The Dragon in the Sea by Frank Herbert Page A

This tube may be booby-trapped. If anything happens to Johnny and me, you two drop the tow and head for home. That’s an order.”
    Johnny! thought Ramsey. He called me Johnny! And then he remembered: We’ve met the enemy. The old magic is dead. Enter the new magic.
    â€œWe’ll want a record of this,” said Sparrow. He took a camera from a drawer, racked it above the bench, focused it. “Okay,” he said. “You’re the expert on these gadgets.”
    Ramsey spoke without looking up from the tube: “A half hour of just looking at this thing, studying all the angles, could mean the difference between success and failure.”
    â€œWhat’re we looking for?”
    â€œI don’t really know. Something different. Something that hits a sour note.”
    Sparrow bent over the bench, grabbed a handhold as the Ram ’s deck slanted to the upflow of an undersea current. Ramsey steadied the tube with one hand, brought up folds of the felt padding to keep the tube from rolling. The amber light of the temperature-gadget indicator on the board ahead of them flashed off, on, off.
    Ramsey switched on the thermo repeater above the light: thirty-four degrees.
    Sparrow nodded at the repeater. “The Arctic bottom
drift. It’s full of food. There’ll be a sonic curtain of sea life above us.” He smiled. “We can breathe a bit easier.”
    Ramsey shook his head. “Not with that thing to solve.” He stared at the tube on the bench. “If you were going to trigger that to explode, how would you do it?”
    â€œA tiny wire maybe. Break it and—”
    â€œMaybe,” said Ramsey. “A better way would be to set a trigger keyed to pressure change—if the vacuum breaks …” He straightened. “First some infra and X pictures. Then we’ll rig a vacuum jar with remote controls, handle the tube in the vacuum. After that we’ll break the seal.”
    Sparrow touched the tube with one long finger of his left hand. “Looks like standard heavy-pressure glass.”
    â€œI don’t understand something,” said Ramsey. He spoke as he worked, setting up the portable infra camera on the bench. “Why did this thing start when it did? That wasn’t smart. The clever thing would’ve been to wait until we reached the well.”
    â€œMy idea exactly,” said Sparrow.
    Ramsey focused the camera. “How much longer until we reach it?”
    The casual way of the question caught Sparrow off balance. He looked up to the shack room sonoran chart, started to say, “Well, it’s on the flank of—” He froze.
    Ramsey made an exposure, turned the tube to a new angle.
    He’s too casual, thought Sparrow.
    â€œYou were saying.” Ramsey spoke without looking up from the tube.
    â€œMr. Ramsey, a subtug’s destination is known only to its commander until the immediate area of that destination is reached.”

    Ramsey straightened. “That’s a stupid order. If something happened to you we couldn’t go on.”
    â€œAre you suggesting I should confide our destination in you?”
    Ramsey hesitated, thought: I already know it. What would happen if I indicated that to Sparrow? That’d confirm his opinion that I’m Security.
    â€œWell?”
    â€œSkipper, I asked you a civil question. Phrased a bit loosely, perhaps. What I want to know is how much longer until we reach Novaya Zemlya?”
    Sparrow held himself in rigid control, thinking: Security ? A spy trying to draw me out with a clever guess? He said, “I don’t see where it’s your concern how long it takes us to get anywhere.”
    Ramsey returned his attention to the tube. Is he convinced that I’m a Security officer?
    I could ask him for the exact coordinates, thought Sparrow. But would it prove anything if he doesn’t know them? Or if he does know them?
    Ramsey set up a bell jar and vacuum pump,