"I don't see how you can say that. Obviously, they are not man-made."
"No."
"Then who did make them-if they were made?"
"I don't know."
Blake started to speak, shrugged, and held his tongue. They resumed their stroll. Graves turned aside to chuck his cigarette overboard, glancing outboard as he did so.
He stopped, stared, then called out: "Captain Blake!"
"Eh?" The captain turned and looked where Graves pointed. "Great God! Fireballs!"
"That's what I thought."
"They're some distance away," Blake observed, more to himself than to Graves. He turned decisively. "Bridge!" he shouted. "Bridge! Bridge ahoy!"
"Bridge, aye aye!"
"Mr. Weems-pass the word: 'All hands, below decks.' Dog down all ports. Close all hatches. And close up the bridge itself! Sound the general alarm."
"Aye aye, sir!"
"Move!" Turning to Graves, he added, "Come inside."
Graves followed him; the captain stopped to dog down the door by which they entered himself. Blake pounded up the inner ladders to the bridge, Graves in his train. The ship was filled with whine of the bos'n pipe, the raucous voice of the loud-speaker, the clomp of hurrying feet, and the monotonous, menacing cling-cling-cling! of the general alarm.
The watch on the bridge were still struggling with the last of the heavy glass shutters of the bridge when the captain burst into their midst. "I'll take it, Mr. Weems," he snapped.
In one continuous motion he moved from one side of the bridge to the other, letting his eye sweep the port side aft, the fo'c's'le, the starboard side aft, and finally rest on the fireballs-distinctly nearer and heading straight for the ship. He cursed. "Your friend did not get the news," he said to Graves.
He grasped the crank which could open or close the after starboard shutter of the bridge.
Graves looked past his shoulder, saw what he meant-the afterdeck was empty, save for one lonely figure pedaling away on the stationary bicycle. The LaGrange fireballs were closing in.
The shutter stuck, jammed tight, would not open. Blake stopped trying, swung quickly to the loud-speaker control panel, and cut in the whole board without bothering to select the proper circuit. "Eisenberg! Get below!"
Eisenberg must have heard his name called, for be turned his head and looked over his shoulder-Graves saw distinctly-just as the fireball reached him. It passed on, and the saddle of the exerciser was empty.
The exerciser was undamaged, they found, when they were able to examine it. The rubber hose to the inhaler mask had been cut smoothly. There was no blood, no marks. Bill Eisenberg was simply gone.
'Tm going up."
"You are in no physical shape to do so, doctor."
"You are in no way responsible, Captain Blake."
"I know that. You may go if you like-after we have searched for your friend's body."
"Search be damned! I'm going up to look for him."
"Huh? Eh? How's that?"
"If you are right, he's dead, and there is no point in searching for his body. If I'm right, there is just an outside chance of finding him-up there!" He pointed toward the cloud cap of the Pillars.
Blake looked him over slowly, then turned to the master diver. "Mr. Hargreave, find an inhaler mask for Dr. Graves."
They gave him thirty minutes of conditioning against the caisson disease while Blake looked on with expressionless Silence. The ship's company, bluejackets and officers alike, stood back and kept quiet; they walked on eggs when the Old Man had that look.
Exercise completed, the diver crew dressed Graves rapidly and strapped him into the bathysphere with dispatch, in order not to expose him too long to the nitrogen in the air. Just before the escape port was dogged down Graves spoke up.
"Captain Blake."
"Yes, doctor?"
"Bill's goldfish-will you look out for them?"
"Certainly, doctor."
"Thanks."
"Not at all. Are you ready?"
"Ready."
Blake stepped forward, stuck an arm through the port of the sphere and shook hands with Graves. "Good luck." He withdrew his arm. "Seal it up."
They lowered it over the side; two motor launches nosed it half a mile in the direction of the Kanaka Pillar where the current was strong enough to carry it along. There they left it and bucked the current back to the ship, were hoisted in.
Blake followed it with his glasses from the bridge. It drifted slowly at first, then with increased speed as it approached the base of the column. It whipped into rapid motion the last few hundred yards; Blake saw a flash of yellow just above the water line, then nothing more.
Eight hours-no plume of smoke. Nine hours, ten hours, nothing. After twenty-four hours of steady patrol in the vicinity of the Wahini Pillar, Blake radioed the Bureau.
Four days of vigilance-Blake knew that the bathysphere's passenger must be dead; whether by suffocation, drowning, implosion, or other means was not important. He so reported and received orders to proceed on duty assigned. The ship's company was called to quarters; Captain Blake read the service for the dead aloud in a harsh voice, dropped over the side some rather wilted hibiscus blooms-all that his steward could produce at the time-and went to the bridge to set his course for Pearl Harbor.
On the way to the bridge he stopped for a moment at his cabin and called to his steward: "You'll find some goldfish in the stateroom occupied by Mr. Eisenberg. Find an appropriate container and place them in my cabin."
"Yes, suh, Cap'n."
When Bill Eisenberg came to his senses he was in a Place. Sorry, but no other description is suitable; it lacked features. Oh, not entirely, of course-it was not dark where he was, nor was it in a state of vacuum, nor was it cold, nor was it too small for comfort. But it did lack features to such a remarkable extent that he had difficulty in estimating the size of the place. Consider stereo vision, by which we estimate the size of things directly, does not work beyond twenty feet or so. At greater distances we depend on previous knowledge of the true size of familiar objects, usually making our estimates subconsciously-a man so high is about that far away, and vice versa.
But the Place contained no familiar objects. The ceiling was a considerable distance over his head, too far to touch by jumping. The floor curved up to join the ceiling and thus prevented further lateral progress of more than a dozen paces or so. He would become aware of the obstacle by losing his balance. (He had no reference lines by which to judge the vertical; furthermore, his sense of innate balance was affected by the mistreatment his inner ears had undergone through years of diving. It was easier to sit than to walk, nor was there any reason to walk, after the first futile attempt at exploration.)
When he first woke up he stretched and opened his eyes, looked around. The lack of detail confused him. It was as if he were on the inside of a giant eggshell, illuminated from without by a soft, mellow, slightly amber light. The formless vagueness bothered him; he closed his eyes, shook his head, and opened them again-no better.
He was beginning to remember his last experience before losing consciousness-the fireball swooping down, his frenzied, useless attempt to duck, the "Hold your hats, boys!" thought that-flashed through his mind in the long-drawn-out split second before contact. His orderly mind began to look for explanations. Knocked cold, he thought, and my optic nerve paralyzed. Wonder if I'm blind for good.
Anyhow, they ought not to leave him alone like this in his present helpless condition. "Doc!" he shouted. "Doc Graves!"
No answer, no echo-he became aware that there was no sound, save for his own voice, none of the random little sounds that fill completely the normal "dead" silence. This place was as silent as the inside of a sack of flour. Were his ears shot, too?