Undersea Quest Read Online Free PDF

there was safety in numbers, even if something did go wrong. What was worse than the slim chance of trouble with a shark was the blind, helpless struggle itself. It was suspended in nothingness; there was no up and no down, no way of telling if I were swimming in the proper direction or off in some crazy angle. I remembered the experiences of the daylight dives and all the long lectures I had listened to; and I tried to relax, tried to “sense” with my body and blood and the canals of my ears when I was swimming level with the bottom. It wasn’t easy; I found out later that a dozen cadets had swum straight into the bottom that night, while twice as many had, to their astonishment, found themselves breaking the surface in their first halfdozen strokes.
    I tried to listen for the faint whisper of someone else’s aqualung bubbles; I thought I heard them, and then they were gone. I thought I heard them again, but I was completely unable to guess whether they came from ahead of me, behind, on top or below. I strained my ears to listen…
    And a rapid brassy gong began thundering in my ear drums. For a moment I was startled almost out of my wits; then I realized what it was.
    The emergency alarm! Sharks had been sighted on the microsonar—the exercise was automatically terminated and we were to get back in the whaleboats pronto!
    All around me lights began flickering on, flashing up ward like bubbles in a glass of sparkling wine. I turned on my light and headed up too. At the surface, the silence was gone as though it had never existed. Voices were yelling, bellowing, growling, shouting; it was bedlam. Over the raucous shouting came Captain Sperry’s bull-like shout: “Take your time! Get into the right whaleboat! You’ve got plenty of time! Everybody get into his own whaleboat—anybody in the wrong boat gets ten tours around the Quad. Take your time! You’ll all be in the boats in two minutes, and that’s plenty of time!”
    I jerked the face-mask off my head and trod water, staring around. I was in luck—the triple green lights that marked Crew Five’s whaleboat was only a few yards away. A half-dozen strokes brought me to the stern; I clambered aboard and helped the next man in after me.
    The shouting and splashing began to quiet down. “At ease!” shouted Sperry from the lead boat. “Crew commanders, report when ready!”
    The voices of the commanders of the individual whale- boats began to come in. “First crew all present!” “Second crew all present!” “Eighth crew all present!”
    Lt. Hachette made a rapid headcount by the light of his lamp. “Nineteen,” he said worriedly. “Who’s missing? Sound off, men! Roll call!”
    The voices came back to him. “Degaret!” “Dodd!” “Domowski!” “Dowling!” “Dunphy!” “Duxley!” “Dyanosky!” “Dye!” “Ealy!” “Eckstrom!” “Eden!” That was me; and I waited to hear Bob Eskow, next in order.
    I didn’t hear him. I looked around, hardly believing it, though there could be no doubt.
    Bob Eskow was not in the boat.
    Already Lt. Hachette had made a swift check of the rest of us. Then, through his megaphone, he hailed the lead boat. “Crew Five missing one cadet! Cadet Robert Eskow out of boat!”
    There was a ripple of sound from the fourteen boats. From the lead boat, Captain Sperry called: “Cadet Eskow! Report!”
    There was no answer.
    The giant searchlights went on and scoured the surface of the water around us, looking for a head, the stroke of an arm…There was nothing. Two hundred and sixty-eight cadets had set out; two hundred and sixty-seven were in their boats.
    Bob Eskow was still under the surface of the water.

5
Sub-Sea Search
    Cadet Captain Sperry didn’t even ask for volunteers.
    The sharks—if it had been sharks that the microsonar spotted, and not porpoises or drifting logs—never bothered us as, by crews, we recharged our aqualungs and slipped over the side. The exercise was forgotten; we grouped in crews at