Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea Part 8

"What the-" Crane recoiled out of his way, banging the point of his ankle against the high sill of the mess. He glared after the man, and caught the black stencil on the seabag: BERKOWITZ.

Crane retraced his steps a few paces, for the man, skidding to a stop in the control room, had begun to scream.

"You got to let me off, you got to! I have a furlough coming and Mr. Morton signed my pa.s.s and I don't even know if he's born yet, she could be dead for all I know, why couldn't I phone at least."

"Sir," suggested the Admiral.

Berkowitz craned wildly up at the dark pocket of the sealed conning tower. "n.o.body told me, oh my G.o.d, you'll go all the way to the Marianas, me not knowing is she alive or dead with the radio out."

"Sir," suggested the Admiral again, even more quietly.

"Sir!" spat Berkowitz furiously. He glared at Nelson, who stood silently, still leaning against the bulkhead, but lightly. The color was beginning to return to the old man's lips. Berkowitz's eyes wavered. "S-sir...?" he whimpered faintly.

"That's better.... If it makes any difference to you, Berkowitz, n.o.body knew we were going to jet out like that until it happened."

"What am I going to do, sir?"

"You're going to drop that duffel right here and go aft to the sick bay and ask Dr. Jamieson to quiet you down."

Anyone who knew the Admiral at all would know that this was the time to aye-sir and off.

Berkowitz may have known him well enough, but he was also more than a little hysterical, so he said, "But what about-"

Nelson's voice became gentle as a lover's, and every man there knew how big the trouble was that Berkowitz was getting himself into. "Berkowitz," he crooned, "you know we'll do what we can for you. We'll get you off. We'll-"

"Th-thank you sir-" Berkowitz began to weep again.

"We'll get you off if we have to dig a hole in the cellar and drop you out, mister. Because we can't run a s.h.i.+p with the likes of you aboard. Now get aft and see the doctor."

Berkowitz, stricken, dropped his duffel bag and turned blindly aft. Nelson watched him go and then fetched a sudden kick on the bag. "I hate a weeper," he said quietly to no one in particular, but Berkowitz heard. Crane, pacing slowly behind him carrying Cathy Connors, watched the stride of a man who needed a tail to tuck between his hind legs.

"Oh man," the Captain murmured, "I wouldn't slam an outhouse door that hard.... Sorry, Cathy."

"That's all right," she whispered. "I wasn't listening... Oh Lee, I know that seemed terribly cruel, but can't you see why he did it?"

"He said why he did it. He usually... picks on someone his size, though."

"You slap hysterical people. That's all it is. He'll let Berky off some way-you'll see. If Sue Hiller was here she'd explain the whole thing to you. The one thing he couldn't do was to be nice to the kid. Berky'd have gone all to bits." kid. Berky'd have gone all to bits."

Lee Crane chuckled. "The O.O.M. can do no wrong, hey, Cats? By golly, if he batted a ball and ran to third you'd change the rules to make him right."

"Now that's just silly and you-"

"And I know it. Sorry, honey. I just hated to stand here and see that happen. Also I'm jealous, because I can be wrong-you've told me so-and he never is, which you've also told me. Are you sure which one of us you want to marry? Choose, hussy."

She bit his ear. "I choose thee now and forever," she whispered and then was crying again.

"d.a.m.n," she said, "Oh, d.a.m.n, d.a.m.n."

"Ankle hurting again?"

"Sure it is," she said furiously, "but that's not worth crying over. It's this whole... thing thing, Lee. It's the ranch and the curtains I'd put up waiting for you to come home. It's getting married yesterday which we didn't do. It's all this, this mess."

"Shh. Shh.... I hate a weeper," he said. She smacked him, but it wasn't meant to hurt. The sick bay was empty when they entered, except for Berkowitz, who sat close to the inboard bulkhead with his head in his hands. The Captain put the girl down on the examining table and turned to face Jamieson, who was coming from the after section of the sick bay. "I see by the papers," said the doctor, "that we're on our way again. "The O.O.M. says go, we go."

"My patient, or is it star boarder, tells me it's G.o.d's will. You tell me it's the Admiral's." He held up a ham-dramatic finger and mugged astonishment. "Or perhaps they're the same after all."

"Don't be irreverent," said Cathy.

"To which one of 'em, girl? And what, may I ask, makes me so fortunate this morning?" He looked at the torpedoman and then at the girl. "My, business is brisk."

"She came down the conning tower without using the ladder. But gracefully," added the Captain.

"I was not graceful," Cathy pouted. "The Captain dropped me in like a sack of coal."

"Let's see it. Oh my. You did give that a wringing out, didn't you?" he turned to the torpedoman.

"And what's with you, Berky?"

"I'm all right now, sir," said Berkowitz shakily. "I thought I had a furlough and they pulled it out from under me and I kind of blew my stack. Admiral Nelson told me to come to you and get quieted down."

Jamieson bent over him, took his wrist, looked closely at his eyes. "All right. You seem okay now. I don't know really if the G.o.d's will hypothesis holds water or not, but I can tell you one thing for sure: For enlisted personnel, practically anybody's will take precedence over the e.m.'s."

"Y-yes sir." Berkowitz almost smiled.

"And take this doctor's advice," added Jamieson. "Don't argue with admirals."

"I won't, sir."

Jamieson stood up and waved him out. When he had gone, he said, "Nelson give him some lumps?"

The Captain told him what had happened. The doctor shrugged. "Rough. But then, this is likely to be a rough trip all around. You straighten 'em out or you throw 'em over the wall. If a man's going to have the miseries, he'd best not be corked up in a bottle with a bunch of others. The Admiral doesn't have to be nice. He doesn't have to be kind. He just has to be right." He turned to Cathy.

"Get that shoe and stocking off."

"I'll go forward," said the Captain, rising.

"She'll be all right," said the doctor. "Nothing busted. And you know the compression bandages we have nowadays. She'll walk out of here. Only," he said sternly to Cathy, "no dancing on no chopping blocks for a while."

Cathy and the Captain laughed. "Oh, you heard about that."

"It didn't get lost in the flurry of news we've been having."

The inner door swung open and the Captain, in the very act of stepping over the high-stilled out door, swung around and his jaw dropped. "What the devil are you doing here?"

"Now that is what I call a warm and welcoming statement," smiled Dr. Susan Hiller.

"Sue!" cried Cathy.

"h.e.l.lo, honey. What happened to you?"

"Used a steel deck for a trampoline," said the doctor.

"Dr. Hiller, I thought I told you to go ash.o.r.e."

"I thought you told me I could go ash.o.r.e."

"I remember what I said."

"Oh... Lee," Cathy chided.

"I'll carry my weight," said Susan Hiller.

Jamieson, who had never lost the gloss of his admiration of Dr. Hiller, said gently, "Cap'n-isn't the discussion academic at this point?"

Without answering him, Crane fixed Dr. Hiller with a cold eye. "You chose to stay aboard, then."

A smile twitched the corners of her carven mouth. "I came aboard to study men under stress conditions," she reminded him.

"There'll be plenty of that ash.o.r.e."

"My present project was to study them here." Suddenly she smiled. The effect, as always, was like throwing back heavy drapes on a sunny day. "I'd like to stop fencing with you, Captain. I was going to request permission to stay aboard anyway. Days ago I took the trouble to find out if my extra mouth would burden your stores, or even your oxygen supply. I checked on the available s.p.a.ce. I wouldn't think of doing it if I'd be in the way. And I'm not just supercargo. I think I can help."

"Let me underline that," pleaded Jamieson. "G.o.d knows what we're in for now. Dr. Hiller's a specialist in something we're going to get a lot of. I'm supposed to handle these stress cases along with everything else: Dr. Hiller's being here is a gift from G.o.d."

"G.o.d seems to be taking a special interest in this project," said the Captain, but he had relaxed; he was kidding; it was all right.

Dr. Hiller, sensing it immediately, said, "Thank you, Captain."

Crane saluted and went out.

"And thank you," said Dr. Jamieson to the psychiatrist.

"Don't," she said. "People are always attaching n.o.bility to the simple matter of doing a job. I know what I have to do here," she added with a sudden profound gravity, "I know what I must do, and I know I'm equipped to do it. I had no choice; the choice made I know I'm equipped to do it. I had no choice; the choice made itself." Abruptly businesslike, she changed her voice and the subject and demanded, "What was the matter with Berkowitz?"

Jamieson, getting to work on Cathy's ankle, said, "The poor kid. His wife's expecting a baby about now. He doesn't know if the baby's alive or dead or his wife either. He got a little hysterical."

"A lot hysterical," Cathy amended. "I was there, and I don't blame him a bit. But he didn't help himself by taking off on the Admiral."

"What happened?"

"The O.O.M. pinned his ears back clear to the sacroiliac, which he then, in a manner of speaking, kicked.... I told Lee it was equivalent to slapping a hysterical patient. Was I right?"

"You could be. It depends. Slapping a hysterical patient can be beneficial if the slap is administered by a friend or a stranger, but not by an enemy."

"Oh, the Admiral's not his enemy!"

"No? Ah... tell me; how did he deliver this figurative slap?"

"First he told Berkowitz he would let him get ash.o.r.e and then he said it was because he wouldn't have the likes of him aboard; 'I hate a weeper,' is what he said."

"Pick 'em up and slam 'em down hard," said Jamieson.

"A little harder than hysteria called for, perhaps. That sounds inimical enough to me."

"Oh, Sue, you just don't understand the military situation," said Cathy ardently. "The man in command can't have an ordinary set of values. I've thought a lot about this-I had to -I'm marrying one of the monsters. The commanding officer, however decent and kind a man he might be, has to replace a lot of ordinary standards. (Ouch! You're putting on that bandage awful tight.) 'Right' and 'wrong' can be completely different things when you look at them in terms of a military operation.

Admiral Nelson's heart might bleed for Berkowitz and very probably does, but the welfare of his s.h.i.+p, his mission and his crew have to come first. And though I hate to say it, a hysterical sailor with primary concerns different from the s.h.i.+p's is an enemy."

Susan Hiller smiled a small eloquent smile, nodded a tiny, significant nod. "Absolutely all I suggested was that the Admiral treated him like an enemy."

"Oh," said Cathy. "Oh dear."

"Which saves the s.h.i.+p and destroys the man. Which creates stress conditions on military-type missions, especially submarines. Which explains again why I decided to stay."

"Now hear this!" clattered the annunciator. "Torpedoman Berkowitz. Lay forward to Main Control, on the double."

The three in the sick bay looked at one another. "Excuse me," said Susan Hiller quietly, and went out.

"Berkowitz," said Jamieson, his eyes on his bandaging job, "is now tried and sentenced.

Execution of sentence follows."

"Oh come on now, doc. It isn't as grim as that. The O.O.M.'s decided what to do and he'll do it. I bet you anything he's found a way to get Berky back to his wife. He's that kind of a man."

"Interesting, what you said about the military sense of values," said the doctor. "True, too. If he does get Berky off, I wonder what's the real reason-to do the man a favor, or to rid the s.h.i.+p of a source of trouble."

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