William Ashbless sat on the beach. He shaded his eyes against the glare and tinkered with a little ship-to-shore radio seemingly charged with static. The voice of Professor Latzarel popped in and out: “Testing, testing, testing …” a half a dozen times at odd intervals. Then he counted a bit for good measure, never getting much past four. Latzarel was apparently happy with the results, however, for it occurred to him to tell a joke by way of further testing the apparatus. Ashbless had a contempt for jokes of all types, especially Latzarel’s. “It seems,” said Professor Latzarel launching out in one of the six standard introductory clauses, “there was an ape who ordered a beer in a pub off Pier Street in Long Beach. The ape handed the bartender a ten … “A burst of static flooded out of the radio. Ashbless cranked away at the volume dial, cutting both the static and Latzarel’s voice which was buried in it. Ashbless could just hear what sounded like “tub ubba hill,” but of course couldn’t be. The radio screed loudly, then fell silent. A burst of laughter leapt out. Ashbless cursed. He’d missed the punchline of Latzarel’s stupid damn joke, apparently. But then it became evident that he hadn’t. It had been anticipatory laughter instead.
“So the bartender, see, thinks to himself, ‘What do apes know about money?’” Unable to contain himself, Latzarel giggled into the radio, which abruptly went dead. Ashbless slammed a hand onto the top of his set. There was a static-laden pause of twenty or thirty seconds before Latzaiel’s voice poked in: ‘Testing,” he said. “Are you there?”
“I’m here,” Ashbless croaked into the machine. “What about the filthy ape?”
“Right,” said Latzarel, giggling. “I’ve got to ask Edward something about the punchline.” The radio fell silent.
Ashbless poked at a switch, twisted a dial, and whistled into the receiver, hoping to irritate Latzarel. He watched Roycroft Squires, who stood on the port bow idly smoking his pipe, gazing out to sea. Twenty miles out beyond the swaying Gerhardi rose the shadowy cliffs of Santa Catalina island, shrouded in sea mist. As the boat listed to starboard, Squires, puffing on his pipe, disappeared behind the bulk of the rising cabin while the southern tip of the distant island seemed to rise skyward behind him. Then as the boat rolled down the backside of the swell, Squires puffed himself up from beyond the cabin, little clouds of tobacco smoke rising over his head, and the tip of the island vanishing momentarily, then rising again almost hypnotically some few seconds later as Squires descended once again beyond the cabin. Ashbless was almost lulled to sleep in the warm air, suddenly free of radio noise and silent but for the cry of a wheeling gull. He could easily have convinced himself that the rocking boat, the puffing Squires, and the misty cliffs of the transmarine island were parts of a cyclical, fabulous machine laboring to an unheard rhythm carried on the late morning breeze.
The crackling of the radio shattered the slow cadence and startled Ashbless out of his daydream. It was Latzarel, testing again. Ashbless was tempted to turn it off. “So the bartender …” said Latzarel, “counts out forty cents change …” A chatter of static eradicated two or three seconds. “And the ape pockets the change and looks around, puzzled …” A great burst of it overwhelmed the ape’s puzzlement. There was a scrunch of gravel and the skid of a shoe on the cliffside scree behind him. Ashbless, fingering switches and dials, turned to find the journalist Spekowsky hastening up, clutching an immense box camera that hung around his neck and shoulder. He was puffing with exertion. The static cleared abruptly, and with a wild hoot of laughter Latzarel shouted, ‘To make small talk, the bartender says, ‘We don’t get many apes in here.’”
Spekowsky was momentarily dumbstruck. He shaded his eyes and peered out at the diving bell. Ashbless hoped that the last revelation concluded the joke, but once again he was mistaken. “And the ape says,” came Latzarel’s voice in a gasp of laughing effort cut short by a hiss of almost deafening static,” … at nine dollars and sixty cents a beer, I’m not surprised!” Ashbless shut the machine down and shook his head at the frowning Spekowsky with a gesture of resignation and blamelessness. Spekowsky hauled out a spiral binder and began jotting quick notes.
Jim had seen the approach of Spekowsky minutes earlier — had spotted the journalist rummaging along the tops of the cliffs, searching for the safest path. He was vaguely surprised to see him, given the recent Newtonian meeting, and was doubly surprised to see him apparently chatting agreeably with Ashbless. The phenomenon puzzled Uncle Edward as well when Jim called his attention to it. Spekowsky busied himself on shore, messing with his camera equipment.
In a little under twenty minutes, the tide dropping rapidly, Edward St. Ives and Professor Latzarel clanked shut the hatch, and with a hum and a splash, the diving bell was hoisted over the edge of the deck and slowly swallowed by the blue ocean.
Jim watched its descent. A rush of bubbles partly obscured the dark sphere that was ringed with a halo of light cast by six stationary lamps. The bell dropped to a depth of ten or twelve feet, dangled momentarily, then dropped again another ten. Jim busied himself with Momus’ glass, but after two minutes or so he could see nothing through it but empty water, for the bell dropped away into the shadows of the enormous pool until there was nothing left but dancing bubbles and a dim, distant submarine glow. Edward’s voice crackled out of the radio on deck as well as from Ashbless’ radio on the rocky shore where Spekowsky leaned forward listening, taking notes.
Inside the bell itself, Edward and Professor Latzarel sat on stools, cold and cramped for space. Little defrosters blew dry air at the ports, but Latzarel’s kept fogging over anyway. He wiped at it with a handkerchief, alternately complaining about the fog and expostulating about some oceanic wonder — a great pink octopus sliding into the shadows of a hollow in the rock wall, or a manta ray the size of the hood of a car, careering away in the distance, sailing among waving tendrils of kelp.
“Spit on it,” said Edward.
“What?”
“On the window. Spit on it and rub it around.”
“What do you see?”
“It’ll keep it from fogging up. By God, look at that!” Edward pointed out into the dark ocean and jammed his face against the cold, dewy port. Latzarel rose and bent across to have a look.
“What do you see?”
“Nothing, now. But there was something vast out there a moment ago.”
“How vast?”
“I don’t know.” Edward shook his head. ‘There was a great luminous eye. As big as a grapefruit. Bigger. It stared at us for a moment, then closed.”
“Closed! You mean it was lidded?”
‘That’s right.” Edward dabbed at a little trail of seawater that leaked in through the seal of one of the ports. He could see nothing beyond, only a family of wildly colored nudibranch messing about on a weedy rock.
A sudden clunking jar pitched Latzarel forward. He caught himself on a brace welded onto the wall of the bell beneath the hatch. “We’ve settled.”
Edward turned, peered out a port, and began to manipulate two little hinged arms, intending to push them off the rocks and into the chasm. The bell hopped forward six inches. Latzarel informed Squires of their dilemma. The bell hopped again with a scrape-clank, then listed abruptly, one of its feet having worked its way off the reef. The bell tottered there for a moment. Edward prodded it once more, it listed farther, and lost its grip on the rock shelf and kelp.