“We don’t have to, but just about everybody does,” March said. “Want to do it with me tomorrow?”
“Sure, if there’s a group going through,” Stan agreed. “By the way, what happened to that fellow Cobden who flubbed the fifty-foot escape?”
“He made it,” March said. “And he’s already done the hundred-footer, too. The psychiatrist found out what was bothering him. When he was just a kid he was swimming with a gang and one of ’em ducked him and held his head under water a bit too long. He got some water in his lungs, passed out, but they revived him. He’d forgotten all about it, really—except underneath, of course. He said that later when he made up his mind to learn how to swim well, it took a lot of grit to make himself do it. He didn’t know why it bothered him, but he had the guts to fight it out and really learn how to swim. Never did any diving, though—didn’t like being completely under water.”
“And after all these years that old experience pops up!” Stan exclaimed.
“It just goes to prove that all these tests are so sensible!” March said. “What if he hadn’t found that out until he got in a sub on duty somewhere? His going to pieces then might have wrecked it, or caused plenty of trouble.”
“He’s all over it now?” Stan asked.
“Sure,” March said. “As soon as the doc got the story out of him and explained it, Cobden just laughed and said he felt foolish. Went right over to the fifty-foot level and did the escape. He even joked with the Chief and said that he shouldn’t hold his head under water—it might make a neurotic out of him.”
“That’s swell!” Stan commented.
“Yes, and he insisted on taking the hundred-foot escape right away, too,” March went on. “But they were smart. They wouldn’t let him. They thought he might be acting under a temporary fit of courage and bravado and the old fear might come back on him later. So they made him wait a couple of weeks. It went fine, though.”
Before going to the escape tower the next day, March looked up Scott, the radioman, and reminded him of their date to look at Winnie and Minnie together. So Scott and March and Stan went to the hundred-foot tower together that afternoon, donned their swimming trunks, their Momsen Lungs, and stepped under the metal skirt in the water at the bottom. As March started up the long cable leading to the surface, he realized that the hatch and platform there were made exactly like the top of a real sub. And there on the walls were the two beautiful mermaids, Winnie and Minnie, smiling at him. He could not smile back, because of the Momsen Lung mouthpiece, but he waved at the girls and went slowly up past them.