THE SEA PATROL STRIKES AT FILEY [336] "There have been no group diver disappearances for a while." said a member at a meeting at BSAC headquarters in London, "I suspect that the word went round after the Hiddleston videotape became public. If it so, then it removes the risk of Government control of diver training and qualification, since the disappearances are thus shown not to be from untrainedness. But it is still alarming; I suspect that we may never know; so many inshore fishing ports nowadays have those dredgersubs with mentalities like aggressive inshore fishermen in electromechanical bodies that size.". "And Hurlock sonars, which are used overside from a small boat, locate and zap, one less diver or porpoise or seal." said another. "In some places, the younger men among the lobstermen have taken to diving. Not such an unmixed blessing. They now don't need us to look for lost gear, and they can go underwater after us, as in those two cases near Filey. Some of them use aqualungs. Some of them use a new sort of rebreather which can be bought if you ask the right people round docksides. Rebreathers are risky and we don't let club divers use them; but this new sort has a microchip-ized automatic gas proportion controller, which makes them much safer to use down to full aqualung depth properly maintained. They seem to be well designed and well made. Certain things about them make me suspect that they're designed for rougher things than ordinary diving. Parts of them are likely made in different places, but I think I can tell were one part is made. I bought one of those sets, and inside its breathing mask is a small maker's plate with an outline drawing of a grab dredgersub on it - like on Crabhaven's diving fishermen's diving suit shoulder badges. This one's got the dredgersub and `Crabhaven. ser. no. L4247' on. Hard round black fullface breathing mask with small eye windows. Very hard to get hold of to pull it off in a fight, particularly if he wears a helmet, unlike our ordinary flat oval mouth and nose masks that come off so easily. Also, any punch at his face or chin just slides off sideways. Single short breathing tube armoured with interlocking metal rings, not looping out for an attacker to get hold of it, surfaced with fluorocarbon to make it slippery if an attacker does get hold of it to pull it. The breathing bag has a surface layer of miniature chain mail. This set's obviously designed as a diving thug's set for underwater rough stuff. This photo shows what sees to be the new coming image of the professional shellfisherman and other professional divers, that sport divers run into at times. These are the main features that I can spot:- As usual with rebreathers, no trail of bubbles to follow him by. Kit is all black with no dayglo or yellow or chrome anywhere to show up. Hard helmet with removable identity number on each side. Hard round breathing mask with small eye windows, as I said. Face hidden to hinder identification by strangers. Set/air valve is a slide valve on bottom of mask behind breathing tube, hard for an attacker to reach it. Unit badge on shoulders (at Crabhaven, black dredgersub (red for trainees) on blue ground in black circle; at Filey, their Y symbol). Weight pouch on each side of the chest to be level with the breathing bag. Fine chainmail round the breathing bag, which has the sodalime canister inside (to absorb the carbon dioxide and water vapour that the diver breathes out). Oxygen and nitrogen (or helium) cylinders on back have guard pieces so attacker from behind can't reach cylinder valves easily. Cylinder valves at bottom of cylinders where diver can reach them easier. All gas tubes lie close against diver's body so they won't cause drag and won't be easily caught by things or attackers. Nothing dangling or trailing on lines or loops to cause drag and be easily caught by things or attackers. Pouch in front of hips for tools and oddments, so they needn't dangle on lines and loops to cause drag etc. Automatic gas proportion controller, so full aqualung depth and no need to waste oxygen flushing set and lungs before diving. Tough drysuit. Cylinder pressure gauges on top of canister which shows at top of breathing bag. Tubes to them run within the set. No mouthpiece, so diver can talk underwater. Long heavy weighted baton trailing from right weight pouch, and a lot of training in using it in air and underwater.". Also at Crabhaven, Pendane explained this to the nine local men who he was training to dive. "This is our standard kit," he said, "but you'll also be trained to use aqualungs. Aphanistor helped to design it; there's more to him than just his grab going `clommp' and a bulge going down his intake. Commercial divers and the armed forces are beginning to get interested in these sets. But here is Tregear modelling the latest weekend sport scoobydoo kit. Its main features are:- Usually, soft unprotected head. `Pillbox mask', pathetically easy to snatch or knock off. Everything imaginable on cords round his neck. [in this example, camera and hammer and writing board and torch] Long looping soft aqualung breathing tubes, so easy to cut or squeeze or pull him about by. Bulky cylinder top assembly and regulator to cause drag, and catch on net etc, and for an attacker to get hold of. Cylinder valves at top of cylinders, easy for an attacker to turn off, hard for him to reach to turn them on again. Loose weight belt, with lobsterhook stuck through it. Where far too many of our shellfish end up. [i.e. a net bag full of shellfish, hanging from his waist] Their main antipersonnel weapon is usually a club solicitor with a typewriter that spits fire and brimstone at us, or `lock-picks' through all our attempts to defend our livelihood in court. Ours is what we can handle and use: training and better kit, and physical and mental hardness from and not penpushing all week and weekend monkeying about for fun. Our kit has less to cause drag and to catch on things and for an attacker to get hold of. The trippers are learning. More and more they stick to just swimming about and leave our shellfish alone. One trick loose mouthpieces allow is: find an oyster, open it with knife, mouthpiece out, oyster in, gulp, mouthpiece in, repeat. At one place, three divers came on holiday, and they never brought shellfish up with them; but the men that live there found too late that the three'd been steadily pumping the village's oyster stock down their throats as subsistence food. Enough of `two-legged seals'; now it's `two-legged starfish', I suppose. Too traceless. Shells stay on the seabed; divers come up with the oysters out of sight in their stomachs. There's two that can do that, if Affy ever catches them at it ... I and Affy have had to design many features of these sets. For example, here is one commercial design of fullface mask:- Soft rubber edging. Window exposes full face for anybody to identify him again. Set/air valve sticks out forward, so attacker can easily operate it, and it can catch on things and even get operated by accident. Mouthpiece in mask!, so diver is gagged, particularly if he's wearing a helmet so he can't get the mask off easily.". So life continued there. [337] Near Filey in Yorkshire, six members of Coventry BSAC set off in an outboard inflatable to scubadive. They had no reason to fear trouble, since group diver disappearances and diving parties being `warned off' had largely stopped after several prosecutions and other publicity. The latest police search of fishing boats had largely cleared the area of its latest crop of `Hurlock type' sonars with lethal ultrasonic beam which had been effectively used in several places against submerged divers near shellfish areas as well as against seals near nets; and after the `Hiddleston videotape' had become public knowledge, the nation's diving clubs very carefully kept track of all known naval and fishing-port dredgersubs - just then the nearest one was 20 miles away, dredging Whitby harbour. "If those rumours are true." said one of the divers, "That tape was in an underwater videocamera that someone found in a wreck near a naval secret area. It showed a grab-dredgersub deliberately ingesting two scuba divers who seem to be civilians - reminds me too much of a duck swallowing a frog - but the factory that makes those dredgersubs said that that one was the Navy's, and the Navy said they were testing using it to recover commando frogmen after secret operations, and can they please have their camera back and all copies of the tape? But so many fishing ports and salvage firms and suchlike have got those recycler-equipped dredgersubs which can dissolve everything, and there've been so many group diver disappearances. And the two on the tape had ordinary sport type diving gear on. Always they allege some other cause for each disappearance. There was a group diver disappearance near here - four scallop divers and their inflatable. But later they reappeared, saying they'd been on a special training course, but they wouldn't say what sort of training, or where.". Peter lifted his binoculars to see who was in three small boats that he saw. "Fishermen and divers." he said, "If they take divers out on dives, they'll be friendly. Forget them.". They got to the diving site, put their diving masks over their eyes and noses, put their mouthpieces in their mouths, tested that their air was coming normally, and rolled in backwards off the sides of their inflatable, except for one who stayed in it as surface cover and to guard it. The divers started picking about in a wreck. "One lobster won't be missed" one thought, "- says each of hundreds of divers each weekend he dives - never mind." and with his hook dragged a lobster from its lair and pouched it. Others thought and did likewise. Peter, as he poked about among rocks, found himself thinking of the divers that he had seen in the three boats: "Funny-looking headgear they had. Are they commercial divers? So what? We dodged those lobsterpotters, we've dodged them many times. And if they do come here, ten feet down and we're out of their reach, and they likely won't want to wait over us till we run out of air, they've their livings to earn. Barring `Hurlock sonars', we don't want about, locate-and-zap, no bang like a gun, one less diver.". John found the wreck's propeller, made of brass as they usually are, and was gloating about the forthcoming profit from salvaging it when something pushed at his cylinders slightly and he found that his air had stopped. [338] "Of all the times for my regulator to go wrong, or some idiot to monkey about like in the swimming pool." he thought. "You surface now!" said a rough local-accented voice behind him, somewhat hollow and muffled as if through a full-face breathing mask. John, alarmed, had to obey. Richard and Paul swam side by side near the bottom. Each already had a partly-full goody bag trailing from his weight belt, and held a lobsterhook. They still had three quarters of their air left, and were enjoying a really l-o-n-g wander in well-lit water around 40 feet down, instead of "great depth for the sake of great depth, which uses our air faster". A shoal of fish fry slid past like a flight of needles. Richard scooped up a crab. They swooped on big two pairs of lobster antennae sticking out of a hole - and a shadow appeared above them, and something reached down between them and pulled their masks off. A rough masked-sounding voice ordered them to: "Get out! You lot surface now! decide who dives here!". Peter kept on poking about among the broken pipes and pieces of plating. A fish swam past; he rolled over to watch where it went - and found himself looking in a shock of fright at a diver wearing what was obviously not ordinary sport diving gear. All black kit with no chrome or yellow or dayglo anywhere. Strong waterproof hard rubber drysuit instead of the foam-rubber wetsuits that most sport divers wore. Two pannier bags of weights instead of a weight-belt. Shoulder badges with a Y-shaped logo. Hard plastic helmet with the number 3 on each side. On his back under a canvas cover were two cylinders, too small to be useful aqualung cylinders, without a regulator; no bubbles rose from his set as he breathed. From their bottom ends connections ran round his right waist to a box attached to a rebreathing bag and sodalime canister covering his chest. This was the first time Peter had seen a rebreather-set, but he had no time to wonder why the other diver was getting away with using one so deep, for the arms were extended, lunging with a diver's knife in the right hand. Peter also was already holding his knife, and the two wrestled briefly; but Peter could not reach the attacker's short breathing tube, set well back, which led from the canister to the breathing mask, while the attacker was much the stronger and soon cut Peter's long looping aqualung breathing tube which waved about as they struggled - the important side, the intake side. "Dive's over, you slippery thieves!" came a hard local-accented voice from the hard round black fullface breathing mask; the eyes behind the small oval eye-windows were expressionless, as if their owner was unemotionally doing a job which had by now become practised routine. Peter had not heard him enter the water - but there are other ways than noisy splashy rolling in backwards. The set was a `mixture- rebreather', a type long known of but much too unsafe for divers to take into account practically - until at last made safe by adding a compact microchip-controlled gas proportion sensor and flow controller in the box that the cylinder connections ran into. Peter could do nothing but surface as fast as possible. The seawater stung Richard's now unprotected eyes, so he had to close them and surface. Paul was luckily very shortsighted, so his eyes could focus much better than normal eyes (but not completely sharply) when directly submerged; his scleral contact lenses kept the salt off his eyeballs for a long time. He turned and saw his attacker's rebreather and serial number 4. He was badly scared, and delayed by having his arms trailing instead of what underwater is `at the ready' folded at the sides of his chest, but he fought back with knife and both feet, mentally cursing his BSAC-standard gag-mouthpiece that stopped him talking underwater to warn his companions; but his knife uselessly hit #4's black helmet while #4 with a twisting squirm easily avoided Paul's flailing fins, and a weighted hardwood baton found Paul's solar plexus. But a thick part of Paul's lifejacket softened the blow, and the two came chest to chest. Paul skinned his left knuckles in vain on #4's helmet and hard breathing mask and wasted his knife's time finding that #4's breathing-tube was armoured with interlocking metal rings and that his breathing bag had a surface layer of small-mesh wire chainmail. Meanwhile, with an angry shout of "Enough!", #4's left fist found Paul's exposed nose and chin - hard and three times. #4 took Paul's knife and inflated Paul's lifejacket to send him to the surface to the men in the boats. John, nearing the surface, saw a wooden boat above him and realized what had happened. Peter, approaching him as he also rose, reached for John's right cylinder valve to turn it on again, to give him some air, but rebreather diver #3 grabbed Peter's wrist and shouted in a local accent "No you don't! Your dives end now!". [339] Paul surfaced and saw that their inflatable was gone. The wooden fishing boat bumped his head, but he pulled himself up on it and started to protest "Do you mind?, you idiots! I'll have the law on you ... ooff ...", as #3 punched him hard in the solar plexus and surfaced and shouted "Another one coming up, Jim!, after these two.". In the boat were three men in heavy sailor's waterproofs with heavy sticks; two wore crashhelmets numbered `6' and `7' and the third wore a bobble-hat. All wore cloth masks. One of them clubbed Richard as he surfaced; then they dragged Richard and Paul into their boat as #3 pushed upwards at their cylinders. The two were quickly stripped of diving gear and handcuffed behind their backs lying face down in the bottom of the boat. "Plenty of our shellfish in your bags!" said the one with the bobblehat angrily, "This stops, never mind the law saying we can't own a fishing area like idle expensive sport anglers can!". "At least James got away in our boat." Richard thought, but not for long, for from #7's walkietalkie came a message "The one that did a runner in their inflatable, we caught him on the beach.". Peter spat his useless mouthpiece out and surfaced by another of the boats, still thinking that the attackers were sport divers dangerously acting the fool from mere sillyness, gasped several times, and protested "Phew, air, what the idiot club do you clowns belong to? When I tell your club chairman about this dange...", but rebreather diver #4 surfaced and, punching him hard, said "No club! We don't matter, we only have to make a living from the shellfishing! You take all the shellfish, you raid our pots. You're same ones as gave me lip a fortnight ago! Well, we now can follow you into the water! Our - fishing - is - ours!", and then to the men in the boat "Another one! OK, drag him out." as one of them pulled Peter alongside with a boathook. John and Edward surfaced by the third boat, a little way from the other two, and held onto it. "Now! Together! We too can act rough! Lullaby!" said John, spitting his mouthpiece out, hoping that Edward would know their codeword usage `lullaby' = `rock him' = `rock his boat, so he can't attack us'. They rocked the boat, but soon had to leave off, and John and Edward narrowly ducked the boatman's pickaxe handle, for men who work in small boats at sea all day are used to being swayed about. There was a slight click from underwater, and John found that he couldn't separate his feet and that they had no grip on the water. Local diver #1 had come underneath him and handcuffed his ankles and removed his fins. #2 and #3 converged on John, who had shown his skill at judo during a previous scuffle there. But judo doesn't work weightless; John, realizing too late that they should have left the shellfish alone, fought back briefly, but soon #3 held his left arm while #2 punched him hard and inflated his lifejacket to stop him from submerging. They cut his aqualung off and handcuffed him, still in the water. They and the boatman dragged him on board. "Where's the other tripper?" said #3. For Edward had swam away during this, thankful that the tidal current would for once be useful and carry him to land. Another of the boats came up. A man in it, who had been dismantling Peter's aqualung, threw its two separated cylinders at #2 and #3, calling out "Bert and Jacko! One's doing a runner northeastwards! Here's a jet-assist for each of you!". He had fastened a metal L- piece to each of the two cylinders' valves, so that when they turned the cylinders on, the air blast went straight away along the cylinder's axis. #2 and #3 each held one of the cylinders lengthwise against his chest, and the jet effect added to the steady fast fin-swimming of their work-hardened bodies soon caught up with the escaping Edward. [340] #2 dropped his cylinder at the last moment and grabbed Edward round the thighs as #3, holding his cylinder in one arm, unhooked his baton from his belt and accurately jabbed Edward. Meanwhile a boat had followed the bubbles; Edward was pulled to the surface by a boathook, dragged onboard, stripped of equipment, and handcuffed. The captured sport divers were put in one boat, and their equipment in another. The boatmen sheeted these loads over for concealment with load sheets taken from the third boat, which the four rebreather divers then got into. "Weekend sailors, and I waste my time having to lifeboat-rescue incompetents." said one boatman. "Trippers, trippers, cluttering the harbour and poaching. Enough of them." said another. They came into port and landed the prisoners. "Right!" said one of the men from the boats, "Into room 3 and take all your kit off, including the wetsuits. Too bad if you've got nothing on underneath them. Unauthorized diving - unauthorized possession of diving gear at sea in a controlled area - unauthorized possession of shellfishing gear - possession of poached shellfish. You are not obliged to say anything, but anything that you say may be taken down and used as evidence against you. As far as we are concerned, our sea's ours, same as your gardens are yours. Get permission off us, or keep out of it and off it. Enough of you lot.". "Like the BSAC magazine reported that time - them putting on police-style airs." Peter muttered. "`Divers not welcome', you say - look rather like one!" said James to #2, who was still in full kit. "We live here, we need the shellfish to live, whatever gear we use!" said #2, his voice still sounding rather hollow and muffled through his breathing mask, "We don't want outsiders setting pots about, either! We used to dive for scallops after the herring got scarce, till town lot tipping your muck in the sea made the council health say they were polluted and we couldn't sell them any more. My father and my grandfather fished here. What club do you belong to? What plans do they have for more mischief? If you lot's stories don't match, we can keep this up all night!". "You can't stop us diving!" said Richard, "And our kit's ours! We'll have the law on you, like they caught Hurlock's `sea patrol' at Crabhaven that time. The lobsters go short because there's too many of lot after them! Not guilty!". "The law says the sea's nobody's?" the bobble-hatted boatman replied, still wearing a cloth mask, "We've changed that! and you are poachers. You want your kit back? In some countries you'd at least get some of your weight belt lead back - out of our rifles as a firing- squad first thing next morning! Your catch stops here, your kit stops here, and enough else to pay for our time and fuel. You will go straight home, you will not hang about here or any other fishing port to be tempted to any more mischief. This is a harbour, not a marina, and it's staying so!". "There's still too many of you for the fishing, and you take them undersized and in berry, and you blame us." said Richard. "If there's a shortage, all the more reason for you town types not to poach. You lot don't look so fancy without your kit!". "Aphanistor at Crabhaven'll be in port." #1 thought, and telephoned as the interrogation continued. Along wires across the width of the Vale of York and the Midlands and the South came in reply, from no larynx of flesh, from an intelligent brain not of organic matter but of silicon, the voice of Crabhaven's type G3 destructor/recycler-equipped grab-dredgersub, CR79, who Captain Hurlock (ex RN), harbourmaster, the local fishermen's action leader, had named Aphanistor, `He who causes disappearance', a name ominous to any who would intrude on the local inshore fishing. Dark rumour went with his name, that many more had met him and his kind underwater than got away to tell of the meeting. His recycler consumed without trace unauthorized divers' gear and boats, and much else, that passed into his grab and down the elastic-roofed rack-conveyor along his grab-arm's underside into his dredgings-tank. Hardly ever (except the mechanic servicing him) did anyone ride his `one-way road' in the wrong direction. The last time was when, after Hurlock and nine men were arrested, to help the two remaining local men able and willing to fish came three others from nearby villages. One of them, Pendane, had been a commando frogman in the Marines. He and Aphanistor taught the local men as work divers and antipoacher commando frogmen. So San Pedro del Mar, a Spanish trawler fishing illegally close inshore there with fine mesh nets, was stopped by Aphanistor, who fouled its propeller with a piece of thick cable and then extended his grab-arm over its rail and regurgitated onboard the five local men in their frogmen's kit with guns and teargas cartridges wrapped in rubber to keep them dry till needed.