"Starter doesn't work, sir."
"Help the engineman get a line on the flywheel. I'll take the tiller."
The two men cranked the engine over easily, but got no answering cough. "Prime it!" Still no results.
The boat officer abandoned the useless tiller and jumped down into the engine space to lend his muscle to heaving on the cranking line. Over his shoulder he ordered the signalman to notify the ship.
"Launch Three, calling bridge. Launch Three, calling bridge. Bridge-reply! Testing-testing." The signalman slipped a phone off one ear. "Phone's dead, sir."
"Get busy with your flags. Tell 'em to haul us in!" The officer wiped sweat from his face and straightened up. He glanced nervously at the current slap-slapping against the boat's side.
Graves touched his arm. "How about the barrel?"
"Put it over the side if you like. I'm busy. Can't you raise them, Sears?"
"I'm trying, sir."
"Come on, Bill," Graves said to Eisenberg. The two of them slipped forward in the boat, threading their way past the engine on the side away from the three men sweating over the flywheel. Graves cut the hogshead loose from its lashings, then the two attempted to get- a purchase on the awkward, unhandy object. It and its light load weighed less than two hundred pounds, but it was hard to manage, especially on the uncertain footing of heaving floorboards.
They wrestled it outboard somehow, with one smashed finger for Eisenberg, a badly banged shin for Graves. It splashed heavily, drenching them with sticky salt water, and bobbed astern, carried rapidly toward the Kanaka Pillar by the current which fed it.
"Ship answers, sir!"
"Good! Tell them to haul us in-carefully." The boat officer jumped out of the engine space and ran forward, where he checked again the secureness with which the tow-line was fastened.
Graves tapped him on the shoulder. "Can't we stay here until we see the barrel enter the column?"
"No! Right now you had better pray that that line holds, instead of worrying about the barrel-or we go up the column, too. Sears, has the ship acknowledged?"
"Just now, sir."
"Why a coir line, Mr. Parker?' Eisenberg inquired, his1 nausea forgotten in the excitement. "I'd rather depend on steel, or even good stout Manila."
"Because coir floats, and the others don't," the officer answered snappishly. "Two miles of line would drag us to the bottom. Sears! Tell them to ease the strain. We're shipping water."
"Aye, aye, sir!"
The hogshead took less than four minutes to reach the column, enter it, a fact which Graves ascertained by borrowing the signalman's glass to follow it on the last leg of its trip-which action won him a dirty look from the nervous boat officer. Some minutes later, when the boat was about five hundred yards farther from the Pillar than it had been at nearest approach, the telephone came suddenly to life. The starter of the engine was tested immediately; the engine roared into action.
The trip back was made with engine running to take the strain off the towline-at half speed and with some maneuvering, in order to avoid fouling the screw with the slack bight of the line.
The smoke signal worked-one circuit or another. The plume of smoke was sighted two miles south of the Wahini Pillar, elapsed time from the moment the vessel had entered the Kanaka column just over eight hours.
Bill Eisenberg climbed into the saddle of the exerciser in which he was to receive antibends treatment-thirty minutes of hard work to stir up his circulation while breathing an atmosphere of helium and oxygen, at the end of which time the nitrogen normally dissolved in his blood stream would be largely replaced by helium. The exerciser itself was simply an old bicycle mounted on a stationary platform. Blake looked it over. "You needn't have bothered to bring this," he remarked. "We've a better one aboard. Standard practice for diving operations these days."
"We didn't know that," Graves answered. "Anyhow, this one will do. All set, Bill?"
"I guess so." He glanced over his shoulder to where the steel bulk of the bathysphere lay, uncrated, checked and equipped, ready to be swung outboard by the boat crane. "Got the gasket-sealing compound?"
"Sure. The Iron Maiden is all right. The gunner and I will seal you in. Here's your mask."
Eisenberg accepted the inhaling mask, started to strap it on, checked himself. Graves noticed the look on his face. "What's the trouble, son?"
"Doc...
"Yes?"
"I say-you'll look out for Cleo and Pat, won't you?"
"Why, sure. But they won't need anything in the length of time you'll be gone."
"Um-m-m, no, I suppose not. But you'll look out for 'em?"
"Sure."
"O.K." Eisenberg slipped the inhaler over his face, waved his hand to the gunner waiting by the gas bottles. The gunner eased open the cut-off valves, the gas lines hissed, and Eisenberg began to pedal like a six-day racer.
With thirty minutes to kill, Blake invited Graves to go forward with him for a smoke and a stroll on the fo'c's'le. They had completed about twenty turns when Blake paused by the wildcat, took his cigar from his mouth and remarked, "Do you know, I believe he has a good chance of completing the trip."
"So? I'm glad to hear that."
"Yes, I do, really. The success of the trial with the dead load convinced me. And whether the smoke gear works or not, if that globe comes back down the Wahini Pillar, I'll find it."
"I know you will. It was a good idea of yours, to paint it yellow."
"Help us to spot it, all right. I don't think he'll learn anything, however. He won't see a thing through those ports but blue water, from the time he enters the column to the time we pick him up."
"Perhaps so."
"What else could he see?"
"I don't know. Whatever it is that made those Pillars, perhaps."
Blake dumped the ashes from his cigar carefully over the rail before replying. "Doctor, I don't understand you. To my mind, those Pillars are a natural, even though strange, phenomenon."
"And to me it's equally obvious that they are not 'natural.' They exhibit intelligent interference with the ordinary processes of nature as clearly as if they had a sign saying so hung on them."
"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.