The Deep Range - Arthur C. Clarke [40]
“Thanks for the treatment, Doc,” he said. “I don’t believe the specialists could do any better, and I’m quite sure now that this trip back to Prof Stevens isn’t necessary.”
“So am I—but you’re going just the same. Now clear out and let me get on with my proper work of putting sticking plaster on coral cuts.”
Franklin was halfway through the door when he paused with a sudden, anxious query.
“I almost forgot—Don particularly wants to take me out tomorrow in the sub. Will that be O.K.?”
“Oh, sure—Don’s big enough to look after you. Just get back in time for the noon plane, that’s all I ask.”
As Franklin walked away from the office and two rooms grandly called “Medical Center” he felt no resentment at having been ordered off the island. He had received far more tolerance and consideration than he had expected—perhaps more than he deserved. All the mild hostility that had been focused upon him by the less-privileged trainees had vanished at a stroke, but it would be best for him to escape for a few days from an atmosphere that had become embarrassingly sympathetic. In particular, he found it hard to talk without a sense of strain with Don and Indra.
He thought again of Dr. Myers’ advice, and remembered the jolting leap his heart had given at the words “The silly girl’s in love with you.” Yet it would be unfair, he knew, to take advantage of the present emotional situation; they could only know what they meant to each other when they had both had time for careful and mature thought. Put that way, it seemed a little cold-blooded and calculating. If one was really in love, did one stop to weigh the pros and cons?
He knew the answer to that. As Myers had said, he could not afford any more mistakes. It was far better to take his time and be certain than to risk the happiness of two lives.
The sun had barely lifted above the miles of reef extending to the east when Don Burley hauled Franklin out of bed. Don’s attitude toward him had undergone a change which it was not easy to define. He had been shocked and distressed by what had occurred and had tried, in his somewhat boisterous manner, to express sympathy and understanding. At the same time, his amour-propre had been hurt; he could not quite believe, even now, that Indra had never been seriously interested in him but only in Franklin, whom he had never thought of as a rival. It was not that he was jealous of Franklin; jealousy was an emotion beyond him. He was worried—as most men are occasionally throughout their lives—by his discovery that he did not understand women as well as he had believed.
Franklin had already packed, and his room looked bleak and bare. Even though he might be gone for only a few days, the accommodation was needed too badly for it to be left vacant just to suit his convenience. It served him right, he told himself philosophically.
Don was in a hurry, which was not unusual, but there was also a conspiratorial air about him, as if he had planned some big surprise for Franklin and was almost childishly anxious that everything should come off as intended. In any other circumstances, Franklin would have suspected some practical joke, but that could hardly be the explanation now.
By this time, the little training sub had become practically an extension of his own body, and he followed the courses Don gave him until he knew, by mental dead reckoning, that they were somewhere out in the thirty mile-wide channel between Wistari Reef and the mainland. For some reason of his own, which he refused to explain, Don had switched off the pilot’s main sonar screen, so that Franklin was navigating blind. Don himself could see everything that was in the vicinity by looking at the repeater set at the rear of the cabin, and though Franklin was occasionally tempted to glance back at it he managed to resist the impulse. This was, after all, a legitimate part of his training; one day he might have to navigate a sub that had been blinded by a breakdown of its underwater senses.
“You can surface now,” said