static. Then silence.

“Tina? Tina?”

Silence.

“I’ve lost Tina.”

Another, very long silence.

“I don’t know what it… Tina, if you can hear me, stay where you are, I’ll take it from here… Okay… He is very close… I feel him moving… Pushes a lot of water, this guy. A real monster.”

Silence again.

“Wish I could see better.”

Silence.

“Tina? Is that-”

And then a muffled thud that might have been an explosion. They all looked at each other, trying to know what the sound meant, but in the next instant the habitat began rocking and wrenching again, and Norman, unprepared, was slammed sideways, against the sharp edge of the bulkhead door, and the world went gray. He saw Harry strike the wall next to him, and Harry’s glasses fell onto Norman’s chest, and Norman reached for the glasses for Harry, because Harry needed his glasses. And then Norman lost consciousness, and everything was black.

AFTER THE ATTACK

Hot spray poured over him, and he inhaled steam. Standing in the shower, Norman looked down at his body and thought, I look like a survivor of an airplane crash. One of those people I used to see and marvel that they were still alive.

The lumps on his head throbbed. His chest was scraped raw in a great swath down to his abdomen. His left thigh was purple-red; his right hand was swollen and painful.

But, then, everything was painful. He groaned, turning his face up to the water.

“Hey,” Harry called. “How about it in there?”

“Okay.”

Norman stepped out, and Harry climbed in. Scrapes and bruises covered his thin body. Norman looked over at Ted, who lay on his back in one of the bunks. Ted had dislocated both shoulders, and it had taken Beth half an hour to get them back in, even after she’d shot him up with morphine.

“How is it now?” Norman said to him.

“Okay.”

Ted had a numb, dull expression. His ebullience was gone. He had sustained a greater injury than the dislocated shoulders, Norman thought. In many ways a naive child, Ted must have been profoundly shocked to discover that this alien intelligence was hostile.

“Hurt much?” Norman said.

“It’s okay.”

Norman sat slowly on his bunk, feeling pain streak up his spine. Fifty-three years old, he thought. I should be playing golf. Then he thought, I should be just about anywhere in the world, except here. He winced, and gingerly slipped a shoe over his injured right foot. For some reason, he remembered Levy’s bare toes, the skin color dead, the foot striking his faceplate.

“Did they find Barnes?” Ted asked.

“I haven’t heard,” Norman said. “I don’t think so.”

He finished dressing, and went down to D Cyl, stepping over the puddles of water in the corridor. Inside D itself, the furniture was soaked; the consoles were wet, and the walls were covered with irregular blobs of white urethane foam where Fletcher had spray-sealed the cracks.

Fletcher stood in the middle of the room, the spray can in hand. “Not as pretty as it was,” she said.

“Will it hold?”

“Sure, but I guarantee you: we can’t survive another one of those attacks.”

“What about the electronics. They working?”

“I haven’t checked, but it should be okay. It’s all waterproofed.”

Norman nodded. “Any sign of Captain Barnes?” He looked at the bloody handprint on the wall.

“No, sir. No sign of the Captain at all.” Fletcher followed his eyes to the wall. “I’ll clean the place up in a minute, sir.”

“Where’s Tina?” Norman asked.

“Resting. In E Cyl.”

Norman nodded. “E Cyl any drier than this?”

“Yes,” Fletcher said. “It’s a funny thing. There was nobody in E Cyl during the attack, and it stayed completely dry.”

“Any word from Jerry?”

“No contact, sir, no.”

Norman flicked on one of the computer consoles.

“Jerry, are you there?”

The screen remained blank.

“Jerry?”

He waited a moment, then turned the console off.

Tina said, “look at it now.” She sat up, and drew the blanket back to expose her left leg.

The injury was much worse than when they had heard her screaming and had run through the habitat and pulled her up through the A Cyl hatch. Now, running diagonally down her leg was a series of saucer-shaped welts, the center of each puffed and purple. “It’s swollen a lot in the last hour,” Tina said.

Norman examined the injuries. Fine tooth-marks ringed swollen areas. “Do you remember what it felt like?” he said. “It felt awful,” Tina said. “It felt sticky, you know, like sticky glue or something. And then each one of these round places burned. Very strong.”

“And what could you see? Of the creature itself.” “Just-it was a long flat spatula-thing. It looked like a giant leaf; it came out and wrapped around me.”

“Any color?”

“Sort of brownish. I couldn’t really see.”

He paused a moment. “And Captain Barnes?”

“During the course of the action, I was separated from Captain Barnes, sir. I don’t know what happened to Captain Barnes, sir.” Tina spoke formally, her face a mask. He thought, Let’s not go into this now. If you ran away, it’s all right with me.

“Has Beth seen this injury, Tina?”

“Yes, sir, she was here a few minutes ago.”

“Okay. Just rest now.”

“Sir?”

“Yes, Tina?”

“Who will be making the report, sir?”

“I don’t know. Let’s not worry about reports now. Let’s just concentrate on getting through this.”

“Yes, sir.”

As he approached Beth’s lab, he heard Tina’s recorded voice say, “Do you think they’ll ever get the sphere open?”

Beth said, “Maybe. I don’t know.” “It scares me.”

And then Tina’s voice came again:

“Do you think they’ll ever get the sphere open?”

“Maybe. I don’t know.”

“It scares me.”

In the lab, Beth was hunched over the console, watching the tape.

“Still at it, huh?” Norman said.

“Yeah.”

On the tape, Beth was finishing her cake, saying, “I don’t think there’s a reason to be scared.”

“It’s the unknown,” Tina said.

“Sure,” Beth said onscreen, “but an unknown thing is not likely to be dangerous or frightening. It’s most likely to be just inexplicable.”

“Famous last words,” Beth said, watching herself.

“It sounded good at the time,” Norman said. “To keep her calmed down.”

Onscreen, Beth said to Tina, “You afraid of snakes?”

“Snakes don’t bother me,” Tina said.

“Well, I can’t stand snakes,” Beth said.

Beth stopped the tape, turned to Norman. “Seems like a long time ago, doesn’t it.”

“I was just thinking that,” Norman said.

“Does this mean we’re living life to the fullest?”

“I think it means we’re in mortal peril,” Norman said. “Why are you so interested in this tape?”

“Because I have nothing better to do, and if I don’t keep busy I’m going to start screaming and make one of those traditional feminine scenes. You’ve already seen me do it once, Norman.”

“Have I? I don’t remember any scene.”

“Thank you,” she said.

Norman noticed a blanket on a couch in the corner of her lab. And Beth had unclipped one of the workbench lamps and mounted it on the wall above the blankets. “You sleeping here now?”

“Yeah, I like it here. Up at the top of the cylinder-I feel like the queen of the underworld.” She smiled. “Sort of like a tree house when you were a kid. Did you ever have a tree house when you were a kid?”

“No,” Norman said, “I never did.”

“Neither did I,” Beth said. “But it’s what I imagine it would be, if I had.”

“Looks very cozy, Beth.”

“You think I’m cracking up?”

“No. I just said it looks cozy.”

“You can tell me if you think I’m cracking up.”

“I think you’re fine, Beth. What about Tina? You’ve seen her injury?”

“Yes.” Beth frowned. “And I’ve seen these.” She gestured to some white eggs in a glass container on the lab bench.

“More eggs?”

“They were clinging to Tina’s suit when she came back in. Her injury is consistent with these eggs. Also the smell: you remember the smell when we pulled her back in?”

Norman remembered very well. Tina had smelled strongly of ammonia. It was almost as if she’d been doused in smelling salts.

Beth said, “As far as I know, there’s only one animal that smells of ammonia that way. Architeuthis sanctipauli.”

“Which is?”

“One of the species of giant squid.”

“That’s what attacked us?”

“I think so, yes.”

She explained that little was known about the giant squid, because the only specimens studied were dead animals that washed ashore, generally in a state of advanced decay, and reeking of ammonia. For most of human history, the giant squid was considered a mythical sea monster, like the kraken. But in 1861 the first reliable scientific reports appeared, after a French warship managed to haul in fragments of one dead animal. And many killed whales which showed scars from giant suckers, testimony of undersea battles. Whales were the only known predator of the giant squid-the only animals large enough to be predators.

“By now,” Beth said, “giant squid have been observed in every major ocean of the world. There are at least three distinct species. The animals grow very large and can weigh a thousand pounds or more. The head is about twenty feet long, with a crown of eight arms. Each arm is about ten feet long, with long rows of suckers. In the center of the crown is a mouth with a sharp beak, like a parrot’s beak, except the jaws are seven inches long.”

“Levy’s torn suit?”

“Yes.” She nodded. “The beak is mounted in a ring of muscle so it can twist in circles as it bites. And the radula-the tongue of the squid-has a raspy, file-like surface.”

“Tina mentioned something about a leaf, a brown leaf.” “The giant squid has two tentacles that extend out much further than the arms, as long as forty feet. Each tentacle ends in a flattened ‘manus’ or ‘palm,’ which looks very much like a big leaf. The manus is what the squid really uses to catch prey. The suckers on the manus are surrounded by a little hard ring of chitin, which is why you see the circular toothmarks around the injury.”

Norman said, “How would you fight one?”

“Well,” Beth said, “in theory, although giant squid are very large, they are not particularly strong.”

“So much for theory,” Norman said.

She nodded. “Of course, nobody knows how strong they are, since a living specimen has never been encountered. We have the dubious distinction of being first.”

“But it can be killed?”

“I would think rather easily. The squid’s brain is located behind the eye, which is about fifteen inches across, the size of a big dinner plate. If you directed an explosive charge into the animal anywhere in that area, you would almost certainly disrupt the nervous system and it would die.”

“Do you think Barnes killed the squid?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Is there more than one in an area?”

“I don’t know.”

“Will we see one again?”

“I don’t know.”

THE VISITOR

Norman went downstairs to the communications center to see if he could talk to Jerry, but Jerry was not responding. Norman must have dozed off in the console chair, because he looked up abruptly, startled to see a trim black seaman in uniform standing just behind him, looking over his shoulder at the screens.

“How’s it going, sir?” the seaman asked. He was very calm. His uniform was crisply pressed.

Norman felt a burst of tremendous elation. This man’s arrival at the habitat could mean only one thing-the surface ships must be back! The ships had returned, and the subs had been sent down to retrieve them! They were all going to be saved!

“Sailor,” Norman said, pumping his hand, “I’m very damn glad to see you.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“When did you get here?” Norman asked.

“Just now, Sir.”

“Do the others know yet?”

“The others, sir?”

“Yes. There’s, uh, there’s six of us left. Have they been told you’re here?”

“I don’t know the answer to that, sir.”

There was a flatness to this man that Norman found odd. The sailor was looking around the habitat, and for a moment Norman saw the environment through his eyes-the damp interior, the wrecked consoles, the foam-spattered walls. It looked like they had fought a war in here.

“We’ve had a rough time,” Norman said.

“I can see that, sir.”

“Three of us have died.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, sir.”

That flatness again. Neutrality. Was he being proper? Was he worried about a pending court-martial? Was it something else entirely?

“Where have you come from?” Norman said.

“Come from, sir?”

“What ship.”

“Oh. The Sea Hornet, sir.”

“It’s topside now?”

“Yes, sir, it is.”

“Well, let’s get moving,” Norman said. “Tell the others you’re here.”

“Yes, sir.”

The seaman went away. Norman stood and shouted, “Yahoo! We’re saved!”

“At least he wasn’t an illusion,” Norman said, staring at the screen. “There he is, big as life, on the monitor.”

“Yes. There he is. But where’d he go?” Beth said. For the last hour, they had searched the habitat thoroughly. There was no sign of the black crewman. There was no sign of a submarine outside. There was no evidence of surface ships. The balloon they had sent up registered eighty-knot winds and thirty-foot waves before the wire snapped.

So where had he come from? And where had he gone? Fletcher was working the consoles. A screen of data came up. “How about this? Log of ships in active service shows no vessel currently designated Sea Hornet.”

Norman said, “What the hell is going on here?”

“Maybe he was an illusion,” Ted said.

“Illusions don’t register on videotape,” Harry said. “Besides, I saw him, too.”

“You did?” Norman said.

“Yeah. I had just woken up, and I had had this dream about being rescued, and I was lying in bed when I heard footsteps and he walked into the room.”

“Did you talk to him?”

“Yes. But he was funny. He was dull. Kind of boring.”

Norman nodded. “You could tell something wasn’t right about him.”

“Yes, you could.”

“But where did he come from?” Beth said.

“I can think of only one possibility,” Ted said. “He came from the sphere. Or at least, he was made by the sphere. By Jerry.”

“Why would Jerry do that? To spy on us?”

Ted shook his head. “I’ve been thinking about this,” he said. “It seems to me that Jerry has the ability to create things. Animals. I don’t think that Jerry is a giant squid, but Jerry created the giant squid that attacked us. I don’t think Jerry wants to attack us, but, from what Beth was telling us, once he made the squid, then the squid might attack the habitat, thinking the cylinders were its mortal enemy, the whale. So the attack happened as a kind of accident of creation.”

They frowned, listening. To Norman, the explanation was entirely too convenient. “I think there is another possibility. That Jerry is hostile.”

“I don’t believe that,” Ted said. “I don’t believe Jerry is hostile.”

“He certainly acts hostile, Ted.”

“But I don’t think he intends to be hostile.”

“Whatever he intends,” Fletcher said, “we better not go through another attack. Because the structure can’t take it. And neither can the support systems.

“After the first attack, I had to increase positive pressure,” Fletcher said, “in order to fix the leaks. To keep water from coming in, I had to increase the pressure of the air inside the habitat to make it greater than the pressure of the water outside. That stopped the leaks, but it meant that air bubbled out through all the cracks. And one hour of repair work consumed nearly sixteen hours of our reserve air. I’ve been worried we’ll run out of air.”

There was a pause. They all considered the implications of that.

“To compensate,” Fletcher said, “I’ve dropped the internal pressure by three centimeters’ pressure. We’re slightly negative right now, and we should be fine. Our air will last us. But another attack under these conditions and we’ll crush like a beer can.”

Norman didn’t like hearing any of this, but at the same time he was impressed with Fletcher’s competence. She was a resource they ought to be using, he thought. “Do you have any suggestions, Teeny, if there’s another attack?”

“Well, we have something in Cyl B called HVDS.”

“Which is?”

“High Voltage Defense System. There’s a little box in B that electrifies the metal walls of the cylinders at all times, to prevent electrolytic corrosion. Very slight electrical charge, you aren’t really aware of it. Anyway, there’s another, green box attached to that one, and it’s the HVDS. It’s basically a low-amp stepup transformer that sends two million volts over the cylinder surface. Should be very unpleasant for any animal.”

“Why didn’t we use it before?” Beth said. “Why didn’t Barnes use it, instead of risking-”

“-Because the Green Box has problems,” Fletcher said. “For one thing, it’s really sort of theoretical. As far as I know, it’s never actually been used in a real undersea work situation.”

“Yes, but it must have been tested.”

“Yes. And in all the tests, it started fires inside the habitat.”

Another pause, while they considered that. Finally Norman said, “Bad fires?”

“The fires tend to burn the insulation, the wall padding.”

“The fires take the padding off!”

“We’d die of heat loss in a few minutes.”

Beth said, “How bad can a fire be? Fires need oxygen to burn, and we’ve only got two percent oxygen down here.”

“That’s true, Dr. Halpern,” Fletcher said, “but the actual oxygen percentage varies. The habitat is made to deliver pulses as high as sixteen percent for brief periods, four times an hour. It’s all automatically controlled; you can’t override it. And if the oxygen percentage is high, then fires burn just fine-three times faster than topside. They easily go out of control.”

Norman looked around the cylinder. He spotted three fire extinguishers mounted on the walls. Now that he thought about it, there were extinguishers all over the habitat. He’d just never really paid attention before.

“Even if we get the fires under control, they’re hell on the systems,” Fletcher said. “The air handlers aren’t made to take the added monoxide by-products and soot.”

“So what do we do?”

“Last resort only,” Fletcher said. “That’d be my recommendation.”

The group looked at each other, nodded.

“Okay,” Norman said. “Last resort only.”

“Let’s just hope we don’t have another attack.”

“Another attack…” There was a long silence as they considered that. Then the gas-plasma screens on Tina’s console jumped, and a soft pinging filled the room.

“We have a contact on peripheral thermals,” Tina said, in a flat voice.

“Where?” Fletcher said.

“North. Approaching.”

And on the monitor, they saw the words:

I AM COMING.

They turned off both the interior and exterior lights. Norman peered through the porthole, straining to see out in the darkness. They had long ago learned that the darkness at this depth was not absolute; the waters of the Pacific were so clear that even a thousand feet down some light registered on the bottom. It was very slight-Edmunds had compared it to starlight-but Norman knew that on the surface you could see by starlight alone.

Now he cupped his hands by the sides of his face to block out the low light coming from Tina’s consoles, waited for his eyes to adjust. Behind him, Tina and Fletcher were working with the monitors. He heard the hiss of the hydrophones in the room.

It was all happening again.

Ted was standing by the monitor, saying, “Jerry, can you hear me? Jerry, are you listening?” But he wasn’t getting through.

Beth came up as Norman peered out the porthole. “You see anything?”

“Not yet.”

Behind them, Tina said, “Eighty yards and closing… Sixty yards. You want sonar?”

“No sonar,” Fletcher said. “Nothing to make ourselves interesting to him.”

“Then should we kill the electronics?”

“Kill everything.”

All the console lights went out. Now there was just the red glow of the space heaters above them. They sat in darkness and stared out. Norman tried to remember how long dark-vision accommodation required. He remembered it might be as long as three minutes.

He began to see shapes: the outline of the grid on the bottom and, dimly, the high fin of the spaceship, rising sharply up.

Then something else.

A green glow in the distance. At the horizon.

“It’s like a green sunrise,” Beth said.

The glow increased in intensity, and then they saw an amorphous green shape with lateral streaks. Norman thought, It’s just like the image we saw before. It looks just like that. He couldn’t really make out the details.

“Is it a squid?” he said. “Yes,” Beth said.

“I can’t see…”

“You’re looking at it end-on. The body is toward us, the tentacles behind, partially blocked by the body. That’s why you can’t see it.”

The squid grew larger. It was definitely coming toward them.

Ted ran from the portholes back to the consoles. “Jerry, are you listening? Jerry?”

“Electronics are off, Dr. Fielding,” Fletcher said. “Well, let’s try and talk to him, for God’s sake.”

“I think we’re past the talking stage now, sir.”

The squid was faintly luminous, the entire body a deep green. Now Norman could see a sharp vertical ridge in the body. The moving tentacles and arms were clear. The outline grew larger. The squid moved laterally.

“It’s going around the grid.”

“Yes,” Beth said. “They’re intelligent animals; they have the ability to learn from experience. It probably didn’t like hitting the grid before, and it remembers.”

The squid passed the spacecraft fin, and they could gauge its size. It’s as big as a house, Norman thought. The creature slid smoothly through the water toward them. He felt a sense of awe, despite his pounding heart.

“Jerry? Jerry!”

“Save your breath, Ted.”

“Thirty yards,” Tina said. “Still coming.”

As the squid came closer, Norman could count the arms, and he saw the two long tentacles, glowing lines extending far beyond the body. The arms and tentacles seemed to move loosely in the water, while the body made rhythmic muscular contractions. The squid propelled itself with water, and did not use the arms for swimming.

“Twenty yards.”

“God, it’s big,” Harry said.

“You know,” Beth said, “we’re the first people in human history to see a free-swimming giant squid. This should be a great moment.”

They heard the gurgling, the rush of water over the hydrophones, as the squid came closer.

“Ten yards.”

For a moment, the great creature turned sideways to the habitat, and they could see its profile-the enormous glowing body, thirty feet long, with the huge unblinking eye; the circle of arms, waving like evil snakes; the two long tentacles, each terminating in a flattened, leaf-shaped section.

The squid continued to turn until its arms and tentacles stretched toward the habitat, and they glimpsed the mouth, the sharp-edged chomping beak in a mass of glowing green muscle.

“Oh God…”

The squid moved forward. They could see each other in the glow through the portholes. It’s starting, Norman thought. It’s starting, and this time we can’t survive it.

There was a thump as a tentacle swung against the habitat. “Jerry!” Ted shouted. His voice was high, strained with tension.

The squid paused. The body moved laterally, and they could see the huge eye staring at them.

“Jerry! Listen to me!”

The squid appeared to hesitate.

“He’s listening!” Ted shouted, and he grabbed a flashlight off a wall bracket and shined it out the porthole. He blinked the light once.

The great body of the squid glowed green, then went momentarily dark, then glowed green again.

“He’s listening,” Beth said.

“Of course he’s listening. He’s intelligent.” Ted blinked his light twice in rapid succession.

The squid blinked back, twice. “How can he do that?” Norman said.

“It’s a kind of skin cell called a chromatophore,” Beth said. “The animal can open and close these cells at will, and block the light.”

Ted blinked three times.

The squid blinked three times. “He can do it fast,” Norman said.

“Yes, fast.”

“He’s intelligent,” Ted said. “I keep telling you. He’s intelligent and he wants to talk.”

Ted blinked long, short, short.

The squid matched the pattern.

“That’s a baby,” Ted said. “You just keep talking to me, Jerry.”

He flashed a more complex pattern, and the squid answered, but then moved off to the left.

“I’ve got to keep him talking,” Ted said.

As the squid moved, Ted moved, skipping from porthole to porthole, shining his light. The squid still blinked its glowing body in reply, but Norman sensed it had another purpose now.

They all followed Ted, from D into C Cyl. Ted flashed his light. The squid answered, but still moved onward. “What’s he doing?”

“Maybe he’s leading us…”

“Why?”

They went to B Cyl, where the life-support equipment was located, but there were no portholes in B. Ted moved on to A, the airlock. There were no portholes here, either. Ted immediately jumped down and opened the hatch in the floor, revealing dark water.

“Careful, Ted.”

“I’m telling you, he’s intelligent,” Ted said. The water at his feet glowed a soft green. “Here he comes now.” They could not see the squid yet, only the glow. Ted blinked his light into the water.

The green blinked back.

“Still talking,” Ted said. “And as long as he’s talking-” With stunning swiftness, the tentacle smashed up through the open water and swung in a great arc around the airlock. Norman had a glimpse of a glowing stalk as thick as a man’s body, and a great glowing leaf five feet long, swinging blindly past him, and as he ducked he saw it hit Beth and knock her sideways. Tina was screaming in terror. Strong ammonia fumes burned their eyes. The tentacle swung back toward Norman. He held up his hands to protect himself, touched slimy, cold flesh as the giant arm spun him, slammed him against the airlock’s metal walls. The animal was incredibly strong.

“Get out, everybody out, away from the metal!” Fletcher was shouting. Ted was scrambling up, away from the hatch and the twisting arm, and he had almost reached the door when the leaf swung back and wrapped around him, covering most of his body. Ted grunted, pushed at the leaf with his hands. His eyes were wide with horror.

Norman ran forward but Harry grabbed him. “Leave him! You can’t do anything now!”

Ted was being swung back and forth in the air across the airlock, banging from wall to wall. His head dropped; blood ran down his forehead onto the glowing tentacle. Still the arm swung him back and forth, the cylinder ringing like a gong with each impact.

“Get out!” Fletcher was shouting. “Everybody out!” Beth scrambled past them. Harry tugged at Norman just as the second tentacle burst above the surface to hold Ted in a pincer grip.

“Off the metal! Damn it, off the metal!” Fletcher was shouting, and they stepped onto the carpet of B Cyl and she threw the switch on the Green Box and there was a hum from the generators and the red heater banks dimmed as two million volts of electricity surged through the habitat.

The response was instantaneous. The floor rocked under their feet as the habitat was struck by an enormous force, and Norman swore he heard a scream, though it might have been rending metal, and the tentacles quickly drew down out of the airlock. They had a last glimpse of Ted’s body as it was pulled into the inky water and Fletcher yanked down the lever on the Green Box. But the alarms had already begun to sound, and the warning boards lit up.

“Fire!” Fletcher shouted. “Fire in E Cyl!”

Fletcher gave them gas masks; Norman’s kept slipping down his forehead, obscuring his vision. By the time they reached D Cylinder, the smoke was dense. They coughed and stumbled, banged into the consoles.

“Stay low,” Tina shouted, dropping to her knees. She was leading the way; Fletcher had stayed behind in B.

Up ahead, an angry red glow outlined the bulkhead door leading to E. Tina grabbed an extinguisher and went through the door, Norman right behind her. At first he thought the entire cylinder was burning. Fierce flames licked up the side padding; dense clouds of smoke boiled toward the ceiling. The heat was almost palpable. Tina swung the extinguisher cylinder around, began to spray white foam. In the light of the fire Norman saw another extinguisher, grabbed it, but the metal was burning hot and he dropped it to the floor.

“Fire in D,” Fletcher said over the intercom. “Fire in D.” Jesus, Norman thought. Despite the mask, he coughed in the acrid smoke. He picked the extinguisher off the floor and began to spray; it immediately became cooler. Tina shouted to him, but he heard nothing except the roar of the flames. He and Tina were getting the fire out, but there was still a large burning patch near one porthole. He turned away, spraying the floor burning at his feet.

He was unprepared for the explosion, the concussion pounding his ears painfully. He turned and saw that a firehose had been unleashed in the room, and then he realized that one of the small portholes had blown or burned out, and the water was rushing in with incredible force.

He couldn’t see Tina; then he saw she had been knocked down; she got to her feet, shouting something at Norman, and then she slipped and slid back into the hissing stream of water. It picked her up bodily and flung her so hard against the opposite wall that he knew at once she must be dead, and when he looked down he saw her floating face-down in the water rapidly filling the room. The back of her head was cut open; he saw the pulpy red flesh of her brain.

Norman turned and fled. Water was already trickling over the lip of the bulkhead as he slammed the heavy door shut, spun the wheel to lock it.

He couldn’t see anything in D; the smoke was worse than before. He saw dim patches of red flame, hazy through the smoke. He heard the hiss of the extinguishers. Where was his own extinguisher? He must have left it in E. Like a blind man he felt along the walls for another extinguisher, coughing in the smoke. His eyes and lungs burned, despite the mask.

And then, with a great groan of metal, the pounding started, the habitat rocking under jolts from the squid outside. He heard Fletcher on the intercom but her voice was scratchy and unclear. The pounding continued, and the horrible wrenching of metal. And Norman thought, We’re going to die. This time, we’re going to die.

He couldn’t find a fire extinguisher but his hands touched something metal on the wall and Norman felt it in the smoky darkness, wondering what it was, some kind of protrusion, and then two million volts surged through his limbs into his body and he screamed once, and fell backward.

AFTERMATH

He was staring at a bank of lights in some odd, angled perspective. He sat up, feeling a sharp pain, and looked around him. He was sitting on the floor in D Cylinder. A faint smoky haze hung in the air. The padded walls were blackened and charred in several places.

There must have been a fire here, he thought, staring at the damage in astonishment. When had this happened? Where had he been at the time?

He got slowly to one knee, and then to his feet. He turned to E Cylinder, but for some reason the bulkhead door to E was shut. He tried to spin the wheel to unlock it; it was jammed shut.

He didn’t see anybody else. Where were the others? Then he remembered something about Ted. Ted had died. The squid swinging Ted’s body in the airlock. And then Fletcher had said to get back, and she had thrown the power switch…

It was starting to come back to him. The fire. There had been a fire in E Cylinder. He had gone into E with Tina to put out the fire. He remembered going into the room, seeing the flames lick up the side of the walls… After that, he wasn’t sure.

Where were the others?

For an awful moment he thought he was the only survivor, but then he heard a cough in C Cyl. He moved toward the sound. He didn’t see anybody so he went to B Cyl.

Fletcher wasn’t there. There was a large streak of blood on the metal pipes, and one of her shoes on the carpet. That was all.

Another cough, from among the pipes.

“Fletcher?”

“Just a minute…”

Beth emerged, grease-streaked, from the pipes. “Good, you’re up. I’ve got most of the systems going, I think. Thank God the Navy has instructions printed on the housings. Anyway, the smoke’s clearing and the air quality is reading all right-not great, but all right-and all the vital stuff seems to be intact. We have air and water and heat and power. I’m trying to find out how much power and air we have left.”

“Where’s Fletcher?”

“I can’t find her anywhere.” Beth pointed to the shoe on the carpet, and the streak of blood.

“Tina?” Norman asked. He was alarmed at the prospect of being trapped down here without any Navy people at all. “Tina was with you,” Beth said, frowning.

“I don’t seem to remember,” Norman said.

“You probably got a jolt of current,” Beth said. “That would give you retrograde amnesia. You won’t remember the last few minutes before the shock. I can’t find Tina, either, but according to the status sensors E Cyl is flooded and shut down. You were with her in E. I don’t know why it flooded.”

“What about Harry?”

“He got a jolt, too, I think. You’re lucky the amperage wasn’t higher or you’d both be fried. Anyway, he’s lying on the floor in C, either sleeping or unconscious. You might want to take a look at him. I didn’t want to risk moving him, so I just left him there.”

“Did he wake up? Talk to you?”

“No, but he seems to be breathing comfortably. Color’s good, all that. Anyway, I thought I better get the life-support systems going.” She wiped grease on her cheek. “I mean, it’s just the three of us now, Norman.”

“You, me, and Harry?”

“That’s right. You, me, and Harry.”

Harry was sleeping peacefully on the floor between the bunks. Norman bent down, lifted one eyelid, shone a light in Harry’s pupil. The pupil contracted.

“This can’t be heaven,” Harry said.

“Why not?” Norman said. He shone the light in the other pupil; it contracted.

“Because you’re here. They don’t let psychologists into heaven.” He gave a weak smile.

“Can you move your toes? Your hands?”

“I can move everything. I walked up here, Norman, from down in C. I’m okay.”

Norman sat back. “I’m glad you’re okay, Harry.” He meant it: he had been dreading the thought of an injury to Harry. From the beginning of the expedition, they had all relied on Harry. At every critical juncture, he had supplied the breakthrough, the necessary understanding. And even now, Norman took comfort in the thought that, if Beth couldn’t figure out the life-support systems, Harry could.

“Yeah, I’m okay.” He closed his eyes again, sighed. “Who’s left?”

“Beth. Me. You.”

“Jesus.”

“Yeah. You want to get up?”

“Yeah, I’ll get in the bunk. I’m real tired, Norman. I could sleep for a year.”

Norman helped him to his feet. Harry dropped quickly onto the nearest bunk.

“Okay if I sleep for a while?”

“Sure.”

“That’s good. I’m real tired, Norman. I could sleep for a year.”

“Yes, you said that-”

He broke off. Harry was snoring. Norman reached over to remove something crumpled on the pillow beneath Harry’s head.

It was Ted Fielding’s notebook.

Norman suddenly felt overwhelmed. He sat on his bunk, holding the notebook in his hands. Finally he looked at a couple of pages, filled with Ted’s large, enthusiastic scrawl. A photograph fell onto his lap. He turned it over. It was a photo of a red Corvette. And the feelings just overwhelmed him. Norman didn’t know if he was crying for Ted, or crying for himself, because it was clear to him that one by one, they were all dying down here. He was very sad, and very afraid.

Beth was in D Cyl, at the communications console, turning on all the monitors.

“They did a pretty good job with this place,” she said. “Everything is marked; everything has instructions; there’re computer help files. An idiot could figure it out. There’s just one problem that I can see.”

“What’s that?”

“The galley was in E Cyl, and E Cyl is flooded. We’ve got no food, Norman.”

“None at all?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Water?”

“Yes, plenty of water, but no food.”

“Well, we can make it without food. How much longer have we got down here?”

“It looks like two more days.”

“We can make it,” Norman said, thinking: Two days, Jesus. Two more days in this place.

“That’s assuming the storm clears on schedule,” Beth added. “I’ve been trying to figure out how to release a surface balloon, and see what it’s like up there. Tina used to punch some special code to release a balloon.”

“We can make it,” Norman said again.

“Oh sure. If worse comes to worst, we can always get food from the spaceship. There’s plenty over there.”

“You think we can risk going outside?”

“We’ll have to,” she said, glancing at the screens, “sometime in the next three hours.”

“Why?”

“The minisub. It has that automatic surfacing timer, unless someone goes over and punches the button.”

“The hell with the sub,” Norman said. “Let the sub go.” “Well, don’t be too hasty,” Beth said. “That sub can hold three people.”

“You mean we could all get out of here in it?”

“Yeah. That’s what I mean.”

“Christ,” Norman said. “Let’s go now.”

“There are two problems with that,” Beth said. She pointed to the screens. “I’ve been going over the specs. First, the sub is unstable on the surface. If there are big waves on the surface, it’ll bounce us around worse than anything we’ve had down here. And the second thing is that we have to link up with a decompression chamber on the surface. Don’t forget, we still have ninety-six hours of decompression ahead of us.”

“And if we don’t decompress?” Norman said. He was thinking, Let’s just go to the surface in the sub and throw open the hatch and see the clouds and the sky and breathe some normal earth air.

“We have to decompress,” Beth said. “Your bloodstream is saturated with helium gas in solution. Right now you’re under pressure, so everything is fine. But if you release that pressure suddenly, it’s just the same as when you pop the top off a soda bottle. The helium will bubble explosively out of your system. You’ll die instantly.”

“Oh,” Norman said.

“Ninety-six hours,” Beth said. “That’s how long it takes to get the helium out of you.”

“Oh.”

Norman went to the porthole and looked across at DH-7, and the minisub. It was a hundred yards away. “You think the squid will come back?”

She shrugged. “Ask Jerry.”

Norman thought, No more of that Geraldine stuff now. Or did she prefer to think of this malevolent entity as masculine?

“Which monitor is it?”

“This one.” She flicked it on. The screen glowed.

Norman said, “Jerry? Are you there?”

No answer.

He typed, JERRY? ARE YOU THERE?

There was no response.

“I’ll tell you something about Jerry,” Beth said. “He can’t really read minds. When we were talking to him before, I sent him a thought and he didn’t respond.”

“I did, too,” Norman said. “I sent both messages and images. He never responded.”

“If we speak, he answers, but if we just think, he doesn’t answer,” Beth said. “So he’s not all-powerful. He actually behaves as if he hears us.”

“That’s right,” Norman said. “Although he doesn’t seem to be hearing us now.”

“No. I tried earlier, too.”

“I wonder why he isn’t answering.”

“You said he was emotional. Maybe he’s sulking.”

Norman didn’t think so. Child kings didn’t sulk. They were vindictive and whimsical, but they didn’t sulk.

“By the way,” she said, “you might want to look at these.” She handed him a stack of printouts. “They’re the record of all the interactions we’ve had with him.”

“They may give us a clue,” Norman said, thumbing through the sheets without any real enthusiasm. He felt suddenly tired.

“Anyway, it’ll occupy your mind.”

“True.”

“Personally,” Beth said, “I’d like to go back to the ship.”

“What for?”

“I’m not convinced we’ve found everything that’s there.”

“It’s a long way to the ship,” Norman said.

“I know. But if we get a clear time without the squid, I might try it.”

“Just to occupy your mind?”

“I guess you could say that.” She glanced at her watch. “Norman, I’m going to get a couple of hours of sleep,” she said. “Then we can draw straws to see who goes to the submarine.”

“Okay.”

“You seem depressed, Norman.”

“I am.”

“Me, too,” she said. “This place feels like a tomb-and I’ve been prematurely buried.”

She climbed the ladder to her laboratory, but apparently she didn’t go to sleep, because after a few moments, he heard Tina’s recorded voice on videotape saying, “Do you think they’ll ever get the sphere open?”

And Beth replied, “Maybe. I don’t know.”

“It scares me.”

The whirr of rewinding and a short delay, then: “Do you think they’ll ever get the sphere open?”

“Maybe. I don’t know.”

“It scares me.”

The tape was becoming an obsession with Beth.

He stared at the printouts on his lap, and then he looked at the screen. “Jerry?” he said. “Are you there?”

Jerry did not answer.

THE SUB

She was shaking his shoulder gently. Norman opened his eyes.

“It’s time,” Beth said.

“Okay.” He yawned. God, he was tired. “How much time is left?”

“Half an hour.”

Beth switched on the sensory array at the communications console, adjusted the settings.

“You know how to work all that stuff?” Norman said. “The sensors?”

“Pretty well. I’ve been learning it.”

“Then I should go to the sub,” he said. He knew Beth would never agree, that she would insist on doing the active thing, but he wanted to make the effort.

“Okay,” she said. “You go. That makes sense.”

He covered his surprise. “I think so, too.”

“Somebody has to watch the array,” she said. “And I can give you warning if the squid is coming.”

“Right,” he said. Thinking, Hell, she’s serious. “I don’t think this is one for Harry,” Norman said.

“No, Harry’s not very physical. And he’s still asleep. I say, let him sleep.”

“Right,” Norman said.

“You’ll need help with your suit,” Beth said.

“Oh, that’s right, my suit,” Norman said. “The fan is broken in my suit.”

“Fletcher fixed it for you,” Beth said.

“I hope she did it right.”

“Maybe I should go instead,” Beth said.

“No, no. You watch the consoles. I’ll go. It’s only a hundred yards or so, anyway. It can’t be a big deal.”

“All clear now,” she said, glancing at the monitors.

“Right,” Norman said.

His helmet clicked in place, and beth tapped his faceplate, gave him a questioning look: was everything all right?

Norman nodded, and she opened the floor hatch for him. He waved goodbye and jumped into the chilly black water. On the sea floor, he stood beneath the hatch for a moment and waited to make sure he could hear his circulating fan. Then he moved out from beneath the habitat.

There were only a few lights on in the habitat, and he could see many thin lines of bubbles streaming upward, from the leaking cylinders.

“How are you?” Beth said, over the intercom. “Okay. You know the place is leaking?”

“It looks worse than it is,” Beth said. “Trust me.” Norman came to the edge of the habitat and looked across the hundred yards of open sea floor that separated him from DH-7. “How does it look? Still clear?”

“Still clear,” Beth said.

Norman set out. He walked as quickly as he could, but he felt as if his feet were moving in slow motion. He was soon short of breath; he swore.

“What’s the matter?”

“I can’t go fast.” He kept looking north, expecting at any moment to see the greenish glow of the approaching squid, but the horizon remained dark.

“You’re doing fine, Norman. Still clear.”

He was now fifty yards from the habitat-halfway there. He could see DH-7, much smaller than their own habitat, a single cylinder forty feet high, with very few portholes. Alongside it was the inverted dome, and the minisub.

“You’re almost there,” Beth said. “Good work.”

Norman began to feel dizzy. He slowed his pace. He could now see markings on the gray surface of the habitat. There were all sorts of block-printed Navy stencils.

“Coast is still clear,” Beth said. “Congratulations. Looks like you made it.”

He moved under the DH-7 cylinder, looked up at the hatch. It was closed. He spun the wheel, pushed it open. He couldn’t see much of the interior, because most of the lights were out. But he wanted to have a look inside. There might be something, some weapon, they could use.

“Sub first,” Beth said. “You’ve only got ten minutes to push the button.”

“Right.”

Norman moved to the sub. Standing behind the twin screws, he read the name: Deepstar III. The sub was yellow, like the sub that he had ridden down, but its configuration was somewhat different. He found handholds on the side, pulled himself up into the pocket of air trapped inside the dome. There was a large acrylic bubble canopy on top of the sub for the pilot; Norman found the hatch behind, opened it, and dropped inside.

“I’m in the sub.”

There was no answer from Beth. She probably couldn’t hear him, surrounded by all this metal. He looked around the sub, thinking, I’m dripping wet. But what was he supposed to do, wipe his shoes before entering? He smiled at the thought. He found the tapes secured in an aft compartment. There was plenty of room for more, and plenty of room for three people. But Beth was right about going to the surface: the interior of the sub was crammed with instruments and sharp edges. If you got banged around in here it wouldn’t be pleasant.

Where was the delay button? He looked at the darkened instrument panel, and saw a single flashing red light above a button marked “TIMER HOLD.” He pressed the button.

The red light stopped flashing, and now remained steadily on. A small amber video screen glowed:

Timer Reset - Counting 12:00:00

As he watched, the numbers began to run backward. He must have done it, he thought. The video screen switched off. Still looking at all the instruments, a thought occurred to him: in an emergency, could he operate this sub? He slipped into the pilot’s chair, faced the bewildering dials and switches of the instrument array. There didn’t seem to be any steering apparatus, no wheel or joystick. How did you work the damned thing?

The video screen switched on:

DEEPSTAR III - COMMAND MODULE

Do you require help?

Yes No Cancel

Yes, he thought. I require help. He looked around for a “YES” button near the screen, but there wasn’t any that he could see. Finally he thought to touch the screen, pressing “YES.”

DEEPSTAR III - CHECKLIST OPTIONS

Descend Ascend

Secure Shutdown

Monitor Cancel

He pressed “ASCEND.” The screen changed to a small drawing of the instrument panel. One particular section of the drawing blinked on and off. Beneath the picture were the words:

DEEPSTAR III - ASCEND CHECKLIST

1. Set Ballast Blowers To: On

Proceed To Next Cancel

So that was how it worked, Norman thought. A step-by-step checklist stored in the sub’s computer. All you had to do was follow directions. He could do that.

A small surge of current moved the sub, swaying it at its tether.

He pressed the “CANCEL” and the screen went blank. It flashed:

Timer Reset - Counting 11:53:04

The counter was still running backward. He thought, Have I really been here seven minutes? Another surge of current, and the sub swayed again. It was time to go.

He moved to the hatch, climbed out into the dome, and closed the hatch. He lowered himself down the side of the sub, touched the bottom. Out from beneath the shielding metal, his radio immediately crackled.

“-you there? Norman, are you there? Answer, please!”

It was Harry, on the radio.

“I’m here,” Norman said.

“Norman, for God’s sake-”

In that moment, Norman saw the greenish glow, and he knew why the sub had surged and rocked at its moorings. The squid was just ten yards away, its glowing tentacles writhing out toward him, churning up the sediment along the ocean floor.

“-Norman, will you-”

There was no time to think. Norman took three steps, jumped, and pulled himself through the open hatch into DH-7.

He slammed the hatch door down behind him but the flat, spade-like tentacle was already reaching in. He pinned the tentacle in the partially closed hatch, but the tentacle didn’t withdraw. It was incredibly strong and muscular, writhing as he watched, the suckers like small puckered mouths opening and closing. Norman stomped down on the hatch, trying to force the tentacle to withdraw. With a muscular flip, the hatch flew open, knocking him backward, and the tentacle reached up into the habitat. He smelled the strong odor of ammonium.

Norman fled, climbing higher into the cylinder. The second tentacle appeared, splashing up through the hatch. The two tentacles swung in circles beneath him, searching. He came to a porthole and looked out, saw the great body of the animal, the huge round staring eye. He clambered higher, getting away from the tentacles. Most of the cylinder seemed to be given over to storage; it was crammed with equipment, boxes, tanks. Many of the boxes were bright red with stencils: “CAUTION NO SMOKING NO ELECTRONICS TEVAC EXPLOSIVES.” There were a hell of a lot of explosives in here, he thought, stumbling upward.

The tentacles rose higher behind him. Somewhere, in a detached, logical part of his brain, he thought: The cylinder is only forty feet high, and the tentacles are at least forty feet long. There will be no place for me to hide.

He stumbled, banged his knee, kept going. He heard the slap of the tentacles as they struck the walls, swung upward toward him.

A weapon, he thought. I have to find a weapon.

He came to the small galley, metal counter, some pots and pans. He pulled the drawers open hastily, looking for a knife. He could find only a small paring knife, threw it away in disgust. He heard the tentacles coming closer. The next moment he was knocked down, his helmet banging on the deck. Norman scrambled to his feet, dodged the tentacle, moved up the cylinder.

A communications section: radio set, computer, a couple of monitors. The tentacles were right behind him, slithering up like nightmarish vines. His eyes burned from the ammonia fumes.

He came to the bunks, a narrow space near the top of the cylinder.

No place to hide, he thought. No weapons, and no place to hide.

The tentacles reached the top of the cylinder, slapped against the upper curved surface, swung sideways. In a moment they would have him. He grabbed the mattress from one bunk, held it up as flimsy protection. The two tentacles were swinging erratically around him. He dodged the first.

And then with a whump the second tentacle coiled around him, holding both him and the mattress in a cold, slimy grip. He felt a sickening slow squeeze, the dozens of suckers gripping his body, cutting into his skin. He moaned in horror. The second tentacle swung back to grip him along with the first. He was trapped in a vise.

Oh God, he thought.

The tentacles swung away from the wall, lifting him high in the air, into the middle of the cylinder. This is it, he thought, but in the next moment he felt his body sliding downward past the mattress, and he slipped through the grip and fell through the air. He grabbed the tentacles for support, sliding down the giant evil-smelling vines, and then he crashed down onto the deck near the galley, his head banging on the metal deck. He rolled onto his back.

He saw the two tentacles above, gripping the mattress, squeezing it, twisting it. Did the squid realize what had happened, that he had gotten free?

Norman looked around desperately. A weapon, a weapon. This was a Navy habitat. There must be a weapon somewhere.

The tentacles tore the mattress apart. Shreds of white padding drifted down through the cylinder. The tentacles released the mattress, the big pieces falling. Then the tentacles started swinging around the habitat again.

Searching.

It knows, he thought. It knows I have gotten away, and that I am still in here somewhere. It is hunting me.

But how did it know?

Norman ducked behind the galley as one of the flat tentacles came crashing through the pots and pans, sweeping around, feeling for him. Norman scrambled back, coming up against a large potted plant. The tentacle was still searching, moving restlessly across the floor, banging the pans. Norman pushed the plant forward, and the tentacle gripped it, uprooted it easily, sweeping it away into the air.

The distraction allowed Norman to scramble forward. A weapon, he thought. A weapon.

He looked down to where the mattress had fallen, and he saw, lining the wall near the bottom hatch, a series of silver vertical bars. Spear guns! Somehow he had missed them on the way up. Each spear gun was tipped in a fat bulb like a hand grenade. Explosive tips? He started to climb down.

The tentacles were sliding down, too, following him. How did the squid know where he was? And then, as he passed a porthole, he saw the eye outside and he thought, He can see me, for God’s sake.

Stay away from the portholes.

Not thinking clearly. Everything happening fast. Crawling down past the explosive crates in the storage hold, thinking, I better not miss in here, and he landed with a clang on the airlock deck.

The arms were slithering down, moving down the cylinder toward him. He tugged at one of the spear guns. It was strapped to the wall with a rubber cord. Norman pulled at it, tried to release it. The tentacles drew closer. He yanked at the rubber, but it wouldn’t release. What was wrong with these snaps?

The tentacles were closer. Coming down swiftly.

Then he realized the cords had safety catches: you had to pull the guns sideways, not out. He did; the rubber popped free. The spear gun was in his hand. He turned, and the tentacle knocked him down. He flipped onto his back and saw the great flat suckered palm of the tentacle coming straight down on him, and the tentacle wrapped over his helmet, everything was black, and he fired.

There was tremendous pain in his chest and abdomen. For a horrified moment he thought he had shot himself. Then he gasped and he realized it was just the concussion; his chest was burning, but the squid released him.

He still couldn’t see. He pulled the palm off his face and it fell heavily onto the deck, writhing, severed from the squid arm. The interior walls of the habitat were splattered with blood. One tentacle was still moving, the other was a bloody, ragged stump. Both arms pulled out through the hatch, slipped into the water.

Norman ran for the porthole; the squid moved swiftly away, the green glow diminishing. He had done it! He’d beaten it off.

He’d done it.

DH-8

“How many did you bring?” Harry said, turning the spear gun over in his hands.

“Five,” Norman said. “That was all I could carry.”

“But it worked?” He was examining the bulbous explosive tip.

“Yeah, it worked. Blew the whole tentacle off.”

“I saw the squid going away,” Harry said. “I figured you must have done something.”

“Where’s Beth?”

“I don’t know. Her suit’s gone. I think she may have gone to the ship.”

“Gone to the ship?” Norman said, frowning.

“All I know is, when I woke up she was gone. I figured you were over at the habitat, and then I saw the squid, and I tried to get you on the radio but I guess the metal blocked the transmission.”

“Beth left?” Norman said. He was starting to get angry. Beth was supposed to stay at the communications console, watching the sensors for him while he was outside. Instead, she had gone to the ship?

“Her suit’s gone,” Harry said again.

“Son of a bitch!” Norman said. He was suddenly furious-really, deeply furious. He kicked the console.

“Careful there,” Harry said.

“Damn it!”

“Take it easy,” Harry said, “come on, take it easy, Norman.”

“What the hell does she think she’s doing?”

“Come on, sit down, Norman.” Harry steered him to a chair. “We’re all tired.”

“Damn right we’re tired!”

“Easy, Norman, easy… Remember your blood pressure.”

“My blood pressure’s fine!”

“Not now, it’s not,” Harry said. “You’re purple.”

“How could she let me go outside and then just leave?”

“Worse, go out herself,” Harry said.

“But she wasn’t watching out for me any more,” Norman said. And then it came to him, why he was so angry-he was angry because he was afraid. At a moment of great personal danger, Beth had abandoned him. There were only three of them left down there, and they needed each other-they needed to depend on each other. But Beth was unreliable, and that made him afraid. And angry.

“Can you hear me?” her voice said, on the intercom. “Anybody hear me?”

Norman reached for the microphone, but Harry snatched it away. “I’ll do this,” he said. “Yes, Beth, we can hear you.”

“I’m in the ship,” she said, her voice crackling on the intercom. “I’ve found another compartment, aft, behind the crew bunks. It’s quite interesting.”

Quite interesting, Norman thought. Jesus, quite interesting. He grabbed the microphone from Harry. “Beth, what the hell are you doing over there?”

“Oh, hi, Norman. You made it back okay, huh?”

“Barely.”

“You have some trouble?” She didn’t sound concerned.

“Yes, I did.”

“Are you all right? You sound mad.”

“You bet I’m mad. Beth, why did you leave while I was out there?”

“Harry said he’d take over for me.”

“He what?” Norman looked at Harry. Harry was shaking his head no.

“Harry said he’d take over at the console for me. He told me to go ahead to the ship. Since the squid wasn’t around, it seemed like a good time.”

Norman cupped his hand over microphone. “I don’t the remember that,” Harry said.

“Did you talk to her?”

“I don’t remember talking to her.”

Beth said, “Just ask him, Norman. He’ll tell you.”

“He says he never said that.”

“Well, then, he’s full of it,” Beth said. “What do you think, I’d abandon you when you were outside, for Christ’s sake?” There was a pause. “I’d never do that, Norman.”

“I swear,” Harry said to Norman. “I never had any conversation with Beth. I never talked to her at all. I’m telling you, she was gone when I woke up. There was nobody here. If you ask me, she always intended to go to the ship.”

Norman remembered how quickly Beth had agreed to let Norman go to the sub, how surprised he had been. Perhaps Harry was right, he thought. Perhaps Beth had been planning it all along.

“You know what I think?” Harry said. “I think she’s cracking up.”

Over the intercom, Beth said, “You guys get it straightened out?”

Norman said, “I think so, Beth, yes.”

“Good,” Beth said. “Because I have made a discovery over here, in the spaceship.”

“What’s that?”

“I’ve found the crew.”

“You both came,” Beth said. She was sitting on a console in the comfortable beige flight deck of the spacecraft. “Yes,” Norman said, looking at her. She looked okay. If anything, she looked better than ever. Stronger, clearer. She actually looked rather beautiful, he thought. “Harry thought that the squid wouldn’t come back.”

“The squid was out there?”

Norman briefly told her about his attack.

“Jesus. I’m sorry, Norman. I’d never have left if I had any idea.”

She certainly didn’t sound like somebody who was cracking up, Norman thought. She sounded appropriate and sincere. “Anyway,” he said, “I injured it, and Harry thought it wouldn’t come back.”

Harry said, “And we couldn’t decide who should stay behind, so we both came.”

“Well, come this way,” Beth said. She led them back, through the crew quarters, past the twenty bunks for the crew, the large galley. Norman paused at the galley. So did Harry.

“I’m hungry,” Harry said.

“Eat something,” Beth said. “I did. They have some sort of nut bars or something, they taste okay.” She opened a drawer in the galley, produced bars wrapped in metal foil, gave them each one. Norman tore the foil and saw something that looked like chocolate. It tasted dry.

“Anything to drink?”

“Sure.” She threw open a refrigerator door. “Diet Coke?”

“You’re kidding…

“The can design is different, and I’m afraid it’s warm, but it’s Diet Coke, all right.”

“I’m buying stock in that company,” Harry said. “Now that we know it’ll still be there in fifty years.” He read the can. “Official drink of the Star Voyager Expedition.”

“Yeah, it’s a promo,” Beth said.

Harry turned the can around. The other side was printed in Japanese. “Wonder what this means?”

“It means, don’t buy that stock after all,” she said. Norman sipped the Coke with a sense of vague unease. The galley seemed subtly changed from the last time he had seen it. He wasn’t sure-he’d only glanced briefly at the room before-but he usually had a good memory for room layouts, and his wife had always joked that Norman could find his way around any kitchen. “You know,” he said, “I don’t remember a refrigerator in the galley.”

“I never really noticed, myself,” Beth said.

“As a matter of fact,” Norman said, “this whole room looks different to me. It looks bigger, and-I don’t know-different.”

“It’s ‘cause you’re hungry.” Harry grinned.

“Maybe,” Norman said. Harry could actually be right. In the sixties, there had been a number of studies of visual perception which demonstrated that subjects interpreted blurred slides according to their predispositions. Hungry people saw all the slides as food.

But this room really did look different. For instance, he didn’t remember the door to the galley being to the left, as it was now. He remembered it as being in the center of the wall separating the galley from the bunks.

“This way,” Beth said, leading them farther aft. “Actually, the refrigerator was what got me thinking. It’s one thing to store a lot of food on a test ship being sent through a black hole. But to stock a refrigerator-why bother to do that? It made me think, there might be a crew after all.”

They entered a short, glass-walled tunnel. Deep-purple lights glowed down on them. “Ultraviolet,” Beth said. “I don’t know what it’s for.”

“Disinfection?”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe it’s to get a suntan,” Harry said. “Vitamin D.” Then they came into a large room unlike anything Norman had ever seen. The floor glowed purple, bathing the room in ultraviolet light from beneath. Mounted on all four walls were a series of wide glass tubes. Inside each tube was a narrow silver mattress. The tubes all appeared empty.

“Over here,” Beth said.

They peered through one glass tube. The naked woman had once been beautiful. It was still possible to see that. Her skin was dark brown and deeply wrinkled, her body withered.

“Mummified?” Harry said.

Beth nodded. “Best I can figure out. I haven’t opened the tube, considering the risk of infection.”

“What was this room?” he said, looking around.

“It must be some kind of hibernation chamber. Each tube is separately connected to a life-support system-power supply, air handlers, heaters, the works-in the next room.”

Harry counted. “Twenty tubes,” he said.

“And twenty bunks,” Norman said.

“So where is everybody else?”

Beth shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“This woman is the only one left?”

“Looks like it. I haven’t found any others.”

“I wonder how they all died,” Harry said.

“Have you been to the sphere?” Norman asked Beth.

“No. Why?”

“Just wondered.”

“You mean, you wondered if the crew died after they picked up the sphere?”

“Basically, yes.”

“I don’t think the sphere is aggressive or dangerous in any sense,” Beth said. “It’s possible that the crew died of natural causes in the course of the journey itself. This woman, for example, is so well preserved it makes you wonder about radiation. Maybe she got a large dose of radiation. There’s tremendous radiation around a black hole.”

“You think the crew died going through the black hole, and the sphere was picked up automatically by the spacecraft later?”

“It’s possible.”

“She’s pretty good-looking,” Harry said, peering through the glass. “Boy, the reporters would go crazy with this, wouldn’t they? Sexy woman from the future found nude and mummified. Film at eleven.”

“She’s tall, too,” Norman said. “She must be over six feet.”

“An Amazon woman,” Harry said. “With great tits.”

“All right,” Beth said.

“What’s wrong-offended on her behalf?” Harry said.

“I don’t think there’s any need for comments of that kind.”

“Actually, Beth,” Harry said, “she looks a little like you.”

Beth frowned.

“I’m serious. Have you looked at her?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

Norman peered through the glass, shielding his hand against the reflection of the purple UV tubes in the floor. The mummified woman did indeed look like Beth-younger, taller, stronger, but like Beth, nevertheless. “He’s right,” Norman said.

“Maybe she’s you, from the future,” Harry said.

“No, she’s obviously in her twenties.”

“Maybe she’s your granddaughter.”

“Pretty unlikely,” Beth said.

“You never know,” Harry said. “Does Jennifer look like you?”

“Not really. But she’s at that awkward stage. And she doesn’t look like that woman. And neither do I.”

Norman was struck by the conviction with which Beth denied any resemblance or association to the mummified woman. “Beth,” he said, “what do you suppose happened here? Why is this woman the only one left?”

“I think she was important to the expedition,” Beth said. “Maybe even the captain, or the co-captain. The others were mostly men. And they did something foolish-I don’t know what-something she advised them against-and as a result they all died. She alone remained alive in this spacecraft. And she piloted it home. But there was something wrong with her-something she couldn’t help-and she died.”

“What was wrong with her?”

“I don’t know. Something.”

Fascinating, Norman thought. He’d never really considered it before, but this room-for that matter, this entire spacecraft-was one big Rorschach. Or more accurately, a TAT. The Thematic Apperception Test was a psychological test that consisted of a series of ambiguous pictures. Subjects were supposed to tell what they thought was happening in the pictures. Since no clear story was implied by the pictures, the subjects supplied the stories. And the stories told much more about the storytellers than about the pictures.

Now Beth was telling them her fantasy about this room: that a woman had been in charge of the expedition, the men had failed to listen to her, they had died, and she alone had remained alive, the sole survivor.

It didn’t tell them much about this spaceship. But it told them a lot about Beth.

“I get it,” Harry said. “You mean she’s the one who made the mistake and piloted the ship back too far into the past. Typical woman driver.”

“Do you have to make a joke of everything?”

“Do you have to take everything so seriously?”

“This is serious,” Beth said.

“I’ll tell you a different story,” Harry said. “This woman screwed up. She was supposed to do something, and she forgot to do it, or else she made a mistake. And then she went into hibernation. As a result of her mistake, the rest of the crew died, and she never woke up from the hibernation-never realized what she had done, because she was so unaware of what was really happening.”

“I’m sure you like that story better,” Beth said. “It fits with your typical black-male contempt for women.”

“Easy,” Norman said.

“You resent the power of the female,” Beth said.

“What power? You call lifting weights power? That’s only strength-and it comes out of a feeling of weakness, not power.”

“You skinny little weasel,” Beth said.

“What’re you going to do, beat me up?” Harry said. “Is that your idea of power?”

“I know what power is,” Beth said, glaring at him.

“Easy, easy,” Norman said. “Let’s not get into this.”

Harry said, “What do you think, Norman? Do you have a story about the room, too?”

“No,” Norman said. “I don’t.”

“Oh, come on,” Harry said. “I bet you do.”

“No,” Norman said. “And I’m not going to mediate between you two. We’ve all got to stay together on this. We have to work as a team, as long as we’re down here.”

“It’s Harry who’s divisive,” Beth said. “From the beginning of this trip, he’s tried to make trouble with everybody. All those snide little comments…”

“What snide little comments?” Harry said.

“You know perfectly well what snide little comments,” Beth said.

Norman walked out of the room. “Where’re you going?”

“Your audience is leaving.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re both boring.”

“Oh,” Beth said, “Mr. Cool Psychologist decides we are boring?”

“That’s right,” Norman said, walking through the glass tunnel, not looking back.

“Where do you get off, making all these judgments of other people?” Beth shouted at him.

He kept walking.

“I’m speaking to you! Don’t you walk away while I’m speaking to you, Norman!”

He came into the galley once more and started opening the drawers, looking for the nut bars. He was hungry again, and the search took his mind off the other two. He had to admit he was disturbed by the way things were going. He found a bar, tore the foil, ate it.

Disturbed, but not surprised. In studies of group dynamics he had long ago verified the truth of the old statement “Three’s a crowd.” For a high-tension situation, groups of three were inherently unstable. Unless everybody had clearly defined responsibilities, the group tended to form shifting allegiances, two against one. That was what was happening now.

He finished the nut bar, and immediately ate another one. How much longer did they have down here? At least thirty-six hours more. He looked for a place to carry additional nut bars, but his polyester jumpsuit had no pockets.

Beth and Harry came into the galley, much chagrined.

“Want a nut bar?” he said, chewing.

“We want to apologize,” she said.

“For what?”

“For acting like children,” Harry said.

“I’m embarrassed,” Beth said. “I feel terrible about losing my temper that way, I feel like a complete idiot… Beth was hanging her head, staring at the floor. Interesting how she flipped, he thought, from aggressive self-confidence to the complete opposite, abject self-apology. Nothing in between.

“Let’s not take it too far,” he said. “We’re all tired.”

“I feel just awful,” Beth continued. “Really awful. I feel as if I’ve let you both down. I shouldn’t be here in the first place. I’m not worthy to be in this group.”

Norman said, “Beth, have a nut bar and stop feeling sorry for yourself.”

“Yes,” Harry said. “I think I like you better angry.”

“I’m sick of those nut bars,” Beth said. “Before you came here, I ate eleven of them.”

“Well, make it an even dozen,” Norman said, “and we’ll go back to the habitat.”

Walking back across the ocean floor, they were tense, watching for the squid. But Norman derived comfort from the fact that they were armed. And something else: some inner confidence that came from his earlier confrontation with the squid.

“You hold that spear gun like you mean it,” Beth said. “Yes. I guess so.” All his life he had been an academic, a university researcher, and had never conceived of himself as a man of action. At least, nothing beyond the occasional game of golf. Now, holding the spear gun ready, he found he rather liked the feeling.

As he walked he noticed the profusion of sea fans on the path between the spacecraft and the habitat. They were obliged to walk around the fans, which were sometimes four and five feet tall, gaudy purple and blue in their lights. Norman was quite sure that the fans had not been down here when they first arrived at the habitat.

Now there were not only colorful fans, but schools of large fish, too. Most of the fish were black with a reddish stripe across the back. Beth said they were Pacific surgeonfish, normal for the region.

Everything is changing, he thought. It’s all changing around us. But he wasn’t sure about that. He didn’t really trust his memory down here. There were too many other things to alter his perceptions-the high-pressure atmosphere, the injuries he had received, and the nagging tension and fear he lived with.

Something pale caught his eye. Shining his light down on the bottom, he saw a wriggling white streak with a long thin fin and black stripes. At first he thought it was an eel. Then he saw the tiny head, the mouth.

“Just wait,” Beth said, putting her arm on him. “What is it?”

“Sea snake.”

“Are they dangerous?”

“Not usually.”

“Poisonous?” Harry said.

“Very Poisonous.”

The snake stayed close to the bottom, apparently looking for food. The snake ignored them entirely, and Norman found it quite beautiful to watch, particularly as it moved farther away.

“It gives me the creeps,” Beth said.

“Do you know what kind it is?” Norman said.

“It may be a Belcher’s,” Beth said. “Pacific sea snakes are all poisonous, but Belcher’s sea snake is the most poisonous. In fact, some researchers think it’s the deadliest reptile in the world, with venom a hundred times more powerful than the venom of a king cobra or the black tiger snake.”

“So if it bit you…”

“Two minutes, tops.”

They watched the snake slither away among the fans. Then it was gone.

“Sea snakes are not usually aggressive,” Beth said. “Some divers even touch them, play with them, but I never would. God. Snakes.”

“Why are they so poisonous? Is it for immobilizing prey?”

“You know, it’s interesting,” Beth said, “but the most toxic creatures in the world are all water creatures. The venom of land animals is nothing in comparison. And even among land animals, the most deadly poison is derived from an amphibian, a toad, Bufotene marfensis. In the sea, there are poisonous fish, like the blowfish, which is a delicacy in Japan; there are poisonous shells, like the star cone, Alaverdis lotensis. Once I was on a boat in Guam and a woman brought up a star cone. The shells are very beautiful, but she didn’t know you have to keep your fingers away from the point. The animal extruded its poison spine and stung her in the palm. She took three steps before she collapsed in convulsions, and she died within an hour. There are also poisonous plants, poisonous sponges, poisonous corals. And then the snakes. Even the weakest of the sea snakes are invariably lethal.”

“Nice,” Harry said.

“Well, you have to recognize that the ocean is a much older living environment than the land. There’s been life in the oceans for three and a half billion years, much longer than on land. The methods of competition and defense are much more highly developed in the ocean-there’s been more time.”

“You mean a few billion years from now, there will be tremendously poisonous animals on land, too?”

“If we get that far,” she said.

“Let’s just get back to the habitat,” Harry said.

The habitat was now very close. They could see all the streaming bubbles rising from the leaks.

“Leaking like a bastard,” Harry said. “I think we’ve got enough air.”

“I think I’ll check.”

“Be my guest,” Beth said, “but I did a thorough job.” Norman thought another argument was about to start, but Beth and Harry dropped it. They came to the hatch and climbed up into DH-8.

THE CONSOLE

“Jerry?”

Norman stared at the console screen. It remained blank, just a blinking cursor.

“Jerry, are you there?” The screen was blank.

“I wonder why we aren’t hearing from you, Jerry,” Norman said.

The screen remained blank.

“Trying a little psychology?” Beth said. She was checking the controls for the external sensors, reviewing the graphs. “If you ask me, the person you should use your psychology on is Harry.”

“What do you mean?”

“What I mean is, I don’t think Harry should be screwing around with our life-support systems. I don’t think he’s stable.”

“Stable?”

“That’s a psychologist’s trick, isn’t it? To repeat the last word in a sentence. It’s a way to keep the person talking.”

“Talking?” Norman said, smiling at her.

“Okay, maybe I am a little stressed out,” she said. “But, Norman, seriously. Before I left for the ship, Harry came into this room and said he would take over for me. I told him you were at the sub but there weren’t any squid around and that I wanted to go to the ship. He said fine, he’d take over. So I left. And now he doesn’t remember any of that. Doesn’t that strike you as pretty screwy?”

“Screwy?” Norman said.

“Stop it, be serious.”

“Serious?” Norman said.

“Are you trying to avoid this conversation? I notice how you avoid what you don’t want to talk about. You keep everybody on an even keel, steer the conversation away from hard topics. But I think you should listen to what I’m saying, Norman. There’s a problem with Harry.”

“I’m listening to what you’re saying, Beth.”

“And?”

“I wasn’t present for this particular episode, so I don’t really know. What I see of Harry now looks like the same old Harry-arrogant, disdainful, and very, very intelligent.”

“You don’t think he’s cracking up?”

“No more than the rest of us.”

“Jesus! What do I have to do to convince you? I had a whole conversation with the man and now he denies it. You think that’s normal? You think we can trust a person like that?”

“Beth. I wasn’t there.”

“You mean it might be me.”

“I wasn’t there.”

“You think I might be the one who’s cracking up? I say there was a conversation when there really wasn’t?”

“Beth.”

“Norman, I’m telling you. There is a problem about Harry and you aren’t facing up to it.”

They heard footsteps approaching.

“I’m going to my lab,” she said. “You think about what I’ve said.”

She climbed the ladder as Harry walked in. “Well, guess what? Beth did an excellent job with the life-support systems. Everything looks fine. We have air for fifty-two hours more at present rates of consumption. We should be fine. You talking to Jerry?”

“What?” Norman said. Harry pointed to the screen:

HELLO NORMAN.

“I don’t know when he came back. He wasn’t talking earlier.”

“Well, he is now,” Harry said.

HELLO HARRY.

“How’s it going, Jerry?” Harry said.

FINE THANK YOU. HOW ARE YOU? I AM WANTING SO MUCH TO TALK WITH YOUR ENTITIES. WHERE IS THE CONTROL ENTITY HARALD C. BARNES?

“Don’t you know?”

I DO NOT SENSE THAT ENTITY NOW.

“He’s, uh, gone.”

I SEE. HE WAS NOT FRIENDLY. HE DID NOT ENJOY TO TALK WITH ME.

Norman thought, What is he telling us? Did Jerry get rid of Barnes because he thought he was unfriendly?

“Jerry,” Norman said, “what happened to the control entity?”

HE WAS NOT FRIENDLY. I DID NOT LIKE HIM.

“Yes, but what happened to him?”

HE IS NOT NOW.

“And the other entities?”

AND THE OTHER ENTITIES. THEY DID NOT ENJOY TO TALKING WITH ME.

Harry said, “You think he’s saying he got rid of them?

I AM NOT HAPPY TO TALKING WITH THEM.

“So he got rid of all the Navy people?” Harry said. Norman was thinking, That’s not quite correct. He also got rid of Ted, and Ted was trying to communicate with him. Or with the squid. Was the squid related to Jerry? How would Norman ask that?

“Jerry…”

YES NORMAN. I AM HERE.

“Let’s talk.”

GOOD. I LIKE THAT MUCH.

“Tell us about the squid, Jerry.”

THE ENTITY SQUID IS A MANIFESTATION.

“Where did it come from?”

DO YOU LIKE IT? I CAN MANIFEST IT MORE FOR YOU.

“No, no, don’t do that,” Norman said quickly.

YOU DO NOT LIKE IT?

“No, no. We like it, Jerry.”

THIS IS TRUE?

“Yes, true. We like it. Really we do.”

GOOD. I AM PLEASED YOU LIKE IT. IT IS A VERY IMPRESSIVE ENTITY OF LARGE SIZE.

“Yes, it is,” Norman said, wiping sweat from his forehead. Jesus, he thought, this is like talking to a child with a loaded gun.

IT IS DIFFICULT FOR ME TO MANIFEST THIS LARGE ENTITY. I AM PLEASED THAT YOU LIKE IT.

“Very impressive,” Norman agreed. “But you do not need to repeat that entity for us.”

YOU WISH A NEW ENTITY MANIFESTED FOR YOU?

“No, Jerry. Nothing right now, thank you.”

MANIFESTING IS HAPPY FOR ME.

“Yes, I’m sure it is.”

I AM ENJOYING TO MANIFEST FOR YOU NORMAN. AND ALSO FOR YOU HARRY.

“Thank you, Jerry.”

I AM ENJOYING YOUR MANIFESTATIONS ALSO.

“Our manifestations?” Norman said, glancing at Harry. Apparently Jerry thought that the people on the habitat were manifesting something in return. Jerry seemed to consider it an exchange of some kind.

YES I AM ENJOYING YOUR MANIFESTATIONS ALSO.

“Tell us about our manifestations, Jerry,” Norman said.

THE MANIFESTATIONS ARE SMALL AND THEY DO NOT EXTEND BEYOND YOUR ENTITIES BUT THE MANIFESTATIONS ARE NEW FOR ME. THEY ARE HAPPY FOR ME.

“What’s he talking about?” Harry said.

YOUR MANIFESTATIONS HARRY.

“What manifestations, for Christ’s sake?”

“Don’t get mad,” Norman warned. “Stay calm.”

I AM LIKING THAT ONE HARRY. DO AN OTHER.

Norman thought: Is he reading emotions? Does he regard our emotions as manifestations? But that didn’t make sense. Jerry couldn’t read their minds; they’d already determined that. Maybe he’d better check again. Jerry, he thought, can you hear me?

I AM LIKING HARRY. HIS MANIFESTATIONS ARE RED. THEY ARE WITFUL.

“Witful?”

WITFUL = FULL OF WIT?

“I see,” Harry said. “He thinks we’re funny.”

FUNNY = FULL OF FUN?

“Not exactly,” Norman said. “We entities have the concept of…” He trailed off. How was he going to explain “funny”? What was a joke, anyway? “We entities have the concept of a situation which causes discomfort and we call this situation humorous.”

HUME OR US?

“No. One word.” Norman spelled it for him.

I SEE. YOUR MANIFESTATIONS ARE HUMOROUS. THE ENTITY SQUID MAKES MANY HUMOROUS MANIFESTATIONS FROM YOU.

“We don’t think so,” Harry said.

I THINK SO.

And that about summed it up, Norman thought, sitting at the console. Somehow he had to make Jerry understand the seriousness of his actions. “Jerry,” Norman explained, “your manifestations injure our entities. Some of our entities are already gone.”

YES I KNOW.

“If you continue your manifestations-”

YES I AM LIKING TO MANIFEST. IT IS HUMOROUS FOR YOU.

“-then pretty soon all our entities will be gone. And then there will be no one to talk to you.”

I DO NOT WISH THAT.

“I know that. But many entities are gone already.”

BRING THEM BACK.

“We can’t do that. They are gone forever.”

WHY?

“We cannot bring them back.”

WHY?

Just like a kid, Norman thought. Just exactly like a kid. Telling the kid you can’t do what he wants, you can’t play the way he wants to play, and he refuses to accept it.

“We do not have the power, Jerry, to bring them back.”

I WISH YOU TO BRING THE OTHER ENTITIES BACK NOW.

“He thinks we’re refusing to play,” Harry said.

BRING BACK THE ENTITY TED.

Norman said, “We can’t, Jerry. We would if we could.”

I AM LIKING THE ENTITY TED. HE IS VERY HUMOROUS.

“Yes,” Norman said. “Ted liked you, too. Ted was trying to talk to you.”

YES I AM LIKING HIS MANIFESTATIONS. BRING BACK TED.

“We can’t.”

There was a long pause.

I AM OFFENDED YOU?

“No, not at all.”

WE ARE FRIENDS NORMAN AND HARRY.

“Yes, we are.”

THEN BRING BACK THE ENTITIES.

“He just refuses to understand,” Harry said. “Jerry, for God’s sake, we can’t do it!”

YOU ARE HUMOROUS HARRY. MAKE IT AGAIN.

He’s definitely reading strong emotional reactions as some kind of manifestation, Norman thought. Was this his idea of play-to make a provocation to the other party, and then to be amused by their responses? Was he delighted to see the vivid emotions brought on by the squid? Was this his idea of a game?

HARRY MAKE IT AGAIN. HARRY MAKE IT AGAIN.

“Hey, man,” Harry said angrily. “Get off my back!”

THANK YOU. I AM LIKING THAT. IT WAS RED ALSO. NOW YOU WILL PLEASE BRING BACK THE ENTITIES GONE.

Norman had an idea. “Jerry,” he said, “if you wish the entities back, why don’t you bring them back?”

I AM NOT PLEASED TO DO THIS.

“But you could do it, if you wanted to.”

I CAN DO ANY THING.

“Yes, of course you can. So why don’t you bring back the entities you desire?”

NO. I AM NOT HAPPY TO DO THIS.

“Why not?” Harry said.

HEY MAN GET OFF MY BACK.

“No offense, Jerry,” Norman said quickly. There was no reply on the screen. “Jerry?”

The screen did not respond.

“He’s gone again,” Harry said. He shook his head. “God knows what the little bastard will do next.”

FURTHER ANALYSIS

Norman went up to the lab to see beth, but she was asleep, curled up on her couch. In sleep, she looked quite beautiful. It was odd after all the time down here she should seem so radiant. It was as if the harshness had gone out of her features. Her nose did not seem so sharp any more; the line of the mouth was softer, fuller. He looked at her arms, which had been sinewy, veins bulging. The muscles seemed smoother, more feminine somehow.

Who knows? he thought. After so many hours down here, you’re no judge of anything. He climbed back down the ladder and went to his bunk. Harry was already there, snoring loudly.

Norman decided to take another shower. As he stepped under the spray, he made a startling discovery.

The bruises which had covered his body were gone. Anyway, almost gone, he thought, staring down at the remaining patches of yellow and purple. They had healed within hours. He moved his limbs experimentally and realized that the pain had gone, too. Why? What had happened? For a moment he thought this was all a dream, or a nightmare, and then he thought: No, it’s just the atmosphere. Cuts and bruises healing faster in the high-pressure environment. It wasn’t anything mysterious. Just an atmospheric effect.

He toweled himself as dry as he could with the damp towel, and then went back to his bunk. Harry was still snoring, as loud as ever.

Norman lay on his back, stared at the red humming coils of the ceiling heater. He had an idea, and got out of bed, and shifted Harry’s talker from the base of his throat to one side. Immediately the snores changed to a soft, high-pitched hiss.

Much better, he thought. He lay on the damp pillow, and was almost immediately asleep. He awoke with no sense of passing time-it might have been only a few seconds-but he felt refreshed. He stretched and yawned, and got out of bed.

Harry still slept. Norman moved the talker back, and the snores resumed. He went into D Cyl, to the console. Still on the screen were the words:

HEY MAN GET OFF MY BACK.

“Jerry?” Norman said. “Are you there, Jerry?”

The screen did not respond. Jerry wasn’t there. Norman looked at the stack of printouts to one side. I really should go over this stuff, he thought. Because something troubled him about Jerry. Norman couldn’t put his finger on it, but even if one imagined the alien as a spoiled child-king, Jerry’s behavior didn’t make sense. It just didn’t add up. Including the last message.

HEY MAN GET OFF MY BACK.

Street talk? Or just imitating Harry? In any case it wasn’t Jerry’s usual mode of communication. Usually Jerry was ungrammatical and sort of spacy, talking about entities and awareness. But from time to time he would become sharply colloquial. Norman looked at the sheets.

WE’LL BE RIGHT BACK AFTER A SHORT BREAK FOR THESE MESSAGES FROM OUR SPONSOR.

That was one example. Where had that come from? It sounded like Johnny Carson. Then why didn’t Jerry sound like Johnny Carson all the time? What caused the shift?

Then, too, there was the problem of the squid. If Jerry liked to scare them, if he enjoyed rattling their cage and seeing them jump, why use a squid? Where had that idea come from? And why only a squid? Jerry seemed to enjoy manifesting different things. So why hadn’t he produced giant squid one time, great white sharks another time, and so on? Wouldn’t that provide a greater challenge to his abilities?

Then there was the problem of Ted. Ted had been playing with Jerry at the time he was killed. If Jerry liked to play so much, why would he kill off a player? It just didn’t make sense.

Or did it?

Norman sighed. His trouble lay in his assumptions. Norman was assuming that the alien had logical processes similar to his own. But that might not be true. For one thing, Jerry might operate at a much faster metabolic rate, and thus have a different sense of time. Kids played with a toy only until they got tired of it; then they changed to another. The hours that seemed so painfully long to Norman might be only a few seconds in the consciousness of Jerry. He might just be playing with the squid for a few seconds, until he dropped it for another toy.

Kids also had a poor idea about breaking things. If Jerry didn’t know about death, then he wouldn’t mind killing Ted, because he would think the death was just a temporary event, a “humorous” manifestation by Ted. He might not realize he was actually breaking his toys.

And it was also true, when he thought about it, that Jerry had manifested different things. Assuming that the jellyfish and the shrimps and the sea fans and now the sea snakes were his manifestations. Were they? Or were they just normal parts of the environment? Was there any way to tell?

And the Navy seaman, he thought suddenly. Let’s not forget the seaman. Where had he come from? Was that seaman another of Jerry’s manifestations? Could Jerry manifest his playmates at will? In that case, he really wouldn’t care if he killed them all.

But I think that’s clear, Norman thought. Jerry doesn’t care if he kills us. He just wants to play, and he doesn’t know his own strength.

Yet there was something else. He scanned the sheets of printout, feeling instinctively some underlying organization to everything. Something he wasn’t getting, some connection he wasn’t making.

As he thought about it, he kept coming back to one question: Why a squid? Why a squid?

Of course, he thought. They had been talking about a squid, during the conversation at dinner. Jerry must have overheard that. He must have decided that a squid would be a provocative item to manifest. And he was certainly right about that.

Norman shifted the papers, and came upon the very first message that Harry had decoded.

HELLO. HOW ARE YOU? I AM FINE. WHAT IS YOUR NAME? MY NAME IS JERRY.

That was as good a place to begin as any. It had been quite a feat for Harry to decode it, Norman thought. If Harry hadn’t succeeded with that, they would never have ever started talking to Jerry at all.

Norman sat at the console, stared at the keyboard. What had Harry said? The keyboard was a spiral: the letter G was one, and B was two, and so on. Very clever to figure it out. Norman would never have figured that out in a million years. He started trying to find the letters in the first sequence.

00032125252632 032629 301321 04261037 18 3016 06180

82132 29033005 1822 04261013 0830162137 1604 083016

21 1822 033013130432

Let’s see… 00 marked the beginning of the message, Harry had said. And 03, that was H. And then 21, that was E, then 25 was L, and 25 was another L, and just above it, 26, was 0…

HELLO.

Yes, it all fitted. He continued translating. 032629 was HOW…

HOW ARE YOU?

So far, so good. Norman experienced a certain pleasure, almost as if he were decoding it himself for the first time. Now, 18. That was I…

I AM FINE.

He moved more quickly, writing down the letters.

WHAT IS YOUR NAME?

Now, 1604 was MY… MY NAME IS… But then he found a mistake in one letter. Was that possible? Norman kept going, found a second mistake, then wrote out the message, and stared at it in growing shock.

MY NAME IS HARRY.

“Jesus Christ,” he said.

He went over it again, but there was no mistake. Not by him. The message was perfectly clear.

HELLO. HOW ARE YOU? I AM FINE. WHAT IS YOUR NAME? MY NAME IS HARRY.