"Escape From The Crater"

Escape From The Crater

by Carl L. Biemiller

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

The Polaris was a sizable submarine. Her conference room was worthy of a flagship. It was roomy, equipped with all necessary recording equipment, and dominated for this meeting by a huge rectangular table. Yet, oddly enough, Kim felt cramped. The obvious space was an illusion, he thought. At the same time, he felt queerly expansive, as though the room and its contents were a picture that he viewed from a distance. He groped toward the deck at the side of his chair to make certain that the Kirl photo-tapes from Moses’ library were there.

Eighteen bodies were in that room, seventeen of them in chairs, and one of them on the table, where Moses had blandly leaped, ignoring any chairs, so that he could be comfortable and at eye level with the human forms present. With that single agile jump, Moses had managed to convey his dignity and his own calm appraisal of its value while, at the same time, chiding his hosts for not being thoughtful enough to ask after his comfort.

At the head of the table sat Commander Brent, flanked on either side by the two members of the World Council of Cities. One of them was a large, alert, and impressive man, as black as Genright with a grave and somehow sad face. The other was a pale-brown man, slender as a reed, with flashing eyes, who sat relaxed while giving the impression that an explosion was about to go off within him. He had not liked Moses’ leap to the table, and Kim, reading his lips, thought he’d muttered something about a performing beast.

Kim knew it again. The Kirl were the heart of the matter. No matter how the hive cities conditioned their citizens, as he had been indoctrinated, against prejudice and futile frictions which could have no place in a civilization compressed by numbers and living space, there were older survival instincts that the utmost skills of the psychs could never banish completely. And prime among them was fear of the alien, the strange, the different, the unknown. There was little of it in the Service, only enough to deter rashness and unnecessary risks, for the seas were normally alien to man and filled with many unknowns.

The slim brown member of the Council would not lightly share the wealth of the oceans with anything strange or anything considered nonhuman.

Kim looked about the room. There were the hydronauts, the commanders, among them Polaris’ skipper, Commander Cassius, his winged, black eyebrows still accenting his snowy hair, Moses, the Major, four senior scientists of varying disciplines, two aides to the Council members.

Toby, seated beside him, slipped her hand in his for one fleeting second of pressure.

Then Commander Brent was speaking, his voice firm, yet easy.

“Most of the matters before us today have been well discussed, perhaps I should say argued,” He said. “That does not mean that they have been clarified to the point where we may make final decisions concerning them. We expect such clarification today from those who have been a direct part of events which may lead us to judgments…”

A low growl escaped from The Kirl, audible enough and intense enough to make the scientists seated near his sprawled form hitch their chairs away from the table. With all the leader’s wisdom, it was clear he would brook little judgment on his people by this conference.

Kim never knew from what source he summoned the courage or how much of his action was involuntary. He rose, stood erect in shining young dignity, and interrupted Commander Brent.

“May I speak, sir?” he requested.

To the eternal credit of the Service, the commander showed no surprise or shock at the obvious breach of rank courtesy, although he was aware that the two members of the World Council had leaned forward in some astonishment. He was even gracious. It was a mark of his stature as a man that he asked no questions.

“Gentlemen,” said Kim, his face pale and set, but his voice steady, “there is only one prime question which requires an answer. Others, while important, are simply a matter of adding up pluses and minuses. You honorable members of the World Council know the question. My superiors here in the Service know it. The answer is obvious. I have it here in a photo-tape borrowed from the historic records of those people—people, I emphasize, that we know as the Kirl whose leader, Dr.. Albert Preston Kirl”—Kim grinned suddenly like a small boy and the broad smile lighted the room—“lies among us. I ask that it be shown before any further discussion by this group. May I have your permission, sir?”

“Yes,” said Commander Brent simply.

Kim reached into the bag at the side of his chair, walked in a room filled with silence, past the head of the table, and handed a container to a young technician who stepped from an obscure, recordo-niche in the wall to receive it.

“Play it. Be careful. The tape is very old.”

He returned to his seat, felt Toby Lee’s warm hand, and looked over to the old Kirl.

Moses’ voice was flat, very soft, but carrying.

“An act of faith, young Forerunner, you haven’t seen the document.”

The room grew dark. The quiet was heavy. Somewhere at the table someone breathed with a rasp. Then, once again from the long corridors of time, the world was bathed in violet light and blue-green vapors. Mountains crumbled. Rivers of fire ran into flaming lakes. Cities and the landscape about them were hidden in mists that were blue and orange. But when the holocaust ceased there were the burrows, and the men of Hawaii hive, whose men, whose great scientists, made humanness a fierce and driving religion. These were the men who knew that time had run out for their city, and what they did was to save humanity. There was that burning giant of a man named Albert Preston Kirl. And then there were the Kirl, the atonement, the new form of man without guilt, adapted for life in what they thought were the remnants of earth, the seas, and the fringes of the nontoxic lands which bordered it.

The photo-tape was long, for the story was long, but no one in the room stirred.

Kim glanced at Tuktu and Genright when it was over. Tuktu’s face was an ivory carving. Genright’s was wet. Kim himself felt curiously light-headed, and somehow drained.

It was a long minute before the room grew brighter and Commander Brent rose to his feet. As he did so, the large, impressive black member of the Council of Cities leaned toward him and spoke briefly.

Commander Brent nodded.

“Gentlemen,” he said. “This group thanks Warden Rockwell for his contribution. And now, stand adjourned. It is requested that Dr. Albert Preston Kirl join me and the two honorable members of the World Council in a private session. I ask Major Bell, our guest, to join Commander Cassius for a visit to the Polaris’ recovery wards and examination of his troops. Wardens Rockwell, Lee, Selsor, and Barnes will stand by for summons later with Commanders Torrance and Jensen. The rest of you are dismissed with my thanks.”

“You broke that one off right fast, oh, mighty Leader,” said Tuktu to Kim.

“Yeah, I looked for big noises and maybe some pushing and shoving, and what do I get? An ol’ movie,” said Genright.

Toby Lee said nothing at all as the little band joined Commanders Torrance and Jensen, still seated and apparently relaxed as a brace of clams in a white sand bed. They looked up at the hydronauts.

“You’ll have to tell it all to the Council members and Brent,” said Jiggs Jensen. “But then, very few small wardens get to meet the mighty in person. Meanwhile we can sit in the Torrance house and take a bun and some kelp-frond tea, and you can tell it all to us, or, since you seem to be running your own versions of the Service fairly well, as much as you care to reveal without injections.”

“We have time,” added Commander Torrance, scratching his nose with a skinny finger. “I imagine The Kirl has much to say to Brent and the good-government fellows. And your buddy Major Bell will doubtless be exhorting his troops to take over the boat. Further, I don’t think your court-martial will be held until tomorrow. I might add that we’re on the examining board, and anything you say will be of no help whatever. So let’s go talk.

Commander Tod Torrance was wrong. The court-martial proceedings were not held the next day. The hydronauts spent much of its long morning with the two Council members, and without the presence of Commander Brent. If they taught, they also learned, for even the lean little brown explosion who represented a faraway Asian hive relaxed as he listened and admitted certain problems of world government that he might never have mentioned to older consultants. The grave and gentle black Councilman offered both understanding and laughter. He loved Toby’s story of her bear, and when Tuktu and Genright confessed their chagrin over the otter-slide ski slope, he howled loud enough to bring an aide to the door. Each of them listened with intense interest as Kim outlined the reasoning which underlay his so-called command decisions. And each was pleasantly formal as they dismissed and thanked the hydronauts for their information.

They lunched with Commander Cassius in his captain’s quarters with Major Bell and Moses, who with neatness and dispatch, waffled down several large abalone steaks before Genright had his fork limbered up.

Moses seemed surprisingly content.

“I’m going back to something called the Denver hive for a time to share notes with some of your fine biochemists,” he said. “Don’t worry about me or my people or their location.” He chuckled and his whiskers jiggled. “Most are not where you left them by now, in any case. But I am sure you will join us again in the future.”

Major Bell seemed pleased, if a trifle edgy.

“I’m going to a place named Olympia Base with my own command, all of whom are doing well. No gripes at Genright and the rest of you, but your medicos would like to check me out. No reconditioning, though. All us troops will get hypno-processing for information only. Then I’m pretty sure they will cut orders to send us back to this part of the world, and with some of your own folks, geologists and metallurgists mostly.”

“Yike!” yipped Commander Cassius, leaning over for a closer look. “You’re insane, man.”

“Swiped it from your weapons locker, and I know how it works too,” said Major Bell, putting it back in his pocket. “But I don’t guess I’ll need it now.”

“Maybe you ought to give it back,” said Kim.

“Later. Just don’t anybody try to take it.”

“Well, that explains why you’re not going through the big psych wringers and all the conditioning.” smiled Toby Lee.

“It does?”

“Sure does.” She smiled over sweetly. “Takes hard people to make it in a hard land, with all that winter coming on.”

“If you don’t give it back, and it’s missing when they count up all the junk we should have, I’ll get gigged,” said Genright.

“More than already?” said Major Bell.

“Dissection is what they do,” added Tuktu.

“Listen, Army, just don’t blow up my boat, you hear me?” said Commander Cassius.

There was no court-martial the following day either. The little fleet stood out to sea while all of the Polaris’ seismic equipment danced, and they watched two inland mountain tops turn torch and shake tons of lava down their smoking slopes.

“Some country,” said Commander Cassius from the command con where they watched the eruptions by television and other sensing gear.

“That’s the only home I’ve got that you’re talking about,” said Major Bell. “The world will learn to love it.”

There was no court-martial on the next day either. A combo-flight hovercraft flew into the fleet anchorage, such as it was, squished down on the flat sea, which apparently had ignored the earth shocks further inland. It boarded the two Council members, Major Bell, and Moses.

“You ought to be crated,” said Genright as he and the other hydronauts made their farewells.

Moses snorted. “I once spanked my own children,” he said, “and I consider you as my own. Take my love instead, and remember wherever you go that the Kirl are in the sea and are your brothers. You and my people are one. I’m sure they’ll find you. I’m certain I shall see you all again. Good bye.”

“Good bye, Father,” said Kim.

The Major shook hands all around. “I figure I owe you all something, but I don’t know whether it’s something good or bad. Anyhow, the Army pays its debts.” He waved an arm toward the land. “Be in there someplace. You need anything, you holler. Say, does this thing fly?”

“Barely,” said Tuktu, “ and real low too. Slow as well.”

“Its windows are open,” said the cryo dubiously. “No plane I ever saw had open windows.”

“It’s full of crazies. You’ll like it.”

Commanders Cassius, Torrance, and Jensen joined them on the Polaris’ hatch platform as they watched the combo-flight hovercraft take off. Their formalities had been made below.

The craft lifted into the air, circled the little fleet, and darted for the south, flying about five hundred feet off the sea. It was perhaps a half mile away when a light winked on the water, a cloud of steam geysered into the air, and a sharp, cracking sound assailed their eardrums.

The combo-flight hovercraft flew on.

“What in the world was that explosion?” asked Commander Torrance.

Genright beamed. He and Commander Cassius swapped a delicious wink.

“Well,” said Tuktu matter-of-factly, “he said he’d give it back later, and he did.”

“Secrets?” asked Commander Tod Torrance.

“Absolutely classified information,” said Commander Cassius.

A proceeding, if not a court-martial, was held the next day in Commander Brent’s reasonable spacious quarters with Commanders Torrance and Jensen astraddle two chairs and the hydronauts at attention along a wall, watching Commander Brent in his skivvies as he shaved.

“Something of a treat in reverse,” Toby told Kim later.

“Plucked duck, ain’t he?” Tuktu queried Genright later.

No one mentioned appearances at the time.

Commander Brent opened the proceedings, spreading an algae depilatory as he did so. The gunk would dissolve his whiskers.

“You people still have that forbidden book you were given by your friends here at Baja?”

“Yes, sir,” said Toby Lee.

“Well, you might look up Psalms thirty-seven, twenty-fifth verse. It goes: ‘I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread.’ I put you under house arrest for my own reasons, mostly to protect my own withered hide in case more things went wrong than I bargained for, and you never heard me say it.

“I made the charges. I heard the charges. I have now ruled on the charges. Arrest is lifted, with nothing on your records except a commendation, which is more for pleasing high government officials than any great shakes of yours. But you did a fine job: I now say so. I am a fair man. You are probably even a credit to the Service.

“But, ding-dab it, every time I hear your names or see your shining faces, I find some ding-dab trouble I don’t need or want. I need you away from me. I want you far…far, that is…ding-dab it, even out of contact…but that would be asking too much. However, if the good Lord of that forbidden book gives me strength, I’ll try.”

“Get to it. You’re dithering,” said Commander Torrance.

“So I am.” There was the noise of breaking sticks, which passed for laughter. Commander Brent swiped at his gunk and faced them.

“Well, first you’re going back to school again for the umpty-umpth time, a real tricky school, Arctic survival, all that homemade navigation without instruments, blind mapping, new weather techniques, lots of stuff. Back to Olympia for you all. Genright and Tuktu will sail with us as soon as we offload that junk in the barges a bit north of here. Major Bell and his frozen army are coming back here to take over Alaska. That’s official, but you’ll say nothing about it to anyone.

“Kim, you and Toby Lee will sail the Adam south alone. You can do it in two weeks, or even one, but take your time. Any questions?”

“Sir,” said Kim. “Olympia Base isn’t very far out of your sight. What comes after school?”

“Not spring vacation,” muttered Genright.

“You speak when you’re spoken to, you black nuisance,” rapped Commander Brent. “No, not spring vacation. You’re going to take a long trip if the Service can find another work sub for you to sink. You’re going to find me a nice big hole under the Polar Cap that cargo subs can use to tote material from the west to the east coast of this continent.”

“How do you know it can be done?” asked Commander Jensen.

“Because it was done once a jillion years ago from the other end by an atomic submarine of the United States Navy. It’s in the history archives of the Service. Anyhow, it can be done because I want it done. No sense opening up Alaska just to keep some army busy or ship ores to the Denver hive. I want that passage under the ice. I don’t care how long it takes to find it either. These people are young. They’ve got lots of time. What’s more, they’re lucky. Tuktu will probably find some supposedly extinct Eskimo cousin who uses that passage every day.”

“There might not be any route at all,” said Commander Torrance.

“That’s the kind of talk that brings on early retirement. Maybe you and that big hulk Jensen ought to go back to sea with these kids.”

“I’m ready,” said Jiggs Jensen, “but you wouldn’t have anybody to cry to if we did.”

“This meeting is ended,” snapped Commander Brent. “Where’s my tunic? Well,” he muttered, “I’ll do it in my underwear, very formal.”

He shook hands with each of the hydronauts.

“Well done,” he said, “and my thanks. Dismissed.”

The commanders waved them out.

“Up to the con,” said Kim. “We’re clearing out as soon as Cassius can put it through channels. That’s maybe an hour to make all tidy. You guys can paddle us to the Adam, and we’ll see you at Olympia. Try to stay lost or they’ll put you to work. Okay?”

“I want to work on my bear,” said Toby.

“Your what?” asked Tuktu.

“My bearskin. It’s all in that preservative stuff, and the skull has to have all the brains taken out. Major Bell left instructions, and we’ve got all the chemicals aboard. In a day or so we’ll have a nice big soft rug with teeth.”

“Ought to be an interesting trip south,” said Genright. “Some messy, but nice.”

“Kim can have something soft to walk on.”

“I’m thinking of something to walk on right now, and it’s soft enough if not as big as a bear,” said Kim.

They walked through the passageway to the con, subconsciously listening to the humming voice of the Polaris in silence. This mission was behind them.

Genright’s voice was reflective.

“Don’t you think a tunnel or passage route under the polar ice is a bit of a frippery?”

“I’ll tell you when we find it,” said Kim.

“Tell a dolphin to bring your message when it comes to my island on the equator,” said Tuktu. “Whoever heard of a man descended from Eskimos that liked cold weather?”

End

Chapter One	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

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