The Deep Range Part 10

But the sky was gone. The sharply defined plane which marked the water-air interface on the sonar screen had vanished, replaced by a meaningless jumble of hazy echoes. For a moment Franklin a.s.sumed that the set had been put out of action by the shocks; then his mind interpreted the incredible, the terrifying picture that was taking shape upon the screen.

"Don," he yelled, "run for the open sea-the mountain's falling!"

The billions of tons of rock that had been towering above them were sliding down into the deep. The whole face of the mountain had split away and was descending in a waterfall of stone, moving with a deceptive slowness and an utterly irresistible power. It was an avalanche in slow motion, but Franklin knew that within seconds the waters through which his sub was driving would be torn with falling debris.

He was moving at full speed, yet he seemed motionless. Even without the amplifiers, he could hear through the hull the rumble and roar of grinding rock. More than half the sonar image was now obliterated, either by solid fragments or by the immense clouds of mud and silt that were now beginning to fill the sea. He was becoming blind; there was nothing he could do but hold his course and pray.

With a m.u.f.fled thud, something crashed against the hull and the sub groaned from end to end. For a moment Franklin thought he had lost control; then he managed to fight the vessel back to an even keel. No sooner had he done this than he realized he was in the grip of a powerful current, presumably due to water displaced by the collapsing mountain. He welcomed it, for it was sweeping him to the safety of the open sea, and for the first time he dared to hope.

Where was Don? It was impossible to see his echo in the s.h.i.+fting chaos of the sonar screen. Franklin switched his communication set to high power and started calling through the moving darkness. There was no reply; probably Don was too busy to answer, even if he had received the signal.

The pounding shock waves had ceased; with them had gone the worst of Franklin's fears. There was no danger now of the hull being cracked by pressure, and by this time, surely, he was clear of the slowly toppling mountain. The current that had been aiding his engines had now lost its strength, proving that he was far away from its source. On the sonar screen, the luminous haze that had blocked all vision was fading minute by minute as the silt and debris subsided.

Slowly the wrecked face of the mountain emerged from the mist of conflicting echoes. The pattern on the screen began to stabilize itself, and presently Franklin could see the great scar left by the avalanche. The sea bed itself was still hidden in a vast fog of mud; it might be hours before it would be visible again and the damage wrought by Nature's paroxysm could be ascertained.

Franklin watched and waited as the screen cleared. With each sweep of the scanner, the sparkle of interference faded; the water was still turbid, but no longer full of suspended matter. He could see for a mile-then two-then three.

And in all that s.p.a.ce there was no sign of the sharp and brilliant echo that would mark Don's s.h.i.+p. Hope faded as his radius of vision grew and the screen remained empty. Again and again he called into the lonely silence, while grief and helplessness strove for the mastery of his soul.

He exploded the signal grenades that would alert all the hydrophones in the Pacific and send help racing to him by sea and air. But even as he began his slowly descending spiral search, he knew that it was in vain. Don Burley had lost his last bet.

PART THREE.

THE BUREAUCRAT

Eighteen

THE GREAT MERCATOR chart that covered the whole of one wall was a most unusual one. All the land areas were completely blank; as far as this map maker was concerned, the continents had never been explored. But the sea was crammed with detail, and scattered over its face were countless spots of colored light, projected by some mechanism inside the wall. Those spots moved slowly from hour to hour, recording as they did so, for skilled eyes to read, the migration of all the main schools of whales that roamed the seas.

Franklin had seen the master chart scores of times during the last fourteen years-but never from this vantage point. For he was looking at it now from the director's chair.

"There's no need for me to warn you, Walter," said his ex-chief, "that you are taking over the bureau at a very tricky time. Sometime in the next five years we're going to have a showdown with the farms. Unless we can improve our efficiency, plankton-derived proteins will soon be substantially cheaper than any we can deliver.

"And that's only one of our problems. The staff position is getting more difficult every year-and this sort of thing isn't going to help."

He pushed a folder across to Franklin, who smiled wryly when he saw what it contained. The advertis.e.m.e.nt was familiar enough; it had appeared in all the major magazines during the past week, and must have cost the s.p.a.ce Department a small fortune.

An underwater scene of improbable clarity and color was spread across two pages. Vast scaly monsters, more huge and hideous than any that had lived on Earth since the Jura.s.sic period, were battling each other in the crystalline depths. Franklin knew, from the photographs he had seen, that they were very accurately painted, and he did not grudge the ill.u.s.trator his artistic license in the matter of underwater clarity.

The text was dignified and avoided sensationalism; the painting was sensational enough and needed no embellishment. The s.p.a.ce Department, he read, urgently needed young men as wardens and food production experts for the exploitation of the seas of Venus. The work, it was added, was probably the most exciting and rewarding to be found anywhere in the solar system; pay was good and the qualifications were not as high as those needed for s.p.a.ce pilot or astrogator. After the short list of physical and educational requirements, the advertis.e.m.e.nt ended with the words which the Venus Commission had been plugging for the last six months, and which Franklin had grown heartily tired of seeing: help to build a second earth.

"Meanwhile," said the ex-director, "our problem is to keep the first one going, when the bright youngsters who might be joining us are running away to Venus. And between you and me, I shouldn't be surprised if the s.p.a.ce Department has been after some of our men."

"They wouldn't do a thing like that!"

"Wouldn't they now? Anyway, there's a transfer application in from First Warden McRae; if you can't talk him out of it, try to find what made him want to leave."

Life was certainly going to be difficult, Franklin thought. Joe McRae was an old friend; could he impose on that friends.h.i.+p now that he was Joe's boss?

"Another of your little problems is going to be keeping the scientists under control. Lundquist is worse than Roberts ever was; he's got about six crazy schemes going, and at least Roberts only had one brainstorm at a time. He spends half his time over on Heron Island. It might be a good idea to fly over and have a look at him. That was something I never had a chance to get around to."

Franklin was still listening politely as his predecessor continued, with obvious relish, to point out the many disadvantages of his new post. Most of them he already knew, and his mind was now far away. He was thinking how pleasant it would be to begin his directorate with an official visit to Heron Island, which he had not seen for nearly five years, and which had so many memories of his first days in the bureau.

Dr. Lundquist was flattered by the new director's visit, being innocent enough to hope that it might lead to increased support for his activities. He would not have been so enthusiastic had he guessed that the opposite was more likely to be the case. No one could have been more sympathetic than Franklin to scientific research, but now that he had to approve the bills himself he found that his point of view was subtly altered. Whatever Lundquist was doing would have to be of direct value to the bureau. Otherwise it was out-unless the Department of Scientific Research could be talked into taking it over.

Lundquist was a small, intense little man whose rapid and somewhat jerky movements reminded Franklin of a sparrow. He was an enthusiast of a type seldom met these days, and he combined a sound scientific background with an unfettered imagination. How unfettered, Franklin was soon to discover.

Yet at first sight it seemed that most of the work going on at the lab was of a fairly routine nature. Franklin spent a dull half-hour while two young scientists explained the methods they were developing to keep whales free of the many parasites that plagued them, and then escaped by the skin of his teeth from a lecture on cetacean obstetrics. He listened with more interest to the latest work on artificial insemination, having in the past helped with some of the early -and often hilariously unsuccessful-experiments along this line. He sniffed cautiously at some synthetic ambergris, and agreed that it seemed just like the real thing. And he listened to the recorded heartbeat of a whale before and after the cardiac operation that had saved its life, and pretended that he could hear the difference.

Everything here was perfectly in order, and just as he had expected. Then Lundquist steered him out of the lab and down to the big pool, saying as he did so: "I think you'll find this more interesting. It's only in the experimental stage, of course, but it has possibilities."

The scientist looked at his watch and muttered to himself, "Two minutes to go; she's usually in sight by now." He glanced out beyond the reef, then said with satisfaction, "Ah -there she is!"

A long black mound was moving in toward the island, and a moment later Franklin saw the typical stubby spout of vapor which identified the humpback whale. Almost at once he saw a second, much smaller spout, and realized that he was watching a female and her calf. Without hesitation, both animals came in through the narrow channel that had been blasted through the coral years ago so that small boats could come up to the lab. They turned left into a large tidal pool that had not been here on Franklin's last visit, and remained there waiting patiently like well-trained dogs.

Two lab technicians, wearing oilskins, were trundling something that looked like a fire extinguisher to the edge of the pool. Lundquist and Franklin hurried to join them, and it was soon obvious why the oilskins were necessary on this bright and cloudless day. Every time the whales spouted there was a miniature rainstorm, and Franklin was glad to borrow protection from the descending and nauseous spray.

Even a warden seldom saw a live whale at such close quarters, and under such ideal conditions. The mother was about fifty feet long, and, like all humpbacks, very ma.s.sively built. She was no beauty, Franklin decided, and the large, irregular warts along the leading edges of her flippers did nothing to add to her appearance. The little calf was about twenty feet in length, and did not appear to be too happy in its confined quarters, for it was anxiously circling its stolid mother.

One of the scientists gave a curious, high-pitched shout, and at once the whale rolled over on her side, bringing half of her pleated belly out of the water. She did not seem to mind when a large rubber cup was placed over the now-exposed teat; indeed, she was obviously co-operating, for the meter on the collecting tank was recording an astonis.h.i.+ng rate of flow.

"You know, of course," explained Lundquist, "that the cows eject their milk under pressure, so that the calves can feed when the teats are submerged without getting water in their mouths. But when the calves are very very young, the mother rolls over like this so that the baby can feed above water. It makes things a lot simpler for us." young, the mother rolls over like this so that the baby can feed above water. It makes things a lot simpler for us."

The obedient whale, without any instructions that Franklin could detect, had now circled round in her pen and was rolling over on the other side, so that her second teat could be milked. He looked at the meter; it now registered just under fifty gallons, and was still rising. The calf was obviously getting worried, or perhaps it had become excited by the milk that had accidentally spilled into the water. It made several attempts to bunt its mechanical rival out of the way, and had to be discouraged by a few sharp smacks.

Franklin was impressed, but not surprised. He knew that this was not the first time that whales had been milked, though he did not know that it could now be done with such neatness and dispatch. But where was it leading? Knowing Dr. Lundquist, he could guess.

"Now," said the scientist, obviously hoping that the demonstration had made its desired impact, "we can get at least five hundred pounds of milk a day from a cow without interfering with the calf's growth. And if we start breeding for milk as the farmers have done on land, we should be able to get a ton a day without any trouble. You think that's a lot? I regard it as quite a modest target. After all, prize cattle have given over a hundred pounds of milk a day-and a whale weighs a good deal more than twenty times as much as a cow!"

Franklin did his best to interrupt the statistics.

"That's all very well," he said. "I don't doubt your figures. And equally I don't doubt that you can process the milk to remove that oily taste-yes, I've tried it, thanks. But how the devil are you going to round up all the cows in a herd-especially a herd that migrates ten thousand miles a year?"

"Oh, we've worked all that out. It's partly a matter of training, and we've learned a lot getting Susan here to obey our underwater recordings. Have you ever been to a dairy farm and watched how the cows walk into the autolactor at milking time and walk out again-without a human being coming within miles of the place? And believe me, whales are a lot smarter and more easily trained than cows! I've sketched out the rough designs for a milk tanker that can deal with four whales at once, and could follow the herd as it migrates. In any case, now that we can control the plankton yield we can stop migration if we want to, and keep the whales in the tropics without them getting hungry. The whole thing's quite practical, I a.s.sure you."

Despite himself, Franklin was fascinated by the idea. It had been suggested, in some form or other, for many years, but Dr. Lundquist seemed to have been the first to do anything about it.

The mother whale and her still somewhat indignant calf had now set out to sea, and were soon spouting and diving noisily beyond the edge of the reef. As Franklin watched them go, he wondered if in a few years' time he would see hundreds of the great beasts lined up obediently as they swam to the mobile milking plants, each delivering a ton of what was known to be one of the richest foods on earth. But it might remain only a dream; there would be countless practical problems to be faced, and what had been achieved on the laboratory scale with a single animal might prove out of the question in the sea.

"What I'd like you to do," he said to Lundquist, "is to let me have a report showing what an-er-whale dairy would require in terms of equipment and personnel. Try to give costs wherever you can. And then estimate how much milk it could deliver, and what the processing plants would pay for that. Then we'll have something definite to work on. At the moment it's an interesting experiment, but no one can say if it has any practical application."

Lundquist seemed slightly disappointed at Franklin's lack of enthusiasm, but rapidly warmed up again as they walked away from the pool. If Franklin had thought that a little project like setting up a whale dairy had exhausted Lundquist's powers of extrapolation, he was going to learn better.

"The next proposal I want to talk about," began the scientist, "is still entirely in the planning stage. I know that one of our most serious problems is staff shortage, and I've been trying to think of ways in which we can improve efficiency by releasing men from routine jobs." "Surely that process has gone about as far as it can, short of making everything completely automatic? Anyway, it's less than a year since the last team of efficiency experts went over us." (And, added Franklin to himself, the bureau isn't quite back to normal yet.) "My approach to the problem," explained Lundquist, "is a little unconventional, and as an ex-warden yourself I think you'll be particularly interested in it. As you know, it normally takes two or even three subs to round up a large school of whales; if a single sub tries it, they'll scatter in all directions. Now this has often seemed to me a shocking waste of man power and equipment, since all the thinking could be done by a single warden. He only needs his partners to make the right noises in the right places-something a machine could do just as well."

"If you're thinking of automatic slave subs," said Franklin, "it's been tried-and it didn't work. A warden can't handle two s.h.i.+ps at once, let alone three."

"I know all about that that experiment," answered Lundquist. "It could have been a success if they'd tackled it properly. But my idea is much more revolutionary. Tell me-does the name 'sheep dog' mean anything to you?" experiment," answered Lundquist. "It could have been a success if they'd tackled it properly. But my idea is much more revolutionary. Tell me-does the name 'sheep dog' mean anything to you?"

Franklin wrinkled his brow. "I think so," he replied. "Weren't they dogs that the old-time shepherds used to protect their flocks, a few hundred years ago?"

"It happened until less than a hundred years ago. And 'protect' is an understatement with a vengeance. I've been looking at film records of sheep dogs in action, and no one who hadn't seen them would believe some of the things they could do. Those dogs were so intelligent and so well-trained that they could make a flock of sheep do anything the shepherd wanted, merely at a word of command from him. They could split a flock into sections, single out one solitary sheep from its fellows, or keep a flock motionless in one spot as long as their master ordered.

"Do you see what I am driving at? We've been training dogs for centuries, so such a performance doesn't seem miraculous to us. What I am suggesting is that we repeat the pattern in the sea. We know that a good many marine mammals-seals and porpoises, for instance-are at least as intelligent as dogs, but except in circuses and places like Marineland there's been no attempt to train them. You've seen the tricks our porpoises here can do, and you know how affectionate and friendly they are. When you've watched these old films of sheep-dog trials, you'll agree that anything a dog could do a hundred years ago we can teach a porpoise to do today."

"Just a minute," said Franklin, a little overwhelmed. Let me get this straight. Are you proposing that every warden should have a couple of-er-hounds working with him when he rounds up a school of whales?"

"For certain operations, yes. Of course, the technique would have limitations; no marine animal has the speed and range of a sub, and the hounds, as you've called them, couldn't always get to the places where they were needed. But I've done some studies and I think it would be possible to double the effectiveness of our wardens in this way, by eliminating the times when they had to work in pairs or trios."

"But," protested Franklin, "what notice would whales take of porpoises? They'd ignore them completely."

"Oh, I wasn't suggesting that we should use porpoises; that was merely an example. You're quite right-the whales wouldn't even notice them. We'll have to use an animal that's fairly large, at least as intelligent as the porpoise, and which whales will pay a great deal of attention to indeed. There's only one animal that fills the bill, and I'd like your authority to catch one and train it."

"Go on," said Franklin, with such a note of resignation in his voice that even Lundquist, who had little sense of humor, was forced to smile.

"What I want to do," he continued, "is to catch a couple of killer whales and train them to work with one of our wardens."

Franklin thought of the thirty-foot torpedoes of ravening power he had so often chased and slaughtered in the frozen polar seas. It was hard to picture one of these ferocious beasts tamed to man's bidding; then he remembered the chasm between the sheep dog and the wolf, and how that had long ago been bridged. Yes, it could be done again-if it was worthwhile.

When in doubt, ask for a report, one of his superiors had once told him. Well, he was going to bring back at least two from Heron Island, and they would both make very thought-provoking reading. But Lundquist's schemes, exciting though they were, belonged to the future; Franklin had to run the bureau as it was here and now. He would prefer to avoid drastic changes for a few years, until he had learned his way about. Besides, even if Lundquist's ideas could be proved practical, it would be a long, stiff battle selling them to the people who approved the funds. "I want to buy fifty milking machines for whales, please." Yes, Franklin could picture the reaction in certain conservative quarters. And as for training killer whales-why, they would think he had gone completely crazy.

He watched the island fall away as the plane lifted him toward home (strange, after all his travels, that he should be living again in the country of his birth). It was almost fifteen years since he had first made this journey with poor old Don; how glad Don would have been, could he have seen this final fruitof hiscarefultraining! AndProfessorStevens, too-Franklin had always been a little scared of him, but now he could have looked him in the face, had he still been alive. With a twinge of remorse, he realized that he had never properly thanked the psychologist for all that he had done.

Fifteen years from a neurotic trainee to director of the bureau; that wasn't bad going. And what now, Walter? Franklin asked himself. He felt no need of any further achievement; perhaps his ambition was now satisfied. He would be quite content to guide the bureau into a placid and uneventful future.

It was lucky for his peace of mind that he had no idea how futile that hope was going to be.

Nineteen.

THE PHOTOGRAPHER HAD finished, but the young man who had been Franklin's shadow for the last two days still seemed to have an unlimited supply of notebooks and questions. Was it worth all this trouble to have your undistinguished features-probably superimposed on a montage of whales-displayed upon every bookstand in the world? Franklin doubted it, but he had no choice in the matter. He remembered the saying: "Public servants have no private lives." Like all aphorisms, it was only half true. No one had ever heard of the last director of the bureau, and he might have led an equally inconspicuous existence if the Marine Division's Public Relations Department had not decreed otherwise.

"Quite a number of your people, Mr. Franklin," said the young man from Earth Magazine, Earth Magazine, "have told me about your interest in the so-called Great Sea Serpent, and the mission in which First Warden Burley was killed. Have there been any further developments in this field?" "have told me about your interest in the so-called Great Sea Serpent, and the mission in which First Warden Burley was killed. Have there been any further developments in this field?"

Franklin sighed; he had been afraid that this would come up sooner or later, and he hoped that it wouldn't be overplayed in the resulting article. He walked over to his private file cabinet, and pulled out a thick folder of notes and photographs.

"Here are all the sightings, Bob," he said. "You might like to have a glance through them-I've kept the record up to date. One day I hope we'll have the answer; you can say it's still a hobby of mine, but it's one I've had no chance of doing anything about for the last eight years. It's up to the Department of Scientific Research now-not the Bureau of Whales. We've other jobs to do."

He could have added a good deal more, but decided against it. If Secretary Parian had not been transferred from D.S.R. soon after the tragic failure of their mission, they might have had a second chance. But in the inquiries and recriminations that had followed the disaster, the opportunity had been lost, possibly for years. Perhaps in every man's life there must be some cherished failure, some unfinished business which outweighed many successes.

"Then there's only one other question I want to ask," continued the reporter. "What about the future of the bureau? Have you any interesting long-term plans you'd care to talk about?"

This was another tricky one. Franklin had learned long ago that men in his position must co-operate with the press, and in the last two days his busy interrogator had practically become one of the family. But there were some things that sounded a little too farfetched, and he had contrived to keep Dr. Lundquist out of the way when Bob had flown over to Heron Island. True, he had seen the prototype milking machine and been duly impressed by it, but he had been told nothing about the two young killer whales being maintained, at great trouble and expense, in the enclosure off the eastern edge of the reef.

"Well, Bob," he began slowly, "by this time you probably know the statistics better than I do. We hope to increase the size of our herds by ten per cent over the next five years. If this milking scheme comes off-and it's still purely experimental-we'll start cutting back on the sperm whales and will build up the humpbacks. At the moment we are providing twelve and a half per cent of the total food requirements of the human race, and that's quite a responsibility. I hope to see it fifteen per cent while I'm still in office."

"So that everyone in the world will have whale steak at least once a week, eh?"

"Put it that way if you like. But people are eating whale all day without knowing it-every time they use cooking fat or spread margarine on a piece of bread. We could double our output and we'd get no credit for it, since our products are almost always disguised in something else."

"The Art Department is going to put that right; when the story appears, we'll have a picture of the average household's groceries for a week, with a clock face on each item showing what percentage of it comes from whales."

"That'll be fine. Er-by the way-have you decided what you're going to call me?"

The reporter grinned.

"That's up to my editor," he answered. "But I'll tell him to avoid the word 'whaleboy' like the plague. It's too hackneyed, anyway."

"Well, I'll believe you when we see the article. Every journalist promises he won't call us that, but it seems they can never resist the temptation. Incidentally, when do you expect the story to appear?"

"Unless some news story crowds it off, in about four weeks. You'll get the proofs, of course, before that-probably by the end of next week."

Franklin saw him off through the outer office, half sorry to lose an entertaining companion who, even if he asked awkward questions, more than made up for it by the stories he could tell about most of the famous men on the planet. Now, he supposed, he belonged to that group himself, for at least a hundred million people would read the current "Men of Earth" Earth" series. series.

The story appeared, as promised, four weeks later. It was accurate, well-written, and contained one mistake so trivial that Franklin himself had failed to notice it when he checked the proofs. The photographic coverage was excellent and contained an astonis.h.i.+ng study of a baby whale suckling its mother-a shot obviously obtained at enormous risk and after months of patient stalking. The fact that it was actually taken in the pool at Heron Island without the photographer even getting his feet wet was an irrelevance not allowed to distract the reader.

Apart from the shocking pun beneath the cover picture ("Prince of Whales," indeed!), Franklin was delighted with it; so was everyone else in the bureau, the Marine Division, and even the World Food Organization itself. No one could have guessed that within a few weeks it was to involve the Bureau of Whales in the greatest crisis of its entire history.

It was not lack of foresight; sometimes the future can be charted in advance, and plans made to meet it. But there are also times in human affairs when events that seem to have no possible connection-to be as remote as if they occurred on different planets-may react upon each other with shattering violence.

The Bureau of Whales was an organization which had taken half a century to build up, and which now employed twenty thousand men and possessed equipment valued at over two billion dollars. It was a typical unit of the scientific world state, with all the power and prestige which that implied.

And now it was to be shaken to its foundations by the gentle words of a man who had lived half a thousand years before the birth of Christ.

Franklin was in London when the first hint of trouble came. It was not unusual for officers of the World Food Organization to bypa.s.s his immediate superiors in the Marine Division and to contact him directly. What was unusual, however, was for the secretary of the W.F.O. himself to interfere with the everyday working of the bureau, causing Franklin to cancel all his engagements and to find himself, still a little dazed, flying halfway around the world to a small town in Ceylon of which he had never heard before and whose name he could not even p.r.o.nounce.

Fortunately, it had been a hot summer in London and the extra ten degrees at Colombo was not unduly oppressive. Franklin was met at the airport by the local W.F.O. representative, looking very cool and comfortable in the sarong which had now been adopted by even the most conservative of westerners. He shook hands with the usual array of minor officials, was relieved to see that there were no reporters around who might tell him more about this mission than he knew himself, and swiftly transferred to the cross-country plane which would take him on the last hundred miles of his journey.

"Now," he said, when he had recovered his breath and the miles of neatly laid-out automatic tea plantations were flas.h.i.+ng past beneath him, "you'd better start briefing me. Why is it so important to rush me to Anna-whatever you call the place?"

"Anuradhapura. Hasn't the secretary told you?"

"We had just five minutes at London Airport. So you might as well start from scratch."