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should be doing something.
They were gathered in a group between the tank and the door we had come
through, apparently arguing some point. I couldn't hear their voices, and
after a minute or two I decided they weren't actually talking; there was a
tremendous amount of gesticulation. They must have a pretty comprehensive sign
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language, I decided. This was reasonable if they spent much of their time, and
especially if they did much of their work, under water. I couldn't see why
they used it now, since my common sense was having trouble admitting that they
were still in water.
In any case, they seemed to reach an agreement after a few minutes, and two of
them went swimming -
yes, swimming- off down one of the smaller shafts.
It occurred to me that even if they couldn't talk under the circumstances,
they should be able to hear.
So I tried tapping on the walls of the tank to get their attention - gently,
in view of my experience with tank-tapping so shortly before. Evidently they
could hear, though they had the expected difficulty in judging the direction
of the sound source and it took them a few minutes to recognize that I was
responsible. Then they swam over and gathered around the tank, looking in
through the ports. I turned on my inside lights again. None of them seemed
surprised at what they saw, though a continuous and animated gesture
conversation was kept up.
I tried yelling. It was hard on my own ears, since most of the sound echoed
from the walls of the tank, but at least a little should get through. It
evidently did; several of them shook their heads at me, presumably indicating
that they couldn't understand me. Since I hadn't used any words yet, this
wasn't surprising. I tried telling them who I was not using my name, of
course in each of the three languages in which I'm supposed to be
proficient. I attempted to do the same in a couple of others in which I make
no claim of skill. All I got was the headshaking, and two or three people swam
away, presumably dismissing me as a hopeless case. No one made any obvious
attempt to communicate with me by any sort of sign or sound.
Eventually I felt my throat getting sore, so I stopped. For another ten
minutes or so nothing much happened. Some more of the crowd swam away, but
others arrived. There was more of the gesture talk;
no doubt the newcomers were being given whatever there was to tell about me.
All the new arrivals wore coveralls more or less like those I'd first seen
outside, but some of these were
in fancy colors. I got the impression that it was the difference between work
clothes and white-collar suits, though I can't give any objective reason for
the notion.
Then some new swimmers, less completely dressed, appeared from one of the
tunnels, and things began to happen. One of them worked his way through what
was by now quite a crowd, came up to the tank, and tapped it gently. It was
refreshing to have one of them try to get my attention instead of the other
way around, but the real jolt came when I recognized the newcomer.
It was Bert Whelstrahl, who had disappeared a year before.
Chapter Nine
He recognized me, too; there was no doubt about that. He put on a
larger-than-life-size grin the moment he got a good look through my port, gave
another bit of knuckle play on the tank and then drew back and raised one
eyebrow in an oh-no-what-do-we-do-with-this-one expression. I decided the
situation justified using up what was left of my voice and called out, 'Bert!
Can you hear me?'
He nodded, and made a palm-down gesture which I interpreted as meaning that I
didn't need to yell so loud. That was a relief. I cut volume and after a bit
of trial and error found that he could hear me when
I spoke only a little louder than a normal conversational tone. I began to ask
questions, but he held up a hand to stop me and began making some more signs.
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He pinched his nose shut, holding the palm of his hand over his mouth at the
same time; then he held his left wrist in front of his face as though he were
looking at a watch, though he wasn't wearing one.
I got his meaning clearly enough. He wanted to know how much breathing time I
had left. I checked my panel, did a little mental arithmetic and called out
that there was about fifty hours still in my tanks.
Then he stuck a finger in his mouth and raised his eyebrows; I answered
graphically, which was easier on my throat, by holding up the partly emptied
box of dextrose pills. He nodded and put on a thoughtful expression. Then he
hand-talked for two or three minutes to the people nearest him, the head
motions which they threw in occasionally being the only part I could
understand. With everyone seemingly agreed, he waved at me and vanished back
into the tunnel he'd come from.
Nothing more happened for the next half hour, except that the crowd grew even
larger. Some of the newcomers were women, though I couldn't tell whether the
one I had seen outside was among them. I
hadn't seen her closely enough to recognize her face. Some of them certainly
weren't; apparently swimming doesn't have to be the aid to figure control some
people claim it to be.
Then Bert came back. He was carrying what looked like an ordinary clipboard,
but when he held it up to the port I saw that the sheets on it weren't paper.
He scratched on the top one with a stylus, which left a mark. Then he lifted
the top sheet, and the mark disappeared. I'd seen toys of that sort years ago;
apparently he'd spent some time improvising this one. It seemed a good and
obvious solution to the problem of writing under water, and I wondered why
none of the others had thought of it.
He had to print fairly large letters in order for me to read clearly, so even
with the aid of the pad our communication was slow. I started by asking what
the whole business was about, which didn't help speed, either. Bert cut me off
on that one.
'There isn't time to give you the whole story now,' he wrote. 'You have a
decision to make before you run out of air - at least twenty hours before, in
fact. It has to do with whether you go back to the surface.'
I was surprised and made no secret of it. 'You mean they'd let me go back? Why
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