SUBSKIMMER
  [274, page sequence changed] In Soissons in northern France, newspaper
reporter Jacques Leroux was addressing a meeting to coordinate action and
gathering of information against drug-runners. Suddenly several men in gas masks
and full riotsquad gear of a pattern which was not standard issue for any of
France's various police riot squads, rushed in firing teargas and clubbing the
audience and roughly ordering them out. "<Not> police! Khakh - koff - Who are
you? What is this? - koff -" Leroux protested, until a pickaxe handle quietened
him while they handcuffed his hands behind his back and slung him in a chain
harness between their leader and another of their number so that both of them
had both their arms free.
  "You're costing us money. You're raising waves. From now on stick to reporting
flower shows and football matches." said their leader, to his left, and then
ordered: "Strip him and give him an overall. Lose any I.D. on him.". Then he
turned to the other man holding Leroux and said: "Oi! Rattler! Why the handbags?
[for he had three handbags on his baton arm.] I said <no> stopping to take
stuff! This is an in and out job! Anything in them goes in the kitty.".
  "From now you are `Tommo', and you lived in Calais and worked on the docks all
your life, if we must talk to you or mention you." said Rattler roughly to
Leroux, "Now help to load some stuff for us. Work for a change.".
  Somewhere on the north coast of France, the men forced him help them to load
many heavy sacks into a dock lighter. An electric prod hurried him on whenever
he slowed a bit. "Best not wonder what this is. I don't suppose Customs'll be
told of it." he thought.
  "Move it, Tommo! This lot's to go at first dark!" the leader ordered and
electric prodded him again.
  "Uhh - I'm worn out and I've pulled something. I'm not some superheavy
stevedore type doing this all day." Leroux moaned.
  "I don't care, lazy nosy office-type pig spoiling people's trade for
officiousness and sensationalizing." said the leader. After this, the dock
lighter went its own way, and Leroux was re-handcuffed and marched onto a cabin
cruiser. The leader and Rattler and Big Red and another got onboard with him. He
saw briefly that the cabincruiser was towing a sheeted-down inflatable with
odd-shaped equipment or cargo on board.
  "Give Tommo a seasickness pill, Rattler. We've got things for him to do." said
the leader. The cabin cruiser sailed out across the English Channel.
  [268 continued] John Tregear, who was still not sailing because of his ear
infection, scanned the sea from his clifftop house near Crabhaven. He put his
binoculars down, pressed some buttons, and looked at a television, which showed
not a program but a relayed scan from a fixed sonar. He identified a blip,
aimed, set to message mode, picked up a microphone, and said: "Affy? [=
Aphanistor] Are you online anywhere?". Aphanistor's reply code came back.
  "Yes, you're near enough." said Tregear, "Investigate underwater activity
among pots, one mile your side of Black Rock Head. Then an eye on Dobbits Cleft:
campers there may `try it on'.". He went to the harbour office.
  The three divers swam down through the clear water over big rounded rocks with
scattered red seaweeds. One had a lobster hook. Two large fish swam over. All
enjoyed undersea peace and relaxation after a very hectic week in their office
in Salisbury. They levelled off to look at something growing on a ledge. A
comforting image of Wormwood Scrubs blotted out the dread of the bad days of
Captain Hurlock and trained riot-equipped fishermen raiding in squads and
impounding and ordering. Suddenly the mental prison's walls fell and its feared
inmates escaped into their brains, spreading dark dreads, as a loud voice from
nowhere in particular ordered: "You are diving among pots. Jettison your
shellfish catching gear and go to shore at once!".
  "So much for the silence of the deep! OK! OK! We're going. So many pots. If we
aren't near one pot, we're near another. Too many pots, they're fishing the area
out, and they blame us." one of the divers thought as all three fled to shore.
  Aphanistor watched his front sonar scan as the three smallish echoes moving at
about a knot about half a mile to his starboard suddenly accelerated to two
knots and made for land. "They're what I thought they were. That's got them
running." he thought, "Humans can't tell where sound comes from underwater. It
scares them. Careful. Too much direct action and we may have the Navy or the RAF
round again, like those two 'copters when Captain Hurlock and his men were
arrested [see 199].". He changed his front sonar from loudhailer mode to full
power beam and aimed to port at a seal-sized echo moving at six knots; it
stopped and slowly sank. One less mouthful of dirty infected wolf-like teeth to
steal fish and wreck nets. He surfaced for air and set course for Dobbits Cleft.
On the way he found that the last echo had been a seal, as he had thought; he
scooped it up in passing.
  [269] The four men called at John Tregear's house, and found nobody in. From
his neighbour they got many words but few to the point, but among the chatter
they found that Tregear was, as usual, in the harbour office, where they went.
They put on thick waterproof overalls and crash helmets with visors and hard
round gasmasks. Two of them stayed in their car, while the other two burst into
Tregear's office. One threw a teargas cartridge in; the other fired his nailgun
into Tregear's desk top, shouting "Freeze!", then aimed his gun at Tregear.
Tregear had heard of those nailguns, and realized that the old trusted defence
against guns, the risk of someone hearing the bang, was gone; he realized he was
probably not long for this earth, but at least was relieved that, as the two men
rushed in, he had just managed to switch a modulated ultrasound microphone on
and jam it in transmit mode. "But what can `it' do on land? Or perhaps one of
the men'll hear." he thought, looking desperately at the industrial-looking
electric-drill-like bulk of the nailgun aimed at his chest.
  He put his hands behind his back. The gang leader, noticing this, said
harshly: "So we can handcuff you easily? You hoping we'll be easier on you if
you `come quietly'? Trick to make us come close to you so you can judo-throw me?
Pity I know that you know judo! Keep back! Now for a few questions. We are not
bound by `judges rules'! What happened to a load of `stuff' and the cabin
cruiser carrying it? What happened to another load and three divers carrying it?
Diver disappearances! Never mind your trigger-happy ultrasonic guns without
looking, as if my men were common trippers after your precious lobsters! Those
two `consignments' were worth all the lobsters your scruffy little village
catches in ten years! What happened to them?".
  Tregear, eyes streaming from the teargas, replied: "Only small load costs that
much is drugs, and I'll not have <that> brought through here! It's ruining parts
of USA already! - khakh cough - fsniffle - your teargas - it causes - OWWWCH!".
  "To the point! What happened? And you will let any future loads through, you
hear?" the gunman rapped, firing a 4-inch nail into Tregear's right shoulder.
  "I'll not help you with your `white death' turning everybody into addicts
stealing to pay for it! We are fishermen and free, not some foreign $%@'s
dockers for his - YOWWW! - nasty ..." said Tregear defiantly.
  "Hold your lip! Answer straight! I've got a hundred shots in here." said the
gang leader, pumping a 4-inch nail into Tregear's other shoulder.
  "Get rid of the phone and that CB or whatever it is." the other man thought,
setting his gun to automatic and burst-firing at anything that looked like a
communications device. But one link still carried sound out.
  "Most guns are grasses [= telltales], they go `bang' and everybody hears."
said the gang leader, "But `Emperor Ming''s a good gun, he doesn't tell tales.
It's <you> who must tell tales - about what happened to my two consignments!?
Then keep quiet about it.".
  "I don't know what happened what happened to your nasty dope or whatever it
was. Captain Hurlock didn't tell me everything, if it was him, which I doubt. Go
on, use me as a dartboard with that thing, I've suffered worse in my time." said
Tregear, wondering if anybody or anything could get to a phone, directly or by
aiming a sonar message beam at it, in time, and if the message wouldn't then be
delayed by some silly switchboard girl at a head police station far away; or if
any other sort of help would come.
  [270] At Dobbits Cleft, Aphanistor found and routinely stowed in his dredgings
tank what Tregear had suspected. This time they were in the act, with hooks in
hands and crabs and lobsters in bags. The public in surface boats and onshore
saw nothing. He folded his grab- arm on his roof. His rear-mounted propeller
between his four steering fins pushed him on over the inshore seabed as his
interior mechanism started emptying five aqualungs and five lifejacket cylinders
of their tons per square inch contents to make them safe for breaking up for
digesting along with the diving regulators and belt weights as scrap to sort and
recover metals; a type of fuel-cell consumed other matter to power his motor.
The outside of his black rounded-ended cylindrical steel hull revealed none of
this, but the fishing boat type code `CR79' on each side of his stern made it
clear where his loyalties lay. He decided to use the cylinder air for a long
shallow dive working near the harbour without nosy infesting surface and land
trippers staring at him. (Two days later, inside pages of a few newspapers
reported a group scuba diver disappearance and that the local fishermen blamed
tidal currents.)
  "Why doesn't official law stop scuba divers taking crabs and lobsters, like in
France and Eire?" he thought, "Our livelihood versus their fun. We don't thieve
in their offices and houses.". He briefly heard a sonar message, then only
`dead' (= unmodulated) carrier. "Poachers are getting less, they're ..." he
thought, then as the sonar message started again: "Not just poachers again, but
<them> again! That lot's big trouble! And on land where I can't reach them! Why
didn't that Wernicke and Captain Blowtorch make me so I can transform into a
landgoing mode?". He went into the harbour along the deep channel along the west
quay that he had dredged out previously so he could enter at any stage of the
tide. He surfaced awash and saw in through the harbour office window. He had no
onboard gun as yet, but he had practised throwing things. He looked about
desperately for something to throw, but he had cleaned the harbour too well.
Then he remembered that he had something after all. A surprised fish watched as
he rolled on his side and unfolded his grab arm underwater. A small bulge came
up his intake cover as he ran his intake rack conveyor in reverse.
  In the harbour office the gang leader was wondering what would work if
`nailing' wouldn't, when a movement outside caught his attention. Suddenly with
a loud breaking of glass a big twin-cylinder aqualung, bereft of its regulator,
harness straps cut off short by Aphanistor's internal equipment for breaking up
large ingested objects, came through the window and hit the gang leader's head
and right shoulder hard; his gun flew forwards. Tregear, who had seen all too
clearly how the nailgun was operated, caught it and set it to full power and
aimed and pressed the trigger repeatedly, hoping that his experience of ordinary
shotguns and rifles and Hurlock sonars would be any use to operate it. His
nailed shoulder hurt horribly as the bulky powerful device's recoil kicked it,
but he continued. Only a second soon enough its shots found the heart of the
other gunman, who had stayed startled for only a second and was already swinging
his gun round; two shots from it just missed Tregear's left side. Tregear
quickly shot the gang leader before he could grab his mate's fallen gun. [271]
The other two men, sitting in their car, had not detected danger in the
scuffling noises and the breaking glass noise; Tregear, leaning out of a window,
saw them. He set the gun to automatic and leaned out of a window and shot them,
despite the pain in his nailed shoulders. The car window was laminated and made
a lot less breaking glass noise than expected, and no tourists were there just
then. "Ye holy @#$ that hurt!" he thought, "having to shoot with my shoulders
like they are, but it had to be done. It was my life or theirs, likeliest, and
anyway it saved more than it destroyed. Sorry, but Crabhaven still isn't going
to be a dope port, towns enslaved to dope, us enslaved to dope-runners, and cops
and drug gangs after each other here and we end up underneath both. No!, and
what people spend on dope, they can't spend on fish.".
  All the other men were away fishing or elsewhere; the place seemed deserted
except for Aphanistor and birds. As the heat of action started to wear off, his
shoulders hurt more and started to go stiff. Aphanistor wanted to call 999 from
his underwater phone connection, but Tregear said no, since "hospitals mean
questions and wasted time, and I don't need their painkiller anyway. I can
withstand the quick way.". He gagged himself securely to stifle noises and for
something to bite on, and set on a risky journey. For once, Aphanistor's `one-
way road' was two-way. Inside him, Tregear, secured, squirmed and bit his gag as
long thin pincers pulled the steel nails out of his shoulders. The intake's rack
conveyor's steel teeth bit Tregear uncomfortably as they ran the `wrong' way for
once, taking him back to daylight and the quay. His shoulders were still stiff
and aching, but he could work with them. He cleaned up completely, but kept the
men's four nailguns and action kit. He wore a set of it in case, wondering what
else would happen. The aqualung went back to where it had been going the first
time. The gang's car went where other cars abandoned in or near the village had
gone. He rang the glazier. He fitted replacement communication devices brought
up from the harbour's store cellar, and ordered replacements for those. "And
people desperate for money to pay for dope go round thieving, and everybody
suffers. No! This stops here. We are fishermen and free, as Captain Hurlock
said." he thought as he went through the gang's papers, one of which told him
where he could get more of those nailguns.
  [271 & 274] In the cabin cruiser well out to sea, the leader and Rattler and
Big Red put on frogman's kit, including helmets and bulky long-duration oxygen
rebreathers with oxygen cylinder lengthways on the back, and breathing bag on
chest containing a large sodalime canister connected to a hard round black
breathing mask with small eye-windows. Their leader, holding a submachine gun,
ordered Leroux: "You! load of walking ballast. Put this frogman's kit on! You're
coming with us! There's people onshore wanting to see you! You're coming
underwater with us! Out of sight of the nasty coastguard!".
  "When we go up, breathe out! If your ears hurt going down, swallow! The boss
wants you undamaged!" said Big Red.
  "But I've never scuba dived - I can't swim - I'm scared of water." Leroux
said.
  "Do it! We can't leave you here." the gang leader ordered.
  [271 & 275] Leroux had to obey. He was frightened, and clumsy in the heavy
rubbery enclosing kit, with his face in a breathing mask like a gasmask or on a
dentist's gas apparatus. He tried to remember the equipment drill that they had
shouted in his ear. He remembered that according to scuba diving literature the
feeling of floating weightless underwater was supposed to be a great addictive
pleasure. "Get in." said the gang leader curtly, aiming the submachine gun.
Leroux looked down at what he was supposed to ride in. It was a boat with a hard
bottom and inflatable tube edges, but with various odd-looking equipment
inboard, and a rotatable arm with an electric motor and wire-encased propeller
(`thrusters', he was told they were called) at each end. They told him that it
could deflate and reinflate itself, and submerge and carry divers underwater.
Intended for naval and patrol and work uses, it had been diverted for a harmful
use that may well have led to loss for others and/or disaster for itself. "Not
many get to ride in one of those!" said the leader. The reporter thought with
regret of many legal underwater groups that could have made good use of it. He
got in it, in the right rear position, and lay on it, and they chained him to
it. "Perhaps the law'll catch this lot, and this craft'll end up getting a
proper job after all." he thought.
  The three men got on it and loaded it. Their leader said: "It seems that some
of that Hurlock's sea patrol are still around. Two more `warnings off' when
sport divers came in cars to camp for a fortnight. But whatever they've got,
we'll outshoot it on the surface, and outrun it on the surface even if it's one
of those Smith & Malton's `dredgersubs' - those things give me the willies, when
I see them in harbour equipment catalogs, they make me feel too much like a frog
where everybody keeps those big domestic ducks that eat everything. It'll be
safe, our men ashore'll have taken charge there. Every consignment's been
caught, the idiots that get entrusted with it. If I want a job doing properly, I
must do it myself. This thing can go at 20 knots on the surface, but only 2
knots submerged. The coastguard won't notice an inflatable this far out, and
we're near enough to Smew Cove to get in before anything submerged from
Crabhaven can catch us, if they have such a thing.". The inflatable went away
northwards, bouncing over the waves, and sending spray flying each side.
  "Now!" the leader ordered later, "Deflate the tubes, seal the outboard's inlet
and exhaust like I said, turn breathing sets on, turn the electric motors on,
and dive! And if any nosy sport divers see us ...".
  Leroux performed the specified ritual with his breathing set.
  The leader shouted: "Tommo! Since I've got you $%^ as crew, remember: When I
call `inflate boat', blow that big air cylinder that's beside you.".
  "Something <else> to remember?" Leroux thought, "Lungs, ears, what a way to
have my first dive! If I ever get out of this, people'll be telling me:
`Subskimmer ride! I with I could have had one!'.".
  He looked for the reinflation cylinder valve, and found it. He was not used to
doing things submerged dressed in and breathing from all that cumbersome feeling
rubbery apparatus. The boat deflated itself and sank. Cold salt water closed
over his head. Nothing to see through his mask's eye-windows except blue water,
and waves overhead, and a few fish. "Soon I'll be the world's expert on The
Boss's flippers and bottom and the rear end of his cylinder." he thought.
  [271 & 276] The sea got shallower. They came to two divers swimming in
ordinary sport diving gear; one of them made a circle and pointing sign with a
hand, which Leroux guessed to be scubadiverese for "Hello.", and pointed
excitedly at the craft and its crew's kit, since they couldn't talk with sport
diving gear mouthpieces in. The gang leader said the codeword "Stork". The boat
stopped, and Big Red and Rattler left it and approached the two unaware sport
divers and shot them with the electric-drill-like `tools' that they were
carrying. There was nothing that Leroux could do, chained to his place in the
boat. It was his first sight of that sort of nailgun. Two more had paid the
price of being at the wrong place at the wrong time, to `preserve secrecy' of
undercover matters. Leroux wondered if that was the cause of some of the group
scuba diver disappearances that he had heard of. "Or is that!?" he thought as a
small submarine with a lethal-looking grab-arm folded on its roof approached, "A
thing like that <must> be official. If it doesn't think we're Navy or Marines
and ignore us. If in my kit and mask, and with some `consignment' tied to me, it
doesn't summarily treat me the same as the other three.".
  Aphanistor left the harbour and set out to sea. He heard and ignored yet
another distant inflatable. There were too many for him to check them all. On
top of his other work, he was more and more becoming an acting harbourmaster
while the citified official human harbourmaster kept finding conferences and
other excuses to be awol. [272 & 276] The distant inflatable stopped, as boats
do sometimes. But then an inflatable-sized sonar echo appeared and submerged
where the boat had stopped. Too slow for it to be a big shark or a small whale.
So many people and seals and porpoises in and on the water to clutter up his
sonar sense. The new sonar echo approached him at an angle; Aphanistor changed
course to intercept it. He came within underwater light-sight visibility range
of it. He for once nearly gave an astonished "brrrm", but suppressed it. He
recognized it as something that Captain Hurlock had told him about. "A
subskimmer!" he thought, "At £100,000 each it can't be trippers or small-time
shellfish divers! If it's business, it's very big business, affording one of
those and those heavy-duty rebreather sets. Most likely the Navy or the Marines.
I better leave them. I better still hang around here, Tregear found Smew Cove
marked on that gang's map.".
  Onboard the subskimmer, the gang leader saw Aphanistor and ordered
frantically: "Now I know! Inflate the boat, start the outboard, and run! And
you, ballast!".
  "OK, OK, I know what to do." Leroux replied, "I didn't ask to come on this
ride. On the surface we'll easily outrun that outsized JCB- gone-scubadiving, if
it's after us anyway. Perhaps it'll think we're Navy and leave us alone.".
  "That useless do-goodie that we're bringing to account better know to blow the
reinflation cylinder on his side, or we've had it." the leader thought.
  Deep in Aphanistor, in a sealed steel casing bearing Smith & Malton's and
Autobot logos, in his close-packed layers of neural net brain electronics, many
different memories competed to be best fit to various parts of the input from
his sensors. The process of recognizing was itself detected and used as input
for other recognition areas. Enough of this put together becomes conscious
thought, even in a brain of silicon rather than of flesh. They competed with
each other and with wired-in impulses and standing orders (instincts and
emotions, if you wish) - of which many, originally programmed in by Wheeljack
the Autobot, had been altered by Captain Hurlock (RN retired) to suit his own
tastes. Something was noticed. A decision to act was made. Many decisions to act
merely alter control conditions of other parts of the brain. Thus people - and
sentient robots - control their own thoughts. But this time a decision to act
reached output wires and caused real action. "No! Those breathing masks aren't
British armed forces issue! And commercial divers don't use rebreathers like
that. It's <them>, likeliest! Someone's last expensive desperate card played.
(And if it's the KGB or whoever asinining about, we don't need them either.)
Activate and aim front sonar - visual contact so no need for scan mode to find
target - maximum power powerbeam mode - fire!".
  In the subskimmer's left front position, the gang leader felt from his
hindquarters brief severe pain, then nothing. He moaned into his breathing mask
and realized: "That thing's got a high powered ultrasonic gun, like in the paper
that time! I can't move! I'm hit bad! Losses, losses! Crash on the M5 and that
silly robot walks up to a cop with dope smeared down its leg [see 251]; one lot
copped in Droitwich thanks to silly boys; one lot burnt in Droitwich thanks to a
silly tramp; Hurlock's gang got two lots and destroyed them; other losses; now
I'm down to my last men, and I must go myself on a run. So it ends! That thing's
destructor recycler leaves no trace! Why didn't I stay legal?? It all boils down
to Wernicke's #$% robots! And I end up processed for fuel like dredgings.". The
Boss had given his last order. He and his men jerked convulsively once and went
limp. Leroux escaped, shielded by Big Red's body and the boat's centrally
mounted inflator deflator box.
  The gang's submersible boat was in deflated underwater mode and only five feet
wide. Aphanistor first turned its protruding thruster arm lengthways so he could
swallow craft and crew and cargo at a grabful to be tracelessly digested, like
any other anonymous odd shaped item of gear with a fancy tradename brought by
unwelcome poaching or otherwise nuisance causing outsider divers or pleasure
sailors. But the realization that he was holding £100,000 worth in his grab, and
naval memories from Captain Hurlock, and other memories, stopped him. "Trelane
kept that set of diving gear that my men impounded from that Birmingham lot when
they raided their camp at Smew Cove that time," he remembered, "and used it to
put a limpet mine on that cabin cruiser that kept raiding our pots and keepboxes
[see 197]. That's proper diving!, as Captain Hurlock said. This thing and its
men's kit'll make it easier for my men to do it next time! I get all the
underwater work round here and even attending to pots and nets sometimes. It's
time the men did their bit underwater. That new man Pendane was a frogman in the
Marines, he can help train the others, and that other man that came with him has
scuba dived. Soon we'll have our own underwater branch to get up stuck and lost
gear, and go underwater after the poachers. Either let there be proper sea
police, or let us police our own fishing area!".
  Aphanistor, whose name means `He who causes disappearance', cleaned up. Like
many, he had his own ideas of justice on drug runners and the loss and
degradation and killing that they cause. Leroux remembered the two sport divers.
Big Red first of the four travelled the `one-way road'; he had caught the full
force of the ultrasound beam and did not move. Next the gang leader, paralyzed
but shouting through his breathing mask every threat known to gangsters at
Aphanistor's supposed human driver, disappeared behind the closing steel jaws,
and a bulge passed up the intake into the hull. Rattler tried to swim away with
his arms, trailing his paralyzed or dead legs. He fought to the last even as he
was held in the grab. His nailgun made a few more small dents in the dirty
scarred grab until he vanished down the dredgersub's intake. Then Aphanistor
broke Leroux's chains between the right end two grab teeth. Leroux saw the
daylight and sea disappear behind the closing steel grab jaws as he was
swallowed fins first. "Those three will import no more addictive poison to
impoverish people and cause crime. Malaysia has the right way, they hang drug
runners there. Frogmen's kit, subskimmer, underwater skill and experience, that
could have been used in a far better cause. So I end as `Tommo', drug-running
frogman docker, tracelessly reprocessed like dredgings by some inshore fisherman
minded fishing port dredgersub that doesn't want either the law or gangs telling
them what to do, or anyone else after their shellfish. No point appealing to
this thing's human feelings, for it isn't human." he thought as the
rack-conveyor's teeth pushed him on. The boat's cargo followed him.
  [272 & 277] Leroux was pumped into an internal storage compartment. He thought
it best not to guess what some of the mechanical noises were that he heard, as
it processed dredgings. The compartment had an air pocket at its top. Leroux
thankfully took his helmet and breathing mask off. A light came on and an
electronic-sounding voice addressed him:
  "Who are you? Enough of poachers and people who get us in trouble!".
  "Jacques Leroux. I am a newspaper reporter. They grabbed me from a meeting in
Soissons. They were taking me to some base of theirs over here." he said.
  "Yes!" said the electronic voice, "Your face matches. It was on the television
news about you. No gun, and you were chained on.". (Aphanistor hadn't watched a
TV set. He could send incoming TV signals directly to his hearing and seeing
brain cortex areas.)
  "What happens to me now?" Leroux asked, wondering how much his fate would
differ from that of a frog that a dredging duck has swallowed. In Aphanistor's
braincase, memories and standing orders again fought for mastery of areas of
silicon to rule over for a while. For once, for a while, something else and
older surfaced through the thick overlay of naval efficiency and secrecy and
pot-fishermen's attitudes that Captain Hurlock had put there and day to day
contact with fishermen had reinforced. "You won't see any of those three
`Medellin's meddlings' again, nor of four other men that they were going to hand
you to on landing. When I say, put your mask and helmet on and swim out of my
side hatch.", he said. (Medellin is a town in Colombia in South America, a
centre of a drug trade.)
  This was done. "Swim straight up, and you'll see the land. It's not far. It's
the south coast of England, near a village called Crabhaven." said the voice,
"And you're lucky that I'd heard of you. Next time not so lucky, unless you ask
us first before diving in our areas.". He was roughly pushed into another
compartment and pumped out of a hatch into the sea.
  Leroux floundered about and found by trial and error the start of how to move
about underwater in frogman's kit. Clear water, sand bottom, a few fish. Waves
passed overhead. Quiet and alone. No ordering captors hurrying him. No urgent
motors carrying him to handover points. No imminent death aimed at him. He even
felt tempted to swim around a bit, but he felt very weary. He surfaced, got to
land, and crawled ashore. He again thankfully took off his helmet and breathing
mask. He took off the fins, and unstrapped the breathing set and let it fall to
the sand. After a struggle (in which he sympathized with such creatures as crabs
that have to moult periodically) he rid himself of the diving suit. Glad to be
out of all that heavy rubbery enclosing kit, he lay in a hollow between rocks.
"I'll keep the kit. My producer'll like a photo of me in it. I suppose all
this'll infest my brain and my dreams until I get so `homesick' for underwater,
that I have to take up scuba diving after all." he thought. He slept.
  In his onboard "Big I-Am" (= Infrared Absorption Meter) Aphanistor `tasted'
the contents of the sacks of white powder; it was what he thought it would be,
the same as on three divers near Dobbits Cleft that one of Captain Hurlock's men
had shot with an ultrasound gun, the same as on the small cabincruiser that
Captain Hurlock and Polwerran had searched and scuttled [see 251]. He also found
what looked like two large battery-powered electric drills; on realizing what
they actually were, he kept them also. He hid the subskimmer underwater and went
back to work.
  The rising tide splashed Leroux, waking him. He was on a lonely rocky shore,
off season and nobody about. No sign of the sub. Dull and overcast, a few drops
in the wind. The experience seemed to have faded into unreality - except that
the frogman's kit lay by him, and the overalls that Rattler had ordered him to
put on hadn't turned back into his office suit, and he was the wrong side of the
English Channel with no papers or money or proof of his identity on him. He
thought what to do: "I better find a police station and find if they'll believe
me or help me get home. The waste that crime causes. Subskimmer, four sets of
frogmen's kit, discipline and leadership and skill, that could have been used in
a far better cause than to smuggle lethal white powder and to end up ground up
and digested by a seagoing refuse destructor. Strange that I was rescued by a
dredgersub. Dark rumours say that lobster fishing port dredgersubs have short
shrift for scuba divers caught `poaching'. No money and no I.D. on me. That
great clamshell grab'd have demolished the subskimmer like a stick of celery.
All vanished. So many diving projects struggling with inadequate kit'd have
liked it. Pity. I'd have liked it to go to have to someone who could have made
better use of it. Time I got up.". But he should have got away from the sea
sooner. Hidden below the waves a rule that secrecy came first had reasserted
itself; as he bent down to pick the frogman's kit up, CR79's grab-arm came out
of a deep inshore gully by the rocks and reached full length across inland, and
from that second capture Leroux did not escape.