The Watch Below Read Online Free Page B

desperately afraid. The ship was sinking and they

had to get up on deck -- he had to get up on deck! Trying to save the

injured, or even Radford, was becoming less important somehow. . . .

They left the watertight doors open behind them as they passed through,

to save time during later trips and because all the tanks were free of

water. This was a very good sign. Wallis reminded himself of how incredibly

buoyant tankers were supposed to be, especially when running empty. Trader

wasn't empty, her cargo tended to be small, dense, and heavy, comprising

as it did food and welding gear, but her tanks were intact and there was

a lot of air in them. As well, there seemed to be a definite upward tilt

in their direction of travel -- she was certainly down by the stern. The

fact that he had the sensation of constantly moving uphill might have

been caused by extreme fatigue or wishful thinking or both, but Wallis

did not think so. As they stumbled through the door between Three and One

and saw that the forward tank was as dry as all the others, Wallis began

to lose some of his fear and to feel ashamed of what he had not yet lost.

The door set in the forward wall of Number One tank was the same in all

respects as the other watertight doors they had passed through, an oval

five feet high and two wide whose lower edge was eighteen inches above

deck level. The height of this edge had been carefully calculated, it

was rumored, to remove the maximum amount of skin from the shins of the

people using it, and such doors were generally considered to be a curse

and an abomination and an unprintable waste of time -- until something

disastrous occurred. Now Wallis, while the doctor held both lamps, was

spinning back the wheel which kept the lips of the door pressed tightly

together, and he was cursing only because this one seemed harder to turn

than any of the others.

Suddenly he stopped, aware that one side of his face was wet.

There was water all around the edge of the door, not just a dampness

or a steady trickle or even a slow spillage over the lower edge --

this was the fine, misty spray of water under pressure.

Wallis reversed his pull on the wheel and tightened it until the spray

disappeared. For a long moment he leaned his forehead against the cold

metal of the door, hearing the oddly loud sound of his own breathing and,

now that he was listening instead of tripping noisily over the gear

littering the tank bottoms, the metallic creaking and banging and scraping

sounds coming from their freshly murdered ship. Then he turned to face

the surgeon lieutenant.

"You don't have to tell me," Radford said suddenly in a slow, harsh voice.

"If this ship is riding bows up, then all I can say is that the stern is

a hell of a distance down! That water was under pressure ! We're not

sinking, dammit, we're sunk ! And . . . and . . ." There was a long,

tearing crash which seemed to go on for minutes and made the tank around

them ring like a cracked bell, and when it ended the ship seemed to lurch

under them. The doctor went on, "Hear that? We're going down, beginning

to break up! The lower we sink, the higher the pressure. Any time now

the hull will cave in -- you can hear the breaking-up noises already."

Radford had dropped one of the fiashlamps, and it lay on its back on the

deck, throwing up a narrow wedge of light between them. The bottom lighting

gave the doctor's features a terrifying appearance, like something out of

a Dracula picture, and it was only afterwards that Wallis realized that this

was due to the light and that his own face must have looked just as bad.

But at the time he was too frightened by the demoniacal aspect of the

lieutenant and of what he might do if, as seemed likely, he went berserk

to think of anything beyond the immediate necessity of calming him down.

"I . . . I disagree, Doctor," Walljs said, trying to keep his voice steady.

"The watertight door is at the bottom of the