He dropped to his knees beside his fallen friend and lifted his head into his lap. Carefully, almost tenderly, he brushed the hair off Dave’s forehead. A thin, pencil line of blood trickled from Dave’s left temple, down the side of his face, spilling over his jaw.
Neil reached for the handkerchief in the back pocket of his dungarees, and wiped the blood from his friend’s face.
Neil’s fingers quickly sought Dave’s wrist, and he let out a deep breath when he found a pulse there.
“Dave,” he said, gently, “Dave, can you hear me?”
The machine rolled under him, and he was aware of the roll but too occupied to interpret its meaning.
“Dave.”
Dave shook his head, almost as if he were scolding Neil for speaking. He shook it again, and his eyes suddenly popped open. He stared around the control room, a blank expression on his face.
“It’s all right, Dave,” Neil said, smiling.
Dave grinned then, and propped himself up on his elbows.
“Whew,” he said, shaking his head again. “That’ll teach me to cross streets against the lights, I guess.” He grinned again and sat up. “You all right, Neil?”
“I’m fine. How are you?”
“A little shaken. Otherwise-” Dave cut himself short, and looked quickly at the hatchway leading to the lower compartment. “Where are the others?” he snapped, wide-awake now, suddenly alert.
“I-I don’t know. You were the first-”
Dave was on his feet already and heading for the hatchway.
He was quick to understand the situation. “We’re on our side, I see.” He gripped the edge of the hatchway with his hands and pulled himself up. He dropped through on the other side and Neil scrambled after him.
Dave was standing stock-still beneath the aluminum ladder that now ran over their heads like a thin catwalk. Neil dropped down beside him, standing now on the plastic part of the bubble. He was surprised to see water beneath his feet, and outside through the clear plastic. Water, green, capped with white rolling breakers, stretching as far as he could see.
But Dave wasn’t looking out at the water. His eyes were opened wide, two white saucers perched on either side of his crooked, comical nose. He was staring at the limp form of Doctor Manning, hanging from his safety belt on the plastic wall opposite him. Below Doctor Manning, a pool of bright red blood was forming on the floor. To his right, just above the line of the water outside, the plastic wall was slashed in a jagged line, a gaping hole staring out at the green, rolling ocean.
The plastic that should have filled the hole in the wall was splintered in several razor-like pieces. Some of these pieces lay on the floor beneath the dangling, athletic form of Doctor Manning.
Another piece of jagged plastic was imbedded deeply in Doctor Manning’s neck.
Outside, the waves lapped against the sides of the machine like the swish of a brush against a starched shirt.
Crumpled against what had been the aluminum floor of the lower bubble, curved grotesquely, his neck slanting at a weird angle from his body, was old Arthur Blake. His eyes were open wide, staring out at the ocean. His mouth was open too.
Just above his head, in the aluminum, was the shape of his skull where it had undoubtedly crashed into the metal when the machine collided with the water.
Without a word, Dave crossed to the hanging body of Doctor Manning. He loosened the safety belt and lowered the doctor’s body to the floor.
Neil knelt beside Arthur Blake and felt for his pulse. The old man was dead. Gently, he closed his eyelids and walked over to where Dave stood, looking through the plastic out at the ocean.
Neither said anything for several minutes.
Dave broke the silence, then.
“Let’s give them a decent burial, Neil. They were swell guys.”
They buried them at sea, Doctor Manning and Arthur Blake, an archaeologist and a historian. The sea quickly reached out with a green, rolling tongue and hungrily snatched up its offering.
A silent gloom seemed to descend upon the machine, and Dave and Neil listlessly went about their work, checking the damage, trying to estimate their position in time and space. The instrument panel was badly damaged, with splintered dials and twisted knobs.
One of the fuel tanks in the lower bubble had been punctured and gasoline now sloshed underfoot as they made their way back and forth.
Silently, they pried open the outer hatchway, which had luckily been above the water line when the ship crashed, and lifted themselves out to sit outside the machine, their legs dangling down through the hatchway.
Dave looked past the control room and the upper bubble to the rotors. One rotor was twisted completely out of shape, a bent, metallic pretzel dipping into the ocean whenever a wave rolled under the machine. The other rotor was in comparatively good condition, slightly bent at the tip, giving the illusion of a large golfing iron.
“It looks pretty bad,” Dave said.