“How do you think we’re run? There isn’t anyone who could order a person to do such a thing, since it’s more for your pleasure and convenience than public necessity. Besides, I told you there isn’t time.”

I pondered that for a little while. His remark about how the installation was run was a little surprising, but this was hardly the time to go into local politics. He’d started to give me a more interesting impression, anyway; if what he’d said could be credited, it seemed almost as though it would be better for these people if Marie and I left than if we stayed. Why was the choice being offered, then? I asked Bert, a little indirectly.

“What will your friends do if I don’t go back up? More people will come to look for me, you know. Even if I hadn’t reached the surface and started my rescue set, which I did, the Board knows where I was going and why.”

He shrugged again. ‘No one cares how many come down. Unless there’s a whole fleet at once, we can pull ‘em in and give them the same choice we’re giving you. It’s happened often enough, as I said.”

“And suppose a whole fleet does come and starts wrecking those lights and that tent or whatever it is without wasting time looking for me or Marie or anyone else? Sooner or later if folks keep disappearing down here that’s what will happen.”

“I’m not in on all the thoughts of the Council here,” he answered, ‘and I don’t know whether they’ve thought much of that point. I repeat, there have been quite a few people who stayed down here without getting the Board very excited. Personally, I think they’d just put this part of the Pacific off limits to the general public long before they’d waste energy sending a fleet of subs down here. In any case, that’s the Council’s worry. The current point is that you and Marie do have the choice and will have to make it of your own free will.”

“What if I refuse to commit myself?”

“Once you’ve been told what is necessary, we’ll simply turn you loose at the gate you came in by. You’re hardly in a position to hang on and refuse to go up. No problem.” He I gestured toward the direction from which we had come along the tunnel. ‘Speaking for myself, I’d like to have you stay — and Marie, of course. I do have some good friends down here now, but they’re not quite the same as old ones.”

I thought for a few seconds more and then tried to catch his eye through the port while I asked the next question.

“Bert, why did you decide to stay down here?”

He simply shook his head.

“You mean it’s too long to explain now, or you don’t want to tell me, or something else?” I persisted.

He held up one finger, then three, but still wrote nothing.

“In other words, I’m going to have to make up my own mind entirely on my own.” He nodded emphatically. ‘And Marie, too?” He nodded again.

I could think of only one more question likely to be helpful, and I threw it at him.

“Bert, could you go back up above now if you changed your mind about staying? Or is what they did to let you breathe water impossible to reverse?”

He smiled and used the stylus again.

“We’re not breathing water; that analysis misses on two counts. They did make an irreversible change, but it’s not a very serious one. I could still live at the surface, though the shift back to air breathing would be somewhat lengthy and complicated.”

“You just said you weren’t breathing water!”

“I repeat it. I’m not.”

“But you just said — ‘ He held up his hand to stop me and began writing again.

“I’m not trying to tantalize you. The Council isn’t dictatorial by nature, or even very firm, but it feels strongly and unanimously that the details of how we live here shouldn’t be discussed with anyone who hasn’t committed himself to staying. I may have said more than they’d strictly like already, and I’m not going any further.”

“Do the people out there with you disagree with the Council?”

“No. The feeling on that point is pretty uniform among the populace.”

“Then why did you take the chance of telling me as much as you did?”

“Most of them were in no position to see what I wrote, none of them could have read it, and none of them can understand your spoken words.”

“Then the native language here isn’t — ”

“It isn’t.” He’d cut me off again with a wave of his hand before I even named a language.

“Then why do you worry about disobeying this Council on the matter of telling me things?”

“Because I think they’re perfectly right.”

That was a hard one to argue, and I didn’t try. After a minute or so, he wrote another message.

“I have work to do and have to go now, but I’ll be back every hour or two. If you really need me badly, pound on your tank — not too hard, please. Even if no one is in sight, which isn’t likely, you can be heard for a long distance, and someone will send for me. Think it over carefully; I’d like you to stay, but not if you’re not sure you want to.” He laid the clipboard down beside the tank, and swam off. Quite a few of the others also disappeared, though they didn’t all take the same tunnel. The small number remaining seemed to be those who had arrived most recently and hadn’t yet given their eyes a real fill of the tank. They did nothing either interesting or distracting, though, and I was able to buckle down to heavy thinking. There was plenty of it to do, and I’m rather slow at the business sometimes.

There was no problem about the decision, of course. Naturally I would have to go back to report.

Staying here might, as Bert had said, merely pass the buck to another investigator, but sending another one down would be a clear waste of power no matter what trick they dreamed up to get him there. Also, I wasn’t nearly as sure as Bert seemed to be that the Board wouldn’t waste a few tons of explosive on this place if they found it and had reason to believe it had killed off three of their agents. The problem was not whether to go back, but when; and the ‘when” depended on what I could manage to do first.

What I wanted to do was make contact with Marie. It would also be nice to find out more about Joey, if information of any sort was to be had. I didn’t want to believe that Bert had lied about him, and it was certainly possible that Marie’s disbelief stemmed from her reluctance to accept the fact that Joey had disappeared in a genuine accident. On the other hand, she was by no means stupid. I had to allow for the possibility that she might have better reasons for doubting Bert.

Joey, like Marie, had had a one-man sub. He could have found out things these people did not want known at the surface. After all, what they seemed to want Marie and me to carry back if we went was information, or propaganda, designed to discourage the Board from checking further.

But wait a minute. That was true only if Bert were right about the Board’s preferring to hide the word of what went on down here.

If he were wrong — if my own admittedly prejudiced idea of the reaction were closer to the truth — there’d be no question of suppression, and the Board would be down raiding this place within a day of the time either of us got back. That could hardly be wanted by this ‘Council” Bert was talking about. Maybe there really was something in what he had said.

But there still could be things these people didn’t want known, whether they were feeding Bert a line about the Board or not. Joey could be here or could have been killed, though the latter went very much against the grain to believe. Even if Bert had been right about his never arriving — perhaps especially if he were — there was Marie to worry about, too. If she were feeling stubborn she’d never leave of her own free will, and they couldn’t just turn her loose to float up, the way they could me. She had a sub. Of course, now that I was here they could cripple her boat, make sure it was low on ballast, and turn us adrift at the same time; maybe I should wait for that. Maybe -