Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea by Theodore Sturgeon

Author:Theodore Sturgeon [Sturgeon, Theodore]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2011-01-11T15:10:45.417000+00:00

4

Commander Emery took one of his feet off the Admiral's desk, swung around in the Admiral's swivel chair, and put both his feet up on the opposite corner. The Captain grinned at him. Emery was, in Crane's mind's eye, the original Shaggy Man. There was an indefinable quality about the man that always called the word up. It had nothing to do with his appearance, really. Starched, smoothed, pressed (none of which he was at the moment) he would still seem shaggy. Perhaps it was the big-dog friendliness of the man, perhaps his utterly confident lack of respect for formality. He was a man who did not need straight ruled lines and sharp creases to comfort himself in an uncertain world. "Hi, Lee.

The O.O.M.'s brushing his teeth or something. Sit you down some."

Crane sat on the edge of the settle. "What's the occasion?"

"Ways and means. You know Harriman Nelson. He likes to have things all nice and tidy. He never did get permission from anybody to make this trip and shoot this bird."

"Looks like permission is first-place, hard to come by and second-place, sort of an empty gesture."

"Not to the O.O.M. He didn't mind spitting in the eye of those UN characters nor the New York police. Damn them," he intoned passionately, then dropped the passion and went on in his easy-going rumble. "Question of jurisdiction. This isn't Navy, this pigboat, or even Government, if it comes down to that; the Bureau of Marine Exploration, you might say, directs it, but when you come right down to it it was created as a land tool of Harriman Nelson. This tail wags that dog."

"So really, what's the problem? In fact and actuality, Nelson's the big wheel. He bought it, built it, paid for it and he bosses it. Why doesn't he just look in the mirror and say 'Hm?' and then nod his head and say, 'Uh-huh.' "

Emery laughed. "He would, Lee, he would, if it were any kind of an operation but this. Also if he were any other kind of a man than what he is. But he's Navy--retired Navy, sure: an out-and-out civilian, when you come right down to it, but Navy for all that; it's the way he thinks, the way he feels, the way he is. And if you could define the indefinable 'real Navy', or at least find the lowest common denominator for the whole sea-going soldier-boy business, you'd find that from the three-day Annapolis boot with hay in his hair, clear on up the layers of legend where live ninety-year-old retired five-star admirals, you'd find that they had one thing in common--they worked for somebody. Now that's so self-evident up through the ranks that it seems silly to mention it, and so overlooked at the very top that most people wouldn't even realize what you were talking about." Emery acrobatically fumbled a hopelessly beat-up pipe out of his right pants pocket, and a tattered oilskin pouch out of his left rear pocket, and a

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