Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea by Theodore Sturgeon Read Free Book Online Page A

there?”
    “Usually around twenty-eight point—” O’Brien turned to glance at the sea-water temp. gauge, and his jaw dropped. “Seventy-seven!”
    “So there must be something wrong with the temp. gauge,” said Nelson with biting irony,
    “Because it disagrees with what you think. I tell you, don’t think! Read, and stack up your data, and let them tell you: don’t think until the data speak. Yes, gentlemen, the sea around us really is at 77°, and it is at 77° after having encountered an awful lot of cold water and ice. I’d judge it was better than a hundred and seventy-seven when it first came in.”
    “But sir!” Morton almost wailed, “where did it come from?”
    “That I don’t know. Take her up, and maybe we’ll find out.”
    “We’re under the pack, sir,” said Morton timidly.
    “Thank you for reminding me,” said the Admiral caustically. “But unless I miss my guess we’ll find damn little pack left up there.”
    “Our schedule calls for another ten days submerged, sir,” said the Captain, almost timidly.
    “Our schedule was made during, and in anticipation of, ordinary circumstances. If you regard these circumstances as ordinary, mister, you may continue to disregard my orders to take her dammit up!”
    “Sorry, sir,” said Lee Crane stiffly. “Take her up.”
    “Take her up,” repeated the Diving Officer.
    The never-ending soft powerful symphony of the machine changed tempo and key as tanks were blown and the Seaview pressed upward out of the deep. The Admiral stepped to the door of the radio shack and said, “Sparks, release a buoy antenna and warm up your receivers.”
    “Buoy, sir? It won’t get past the ice-pack.”
    “I have a hunch, mister, that the ice won’t bother it much. I have more than a hunch—why, it’s a downright conviction—that you ought to release a buoy when ordered to do so, or scuttle the ship when ordered to do so, or put yourself under arrest when ordered to do so.”
    “Aye-aye, sir,” said the radioman, and pulled a lever. “Buoy released, sir.” He switched on his receivers and with open relief, dove into his headphones.
    Crane said, “What do you expect from the radio, Admiral?”
    “Rock-and-roll music, probably. And then perhaps, between choruses, a news announcement.”
    Dropping his vicious irony as suddenly as he had assumed it, he said seriously, “Whatever this is, it’s too drastic an effect to be purely local. Something’s happened while we were bubbling around down here like fish in a steel tank.”
    “And haven’t you any idea at all what it might be?”
    “Not the ghost of a guess,” said the Admiral cheerfully. “Which only means it’s time to stop hypothesizing and wait for more data.”
    “Two hundred,” said O’Brien.
    “Ow,” said Sparks.
    They all looked at the door of the radio shack. “In one moment,” said the Admiral, still cheerful, “Sparks will appear in that doorway and announce that something is wrong with his gear.”
    “One-eighty,” droned O’Brien.
    Sparks appeared in the doorway, and blinked when he saw all eyes on him. “Cap’n,” he said deferentially, “is anyone like welding aboard, or something?”
    “No, Sparks.”
    “Or is the doctor maybe using a diathermy machine?”
    “I don’t believe he even has one aboard.”
    Sparks rubbed his ear and shook his head. The earphones were clamped there still, pushed back.
    “Something wrong some place,” he murmured, puzzled.
    “Let’s hear it, Sparks,” said the Admiral. The operator returned to his shack and threw a switch.
    The chamber filled up with an unreadable scratching roar. Sparks, working over his controls, was able to add a couple of heterodyning whines and shrieks, but that was all. The sound cut, and Sparks returned, looking worried. “I tried ‘em all, sir, single sideband, FM, the works. There’s more grass and garbage in the air than I ever heard before.”
    “Magnetic storm?” suggested the Captain.
    “No,