The Deep Range - Arthur C. Clarke [96]
The light was fading swiftly as the sun’s rays lost their battle with the turbid water. A hundred feet down, he seemed to be in a world of misty moonlight, a world completely lacking color or warmth. His ears were giving him no trouble now, and he was breathing without effort, but he felt a subtle depression creeping over him. It was, he was sure, only an effect of the failing light—not a premonition of the thousand feet of descent that still lay ahead of him.
To occupy his mind, he called the pilot and asked for a progress report. Fifty drums had now been attached to the derrick, giving a total lift of well over a hundred tons. Six of the passengers in the trapped sub had become unconscious but appeared to be in no danger; the remaining seventeen were uncomfortable, but had adapted themselves to the increased pressure. The leak was getting no worse, but there were now three inches of water in the control room, and before long there would be danger of short circuits.
“Three hundred feet down,” said Commander Henson’s voice. “Check your hydrogen-flow meter—you should be starting the switch-over now.”
Franklin glanced down at the compact little instrument panel. Yes, the automatic change-over was taking place. He could detect no difference in the air he was breathing, but in the next few hundred feet of descent most of the dangerous nitrogen would be flushed out. It seemed strange to replace it with hydrogen, a far more reactive—and even explosive—gas, but hydrogen produced no narcotic effects and was not trapped in the body tissues as readily as nitrogen.
It seemed to have grown no darker in the last hundred feet; his eyes had accustomed themselves to the low level of illumination, and the water was slightly clearer. He could now see for two or three yards along the smooth hull he was riding down into the depths where only a handful of unprotected men had ever ventured—and fewer still returned to tell the story.
Commander Henson called him again. “You should be on fifty per cent hydrogen now. Can you taste it?”
“Yes—a metallic sort of flavor. Not unpleasant, though.”
“Talk as slowly as you can,” said the commander. “It’s hard to understand you—your voice sounds so high-pitched now. Are you feeling quite O.K.?”
“Yes,” replied Franklin, glancing at his depth gauge. “Will you increase my rate of descent to a hundred feet a minute? We’ve no time to waste.”
At once he felt the vessel sinking more swiftly beneath him as the ballast tanks were flooded, and for the first time he began to feel the pressure around him as something palpable. He was going down so quickly that there was a slight lag as the insulating layer of air in his suit adjusted to the pressure change; his arms and legs seemed to be gripped as if by a huge and gentle vice, which slowed his movements without actually restricting them.
The light had now nearly gone, and as if in anticipation of his order the pilot of the sub switched on his twin searchlights. There was nothing for them to illumine, here in this empty void midway between sea bed and sky, but it was reassuring to see the double nimbus of scattered radiance floating in the water ahead of him. The violet filters had been removed, for his benefit, and now that his eyes had something distant to focus upon he no longer felt so oppressively shut in and confined.
Eight hundred feet down—more than three quarters of the way to the bottom. “Better level off here for three minutes,” advised Commander Henson. “I’d like to keep you here for half an hour, but we’ll have to make it up on the way back.”
Franklin submitted to the delay with what grace he could. It seemed incredibly long; perhaps his time sense had been distorted, so that what was really a minute appeared like ten. He was going to ask Commander Henson if his watch had stopped when he suddenly remembered that he had a perfectly good one of his own. The fact that he had forgotten