SUBSTANCE TO THE SHADOW [184] Meanwhile, having no connection with these other matters, two scuba divers, Kevin and Jim, entered the water just outside the eastern end of the part of the south coast made inaccessible by the Hiddleston M.O.D. establishment. As they were not averse to a little wreck and shellfish picking, each carried a large tool pouch, and had fitted large metal diffuser-boxes over the regulators of their oversize twin-cylinder aqualungs, to break their bubbles up small, so rivals or hostile sea-users could not follow them on the surface. They had round black full-face breathing masks rather like an air-pilot's, hiding their faces except for their eyes, and so could talk to each other underwater. Reports from other divers of hostile encounters on the surface led them to wear safety helmets, which they had painted black for concealment. They went down to 30 feet and swam westwards along the coast. "I don't trust this place." said Jim, "It's been linked in the past in the newspapers and telly to dark rumours of chemical and bacteriological warfare research, and there've been demonstrations at the gates from time to time. What goes on here?". "Forget it." said Kevin, "Whatever they do, they do on land. We aren't going to land on their property. People can't claim to own sea, or seabed, or land that the tide flows over, and it isn't a designated harbour area. Keep on.". "I still don't trust it." said Jim, "They say in my club that a naval commander based here, and that Captain Hurlock at Crabhaven, have been to the same place in Droitwich to buy funny new equipment. Much gets leaked by tongues loosened by drink. And apart from this scare that's in the papers and the television about parties of scuba divers disappearing, there've been tales in the clubs for many years, offshore from coastal M.O.D. areas, of divers disappearing, and mass deaths of fish, and divers coming back reporting hearing strange `sonic noises'. If you ask me, they've got some sort of fancy underwater ultrasonic weapon, like a book I once read speculated about. What if we run into some naval exercise and get seen and dragged out by Navy divers, and arrested as spies? If we're lucky. In the old days, unidentified divers in naval areas often used to simply get a small depth charge on them, and the disappearance was blamed on `inadequate training of uncontrolled civilian underwater sightseers'.". "Not now. Someone hears the bang, and the BSAC puts two and two together, and the civil authorities ask questions." Kevin replied as they swam on along the coast, "If they want to make this area restricted as a secret exercise area, they can do so properly and tell everybody to keep out, like the army area on Salisbury Plain. Probably there's nothing. There's a lobster in that crevice.". Jim took his hook out and caught and pouched the lobster and two crabs, and said "I suppose so. But I still feel safer with us both using diffusers, so they can't see our bubbles. I'd still hate to run into a bunch of Marines commando frogmen on exercise acting exactly as if it was war, and out of sight of superior officers they `use their initiative' and take the course which keeps secrecy while creating the least subsequent paperwork, and go for their knives and trust that the sea'll hide the evidence. I don't trust sea off Defence-owned coast, even if they don't openly claim to control sea areas. Around here where they hope that civilian divers won't go, there may well be some of those secret underwater listening posts to listen for enemy submarines, that articles in newspapers about defence talk about. Declaring the area restricted attracts attention to the area, so they let the sea hide them.". "Who's afraid of the big bad wolf?" said Kevin, "Same as that in the real world trawls are for catching fish, and things like gang A using one to catch unfortunate sport divers or gang B's divers in some dispute over sunken valuables, and out of sight in the fish hold doing dire things to them, belong only in thrillers and B-movies. You'll be telling me there's sharks next. You imagine too much. Let's carry on with one more perfectly ordinary scuba dive. The M.O.D. scientists in those labs do whatever they do on land, we look for wreck in the sea, no need for either to disturb the other. As far as I'm concerned, we're legally the same as on a public road going past an M.O.D. building, they can't touch us. Carry on with the dive and forget it. We're on holiday, after all.". They swam on. Their pouches gradually filled with flatfish and shellfish and small non-ferrous wreck items. They came to a fishing boat which had sunk in a storm, looked at it, and swam on. Fish passed them. Fragments of broken sun started to sparkle above them as the overcast blew away at last. Jim noticed a vague shadow above them, as if something large was just beyond the range of underwater visibility, and said so. "Only a boat above us!" replied Kevin, "It can't see us with our diffusers, that's what they're for. Keep quiet while it goes away". They swam on, looking at the fish and the underwater scenery of kelp and rocks and many sorts of encrusting life, and at their aqualungs' pressure-gauges to see when it would be time to turn back. Each wave passing overhead washed them an inch or two to right and left. Jim stopped breathing and advanced carefully slowly with his knife drawn to catch a large turbot which was lying on a small `pool' of sand among weedy rocks, for its precaution in fluffing up sand to bury itself had failed to hide its eyes and the outline of its head. As he was putting it in his pouch, he noticed the shadow again, to one side and not above them, and too big to be a curious porpoise or seal. Perhaps it was his imagination, for it is easy to fancy things when looking endlessly at mist or its underwater equivalent. Kevin also saw it, and again, and had his own first feeling of unease. It seemed to get less; they shook their heads to unclutter their brains of distracting fancyings, and swam on. Jim looked at his pressure-gauge: ten more atmospheres pressure to use out of his aqualung before he had to turn back. "Something big's been digging trenches here. I told you something was about." said Jim. "Only grey whales. They dredge sand from the bottom, and filter the animals out of it with their whalebone. No danger to us". "In England!? Not since stone-age men wiped them out this side of the Atlantic! They're only on the west coast of North America.". They came to a strange artificial object on the seabed. Not a wreck, and not jettisoned cargo. It was a large steel and concrete box with various anonymous equipment sticking out, and a framework of steel bars around it to fend off nets or pots dragged over it by fishermen that did not know it was there. Kevin examined it for three minutes, with growing unease because the shadow had appeared again - and was becoming nearer and clearer. He looked at the installation again for signs of ownership, and said "I reckon I've found one of those underwater listening posts that you said about, Jim.". Hearing no reply but a metallic clang, a familiar enough sound made to attract attention, usually by a diver hitting his cylinder with a tool or a stone, Kevin realised that he had gone too long without the routine precaution of checking how and where his companion was, and, calling "Jim?" again, turned round. "JIM!!" he shouted in horror on seeing him. [185] Near Crabhaven, John surfaced and shouted desperately "Dive and scatter! Make for land before that thing has us all!". He briefly saw CR24 and CR31, each with two men in cloth masks and crash helmets and identical dark blue heavy sailor's waterproofs. Each had a number on his armbands and on the sides of his helmet. #5 held into the sea a hand-held boat sonar; then he aimed it directly at John, who briefly heard a piercing high-pitched noise, then knew no more. Such is the effect of a high powered ultrasonic beam, for that sonar was a far from standard type. Captain Hurlock had learned much electronics in the Navy. The men with the `Hurlock sonars' found and fired at their targets as the two boats circled, stopping the scatterers. Two of the divers tried to approach the boats to surrender to them, but one then the other diver sank, and there were no bubbles from them. #7 put his sonar into the water, set it to `voice-modulated ultrasound' message transmitting mode, and said into it "We've finished up here. You clean up below.". All the other trails of bubbles, rising from regulators of aqualungs brought from Chesterfield in every expectation of a pleasant day's diving and return home tired in the evening, stopped one by one soon after. The sea rolled emptily over the place as it had for 8000 years. No trace of the eight sets of sea-hardy well-made diving gear, or their users, was ever found again, although men searched long. "That's it. Back to work." said #7. Now there was no more risk of anyone using and losing a camera which another diver may find later, the men in the two boats took their helmets and masks and armbands off and went back to pot hauling. What Kevin saw offshore from Hiddleston was a type of underwater craft which he had not seen or imagined before, except for what some newspaper subeditor's mutilating pen had left of an already unclear account in an inside page of his daily newspaper. It was a small submarine, about 40 feet or a little more long, about 12 feet thick, cylindrical with rounded bows and tapering stern, with no superstructure, but instead, attached to the front end of its roof, an arm like a long-reach excavator's, with two segments each about 12 feet long. It ended not in one scoop, but in two closing against each other as a `clamshell grab', 5 feet wide and 7 feet long. As well as the usual powerful-looking apparatus of unconcealed hydraulic rams and pipes, it had, running along the underside of the arm from the back of the grab to the front of its hull, the tough flexible cover of an intake which presumably contained a rack-conveyor as well as allowing intake by suction. Its grab-teeth were firmly clamped across Jim's aqualung and chest, and his legs and right arm protruded from its grab. Such was his first sight of a Smith and Malton's `intelligent type G3 destructor recycler equipped submersible dredger', more usually called by a shorter name which in future years was to haunt the dreams of sporting and freelance commercial divers who had previously thought that hostile competing water-users and officials overfond of secrecy had no effective affordable action against them in disputes that arose - . From what he had heard, and what he saw now, it all too obviously could cheaply recover and separate metals even from dilute mixtures to pay for its upkeep, make electricity to power itself by consuming in a special type of fuel cell any organic matter taken in, even a few percent in sand or silt, or use the surplus to generate hydrocarbon fuel and oil enough for several fishing boats as well as for itself, operate for months without needing servicing, be used in the concealing sea as an effective traceless patrol craft by local groups of sea users against unwelcome competitors and by armed forces to keep secret installations secret, and perform many sorts of underwater work and searching better than divers can. It opened its grab slightly and jerked it forwards, then closed it. Jim disappeared inside except for his rubber fins projecting between its interlocking grab teeth. Kevin hid desperately between the installation's struts as the dredgersub shook its grab again and closed it with a hollow metallic "clomp" as Jim's fins disappeared inside. A bulge went along the covered rack conveyor on the underside of its grab arm and vanished into its hull as it swallowed the scuba diver as a pond-dredging duck swallows a frog. The cloud of disturbed sand started to settle back to the seabed. Its grab was too wide to reach between the struts, but it could wait until Kevin ran out of air, or pull him out with another tool. That sound soon to be the most dreaded by divers, the muffled sliding clang and scrape of a captured `unauthorized' diver's cylinders inside a dredgersub's intake, was soon followed by air hissing as its internal mechanism released Jim's aqualung's high pressure contents into its engine air intake to delay its next need to surface and so it could safely grind up the aqualung for dissolving. Kevin frantically reached in his pouch for three things which he has fortunately brought with him. Desperately trying to keep cool, suppressing a foolish desire to attack its steel hull with his knife or speargun, he took out his underwater video camera and filmed what happened: perhaps he could get rid of the camera; perhaps then someone else would find it and view the tape, and tell the authorities what had happened, for now he guessed that inshore fishermen and others had been using these subs for a purpose not intended by their makers, to settle grievances against "poaching" scuba divers and others who competed with them for shellfish and wreck-picking. A copy of this videotape to the right MP; questions in Parliament; something may get done - perhaps, for it seemed all too likely that the armed forces also had realised the possibilities of these new contraptions for underwater patrolling. Typical armed forces guard mentality, to want to control everything and to treat peacetime trespassers the same as wartime prowling saboteurs, and to shoot first and say nothing if high command and the public were not watching. As it passed him, he panned his camera across its rear end with its four hydroplanes surrounding a propeller, and the identity code DS2 and Smith & Malton Ltd makers' plate. That might let the authoritieso identify the sub one was. Seizing a chance, he let the camera dangle from his arm on its strap and took out two hand-held magnetic `limpets' which he used to pull scrap iron about underwater. He came out from between the struts, kicked away from them, and clapped the `limpets' on the sub's hull, about two-thirds of the way back. They held; thank Poseidon the sub's hull wasn't non-ferrous! As it suddenly sped off, he trailed from the `limpets', wondering if he could drop off unnoticed and reach land, wondering how long before he ran out of air he could last out as a fish-louse on the steel hull of a dredgersub which was running on electricity generated by digesting his companion in its fuel-cell along with miscellaneous dredgings as it in the national interest maintained secrecy of a secret defence installation which wrong eyes had inadvertently seen. The sea sped past him. At another time, with another steed, it would have been an exciting ride. Was it returning to base, and he would get nothing worse than arrest and imprisonment and confiscation of diving gear under some armed forces law? If this particular sub the navy's, for the navy is controlled and authorised by regulations and is allowed to hold and try prisoners, but unauthorised gangs trying to keep the public away from their activities are more likely to ensure tracelessness. It continued, and once surfaced for air like a whale. Clearly `they' had discovered something which soaked up much oxygen like a sponge, and released it, at much less energy cost than compressing it into a cylinder. Yet another commercial and armed forces secret which the diving public would be glad of but weren't getting. How long before the public could buy aqualungs with that sort of air-storage? The sea still sped past. By now, he reckoned, he had about reached the further end of the M.O.D. area. As he went, he tried to film - any odd clue might help whoever found the camera and saw the tape in it. A little later he saw ahead a wreck, which he recognised as the Cerberus, a freighter which had sunk in a storm some time before, and was by now much broken up by many subsequent storms. Could he drop off and hide among the huge jumble of scrapiron and pipes until the sub went away? He feared that it could see much farther by sonar than he could see by light-sight; this was true. He wished in vain that his steel aqualung would turn into a non-ferrous naval rebreather without bubbles or magnetic signature. As it neared the wreck, he realised that the worst was happening: it turned against a large projecting piece of ship's side like a whale scratching itself. Sharp wreck-iron cut his right breathing-tube and cut his right arm to the bone as it scraped him off, breaking his grip on his `limpets'. He desperately looked about. No hope of reaching land, but he saw a narrow cleft between the piece of ship's side and another piece of plating which had fallen against it. Thinking "We've seen a lot together and been through a lot together, my faithful videocamera, but now we must part. Do this last one thing for me, without me!", he unslung the camera from his arm and dropped it into the darkness between rusty steel and rusty steel. It fell two feet in and wedged, still running. Kevin now could do nothing but desperately swim away to draw it away from the hiding place. Air trailed from his cut breathing tube, and blood from his arm (oddly, looking green, since no red light got that deep). His last hope of getting unnoticed to land ended as DS2's grab closed on his left foot. A pull back and jerk forwards, and its grab teeth closed round his waist. He fired his speargun and drew his knife in vain; a spearhead exploded harmlessly against DS2's steel hull as his diving-masked face and arms and trailing tethered tools vanished behind its closing steel jaws. A bulge passed down its intake into its hull as it swallowed him fins first. DS2 returned to its home area and resumed patrol, listening to the sea's stealthy sounds and ultrasounds for unidentified men or craft as it dredged in sand and silt for organic matter and metals. In the little control compartment under its hind roof, Petty Officer Edwards, who thought it better for him to take action necessary to stop at source a breach in nationally important secrecy than for many men later to have to chase leaked information scampering like spilt mercury through the many channels of the sport diving organizations and the public media, saw no need to report the incident and get entangled in a tide-net of paperwork, as DS2's onboard grinder and recycler were destroying all traces of this action. Back in base when servicing DS2, he saw Kevin's `limpets', pulled them off, and threw them in the `confidential scrap' bin; they were later destroyed on site.As usual, he emptied DS2's recovered materials tank and sent granular separated metal oxides to the base's main storeroom. Of the two who had assumed the right to dive where they wanted to in the open sea, driven by the desire to wear impressive equipment and use it to explore what was to them unknown, and of their civilian sport diving gear of makes not authorized for naval or Marines issue and use, nothing was left. CR79, a type G3 Smith & Malton dredgersub, returned submerged to Crabhaven. Its propeller, turning steadily between four ear hydroplanes, pushed it along a few feet above the sand seabed, unseen to surface trippers; its grab-arm lay folded double on its roof. A few fathoms of sea water hid a world where diving clubs' expensive expert solicitors and Westminster's laws saying "the sea is everybody's" were irrelevant. Stephen Bennett, solicitor, member of Chesterfield BSAC, winner of many law actions against groups claiming right to forbid or control public access to the sea, now found ingenuity with words and laws of no use in the court of force backed up by new machinery in the hands of men who had lost patience with the increasingly remote official law-makers and were enforcing their own laws made on the spot by themselves who knew their livelihood and its problems; for CR79 had pumped him together with his clients into its dredgings tank. The air released from the aqualungs to empty them to make them safe to treat as scrap, let CR79 stay underwater for over two hours for a long deep dive where it picked up much of use to itself and its owners, as its onboard heavy-duty grinder and recycler started to consume eight shellfish poachers and their long-duration breathing apparatus and protective suits intended for what Captain Hurlock (ex RN) called "a nuisance sport instead of its proper use as equipment for necessary hazardous work in or out of water". Captain Hurlock lay satisfiedly in the little control compartment under CR79's hind roof as what he called "the symbols of uncontrolled sea-plundering sport diving without permit or order or official record of dives and their purpose", rubber flippers and masks and wetsuits of every shape and colour, weight belts, shellfish poaching kit, aqualungs of all colours although gas cylinder colour coding regulations specify for breathing air "grey body, black and white quartered top", all with exciting tradenames designed to make the users think they were important explorers, along with dredgings and driftwood and intruding outsiders' fishing gear - and other things - were being pumped from its dredgingstank into its recycler and ground up and used to power CR79 as it dissolved everything oxidizable including metal in a large `fuel cell' which produced electricity directly instead of heat, and separated any contained metals for re-use. Surplus electricity output was used to make fuel and oil, later to be used by his people's fishing boat motors. The metal oxides were later sent to a foundry. Eight more shellfish poachers and amateur Cousteaus would never return to their inland dens. "Thanks to too much brain in his riotsquad helmet computer expert James Wernicke and oversized wirebrain Optimus Prime which he copied into reality from unlikely fiction and more useful sort of cylinder wearer Captain Blowtorch [= Mr. Malton of Smith and Malton's], but without me telling them the uses I and others have for this handy little make of sub, once I `tweaked' its electronic instincts a bit ..." Captain Hurlock thought when CR79 reported that its dredgings tanks and destructor and recycler were tracelessly empty. He took CR79 into port and went back into his office. The public media reported another traceless group disappearance of scuba divers. People speculated about bad training of dive leaders, and food poisoning from a camp meal, and freak weather and currents at sea, and suchlike; some contacted Captain Hurlock as harbourmaster for help, and were told "I advised them not to dive here: there's a longshore tide rip that would have swept them into deep water.". Helicopters and police divers and others searched in vain; Captain Hurlock and his men went through an act of searching. The BSAC ordered a tightening up of training standards, particularly for dive leaders, and ordered many clubs to re-take all their diving qualification tests. Divers started nervously keeping away from the area as they had started to keep away from other areas. No trace was found. Near Hiddleston, in a cleft between two pieces of rusty sea-broken plating in the wreck of the Cerberus, an underwater videocamera was wedged, with only a lobster as storekeeper in charge of it. As it fell, it had taken, unguided by man, some final footage. [190] In their room in Worcester police station, an underwater search unit was watching news of this disappearance on a television standing on a packing case in a corner. Diving gear lay on the floor, and a photograph of fish hung on a wall. Most of them agreed with Captain Hurlock's statements and the reporter's speculations; but one of them started to growl like a suspicious Alsatian. Another, reflecting that it was true that dogs and their owners get like each other, asked him "What's the matter, Jim?". "That Hurlock! I've met him! I don't trust him. Liar! There's longshore rip current there! He looks like he knows more than he's saying." replied Jim, whose full name was James Melrose. "You suspect too much! It'll be some mishap. If we're called to search, we'll go there.". "I still don't like something about him. Next day off, I'm going there.". In Wernicke's factory, James Wernicke and Jazz had nearly finished some control circuitry for the Gas Board. By "kneeling" on his hip joints which were bent at a right angle backwards like humans can't, Jazz could work on the floor or on a table intended for humans. Jack Brown who they were fostering ran in and said "James! Jazz! There's a policeman at the door for you and Sideswipe.". Meanwhile the policeman, who was James Melrose, came in and found Wheeljack in car shape connected to a computer link which ran directly to his sentient electronic brain's cortex without need for a terminal with screen and keyboard. He asked him "Oh, hello, Wheeljack. Where's Jazz or Sideswipe? Just a few words about those characters that they caught. [see 135-146.] And where's Huffer? "Jazz is with James." replied Wheeljack from his hind end where his robot form's head was folded away, "The boy - Jack - has gone to them, in the #2 garage. Sideswipe's in Leicester, delivering urgent goods. Huffer's just back from hauling a load from Cheltenham to Liverpool docks.". PC Melrose, looking up at Jazz who was now standing fully upright at nearly 20 feet tall, wondered which of Wernicke's Transformers' alternate shapes took more getting used to, ordinary shaped but intelligent and talking vehicles, or `people' 3 to 4 times as tall as normal, made of steel, with car or lorry wheels attached to various parts of their anatomy, and asked him "Just an odd query about that bunch that you and Sideswipe and Laserbeak caught - their case is coming up soon at Birmingham Crown Court - heaven knows what the judge'll think, you having to go there as witnesses - and how to avoid you filling the courtroom with carbon monoxious phew!!mes ---" - PC Melrose finished that part of his visit, then went to find Huffer. When Melrose entered, Huffer, who was standing upright in robot form, said "erh" preoccupiedly and revved his engine in slightly annoyance at being interrupted from thinking about something, then said "What?". "Coo, Huffer," said Melrose, "You a height. I don't often see you out of vehicle mode - will you be free on Friday to take me to Crabhaven? It's got to be you, the others won't `look the part' for what I'm going undercover as.", and felt thankful that he had been born in that part of the country and thus had the right accent. [191] Huffer lay face down on the floor, unfolded his cab from behind his shoulders, and folded his arms behind his cab. Having thus transformed into his other mode of an orange two-axled artic cab, he asked "Why particularly me?". Melrose answered: "For what I'm thinking of going as - Captain Hurlock's seen Bumblebee; Prowl shouts `police' all over; Jazz and Wheeljack and Sideswipe look too `sportsy'; Shockwave - no - going in a mobile refuse-destructor wouldn't fit; Laserbeak - hardly!; must be Hoist or an artic-cab, to look adequately `workmannish', and Hoist's busy; ..." - "And so am I." Optimus Prime interrupted , "Another delivery run for Smith and Malton's.". "Must be Huffer, then" said Melrose. "Going in an ambulance wouldn't fit either." said Ratchet, "I better come along and stay in the background in case of anything.". "That might be useful, Ratchet." said Melrose. During this, Tabbins entered and waiaiowhed appealingly at Ratchet, who replied curtly: "Not now. You had some fish earlier.". While Huffer unfolded his arms and put covers over his Autobot symbols, to look more the part, PC Melrose put on sailor's waterproof trousers, blue cable knitted sweater, wool bobble-hat, and a temporary new identity as Mr. Trerose, inshore fisherman. He got into Huffer, who drove out and onto the M5 southbound, and got to the harbourmaster's office in Crabhaven. [192] PC Melrose got out of Huffer and entered the office and said "Captain Hurlock? I'm Mr. Trerose. I phoned.". Captain Hurlock, who was sitting watching a monitor screen, replied "Yes, you wanted some sonar gear.". "What sorts have you got on offer?" Melrose asked. "I'll take you to where we make them." said Captain Hurlock. They entered a building. Captain Hurlock took out a cylindrical device about ten inches diameter and three feet long. One end had controls and a small screen, and a handle on each side, and a curved arm to hook over a boat's gunwale. He said "This type is D2SD, for use hand-held overside on small boats. There is also the D4SD, a more powerful directable side-scan version for mounting on the hulls of larger craft.". "Um- how powerful can it be set to?" Melrose asked, "Say to signal a mile or two, if the other craft's got an ultrasound receiver?". "Very!" said Captain Hurlock, "Careful there isn't anyone in the water at the time, as it can aim itself at any target at a preset distance. Yes, very useful ---.". "Yes, very careful." said `Trerose', "Where I come from, sometimes everywhere you look there's a scuba diver - yes, I'll have one. I can pay for it now, we had a whipround in the harbour to get the price for one.". "We've sold quite a lot of these. They're quite popular." said Captain Hurlock, "Yes, too many scuba divers. 30 diver-hours per day through the summer can get through a lot of our shellfish.". "And they cover the beach with gear, and park cars everywhere.", `Trerose' agreed angrily. "And they disturb people on the beach when they carry inflatables across." said Captain Hurlock. PC Melrose paid for and took the D2SD, slung it on his back in its packing on a carrying strap, went out of Captain Hurlock's office, and climbed into Huffer's cab, relieved that he had managed to convince Hurlock, and glad to get away. After Huffer had driven a few miles, an urgent voice came in over his radio. "Skwaak! Ratchet or Huffer! A scuba diver lying injured at the bottom of cliffs a mile and a half east of Dobbits Cleft. I can't land just there.". "Laserbeak! What are you doing here?" Huffer back radioed, somewhat surprised. "Hedge-hopping [= flying very low] - best if they here didn't see me.", Laserbeak replied. "Ratchet here. I'll go and look. I've got special gear to climb down." came in Ratchet's voice over the radio. Ratchet drove to the place. His rear split into arms and legs, his waist straightened, his head appeared. [193] Having thus transformed, he protruded his finger and foot claws and climbed down the cliff. Luckily the rock was firm. At the bottom of the cliff, a scuba diver was lying among the loose rocks. Seeing Ratchet, the diver's eyes widened in panic and he said weakly "No - it got my brain also - I'm seeing things - `Ratchet' out of my son's `Transformers' video cartoons!". "No, I'm real. Somebody made a real copy of me. What happened?" Ratchet asked. Sounding badly scared and shocked, the diver said "We four went in at Dobbits Cleft and swam this way. Then I heard a boat over us. Then my three mates all went - ohh - went limp, and my right thigh suddenly hurt and then went numb, and now I can't use my right leg. I shammed dead till the boat went away, then I came to land. My mates? What happened? Don't ditch my kit if you needn't - it's been through a lot with me.". Ratchet slung the diver in a net hammock across his back and climbed back up the cliff. "I don't suppose you turn into an ambulance like in the stories." said the diver, then "Wowee, you can!" as Ratchet transformed back and put the diver in his back on the left stretcher. Using two mechanical arms which hung down from his roof, he took the diver's gear off and put it on the right stretcher, then said "You'll feel better with a sedative - let's see - I'll get a bit further from Crabhaven, I feel uneasy about the place.". "We've stopped - where are we?" the patient queried a bit later. "A service station near Taunton." said Ratchet's voice from somewhere in his front, "Let's have a look at your leg.". The patient had no feeling in the leg, so Ratchet cut a small sample out of the damaged part and put it on a microscope slide, which he inserted in a slot in the equipment in his front. "What by Iacon's great dome!!" Ratchet exclaimed in amazement at what he saw on the slide. "Mr. Trerose - I mean PC Melrose - " he radioed to Huffer, "Of all the unusual dangers to find in the sea, its ---" - "Ultrasonic damage?" Huffer broke in. "Yes!" Ratchet agreed surprisedly. "Then it is as I feared." said Huffer. [194] Ratchet took the patient and PC Melrose to Droitwich Hospital. The patient was put to bed. Ratchet transformed to robot form and looked in through a window. By now the staff there were used to seeing him. "It's severe damage from powerful ultrasound received underwater, just like in that industrial hazard book I read!" said Ratchet. There've been a few cases." said the doctor, "Workmen putting hands in powerful ultrasonic cleaning baths.". "But this was in the sea." said Melrose, still in his fisherman's clothes. I know what from - I better not say more. The matter's under investigation. And <> ring the harbourmasters or coastguards round there about it - I'll tell you why later.". By now the patient's sedative was wearing off. "You mean, like sonar but a lot stronger? Risky stuff - my mates!?" he asked. "Sorry - no point searching, I fear." said Ratchet, who saw no purpose in raising false hopes and delaying the inevitable news. "Well, this one's new on me." said a scientist in a police forensic ballistics laboratory in Birmingham, "You've sent me a lot of different stuff down the years: sawn-offs [shotguns], rifles, pistols, etc, as expected; home-made guns; those `Emperor Ming' nailguns; flamethrowers made from fire extinguishers; crossbows and spearguns; but never before one of these! Ultrasonics! First to find enough water to test it in! Would the police sports centre mind losing its swimming pool for a few days?". It was the scientist's first aqualung dive, and he was startled and alarmed to find how powerful and lethal an underwater weapon he was using, as well as a sonar's normal function, as he tested it on various targets. "Eeyow!" he thought, "These in the hands of every longshore and seagoing ruffian, no wonder scuba divers disappear! if they get near something that they aren't meant to see. `There's no such thing as a ray gun.', it is said, and now I'm using one, or nearly! The sooner the Home Office knows, the better!". He send a telex to the Home Office in London: "New type of unauthorized powered offensive weapon available to civilians: types of sonar locater which can emit an ultrasonic beam strong enough to kill or stun or incapacitate men in the water including divers. (It is of no effect when fired in air.) Two models: D2SD (hand-held, to be used overside from small boats), and D4SD (more powerful, for mounting on larger craft). They can use their normal sonar to automatically find a target at a preset range, then fire at it. They can be also used as underwater loudhailers, and to send voice as a modulated ultrasound beam. They are being made in a building near Crabhaven harbour. One of our PC's went undercover as a fisherman and bought a D2SD, and was told that many of them have already been sold; also in Droitwich hospital is a Mr. John Harrison who has a severe leg injury (received while scuba diving at Crabhaven) consistent with high-powered ultrasonic beam damage. He says he is the only survivor of a party of four scuba divers who were probably fired on by such a sonar from a boat passing overhead. Correlate with previous reports of disappearances of parties of scuba divers? Home Office to classify this type of sonar as a firearm? They do not appear to be patented. Suggest legal maximum power to ordinary navigational / fish-finding sonars?, to prevent routine use as anti-diver weapons by fishermen to further grievances such as exist now. I suggest police take action necessary to prevent further spread of these devices including overseas. Are these devices an infringement (by independent duplication?) of some pre-existing naval patent? Message ends.". In the Admiralty, a secret weapons officer, reading this telex, said several foul quarterdeck words and continued: " secret patent blown by some clever civilian independently duplicating it! Several dozen times a year we catch it in time: he patents it, we requisition the patent and order him to silence under the Official Secrets Act. We lost secrecy on the Exocet anti-ship missile's target finder, when a civilian duplicated it as a boat-navigater called Lokata. He patented, we took the patent, but they made such a kick-up in Falmouth where he lived, about wanting jobs making them, that we had to release the patent and let him produce them. And much work on intelligent computers for missiles etc went up the ^&*@#$% when that James Wernicke went ahead and produced without patenting. Aye, knew, we'd have requisitioned the patent! So he went ahead and did the last bit which we hadn't wanted to do, and `gave life to the work of his hands', and published full details spilling every bean in the truckload in his book called ``Intelligent Computers' by J.Wernicke and O.Prime'! Bang goes secrecy in missile advances, in exchange for a real Optimus Prime charging about the roads, merely a celebrity and public event opener, and heavy goods hauler like any other artic! need these ultrasonic beamers to defend vital installations in wartime against attacking or spying enemy frogmen; and we need secrecy preserved so the enemy isn't `forewarned so forearmed'. And somebody in some fishing port duplicates and makes them merely to defend crabs and lobsters and wreck-scavenging `rights'! And that survivor's doctor, Dr.Ratchett his name is, told him that it was ultrasonic damage, before I could clap secrecy on it and tell him to tell the patient that it was `bends' or distant explosion or the like. OK, so industrial safety literature knows of ultrasonics; and that Frenchman Diole' who dived with Cousteau got angry about war spreading underwater, speculating on such things existing. But it isn't just the idea! It's the development work and testing - and after five years or whatever it is, out comes some civilian with the same thing. I dare say, as some suspect, that from time to time some sport diver gets too near a secret undersea listening post or whatever, and the base's commandant zaps him out. Else one photo and description in some misspellingy diving club magazine, and much secrecy goes down the plughole. But just to defend crabs and lobsters, bang goes the national interest.". He telephoned to pass on the bad news.