The Last Plunge

                           By S. J. Sackett

              Granting the need for money, a man will do
           any dangerous job that comes along; Borgmann was
           such a man; air lion diving off Uranus--the job!

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
              Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy
                             October 1955
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


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.