“This is exciting!” Ted said. “Fantastic! Unbelievable.”
“So,” Barnes said, still watching Harry, “you should all get a good night’s sleep-if you can.”
“ ‘Innocent sleep, sleep that knits up the ravell’d sleave of care,’ ” Ted said. He was literally bobbing up and down in his chair with excitement.
“During the rest of the day, supply and technical officers will be coming to measure and outfit you. Any other questions,” Barnes said, “you can find me in my office.”
He left the room, and the meeting broke up. When the others filed out, Norman remained behind, with Harry Adams. Harry never moved from his chair. He watched the technician packing up the portable screen.
“That was quite a performance just now,” Norman said.
“Was it? I don’t see why.”
“You deduced that Barnes wasn’t telling us about the door.”
“Oh, there’s much more he’s not telling us about,” Adams said, in a cold voice. “He’s not telling us about any of the important things.”
“Like what?”
“Like the fact,” Harry said, getting to his feet at last, “that Captain Barnes knows perfectly well why the President decided to keep this a secret.”
“He does?”
“The President had no choice, under the circumstances.”
“What circumstances?”
“He knows that the object down there is not an alien spacecraft.”
“Then what is it?”
“I think it’s quite clear what it is.”
“Not to me,” Norman said.
Adams smiled for the first time. It was a thin smile, entirely without humor. “You wouldn’t believe it if I told you,” he said. And he left the room.
TESTS
Arthur levine, the marine biologist, was the only member of the expedition Norman Johnson had not met. It was one of the things we hadn’t planned for, he thought. Norman had assumed that any contact with unknown life would occur on land; he hadn’t considered the most obvious possibility-that if a spacecraft landed at random somewhere on the Earth, it would most likely come down on water, since 70 percent of the planet was covered with water. It was obvious in retrospect that they would need a marine biologist.
What else, he wondered, would prove obvious in retrospect?
He found Levine hanging off the port railing. Levine came from the oceanographic institute at Woods Hole, Massachusetts. His hand was damp when Norman shook it. Levine looked extremely ill at ease, and finally admitted that he was seasick.
“Seasick? A marine biologist?” Norman said.
“I work in the laboratory,” he said. “At home. On land. Where things don’t move all the time. Why are you smiling?”
“Sorry,” Norman said.
“You think it’s funny, a seasick marine biologist?”
“Incongruous, I guess.”
“A lot of us get seasick,” Levine said. He stared out at the sea. “Look out there,” he said. “Thousands of miles of flat. Nothing.”
“The ocean.”
“It gives me the creeps,” Levine said.
“So?” Barnes said, back in his office. “What do you think?”
“Of what?”
“Of the team, for Christ’s sake.”
“It’s the team I chose, six years later. Basically a good group, certainly very able.”
“I want to know who will crack.”
“Why should anybody crack?” Norman said. He was looking at Barnes, noticing the thin line of sweat on his upper lip. The commander was under a lot of pressure himself.
“A thousand feet down?” Barnes said. “Living and working in a cramped habitat? Listen, it’s not like I’m going in with military divers who have been trained and who have themselves under control. I’m taking a bunch of scientists, for God’s sake. I want to make sure they all have a clean bill of health. I want to make sure nobody’s going to crack.”
“I don’t know if you are aware of this, Captain, but psychologists can’t predict that very accurately. Who will crack.”
“Even when it’s from fear?”
“Whatever it’s from.”
Barnes frowned. “I thought fear was your specialty.”
“Anxiety is one of my research interests and I can tell you who, on the basis of personality profiles, is likely to suffer acute anxiety in a stress situation. But I can’t predict who’ll crack under that stress and who won’t.”
“Then what good are you?” Barnes said irritably. He sighed. “I’m sorry. Don’t you just want to interview them, or give them some tests?”
“There aren’t any tests,” Norman said. “At least, none that work.”
Barnes sighed again. “What about Levine?”
“He’s seasick.”
“There isn’t any motion underwater; that won’t be a problem. But what about him, personally?”
“I’d be concerned,” Norman said.
“Duly noted. What about Harry Adams? He’s arrogant.”
“Yes,” Norman said. “But that’s probably desirable.” Studies had shown that the people who were most successful at handling pressure were people others didn’t like-individuals who were described as arrogant, cocksure, irritating.
“Maybe so,” Barnes said. “But what about his famous research paper? Harry was one of the biggest supporters of SETI a few years back. Now that we’ve found something, he’s suddenly very negative. You remember his paper?”
Norman didn’t, and was about to say so when an ensign came in. “Captain Barnes, here is the visual upgrade you wanted.”
“Okay,” Barnes said. He squinted at a photograph, put it down. “What about the weather?”
“No change, sir. Satellite reports are confirming we have forty-eight plus-minus twelve on site, sir.”
“Hell,” Barnes said.
“Trouble?” Norman asked.
“The weather’s going bad on us,” Barnes said. “We may have to clear out our surface support.”
“Does that mean you’ll cancel going down there?”
“No,” Barnes said. “We go tomorrow, as planned.”
“Why does Harry think this thing is not a spacecraft?” Norman asked.
Barnes frowned, pushed papers on his desk. “Let me tell you something,” he said. “Harry’s a theoretician. And theories are just that-theories. I deal in the hard facts. The fact is, we’ve got something damn old and damn strange down there. I want to know what it is.”
“But if it’s not an alien spacecraft, what is it?”
“Let’s just wait until we get down there, shall we?” Barnes glanced at his watch. “The second habitat should be anchored on the sea floor by now. We’ll begin moving you down in fifteen hours. Between now and then, we’ve all got a lot to do.”
“Just hold it there, Dr. Johnson.” Norman stood naked, felt two metal calipers pinch the back of his arms, just above the elbow. “Just a bit… that’s fine. Now you can get into the tank.”
The young medical corpsman stepped aside, and Norman climbed the steps to the metal tank, which looked like a military version of a Jacuzzi. The tank was filled to the top with water. As he lowered his body into the water, it spilled over the sides.
“What’s all this for?” Norman asked.
“I’m sorry, Dr. Johnson. If you would completely immerse yourself…”
“What?”
“Just for a moment, sir…”
Norman took a breath, ducked under the water, came back up.
“That’s fine, you can get out now,” the corpsman said, handing him a towel.
“What’s all this for?” he asked again, climbing down the ladder.
“Total body adipose content,” the corpsman said. “We have to know it, to calculate your sat stats.”
“My sat stats?”
“Your saturation statistics.” The corpsman marked points on his clipboard.
“Oh dear,” he said. “You’re off the graph.”
“Why is that?”
“Do you get much exercise, Dr. Johnson?”
“Some.” He was feeling defensive now. And the towel was too small to wrap around his waist. Why did the Navy use such small towels?
“Do you drink?”