Then I remembered that Bert’s own sub should still be around somewhere. I grabbed the pad.

“Why can’t we all go back?” I wrote. ‘Your boat must still be here, too. If Marie feels so strongly about having you in hers, I could still use yours. You can still come down again, or both of us can, if the job seems to call for it.”

It seemed like a fine idea to me, and even Marie appeared to approve of it, but Bert had a question or two. I had to admit he raised good points.

“The operating room will handle only one at a time. Once I’m done, there’ll be communication trouble during your own depressurization.”

“You could explain the whole program to them first. For that matter, I could go through it first.”

“I’m not sure I could explain it too well. Remember, I’m no expert in this finger-wiggling.”

“But why couldn’t I go first, with you directing which sub was to be connected, and so on, until it was your turn?”

“You could, I suppose. We’d better check my boat, though. It’s been here a long time and been used for regular work here. The flotation system will certainly need going over. I’m not sure I’d like to risk it against pressure differential myself, but we’ll see. We’d better check that first.”

Marie had been reading our conversation and nodded approval, so our flock went off to look over the vessel.

He was right. The flotation liquid was completely gone. It hadn’t been used even locally for months, since there were no facilities for making the hydrocarbon its buoyancy tanks were designed to use. The local machines used the same sort of low-density solid employed in the swimming coveralls; it would have involved major structural changes to put that into the submarine. No one had considered it worth the trouble.

“I could use one of the local boats,” I suggested when this became clear.

“Don’t try it until you learn the language,” was the rejoinder. That seemed a little silly. A sub is a sub, and you either understand them or you don’t. A look into one of them educated me, though.

I still don’t see why their control panels are made that way; the laws of physics are the same down here as up above. Apparently the difference in basic thinking which goes with that weird graphic language extends into more factors than mere common sense would lead anyone to expect.

It began to look as though the other two were going back alone. Bert seemed quite resigned to it, and even I was getting that way. When we went back to Marie with the word, though, she came up with another of her ideas. I’ve come to suspect since then that she had something more in her mind than just getting me back to the surface, just as she had when she insisted on Bert’s going along, but she didn’t confide in me. Of course, that may have been because there was no way for her to speak to me alone.

“There’s plenty of spare buoyancy in my tanks,” she pointed out suddenly and firmly. ‘Just attach that wreck of Bert’s to my tow-lugs, and we can haul it along. You say the hull’s sound enough to hold against the pressure when you pump it down again.”

Bert seemed startled, no doubt because he hadn’t thought of that himself. That was my suspicion, anyway. But he promptly agreed; and so it was settled. He went off to get help in towing the subs and to arrange for the operating room, and I took advantage of his absence to write a remark to Marie.

“You seem to have been wrong about Bert. He certainly took you up fast enough on that test suggestion.”

“So I noticed.”

I waited for further comment, but got none. I suppose I should have known better than to expect any. When she did speak again, it was on a wholly different subject — I thought.

“Be sure you check the bitts on both subs very carefully.”

I nodded, surprised; that was too standard a procedure to call for special comment.

“And the lines, too. You’ll use mine; they’re newer.” I agreed silently, wondering and perhaps hoping a bit. Anything from Marie that sounded like interest in my welfare was enough to make me hope. I was still several miles behind her reasoning, only partly because I hadn’t started out with the same set of prejudices. She wanted it that way, I guess; She firmly changed the subject by asking about the people who were floating beside me.

“Who are your friends? Is the lady one of the reasons you decided to stop breathing air?”

“No!” I wrote emphatically. ‘I never saw her to my knowledge before I made the change.” I couldn’t understand why Marie was laughing. ‘I can’t introduce you, because I’ve never heard their names. With this language, I’m not sure what a personal name would be like. Maybe they haven’t any.”

She grinned for the first time since I’d seen her down here.

“That accounts for your staying, then. No, don’t bother to point out that you didn’t know about the language till afterward. I know you didn’t. It must be a strong recommendation for the place, though, now that you do know about it.”

As it happened, I hadn’t thought of that. She was quite right, though. That was one nuisance of my life which couldn’t possibly follow me down here. Marie was watching my expression and, I guess, reading it like a book. She laughed even louder than before. The sound wasn’t much like laughter under the circumstances, but it was different enough from ordinary speech to catch the attention of my attendants. They looked from me to the sub and back, but could make nothing of it. The girl smiled again though.

Marie was right, in a way. If I did have to stay down here for any reason —

I killed that thought firmly. Where Marie went, I was going sooner or later.

The party grew almost gay for a while as we waited for Bert. Both Marie and I tried more communication experiments with the girl and her friends, but only the most elementary signs made sense to them, and not always even these. We even tried to get the idea of a phonetic alphabet across, Marie providing the sounds and I the symbols. But it was hopeless.

This wasn’t entirely due to their own background deficiencies; sounds were modified enough in this combination of media so that basic letters no longer abstracted the same parts. For example, ‘p” and V didn’t sound as different as they should, and when you put them together in a word like ‘speak” the combination of symbols had even less resemblance, or I should say recognizable relation, to the combination of sounds. About all that was accomplished before Bert came back was to convince even Marie that there was a genuine, serious problem in communication to be solved.

She wasn’t even yet convinced that it was worth solving. She was willing now to think of these people as a whole separate culture rather than a group of criminal fugitives from our own, but she still thought of the culture rather as a dignified lady of mid-nineteenth century Boston probably regarded the South Sea cannibals her missionary society had told her about.

At least, she was polite to them.

The politeness faded a trifle when Bert came back with bad news. The Council, it seemed, would hear nothing of letting both Bert and me go back to the surface at the same time. Either one was all right, but not both.

I was dumbfounded and unable to fit this into my picture of the situation. Marie didn’t actually say ‘I told you so,” but the look she gave me carried the thought completely. It was unfair, since she hadn’t. She might have guessed it for herself, but she hadn’t told me.

Maybe it was that look that stiffened me up again. I reminded myself that the main thing was to get Marie back to the surface safe and sound. After she’d reported in, the Board would certainly open communication with this place, no matter what Bert thought, and there’d be all sorts of other chances to get back myself.