I hung there, one hand resting on the guide line, staring, not believing and yet not doubting.
And then it was gone—if it had ever been there.
I stared at the place where it had been, or where I had thought I had seen it, waiting for something to happen—for it to appear again, or for something to convince me that it had been only imagination.
Nothing happened.
I don’t know how long I waited there. Then, slowly, I remembered. I was not supposed to stay there. I was supposed to be doing something. I had a definite goal. I was on my way back to the lock—
Painfully I forced myself into motion again.
That brightly gleaming line seemed a million miles long. I kept close to it, swimming as hard as I could, until the stern lights took form and the dome of the lock itself bulged out of the dark.
I dragged myself inside the sea-gate and looked back.
There was nothing there.
The sea-gates moaned and whined and closed, and the pumps forced the water out.
I don’t know what the other two had seen—nothing, I suppose—but they looked as beaten, as exhausted as I did, when the last of the water was gone and Coach Blighman came swinging in from the escape hatch.
He was grinning, and when he spoke his voice resounded like thunder in the little room.
“Congratulations, men!” he boomed. “You’re real sea-cows, you’ve proved that! The three of you have qualified at nine hundred feet—nine hundred feet!—and that’s a record! In all the years I’ve been sea coach at the Academy, there haven’t been half a dozen cadets to make the grade this far down—and now there are three of you in one class!”
I was beginning to catch my breath. I said: “Coach. Lieutenant Blighman, I—”
“Just a minute, Eden,” he said sharply. “Before you say anything, I want to ask you all something.” I wasn’t sure what I had been going to say—something about the thing I had seen, or thought I had seen, I suppose. But in the brightly lightly little room, with Blighman talking about records, it seemed so utterly remote, that less and less could I believe that I actually had seen it.
Blighman was saying: “You’ve all qualified, no question about that. But Lieutenant Saxon has asked if any of you are willing to try another dive two hundred feet farther down. It’s a strictly volunteer operation—no objections if any of you don’t want to do it. But he has hopes that his new injections are going to make it possible to establish deeper and deeper records; and he would like to try a little more. What do you say, men?”
He looked us over, the shark’s eyes glowing. He stopped at me. “Eden? Are you all right? You look like you might be getting some kind of reaction.”
“I—I think perhaps I am, sir.” I hesitated, trying to think of a way to tell him just what that reaction was. But—a giant serpentine head! How could I tell him that?
He didn’t give me a chance. He barked: “All right, Eden, that lets you out. Don’t argue with me. You’ve made a splendid showing already—no sense going on unless you’re sure you can take it. Craken?”
David said, almost too quietly to hear, “Yes, sir. I’m ready.”
I remembered, looking at him, what he had said about sea serpents, just a short time before while we were still on the surface. And what I had said to him! For a moment I was tempted to warn him that his sea serpent was really there—
But probably it was only an effect of pressure and the injection, anyhow. There were no sea serpents! Everyone knew that.
“Fairfane?”
Roger Fairfane said, with an effort: “I’m okay. Let’s dive.”
Sea Coach Blighman looked at him thoughtfully for a moment. Then he shrugged. I could read his mind as clearly as though he had spoken. Fairfane didn’t look too well, that was sure—but, Blighman had decided, if there was anything wrong the sea medics would spot it, and if there wasn’t, it didn’t matter how the Cadet Captain looked.
The sea medics trotted in, made their quick checks, and reported both David and Roger in shape to go on.
Then Blighman curtly ordered the sea medics and me out of the lock. As I left I saw Roger Fairfane turn to glare at David, and I heard him mutter something.
It sounded like: “You’ll never make a jellyfish out of me!”
Eleven hundred feet.
Coach Blighman let me come with him into the control room to watch Fairfane and David Craken swim their eleven-hundred-foot test.
The ship’s motors rumbled and sang, bringing us down another two hundred feet, trimming the ballast tanks. It was important that the ship be kept dead still in the water—if it had been moving when any of us were swim-ming our trials, we would have been swept away by the motion of the water. The diving vanes fore and aft were useless for that reason; the trim of the ship depended only on the tanks.
Finally it was adjusted, and the lock was flooded. I could see the sea-gates iris open—the round portals spinning wide like the opening of a camera lens. David and Roger came slowly out of the lock.
The thick lenses in the observation port made them look distorted and small. They swam painfully away into the gloom, queer little frogs, slower and more clumsy than the fish.
As soon as they were out of sight I began to feel guilty.
Crazy or not, I should have warned them of what I thought I saw. I waited, and they didn’t come back—only seconds had passed, after all.
I began to squirm.
Hesitantly I said, “Sir.”
Blighman paid no attention to me.
I blurted out: “Coach Blighman! That reaction—I didn’t tell you, but what I thought I saw was—”
“There they are!” he cried. He hadn’t heard a word I was saying. “There they come—both of them! They’ve made it!”
I looked, and I saw them too—the pair of them, coming slowly, limping, out of the dark. They kicked sluggishly toward us and it seemed to me that Roger Fairfane was in trouble.
Both of them moved slowly; but Fairfane looked weak, strained, erratic.
David Craken was swimming close alongside him and just above, keeping watch on him. They swam into the lock above us and I heard the doors whine shut.
It was over. I was glad I hadn’t said anything about sea serpents. They had returned safely, the tests were at an end, and now we could go back to our life at the Academy.
Or so I thought…
The coach splashed in before all the water was out, and I was at his heels. Roger Fairfane was sprawled on the bench, exhausted; David Craken was looking at him anxiously.
Blighman said exultantly: “Fine swimming, men! You’re setting new records.” He looked sharply at Roger. “Any reactions?”
Roger Fairfane blinked at him glassily. “I—I’m okay,” he said.
“You, Craken?”
“I’m perfectly well, sir,” said David. “I tried to explain to Lieutenant Saxon that I didn’t need the shots at all. I am not sensitive to pressure.”
Blighman looked at them, speculating. He said: “Do you feel fit for another dive?”
I couldn’t help it. I burst in: “Sir, they’ve gone two hundred feet farther down already than the regulations
“Eden!” The voice was a whiplash. “I am in command of these tests! It’s up to me to decide what the regulations say.”
“Yes, sir. But—”
“Eden!”
“Yes, sir.”
He stared at me for a moment with the cold shark’s eyes, then he turned back to Roger and David. “Well?” he asked.
Roger Fairfane looked white and worn, but he managed to get the strength to scowl—not at Coach Blighman, but at David. He said: “I’m ready, Coach. I’ll show him who’s a jellyfish!”
David spoke up, his voice concerned. “Roger, listen. I don’t think you ought to try it. You had a tough time making it back to the lock at eleven hundred feet. At thirteen hundred—”