Free Undersea Fleet by Frederik & Williamson Pohl

waist and surface-dived to see what was below. It was a strangely frightening experience. I was swimming through ink, swimming about in the space between the worlds where there is neither light nor gravitation. There was no up and no down; there was no sign of light except an occasional feeble flicker of phosphorescence from some marine life. I could easily have got lost and swum straight down. That was a danger; to counter it, I stopped swimming entirely and took a deep breath and held it. In a moment I felt the wash of air across my back and shoulders, as the buoyancy of my lungs lifted me to the surface.
    I lifted my head and looked around.
    Bob Eskow was shouting and splashing, a hundred yards to my right. And cutting toward him, close to where I had surfaced, Roger Fairfane was swimming with frantic speed.
    “Come on!” cried Roger, panting. “Bob’s found him, I think!” That was all I had to hear. I drove through the water as fast as my arms and flipper-shoes would take me. But I had breath enough left over to cry out:
    “Careful, Bob! Watch out for his knife!”
    We got there in moments, and the three of us warily surrounded a feebly floating form in the water. Knife? There was no knife.
    There were no pearly eyes, no milk-white face.
    We looked at the figure, and at each other, and without a word the three of us caught hold of him and swam rapidly toward the shore.
    We dragged the inert body up on the sand.
    I couldn’t help staring back at the sea and shivering. What mysteries it held! That strange, huge head—the white-eyed man who had clipped me and stolen the pearls—where were they now?
    And what was this newest and strangest mystery of all?
    For the inert body that we brought up wasn’t Joe Trencher. We all recognized him at once.
    It was David Craken, unconscious and apparently more than half drowned.

7
Back from the Deeps
    Bob’s voice was filled with astonishment and awe. Even Roger Fairfane stood gawking. No wonder! I could hardly believe it myself. When a man is lost on a lung dive at thirteen hundred feet, you don’t expect him to be found drifting off shore months later—and still alive!
    “Don’t stand there!” I cried. “Help me, Bob! We’ll give him artificial respiration. Roger, you stand by to take over!”
    We dragged him up to the firm, dry sand and flipped him over. Bob knelt beside his head, taking care that his tongue did not choke him, while I spread his arms and moved them, wing fashion, up and down, up and down—
    It was hardly necessary. We had barely begun when David rolled over suddenly, coughing. He tried to sit up.
    “He’s alive!” cried Roger Fairfane. “Jim, you keep an eye on him. I’m going after an ambulance and a sea medic. I’ll report to the Commandant and—”
    “Wait!” cried David Craken weakly. He propped himself on one arm, gasping for breath. “Please. Please don’t report anything—not yet.”
    He gripped my arm with surprising strength and lifted himself up. Roger glanced at him worriedly, then, uneasily, out toward the dark sea, where that peculiar person who had said his name was Trencher had vanished with the pearls. “But we have to report this,” he said, without conviction. It was, in fact, an open question—there was nothing in the regulations to cover anything like this.
    “Please,” said David again. He was shivering from the chill of the deep water, and exhausted as if from a long swim, but he was very much alive. The straps at his shoulders showed where his electrolung had been seated—lost, apparently, after he had surfaced. He said: “Don’t report anything. I—I’m lost, according to the Academy’s roster. Leave it that way.”
    Bob demanded: “What happened, David? Where have you been?”
    David shook his head, watching Roger. Roger stood irresolutely for a moment, staring at David, then at the lights of the Academy. At last he said: “All right, Craken. Have it your way. But I ought to get a sea