SEA PATROL After dark CR79 carried the subskimmer in his grab to the harbour, where he lifted it onto a waiting boat trailer. He then rolled on his side so the men could unload the four sets of frogmen's kit and other items out of his side hatch into a waiting dumper. "This lot looks useful!" said Pendane, kneeling on Aphanistor's side helping to unload, "I was a frogman in the Marines. No point asking Affy [= Aphanistor] where he got this lot, I suppose.". "Sooner this lot's in store, the better." he said as he drove the dumper towing the boat trailer into a storeroom, "I better get the men trained to use it, and make somewhere to keep this subskimmer where it and the men diving with it can come and go underwater without everybody seeing it. Rebreathers! Lighter than aqualungs for the same duration, no bubbles to follow us by. A lot quieter and less cumbersome than aqualungs, when we go underwater after poachers. Add a nitrogen or helium cylinder and a microchip controlled oxygen proportion sensor and controller, and we can go as deep as aqualungers. What a surprise, when they find we can go underwater after them and catch them 100 feet down! There's maker's labels on them, so I know where to get more. And two of those nailguns, plus four off those four men that came by land: I know just what to do with two of them. Time Affy had guns mounted on him. One fore and one aft.". "This lot'll help to make up for the ten men we lost when Captain Hurlock was arrested!" said Tregear. [278] Tregear's ear infection had now cleared up. He, wearing a set of the frogmen's kit, was driving the subskimmer in deflated submerged mode above sandy seabed. He passed a few scattered starfish and small crabs. The armbands and the sides of his helmet bore his serial number 12; his shoulder badges and the badges on the each side of the subskimmer's bows bore an outline of a grab dredgersub on blue ground in black circle. "Work to get food from the sea, antipoacher patrolling, salvaging." he thought, "Far better than nasty furtive drug running. Lets get used to steering this thing. It'll startle a few poachers, when they see it!". Aphanistor approached; his voice came out of an ultrasound receiver on the subskimmer's thruster bar: "Very impressive, Tregear, or it will be when you have had a lot more training. I wish we had these when was in the navy. Soon I'll be bad news for the poachers, both as myself and as my image on your kit! Now blow its tubes and surface and go back to base, and next action will be by swimming. People's brains get too vehicle-bound and lazy nowadays.". "Aphanistor as a naval officer? Even silicon brains have `Freudian slips' - the amount of navy that got into his brain via Captain Hurlock!" Tregear thought, and said: "Hang on. I'll go check some of my pots first. I must earn to help pay for all this. I bet this subskimmer'd feel glad to be used for a proper purpose instead of what that lot bought it for, if it had a mind - likely it soon have its own mind, if that robot engineer Wheeljack gets at it.". Another Crabhaven man, similarly equipped, with serial number 13, was holding onto the top of Aphanistor's hollow bin-sized clamshell grab, contemplating the amount of stuff that had passed in to the destructor through the powerful capacious intake which was just below him. Aphanistor spoke to him, and he heard by small ultrasound receivers in his helmet: "Brrrm! Polzean! I suppose you intend that to be your favourite riding position! Watch out! One shake and snatch and gulp and ... Time you went back to your antipoacher training. Trippers! If they don't poach, they scavenge. They come, pick, act the goat, and go, like underwater tramps. No discipline. I had a narrow escape from ordinary land tramps once. Before I was brought to life, part of my brain was being delivered from Wernicke Computers (who made it) to Smith & Malton's (who made most of me). A tramp stole the package and was going to burn it for the fuel value of its wrappings! I tell you, Captain Blowtorch and his men didn't spare their riotsquad gear that day! The social worker types called him all sorts of things, but all their sorrowful ink wouldn't have brought those microchip boards back [see 110]. Most vagrants steal. Captain Hurlock told me that in the old days vagrancy was a punishable offence, and important specialist trades like the Cornish tin miners and the Forest of Dean coal miners, and fishermen sometimes, were allowed to arrest and try their own offenders, who knew their trade and its problems. Now along comes something worse than poachers. Lucky we made a traceless end of it, else the law and some gang'd likely be hunting each other here and ordering us about. `When elephants fight in a peasant's field, it's the peasant that loses most.' said Captain Hurlock once. Lucky I had inside me that undigested aqualung off those five poachers at Dobbits, to throw in at that gunman! Time is you'd better mount guns on me! Pity that subskimmers cost so much. If a lot more people wanted them, they could be mass produced and therefore a lot cheaper - and then trippers'd use them, to surface and dart off as I got near. But my or your good old Hurlock sonars should stop anything submerged that poachers or underwater scrap-thieves ride on the outside of. - Hang on! You've still got that ordinary hard hulled inflatable that that lot from Bromsgrove left when you saw them off. If that workshop of yours can make those sonars, and bits for trippers' boats, it can make the bits to `subskimmerify' an ordinary hard-inflatable, I think! Why not? Several car or lorry batteries; electric motors; some air cylinders off trippers can have a second life as reinflation cylinders; assorted metal parts; sonar; make its outboard depth-pressure- waterproof; etc. The result won't be as good as the real thing, but it should be useful.". By now Aphanistor had surfaced, and Polzean had got into Tregear's boat which came alongside him. Tregear replied: "Now you sound like there's a lot of that robot engineer Wheeljack in your make-up, trying to surface.". Seabirds flew in a dense crowd to and from the cliffs, continually calling what sounded like words. Tregear commented on this din: "Noisy, those birds. Someone said they're called `kittiwakes', after the noise they make. To me it sounds more like `let me out'. To me they're all just gulls, to make mess and eat our fish and attract birdwatchers to mess about in boats and get among our pots and be tempted, and then get adrift or stuck on cliffs, and we have to waste our time lifeboat-rescuing incompetents.". "`Let me out': who and from where?" Aphanistor replied, "Some people'd say they're those three I got the subskimmer off, come back to accuse me - and others also indeed - some humans' imaginations! Doesn't bother me. I just submerge and wash their mess off.". (The serial numbers of the five Crabhaven men that learned to scuba dive were: #10 = Pendane, #11 = Mickelson, #12 = Tregear, #13 = Polzean, #14 = Malling. [see 281]) [279] Tregear and Pendane came to a pot marker. Tregear, still wearing frogman's kit, hauled it in, for they still had to fish for their living. "Brrrm!" Aphanistor remarked, "A diver going in pots! A sight to set my intake conveyor twitching! Good thing I know who you are! Hurry up with it! And as I said, Pendane, who was a Marines commando frogman, is in command of you in diving matters! And as I said, there will be no idle underwater scoobydooing and sightseeing wasting time and breathing set refills! Every dive to be authorized by him or me, and logged. Diving is addictive, and addictants where they are necessary must be kept under control! Aye! Captain Hurlock (RN retired) made you lot into a disciplined trained force to act against nuisances instead of complaining over drinks and doing nothing! Now you've made good use of that bad weather when you couldn't sail, training in that quarry to do your own diving work and antipoacher actions. Like in France there are sea-police who can dive and arrest underwater! Now you are all passed in basic aqualung and rebreather diving, the fun part can start now.". "And next time they slope off to the pub and dodge training ..." he added to himself. "This dive and a few more to get used to sea conditions. If you want to pick shellfish, you can." said Pendane, "But practise keeping together as a disciplined squad and keeping out of sight among rocks and kelp. Practise being quiet! No noisy splashy rolling in backwards, unless I say you can! Now in you go!". "Aye, the old solid conspiracy retreats!" Aphanistor thought as he floated alongside, "Where is Stephen Bennett of Chesterfield BSAC, expert diver, expert solicitor, twisting the law round his little finger, lock-picking through every attempt to enforce by law notices telling divers to keep off, winner of many cases when we tried to control our own harbours and beaches, cause of many injunctions and sentences imposed on our people? My destructor recycler digested at the same time his aqualung and his expertise, his flippers and his fancy words, when off Dobbits Cleft I judged a case where his law didn't apply, when we two met!". The five dived. Aphanistor said to them: "Discipline! Don't wander off! Stick to the job! Stay hard! The first thing for you to be is my `second grab and intake' for when I am elsewhere! I can't be everywhere at once. That's why you've got me on your badges.". Underwater, Mickelson, wearing ordinary aqualung and mask, looking up at Aphanistor and seeing of him only his rounded-tapered rear end with its propeller between four steering fins and forgetting that sentient robot vehicles are liable to have more eyes and elsewhere than the normal human two, pulled Tregear by his fins which were temptingly near, thinking with rough humour "Pull the cat's tail!". Aphanistor suddenly made a half-loop downwards with his grab arm extended along his arc of travel as an extra steering aid, and grabbed Mickelson fins-first. He shook and shut his grab once, and the frogman disappeared inside. "What!?" Mickelson complained inside the hollow grab. "No you don't!" came a loud warning from Aphanistor's powerful all-digesting steel bulk. "Oi! Let me out! Let me out!" Mickelson complained, "Oi! You me to dive! Let me out!". "`Let me out'? Have I caught a kittiwake bird? Or just another sport aqualunger poaching and acting the fool? Enough of them! They indeed `fly' about everywhere and leave mess, like birds! One gulp with my pusher plates and ... No, I'll let you go, but stay here.", said Aphanistor as he rolled over to keel-down. He opened his grab. Mickelson swam out and rolled over to belly-down. "Pulling #12's fins! Skylarking!" No you don't!" said Aphanistor angrily, firing his front sonar at Mickelson low power so he felt the effect a bit, "If I had a tankful of fuel for every silly young rating that acted the goat endangering or distracting someone, when I was in the navy - I mean, when Captain Hurlock was in the Navy - and found the hard way what Captain Hurlock's electric shock prod was for! `Only a bit of fun'? That excuse doesn't hold at all! Fin fights are for swimming pools, not open water! If I or #10 tell you to `attack' another one of you as combat training, then do so, and only as I say - else no clowning about at all! Is that clear? And how did you talk? By taking your mouthpiece out? Don't do that either! So, if you want to become one of the teeth of my `second grab for when I am busy elsewhere' for when trouble arises, and to wear me on your shoulder badges, then remember: No clowning about! No fraternizing with trippers! And, as #10 told you to do, but you haven't done it yet: I know that's your own kit, but still: blacken out all that yellow and chrome! You aren't sport divers. You will often have to go unnoticed. Mask edges, fin buckles, lifejacket, suit seam tape, regulator: blacken it out! that big yellow maker's badge on your suit with `Cressi-sub' and a girl spearing a shark on it: dredgersub yes, Cressi-sub, no. You don't work for them. Your shoulder badges have a red dredgersub on a black circle: you get them with a black dredgersub on when #10 says you're fully trained and passed. That'll be the sooner the more you train. So, if there's bad weather and you can't sail, you go to the quarry and train, not to the pub and not visiting about! How long before #1 to #9 get let out? #8 [= Trelane] used a set of scuba gear to good effect! That floating gin palace that kept hauling our pots took away a limpet mine as well as lobsters [see 197]! And get a diffuser for your aqualung. Foam rubber packing on the bottom of your cylinders so they won't clang on your weightbelt. Removable black cloth cover for your cylinders, for stealthy operations. (Don't paint the cylinders black: in industry, black cylinders mean oxygen.) And remember: both ends of me are dangerous. Keep away from my propeller. And from all propellers.". Later, Pendane said to Mickelson before diving: "Affy found valuable metals in an old wreck that he dug out. Thus I could buy more of those rebreathers, Rebreathers with pure oxygen can't safely go below 30 feet, and purposely diluting the oxygen in a rebreather is dangerous and not to be done - except with these sets. In mixture mode they have an oxygen cylinder and a nitrogen cylinder, lengthways on the back like I've got now, and a microchip controlled oxygen proportion sensor and controller to keep the oxygen proportion right automatically - if the battery doesn't go flat, so keep it charged.". [281] Bad weather prevented fishing. Three of them went to the village pub. "Umf!" said one, "So much of that quarry! When will this gale stop? I'm glad to look like a fisherman, instead of another thieving sea-frog for that overgrown steel duck to pump down its throat at a gulp and digest kit and all. I thought we were `fishermen and free', not to be ordered about by a robot sub.". "Come off it!" another replied, "Affy's as good as being one of us. How things change! At first Captain Hurlock didn't like seeing sport divers' gear any more than seeing its owners. But he appreciated Trelane's dive that time [see 197]. Then the cops came the wrong day, and we lost ten men [see 195-202]. That left Tregear (#12) and me (Polzean) (#13), plus two men too old to be much use, plus three boys old enough to sail but the $%# Education won't let them leave school for it. But Pendane (#10) and Mickelson (#11) and Malling (#14) came from other villages to help out, and Pendane had been a frogman in the Marines. Then Affy (= Aphanistor) found the subskimmer and those four sets of kit, etc as we all know.". They finished their drinks and went out. Outside, the gale-driven rain beat against walls and windows - and against the steel hull of Aphanistor, who stood high and dry on wheels in the road in front of the pub. Pendane was beside him. They stopped, startled, with the usual apprehension of absentees caught at fault. "Since that gang affair, I got Smith & Malton's to fit me with retractable road wheels. Back to duty." Aphanistor ordered, "Nuisances won't go just by complaining over drinks! Your kit's in my hold. To the quarry!". "Yurrh, ordering us about like that Captain Hurlock!" Polzean growled. "If it wasn't for Captain Hurlock and then Affy, you'd still be complaining over drinks and doing nothing, handcuffed by all their fancy solicitors! Freedom must be earned and worked for! Now back to training to fight back!" Pendane ordered. They went back to training. Rain beat on their diving gear. Pendane said: "Fancy kit's very handy, but keep in practise of how to use ordinary kit. These rebreather sets are good, but they need oxygen (and nitrogen or helium, for mixture mode), which aren't in most corner shops. So learn how to use aqualungs, which are far easier to get hold of, and only need air, which is all round us, so all you use up to refill them is compressor fuel. And don't get so subskimmer-minded that you can't do the job by swimming.". Polzean replied: "Yes, you said, such as, if you are using an aqualung without a diffuser, if you're creeping up on a suspect, to arrest him, only breathe out when he breathes out, so he won't hear your bubbles coming out. Likewise with aqualung intake hiss.". Pendane said: "Yes, you're learning. And `arrest'!, right word, not `get' or `nab' or the like, at last! Soon you earn a black dredgersub on your badges instead of a red one.". In the quarry, one of them was practising creeping up on a suspect diver and turning his air off to make him surface. This time it was a difficult case, turning off a twin cylinder set's two air taps at once, one with each hand. He managed it, and inflated the `suspect''s lifejacket, forcing him to surface, where in real action the surface party in the boats would have caught him, and not gently. "Enough of poachers. If 30 trippers each take a lobster a week, for 20 weeks each year, from our waters ..." he thought. Pendane and Aphanistor floated in front of the other four men, who stood underwater to attention in serial number order. "That's all you four passed. Here's your badges with the black sub on," said Pendane, swimming along the rank giving them their badges, "and perhaps help to train #1 to #9, when they come out.". "Now you've got me on your shoulder badges in my own colour, remember:" said Aphanistor, "be as hard as my grab and as thorough as my grinder and as traceless as my recycler! One day they'll learn that work and production come first!". "And be yet another shellfish diver, if I can't pot because those new sea woodlice that eat pot baits first start infesting round here." Polzean thought. "Something sailed through our drift-nets again, cutting them." Mickelson thought. They also learned other matters, such as explosives handling, for when they had to blast during underwater salvage work. "In slack seasons you may want to do underwater work, which may include blasting." said Pendane. The lesson started and ran its course. "When crimping a detonator, always crimp from the back, not over the end! If you crimp the det', and it goes off, goodbye to your hands!" Pendane warned. "`Agh burzum-ishi crimping-tool', when Sauron blew the city walls up!" said Malling, adapting from `The Lord of the Rings'. "Never mind silly puns with fiction! I better go over that again." Pendane snapped, and repeated his warning. "Remember: `bang clatter clatter clatter': after an explosion always wait for all the debris to stop falling." he said later. "In towns, explosions usually go `bang wuff wuff wuff': silly dogs commentating on it.' Polzean thought. The lesson ran its course. At Crabhaven, life continued.