Danger Below! Read online

  “Skip the amateur psychoanalysis and answer my question,” Rick said, returning the grin.

  “I’m with you. Only we may have trouble getting there.”

  Rick knew what he meant. The boat trip from Whiteside Landing to the island had been pretty rough yesterday, and the seas would be even higher today. “The way to find out is to go see,” he said.

  They rinsed dishes and utensils and stacked them in the dishwasher, then got into foul-weather clothing Page 7

  of waterproof outer pants, waterproof parka, and boots. When they went out into the heavy rain, it was still quite dark because of the thick clouds overhead. They could see without lights, but that was about all.

  At the dock where the Spindrift boats were tied up they found the craft heaving violently on their restraining lines. The big winds from Donna had not yet reached Spindrift, but the high-piled waves and the surf breaking on the sea wall were evidence of their coming.

  “We’ll have to haul the boats out today,” Scotty observed.

  In stormy weather the Spindrift boats were pulled ashore and lashed down on cradles made for that purpose. Only five times within Rick’s memory had that been necessary-once before in a hurricane, and four times when prolonged cold spells had surrounded the island with ice on the landward side. When that happened, Rick and Barby hiked across the frozen tidal flats that connected the island with the mainland and walked to school at Whiteside, the nearest town. There had been no heavy freeze since Scotty, an orphan, had joined the Spindrift family after service in the Marines. But Scotty had been there for the previous hurricane.

  “We can’t cross by boat, and we can’t hike,” Rick said.

  “But you’re going, anyway,” Scotty replied with a grin. “And I know how.Under the waves. Too bad we can’t use the Sea Horse.”

  “It would be nice,” Rick admitted. “Are you game to use the scuba gear?”

  “Why not?It’s the safest and fastest way to get there.Also the warmest. Notice that it’s getting cooler?”

  Rick nodded. “Let’s go and suit up.”

  The boys hurried to the room on the cove side of the laboratory where the diving gear was stored. They turned on the lights and inspected the array. Neatly racked on hangers were several “wet” suits, most of them black. But one was blue and one was red. Those belonged to Barby and Jan, both expert divers, whom the boys had taught. One outsize suit belonged to big Hobart Zircon, the Foundation’s Associate Director, and a brilliant physicist. Others belonged to staff members of more normal size. In racks along the walls were scuba air tanks with harnesses, and a row of spare tanks. The girls’ tanks were easily identified by color, while the rest were black or silver. Above the tanks, regulators hung, and there was a rack for fins, face masks, life vests, and weight belts. There were shelves for hoods, gloves, and boots, made of foam neoprene for warmth, and a separate shelf for compasses, depth gauges, pressure gauges, spare weights, and knives in leg sheaths.

  Rick and Scotty were proud of the gear room. They had planned and outfitted it themselves so that diving gear could be stored safely and neatly. They had built a rack for a series of big tanks, called a cascade, in which air was stored from which the scuba tanks could be recharged, and there was a place for the air compressor that filled the big tanks.

  Rick took a pressure gauge, adjusted it to his own tank, and opened the tank valve.“Reads 1900

  pounds. No need to recharge this one.” He transferred the gauge to Scotty’s tank. It was full, at 2400

  pounds. “Tanks okay,” he reported “Let’s suit up.”

  They stripped, changed to swim trunks, then got into the neoprene suits, using powder liberally to make the skin-tight pants and jacket slip on easily. Each added boots, life vest, and hood, but left off the foam Page 8

  gloves. It wasn’t cold enough to require full gear, but the boots would be useful on the beach, and the hood would keep rain off their heads.

  The boys attached regulators, strapped knives to their legs, and placed compasses and depth gauges on their wrists. By the time they swung the tanks to their backs and put on weight belts, daylight had penetrated the storm clouds. They picked up fins and masks and left.

  Weighted down with gear they walked to Pirate’s Cove, paused at the beach, and took a compass bearing on a strip of beach on the opposite side of the cove.

  The water in the cove, usually calm, was very rough, with steep waves that crashed on the shore like miniature breakers.

  “We’d better get in and under quick,” Rick observed. “It will be calm below. Let’s hold the fins until we’re in, or well get pebbles in them.”

  They spat into their masks to keep them from fogging, rinsed them in the surf, and put them in place on their foreheads. The last step was to reach over their shoulders and turn on the tanks,then check the regulators. When Scotty nodded that his was working, Rick pulled his mask down into place, and holding tight to his fins, ran out and dove into the waves. The surf lifted him and almost turned him over, but he straightened out and swam, with Scotty close behind him. The beach got deeper gradually for about 20 yards, then dropped rapidly to about a 20-foot depth.

  Rick swallowed to adjust his ears, noting that even on the bottom where he was swimming the pressure of the waves could be felt strongly. Visibility was poor, not more than three feet, because the storm was stirring up the bottom. He stopped and put on his fins, and saw dimly that Scotty was doing the same, within touching distance. Then, checking the luminous hand of the compass, they started out, side by side, so close that each could have reached out and touched the other. They had been diving together for so long that it was all automatic.

  They swam a few feet above the bottom, following its contours. At the 50-foot depth, the water was clearer, but dark because of the overcast skies. Maximum depth in the cove was about 70 feet, and that was near the opposite shore. They reached it, and started up, knowing that the trip was almost over. To avoid any rocks or obstacles close inshore, they swam to the surface at Rick’s thumbs-up signal, and the waves shoved them violently toward the beach. That was no problem. Each picked up a wave and body-surfed neatly into shallow water, then stood up and ran backwards to dry land, the only sensible way to move when wearing fins.

  “Not a bad trip,” Rick observed as he slipped out of his tank harness and dropped his weight belt. Then he removed fins and mask, used his life vest as a wrapper for mask and regulator, and placed the gear carefully above the high-water mark. Scotty did the same, and presently the two boys stood in their wet suits, comfortable even in the drenching rain, and feeling pounds lighter with the diving gear removed. The foam neoprene of the wet suits trapped a layer of water next to their bodies, and once their bodies had warmed the layer, cold crept in only very gradually. If anything, the suits were too warm when the wearer was not in the cool water.

  The boys made their way along the edge of the cove toward the openAtlantic , staying on the narrow strip of cove beach. When they rounded the corner of the cove to the beach that faced the sea, they found heavy surf beating far up on shore.

  “Great surfing weather,” Scotty said jokingly. The waves were right, but that was all.

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  “Great camping weather, too,” Rick added. “Wonder if Jan’s stranger is really here?”

  The question was answered within a minute. Scotty caught a glimpse of color and pointed. A few yards inside the scrubby woods, safely above the high-water line, was the tent. They couldn’t see it clearly because of some kind of obstruction. As they got closer, they saw why. The stranger had built a windbreak of heavy timbers from an old wreck of a fishing boat, spiking the wood to trees. His tent was protected from the wind to a large extent, and he had piled dirt on the tent edges so that wind couldn’t get underneath and lift the fabric up. Rick thought the setup might even survive Donna. Obviously, the occupant knew exactly what he was doing.

  The tent had a zipper opening. It was closed. As they got within speaking distance,
Rick said, “I wonder if anyone’s home.”

  The zipper opened. A bearded face poked through and cool blue eyes surveyed them. The man said casually, “Hello, boys.Out bird watching?”

  Rick grinned. It was a fair question. He had his answer prepared, anticipating it. “Not exactly, sir. We thought we’d see what it was like under the water in a storm, and when we got to the beach we saw your tent. We wondered why anyone would be camping in this weather.”

  The man opened the tent zipper all the way down and stepped through. Rick had a quick look at equipment inside the tent, mounted on a tripod. The bearded man looked harmless enough, and he didn’t seem at all disturbed by their arrival. He wore foul-weather gear.

  “You didn’t dive from a boat in this sea,” he stated. “Where did you boys come from?”

  “We live on the island across the cove,” Scotty replied. “My name’s Scott, sir. This is Rick Brant.”

  “Glad to meet you, boys.I’m John Cartwell. And since you’ve explained why you’re out in this weather, the least I can do is reciprocate. I’m a meteorologist from theUniversityofDelaware . Right now I’m a hurricane watcher.”

  “What are you watching for, Dr. Cartwell?” Rick asked.

  “Changes in wind velocity and direction as a function of time.I’m only one of several idiots doing this.

  It’s a Weather Bureau project the university is conducting.”

  Rick understood. “Automatic stations couldn’t record any short-duration shifts, is that it, sir?”

  “Exactly.And the weather planes that fly through the storm can’t get the small, fast changes, either. We have to understand these storms if we ever expect to do anything about them, so I suppose it’s worth a little discomfort.”

  “I should hope so,” Rick agreed. “Well, we’d better be getting back.Lots of luck, Dr. Cartwell. Your setup looks as though it could withstand the winds if the velocities don’t get too high.”

  “I’ll know more about that after the storm passes. But the tent actually isn’t too important. My clothes protect me, and my food and water are safe in cans. I may be uncomfortable, and without a roof over my head, but I’ll get along.”

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  “Nice to meet you, sir,” Scotty said. “I hope it doesn’t last too long.”

  They shook hands all around, and the boys walked back to their equipment. As they were putting on the diving gear, Scotty looked at Rick quizzically. “Even through the water pouring down your face, I can see a certain Brantish look that I recognize. Didn’t you believe the man?”

  “He made sense,” Rick admitted. “There’s a lot of hurricane research going on, and about the only way to get detailed information is to have instruments in the path of the storm. Also, what I saw of his instruments inside the tent added up. He had a pelorus on a tripod at the ready to take bearings. And he must have had gauges and stuff in the boxes. Only. . .”

  “Only what?”Scotty urged.

  “What’s down the beach a few hundred yards from him?”

  Scotty’s eyes widened. “A Coast and Geodetic tidal station, and it has a hut made of concrete blocks behind it for the recording equipment.”

  “Right.And the Coast Survey is in the same federal agency as the Weather Bureau-the Environmental Sciences Service Administration.ESSA for short. Do you mean to tell me a scientist working for the Weather Bureau couldn’t use a Coast Survey hut?”

  “It doesn’t make sense,” Scotty agreed. “But if his story isn’t true-and maybe it’s true because there was a bureaucratic foul-up of some kind-then what’s he doing there?”

  “I’d like to know for sure,” Rick said thoughtfully. “Come on. Let’s get back. I’ve worked up an appetite for a second breakfast, and I’ll bet the family’s eating by now.”

  CHAPTER III

  Eye of the Hurricane

  Hurricane Donna drove into theNew Jersey coast as predicted, bringing winds of over a hundred miles an hour. The seas smashed against the shore, wrecking boats and buildings, and tearing up great sections of the famousAtlantic City boardwalk. At Spindrift, the storm’s onslaught was felt only a short time later, but all was in readiness. Plywood storm shutters barred the windows, the boats were lashed down, and all loose objects were stored.

  Rick was grateful for the fortunate timing that had put his plane, the Sky Wagon, in a safe location. Just before leaving forEurope he had taken it to the regional dealer atNewark Airport, where it could be torn down for a thousand-hour check. It was safe in a hangar at the airport, waiting for him to pick it up.

  While the hurricane neared the island, work in the lab continued. Getting from house to lab became an adventure for Rick and Scotty, clad in foul-weather gear and fighting winds that grew in intensity.

  With Dick Antell as guide, the boys inspected the interior of the Sea Horse. It was a masterpiece of Page 11

  compact design, with enough room for everything, but no room to spare. The control room had a wheel on a yoke, much like the control of Rick’s plane. The control column changed the direction and pitch of the four propellers that both propelled and steered the undersea craft. The tail assembly was merely for stability and trim. The observer’s seat was fitted with camera and instrument controls, and handgrips for an external flexible arm, very much like the device on the Spindrift Submobile with which a dragon had once been brought up from the depths, as described in 100 Fathoms Under.

  The divers’ compartment was fully equipped with pressurization and mixed gas controls. The divers could either use a hookah system in which the breathing mixture was supplied to the divers’ regulators by hoses from the submersible’s gas tanks, or they could dive free, carrying their own tanks of gas.

  The more Rick and Scotty saw, the more eager they became to make a dive in the Sea Horse. But all chances for an immediate dive looked dim.

  Rick had moved his radio to the workshop so that the group could keep track of the storm’s progress.

  While the sonoscope installation went on, they paused to listen now and then. Once, the announcer reported that Red Bank had registered winds of ninety-five miles an hour, and added that the hurricane was moving slightly east of north.

  “Right toward us,” Scotty commented.

  “We’ll work until the eye reaches us,” Hartson Brant told the group. “According to the direction and speed of the storm, we should be in the eye in about an hour. We’d better go to the house, then, or we’ll be stuck out here. Once the eye passes, the winds will shift. Until now, we’d have been blown inland where we could grab a tree or something if the wind knocked us off balance, but when the shift comes, anyone moving between here and the house would get blown toward the sea.”

  Rick had been wondering about the weather watcher on the other side of the cove. “Do you suppose Dr. Cartwell is weathering the storm?” he inquired.

  “Let’s hope so,” Dr. Brant replied. “There’s nothing we can do in any case. Rick, I’ve marked the place where the mounting brackets for the image tube are to go. Will you please drill evenly spaced 3/16th-inch holes to match up with those on the brackets? Then Scotty can help you put the brackets up with metal-tapping screws.”

  “Okay, Dad.” Rick got busy at once, working carefully because precision was essential. But now and then he paused, thinking again of Cartwell. When he had reported to his father, and stated his doubts, the elder Brant had inquired if the boys had asked Cart-well whether someone else was using the Coast Survey hut. They admitted they hadn’t.

  The scientist had smiled at his son. “Always suspicious of behavior or situations that differ from what you naturally expect, aren’t you? From the description, this project of Cartwell’s would come under the heading of micrometeorology, which is to look for fine detail in a restricted geometrical situation. If that’s true, there are probably several others close by.

  Doing a good job of analysis means getting data from as many points as can be managed.I suggest that you reserve judgment until you find out where the othe
rs are located.”

  Rick knew his father was right, but he couldn’t help wondering. It was the tent that bothered him, Cartwell had fixed it pretty securely, but it didn’t seem reasonable either for a university or a government agency to give a hurricane investigator such a fragile shelter.

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  He put thoughts of the hurricane watcher aside and concentrated on his work. Scotty, meanwhile, was helping Pryor to unscrew the conical nose of the Sea Horse. The sensing unit would go in the nose, which had to be adapted to take the complex instrument. When complete, very high-frequency sound impulses would be sent out from the nose, and their echoes would be collected and turned into electrical impulses that would trace a picture on the image tube.

  When Rick had first learned how the sonoscope operated, he had been amazed at its complexity, but his father had told him that the Spindrift scientists had merely duplicated a system that bats, porpoises, and whales had been using for millions of years- and the sonoscope was pretty rough compared with their sound-sensing equipment.

  Although fully shielded from the hurricane inside the building, Rick had been conscious of its presence because of the continuous roaring, audible even through the insulated walls. Suddenly he was conscious that it had become quiet. He looked up from the bench where he was working on the aluminum brackets and saw that everyone else was listening, too.

  Hartson Brant spoke. “We’re in the eye of the hurricane.”

  “Let’s go outside,” Scotty suggested. “I’ve never been in a hurricane’s eye before.”

  “I think none of us have,” Hartson Brant replied. “Let’s all go. First, though, turn off equipment and lights. We won’t be coming back. Pick up foul-weather gear on the way.”

  It took only moments for Rick to secure his equipment and throw switches. Then he ran for the door, with Scotty close behind him. At the outer entrance, he opened the door and looked out. Sound flooded in, but it wasn’t the wind. It was the surf, still breaking as violently as ever. But the wind had died to an occasional gust, and-wonder of wonders-the sun was breaking through!