Mer-Cycle

By the coordinates, he had come barely ten or twelve miles. It was hard to figure, and not important enough to warrant the necessary mental effort. Three or four miles an hour, average. On land, the little distance he had gone, he was sure his rate had been double or triple that. He could have walked as fast, down here. And with less fatigue.

No, that was not true. He had to be honest with himself. He was carrying considerable weight in the form of food and clothing and related supplies. He even had a small tent. Then there was the converter: portable plumbing. And complex miniaturized equipment to keep the humidity constant, or something. His instrumentation was formidable. That coordinate meter was no two-bit toy, either. He had not known that such things existed, and suspected their cost would have been well beyond his means. Regardless of their miniaturization, they weighed a fair amount. His bicycle weighed about forty pounds, and the other things might total a similar amount. Half his own weight, all told. He would have felt it, hiking, and would not have been able to maintain any four miles an hour.

Naturally the bike was sluggish. Even the quintuple gearing could not ameliorate weight and terrain and indecision. Once he found a good, smooth, level stretch without weeds or shells, he could make much better time.

Even so, he was on schedule. Fortunately he was in good physical condition, and recovered quickly from exertion. How good his mental state was he wasn’t sure; small things were setting him off unreasonably, and he was hearing female voices on a closed-circuit radio.

He unpacked the concentrates, having trouble finding what he wanted. These were supposed to be packages of things that expanded into edibility when water was added.

He had a bulb of water: a transparent pint-sized container. There was a second pint in reserve. After that he would have to go to recycled fluid, a prospect he didn’t relish.

There were a number of things about this business that did not exactly turn him on. But two things had overwhelmed his aversions: the money and the chance to be involved in something significant. The mission, he had been told, would be done within a month, and the pay matched what he would have had from a year with a good job in his specialty. And if he did not agree that it was a mission he was proud to be associated with, that pay would double. The money had been paid in advance, in full; there was no question about that. So he had been willing to take the rest on faith, and to put up with the awkward details. They were, after all, necessary; he could not drink the water of the sea because it was both salty and phased out, and he could not eat the food of it either. He had to be self sufficient, except for the supplies which would be found in depots along the way.

Don inserted the syringe into the appropriate aperture of his food-packet and squeezed. The wrapping inflated. The principle was simple enough; he could have figured it out for himself if he had not been told, and there were instructions on the packets. He kneaded it, feeling the content solidify squishily. He counted off one minute while it set. His meal was ready.

He tore along the seam, exposing a pinkish mass. Cherry flavored glop, guaranteed to contain all the essential nutrients known to be required by man, plus a few good guesses. Vitamins A, B, C; P and Q; X, Y, and Z? It looked like puréed cow brains.

Don brought it cautiously to his nose and sniffed. Worse. Had he done something wrong? This smelled as if he had used urine as the liquid ingredient. He would never make his mark as a chef!

He suppressed his unreasonable revulsion and took a bite. After all, what could go wrong with a prepackaged meal? He chewed.

He spat it out. The stuff was absolutely vile. It tasted like rotten cheese laced with vinegar, and his stomach refused to believe it was wholesome. He deposited the remains in the converter, for even this must not be wasted.

Now he had sanitary needs. The hard labor of travel had disturbed his digestion. Or was it the experience with the foul glop? No, neither; it was the emotional strain of traversing the ocean floor in this remarkable phase state. He had practiced breathing in that tank of water, just after tunneling through, so that he had known it was feasible. But that had hardly prepared him for the psychological impact of pedaling a bicycle under the heaving sea.

He had to admit that this was an interesting adventure, even in its bad aspects. He knew already that he would not be demanding double pay. He had not been told he would like every aspect, just that it would be significant, and that it was.

He wound up with a plastic bag of substance. He hesitated, then reluctantly deposited it, too, in the converter. This stuff was in phase with him, and there was not much way to replace it; it must not be wasted. The unit would process it all, powered by a spur from his pedaling crank just below, reducing the solids to ash and filling another pint container with potable water.

Water, water, everywhere—how odd that he should be immersed in it, yet have to conserve it rigidly lest he dehydrate. There was a dichotomy about this phaseout that he wasn’t clear about. The sea was like air to him, yet it remained the sea to its denizens. Fish could and did swim right through him and his bicycle without falling or gasping for gill-fluid. So it wasn’t air at all, merely water at one one-thousandth effective density. So how was he able to breathe it? That little matter had not, in the rush, been clarified.

Don was no chemist, but he knew that H2O did not convert to—what was it? N4O? No, air wasn’t that kind of combination, it was just a mixture of gases. Anyway, the O, for oxygen, in H2O could not be asssimilated for respiration. He knew that much. Water vapor wasn’t breathable. Even the fish had to sift their oxygen from the air dissolved in water, not the water itself. Yet even if he could have breathed the water, he would have been getting only one thousandth of the oxygen it contained, or maybe one five-hundredth what he was accustomed to. That was extremely slim pickings.

He was wasting time. He had perhaps forty miles to go yet—a good four or five hours even on a decent surface. Twelve hours at his present rate. Which left him no time at all to rest or sleep. He had to keep moving.

Maybe his contact was expecting him. Was he in radio range? He flicked the radio switch.

“Now don’t turn me off,” the female voice said, “before I—” But he had already done so.

Now as he rode he tried to analyze his motive. Why did he object to hearing from a woman? So maybe she had somehow tuned in on this private band; that did not make her a criminal. She evidently had some notion where he was. What harm would there be in talking to her?

He got under way and tuned out the scenery. Not that he had paid much attention to it so far. What had he seen, actually? Fish, sponges, a blur of water, the shift of digits on the meters, and the irregular terrain of the sea floor.

Somehow the radio voice seemed one with the scenery. Both needed to be tuned out. Yet he knew that this was nonsensical. The scenery was already over-familiar, but the woman was a stranger. Why wouldn’t he talk to her?

He realized that he couldn’t blame it on the secrecy of the mission, because he knew no secrets yet, and was not responsible for radio security. It was the fact that she had caught him by surprise, and that she was a sweet-voiced young woman. That voice conjured a mental image of an attractive creature—the kind that paid no attention to a studious loner like him. So he had tuned out immediately, rather than get involved and risk the kind of put-down that would inevitably come. It was a virtually involuntary reflex.

So now he understood it. That didn’t change it. He was afraid to talk to her.

He moved, he rested, he moved less, he rested more, he ground on, he tried another meal—and quickly fed it into the converter. It couldn’t be his imagination! That food was spoiled. Fortunately his appetite was meager.

Don woke from his travel-effort oblivion to see to his dumbfounded joy that he had picked up on his schedule and could afford an hour’s break. So he propped his bike, lay down on the strangely solid sand, and sank into a blissful stupor until the alarm went off. The world outside his little sphere became as unreal as it seemed.

Just so long as he didn’t miss his rendezvous. He thought of himself as a loner, but that was mainly with respect to women. He had been alone more than enough, in this odd region on this strange mission.

He made it. He was on 83°15’ west longitude already, and bearing down on 27° north latitude. It was a few minutes (time, not distance) before nine in the morning. Nothing was visible, of course. It was dark above, and even with his headlight on he could not see far enough to locate anything much smaller than an active volcano. Water in his vicinity might feel like air, but it still dampened vision in its normal fashion. Except that the lamp restored full color, blessedly. Even if he could have seen for miles, the problem of pinpoint location would be similar to that in a dry-land wilderness. His meter was not that precise.

As his watch showed the moment of scheduled contact, Don stood still and listened. The ever-present noises of the sea crowded in annoyingly. Sound: there was the key. Here in the ocean, sound traveled at quadruple its speed in air, and it carried much better. Light might damp out, and radar, but sound was in its element here. Make a noise in the sea and it would be heard.

Don heard. It was the faint beep-beep of a signal no marine creature made—he hoped. It was Morse Code. And it had an echo: the slower arrival of the impulse through the air of the phase?

When it paused, he answered. He did not know Morse himself, except as a typical pattern of dots and dashes, so he merely sounded three blasts on his whistle. After a moment the same signal was returned.

Contact had been made.

CHAPTER 2

GASPAR

Proxy 5–12–5–16–8: Attention.

Acknowledging.

Status?

The first three recruits have been sent through the phase tunnel and the fourth alerted. The mission is proceeding as designed.

Contraindications?

The first recruit refuses to hold a radio dialogue. This may indicate an intellectual problem that did not manifest itself on the initial screening. He is otherwise normal, and seems to be pursuing the mission in good faith. The second recruit is more assertive, and may override this attitude or incapacity in the first. This foible does not appear to pose a threat to the mission.

There are always peculiarities of local situations. If this is the extent in your case, you are well off. 5–12–5–16–9 has a suicidal recruit.

That world may be lost!

Not necessarily. A suicidal person may be in a position to understand the loss of a world.

And may not care.

True. But what we offer does seem preferable to complete destruction.

“Gaspar Brown, marine geologist,” the man said. He was short and fairly muscular, dark-haired and swarthy and looked to be in his mid thirties.

“Don Kestle, archaeologist,” Don responded. “Minoan.”

The bicycles drew together and the men reached across to shake hands. Don was phenomenally relieved to feel solid flesh again. He found himself liking Gaspar, though he had never met the man before. At this stage he liked anything human. The specters of his loneliness had retreated immeasurably.

“S-so you know about the ocean,” Don said, finding nothing better as conversation fodder at the moment. He had never been much for initiating a relationship, and hoped Gaspar was better at it.

“Almost nothing.”

“W-what?”

“I know almost nothing about the ocean,” Gaspar said, “compared to what remains to be discovered. I can’t even identify half these fish noises I’m hearing. They’re much louder and clearer and more intricate than normal.”

Don smiled weakly. “Oh. Yes.”

“That’s why I welcome this opportunity to explore,” Gaspar continued, warming. “This way we don’t disturb the marine creatures, so they don’t hide or shut up. Think of it: the entire ocean basin open to us without the problems of clumsy diving suits, nitrogen narcosis, or the bends.”

“N-nitrogen—?”

“You know. Rapture of the deep. Nitrogen dissolves in the blood because of the pressure, and this makes the diver drunk. This can kill him faster than alcohol in a driver, because it’s himself at risk, not some innocent pedestrian. So he comes up in a hurry, and that nitrogen bubbles out of his blood like the fizz in fresh soda, blocking blood vessels or lodging in joints and doubling him up like—”

“You’re right,” Don agreed quickly. “Nice not to have to worry.”

“Hey, have you eaten yet? I’ve been so excited just looking around I haven’t—”

“W-well, I—” Don was abashed to admit his problem with the food, so he concealed it. “I haven’t eaten, no.” Gaspar was carrying the conversational ball, and that was a relief. Don was happy to go along, letting his compliance pass for social adequacy. Once he knew a person, it was easier.

“Great.” Gaspar hauled out his packages and chose one. “Steak flavor. Let’s see whether it’s close.”

Don dug out a matching flavor from his pack, not commenting. If Gaspar could eat this stuff …

They squeezed the bulbs and the packages ballooned. Gaspar opened his first and took a bite. He chewed. “Not bad, considering,” he said. “Not close, but not bad. Maybe it would be closer if it didn’t have the texture of paste. Better than K-rations, anyway.”

Don got a grip on his nerve and opened his own. The same rotten odor wafted out.

“Hey, is your converter leaking?” Gaspar inquired.

“Not that I know of. Why?” As if he didn’t know!

“That smell. Something’s foul. No offense.”

Wordlessly Don held out his package.

Gaspar sniffed, choked, and took it from him. In a moment it was in the converter. “You got a bad one! Didn’t you know?”

“They’re all like that, I thought. I was afraid—”

“They can’t be! These things are sterile. Let me check.”

“B-be my guest.”

Gaspar checked. “What a mess! I can tell without having to use the water. Did you actually eat that stuff?”

“One bite.”

Gaspar laughed readily. “You’ve got more grit than I have. What a rotten deal! Have some of mine.”

Don accepted it gratefully. Gaspar’s cherry glop tasted like cherry, and his steak like steak. Texture was something else, but this wasn’t worth a quibble at this stage.

“H-how do you think it happened?” Don asked as his hunger abated.

“Oh, accident, I’d say,” Gaspar decided. “You know the government. Three left feet at the taxpayer’s expense. We’ll share mine, and we’ll both reload at the first supply depot. No trouble, really.”

The man certainly didn’t get upset over trifles. But Don wondered what kind of carelessness would be allowed to imperil this unique, secret mission, not to mention his life. For a man had to eat, and they could only assimilate food that had been phased into this state.

“Is it a government operation?” Don asked. “I thought maybe a private enterprise.”

Gaspar shrugged. “Could be. I wasn’t told. But somebody went to a pretty formidable expense to set us up with some pretty fancy equipment. If it’s not the government, it must be a large corporation. This looks like a million dollar operation to me, apart from what they’re paying us. But you’re right: the big companies get criminally sloppy too. It could be either. Let’s hope their quality control is better on the other stuff.”

That reminded Don about the female voice on his radio. Had it been mistuned, so that it connected to someone not with this mission? If so, he had been right to cut off contact, though that was not why he had done it. Obviously that person wasn’t Gaspar. Did she speak on both their radios, or only his own? Or had he imagined it? Should he ask?

Yes, he should. “D-did you t-turn on your—?”

“Say, look at that!” Gaspar cried.

Don looked around, alarmed. It was a monstrous fish, three times the length of a man, with a snout like the blade of a chain saw.

“Sawfish,” Gaspar exclaimed happily. “Isn’t she a beauty! I never saw one in these waters before. But then I never rode a bike here before, either. My scuba gear must have scared them away. What a difference that phase makes. Not that I’m any ichthyologist.”

“I thought sea-life was your specialty.”

“No. The sea bottom. I can tell you something about rock formations, saline diffusion, and sedimentary strata, but the fauna I just pick up in passing. I know the sawfish scouts the bottom—see, there she goes, poking around—and sometimes slashes up whole schools of fish with that snout, so as to eat the pieces, but that’s about all. Relative of the rays, I believe.”

That ugly chill returned. The fish was horizontally flattened, with vaguely winglike fins. It did resemble a skate, from the right angle.

“Y-you know, w-we aren’t completely apart,” Don said. “The bones—they interact—”

“Oh, do they?” Gaspar asked, as if this were an interesting scientific sidelight. As of course it was, to him. “I suppose they would, being rigid. There has to be some interaction, or we would sink right through the ground, wouldn’t we? In fact, I’m surprised we don’t; it isn’t that solid, normally. Sediment, you know.”

The sawfish vanished, and Don was vastly relieved. “You’re right! If we intersect the real world by only a thousandth, why don’t we find the sand like muck? If anything, it’s harder than it should be. My tires don’t sink into it at all. And how is it we can see and hear so well? I should think—”

“I’m no nuclear physicist, either. I have no notion how this field operates, if it is a field—but thank God for its existence.”

“Maybe it isn’t exactly a field,” Don said. He was glad to get into something halfway technical, because it was grist for conversation, and he was curious himself. “Why should we have to ride through that tunnel-thing—you did do that?—to enter it, in that case? But if we were shunted into another, well, dimension—”

“Could be.” Gaspar considered for a moment. “Maybe one of the others will know. I’m just glad it works.”

“Others? I thought this was a party of three.”

“Oh? Maybe you’re right. I wasn’t told, just that there would be more than one. I thought maybe four.” Gaspar seemed to sidestep any potential disagreement, inoffensively. “Do you happen to know his specialty?”

“Me? That official was so tight-lipped I was lucky to learn more than my own name. And we’re not supposed to tell each other our last names, I think.”

“Necessary security, I suppose,” Gaspar said. “I clean forgot. Well, you just forget mine, and I’ll forget yours. Did you get to see anyone?”

“No, it was just an interviewer behind a screen. A voice, really; it could almost have been a recording.”

“Same here. I responded to this targeted ad on my computer, and the pay and conditions—I was about ready for a job change anyway. I still don’t know what the mission is, but I’m already glad I’m here.” He glanced at Don. “How’d you get into this project, anyway? No offense, but archaeology is mostly landside, isn’t it? Digging trenches through old mounds, picking up bits of pottery, publishing scholarly reports? There can’t be much for you, under the sea.”

“That’s a pretty simple view of it,” Don said, glad to have a question about his specialty. His reticence faded when he was in his area of competence. “But maybe close enough. The fact is, a great many archaeologists have combed through those mounds and collected that pottery, on land. They’ve reconstructed some fabulous history. If I could only have been with Bibby at Dilmun …” He sighed, knowing that the other would not comprehend his regret. No sense in getting into a lecture. “But I came too late. Today the major horizon in archaeology is marine, and the shallow waters have been pretty well exploited, too. No one knows how thoroughly the Mediterranean Sea has been ransacked. So that leaves deep water, and I guess you know better than I do why that’s been left alone.”

“Pressure,” Gaspar said immediately. “One atmosphere for every thirty four feet depth. A few thousand feet down—ugh! But I was asking about you. I don’t want to seem more nosy than I am; I just think we’d better have some idea why and how we were picked for this mission. Because the sea is formidable, even phased out as we are; make no mistake about that. The depths are a greater challenge than the moon. So it figures that the most qualified personnel would be used.”

Don laughed, but it was forced. “I—I’m the least qualified archaeologist around. My only claim to fame is that I can read Minoan script, more or less—and there’s precious little of that hereabouts.”

“I’m not the world’s most notable marine geologist, either,” Gaspar agreed. “Any major oil company has a dozen that could give me lessons. But what I’m saying is that for this project, they should have used the best, and they could have, if they cared enough, because they evidently do have the money. Instead they placed little ads and hired nonentities like us, and maybe we aren’t quite even in our specialties. You’re—what was it?”

“Minoan. That’s ancient Crete.”

“And I specialize in marine impact craters. Want to know what there’re none of, here in the Florida shallows? If they had taken us down to the coast of Colombia, as I had hoped—” He shrugged.

“What’s there?” Don asked.

“You don’t know? No, I suppose that’s no more obvious to you than Crete is to me. That’s where we believe the big one splashed down: the meteor that so shook up the Earth’s system that it wiped out the dinosaurs.”

“The extinction of the dinosaurs!” Don exclaimed.

“Right. But the site has about sixty five million years worth of sediment covering it. So it will take an in depth—no pun—investigation to confirm it, assuming we can. But instead of sending me there, they sent me here. We’d have to bike across the Puerto Rico Trench to reach it, which is pointless and probably impossible. So either they have some lesser crater in mind for me, or they don’t care whether I see a crater at all. I’m out of specialty, just as you are. See what I mean?”

Don nodded soberly. “Maybe we’re expendable.”

“Maybe. Oh, I’m not paranoid about it. This phase thing is such a breakthrough that I’d sell my watery soul for the chance, and I think I mean that literally, to explore the ocean floor at any depth, unfettered by cumbersome equipment—that’s the raw stuff of dreams. But why me? Why you?”

“I can’t answer that,” Don said. “All I can do is say how I’m here. I wasn’t the bright boy of my class, but I was in the top quarter, with my main strength in deciphering. The lucrative foundations passed me up, and anyway, I wanted to go into new territory. Make a real breakthrough, somehow. Too ambitious for my own good. The prof knew it, and he made the contact. Swore me to secrecy, told me to buy myself a good bicycle and ride it to the address he gave me—well, that was two days ago, and here I am.”

“You’re single?”

“All the way single. My father died about five years ago, and my mother always was sickly—no s-sense going into that. I’ve got no special ties to this world. Maybe that’s why the ancient world fascinates me. You, too?”

“Pretty much. Auto accident when I was ten. Since then the sea has seemed more like home than the city. So nobody is going to be in a hurry to trace down our whereabouts. I think I see a pattern developing. We must have had qualifications we didn’t realize.”

“Must have,” Don agreed. “But you know, it’s growing on me too. I don’t know a thing about the sea, or even about bicycles, but I do know that the major archaeological horizon is right here. Not that I have the least bit of training for it. I guess I just closed my mind to the notion of going to the sea. But now that I’m in it—well, if I have to risk my life using a new device, maybe it’s worth it. All those ancient hulks waiting to be discovered in deep water—”