Free On the Beach by Nevil Shute Page A

a copy of Johnny Dismore’s report—he’s her captain—but I haven’t seen it yet. There hasn’t been a ship across to South America for quite a while. I asked for a copy to be sent by teleprinter, but it’s low priority upon the radio.”
    “How far did she get?”
    “She got all over, I believe,” he said. “She did the Eastern States from Florida to Maine and went right in to New York Harbor, right on up the Hudson till she tangled with the wreck of the George Washington Bridge. She went to New London and to Halifax and to St. John’s, and then she crossed the Atlantic and went up the English Channel and into the London River, but she couldn’t get far up that. Then she took a look at Brest and at Lisbon, and by that time she was running out of stores and her crew were in pretty bad shape, so she went back to Rio.” He paused. “I haven’t heard yet how many days she was submerged—I’d like to know. She certainly set a new record, anyway.”
    “Did she find anyone alive, Dwight?”
    “I don’t think so. We’d certainly have heard about it if she did.”
    She stared down the narrow alleyway outside the curtain forming the cabin wall, the running maze of pipes and electric cables. “Can you visualise it, Dwight?”
    “Visualise what?”
    “All those cities, all those fields and farms, with nobody, and nothing left alive. Just nothing there. I simply can’t take it in.”
    “I can’t, either,” he said. “I don’t know that I want to try. I’d rather think of them the way they were.”
    “I never saw them, of course,” she observed. “I’ve never been outside Australia, and now I’ll never go. Not that I want to, now. I only know all those places from the movies and the books—that’s as they were. I don’t suppose there’ll ever be a movie made of them as they are now.”
    He shook his head. “It wouldn’t be possible. A cameraman couldn’t live, as far as I can see. I guess nobody will ever know what the northern hemisphere looks like now, excepting God.” He paused. “I think that’s a good thing. You don’t want to remember how a person looked when he was dead—you want to remember how he was when he was alive. That’s the way I like to think about New York.”
    “It’s too big,” she repeated. “I can’t take it in.”
    “It’s too big for me, too,” he replied. “I can’t really believe in it, just can’t get used to the idea. I suppose it’s lack of imagination. I don’t want to have any more imagination. They’re all alive to me, those places in the States, just like they were. I’d like them to stay that way till next September.”
    She said softly, “Of course.”
    He stirred. “Have another cup of tea?”
    “No thanks.”
    He took her out on deck again; she paused on the bridge, rubbing a bruised shin, breathing the sea air gratefully. “It must be the hell of a thing to be submerged in her for any length of time,” she said. “How long will you be under water for this cruise?”
    “Not long,” he said. “Six or seven days, maybe.”
    “It must be terribly unhealthy.”
    “Not physically,” he said. “You do suffer from a lack of sunlight. We’ve got a couple of sunray lamps, but they’re not the same as being out on deck. It’s the psychological effect that’s worst. Some men—good men in every other way—they just can’t take it. Everybody gets kind of on edge after a while. You need a steady kind of temperament. Kind of placid, I’d say.”
    She nodded, thinking that it fitted in with his own character. “Are all of you like that?”
    “I’d say we might be. Most of us.”
    “Keep an eye on John Osborne,” she remarked. “I don’t believe he is.”
    He glanced at her in surprise. He had not thought of that, and the scientist had survived the trial trip quite well. But now that she had mentioned it, he wondered. “Why—I’ll do that,” he said. “Thanks for the suggestion.”
    They went up the gangway into
Sydney
.