"Escape From The Crater"

Escape From The Crater

by Carl L. Biemiller

Published by Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, New York.

The lake stretched away miles before them, its breeze-tousled surface an ever-changing interplay of greens and blues. Its shores beyond their vision vanished behind wooded headlands or broke off into bays and coves, ultimately to end somewhere against the bases of the mountains which ringed this miniature inland sea. Snows, which never melted, frosted the many of those mountain peaks. But over the cones and scarps and shoulders of others, plumes of violet smokes and pale steams, made gold lace by the sunlight, rose into the sky.

Somewhere to the south and west, and at no great distance horizontally, lay real ocean, probably some arm of the Bering Sea as shown on the archival maps. A hump of mountains, portions of it still oozing pumice-dark gelatins of lava, blocked any view of it from the crater-lake.

A tunnel joined that ocean to its interior cousin of water. At least it had only a few short weeks ago, until the sea bottom plugged its entrance with an angry seismic sneeze of hot rock.

“Ah, well,” said Kim Rockwell, apparently to the faraway peaks.

“Explain?” asked Toby Lee, absent-mindedly running a fingernail down her arm to see if it made marks.

“The longer I live the harder I find it to believe much of what I see and a lot of what I know darn well is true.”

Toby Lee followed his gaze across the water from the weld-glass deck of the work sub Adam I, and giggled.

“No problem. You’ve been taught to accept the unusual as normal most of your life.”

“If you two are talking about my buddy, my left-headed buddy Genright Selsor, inventor of the wrong-way brain, his norm is always unusual. He is one smart warden all the same,” said Tuktu Barnes firmly.

“Granted,” said Kim. “But would you say that a long, skinny black type…”

“With a white right arm…” Interrupted Toby Lee.

“Lying on the back of a seventy-foot California gray whale talking to…”

“A sea otter eight feet long…”

“Is a sight that’s easy to believe?”

“It is for me,” said Tuktu stolidly.

“Even a whale with a bright yellow rump?” asked Kim.

“What’s with you?” snorted Tuktu. “You ordered us to decorate that whale. You helped us do it so we could see it better. Then we followed it a jillion miles so it could lead us to that otter person and his friends, which was our mission in the first place.

“Now you say you don’t believe your eye when you see a uniquely commonplace, routinely unusual little thing like a whale with a yellow rump.”

“Mine is sort of a brunette lemon color,” said Toby reflectively. “It’s different,” said Kim.

“Thank you.”

“This must be nutty day,” moaned Tuktu. “Just where is this conversation going?”

“To a little meeting,” said Kim. “Do you think we could interrupt your counterpart at his whale games?”

“All I have to do is crook my finger.”

“Especially when you know that he knows we’ve had an eye on him,” said Toby.

“I’ll do it with my back turned.”

Tuktu raised an arm and waved it languidly, crooking a forefinger as if to summon a passing puff of cloud.

There was no doubt that Genright knew he was being watched or beckoned. He rose to his feet on the broad-beamed back of the giant cetacean. He thrust his white arm aloft and shook a clenched fist at them in mock anger. He stamped a foot and yelled.

“I am in conference and very busy conferring!”

He stamped a foot with each word. As he did so, the whale settled slowly and deeper into the water and disappeared, leaving Genright’s grinning head to mark its former site. His otter companion plunged for the rocky shoreline.

“I think he teaches that whale a new trick every day,” said Toby Lee. “It would sleep with him if he’d let it.”

“Oh, he’d let it,” snorted Tuktu. “I won’t. We might get out of wherever we are and share sea-range duty again. I don’t need any whale snoring around.”

“Don’t worry. You’d never get a creature that size in any craft as small as the work sub you sank.”

“We didn’t sink Adam II. A volcano did. Anyhow, old Gen would probably make voice prints of Tube Steak snoring and bring the sound to bed with him.”

Genright reached the sharply curved hull and scrambled up a knotted rope to the crest of the curve and the deck hatch where the others were gathered. He paused to shake icy lake water from his brief sargassum-cloth trunks over Tuktu’s shoulders.

“Sun in these high latitudes is bland but not exactly warm. What’s going on? A meeting? Oh, I like meetings.”

“Our commander, Sea Warden Second Class with Rover Assignment, does not believe much of what he sees as he grows older. He wants to have a meeting,” said Toby Lee.

Genright collapsed in sections like a jointed telescope and settled, sitting on his heels.

“I just knew there was a meeting about to start someplace.”

With only a flicker of changed expression betraying an unconscious assumption of formal leadership, Kim focused their attention. They gave it casually as long-disciplined veterans, their concentration no less because they chose to conceal it in a hundred silly forms of whimsy. This was a close-knit group made nearly telepathic by their mutual respect and affection for each other, and one long accustomed to shared enthusiasms, duties and dangers.

Kim’s torso loomed tall as he knelt on the tiny deck and leaned back on firm calf muscles. A wide span of shoulders flared over his deep, sea-conditioned chest and rib cage. His face was slightly flushed under the high-riding sun. His ash blond hair stirred under fingers of light air from the lake. His eyes were bright and cat-green as he glanced at the hydronauts.

“Well, sir?” Toby’s voice was a gentle probe.

“I don’t like to be hasty in a hurry,” said Kim.

“And I am not going to figure that out,” grunted Tuktu.

“But there comes a time in the solution of problems to stop thinking and start doing.” Kim grinned. “I think we all agree that we have a nice variety of problems.”

“You might say that,” said Genright, “as you already have. The last communication with our commanders mentioned court-martial, I think. And the psychs were going to recycle us or recondition us if we didn’t destroy all the Ocean People we were sent to find. Am I making this up? Or should I stop watching the horizon for some search air flitter to spot this lake and the Adam?

“That’s future worry,” said Tuktu. “I am not going to include it in my daily schedule.”

“Well, we’ve tried to contact our people,” added Toby practically. “All our equipment is in good shape, but we can’t bend a signal through these funny atmospherics and over mountains from the bottom of a well. I must admit, we haven’t tried to climb any of those mountains either. Nor have we scorched the sky with any big laser light as a guidepost for possible searchers.”

“However, it’s possible that the Service is having some trouble out there,” mused Genright. “The mission-base sub Polaris was coping with volcanic-shock troubles when we last heard from Commanders Brent, Torrance, and Jensen. And I gathered that our big man, Mr. Brent, had the Council of Cities breathing hard at him again.”

“As Tuk says, however, we have more immediate problems,” said Kim steadily. “And you all know it. I’ll give them to you in order, if you like…”

He nodded toward the shore where a group of the Kirl were sporting in the water, high-pitched voices shrilling in the ancient common tongue, and watching the little assembly on the deck of the Adam I.

“Problem one,” he said, “our unhuman humanity, our cousins, our new race of friends or, according to our last orders, our enemies.”

“My buddies,” said Genright. “Why, there’s Jeremiah and Mark and Matthew and old Goliath.”

“Everything in the world is not your buddy, buddy,” snorted Tuktu. He stifled a rumble in his deep chest, which could have been a chuckle. “I take it all back. Everything in the world is your buddy. And where’d you get the new names?”

“You ain’t,” said Genright inelegantly. “You are an ex-buddy. And out of the Bible that Commanders Torrance and Jensen gave us at Baja Base. You read it and so does Toby. Kim’s too busy with other stuff. Anyhow, it has lots of names.”

“Never mind the Bible,” said Kim, and a grin overtook his words. “What do you call the Kirl leader? He names himself only as The Kirl and all others as just plain Kirls, although I know they have more personal identities.”

“That’s Moses, ol’ Moe, and he knows I call him that, and while I can’t prove it, I think he likes it. At least, his whiskers have sort of a smiley curve and those big brown eyes get a little glowy.”

“And he hasn’t bitten your arm off with those cutesy big teeth,” snapped Tuktu. “Boy, what a kooky kid you are. Moses! Moses! What does Moses call you, Kim?”

“Young Forerunner,” said Kim softly. “He knows his own history.”

“Anyhow, I like Moses and all the others too,” said Toby Lee, smiling. “They seem happy and unspoiled and so beautiful in the water. I could watch them forever.”

“You may have noticed that they watch us forever,” said Kim, “and everything we do from water sampling to Gen’s little swimaways with Tube Steak. How far away have you gotten from here with that whale?”

“Mile or so, and then ol’ Tube gets his orders and we are headed back. That’s when I’m with him. He may do the whole lake when he’s alone. He goes for days, as you know.”

A hundred yards on the open lake from the Adam, one of the Kirl floated sound asleep on its back with its forepaws folded over the upper rim of bulging tummy and a small air ruffling its chin hedge of whiskers.

“Order Carnivora, Family Mustelidae, Enhydra lutris, the sea otter, and twice as large as he ought to be,” muttered Tuktu.

“That’s Amos…” murmured Genright.

“Wrong, Tuk,” sand Kim. “That’s Enhydra lutris, adapted by Homo sapiens to house Homo sapiens. Amos is your cousin. The Kirl were given those otter-like bodies by men, by deeply concerned laboratory wizards who thought that mankind could not survive in a strictly human form. Those great scientists died in that belief. But I think they died in peace, knowing that human thought and humanity itself would go on in bodies that could meet the challenges which destroyed them.”

Kim wrinkled his nose. “So I sound like a lecturer.”

“Everybody sounds like a lecturer when he lectures,” agreed Genright.

“And you’ve got to remember that those lab-life masters fought time for many years, experimenting and planning, before they evolved the Kirl. They were going to die with their city, and thinking that they and their hive were alone in the world, that they alone had to save some form of man from extinction. There was no communication among the surviving burrow cities for many decades after the last bombs stopped falling.

“And what’s more, they never stopped trying to make a better model for human existence in the sea. We saw the last hatch, the sea babies we captured, the ones that died.

“Nope, Tuk, that bunch out there frolicking around with their pointed ears cocked in this direction are not Enhydra lutris, the sea otters. The Kirl are a new species of human intelligence in an amphibious body. They think. They reason. And you’ve all seen that half laboratory, half library the Kirl leader showed us. That could only have been put in that cave by scouts from the lost Hawaii hive looking for a home for this particular clan. The Kirl know their own history, and they know us too. That’s why old, ummmm, Moses calls us the Forerunners.”

“I think they know us all too well,” said Toby Lee softly. “The Kirl…well, who knows how long they’ve existed as a people? Or for how many generations? It was only luck and an odd set of circumstances which led the cities to suspect they were around at all.”

“Luck and us,” said Genright.

“We know they are a far-ranging people and that they use the sea range as widely as our own Service does,” said Kim.

“They were messing with our whale herds more than five thousand miles from here when we first saw them,” added Tuktu.

“Maybe they think we were messing with their whale herds,” suggested Genright. “If they’ve been around a long time, as Toby indicates, maybe they think we’ve been messing with their oceans and all their food supplies to boot.”

“Exactly,” said Kim. “Now reverse it from the viewpoint of the Council of Cities. The survival of the hives depends upon the range and, as Commander Brent told us, nothing including a new species of man, must compete with us for the resources of the range. Sure, the psychs and the medico-life masters might accept the Kirl as cousins, as men in an alien form, and welcome them into the club. But I can see the Council considering them as one more predator on the food supply…”

“As another great oceanic resource themselves…” Tuktu interrupted.

“To be eaten, de-furred and processed by the Service,” said Genright.

“The Kirl have reason to fear us. Not us as us. But us as what we represent and serve. I think they might have destroyed us if we hadn’t saved the Kirl leader when the sea bottom exploded and that mountainside fell down, or if Tuk and Gen hadn’t turned back to save the Kirl they stun gunned on that sour escape try they made.

“Anyhow, I like the Kirl, but I’m going to have a talk with Moses. These twenty-hour sunlight days of summer aren’t going to last too much longer. And they are followed by twenty-four-hour days of night during a winter, which gets too cold to think about. As I said, I don’t like to be hasty in a hurry, but I don’t intend for this unit to live on this lake forever.”

“The tunnel we came in by is blocked,” reminded Tuktu.

“We might be able to blast it open or drill it open with all the fine stuff on Adam I,” said Genright.

Kim nodded slowly. “Among some of the things I don’t believe around here is the fact that our entrance hole can be the only exit and entrance to the sea. The Kirl are a pelagic people, and I don’t think this tribe of them, smart as they are, would make a home with only one doorway to the outside. Further, this crater water would have to be a biological wonder to hold a never-ending food supply. It has to be restocked, and logically enough, from the sea. Further than that, it’s slightly brackish, as all our tests show daily, and not as fresh as it would be if it were fed only by springs of snow runoffs from the mountains.”

“Well Tube Steak thinks our tunnel is his only exit. I kick his nose out of it often enough,” said Genright.

Tuktu heaved his wide and stocky frame to his knees. He looked at Genright, grimaced, and closed his eyes as though he couldn’t bear the sight.

“Tube Steak is a stupid freak,” he said.

“And you are anti-whale, and, as of right now, Tube Steak is my only true friend.”

“May I say a word for Tube Steak?” asked Toby sweetly.

“No,” said Tuktu.

“Please do,” said Genright.

“Tube Steak may be right about the tunnel, as far as he is concerned. He isn’t exactly a sardine…”

“He has the brain of a sardine…”

“About as big as yours!”

“I’d say Tube Steak weighs about seventy tons or more, and perhaps he measures fifteen feet or more across the trailing edge of his fluke. Other exits may simply be too small to accommodate him. There may be many smaller access points to the sea,” she finished.

“Has to figure,” said Kim. “The Kirl are intelligent. They many not have science enough, but certainly they have direct knowledge enough to realize that they live in a region that isn’t exactly stable. Probably they’re here because nobody else would want to be. This whole area was born in volcanic upheaval. There must be a hundred active cones simmering around ready to blow any minute. There’s a seismic tickle on our instruments practically all the time. No, there has to be more than one way out of this crater.”

He rubbed his nose reflectively. “But it has to be a way big enough for the Adam. I’m not leaving our basic strength nor our records.”

“Think about the Kirl for a moment,” said Toby. “They’re sea creatures, all right. But they are also four-footed, strong, agile, and air breathers just like us. What’s to stop them from taking trails overland if they feel like it?”

“Same reason the cities are underground,” said Tuktu. “Radiation sickness and death.”

“Healthy enough here, ol’ ex-buddy. We’ve checked that all out.”

“Right enough, but this is here and a comparatively small here, just like the areas around some of our bases like Baja and Olympia. There’s an awful lot of there out there.” Tuktu waved toward the ring of peaks. “And probably and awful lot of wild REMS?” sitting around to make your teeth fall out.”

“Boy, are you crude,” said Genright loftily.

“Better to be crude with teeth than cultured and smile with my gums.”

Toby laughed, a crystal waterfall of sound so gay that the swimming Kirl, sporting out on the lake surface, cocked their ears in the direction of the Adam to listen.

Kim was not listening. He seemed fixed in some other space, his eyes rapt on an elsewhere that only he could see. He could feel Toby’s mind questing his own as he shaped a still forming thought.

“Overland,” he said slowly. “Of course, overland. If we can’t persuade the Council of Cities, namely Mr. Brent, that the Kirl could be wonderful allies in helping the Service develop the sea resources more fully because they were created to live in the sea…”

“I see a sneaky mind at work,” murmured Genright.

“Then the Kirl might be accepted as partners in the discovery, and I could say mapping…”

“Sure say it,” urged Tuktu.

“Of a vast, safe, land area for surface use, even for farming.”

“Don’t say farming,” said Toby. “Say great mineral potentials. It is hard to plow mountains.”

“Just say land, lots of land, non-hot land that doesn’t jiggle a Geiger or disturb any other radiation sensor,” added Genright.

“I wouldn’t say non-hot unless you said radiation with it, though. All those volcanoes aren’t exactly cool, you know,” said Toby.

There was a long, digestive minute of silence.

“If we don’t go out by water, we could seal the Adam on some deep bottom beyond Kirl depth. I don’t think they come by deep diving on the otter side of the their family. And maybe we could ask Tube Steak to come along. He could sort of ooch ahead and bash down bushes and stuff to make walking easier for us. I am not much of a fellow for hiking,” said Tuktu blandly.

“No and no again to ooching. It’s unwhale-like. He sticks to water,” snapped Genright.

“And so do we, but with side trips, and maybe long ones,” said Kim. He stared at them as though they were suddenly strangers.

“Gone again,” whispered Toby.

“If the Kirl…” he began. “Why, we might not need them… We’ve got the cryo. He’s our second problem, and besides not wanting to make haste hurriedly with the Kirl, he’s the reason I’ve had us sit quietly for the past few weeks. We’ve brought him back to life, or rather Genright has with the instructions the medico-psychs gave him before we lost communication. At least he didn’t die like the girl child we melted out of the berg with him. And he’s about ready to awaken.

“He has to know something about this country. We found him here.”

“And with lots of company still locked in the glacier wall of the tunnel,” said Tuktu.

“Who will stay there, too,” said Kim firmly. “Risk is risk. We aren’t the burrow-city experts.”

“And speaking of risk,” said Genright carefully, “the cryo might not be usable. He might have to be allowed to return, ah um, to the death he should have experienced, ah um, who knows how many years, decades, even centuries ago. I had instructions about that too, you know.”

“That word usable.” sighed Toby Lee. “I don’t know why, but it makes me feel scrantchy inside. You suppose I’m getting more female?”

“Nah,” said Tuktu, and ducked.

“I hope he’s usable.” Kim was blunt. “Among the things I’ve seen and don’t believe is that tunnel where our cryo was shaken off the wall in his own slab of ice. It was too well engineered to be a natural formation. He may have helped build that tunnel.”

“How does ‘scrantchy’ feel?” asked Genright.

“You’ll never know because you’re a lump.”

“Well, then, if we’re finished name-calling, it’s time to take a look at our patient. I’m getting as cold as he once was.”

“Get dressed,” said Kim, grinning. You’ll be playing gotcha with a chill.”

“Gotcha.”

Chapter Two	Chapter Three	Chapter Four	Chapter Five	Chapter Six
Chapter Seven	Chapter Eight	Chapter Nine	Chapter Ten	Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve	Chapter Thirteen	Chapter Fourteen	Chapter Fifteen

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