Part 13 (1/2)
”How long will our air last, for sixteen of us?” I asked.
”About eight hours.”
It would take us fifty to get to Port Sandor, running submerged. The wind wouldn't even begin to fall in less than twenty.
”We can go south, to the coast of Hermann Reuch's Land,” Abe Clifford, the navigator, said. ”Let me figure something out.”
He dug out a slide rule and a pencil and pad and sat down with his back to the back of the pilot's seat, under the light. Everybody watched him in a silence which Joe Kivelson broke suddenly by bellowing:
”Dumont! You light that pipe and I'll feed it to you!”
Old Piet Dumont grabbed the pipe out of his mouth with one hand and pocketed his lighter with the other.
”Gosh, Joe; I guess I just wasn't thinking...” he began.
”Well, give me that pipe.” Joe put it in the drawer under the charts.
”Now you won't have it handy the next time you don't think.”
After a while, Abe Clifford looked up. ”s.h.i.+p's position I don't have exactly; somewhere around East 25 Longitude, South 20 Lat.i.tude. I can't work out our present position at all, except that we're somewhere around South 30 Lat.i.tude. The locator signal is almost exactly north-by-northeast of us. If we keep it dead astern, we'll come out in Sancerre Bay, on Hermann Reuch's Land. If we make that, we're all right. We'll be in the lee of the Hacksaw Mountains, and we can surface from time to time to change air, and as soon as the wind falls we can start for home.”
Then he and Abdullah and Joe went into a huddle, arguing about cruising speed submerged. The results weren't so heartening.
”It looks like a ten-hour trip, submerged,” Joe said. ”That's two hours too long, and there's no way of getting more oxygen out of the gills than we're getting now. We'll just have to use less. Everybody lie down and breathe as shallowly as possible, and don't do anything to use energy. I'm going to get on the radio and see what I can raise.”
Big chance, I thought. These boat radios were only used for communicating with the s.h.i.+p while scouting; they had a strain-everything range of about three hundred miles. Hunter-s.h.i.+ps don't crowd that close together when they're working. Still, there was a chance that somebody else might be sitting it out on the bottom within hearing. So Abe took the controls and kept the signal from the wreck of the _Javelin_ dead astern, and Joe Kivelson began speaking into the radio:
”Mayday, Mayday, Mayday, Mayday. Captain Kivelson, _Javelin_, calling.
My s.h.i.+p was wrecked by an explosion; all hands now in scout boat, proceeding toward Sancerre Bay, on course south-by-southwest from the wreck. Locator signal is being broadcast from the _Javelin_. Other than that, we do not know our position. Calling all craft, calling Mayday.”
He stopped talking. The radio was silent except for an occasional frying-fat crackle of static. Then he began over again.
I curled up, trying to keep my feet out of anybody's face and my face clear of anybody else's feet. Somebody began praying, and somebody else told him to belay it, he was wasting oxygen. I tried to go to sleep, which was the only practical thing to do. I must have succeeded. When I woke again, Joe Kivelson was saying, exasperatedly:
”Mayday, Mayday, Mayday, Mayday...”
11
DARKNESS AND COLD
The next time I woke, Tom Kivelson was reciting the Mayday, Mayday incantation into the radio, and his father was asleep. The man who had been praying had started again, and n.o.body seemed to care whether he wasted oxygen or not. It was a Theosophist prayer to the Spirit Guides, and I remembered that Cesario Vieira was a Theosophist. Well, maybe there really were Spirit Guides. If there were, we'd all be finding out before long. I found that I didn't care one hoot which way, and I set that down to oxygen deficiency.
Then Glenn Murell broke in on the monotone call for help and the prayer.
”We're done for if we stay down here another hour,” he said. ”Any argument on that?”
There wasn't any. Joe Kivelson opened his eyes and looked around.
”We haven't raised anything at all on the radio,” Murell went on.