The Watch Below Read online

  Ballantine/27691/$1.75 . . . . . . . A Del Rey Book

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  They were human, desperate and trapped

  in the hull of a sunken ship . . . for generations!

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  The

  Watch

  Below

  A Riveting Saga of Survival by

  James White

  UNDERSEA SURVIVAL

  "What the blazes d'you call this?" Dick-

  son yelled suddenly.

  "We're trapped in a sinking ship. We're

  deep! The whole damn hull could cave in on

  us at any minute. What bigger emergency

  can you have than that?"

  "If we were here long enough," Radford

  broke in harshly, "I can think of several . . ."

  THE WATCH BELOW

  A Classic Science-Fiction Novel of

  Indomitable Courage

  Incredible Suspense

  and

  Invincible Destiny

  Also by James White

  Published by Ballantine Books:

  MAJOR OPERATION

  ALL JUDGMENT FLED

  MONSTERS AND MEDICS

  DEADLY LITTER

  THE DREAM MILLENNIUM

  LIFEBOAT

  HOSPITAL STATION

  STAR SURGEON

  TOMORROW IS TOO FAR

  THE ALIENS AMONG US

  THE

  WATCH

  BELOW

  James White

  A Del Rey Book

  BALLANTINE BOOKS * NEW YORK

  To

  JOHN CARNELL

  Friend, Agent, Slave-driver

  With Thanks

  A Del Rey Book

  Published by Ballantine Books

  Copyright © 1966 by James White

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American

  Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by

  Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New

  York, and simultaneously in Canada by Ballantine Books of

  Canada, Ltd., Toronto, Canada.

  ISBN 0-345-27691-4

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  First Edition: February 1966

  Third Printing: October 1978

  Cover art by Michael Herring

  I

  From space the Earth was a serene and beautiful world circling a young and relatively cool sun. The great ice caps, the tremendous, stretches of ocean, and the dazzling white carpets of the cloud layers were blurred both by distance and atmospheric haze, so that outwardly it was a planet of great beauty and peace. It would have required a telescope of fantastic power and definition to resolve the tiny sparks on the night side which were torpedoed ships or bombed and burning towns, and on the sunlit hemisphere the disturbances caused by the waging of World War Two were also of too minor a nature to register over interstellar distances.

  It was February 3, 1942. . . .

  Eleven days out of St. Johns, its ranks thinned to begin with by the unceasing attacks of the wolf packs and then scattered in disorder by a storm which was bad even for the North Atlantic in winter, the remnants of Convoy RK47 were in the process of reforming in the area of Rockall Deep prior to entering the relative safety of the Irish Sea. Most of the ships were within sight of a few others, but there were lone stragglers as well, and one which apparently had the ocean all to itself was the converted tanker Gulf Trader.

  The Trader was unusual in that she was an oil tanker not carrying oil. Originally designed as a fleet oiler for the United States Navy, and then converted to commercial operation between the Gulf of Mexico and South America because the powers-that-were had thought that the world in 1938 was too peaceful a place for the Navy to need another fleet auxiliary, she was now in the process of being converted into something which might be an answer to the U-boat menace. There was no certainty about this, of course, but any idea which might conceivably help against the wolf packs had to be tried.

  For behind Gulf Trader lay the memory of five sinkings. One, a sister tanker, had vomited blazing fuel over half a mile of sea before going down and leaving a torch in the wake of the convoy which had burned all that night. And there was the munitions ship which had gone so suddenly that seconds later all that was left was a blotchy green afterimage of the flash and the dying echoes of that savage, crashing detonation. The other ships had died less dramatically, with the sounds of the explosions lost in the screaming wind and the blazing upperworks seen only as a dull glow through the driving snow and spray. Despite the long dogleg to the north the convoy had not been able to shake off the wolf packs. Only the storm had been able to achieve that feat, forcing them to seek shelter in the depths where their fragile pressure hulls would be safe from the hurtling mountains and avalanches of water above.

  But now, after five raging days of it, the storm was dying. The sky had cleared and the sun was melting the unnatural streamlining of frozen spray and snow from Trader's superstructure. The sea was still mountainous, but its slopes were smooth now and the valleys were no longer filled with spray. Yet, the improving conditions meant that enemy reconnaissance aircraft would be seeking out the scattered convoy and directing their U-boats towards it, and that Allied aircraft would be spotting and, where possible, trying to sink the enemy submarines.

  In the wheelhouse of Gulf Trader Captain Larmer sagged a little more heavily against the strap which, except for a number of unavoidable absences totaling not more than two hours, had held him in an upright if not always wakeful position on his stool for the past three days. He was looking at the signal which had just been handed to him and, although the words were printed boldly and legibly, for some reason their meaning was taking a long time to reach his brain. It was as if fatigue had surrounded him with a thick, invisible cocoon which slowed and deadened everything trying to pass through it, but finally the marks on the flimsy surrendered their meaning and Larmer said, "Two subs have been reported in this area. How about that! We're advised to maintain maximum vigilance and proceed with caution!"

  Beside him Lieutenant Commander Wallis nodded stiffly but did not speak.

  There were times, Larmer thought tiredly, when trying to be pleasant to Wallis hardly seemed worth the effort. Anyone would think that Captain Larmer was going to take over the ship from Wallis when they reached Liverpool instead of vice versa. Between the storm and the U-boats it had been a very unpleasant trip, and the presence of the Royal Navy on board had not added to the social atmosphere of the ship.

  Traditionally there had always been a certain difference of opinion between the merchant service and the Navy proper, for having to work harder under much stricter discipline for less pay it was natural that the Naval ratings felt superior to their sloppily dressed and overpaid colleagues. The filthy weather, the general tension, and the chronic lack of proper rest all played their part in aggravating the situation. At the same time Larmer was sure that the ratings engaged in modifying the tanks could have tried a little harder to conceal their feelings of superiority, that his own chief and the engineer lieutenant who was familiarizing himself with Trader's engine room could have conversed without giving the impression that they were on the point of committing mutual and bloody murder, and that the lieutenant commander could speak just a few words which were not shop. So far as Larmer could see the only exception among the Naval types was Radford, the surgeon lieutenant who was to be attached to the ship when she became H.M.S. something-or-other. Radford was not a very friendly type either, but he had been kept too busy in his professional capacity during this trip to arouse anything but admiration. This train of thought brought him back
to the signal in his hand and the few hopelessly inadequate precautions he could take regarding it.

  He said, "I hate to break up the party that Dickson and your doctor must be having with those girls, but under the circumstances it might be better if we moved them up top. What I mean is, they've been torpedoed once this trip already. . . ."

  While Lamer had been talking Wallis had climbed off his stool. He said, "The doctor will object to moving them. Especially the burn case and your Mr. Dickson. It might be better if I explained the reason for moving them in person. . . ."

  "Sooner you than me," said Lamer to Wallis's disappearing back.

  The ship had picked up more than the usual share of survivors this trip. The poop and upper decks aft, where engineer officers and apprentices, the seamen, and the firemen-greasers all had their quarters, had been forced to accommodate thirty-five R.N. ratings and petty officers together with upwards of fifty survivors from three torpedoed ships. By itself the overcrowding would not have been too bad, but the storm had been such that anyone who was not in a hammock or tied solidly into his bunk was liable to grievous bodily harm -- First Officer Dickson being a case in point. As for the bridge deck amidships, the navigation officers, apprentices, and stewards had been crowded out by the additional number of injured survivors who had overflowed from the sick bay.

  An added complication had been the fact that the survivors refused to be moved to the more roomy and comfortable tanks below, where the rolling and pitching of the ship was much less violent, and some had refused even to let themselves sleep in case they were torpedoed again. All things considered, Larmer thought they had a point. But the case of Dickson and the two Wren officers was different. They had been in no fit condition to have opinions one way or the other; so the doctor, whose views tended to be medical rather than psychological, had decided for them. But the doctor was a very difficult man to order around, especially when the orders touched adversely on the welfare of his patients. The only thing, in fact, that would make him do as he was told, sometimes, was the few extra grams of gold braid on Wallis's sleeve.

  The ship dug her bows into another mountainous wave and the entire forepeak disappeared beneath a solid wall of water which roared along the weather deck, exploding into clouds of spray against the catwalk supports and guardrails until, with most of its energy expended on the deck gear and pipelines, it rolled almost gently around the base of the bridge and tumbled over the side. Watching it Larmer felt a little sorry for the lieutenant commander. As well as having to face an ogre called Radford he would have to negotiate between the bridge and the aft pump room a catwalk, which was the only means of entering the tanks where, amid the tangle of oxyacetylene gear, packing cases, and cargo, the doctor had opened a branch of the ship's hospital. Conditions aft would be somewhat better than those forward, of course, but there was still a strong possibility that Wallis would get his feet wet, that he would get them wet even if he walked all the way on his hands.

  There were times, Larmer thought as the foredeck struggled into sight again only to disappear seconds later into another watery mountain, when Gulf Trader acted as if she had delusions of being a submarine.

  The first torpedo struck a few minutes later just as she was digging her nose in again. If it had waited for another second it would have passed clean over the momentarily submerged fo'c'sle, but instead it hit just below deck about twenty feet back from the prow, and it tore open the deck as if it had been a bomb rather than a torpedo. Several hundred tons of water in the shape of a wave which was then breaking over her bows enlarged the opening, peeling back the deck plating as it if were so much tinfoil and pouring into the underlying forward pump room and storerooms and the big forehold. This time the bows did not rise again and the wave crashed into the bridge with its full force, and at that moment the second torpedo struck the stern.

  From the engine-room phone there came a shrill, raucous sound composed of shouts and screams and escaping steam. Larmer broke contact knowing that he could neither give nor obtain help there, and glad suddenly of the tiredness that was deadening his feelings at the moment. The ship, holed fore and aft, was settling rapidly on an even keel. Underfoot the wheelhouse deck was disquietingly stable now, the reason being that Trader was going through the waves instead of riding over them. The fo'c'sle was completely under, as were both the fore and aft catwalks, so that the navigating bridge and the boat deck aft seemed to be the superstructures of two different ships. Yet she was in no immediate danger of sinking -- tankers were incredibly buoyant. But the sea was running high. She had lost way and was beginning to drift broadside to the waves. That could play hob with lowering the boats. . . .

  Larmer unstrapped himself and climbed off his stool, then headed slowly towards the radio room while issuing the only order possible for him under the circumstances. Like his steps, Larmer's voice was slow and deliberate -- but not, he told himself wryly, because he was brave or cool-headed or anything like that. It was simply that he was too tired to shout and run about as some of the others were doing. Too tired even to feel really afraid.

  Some time later he watched Gulf Trader go down, fighting stubbornly every inch of the way. Several times he was sure that she had gone, only to see part of the superstructure heave itself into sight for a few seconds and disappear again. But finally it seemed that even the ship had accepted the fact that she had died and must therefore stay down, and she left the cold and furious ocean to three crowded lifeboats and about twenty rafts.

  From one of the rafts, which he shared with the radio officer, Larmer counted heads as best he could and came to the conclusion that nearly everyone had been able to get away. He turned to the other man on the raft then and began instructing him on the necessity of staying alive until they were rescued. The very soonest that they could expect to be picked up was shortly after midnight, he said, and there was no point in surviving a disaster if one did not stay alive afterwards. They had to keep themselves alive, keep exercising their minds as well as their bodies so as to fight loss of consciousness as well as loss of circulation; they had to move their arms and legs, slap each other, tell jokes, sing.

  He tried not to think about Dickson and Radford and the lieutenant commander, and the two girls whose names nobody knew.

  . . . The main thing, be told the shivering radio officer grimly, was to stay alive until the last possible minute.

  II

  Seemingly without motion the ship hung like a tiny, metal bubble in a dark and limitless sea, all alone, apparently, and helpless. But the vessel was neither motionless nor alone; it was simply that its velocity relative to the nearest stars was too minute to be easily discernible and the multitude of its companion bubbles were too widely scattered to be seen at all. And within this lonely bubble the years and days were numbered from a historical event and based on a period of rotation which were not that of Earth.

  Senior Captain Deslann -- senior because he was warm, awake, and theoretically in possession of all his faculties while the other captain was none of these things -- looked around the control room and tried to goad his not-quite-thawed-out brain into producing a remark which would sound pleasant, authoritative, and not too stupid. Except for Gerrol the room was empty, the others having left tactfully so as not to embarrass him while he gathered his wits, or having been ordered to do so by the astrogator for the same reason. The wall displays showed nothing in six different directions and Astrogator Gerrol floated respectfully in the center of the control room, also saying nothing.

  "If I didn't know better," Deslann said at last, "I'd say we were lost."

  A pleasant enough remark, he thought; but stupid, definitely stupid. . . .

  "We aren't lost, sir," said Gerrol, obviously humoring him, "everybody else is. . . ." He hesitated, then went on, "There can be an awful lot of deviation in ten years, sir."

  "I expect so," said Deslann a trifle less pleasantly. "How many, and how much? . . .?

  Of the fleet of 861 ships launched fr
om around their home world over a period of three years, Gerrol reported, more than two-thirds of this number appeared to be on course and maintaining proper station -- a fact which reflected great credit indeed on the guidance-system technicians. He gave details of the stragglers, their numbers, degree of deviation and estimated present positions. He mentioned the two ships which had suffered catastrophic pile malfunction during the initial period of acceleration and the five others which had deviated so badly that they lacked the fuel reserve necessary to correct, but with these Gerrol did not give details. They both knew how many people each of those ships had contained.

  Even in the leading contingent of the fleet, of which they were the most important unit, there was no ship within visual distance of another. The main body of the fleet lay about three years behind them, so that the radioed course corrections required days to arrive at the ship in question and for the acknowledgement to return, and the degree of scatter could get worse.

  "In my opinion we should have been stationed at the center of the fleet," Gerrol went on, "instead of in the middle of the first wave with the -- uh -- expendables. It would have simplified our job, sir, considerably. After all, we are navigating for the whole fleet. . . ."