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By Root 361 0

Bluewater, from the surface of which a light mist, golden in the almost level rays of the morning sun, was lazily rising. The Lieutenant was already in his skin-tight suit, as was the remainder of the working party, but had yet to put on his helmet and flippers. The interior of the boat was crowded with men and gear, and there would have been little room to undress and dress. By his side, similarly attired, sat Chief Petty Officer Anderson, a big man, grossly fat until you looked at him more closely and realized that the fat was solid muscle. Baldheaded, baby-faced, he was peering intently at the submerged metal indicator that had been installed on the work boat's control console. He looked up from the instrument, said, "If I were you, Mr. Grimes, I'd run to the end of the lake and then come back in short sweeps." It was a suggestion, not an order, but when a C. P. O. suggests to even a senior officer the words carry weight.

Grimes replied, cheerfully enough, "I'll do just that, Chief."

He reduced thrust, lost altitude as he approached the beach, so that the boat would make its run barely clear of the surface of the water.

"If I were you, Mr. Grimes, I'd keep her up. That way we get a better spread on the detector beam. Once we've found the wreck we can come down for finer location."

"All right, Chief." And, thought Grimes, what the hell do we have officers for? To carry the can back, that's all.

Slowly, steadily, the boat grumbled its way out over Lake Bluewater. There were not, Grimes was relieved to see, any early morning swimmers or water-skiers. An audience he could do without, especially when such an audience would have with it a horde of watchbirds. He had good reason to dislike those robotic guardian angels.

To the end of the lake flew Grimes, toward the clump of screw pines that backed the sandy beach. "Anything yet, Chief?" he asked Anderson.

"No, sir." Then, in a reproachful voice, "You should have released the marker buoy, Mr. Grimes."

"I didn't know that we had one."

"I installed it myself, Mr. Grimes." Anderson was the ship's expert, rated and paid as such, in submarine operations.

"Why wasn't it an automatic release?" demanded the Lieutenant.

"Come, sir. You know better than that." The intonation made it quite clear that in the speaker's opinion Grimes didn't. "What if you make a crash landing on some hostile planet, in the sea, and don't want to give the potential enemy a chance to pinpoint your position? And hadn't you better watch those trees, sir?"

"I am watching them." Slowly Grimes turned the boat, started his sweeps back and forth across the width of the lake.

"Now!" exclaimed Anderson. "That's it, sir, I think. Bring her down, if you don't mind . . . Stop her. Now, back a little. Slowly, sir, slowly. Right a little . . . Stop her again. Cut the drive."

Gently, making only the slightest of splashes, the work boat settled to the surface. With the drive shut down it was suddenly very quiet. The air drifting in through the open windows carried a faint, refreshing tang of early morning mist. One of the ratings in the after compartment muttered, "This is a bit of all right. We should have brought fishing tackle."

Anderson turned his head, "You'll have all the fishing you want, Jones. It's a big, tin fish we've come to catch."

The men who knew what was good for them laughed.

"There are goldfish in the lake," contributed Grimes. His remark was received in silence. He shrugged. "All right, Chief. I'll go down to make the preliminary inspection. I'll let you know when I need help."

"Have you had your antibend shot, sir?" asked Anderson in a way that implied that all officers have to be wet-nursed, junior officers especially.

"Yes, Chief. Now, if somebody will help me on with my helmet . . ."

Anderson himself picked up the transparent sphere, lowered it carefully over Grimes' head, connected up the air pipes to the shoulder tank. The speaker inside the helmet said tinnily, "Testing, sir. Testing. Can you read me?"

"Loud and clear." The Lieutenant eased himself up from his chair, sat on the