DANGER IN THE DEEP
  [177] Next morning at about 7am, a yellow Volkswagen entered and stopped
outside Smith & Malton's gate 2. One of the gate guards challenged it, for none
of the men there had that make and colour of car - then he was more surprised
when he saw that it had no driver. Then he remembered, and said to it
"Bumblebee? You're a new one! Wheeljack told me you'd be coming. Here's the
package, it's some components for Captain Hurlock at Crabhaven Harbour.". He put
the package in Bumblebee, who drove away through back streets, past the end of
the street leading to the old mansion where Mr. Elliott's drama group met, and
reached the Simmonses' address. Next door, Jack Brown's old bedroom window was
still boarded up. Richard and Stephen Simmons came out, wearing their rubber
diving suits under their clothes to save time at the diving site. Richard sat in
the front and Stephen in the back, each with his diving gear beside him, sheeted
over from nosy eyes, and so they could kit up in the car where they would be
less visible. Bumblebee got onto the M5 and set off for the southwest. "What are
you suspicious of?" he asked as they passed the Bristol turnoff.
  The Simmonses, as much as any other occasional passenger in Wernicke's real
Transformers, were feeling some culture shock at finding themselves talking with
an intelligent personality resident in an electromechanical body with no flesh
or bone or blood or other living matter anywhere in its makeup, but they
gradually got used to it. "I don't quite know," said Richard, "nor does `Captain
Blowtorch', it seems, although his men jumped us like that. BSAC [= British Sub
Aqua Club] try to keep peace between scuba divers and local people at diving
sites, after the inevitable minority of `cowboy elements' gave the rest a bad
name. And the inevitable minority of people living by the sea think they own it.
Something wrong's been going on in the last few months. I can feel it in my
bones. That's why we've put these big perforated metal boxes over our aqualung
regulators, to break our bubbles up small, so they won't be seem from the
surface. They're called `diffusers'. They moan about the crabs and lobsters
going, but it's not mostly us! It's too many of them at it at once; pollution
(What pollution? No industry behind us! - Plenty pollution from pesticides and
sheep dip!); too much inshore trawling scraping everything up; trouble is, once
a bete noire, always a bete noire. Except in designated harbour and armed forces
areas, no-one controls or owns land below high tide level in Britain. Many law
cases have proved that.".
  [178] They got off the motorway and onto the road to Crabhaven. Richard said
"Not <in> the village. There's a cleft in the cliff to the left of the village.
It's common land, so they can't legally stop the public. Leave us there, then go
into the village and deliver your components. And <listen> for anything. Then
pick us up again at the cleft at 4 pm.".
  Stephen said: "We've had so many good dives here - this is probably a false
alarm, but that Captain Hurlock turning up at Smith and Malton's - could be
nothing to do with us, I suppose.". They got to a fork. The signpost said "right
turn Crabhaven, left turn Dobbits Farm only.". They took the left turn - it
actually also led to Dobbits Cleft, where a path led down a narrow cleft to the
sea. Richard thought: "Soon once more to get you wet, my faithful old aqualung.
The wife keeps moaning about me never being in at weekends for gardening or
decorating, but who cares? Why waste good diving weather?".
  At the top of the cleft, they got out, not noticing or not heeding a small
blockhouse on top of the right rim of the cleft on the edge of the sea cliff.
"On the way, lets see how much non-ferrous pickings left on that wreck. Should
still be plenty to pay us for a good many dives." said Richard as he put his
fins on. "Bearing brasses, portholes, that delicious great brass propeller! - oh
yes, and a good few crabs and lobbies [= lobsters] - we'll see!" said Stephen as
he put his aqualung on.
  "Yes, we'll see." said Captain Hurlock to himself as he saw and heard them
over a television monitor in his office at the harbour.
  Richard and Stephen dived and swam along the coast towards the harbour. [179]
Bumblebee drove to the harbour office, where Captain Hurlock took the package
from behind Bumblebee's front seat, where he had been told on the phone that it
would be. Bumblebee parked himself at one side of the harbour office to try to
see or overhear anything, until time to go back to the cleft to pick the two up.
  The two divers reached an old wreck, battered to a scrapheap by years of
storms. They took what shellfish they found, then swam on, for they had to get
to the harbour and look round there and get back to the cleft, on the air in
their cylinders, without surfacing. They reached the left mole of the harbour.
On it, they saw more young Californian giant kelp starting, descended from some
that someone introduced illegally, and it spread. "It'll make diving more
interesting - but it'll also drive out native species and clog boat propellers."
Stephen thought, "Captain Hurlock may control the harbour, but he doesn't
control the other coves and cliff clefts. Once round here to look for anything
odd or suspicious, then back.".
  Meanwhile Richard, in a rough mood, thought: "OK. So CRS [= French riotsquad]
man Werwolf Wer-nick says that King Kong wirebrain Optimus says through his
smelly diesel exhaust pipe that walking welding shop Mr.Malton thinks that
Captain Hurlock isn't telling everything. We'll find out soon -- Oww!". His
thoughts were suddenly interrupted by a feeling like illness and a loud high
pitched noise in his ears. "Of all the times for me to start to have head
noises." he thought irritatedly. Then he saw that Stephen also had his hands
over his ears, and realised that the noise was real. They looked round in
horrified amazement. Inside their diving masks their eyes opened to circles of
white in their fear, they bit their mouthpieces hard, and suddenly all the vague
disquiets and suspicions that they had heard of, cohered into all too solid
visible reality that fitted everything. What they saw was ----
  [180] At 3.30 pm, Bumblebee set off back to Dobbits Cleft, and waited there.
Time passed. The sun travelled slowly across the sky. No divers returned. Time
passed. He felt trapped, for he had nobody else to watch the cleft if he went to
find a telephone to ask if the missing divers had landed elsewhere and to call
the lifeboat if necessary - not knowing that someone else <was> watching the
cleft. His bonnet lengthened and split into legs. His head uncollapsed from in
his rear engine compartment. Parts of the sides of his chassis unfolded into
arms. His body compacted roof-to-floor somewhat. Having thus transformed, he
stood up. "Good thing Prowl suggested giving me retractable climbing claws on my
fingers and feet." he thought as he climbed the side of the cleft towards the
`blockhouse', which he had by now noticed. He left a crushed trail through the
`Sally-my-handsome' [= mesembryanthemum] which grew all up the steep rocky
cleft-side, but it couldn't be helped, for urgency compelled him. He switched
his eyes into telephoto mode to scan the sea and the coastline, but he saw no
sign of the two. On the blockhouse was written "Coastguard Lookout 7B (Dobbits
Cleft). Private" - it was what he thought it would be. His left hand claws bit
into hard wood and his engine revved as in his urgency he forced the door open.
Inside he found assorted surveillance equipment and - a direct telephone line to
Crabhaven harbourmaster and a coastguard. He hurriedly connected himself to it
to explain the situation.
  [181] "Hello? Coastguard? Harbourmaster?" he said.
  "Captain Hurlock here, harbourmaster, Crabhaven." came the reply.
  "I'm speaking from the Dobbits Cleft lookout. I'm sorry to break in there, but
there's two people missing at sea.", he said.
  "@#$@#$! Had to happen! All that equipment in there to `surveill' the cleft
against smugglers and - those -, and some panicky civilian breaks in in a blue
funk for a phone.", Captain Hurlock thought, but merely asked "What then?".
  "Two scuba divers, went in here at 1 pm, due back at 4 pm, not come back yet.
Both male, with two-cylinder blue aqualungs with a metal box on top, black
wetsuits with dayglo seam strips, `Fenzy' lifejackets." said Bumblebee.
  "Oh? Divers? We've had `Egypt's second plague' of amateur frogmen in recent
years! spreading their gear everywhere, and nothing in the sea's our own any
more! They'll have got mixed with some other bunch.".
  "Well, they're still missing." said Bumblebee.
  "OK, I'll tell the lifeboat to take a run up and down the shore and take a
look, but I bet they're ashore somewhere and safe.", said Captain Hurlock
reassuringly, thinking that it was a pity to waste the lifeboatmen's time but
that it would serve as training for them. He continued "When it's dark, you may
as well go home. What's your address?".
  "Nicknamed `Bumblebee', care of Wernicke Computers Ltd, ----".
  "Which I knew already." Captain Hurlock thought, "Trust him to know so little
that he brings scuba divers <here> uninvited.".
  "Thankyou. Sorry to trouble you. I'll tell you if they turn up after all."
said Bumblebee, and rung off and left.
  "Pity to raise his hopes," Captain Hurlock thought satisfiedly, "for <I> know
what happened to those two.".
  Bumblebee went home empty along the M5, reflecting gloomily on the outcome of
his first real contact with humans, compared with his successful fictional
adventures. "If they don't turn up," he thought, "two more scuba diver
disappearances to add to a lengthening list - what's happening to them? I
thought their clubs trained them properly. Two more `statistics', as the saying
goes. Optimus said that `Captain Blowtorch' was having vague doubts that could
be anything or nothing - him being a fleshling, Ratchet can't read off his brain
circuitry synapse patterns and sort out properly what's lurking in odd corners
of his brain. Else whatever it is might have been found out sooner, whetever it
is that's bothering him.". Past the Bristol turnoff. Past the Worcester turnoff.
Back to Droitwich at last. "If I hadn't taken them there - but they had dived so
many times before without incident." he thought as he entered Wernicke Computers
goods entrance and went to find Optimus to tell him what had happened.
  "Not your fault. Don't keep accusing yourself. Wait a day for any news of
them, ring Crabhaven again, then if there's still no news, go tell the police"
said Optimus to him.
  "They lived together, but nobody else with them except Richard's wife. They
left their clothes in my bonnet. I've still got them." said Bumblebee. (His
engine was in his rear end.)
  "You better take them to the police then, as - lost property." said Optimus,
himself feeling unhappy at the outcome. He waited in vain. No trace of the two
divers was ever found. Captain Hurlock knew what had happened, but he did not
reveal it.
  [182] A BSAC meeting in BSAC headquarters in London was proceeding routinely.
The chairman, satisfied that discussion on agenda item 3 had finished, announced
"Agenda item 4. Diver accidents. Yesterday's report of two divers disappearing
at Crabhaven highlights the increasing amount of such incidents. Concern is felt
at the standard of diver training. I propose that we send people round the clubs
to check the standard of training. Else we run an increasing risk of official
restrictions.".
  Another member said: "Something peculiar's going on. It may not be just bad
training. There <are> always accidents, but - there are no more accidents where
the casualty is found, than before. The increase is solely in disappearances.
One TV news item about this, started with the music from `Jaws' (that shark
film), which to me wasn't funny or called-for. Too cold for dangerous sharks
anyway. Eleven divers disappeared tracelessly at Llanfairfechan [see 135];
twelve and their two inflatables at Puffin Island at the east tip of Anglesey
[see 166]; nine off Porlock in north Devon. More and more divers are diving
abroad only (Majorca, Eilat, etc) or crowding into inland sites. Any given
incident <could> be explained normally, but so many together ---".
  Another said: "There need be nothing more sinister than in the so-called
`Bermuda Triangle', where many ships disappear simply because many ships cross
it, and the usual proportion of them sink! Inexperienced dive leaders; ignorance
of local tidal currents; petrol- driven on-site compressors set up the wrong way
for the wind, so they suck their exhaust in; illness in the water; one gets into
difficulties, and then ditto the rest trying to save him. Anything involving
explosives or firearms'd be heard!
  Another member, a Mr.Hilton, said: "That implies that guns go `bang'. Not all
do! Spearguns and crossbows don't; and odd cases in the papers of criminals
using a sort of silent electromagnetic-powered nail-gun called "Emperor Ming" -
they've still not found who's making them ---".
  "Belay the science fiction!" another interrupted, "I know nail-guns. Most are
powered by special cartridges, some by compressed air. They go `bang'. They're
wildly inaccurate except pointblank, for nailing wood. Our club solicitor in a
string of prosecutions has largely put a stop to illegal actions and libellous
propaganda by hostile inshore fishermen. Next thing, you'll be alleging that
they'll take the transmitter part of a powerful sonar and put it in an aimable
casing as an underwater ray gun! Back to reality!".
  "Phasers on stun - beam us down, Scotty!" someone mocked, and there was
laughter.
  The chairman called for order, and Mr.Hilton continued: "Spearguns don't go
"bang"! And, those `Emperor Mings' are powerful and accurate, and designed to
look like electric drills, a grave security anxiety: `Electro Magnetic Powered
Modified Industrial Nail Gun'; and with sonar: one naval anti-frogman trick was
to ping the sonar at full power - quite enough to burst frogmen's eardrums and
disorient and panic them. Very powerful ultrasonic beams underwater can kill or
stun. (Sperm whales do it! The big sac of spermaceti oil in their heads focuses
their sonar into a tight beam to stun prey, which is why they can catch agile
fish with their clumsy big heads.) Also, even before this recent bout of
casualties, there have been offshore from one secret Ministry of Defence base on
the south coast, various diver disappearances, also mass deaths of fish, also
divers who dived there and came back and reported hearing `sonic noises'.
Underwater lethally powerful ultrasonic beam guns are possible, and probably
exist now! ---".
  Another interrupted: "Where'd fishermen get them from? Anyway, these
anti-diver sweeps and searches would be seen and reported, and they'd end up in
the Old Bailey; also they can't spare the time and fuel from their work for all
this playing at antisubmarine patrols! They must fish!".
  Mr.Hilton continued: "And the casualties would sometimes be found, but they
aren't found, not even after the Llanfairfechan case which happened close
inshore, and a large search party found nothing. (I know it's risky to dive in
armed forces areas: they're supposed to send their own divers in to catch the
trespassers, but (in the old days, especially) they'd often decide that's too
much trouble, and instead throw a small depth charge in, and report it
officially as an accident to unauthorized civilians trespassing on a training
area.) Anyway, most of these incidents are nowhere near armed forces areas! Our
seas aren't the Wild West yet. A few photos of the culprits brought back, and
it's all over for yet another plot of trouble. That over, back to the point. (1)
Article about not offending local customs where we dive; (2) Stiff circular to
clubs about training standards, and in some lax clubs we may have to have tests
re-taken; (3) Random testing of clubs' training sessions. Who seconds?".
  Someone seconded, and the chairman went to item 5, which was about policy re
advertisements in some publications. Discussion on item 8 drifted back to the
group diver disappearances, until someone, to stop the repeating of points
already raised, said: "Right? I take it we can discount rumours of unusual
weapons and Get - Back - To - Diving? Nailguns: the industrial sort, as you
said; the other sort, easy to cope with: make him waste his first shot, then
%^&*%^&* of a time to reload, black powder, then nails and/or gravel etc, takes
at least a minute ..." -
  Mr.Hilton interrupted sharply: "That's a blunderbuss, it's a museum piece!!
The sort I heard of, fires <one> nail, point first, spinning like a rifle
bullet, as accurately as a rifle, silent, no muzzle flash or gun smoke. Once
you've got the gun, you reload it from a hardware store, recharge it from the
electricity mains, no need to buy anything which is illegal or needs a permit.".
  The previous speaker continued: "Oh? And I'll believe in ultrasonic guns when
I see one in a gunshop or chandlers or diving gear shop! Let's come back from
the future! Anyway, they don't usually `try it on' near a lot of public, and
they're too busy with work to keep patrolling against us, even without the risk
of other water users noticing what's going on. Their chief enemy's too many of
their own kind, and pollution. So - much - for - that! Item 9: "More near miss
incidents between divers and waterskiers".".
  The meeting continued, following its agenda, and finished unremarkably.
  Two divers dived in a flooded quarry near Eccleston near Chorley in
Lancashire. On the road down to the water, they saw that, after the last heavy
rain which was two days before, a large articulated lorry had driven right into
the water and out again, twice. A big area of bushes near the water had been
hacked down to make room for it to manoeuvre. They dived, and found to their
surprise that every bit of metal in the water had vanished, the old cars, the
hut and the crane and the trucks, and the rubbish; and every bush near the water
on all sides was pulled up and gone. They finished their dive and returned home.
  [183] The disappearance of the Simmonses did not compete well enough with the
doings of politicians and warring foreign nations for space in the public media,
to prevent eight divers from Chesterfield BSAC from going to Crabhaven on a
sunny day a few days later. On enquiring at the harbour office, they found
Captain Hurlock (ex RN), the harbourmaster, uninformative and the inshore
lobster fishermen silent and suspicious. They took the way of least resistance,
a little way along the coast, to Dobbits Cleft, where a high cliff was broken by
a narrow steep unmade public road down to the sea. They left their cars at the
top, kitted up, and walked down towards the sea, little heeding a small
`blockhouse' above the cleft. They talked in anticipation of the coming dive.
  "Hallo? Something as big as a car's slid down here, crushing the
mesembryanthemum. Pity." said one looking up to his right.
  "Handy, this brook being here, to wash the salt off our diving gear
afterwards." said one.
  "This'll give me enough dives to qualify as a 2nd class diver." said another.
  "Check:- mask? snorkel? 2 fins? weights? knife? depth gauge? safety helmet?
lifejacket? compass? air turned on?" said their leader.
  "Underwater visibility's about 17 feet." said another.
  "Hopkins, take that diffuser off your regulator!" said their leader, "All our
bubbles must be followable, for safety. Diffuser!? This is an ordinary sport
dive, not an undercover mission!".
  Hopkins reluctantly obeyed, for he thought it safer to dive <with> a diffuser,
from what he had heard of some places. They reached the sea and put their fins
on. Their leader gave them final instructions before diving, for mouthpieces
prevent talking underwater. They spat in their masks to de-mist them, rinsed
them in seawater, and put them on. One of them found that his mouth was too dry
to spit, from an unplaceable apprehension, but thinking hard of a roast turkey
got his saliva running again.
  Two small fishing boats, CR24 and CR31, watched from a distance. "Whatever
they want, they can't reach us where we're going." John the dive leader thought,
"All those dirty similar fishing boats with their harbour codes `CR and a
number' on them instead of names, look official and threatening, but ten feet
down we're out of their reach; and if there's plenty of public about where we
land, they daren't try anything. I've been running rings round Captain Hurlock
and his kind for years, them claiming we take all the shellfish when the chief
culprit's likelier to be there being too many of them for the fishing, and
intensive trawling further out scooping them all up, and pollution. For a few
cowboy types in the past, we all get blamed."
  They entered the water and swam along together at about 40 feet depth, looking
at the fish and encrusting life in the clear water of the southwest. While they
were examining a small wreck, a shadow passed over them and there was a sound of
boat motor. (Underwater the human ear cannot distinguish the direction that a
sound comes from.) They continued their dive. Then a large but vague shadow
appeared, like something big a bit too far away to see, to their left side, and
not above them; it hung about for a while as they swam on, then it faded away,
or they stopped noticing it.
  They swam out from to the shore to a spot that John knew of, a sunken rock
reaching to 20 feet depth sticking up from deep water. More shadows went over;
more motor noise in the water. "Here they buzz us like Indians round a wagon
train" Hopkins thought, "but ten feet down they can't reach us, and on shore
among a lot of public they won't touch us.". There was a brief high-pitched
noise in the water, and the underwater shadow appeared again briefly. Some of
their heads felt funny briefly. There was a metallic clang from somewhere. John
felt uneasy, and signalled to them to go back to shore. He looked back and
counted: "me, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 - 7 - 7?" He pointed round them, held up 8
fingers, then folded one of the 8 fingers down, and pointed round again, then
pointed up, to tell them to "surface and look round! One of us is missing!". The
high-pitched noise came again; some of them briefly felt giddy. There was a
metallic clang from somewhere, and a slight muffled scraping. In some foreign
seas `pistol prawns' and fish with modified swim bladders make a great variety
of undersea noises, but not so in English waters. The divers surfaced, and found
there were only 6 of themselves, and could see no more bubbles. As John looked
down, the unexplained shadow appeared again - becoming larger and clearer. Then
it came nearer than the visibility limit and took definite shape. "Oh no! A lot
more than ten feet down and they <can> still reach us! I hoped I'd never see a
fisherman's boat code on one of <those>!". The boatman's walkietalkie in CR24,
and a surveillance camera in the `blockhouse', had done their work.