The Last Plunge

When you are only about ninety degrees from absolute zero, it is not hot, despite the fact that the sun is shining down on you twenty-four hours a day. The answer to this riddle is that you are on Uranus, in the arctic circle, where the sun is a bright star almost directly overhead. And what are you doing on Uranus? You need the money.

Nils Borgmann, however, was sweating. And the reason was that the heating unit on his space suit, like the heating units on almost all space suits, was not functioning properly. The breathing mechanism was in good shape, however, and the oxygenerator on the raft pumped in fresh air in satisfying amounts.

Nils needed money badly, for he had a wife and seven children. So he said, "Let me down a little farther." For he saw a big, white shape dimly through the murk—an air lion.

Up on the raft, where they heard the message, the drum went round and paid out another twenty feet of the cable by which Nils Borgmann was suspended in the Uranian atmosphere. Borgmann took aim and fired.

The shape kept moving. An air lion's hide is so tough that you have to hit it right under the ribs or through the eye in order to kill it, and Nils could not see that one clearly enough, despite the headlamp on his helmet.

"Get it?" came the voice in his earphones.

"I'll tell you when I've got one," Nils said.

"We're sending down Petrone."

"How about running the harpoon down to where I am?"

"Okay, Nils. Sorry," the voice said.

The radio was very comforting to Nils Borgmann. Through it he felt close to the surface, as if he had friends ready to help him at any moment. It made him forget the real dangers of his situation.

Nils saw the harpoon come jerking down into his reach. He grabbed it with his left hand, then held out his right for another shot at the air lion.

"Take it easy," Petrone's voice came into his eardrums. "Don't get me with that thing."

"Can you see it? It's getting away from me."

"I think so," Petrone said. "I think it's coming my way."

"Oh," Nils said. That was one more bonus he wouldn't get. He looked around, hoping to sight another lion.

The sound of a muffled report came in over Nil's earphones. Then Petrone swore in Italian. Nils always had to laugh because Petrone would never swear in English.

And then the white shape came looming through the murkiness right at Nils's pistol. He could even see the animal's eye, whereas usually you were lucky if you could distinguish the head. He raised his gun and fired and had the satisfaction of seeing the lion flounder and thrash and finally subside, floating aimlessly in the air.

"Got it," Nils said, grinning. That was another bonus, and each time Nils got a bonus, one of his kids had enough money to get through college. He threw the harpoon and snagged the beast just behind it's right foreflipper. Pulling in the harpoon cable, he made certain that the weapon was firmly embedded in the lion's flesh.

"Pull away," he said.

"We think you'd better come up, too," they said on the raft.

"Okay," Nils said. There was only one more child to earn an education for, and then he was going to quit.

He and the dead lion were pulled up through the atmosphere slowly and gently, but side by side, so that he could look closely at the beast he had killed.

Evolution had been kind to the air lion of Uranus. To the only animal inhabitant of a planet whose surface temperature is -180 degrees Centigrade, Evolution had granted the thickest fur coat of any animal known to man and a cold-blooded circulatory system. To the inhabitant of a planet whose atmosphere is mostly hydrogen and methane, Evolution had given a complicated respiratory apparatus that breathed in hydrogen and exhaled hydrogen sulfide. To retain the balance of Uranian chemistry, Evolution had provided a brittle, yellow, rootless plant-life that inhaled hydrogen sulfide and exhaled hydrogen. To the inhabitant of a planet where most of the atmosphere was in a liquid state, Evolution had seen to it that the air lion was perfectly capable of living entirely in a liquid environment: a thick skin and heavy bone structure enabled the air lion to withstand the heavy pressures of the Uranian depths, gills made it possible for him to breathe liquids, and his powerful flippers made him the strongest swimmer in the solar system.

One would say that a bountiful Providence had been good to the air lion. Granted the inconveniences of its environment, certainly the air lion was efficiently equipped by Nature to live on its home planet. But Providence also provided the air lion with a natural enemy which bade fair to exterminate the species. And that enemy was women—the same women (or rather, their descendants) who caused the extermination of the egret. Women on Earth had taken a fancy to air lion coats; and, despite the high cost of these coats (between forty and fifty thousand dollars), the number of air lions was decreasing more rapidly than any species could withstand.

To begin with, air lions were limited to the "northern" hemisphere of Uranus. Uranus is a topsy-turvey planet, tipped on its axis and rolling around the sun in the plane of its equator. The "northern" hemisphere, then, is that side of the planet which is always turned toward the sun—for which the sun is the pole star. This restriction on the area in which air lions may thrive imposed a natural limitation on the number of animals which there were in the first place. The demand for air lion pelts—despite the fact that the beasts were so large that an entire coat might be made from one of them—caused a dangerous depletion.

Nils's helmet broke atmosphere, and then hands were grappling him, helping him up the ladder, and pulling him aboard the "raft." The raft actually was a well constructed metal vessel; but, as it did not need a powerful engine, its motor was so weak that it hardly counted. Its gunwales rose only a few feet out of the air.

Nils, as usual, fell to the deck with a clatter. One of the space-suited men on the raft knelt down to look at him. "Hi, Borgmann," the man said. "Congratulations." His name was Kerr.

Nils smiled. Yes, it was worth congratulations. He was now only one lion—only one bonus—away from his goal, and then he could quit. And he'd be glad to quit. Dangling by a cable in liquid atmosphere is not safe work, and Borgmann was getting old for that kind of thing.

Another man squatted down and said, "Yeah, Nils. Happy birthday."

Birthday! Nils had forgotten all about it. That was right—he was thirty-five today. Realizing that he must have looked puzzled, he laughed. "It slipped my mind completely," he explained. "When you're on another planet, Earth dates get all mixed up."

Kerr said, "The captain's ordered you aloft for a physical check-up. It came over the radio while you were down."

Nils Borgmann stopped laughing. That could mean he'd never get a chance to make another plunge, never have another crack at an air lion, never collect that seventh bonus. They'd rotate him, put him on the mother ship and fill in on the raft with a substitute.

Nils clambered to his feet, helped by Kerr and the other man, and walked over to take a look at the air lion he had just killed. It was a good, big beast, its fur still that faint yellowish color that was bleached out on Earth. It looked something like a walrus, but without any tusks.

"Just one more," Nils said, "and I'm going to quit. I've got thirty thousand dollars in bonuses, on top of my pay."

Kerr said, "That's almost enough to buy your wife an air lion coat. That'd be a nice present, so that you could be reminded of your happy days on Uranus every time she wore it."

Nils laughed and said, "Go to hell." He was feeling pretty good again. Kerr always perked him up. After all, a physical examination might be just routine; they might find out that he could go on hunting air lions for five more years if he wanted to.

The scout came roaring over the horizon; but no one could hear it in the airlessness. Somebody saw it and said, "Here comes Erskine!" and everybody turned to watch. The scout was a gaudy red and came in low over the surface of the atmosphere. It put out its pontoons and came to a landing near the raft. Then it taxied over slowly, its jets running at their lowest speed. When it got very close it cut its motors and men in clumsy space suits grappled it and made it fast with ropes.

Erskine hopped out of the scout. You could tell who it was from the cocky stride and the colorfully decorated suit, which he spent hours in painting and shining. "Who's Nils Borgmann?" he asked. "The lucky man gets a trip upstairs for tonight. You scow jockeys will have to sleep out in the cold again."

Actually, the raftsmen lived in an air-filled bubble in the center of the raft which was comfortable and warm. But it was a standing joke that the men "upstairs," in the ship that wheeled idly in its orbit around Uranus, slept in feather beds every night with all the comforts of home except women—and some rumors even gave them that advantage.

"Here I am," Borgmann said.

"Let's go," Erskine said. "This smell offends my nostrils. I just don't know how you guys stand it down here."

Somebody guffawed, and somebody else began singing, "Swing low, sweet chariot, comin' for to carry me home...."

Borgmann walked to Erskine's side and let the scout pilot boost him into the cabin. "So long, suckers," Erskine said as he climbed into the scout and clanged the door shut behind him. He pressed a button which cleared out the faint traces of Uranian atmosphere in the cabin and pumped in an Earth-type mixture. Then he unscrewed his helmet and grinned at Nils, who by then was struggling with his own. "I hear you got your sixth one today," he said, starting up the jets.

"That's right," Nils answered self-consciously.

"Well, that's good. There aren't many men with six lions to their credit." He took off, and Nils could feel the scout rising, heading out into space.

Erskine was busy with his navigation, and Nils was glad that there was little time for conversation. He leaned back and closed his eyes. He was always tired after a plunge. But sleep would not come, and he roused himself and peered out of the porthole.

By this time the raft had dwindled to a speck on the vast, featureless surface, and the scout had climbed high above it. The sky was black, even though it was a region of eternal day. On the raft, far below, little sparkles of light moved in a random dance—the headlamps of the men.

But out and away the scout moved until the horizon lay between it and the raft. High and higher it went until the planet was a smooth, gray ball beneath and behind it. And then, out of the black daylight sky, a pattern of red and green lights seemed to take shape above them and ahead. It was Proserpine , their ship.

The scout and the ship fell toward each other at tremendous speeds: the ship loomed huge, like a great silver cigar, then like a curved wall, then like a metal hand someone was holding up just outside the portholes so that you could not see out. It seemed to Nils that it was inevitable that they crash. Erskine flipped the ship over, but there was no discomfort because neither he nor Nils had any weight to be displaced. And then Nils saw him flip the toggle that turned on the scout's magnetic grapple. There was a scrape and a jarring bump that sent Nils floating out into weightlessness. And the scout had arrived home.

The scout was swung into the ship by powerful motors, and after the ringing of the bell which signified that the scout's berth was filled with air, the two men emerged from the small craft and went into the ship. Captain Davis was there to greet them. "Good trip," he told Erskine. "Borgmann, I'll bet you're happy to get aboard ship again." He shook hands vigorously. "We have a good hot dinner waiting for you, and then a bath and a soft bed. You'll see Dr. Carpenter in the morning."

And, after months on the raft, life on board Proserpine was a luxury. The food was good; even though it, like that on the raft, came from cans, it was prepared with more artistry. There were no facilities for bathing on the raft, and the streaming water of the shower and rich suds of the soap was a real sensuous delight. And the beds—well, the bunks on the raft were good, but there was something about the beds on the ship that were so eminently sleepable that Nils dropped off immediately, not even thinking about the physical examination.

It was the first thing he thought of, however, when he woke up in the morning. And he was worried. It seemed, today, very real and inescapable; last night the idea had been so new that he had not really been fully aware of what it might mean.

And immediately after breakfast he was subjected to it. The doctor was thorough; Nils had to give him credit for that. And at the end, he said, "Well, Borgmann, it looks like a vacation for you."

Nils had been dreading those words so much that they were really not much of a surprise to him. But still there was a dejection that he could not overcome. He said, "What are the chances of my getting one more lion before I have to quit?"

The doctor was surprised. "Generally the men are glad enough to get off Uranus. We'll have enough trouble getting one of Proserpine's crewmen to go down there and take your place."

"I know," Nils said, "but with me it's different. I want one more chance at a lion."

"Well," the doctor said, "you'll have to take that up with Captain Davis. But, my recommendation is that you stay up here on Proserpine until we go home."

And so Nils took up the matter with Captain Davis. The captain was also surprised. "I can't understand it, Nils. You have thirty thousand dollars in bonuses already, on top of your salary of six thousand for the year. Why do you want to go down again and take all those chances?"

Nils was not a man for making speeches, but he did his best to explain to the Captain that he had seven children, and it took one air lion to get each of them a college education. He had one child unprovided for, little Siegfried, and he didn't want to quit until he had taken care of them all.

"Well, that's very commendable, Nils, and I can appreciate your point. But why are you so certain that it will take exactly five thousand dollars to get each one through college? There are state universities, you know, and they aren't very expensive. And if they ran short, they could make their own way for part of the time, you know. Why don't you just divide the money you have now among the seven kids?"

"I can see I'm not explaining this so good," Nils said. "But they're my kids, Captain, and I want to do it right for each of them in my own way." The image of Eric—the oldest and his favorite—came into his mind, and his eyes grew warm and moist.

"Yes, I understand that, Nils, but—"

"No, Sir, you don't understand. I have a dream, and I'm just about to have it come true. You can't make me stop short now and change the dream." He wanted to go on, but the words would not come to him.

"Well," Captain Davis said, more seriously now, "maybe you are right." He nodded, soberly. "Nils, you've been on Uranus about six Earth months, now. The doctor says you shouldn't take even one more plunge. It's hard work, and it's a strain, and you're wearing out. You're wearing out gradually—but still faster, much faster, than a man would on Earth, no matter what he did. But this isn't something that just happened yesterday, Nils; it's been going on since you got here. You were lucky we let you sign on, close as you were to the age limit. Who can say when you finally crossed the danger line? Maybe a month, maybe two months ago. You've been on borrowed time since then, whenever it was. You shouldn't have taken that plunge yesterday, or perhaps the last fifty plunges. Do you realize that?"

"I guess so."

"And we're doing you a favor. Instead of gambling with your life, you can knock off now, take your thirty thousand dollars, and call yourself the winner."

"Captain, I don't care what you say. It's my dream, and I want to get that seventh lion."

"Nils, you're a stubborn cuss. All right. But the minute you get that lion on your harpoon, we're hauling you up."

Nils grinned happily. "That's a deal," he said.

And so Erskine took Nils back down to the raft.

On Uranus there is no sense trying to make a man adapt to any of the natural divisions of time there, such as the rotation of the moons or the position of the sun; and as long as man is attuned to the artificial twenty-four hour day anyway, that is the most convenient unit of time. You have sixteen hours to yourself, for whatever you want to do—sleeping, reading, playing the visitapes, or anything else that strikes your fancy in the limited space of the air bubble, half of which is always dark and the other half always light.

But the other eight hours belong to the company. For six of them you man the pumps or the radio equipment or the cable drum while the other men plunge, and you make your plunges in the other two.

When Nils went on duty that day, he was on the radio, and Kerr was down below. The optimism he had felt after his talk with the captain was dissipated. He realized that, after all, the air lions were a disappearing species. He had been here hunting them for six months and had bagged only six. One a month—yet that was the best record of any of the men. And here he was, expecting to get his seventh in the next day or so.

Kerr was calling for more cable. Nils reassured him absently and signaled the crew at the drum.

The hunter said, "What's the matter, Nils? You don't sound happy."

Nils said into the microphone, "Don't worry about me. You watch out for those lions."

He glanced at his watch. He had been on duty now only twenty minutes. An hour and forty minutes to go before his plunge. Usually you took it first, in order to be in your best condition, rested and untired. But, because Nils had got out of order owing to his trip upstairs, he had to take his plunge after he had already been on duty for two hours.

That was bad. He would be just a little tired. He wouldn't be quite in the right condition. His responses would be just a shade off. The work would be just that much more dangerous.

And then he thought, What if I don't get back? What if it's my last plunge? What if I don't get that air lion? What if I die down there, Siegfried unprovided for?

Kerr's voice sounded: "I think I see one."

"Need anything?" Nils asked.

"Not so far. But I think there's something moving down there."

"Good luck," Nils said. But his voice was empty. He was thinking of himself. There were so many things that might happen to him down there, and he had only now begun to think of them.

An air lion was a big creature. If one charged you, it could rip you right away from any one or all three of the vital strands that connected you with the surface—cable, air hose, or radio wire. Actually, the loss of the radio wire was nothing. When there was a total deadness in his earphones, the radioman signaled frantically and the diver was hauled up. But loss of either of the other two was fatal. If your air hose was cut, you died right away, not of lack of oxygen but of the liquid methane and ammonium that got into your breathing apparatus. If your cable was torn loose, there was a faint chance. You hung on, if you could, until the old cable could be taken off the drum and a new one put on. Then they sent it down and the other diver snapped it to your suit. But the air hose alone might not be capable of sustaining the heavy suit—and if it gave way before the new cable was attached, you were dead.

"There's one!" Kerr's voice was excited in his earphones. "I can see him now. If he gets a little closer, I can get a shot at him."

"We'll send down Newcomb," Nils said. He stood up and waved to the installation, where Newcomb was sitting placidly, already hooked up to cable, hose, and wire. Immediately Newcomb rose and clambered over the side, down the ladder.

Nils glanced at his watch again. Well, only an hour and ten minutes to go.

If an air lion didn't get you, there was the chance that your cable would wear loose or that your air hose would get snarled. The air hose, after all, was rubberoid and came down loose, not taut. You could get a kink in it very easily and not be aware of it until that sudden drowsiness that was oxygen starvation hit you. Then, if you could stay conscious long enough, you could gasp it into the microphone: "My air line's fouled!" And if they could get you to the surface fast enough, or even just get the kink high enough to straighten it out, then you were saved. If it took too long, you were gone.

Kerr said, "Missed him, damn it."

"Do you see him, Newcomb?" Nils asked.

"Not yet," came the cheerful reply.

"He's a big one," Kerr said.

Forty-five minutes to go. Well, at least there was a big air lion down there, if he hadn't been frightened off by Kerr's shot, and maybe he would still be down there when Nils made his plunge. So there was a chance, not a big one but a chance all the same, that Nils could pick up his seventh lion today.

But even if the lion was down there, it wasn't at all positive that Nils would get him. That went without saying. After all, when you went down every weekday for six months and got only six lions, then it was pretty obvious that you couldn't always bag one when you wanted it. There were—how many now?—twenty-four men on the raft, and so far they'd got only forty pelts. About one every four days. Sometimes weeks went by without a catch.

"I think I see him now," said Newcomb. "He is a big fellow. I don't think I've ever seen a bigger one."

"Can you get a shot at him?" Nils asked.

"I'll try," Newcomb said. "He's coming straight for me. Lord, what a monster. I think I—No, damn it, I missed. Here, let me—Damn it! He's—" And then came that peculiar deadness in Nils's eardrums that meant the radio wire had been severed. Nils jumped to his feet and waved wildly to the crew at the drums. They began frantically to pull Newcomb up. Soon he broke surface and was helped up the ladder. He stood, bewildered, until one of the men led him into the bubble.

"His radio wire snapped," Nils explained to Kerr.

They wouldn't send Newcomb down again today—not after a narrow shave like that. His nerve would be gone.

Nils stood up. "I'm going down after that baby," he told the crewmen. He began to work his way out of the complicated radio equipment, which snapped on over his helmet to take advantage of the built-in radio in his suit. "Petrone, you take the radio."

Petrone came lumbering over and accepted the rig. Nils sat on the ready bench and let the other crewmen adjust the equipment he needed. The rope hooked into the back of his suit; the air hose was connected to the suit oxygenerator, which was strong enough to support a man in airlessness but could not stand the pressure of the Uranian atmosphere and thus needed assistance from the powerful pump on the raft; and the radio wire attached to his light helmet rig.

And then he was going over the side. He went down—way, way down—and then he saw Kerr.

"How is it?" Nils asked.

Kerr gestured. "He's off that way. He took a swipe at me, and I tried to get a shot at him. I think I took his ear off, but that's all. Anyway, he lit out like a jet. I expect he'll be back, though; probably he's too mad to think straight."

They watched. While they watched, the harpoon was lowered to them. Minutes passed, dragging by with interminable slowness while their eyes searched the murky depths, the headlamps making strange patterns, looking for the air lion.

And then Nils spotted him—too late. "Look out behind you!" he shouted desperately.

But he was too late. The air lion's powerful flippers forced him through the atmosphere with astonishing speed, and he struck Kerr with tremendous force and impact before the other diver could even turn around.

"God!" Nils muttered into his mouthpiece, horrified, as the lines snapped with the lion's onslaught and Kerr began to hurtle down toward the bottom of the sea of atmosphere, down to where the Uranian air was frozen solid.

"Did it get him?" Petrone's voice sounded in the earphones.

"Cut him off like a knife," Nils said.

"We're going to pull you up. That baby's too rough to handle."

"I'm staying down," Nils said. And the tone of his voice showed that he meant it.

"Well, we'll send Newcomb down again," Petrone said.

"Let him get his rest," Nils said. "I just got here."

The lion, meanwhile, had seen Nils with his weak eyes and was coming toward him. Nils held up his pistol and took steady aim. He waited until he could quite easily see that the lion did, in fact, lack an ear. And then he pulled the trigger.

Nothing happened.

This occasionally occurred. The pistols were very intricate mechanisms, designed so that none of the liquid atmosphere could get into them at the same time that the bullet got out. And like all intricate mechanisms, occasionally they went wrong.

The air lion was coming closer, hurtling through the liquid air now with strong beats of his powerful flippers.

Nils pulled the trigger again. And again nothing happened. He could feel the sweat running down his face.

The lion was looming larger now; it was almost upon him. Nils could see the creature's ugly, yellow eyes.

He pulled the trigger a third time. One of the eyes suddenly disappeared, to be replaced by a hole, from which a yellow fluid poured.

But the impact of the bullet had not stopped the momentum of the lion. The body fell into Nils with a sudden jerk.

Nils dropped suddenly, then stopped with a wrenching snap.

"What's the matter?" Petrone said in his earphones.

Nils assessed the damage.

"I've broken my cable," he said. "I've still got the air hose and radio wire."

Petrone swore softly in Italian.

Nils changed the subject. "Get the harpoon about four feet lower, quick. I don't want to lose this baby."

The harpoon came down within his grasp, and he impaled the dead air lion on it.

"Okay," Nils said "haul him up."

The pale shape of the lion began to rise above him. The idea came to him of attempting to grab hold of the lion so as to be pulled up with it. One of the men in his predicament had tried that once; the harpoon cable had broken and both man and lion had been lost. No, there was nothing to do but wait—and pray.

Nils dangled there, in the atmosphere, like a marionette on a single string. Well, he thought, this may be the end. He tried to puzzle out why he wasn't frightened. Was it because he was still full of triumph from getting that seventh lion? Perhaps. But more likely it was because there was still a chance that he could be saved, and a man never gives up hope until he thinks that there isn't a chance any more.

"Hold on, Nils," Petrone's voice said. "Everything's coming all right. We have to put a new cable on Kerr's drum, too, you know. But we'll have 'em both ready at about the same time, so that won't slow us down."

"I think I'll drop my gun," Nils said. "It doesn't weigh very much, but it may make a difference."

"And lose the company five hundred smackers?" Petrone asked. "Okay it's your salary they'll dock. I'd rather let the air lions get me."

Nils chuckled. He worked the gun loose from his gauntleted hand—rather an awkward process, for the guns were designed to be held securely by heavy gloves. Then he released it and watched it plunge down.

Down.

Would he be following it? Would his last plunge end that way?

For the first time he began to feel a twinge of fear. The sweat started out on his forehead, and he could feel it under his arms.

He loved his wife and every one of those seven kids. He wished he could see just one of those kids again. Especially Eric. His memory showed him Eric's grinning face, and he bit back a sob.

But to die out here, millions of miles—hundreds of millions of miles!—away from them, so that they wouldn't even know it for months: that was too much.

"We're ready to start," Petrone said. "I'm coming down myself to get you."

Nils didn't answer. He was thinking. How long have I been here already? How much longer can I hold out?

"Nils?"

"I'm okay," he managed to mutter.

What would it be like? How fast would you go? And what would you see, down there on the bottom of the liquid layer of the Uranian atmosphere? There would probably be more of those funny brittle yellow plants that sometimes floated even this high; but no man had ever explored the floor of the liquid air. Would it be smooth, like a ball?

Kerr would be down there to keep him company.

Damn it, he'd liked Kerr.

Was it his imagination, or was he really starting to slip? The trouble was that there wasn't anything he could use to measure by, no fixed point to tell whether he was already going down or not.

But once the air line broke, he'd be dead like that. He'd never see the bottom even when he got there.

Hundreds of millions of miles! "Eric!"

Petrone's voice said, "What?"

But Nils ignored him.

What would it be like to die like that? Would he even know it? Or would he strangle and gasp and shriek? He was sweating heavily now.

Just once, O Lord, just once more. Just to see them.

Well, this was his last plunge, either way. He was going to quit as soon as he had his seventh lion; he had it now, and he was through. One way or another.

"Gotcha!"

It was Petrone's voice. Nils couldn't hear the new cable click into place in his back; but he felt it.

And then he felt the slow and steady pull as he was drawn up out of the depths.