Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea Read Online Free PDF Page A

same direction as the Admiral passed her, “We’ll have a little talk later, Miss Connors,” he said without inflection.
    “Stand by, Connors,” said the Captain, and she stopped in mid-stride, her head humble, as if his words had the power to switch her off. “We’ll have our little talk right now.”
    The Admirals went out the far door, followed by the Congressman. As she passed him, Dr. Hiller murmured, “It only means high morale, Captain.”
    “Thank you, Doctor,” said Lee Crane coldly. He and Miss Connors waited until the door had closed behind them, and another interminable thirty seconds, while the galley staff succeeded in not looking at them while fairly creaking with the effort. At last Crane motioned to the girl and they in turn went through the door and closed it behind them.
    They found themselves in the relative privacy of the starboard corridor. “That,” said Crane chillingly, “was quite an act, Connors.”
    “Yes,” she admitted faintly.
    “It will, I’m sure, get a favorable review in the Congressional Record. And say yes, sir, this time.”
    “Yes, sir.” She raised her downcast eyes and they were full of laughter, though there was none on her face as she whispered, “Will they fire me, Captain?”
    “They’ve fired better men for less. Can you explain this undignified behavior?”
    “I was just showing Cookie how I’ll dance at my wedding.”
    “Well,” said Crane grudgingly, “that is an extenuating circumstance. In about three weeks, isn’t it?”
    “. . . and two days and four hours.”
    “Hm,” grunted the Captain, “And who’s the unlucky man?”
    She raised her eyes again, and her face, and her arms, and her warm lips met his eagerly and with joy. “Oh Lee,” she said with her lips still against his, “I feel like an idiot.”
    “Nice idiot,” he chuckled. “I love the idiot. But watch it, will you?”
    Now it was in this moment, with his lips on hers, that there came to him the surge of feeling he was later to identify, derisively, as the Big Brag. It must be understood that it came to him in a flash, and, for all its intensity, it lasted for the least part of a second. It was this which, later, he came so bitterly to regret, although the Big Brag was unspoken and no one knew of it but Lee Crane in his own innermost secret self. We all impose guilts upon ourselves; it is one of the penalties we pay for belonging to a social species—a vague and constant awareness, however far away from the surface, that we are part of the race, and that for our sins all mankind might be punished. Had things remained normal, this passing flash of Lee Crane’s may well have disappeared forever into that lightless region into which we all drop passing thoughts which no longer matter. But things, of course, were never to be what the world once called “normal” again . . .
    The Big Brag, coming to a man who ordinarily did not turn his thoughts inward, and who was not given to taking stock of himself in any way, let alone making mountains of the credit side—the Big Brag, then, suffusing him as he stood in the corridor with the slight strong body of Cathy Connors in his arms, ran thus:
    Do you know who I am? I’m Crane. Lee Crane. Yes—that Lee Crane. My girl loves me and her standards are high. Never since grammar school have I been off the honor roll. I’m still the youngest sub skipper in the country, maybe the world. My crew, every man Jack of ‘em, would jump to sail this ship under the cellar of Hell and torpedo the boilers. So there you are: I’m strong, smart, young and respected, my girl loves me and the world is watching. I’m Crane. Lee Crane. I’m—that Lee Crane!
    The Big Brag—unspoken, but rising up in him in a sudden surge that made his eyes smart. Then the knob on the door behind them turned and they sprang apart. O’Brien, with his black hair and red eyebrows, emerged: “Beg pardon, Cap’n.”
    “Carry on, O’Brien.” To Cathy he said sternly,