By the Skin of My Teeth.

A Story of Resilience and Victory. 

Author Dove Grey

Edited by Daniel Larsen-Barr

Written 2013-2019

Copyright. All rights reserved by the author.

Part One LOST 

Part Two MISSION

Part Three ENTERPRISE

Part Four DRAFT

Part Five FORGIVENESS

Acknowledgements

With thanks to T.S. Eliot for The Hollow Men, 1925.

         Thanks to Nevil Shute for On the Beach, 1957.

Preface

This is a sequence of memories. Whether what I remembered happened or not is something I find immaterial. The memories persisted, so I wrote them instead of suffer them.

LOST

 Mystics in the past have gone on a journey of suffering to see God. Their suffering was a personal matter, and when they had their visions they took it as proof. Proof of His existence does not come easy. The Buddha starved. He realised enlightenment under a Bo tree, and Mohammed too journeyed. He almost died in the desert of burns before he saw Allah. Jesus was not recognised. The Romans crucified him for breaking their laws. And so God reveals himself through suffering.

 There is after this others' disbelief of the visions of God. Does a person have to actually be at death's doorstep to be able to see God? If mortality aids the proof, then how can we live well? Or, how must we die? Young Johnny's life contained in it a set of circumstances within desperate suffering. His experience directed the vision upwards and raised questions. The questions concerned God's forms in appearance and proof of the above.      

  For many, higher authorities apprehend their purpose in life early. They change the expected course of events.

 Johnny was the son of two working parents. He was only ten years old when conscription brought him into the Navy. On a sunny mid-week morning a group of boys gathered at the steps of the Grammar swimming pool. School buses had transported them there from different places for this. A short blonde police lady with a truncheon stood in front of them. With her was an unsmiling man from veteran’s affairs who was wearing an old grey suit.

 She spoke, “This is your recruitment meeting. We will choose your careers, based on your family histories. Step forward," calling names from a list, “Army…Navy…Air Force…Intelligence recruits. Law...Business...Artists...Scientists." As she worked through the list, boys stood one by one and walked forward to meet their future suffering.

 Johnny saw this choosing as a sacrifice, although he did not realize yet what the calling was for. His mother Eleanor had often talked about her dear late father Owen. He had died seven years before Johnny's life began. In the first battle of Jutland he was a rating with the English navy. In recognition of his bravery and intelligence he earned a promotion. After the war he died aged sixty-six from smoking and ritual recitations

 “Submariners’ service,” the police lady said when he stood next to her. “That’s alright we’ve already heard. You’ll have a life time of adventure and merchant profit beneath the high seas. You can’t escape a grandfather like that, even if he is dead.” She smiled and looked away. Soon on a deck above the swimming pool the officers retired with a two teachers for a cup of tea and special cookies. They murmured their quiet disrespects about rough youngsters. The boys shambled away to go back to their classes on their respective broken-down buses. The secret service had tied knots in the cord of the social fabric there that day. Thirty years later, nobody could tell him how many of those boys stayed alive to grow to be successful men. His late family had dictated his career, and he was ignorant of the pains it would put him through. 

  Johnny had become tired of schoolmasters beating him across his head with sticks. In the weeks after the recruitment meeting this usual hardship continued. The fact that he lived in a middle-class neighbourhood seemed to excuse the abuse. The authorities lied about his age and put it up by eight years. He had slave wage work at trivial jobs which were close to meaningless. Even though his brothers loved him, he wanted something else out of his life. He began to see the submariners service as something which could provide him a welcome break. 

 At this age he knew nothing of the human rights act. He saw that no-one cared about anything but themselves. He entered training by the navy first in the grammar swimming pool. He must remain underwater for minutes at a time with his hands and feet bound. If he came to the surface to breathe then a soldier would force his head under again. Several times he got hauled out drowning and bleeding. And then he had to do it again. No-one gave him anything to eat, and he was not paid. His limited and demanding army class father provided him the few things he had, and he had next to nothing. 

 Shortly from his home he received the first call-up. It involved going to the Falkland Islands to defend it from the Argentinians. He was in a platoon of six, one of them was his brother Roscoe and boys who knew their brother Joe. He did not know who else was in it. His part in it first involved scanning the sonar aboard a British sub. All the staff were adults apart from him, and they did not listen to him and nor did he know how to do it. They were inside the ship and he sat on a stool in front of a circular screen. When a torpedo lighted in sight coming in fast at nine o’clock, he made the call to the officers that it was heading in. They replied for him to keep quiet, shouted at him to speak louder, and said that he did not know anything. The torpedo hit the hull of the submarine and it split open and sea water gushed into it and it sank. All the marines floated in their green uniforms, rising to the surface like sprats in a school. Their arms and legs spread wide and air bubbled up out of their noses.

 A dinghy collected the survivors at the surface, and it took them to the shore. He was in tears and the young adult staff asked each other what he was doing there in a war. Waves overturned the boat at the shoreline. They swam in and hauled themselves up onto the cold rocks like water rats. The other five of the childhood platoon arrived. They had six hours to march across the island to regroup with the men on the other side. He fell behind in the dark and limped. He used his rifle as a crutch and crawled in the mud and slept. Sixteen hours later he arrived at the rendezvous point. He was in such a state that he could not hear anything and had no balance left. By the time he returned home he had stopped speaking.

 He worked as a rating on Oberon and Typhoon and Ulysses machines in the waters. He learned how to swing through the circular doors aboard. He held the handles above them and threw his feet forward like an acrobat. He learned the system of dials and swivels to control flotation. He got the feeling of the tilt. It wasn't long before he got a job mapping the Ross Sea-bed in Antarctica. His devoted family saw him away from a sea-hold in the capitol. 

 In the frigid waters the H.M.S. Enterprise towed a batholithic craft by three hundred fathom long cables. A steel gantry wound the cables up and exposed the deep-sea device. He entered the ship with a mate through the top valve. It was small and cold inside. A crew of two was already inside and they gave him instructions about how to do the work before they left. They said that he was almost too young for the job and that he was the adventurous type.  He was being raised the hard way. The craft did not drive anywhere as the moving ship above it held it. 

 There was a bench and a green sonar screen and a gas filter which provided him breathing air. The oxygen level inside was crucial.  He had a sleeping bag and wore heavy weight coats and trousers and boots and underwear and gloves and a scarf and a hat. He brought a watch. The Enterprise provided a tin dish and a mug and spoon, with a large thermos of minestrone stew. Another had milky sweet tea. The toilet consisted of a square lidded can. A fire extinguisher was on a hook on the wall. A deep sea dive suit lay folded next to the ladder leading down from the entry valve. There was a porthole which allowed a view into the briny deep. He also had a pad of paper and a greasy pencil and a knife. The sonar screen had an angled bench next to it for the work.

 Upon climbing down into the batholith, a wave of fear passed through him. The enclosed space inside was so final and cold. It was cold not only by temperature, but also by the fragility of its artificial environment. If the two-foot-thick steel hull split or if the spinning valve leaked, he would be fast drowned.

 After advising, the first crew of two exited up the short ladder and through the valve. He was alone to cope with his feelings of confinement. There was also the work ahead to resolve. If he could plot the chart for the next three days without causing an accident that would be an achievement. He brought a packet of cigarette tobacco with him which he had to ration. He had brought a lighter though any fire in the gas transistor would suffocate him. With his hands he measured the space he was in. Noise was the enemy in a submarine and so he worked by making no sound. After a single tap on the hull, the crew of the mothership lowered his batholithic ship into the deeper sea. From three hundred metres beneath the keel of the Enterprise, he sent signals down to the sea-bed. 

 During the descent his stomach dropped from the lowering movement. When the movement ended he waited a while then turned on the sonar surveyor. This is when he began mapping. The sonar operated by emitting a sequence of sonic 'blips'. When the sound returned a light flashed on the circular green screen on his bench. The lights appeared at varying distance from the centre of the circle. He drew dots on a graph paper at corresponding points. Two to three times a minute a blip sounded and a light flashed. His greasy pencil worked across the graph.  

 He did this for eight hours, then had a meal and a rest for four, then started again. Like a programmed tool he repeated this routine six times. In his rest times he ate and attempted sleep.  After his meals he would have a hand rolled cigarette. 

 He could see fish with lights in the heads and on antennas swim past the porthole. Condensation from his breath and body made the inside of the craft wet. After his lonely methodical three days under, the cables of the mothership lifted. They raised him and swung his ship around to the broad steel deck. He felt relief to hear the tap signal to open the valve screw. Daylight surrounded him. 

 He was not home for long until he received another call for service. 

 He returned to the sea-hold. He carried with him a big bag full of mechanical equipment. The sea-hold was high and deep and drilled out of rock in a cave at sea level by the strait. The boat floated half above the water line and he walked aboard it across a steel ramp and into its hull. It was a brass boat, a material which had become popular for defence. Its bow was an impact resistant structure designed for ramming other ships. The specialist glass port holes increased visibility in the water. 

 This mission demanded that he defend his country from roving foreign sailors. The sailors were marauding the South Pacific. His boat rammed a launch full of foreigners and left them all floating in the sea. He worried that he had sunken some of his friends. Then they returned to port. He had also played a game of checkers with his cabin mate during a stand down time that he had.

 There followed two more submarine missions, both to the waters around India. By this time, he had joined the army and knew how to use a rifle. The first mission consisted of doing in a doctor in Bombay, now called Mumbai. He didn’t know why the great man had to die, but his brother had recruited him to do the work. The purpose fit in with the politics of the acting Commander-In-Chief. It was far beyond him to question the powers that be. 

 The crew landed at a wasteland swamp with a canal and watchtower. They drove around on amphibian buggies and assessed that they didn’t know where they were. He found a cartoon magazine in the watchtower. Then he walked through the streets of Bombay and saw the basic poverty. He always felt sorry for that doctor. He caught a train south to Madras to meet another contact and change boats. He found the boat by its light signals at night off the city coastline. He signalled back to it with a torch and a man came to meet him in a dinghy. The man wanted to look around town first before leaving. The next day they had tea and saw the architecture, shot photographs and walked back to the dingy. A group of twelve joyous boys shouted and ran towards them. This jeopardized their chances of getting into the escape dingy. They fired their rifles at them then got into the boat.

 The boat travelled to the Australian coastline. The crew could see the red rock on the side of the shelf on the bottom of the sea. From Perth they went to Melbourne and hove to. He looked around town, and at St. Kilda’s he met a woman who was on day leave from a mental institution there. They went to the pub and then she went back to meet her curfew time at the hospital. He enjoyed their serendipitous beatnik meeting. She was late for her curfew and he helped her climb over the wall to get back in. Then he had to arrange a ticket for an air flight to get him home. His pay-check was due in three days’ time and he had nowhere to stay. His mate whom he had contacted in Madras had already gone home on his own ticket. Poor Johnny walked through the city swearing when three policemen stopped him. They questioned him about his business. When they found he had none, he found that he had to sleep over in the mental institution. The policemen took him there under the premise that he was a homeless man.

 The woman whom he dated was not in sight. The hospital was open to the air as it had no roof, but only a brick and plaster wall around it. Straw littered the floors of the corridors. There were some staff who were doctors and nurses who were there for part of the time each day. For five days his roommates were in straightjackets. They swore and spat and pissed themselves. He explained to the psychiatrist that he was waiting to get paid by the navy and then he could buy a plane ticket home. The psychiatrist didn’t care. The boy felt threatened by a possible indefinite time held. He argued his freedom and when his payment came through the asylum took their bribe. The payment allowed release. He never saw the woman again. He stumbled out the gates in shock. 

 His will to reorient himself directed him. He saw an obvious block of modernist architecture. This turned out to be the royal institute of technology. By the end of the day he had enrolled in his first human sciences degree. He studied this by correspondence in his home town while at school. He graduated within the next year. 

 Despite the risks of recognition, he met another rating on a city street. First he banked his check and then he went with him. The man's name was Blevins. He wanted to take Johnny out on the harbour to deliver supplies to a crew in a boat. Close to the harbours entrance by the heads there was a dinghy. He could hear the Southern Ocean bluster. They first loaded the dinghy with boxes delivered in a panel van. Blevins took the helm of the outboard motor and drove from the wharf to a place within spray drift of the ocean. He kept the dinghy circling around a place for half an hour. The two seafarers watched for any turbulence on the surface of the water. Gulls cried.

 The sea surface began welling about. Grey pressure waves moved in ominous flat circles. Metal rigging poles emerged and then the flat deck of a craft which was seldom seen appeared. Cascades of water fell away from the hulk as it rose higher. Johnny and Blevins saw the bolted steel plates of a vessel which hid unless forced to arise. A fixed ladder on the side of the hull reached from the top deck to an unseen level beneath the water. Blevins brought his dingy close to the end of the ladder.  Johnny bit on his fear and climbed it to the flat top of the boat. In six climbs he carried up boxes of supplies for its crew.

 A senior in uniform swung open a door to a top deck cabin. He had black hair and beard stubble and large knuckles on his hands and wore a black woollen shirt. 

 "Supplies from the harbourmaster," said Johnny.

 "Bring them in before the weather changes," the man said.

 A short chain gang of crewmen took the boxes into the cabin and then lower into the boat. Dry stocks, lightbulbs, batteries and mechanical utilities were thus delivered. "Thank you. My name is Pieter. Stay for a little tea," said the man. 

 Johnny obliged and enjoyed the sweet milky brew that a large silent man carried up. 

 Pieter swapped stories of the wars with his junior guest. The submarine was a U-1 in a unique condition. He said that efficiency produces miracles, and so it was with his submarine. The fact that it remained functional after seventy-two years was an achievement. He saw the marine know-how of these government employees as a tribute to them.

 "Although the sixth piston and ring of our diesel engine requires remaking." He brushed a knuckle against his lips.

 The large shipmate who had brought the tea said, "There are a million souls down there waiting to come back up. I can hear them in the engine rattle."

 "We can't give chase to enemy vessels with inefficient compression," Pieter said. "A Japanese X-craft evaded us last week. There was a killing in a shopping district after that. Naval control said that we should have saved a torpedo, and they have sent a frigate out to mine the mothership. That bastard assassin shouldn't live."  

 There followed a short note-taking session. The Captain recorded the delivery in the log. His grease pencil hatched out the names and details of the visitors. After that Johnny and Blevins thanked him for his hospitality and co-operation. Pieter thanked them once again and the two young men retreated down the ladder to the roped up dinghy.

 Lighter now, they motored back to the wharf. The U-boat descended beneath sea level to continue its long guard. Johnny mused that even the devil was vigilant. 

  He flew from a lover’s tryst in NZ to Singapore. There he assassinated an environmental activist in a crowd in a market. He ran to escape the police and dived off a wharf into the harbour. He sheltered in an air pocket under a rock until he heard the engine of a large submarine. He swam and entered the boat through the rear hatch by the great propeller. The American crew returned him as a castaway on a beach at Papamoa.

  By this time, Johnny felt disgusted by the harsh treatment he had received. He asked a Captain for leave from the Navy so that he could live a civilian life. With stripes on his suit and a cup of tea in hand, the Captain declined the request. "We have invested resources in you and your training. As a result, the administration cannot afford to let you go," he said. "Stay in and you will have the world at your feet. You can achieve great things with a team like this behind you." 

 It wasn't long before Johnny couldn't tell the difference between the war and a nightmare. He didn't know who he was fighting. Images of bloodied corpses and prisons and deserts rose in his eyes. Complex links to secret service missions to document injustices fought in his memory. The people he would meet were no longer people, but caricatures. A discussion with a Legionnaire about military law bothered him. He was not sure whether it had actually taken place. More images of tent cities in other countries kept him from sleeping. The sounds of rifle fire and airplane engine and the drone of propellers bothered him. Yet this was all the same to senior command. They demanded that he stay in his career. 

 The result of this distress was that he saw what he did but could not be certain that he did it at all. An extra excursion through south and eastern Africa passed in this mental confusion. In response to protests against apartheid, its tragedy must show. He worked in secret from Johannesburg to Nairobi. What he documented haunted and angered him for many years afterward. 

 He was dirty and unshaven and making a sacrifice of his own comfort and safety for the benefit of others. Martial law, injustices of rights and inequalities of wealth he filmed. Once the camera's lens aperture closed for the last time, he boarded the train. The Cape to Cairo Railway was never built, so he negotiated a broken route. He walked between stations like a pilgrim. He lay on seats and covered up under a blanket to hide the reel beneath it. He said nothing to the other passengers in the carriages because he must keep his business a secret. 

 At a diplomatic office on an urban hill he delivered the reel, and then decamped to a settlers' outpost. He was to seek exile again. He felt he knew Nairobi well by the time he left, and knew it as a desperate and risky place. Schoolwork at his local area Grammar and the comfort of a doctor welcomed him home.

 Battle weariness altered his demeanour. His father repeated the question, "Why are you acting so strange?" His brothers scorned him. Whenever he and they were close, they would raise their arms in front of their faces. This would prevent them from seeing their brother the spy. At school, he was earning the reputation of truant.  

 When he did return home an officer named Aunty May adopted him by de facto terms. She saw potential in him and demanded that he visit her every afternoon. They would drink tea and talk about systems, history and policy. His girlfriend Mia would also visit, and this made the lessons more enjoyable. Aunty requested that he join a team on a treasure hunt by Sri Lanka, winner takes all. He found the thought of running his fingers through gems irresistible. 

 This second trip into Asian waters went much better than the first.  She took care of all the operative needs from home. The trip was for strategical training purposes. A competitive international treasure hunt for sunken jewels, winner takes all. They flew a small electrical drive engine boat with a crew of six about the shallow tropical ocean floor. There was plenty of light coming down through the clean water. They used a system of placing white triangular flags on the sandy surface of the sea bed to mark where they had been. This trial-and-omission system led to the target. They navigated to a point above the chest of jewels. It was Johnny's job to recover it, since he was the youngest of the team. He had to dive in the deep by coming out through a valve exit in the side of the ship. Unfortunately, his stomach burst when he swam out into the pressure of the water at that depth. Pink pulp floated in front of his face. Even so he tied chains to the chest and strapped them to the underside of their X-craft. They hauled it in and took it home.  

   At the age of seventeen, Johnny had now graduated to the elite level of X-craft team member. An X-craft is a miniature submarine and drive, or are flown by, pilots with expert skills. After seven years of investiture into his career he had become indispensable. The work he had done described espionage, assassination, international escapes and romantic follies. He was ready for decoration.

 The sky hid behind cloud cover above a harbour side restaurant.  Six young men including his brother and two older officers gathered. They lined in rank by the windows. Petty Lieutenant May carried a velvet tray of items made of gemstones and rare metals. Walking along the line, she greeted each man by name. When she met Johnny, who was steely in his stiff uniform, she picked up a medal. The Silver Southern Star looked like a star burst of radiating lines around a central oval. She pinned it to Johnny’s shirt at the chest, shook his hand and said he had done well. His senior brother received an equal recognition. She decorated two ships mechanics with iron chevrons before she came to Jane, who was a diver. It was Jane's habit to strap her breasts down under her white suit, and call herself James. Aunty May hung a ribbon with a small golden disk around the hero's neck. The last man in the line wore a black designer suit and open collar shirt. May and he exchanged a few quiet words before she passed him a Colt Cobra .38, which he secreted at the belt line. They did not eat or drink, but disbanded to go about their business.

 Johnny and Craig made a pledge to themselves and each other. No lowlife was going to steal their medals. It was the one thing that gave them prestige in the tough society they worked in. It made power brokers take watch and notice and could lead to opportunity. He never suspected what pain his medal would bring him.

 His situation got worse with the notoriety. A classmate offered him another mission. Despite his experience, he was still enthusiastic about doing things. The exercises had not killed him yet, but he could not divine the future. His excitement seduced him into dealing with matters in the arms race. 

 The scenario behind this exercise was well beyond his wisdom. Marine compass points for mines were being planned, and he was the tool. The prospect of captaining a French-built X-craft was far too enticing an option for him to refuse. Flying passenger in an F-12 Tomcat, he met his crew on the Arctic ice at Greenland, Kalaallit Nunaat. A smelly Naval Seal introduced Johnny with Lana Vaxkin and Ed, the mechanic. "Two-tonne hold sir with a twenty-five kilo titanium battery," said Vaxkin. Their ship was a hundred metres way from the airstrip, facing the sea-bound ice floe. A plastic ramp supported its grey steel hull, not much larger than a Combi van, but seaworthy. Required aqua-dynamics create vessels which resemble a scientists' interpretation of the Hectors Dolphin.

 Johnny approved of the vessel's five-blade propeller. With a prayer and a whistle, the three crew members strapped themselves into position. Within its tight confines, each of them had individual access to all the tools required to float and turn. A whish and the HM Io skimmed down the ramp. Captain Johnny switched on the prop and First Mate Ed flooded half a tonne of water into the hold. Coxswain Lana steered the craft into the current and they descended under the ice. A chilled frozen brine of water was their ceiling. Far under them were the stones and giant weeds of the North Atlantic seabed. 

 An unusual form of night greets and surrounds the submariner when he is at a depth. It is a dark shade of blue, although not silent. Muted noises carry far in the sea. The three expeditioners heard the cry of manatees. Ice boomed as it collided many fathoms above. According to their purpose, they listened for the sounds of other propellers. They remained vigilant as the Io flew south-south-east. 

 The undersea buoy of Portsmouth was their first return to civilisation's reach. Its weighted black dome alerted the Captain and Coxswain that they were near a port. Navigating in and coming up to, he exchanged a few friendly words with another skipper. From the open top hatch above water he received jokes about roving Scots. Taking in their three breaths of fresh air, the crew of the Io saw the hulking hulls of naval England. Yet this was only a flying stop, and so they descended. 

 Being an early starter, Johnny kept a light-hearted attitude. He chose to cruise at a shallow depth. With eyes open, he enjoyed the light and the good view it provided. They were west of Africa when his fortune took a sudden downwards spiral. He received a radio message that the speaker was the Trident and that he could not escape. Looking behind him in the mirror, he saw a broken image of three large boats. Torpedoes fired and hit the X-craft and the hull broke and it flooded. They sealed their survival suits and turned on the extra gas. The ship went down and down further until finally coming to rest on the surface of the seabed in cold darkness.

 The pressure was borderline to fatal. There was no way to float the craft. He had one emergency button to press in front of him. His arm and hand strained against the weight of sea water which held them back. With a huge muscular effort and mental concentration his arm flexed. Embattled animate will collided with the force of dead inertia. Twenty minutes later he won and managed to press the button. An alarm sounded. It rang to sensors on ships at surface above them and their crashed boat. This was the only thing they could do. 

 Cranes and cables with great hooks dropped. They hoisted the small wreck from out of the water and the crew taken into hospital for revival.

 News of the drowning reached his mother, and when he returned she was distraught. Yet despite her distress, she also wanted him to stay in service. "Owen served all his life, he never gave up. If it was good enough for my lovely father, then it is good enough for you. I'm sorry," Eleanor said.

 “I need an easier life. Please let me go,” said Johnny.

 “I gave you your name. It’s Johnny, for Jonathon and John so that you can stand as an individual. Remember your father and I didn’t want you. You will have to leave home and be brave,” said Eleanor.

 He visited Aunty May in Devonport, and she gave him an easy job as compensation. She asked him to take a few photographs of Miami, and if he could, New York. In a crew he drove a sub through the Panama Canal and on to Florida. It stopped on the shores of the swamp there and he got out and waded through the swamp and walked into Miami. He took some photographs of the place and went to a cafe and met some people. He then left the city and returned by the way he had come through the swamp. He needed something to eat. So he shot a horse and cut it up and put its body parts aboard the boat so he could cook it and eat it on the journey home. Aunty May said she had never seen anything that disgusting aboard one of her boats. She brought his mental health into question.

 Since his intellect and morale were under scrutiny, he agreed to a simpler job. This was to be a check courier for a naval family who had a young adult daughter living in Brisbane. The job doubled with an observational role over a person who had been living in Sydney. He caught the flight to Australia one Friday night after the week in school.

 She had been a wayward girl at the age of eleven and had started an appalling forest fire. Since then she had been living in a ward and going to Grammar school on her days of leave. He went straight to the place where he was to gain the first sighting of her. It was a blue light disco where there was no alcohol for sale. She was there, wearing a hat and talking to some other girls. Now that he had seen her, he remembered her and in later years she became one that he knew on first name terms.

 That night he caught a night train link to Brisbane and slept on the route. He caught a taxi to the young adult daughter’s address and knocked on the door. When a lady opened it she saw his social blue and white uniform with a neck tie and let him into the house. He gave the check for living costs to the lady on behalf of her father who could not be there. After a cup of tea and a conversation he rode in the same taxi to the naval officers’ base. There was dormitory where he could sleep before arranging his trip back home. He stayed there under a provision. This was that he sits his mathematics senior school examinations. He swatted for the G.R.E. exams at a table aboard a ship while talking with an officer. He wore mirror shades and laughed a little while discussing nuclear drive engines. Then he returned home having completed his mental health assignment.

 The management considered the grisly horse's head. They decided that despite the sight of it he was still fit and employable. They contracted him out as a pilot to an oil company which had business holdings in Africa. There is a geodesic cavity beneath the Sahara desert’s sandstone base. It forms an underground sea and is like a subterranean extension of the Atlantic Ocean. The entry point to this huge cavern is at Casablanca in Morocco. A metal portcullis grille gate closes it beneath sea level at the ports area. It was through this that he piloted the next X-craft. His first mate was again Lana Vaxkin. She refused to drive with him again after this mission because of the accident that happened. 

 Permit papers exchanged between the Navy and the Government. A day's wait proceeded. With all systems go and the small boat well balanced, they drove into the cavity. Search lights on revealed sightings of significant geographic structures of the sandstone surface. It curved in broad lines and arched downwards. The two explorers continued for a far distance in the dark still water. 

 The strange environment confused them. They drove too far and for too long. They had passed the half-way measure mark for having an adequate supply of air on the return journey out. Lana deregulated the tanks so they were running out of air and their lungs were going to explode. Johnny manoeuvred the craft thirty-five degrees upwards instead of keeping it horizontal. He and the mate saw a beam of natural light coming down onto them from the top of the enclosed undersea ocean. It shone through an opening in the roof of the sea, but the gap was too small for their boat to pass through. If they tried to drive out the way they had come, they would suffocate for having no spare air. They made a decision to remedy the emergency.

 Together they fired an explosive torpedo at an edge of the opening.  It hit rock and detonated and the cave edge collapsed. This made the gap wide enough for the small vessel to pass through and up to the surface and reach breaths of air. The explorers accelerated the propeller and shot upwards.

 The aquiline X-craft emerged at the top of a lake above the subterranean sea. It rose then splashed back to float at a horizontal rest. A searing heat remained from the spent explosive. Relieved, Johnny and Lana opened the top hatch and climbed out to daylight. Johnny was sure that he heard a cheer at the instant of his first saving breath. They swam to the crumbling edge of the lake and walked to shelter in a wooden hut on dry land. Another foreign legionnaire met them. He expressed surprise and annoyance at the sudden appearance of their torpedo boat. In this otherwise harmless fishing village, such intrusions were not meant to occur. He took them in a motorbike sidecar to Tripoli where they disappeared into the crowd at the bazaar.

 By the time he flew home, and she to her own country, his first examination came up. The number of submersible services achieved fall into three blocks of twelve. Whether there is an exam at six, or twelve, or eighteen services and so on, is a decision usually made over a game of darts. In all over his life as he grew, Johnny completed nineteen services. He had not yet done twelve, and had enjoyed the unique perspective on life that the service gave him.

 At the exam Aunty May required him to build a weapon of war of his own invention. Tooling away for a month, he defended the Strait from enemy ships by building a mine. This same exam repeated in future years when fate and happenstance turned. Together they caused him to join another brigade not foreseen.

 His repeated missions in the submarine division had an effect on his health. At the age of seventeen years he received a medical condition. It came about by the mix of gas which the mariners breathed aboard the ships. Bottled gas inside a sub releases at a slow steady rate through valves into the hull spaces where the crew live. The air pressure is higher inside a submarine than outside on the surface. Gas transistors re-process expired air to alter carbon dioxide levels. In this way higher carbon dioxide levels change to a safer lower level. There is no nitrogen leaked out of the bottles, and none of the bottles have nitrogen in them. Nitrogen is a gas which can enter the human body through the skin and so to the bloodstream. It does this when the atmospheric pressure around the body is higher than usual, such as it is aboard a sub. When pressure returns to normal, nitrogen gathers in the joints of the body. This causes bones to link up and swivel in a crippling condition known as the bends. The bends causes seizure and coma and is fatal. This is why pressurized and confined atmospheres have no tanked nitrogen.

 To compromise the total level of gases, a higher level of hydrogen is in the bottles. The proportion of helium is the same. The tanks have usually higher oxygen and lower carbon dioxide. Hydrogen is a harmless gas and so a higher compromised level of this does no harm. Carbon monoxide and other poisonous bi-product gases are undesirable.  As the exhalation of the team increases carbon dioxide, the gas transistors go to work to reduce it. The crews breathe a measured dose of their life support in every breath that they take. It is harmful to breathe a higher than usual level of carbon dioxide. It can cause a person to lose consciousness and if it increases further, to die. The valves release a mixture of the artificial atmosphere at a constant rate. The gas provided is life support for the crew.

 The bottles show a reading of their internal pressure on their gauges. A crewman usually has a job to watch this, and change valves onto a new bottle. He ties the used bottle up as a spare. Refills are due next time the ship comes to surface at a port and receives a maintenance service.

 Relying on this altered mix of gases has an effect on the heart. Every next breath of the artificial atmosphere forces the body to change. The body reacts to the mix. A heart attack becomes impossible. The nerve signals sent between the brain and the heart become more emphatic than usual. The gas causes a change in function of the grey matter. Autonomic impulses become strong and steady. They would otherwise beat at their own leisure. Under the influence of a signal like this, there is no way that a heart can fail. This gave the ship doctor a rest while the ratings work like machines. 

 The after effect is unfortunate. Johnny's young heart had strained like a flogged horse that was not given any rest. A heart cannot beat in a forced manner without in some way rebelling or caving in afterward. When a sailor comes to the surface and breathes real air again, he or she must re-acclimatize for a day or two. The organs adjust to natural conditions. Nerves even out. The unfortunate result of this change for Johnny is that he developed a heart murmur.

 The four chambers of his heart missed the third beat. As two chambers expand and suck blood in, the two next to them contract and push blood through them. A heart-beat is the simultaneous activity of these four chambers. Expansion and contraction causes blood to flow throughout the body. Johnny almost missed a beat. Two chambers expanded well but only one contracted on time. The third chamber contracted an instant late and at only half thrust power. This arrhythmia and can result in sudden heart failure and so death. He had given the better time of his early life to the secret navy. They left his body flogged. An ominous threat of loss of life at any time loomed on him. 

 His doctor gave him orders to take it easy. Ella responded with her usual hard-nosed replies. "You're young and strong. Stop being a hypochondriac. Run out and play your football."  

 During the three years he had known Mia, she had participated in his career. They had attended drill together. It was as though they both had the same career. Their drill sergeant was a man named Maxwell Stern. It was he who ordered Johnny to travel and obey. A system was going to be assemble. Stern ordered Johnny to operate this system. Its' centre was in a faraway land. Johnny did not understand how to get there. The world is round, but one must operate on the basis that it is flat.

 The time came to seek other escapades. He looked back on the twelve years that school had taken, and saw it is a confinement. He saw them as wasted years. Three further offers promised to carry him into his life ahead. A foreign businessman, a national hero and Aunty May all reached out to him. He plotted that he might be able to take on all three of them with success.