NEW KIT
  [324] In Smith & Malton's the next day a foreman showed some apprentices a
four-foot-long model of a dredgersub. If the plastic toy frogman standing beside
it on the table was to the same scale, the real sub would be 60 feet long or a
bit more. Instead of a grab arm it had a suction tube which untelescoped in
three sections to the scale equivalent of over 30 feet long, and the nozzle at
least four feet wide. The wide base section was fastened to theroof of the hull
by a universal joint at its front and two diverging hydraulic aiming arms at its
rear. It led backwards into a wide flexible reinforced powerful-looking suction
hose whose other end's connection flanges were bolted with an air of
mechanically efficient finality over an intake hole in the hull's hind roof. The
hull was cylindrical with rounded ends; the stern tapered somewhat and bore a
large propeller between four hydroplanes.
  "Well, that's what they'll look like when they're finished. There's a hatch in
the bows to scoop up big objects." said the foreman, and gave a short technical
lecture on that sort of dredgersub. He continued: "The Navy at Scapa Flow have
already got one of them, called Pelargos, as well as an ordinary G3 grab
dredgersub called Nesse [see 307-311]. We make models of these not for
entertainment but because it's often easier to work with a model to check
complicated layouts in three dimensions than to try to work with two-dimensional
drawings. The model propels itself and sucks, but I have to control it by an
ultrasonic signal. The real thing'll have an intelligent computer-brain from
Wernicke's. It'll have the standard destructor / recycler / materials and energy
recoverer, for its size. The man that went with them says that Nesse is named
after the lake with the monster [= Loch Ness in Scotland] and Pelargos is named
after a fictional naval base called Pelargir in `The Lord of the Rings'.".
  "No, not so fancy." said one of the apprentices, "`Nesse' and `Pelargos' are
merely Greek for `duck' and `stork'. The Navy often names its ships from the
classics. That thing looks fearsome - something else I'd rather meet as a model
on a table rather than the real thing underwater! That video that turned up on
the `Cerberus' [see 301 & 313-315]! Myself, I keep away from naval areas when I
scuba dive. Over 30 feet: that's more than the underwater visibility ever is
round Britain, except to sonar. One dive near anything Naval secret, and that
great suction pipe shot at me suddenly from beyond the visibility limit and
fshwooffp! That's all I'd see!".
  "The matter of that video got to Parliament at Question Time and caused the
reply that I thought it would." said the foreman, "An MP asked: `Tape in a
videocamera found by a civilian scuba diver in a crevice in a sunken wreck -
undoubtedly shows a naval grab dredgersub deliberately ingesting two scuba
divers whose equipment is of no known authorized Armed Forces type, so likeliest
they were civilians - recent succession of group diver disappearances - all too
well equipped for tracelessly consuming many sorts of things - the continual
Armed Forces temptation to use lethal force to stop leaked secrets, as the
saying `dead men tell no tales' - Will the Minister of Defence please comment?'.
  The minister said that the commander of M.O.D. Hiddleston had said: `We do not
use lethal weapons against civilian peacetime trespassers, despite rumours and
allegations in the popular press and outdoor activity club magazines. The Navy
was using our two dredgersubs to test their usefulness in transporting and
recovering combat divers on covert operations. That videocamera and the tape
that was in it are Naval property, and I would appreciate return of them and of
all copies of the tape.'. But he would deny it, I suppose.
  Another MP, who had been a naval captain, got up and said: `What even if what
the sport diving clubs allege happened down there, did happen? Diving's work and
combat-action, not pleasure. They long ago should have passed a law ordering so.
People consume more and more room and natural resources for room and kit for
unnecessary pleasure travel and the like. Time someone said to them: `So far and
no farther!'. I thought something like this'd happen in the end to one of those
endless undisciplined civilian underwater sightseers and the time we waste
rescuing them and treating them for bends. Some weekend frogman who thinks he's
a second Cousteau exploring the unknown, find a secret underwater listening post
and photographs it and chatters about it to he cares not who - what do you
expect to happen? Two trippers versus the Russians finding all our secret
listening devices and copying them and finding how to bypass them. `Careless
talk costs lives', still!'.
  Other members started to support or oppose him, but the Speaker couldn't let a
long debate about this develop, as there were more questions on the order list.
The MP's turned to other matters, and that was the end of that.".
  This started a bout of the inevitable rough humour among the apprentices,
until the foreman called them to order and sent them to their next metallurgy
class.
  "Some American's come up with this design." said Mr.Malton in his office
showing a drawing to a fabrication engineer, "Dredgersub about 45 feet long. Its
bows open and can protrude upper and lower opposed metal-mesh scoops. Onboard
recycler / etc as usual. Described as floating and sunken debris collecter. I
suppose there'll be umpteen variations on the theme coming, now that the basic
design has got about. Again it seems rather over-engineered for that purpose.
For one thing its hull's got the same anti-turbulence system that the Navy told
me to put in that `ADT' work-torpedo that we and Braithwaite's are making for
them [see 296 & 298]. The hull has hundreds of surface flow and pressure
sensors, and hundreds of little blowing holes. When a turbulence eddy starts, it
blows in the right places to break up the eddy before it gets big using up the
ship's momentum causing drag. Another system is a rubber-based imitation of how
dolphin skin works. It certainly gives a lot more speed for the same power.
Anyway, these subs are certainly recovering a lot of materials and metals that
Man's lost in the sea down the centuries. Undersea archaeologists don't like
them: one good-sized dredgersub can consume an ancient wreck in a few days, wood
digested for energy and to make hydrocarbon oil fuel, recycled copper and lead
(and sometimes silver and gold) brought to shore, any pottery on board usually
ground to powder.".
  "Not the only ones guilty." said the fabrication engineer, Mr.Collings, "There
must be no end of ancient lead ingots found in wrecks and straight away melted
down for divers' weights or bullets or net weights or wherever.".
  "Well!" said Mr.Malton, "After something's been `ringing my mind's doorbell
and running away' for months, usually when I was working on these subs, and not
saying what it wanted, at last this `Cerberus video' turns up and a lot of
sensationalizing in newspapers, and the matter at last gets to Parliament: that
mountain of suspicion finally went into labour and brought forth the expected
mouse: denial and plausible other reasons for everything.".
  "There's more than a mouse still in that womb!" Collings replied, "I still
smell a rat! Some day more evidence or a careless tongue. That bland minister! I
wonder if it's safe to scuba dive at Crichel Down!".
  Mr.Malton laughed briefly, for he knew of the proverbial case of Crichel Down.
It was a piece of land that the Ministry of Defence had bought for the Army, and
then, finding that they didn't need it after all, had sold it for a big profit
to someone else instead of offering it first to its original owner for its
original price. MP's had complained and asked questions; the Minister of Defence
of the time had told lies in reply; the row had continued and got worse and the
Minister of Defence had had to resign.
  "Yes, the suspicion." Collings continued, "`Have or have not the Navy and/or
inshore fishermen's groups been using recycler equipped dredgersubs as armed
inshore patrol craft to enforce unofficial restrictions on scuba diving and
small boat sailing by holidaymakers and other outsiders?'. Hurlock's bunch got
caught in the act and sent down. And other prosecutions!".
  "Indeed have they!?" Mr.Malton replied, "Some of <my> men like scuba diving!,
like you do. The sea's for everybody! But if I start getting restrictive who
buys what I make and where they use them, they'll merely buy them somewhere else
like in America, now that the basic design's common knowledge among the world's
heavy engineering manufacturers, and I'll have thrown away many local jobs for
nothing. The old dilemma again.".
  [325] Meanwhile at BSAC headquarters someone addressed a meeting: "The storm
seems to be blowing over. There've been no more group diver disappearances for a
while. That `Cerberus video' turning up: often mere publicity stops underhand
goings-on. No more trouble at Crabhaven since that lot of divers turned out to
be all cops. That general search among inshore fishermen found and seized a lot
of those `Hurlock sonars' with the lethally powerful underwater ultrasound beam,
and there's been a lot less trouble since then. After a string of prosecutions,
the recent trouble movement against is gradually losing steam. Hurlock sonars
better stay illegal!, else they'll be a fearsomely efficient compact silent
anti-diver weapon for small boat users. They claim they're to use against seals
and sharks that damage nets. Gun law at sea, pitched battles over access to the
sea like there were between hikers and gamekeepers over access to moorlands
before the last war, permits needed to dive: no thankyou! Crabs and lobsters are
only luxury food, not a staple. Fishnet fishermen don't bother us, only the
shellfish sort, who accuse us of poaching and every evil. Give them and the
legalizers of new weapons half a chance and it'll end up with `We are nailgunned
on the surface, we are sonar-gunned below' in a lot too many places and
countries. I bet the Navy's had some sort of secret anti-frogman ultrasound beam
weapon for ages, and they don't like that Hurlock and his kind independently
duplicating them and selling them to longshore roughs all over the place!".
  "How about this!?" said another member, showing a wooden toy boat about a foot
long. He reached under it and took out of its underside a small submarine about
two thirds as long as the boat. It left a deep half-cylindrical underbelly
hollow where it had fitted out of sight of anyone on the surface. He said: "I
read about it as the real thing in a boatyard's catalog, and I made this wooden
model of it to show what it looks like. Fast gas turbine powered patrol boat,
obviously not a workboat, carries a battery electric powered midget sub with a
floodable hold and a front scoop to pick things up underwater, then it docks
with the boat out of sight people on the surface, and the boat's crew unload the
sub and recharge its battery. Useful for light fast salvage, and for rescuing;
but no doubt about another use this time, that catalog said in so many words
`fast and efficient at catching submerged divers - optional onboard incinerator
capable of destroying most sorts of seized gear including inflatable boats and
fishing nets'! The sub dives and scoops us up and goes back and docks in the
boat's underside hollow, and pumps us across into the boat's hold, where a squad
of riotsquad-equipped uniformed patrol roughs, probably inshore fishermen on
action callout and such work-toughened types with a hard anti-sportdiver and
anti-tripper mentality, arrests us or does whatever they like. The easier it is
to catch submerged divers, the likelier governments'll be tempted to pass
restrictive laws that need something like that to enforce them effectively!
  Aye! The powers that Hurlock and others were wanting: divers to be licenced,
all dives to be authorized by the area harbourmaster, and then only if the dive
is necessary, the local inshore fishermen organized into inshore patrols like
Hurlock's but legal with powers to arrest and seize boats and kit, that is, to
turn the inshore sea into a police state. About time those disappearances
stopped, else an endless succession of such tragedies until I'd have actually
been wanting those restrictions, so that that sort of character could act
overtly and merely have us fined or imprisoned instead of having to ensure
tracelessness with their guns and dredgersubs, like I suspect happened to those
12 from Wigan and their two inflatables at Puffin Island, 11 at Llanfairfechan,
8+2+5 at Crabhaven, and other disappearances - we may never know, unless drink
or creeping guilty feeling loosens a tongue. 4 at Crabhaven we know, one
survived, it was ultrasound guns. Always they allege some other cause. Back to
the old mentality: 170 years ago I could have been hanged for stealing a sheep
or a handkerchief. Taking the law into their hands complaining that the official
law's too weak and too slow. A sad day when I see this sort of patrol boat as
the real thing at the quayside in every good diving area, crewed by men like
Hurlock's squad but legal, trailing incinerator-smoke as it destroys seized
diving gear, and offloading gagged and handcuffed prisoners stripped to whatever
they were wearing under their wetsuits, and diving as a sport finished (except
if we're lucky in a few small reserves). Not even work diving for us, but we
must pay a local man to do any `necessary underwater work'. Enough! They don't
own the sea and they aren't going to stop us from using it! This must stop! What
vote we send as many divers as possible to one threatened site for a massive
`dive-in' like one of those mass trespasses that hikers organized between the
wars?".
  At Smith & Malton's, men were working on a nearly-complete suction dredgersub,
not this time an engineer's model but the real thing, nearly sixty feet long.
They crawled on its roof like on a whale's back. To them it was merely one more
job, still motionless and mindless, on dry land supported by stocks, with no
insignia, except "Keep away from prop" sticky-taped to each side of its stern.
  "Where did you go last weekend? Scuba diving again?" one of them asked
another.
  "Yes. Crabhaven." said another, "No trouble now. I reckon that after recent
events the word has gone round to keep their heads down. Oddly, some of them
have taken up diving. They wear shoulder badges with a black outline of a grab
dredgersub on a blue ground in a black circle. I don't suppose that makes them
any more in favour of outsiders diving there.".
  "More likely next time there's trouble, some sport divers'll find the hard way
that pot-fishermen who have learned to scuba dive don't suddenly become sport
divers but are pot fishermen in diving gear, as hostile as before, and now able
to go underwater after them. There's already been one case of that: some divers
60 feet down near Filey were attacked by a diving hard squad of four local men
and forced to surface where other local men in boats were waiting for them, and
that was the end of their diving for a while.".
  "Yes. The easier and quicker is to catch divers, legally or illegally, the
more'll do it instead of having to wait for us to surface or having to go back
to work as they can't spare the time to wait. <More> prosecutions before that's
put a stop to. Some of those diving local men at Crabhaven had mixture
rebreathers with microchip controlled gas proportion controllers, very fancy,
like underwater commandoes. Too much can happen out of sight underwater. Already
they've got a funny-looking submersible inflatable.".
  "Those two that went to the Navy at Scapa Flow in the Orkneys, they're called
Nesse and Pelargos, which mean `duck' and `stork', I looked them up." said one
workmen crawling about on the sub's roof, "Sometimes a sport diver thinks it's
adventurous to creep into a naval area and sign his name on the underside of a
warship. Any who try it there'll run a risk: there's not much that storks miss,
where they live.". He came to where the five-foot-diameter suction hose joined
the hull, and a shiver ran through him as he thought of its wide- diameter
engulfing power vanishing into the hull, behind the huge nozzle suddenly aiming
and untelescoping in the deeps which were soon to be its natural element.
"This'll soon clear up the rubbish that sailors tip overside in ports ..." he
thought, "Yes, `<all> the rubbish that gets into the water', as some naval types
would say.".
  "What the Navy do with them's their business." said another workman, towing a
blowtorch trolley on the floor as the sub's cylindrical bulk towered over him,
"We just make them. When we go scuba diving, a lot of trouble backs off if a lot
of us go together and stick together and stay near where the public are. ".
  "This one's going to Wilhelmshafen in Germany." said their foreman, standing
near the sub's bows looking at its large object intake hatch, "It'll be launched
at Southampton and let sail over. I wouldn't like to be Oppy [= Optimus Prime]
hauling it over the Marlborough Downs; but an easier trip than he had in that
bad winter [see 12-13], and when he got there the harbour was frozen.".
  [326] "Aye, those things get rid of <all> the rubbish that gets in the water
round ports." a workman said meaningly to another when their dinner break
started, "A rest from crawling about in its innards - what's all this.". He
looked at a notice stuck to a wall. "Round Tuits." it read, "Since several jobs
recently have been held up waiting for these, the Small Jobs Department have
made a large supply of them, and they can be got on demand at any time from any
store. No job need wait any more for someone to get a round tuit.". He looked
puzzled for a moment, then said: "Ha ha. `Get around to it'. Puns are the lowest
form of humour. Sometimes things <can't> be done at once, people have to finish
other things first sometimes. Lets go down the road to Ming's.".
  "What!? Those nailguns? Who's got <those> now?" his mate exclaimed, jumping a
bit at the word `Ming', for he had heard of them in the newspapers. (`Emperor
Ming' = `Electro Magnetic Powered Modified Industrial Nail Gun').
  "No!" said the other workman, "Ming as in vase! That Chinese restaurant! Lets
have chicken fried rice or something.".
  Mr.Malton, very impressive in his heavy work-kit and oxyacetylene torch fed
from large cylinders strapped to his back, entered and approached the sub and
asked the foreman: "How's Wilhelmshafen's sub getting on?".
  "Ready in another week, if no delays." said the foreman, whose rank was marked
on his armbands.
  "Oh. `Captain Blowtorch', can I <please> see you for a moment?" said a workman
with `Small Jobs Department' on the department flash on his overall, who had
just come in.
  "If it won't take long." replied Mr.Malton, who was already busy.
  "Will you please tell that stroppy farmer that that old plough of his <won't>
mend any more!" the Small Jobs man said annoyedly, "He went to Jazz (he's one of
Wernicke's robots) with it once [see 134], and even then it was more rust and
repairmen's welds than original metal. He pesters different people to mend it.
Tell him `Hard $#@, he should've been saving for a new one.'.".
  Suddenly a loud electrosynthesized-sounding voice echoed through the huge
girder-roofed assembly building. "Und wann gehe ich zu See?" it said. Several
men made startled noises. Others felt a deep wonderment, that again a work of
their hands had come to life, although to them it was routine enough and as
liable as anything else to have other things happening at the same time.
  "Yes, it's alive already. Wheeljack and a German Navy man came last night."
said Mr.Malton, and then, louder, rummaging hurriedly in his brain through
layers of engineering to find the words: "Wenn - du bist -- gereid und -
geprueft.". That used up his immediate reserves of German; turning back to the
Small Jobs man he said: "OK, Mr.Brennan, come to No.2 Gate with me. That
farmer's back for his plough already, he's there.".
  Mr.Malton sat beside him on a dumper which had the old plough in its skip. He
drove it to No.2 Gate. "Here he is already with tractor and empty trailer to
take his plough away, thinks we can work miracles." said Mr.Malton, and then,
seeing a white Porsche which he knew, "And what's Jazz Autobot want?, several
people wanting me at once yet again.".
  "Mr.Malton! Mr.Wernicke said-- Oh, you're busy." said Jazz.
  The farmer got off his tractor and went to the dumper and looked in it to see
what sort of job had been made of the repair. "My plough! It's as it was! You
haven't touched it!" he exclaimed in dismay, "And you said you'd do the job at
once! I need it!".
  "I said I'd try to mend it." said Brennan patiently, "I tell you it won't mend
any more! It'll need so many new parts that it'd cost as much as buying a new
one! You should have saved up and bought a spare plough some time ago.".
  "Meaning you'd rather I paid for a new one. Usual conspiracy never to mend
anything if you could sell a new one." said the farmer.
  "No. It - won't - mend. It's - had - it. It's - past - it. Sorry, but that's
it." said Mr.Malton slowly and steadily.
  "That's Jazz there!" said the farmer, recognizing the white Porsche, "He'll
mend it: he mended it that time. My fellow men let me down and I get better
service from alien space-robots or wherever they come from!".
  Jazz transformed and stood and looked down into the dumper, and examined its
load. "Mr.Johnson," he said to the farmer, "sorry, but Mr.Malton's man's right.
Your plough won't mend any more. It broke because it was rusting through. You
need a new one.".
  "Agh!" Mr.Johnson exclaimed in disgust, "Always the same, same as whenever I
go to that place Rugby for the big cattle market there, I've a hill to climb,
whichever way I go. And what about that part for my tractor that you said you'd
make?".
  "When you've paid me for the previous job." said Mr.Malton.
  "Next time I go to market, I tell you!" Mr.Johnson irritatedly replied, "I'm
not paid weekly like your men!".
  "`Next time I go to market': I thought I'd heard the last of that excuse.
That's three market days you've put me off till the next market day." said
Mr.Malton.
  "I told you so." said Brennan.
  [327] "OK! OK!" said Mr.Johnson resignedly, "You win again, like when you all
came on John Stevens [see 207-221] like vultures because he owed! I've got two
heifers in calf, I'd meant them to be herd replacements, but now I'll have to
sell them to raise the cash! No sons, my wife merely filled the place with
daughters like a $#@ harem, till one by one they're marrying and leaving! Always
out with boyfriends and never doing any work round the place. And now I'm a
grandfather, thanks to my daughter Alice and her boyfriend (they moved to
Worcester instead of bringing him here and being some use round the place):
`grandfather', doesn't the word make me feel old! OK, OK, I'll sell Buttercup
and Dahlia instead of keeping them as `young entry': <more> plans put off. And
in a few years John Stevens's land'll be such a thicket of the Forestry
Commission's spruce fir saplings that I won't be able to get in it to shoot the
vermin - foxes and crows and rabbits - OK! OK! How much'll it cost me for you to
make me a new plough? At least I needn't help to pay for some town dealer's
fancy showroom. Alice! Usually she was `in wonderland', daydreaming about pop
stars and fashions, or `through the looking glass', powdering her nose in the
mirror, not working; then she flies the nest like the rest. Wife has all
daughters, cows have nearly all bull calves. What's happened to sons and heifer
calves nowadays? If I did have a son, I suppose he'd insist on sixth form,
A-levels, university, %$# off to a house and job in town like Stevens's son did
and never touch a stroke of farm work again. No inheriting of land, no
continuity, I'll have to sell up when I get too old to work. At least I've got a
lot more land then Stevens, I can produce more to sell. Now I do have two heifer
calves and bring them to nearly their first calving, I must sell them to pay
your bills, or you'd do what you did to Stevens that time [see 212] and turn up
with blowtorch and bailiff and take his best fat bullock. Then he goes under and
you are there with the rest of the vultures, wanting every penny paying, and his
implements that he'd used for so long vanish into your furnace as scrap. OK, how
much do you want for the plough?".
  "£1200." said Mr.Malton, "<Plus> what you owe me from before. Come for your
new plough in a fortnight's time.".
  "I went past his farm two days ago. He's got five heifers altogether." said
Jazz, transforming back to car form.
  "What happens to your old plough?" Mr.Malton asked.
  "Keep it. OK, it's no use except as scrap, it's had its innings. I better get
back or the cows'll burst." said Mr.Johnson, and drove away on his tractor
towing his empty trailer, thinking: "Huh! I have to keep expanding my herd as
fast as possible just to keep up with having to sell cows and heifers to pay for
things.".