Slowly, the smile faded from Dr. Lanning's face.
RESCUE OPERATION
Pull! Pull steadily…!" Dragomir shouted, clutching at the tarry cords of the net. Beside him in the hot darkness Pribislav Polasek grunted as he heaved on the wet strands. The net was invisible in the black water, but the blue light trapped in it rose closer and closer to the surface. "It's slipping…" Pribislav groaned and clutched the rough gunwale of the little boat. For a single instant he could see the blue light on the helmet, a faceplate and the suited body that faded into blackness — then it slipped free of the net. He had just a glimpse of a dark shape before it was gone. "Did you see it?" he asked. "Just before he fell he waved his hand."
"How can I know — the hand moved, it could have been the net, or he might still be alive?" Dragomir had his face bent almost to the glassy surface of the water, but there was nothing more to be seen. "He might be alive."
The two fishermen sat back in the boat and stared at each other in the harsh light of the hissing acetylene lamp in the bow. They were very different men, yet greatly alike in their stained, baggy trousers and faded cotton shirts. Their hands were deeply wrinkled and callused from a lifetime of hard labor, their thoughts slowed by the rhythm of work and years.
"We cannot get him up with the net," Dragomir finally said, speaking first as always.
"Then we will need help," Pribislav added. "We have anchored the buoy here, we can find the spot again."
"Yes, we need help." Dragomir opened and closed his large hands, then leaned over to bring the rest of the net into the boat. "The diver, the one who stays with the widow Korenc, he will know what to do. His name is Kukovic and Petar said that he is a doctor of science from the university in Ljubljana."
They bent to their oars and sent the heavy boat steadily over the glasslike water of the Adriatic. Before they had reached shore, the sky was light and when they tied to the sea wall in Brbinj the sun was above the horizon.
Joze Kukovic looked at the rising ball of the sun, already hot on his skin, yawned, and stretched. The widow shuffled out with his coffee, mumbled good morning, and put it on the stone rail of the porch. He pushed the tray aside and sat down next to it, then emptied the coffee from the small, long-handled pot into his cup. The thick Turkish coffee would wake him up, in spite of the impossible hour. From the rail he had a view down the unpaved and dusty street to the port, already stirring to life. Two women, with the morning's water in brass pots balanced on their heads, stopped to talk. The peasants were bringing in their produce for the morning market, baskets of cabbages and potatoes and trays of tomatoes, strapped onto tiny donkeys. One of them brayed, a harsh noise that sawed through the stillness of the morning, bouncing echoes from the yellowed buildings. It was hot already. Brbinj was a town at the edge of nowhere, located between empty ocean and barren hills, asleep for centuries and dying by degrees. There were no attractions here — if you did not count the sea. But under the flat, blue calm of the water was another world that Joze loved.
Cool shadows, deep valleys, more alive than all the sun-blasted shores that surrounded it. Excitement, too: just the day before, too late in the afternoon to really explore it, he had found a Roman galley half-buried in the sand. He would get into it today, the first human in two thousand years, and Heaven alone knew what he would find there. In the sand about it had been shards of broken amphorae; there might be whole ones inside the hull.
Sipping happily at his coffee, he watched the small boat tying up in the harbor, and wondered why the two fishermen were in such a hurry. They were almost running, and no one ran here in the summer. Stopping below his porch, the biggest one called up to him.
"Doctor, may we come up? There is something urgent."
"Yes, of course." He was surprised and wondered if they took him for a physician.
Dragomir shuffled forward and did not know where to begin. He pointed out over the ocean.
"It fell, out there last night, we saw it, a sputnik without a doubt?"
"A traveler?" Joze Kukovic wrinkled his forehead, not quite sure that he heard right. When the locals were excited it was hard to follow their dialect. For such a small country Yugoslavia was cursed with a multitude of tongues.
"No, it was not a putnik, but a sputnik, one of the Russian spaceships."
"Or an American one." Pribislav spoke for the first time, but he was ignored.
Joze smiled and sipped his coffee. "Are you sure it wasn't a meteorite you saw? There is always a heavy meteor shower this time of the year."
"A sputnik," Dragomir insisted stolidly. "The ship fell far out in the Jadransko More and vanished, we saw that. But the space pilot came down almost on top of us, into the water. "
"The WHAT?" Joze gasped, jumping to his feet and knocking the coffee tray to the floor. The brass tray clanged and rattled in circles unnoticed. "There was a man in this thing— and he got clear?"
Both fishermen nodded at the same time and Dragomir continued. "We saw this light fall from the sputnik when it went overhead and drop into the water. We couldn't see what it was, just a light, and we rowed there as fast as we could. It was still sinking and we dropped a net and managed to catch him…."
"You have the pilot?"
"No, but once we pulled him close enough to the surface to see that he was in a heavy suit, with a window like a diving suit, and there was something on the back that might have been like your tanks there."
"He waved his hand," Pribislav insisted.
"He might have waved a hand, we could not be sure. We came back for help."
The silence lengthened and Joze realized that he was the help that they needed, and that they had turned the responsibility over to him. What should he do first? The astronaut might have his own oxygen tanks, Joze had no real idea what provisions were made for water landings, but if there was oxygen the man might still be alive.
Joze paced the floor while he thought, a short, square figure in khaki shorts and sandals. He was not handsome, his nose was too big and his teeth were too obvious for that, but he generated a certainty of power. He stopped and pointed to Pribislav.
"We're going to have to get him out. You can find the spot again?"
"A buoy."
"Good. And we may need a doctor. You have none here, but is there one in Osor?"
"Dr. Bratos, but he is very old…"
"As long as he is still alive, we'll have to get him. Can anyone in this town drive an automobile?"
The fishermen looked toward the roof and concentrated, while Joze controlled his impatience.
"Yes, I think so," Dragomir finally said. "Petar was a partisan."
"That's right." The other fisherman finished the thought. "He has told many times how they stole German trucks and how he drove. "
"Well, then one of you get this Petar and give him the keys to my car, it's a German car so he should be able to manage. Tell him to bring the doctor back at once."
Dragomir took the keys, but handed them to Pribislav, who ran out.
"Now let's see if we can get the man up," Joze said, grabbing his scuba gear and leading the way toward the boat.
They rowed, side by side though Dragomir's powerful stroke did most of the work.
"How deep is the water out here?" Joze asked. He was already dripping with sweat as the sun burned on him.
"The Kvarneric is deeper up by Rab, but we were fishing off Trstenilc and the bottom is only about four fathoms there. We're coming to the buoy."
"Seven meters, it shouldn't be too hard to find him." Joze kneeled in the bottom of the boat and slipped into the straps of the scuba. He buckled it tight, checked the valves, then turned to the fisherman before he bit into the mouthpiece. "Keep the boat near this buoy and I'll use it for a guide while I search. If I need a line or any help, I'll surface over the astronaut, then you can bring the boat to me."