The Deep Range Part 9

"And you want to be that somebody. Well, that's reasonable enough. When I got your original letter I had a talk with my marine biology people, and got about three different opinions-none of them very encouraging. Some of those who admit that these echoes have been seen say that they are probably ghosts due to faults in the sonar sets or returns from discontinuities of some kind in the water."

Franklin snorted. "Anyone who's seen them would know better than that. After all, we're familiar with all the ordinary sonar ghosts and false returns. We have to be."

"Yes, that's what I feel. Some more of my people think that the-let us say-conventional sea serpents have already been accounted for by squids, oarfish, and eels, and that what your patrols have been seeing is either one of these or else a large deep-sea shark."

Franklin shook his head. "I know what all those echoes look like. This is quite different."

"The third objection is a theoretical one. There simply isn't enough food in the extreme ocean depths to support any very large and active forms of life."

"No one can be sure of that. Only in the last century scientists were saying that there could be no life at all on the ocean bed. We know what nonsense that that turned out to be." turned out to be."

"Well, you've made a good case. I'll see what can be done."

"Thank you very much, Mr. Parian. Perhaps it would be best if no one in the bureau knew that I'd come to see you."

"We won't tell them, but they'll guess." The secretary rose to his feet, and Franklin a.s.sumed that the interview was over. He was wrong.

"Before you go, Mr. Franklin," said the secretary, "you might be able to clear up one little matter that's been worrying me for a good many years."

"What's that, sir?"

"I've never understood what a presumably well-trained warden would be doing in the middle of the night off the Great Barrier Reef, breathing compressed air five hundred feet down."

There was a long silence while the two men, their relations.h.i.+p suddenly altered, stared at each other across the room. Franklin searched his memory, but the other's face evoked no echoes; that was so long ago, and he had met so many people during the intervening years.

"Were you one of the men who pulled me in?" he asked. "If so, I've a lot to thank you for." He paused for a moment, then added, "You see, that wasn't an accident."

"I rather thought so; that explains everything. But before we change the subject, just what happened to Bert Darryl? I've never been able to find the true story."

"Oh, eventually he ran out of credit; he could never make the Sea Lion Sea Lion pay its way. The last time I ever saw him was in Melbourne; he was heartbroken because customs duties had been abolished and there was no way an honest smuggler could make a living. Finally he tried to collect the insurance on the pay its way. The last time I ever saw him was in Melbourne; he was heartbroken because customs duties had been abolished and there was no way an honest smuggler could make a living. Finally he tried to collect the insurance on the Sea Lion Sea Lion; he had a convincing fire and had to abandon s.h.i.+p off Cairns. She went to the bottom, but the appraisers went after her, and started asking some very awkward questions when they found that all the valuable fittings had been removed before the fire. I don't know how the captain got out of that mess."

"That was about the end of the old rascal. He took to the bottle in earnest, and one night up in Darwin he decided to go for a swim off the jetty. But he'd forgotten that it was low tide-and in Darwin the tide drops thirty feet. So he broke his neck, and a lot of people besides his creditors were genuinely sorry."

"Poor old Bert. The world will be a dull place when there aren't any more people like him."

That was rather a heretical remark, thought Franklin, coming from the lips of so senior a member of the World Secretariat. But it pleased him greatly, and not merely because he agreed with it. He knew now that he had unexpectedly acquired an influential friend, and that the chances of his project going forward had been immeasurably improved.

He did not expect anything to happen in a hurry, so was not disappointed as the weeks pa.s.sed in silence. In any event, he was kept busy; the slack season was still three months away, and meanwhile a whole series of minor but annoying crises crowded upon him.

And there was one that was neither minor nor annoying, if indeed it could be called a crisis at all. Anne Franklin arrived wide-eyed and wide-mouthed into the world, and Indra began to have her first serious doubts of continuing her academic career.

Franklin, to his great disappointment, was not home when his daughter was born. He had been in charge of a small task force of six subs, carrying out an offensive sweep off the Pribilof Islands in an attempt to cut down the number of killer whales. It was not the first mission of its kind, but it was the most successful, thanks to the use of improved techniques. The characteristic calls of seals and the smaller whales had been recorded and played back into the sea, while the subs had waited silently for the killers to appear.

They had done so in hundreds, and the slaughter had been immense. By the time the little fleet returned to Base, more than a thousand orcas had been killed. It had been hard and sometimes dangerous work, and despite its importance Franklin had found this scientific butchery extremely depressing. He could not help admiring the beauty, speed, and ferocity of the hunters he was himself hunting, and toward the end of the mission he was almost glad when the rate of kill began to fall off. It seemed that the orcas were learning by bitter experience, and the bureau's statisticians would have to decide whether or not it would be economically worthwhile repeating the operation next season.

Franklin had barely had time to thaw out from this mission and to fondle Anne gingerly, without extracting any signs of recognition from her, when he was shot off to South Georgia. His problem there was to discover why the whales, who had previously swum into the slaughtering pens without any qualms, had suddenly become suspicious and shown a great reluctance to enter the electrified sluices. As it turned out, he did nothing at all to solve the mystery; while he was still looking for psychological factors, a bright young plant inspector discovered that some of the b.l.o.o.d.y waste from the processing plants was accidentally leaking back into the sea. It was not surprising that the whales, though their sense of smell was not as strongly developed as in other marine animals, had become alarmed as the moving barriers tried to guide them to the place where so many of their relatives had met their doom.

As a chief warden, already being groomed for higher things, Franklin was now a kind of mobile trouble shooter who might be sent anywhere in the world on the bureau's business. Apart from the effect on his home life, he welcomed this state of affairs. Once a man had learned the mechanics of a warden's trade, straightforward patrolling and herding had little future in it. People like Don Burley got all the excitement and pleasure they needed from it, but then Don was neither ambitious nor much of an intellectual heavyweight. Franklin told himself this without any sense of superiority; it was a simple statement of fact which Don would be the first to admit.

He was in England, giving evidence as an expert witness before the Whaling Commission-the bureau's state-appointed watchdog-when he received a plaintive call from Dr. Lundquist, who had taken over when Dr. Roberts had left the Bureau of Whales to accept a much more lucrative appointment at the Marineland aquarium.

"I've just had three crates of gear delivered from the Department of Scientific Research. It's nothing we ever ordered, but your name is on it. What's it all about?"

Franklin thought quickly. It would would arrive when he was away, and if the director came across it before he could prepare the ground there would be fireworks. arrive when he was away, and if the director came across it before he could prepare the ground there would be fireworks.

"It's too long a story to give now," Franklin answered. "I've got to go before the committee in ten minutes. Just push it out of the way somewhere until I get back-I'll explain everything then."

"I hope it's all right-it's most unusual."

"Nothing to worry about-see you the day after tomorrow. If Don Burley comes to Base, let him have a look at the stuff. But I'll fix all the paper work when I get back."

That, he told himself, would be the worst part of the whole job. Getting equipment that had never been officially requisitioned onto the bureau's inventory without too many questions was going to be at least as difficult as locating the Great Sea Serpent....

He need not have worried. His new and influential ally, the secretary of the Department of Scientific Research, had already antic.i.p.ated most of his problems. The equipment was to be on loan to the bureau, and was to be returned as soon as it had done its job. What was more, the director had been given the impression that the whole thing was a D.S.R. project; he might have his doubts, but Franklin was officially covered.

"Since you seem to know all about it, Walter," he said in the lab when the gear was finally unpacked, "you'd better explain what it's supposed to do."

"It's an automatic recorder, much more sophisticated than the ones we have at the gates for counting the whales as they go through. Essentially, it's a long-range sonar scanner that explores a volume of s.p.a.ce fifteen miles in radius, clear down to the bottom of the sea. It rejects all fixed echoes, and will only record moving objects. And it can also be set to ignore all objects of less than any desired size. In other words, we can use it to count the number of whales more than, say, fifty feet long, and take no notice of the others. It does this once every six minutes-two hundred and forty times a day -so it will give a virtually continuous census of any desired region."

"Quite ingenious. I suppose D.S.R. wants us to moor the thing somewhere and service it?"

"Yes-and to collect the recordings every week. They should be very useful to us as well. Er-there are three of the things, by the way."

"Trust D.S.R. to do it in style! I wish we had as much money to throw around. Let me know how the things work -if they do."

It was as simple as that, and there had been no mention at all of sea serpents.

Nor was there any sign of them for more than two months. Every week, whatever patrol sub happened to be in the neighborhood would bring back the records from the three instruments, moored half a mile below sea level at the spots Franklin had chosen after a careful study of all the known sightings. With an eagerness which slowly subsided to a stubborn determination, he examined the hundreds of feet of old-fas.h.i.+oned sixteen-millimeter film-still unsurpa.s.sed in its own field as a recording medium. He looked at thousands of echoes as he projected the film, condensing into minutes the comings and goings of giant sea creatures through many days and nights.

Usually the pictures were blank, for he had set the discriminator to reject all echoes from objects less than seventy feet in length. That, he calculated, should eliminate all but the very largest whales-and the quarry he was seeking. When the herds were on the move, however, the film would be dotted with echoes which would jump across the screen at fantastically exaggerated speeds as he projected the images. He was watching the life of the sea accelerated almost ten thousand times.

After two months of fruitless watching, he began to wonder if he had chosen the wrong places for all three recorders, and was making plans to move them. When the next rolls of film came back, he told himself, he would do just that, and he had already decided on the new locations.

But this time he found what he had been looking for. It was on the edge of the screen, and had been caught by only four sweeps of the scanner. Two days ago that unforgotten, curiously linear echo had appeared on the recorder; now he had evidence, but he still lacked proof.

He moved the other two recorders into the area, arranging the three instruments in a great triangle fifteen miles on a side, so that their fields overlapped. Then it was a question of waiting with what patience he could until another week had pa.s.sed.

The wait was worth it; at the end of that time he had all the ammunition he needed for his campaign. The proof was there, clear and undeniable.

A very large animal, too long and thin to be any of the known creatures of the sea, lived at the astonis.h.i.+ng depth of twenty thousand feet and came halfway to the surface twice a day, presumably to feed. From its intermittent appearance on the screens of the recorders, Franklin was able to get a fairly good idea of its habits and movements. Unless it suddenly left the area and he lost track of it, there should be no great difficulty in repeating the success of Operation Percy.

He should have remembered that in the sea nothing is ever twice the same.

Seventeen.

"YOU KNOW, dear," said Indra, "I'm rather glad this is going to be one of your last missions."

"If you think I'm getting too old-"

"Oh, it's not only that. When you're on headquarters duty we'll be able to start leading a normal social life. I'll be able to invite people to dinner without having to apologize because you've suddenly been called out to round up a sick whale. And it will be better for the children; I won't have to keep explaining to them who the strange man is they sometimes meet around the house."

"Well, it's not that that bad, is it, Pete?" laughed Franklin, tousling his son's dark, unruly hair. bad, is it, Pete?" laughed Franklin, tousling his son's dark, unruly hair.

"When are you going to take me down in a sub, Daddy?" asked Peter, for approximately the hundredth time.

"One of these days, when you're big enough not to get in the way."

"But if you wait until I am big, I will will get in the way." get in the way."

"There's logic for you!" said Indra. "I told you my child was a genius."

"He may have got his hair from you," said Franklin, "but it doesn't follow that you're responsible for what lies beneath it." He turned to Don, who was making ridiculous noises for Anne's benefit. She seemed unable to decide whether to laugh or to burst into tears, but was obviously giving the problem her urgent attention. "When are you going to settle down to the joys of domesticity? You can't be an honorary uncle all your life."

For once, Don looked a little embarra.s.sed.

"As a matter of fact," he said slowly, "I am thinking about it. I've met someone at last who looks as if she might be willing."

"Congratulations! I thought you and Marie were seeing a lot of each other."

Don looked still more embarra.s.sed.

"Well-ah-it isn't Marie. I was just trying to say good-by to her." her."

"Oh," said Franklin, considerably deflated. "Who is it?"

"I don't think you know her. She's named June-June Curtis. She isn't in the bureau at all, which is an advantage in some ways. I've not quite made up my mind yet, but I'll probably ask her next week."

"There's only one thing to do," said Indra firmly. "As soon as you come back from this hunt, bring her around to dinner and I'll tell you what we think of her."

"And I'll tell her what we think of you," you," put in Franklin. "We can't be fairer than that, can we?" put in Franklin. "We can't be fairer than that, can we?"

He remembered Indra's words-"this is going to be one of your last missions"-as the little depth s.h.i.+p slanted swiftly down into the eternal night. It was not strictly true, of course; even though he had now been promoted to a permanent sh.o.r.e position, he would still occasionally go to sea. But the opportunities would become fewer and fewer; this was his swan song as a warden, and he did not know whether to be sorry or glad.

For seven years he had roamed the oceans-one year of his life to each of the seas-and in that time he had grown to know the creatures of the deep as no man could ever have done in any earlier age. He had watched the sea in all its moods; he had coasted over mirror-flat waters, and had felt the surge of mighty waves lifting his vessel when it was a hundred feet below the storm-tossed surface. He had looked upon beauty and horror and birth and death in all their mult.i.tudinous forms, as he moved through a liquid world so teeming with life that by comparison the land was an empty desert.

No man could ever exhaust the wonder of the sea, but Franklin knew that the time had come for him to take up new tasks. He looked at the sonar screen for the accompanying cigar of light which was Don's s.h.i.+p, and thought affectionately of their common characteristics and of the differences which now must take them further and further apart. Who would have imagined, he told himself, that they would become such good friends, that far-off day when they had met warily as instructor and pupil?

That had been only seven years ago, but already it was hard for him to remember the sort of person he had been in those days. He felt an abiding grat.i.tude for the psychologists who had not only rebuilt his mind but had found him the work that could rebuild his life.

His thoughts completed the next, inevitable step. Memory tried to recreate Irene and the boys-good heavens, Rupert would be twelve years old now!-around whom his whole existence had once revolved, but who now were strangers drifting further and further apart year by year. The last photograph he had of them was already more than a year old; the last letter from Irene had been posted on Mars six months ago, and he reminded himself guiltily that he had not yet answered it.

All the grief had gone long ago; he felt no pain at being an exile in his own world, no ache to see once more the faces of friends he had known in the days when he counted all s.p.a.ce his empire. There was only a wistful sadness, not even wholly unpleasant, and a mild regret for the inconstancy of sorrow.

Don's voice broke into his reverie, which had never taken his attention away from his crowded instrument panel.

"We're just pa.s.sing my record, Walt. Ten thousand's the deepest I've ever been."

"And we're only halfway there. Still, what difference does it make if you've got the right s.h.i.+p? It just takes a bit longer to go down, and a bit longer to come up. These tubs would still have a safety factor of five at the bottom of the Philippine Trench."

"That's true enough, but you can't convince me there's no psychological difference. Don't you you feel two miles of water on your shoulders?" feel two miles of water on your shoulders?"

It was most unlike Don to be so imaginative; usually it was Franklin who made such remarks and was promptly laughed at. If Don was getting moody, it would be best to give him some of his own medicine.

"Tell me when you've got to start bailing," said Franklin. "If the water gets up to your chin, we'll turn back."

He had to admit that the feeble joke helped his own morale. The knowledge that the pressure around him was rising steadily to five tons per square inch did have a definite effect on his mind-an effect he had never experienced in shallow-water operations where disaster could be just as instantaneous, just as total. He had complete confidence in his equipment and knew that the sub would do all that he asked it to; but he still felt that curious feeling of depression which seemed to have taken most of the zest out of the project into which he had put so much effort.

Five thousand feet lower down, that zest returned with all its old vigor. They both saw the echo simultaneously, and for a moment were shouting at cross purposes until they remembered their signals discipline. When silence had been restored, Franklin gave his orders.

"Cut your motor to quarter speed," he said. "We know the beast's very sensitive and we don't want to scare it until the last minute."

"Can't we flood the bow tanks and glide down?"

"Take too long-he's still three thousand feet below. And cut your sonar to minimum power; I don't want him picking up our pulses." The animal was moving in a curiously erratic path at a constant depth, sometimes making little darts to right or left as if in search of food. It was following the slopes of an unusually steep submarine mountain, which rose abruptly some four thousand feet from the sea bed. Not for the first time, Franklin thought what a pity it was that the world's most stupendous scenery was all sunk beyond sight in the ocean depths. Nothing on the land could compare with the hundred-mile-wide canyons of the North Atlantic, or the monstrous potholes that gave the Pacific the deepest soundings on earth.

They sank slowly below the summit of the submerged mountain-a mountain whose topmost peak was three miles below sea level. Only a little way beneath them now that mysteriously elongated echo seemed to be undulating through the water with a sinuous motion which reminded Franklin irresistibly of a snake. It would, he thought, be ironic if the Great Sea Serpent turned out to be exactly that. But that was impossible, for there were no water-breathing snakes.

Neither man spoke during the slow and cautious approach to their goal. They both realized that this was one of the great moments of their lives, and wished to savor it to the full. Until now, Don had been mildly skeptical, believing that whatever they found would be no more than some already-known species of animal. But as the echo on the screen expanded, so its strangeness grew. This was something wholly new.

The mountain was now looming above them; they were skirting the foot of a cliff more than two thousand feet high, and their quarry was less than half a mile ahead. Franklin felt his hand itching to throw on the ultraviolet searchlights which in an instant might solve the oldest mystery of the sea, and bring him enduring fame. How important to him was that? he asked himself, as the seconds ticked slowly by. That it was important, he did not attempt to hide from himself. In all his career, he might never have another opportunity like this...

Suddenly, without the slightest warning, the sub trembled as if struck by a hammer. At the same moment Don cried out: "My G.o.d-what was that?"

"Some d.a.m.n fool is letting off explosives," Franklin replied, rage and frustration completely banis.h.i.+ng fear. "Wasn't everyone notified of our dive?"

"That's no explosion. I've felt it before-it's an earthquake."

No other word could so swiftly have conjured up once more all that terror of the ultimate depths which Franklin had felt brus.h.i.+ng briefly against his mind during their descent. At once the immeasurable weight of the waters crushed down upon him like a physical burden; his st.u.r.dy craft seemed the frailest of c.o.c.klesh.e.l.ls, already doomed by forces which all man's science could no longer hold at bay.

He knew that earthquakes were common in the deep Pacific, where the weights of rock and water were forever poised in precarious equilibrium. Once or twice on patrols he had felt distant shocks-but this time, he felt certain, he was near the epicenter.

"Make full speed for the surface," he ordered. "That may be just the beginning."

"But we only need another five minutes," Don protested. "Let's chance it, Walt."

Franklin was sorely tempted. That single shock might be the only one; the strain on the tortured strata miles below might have been relieved. He glanced at the echo they had been chasing; it was moving much faster now, as if it, too, had been frightened by this display of Nature's slumbering power.

"We'll risk it," Franklin decided. "But if there's another one we'll go straight up."

"Fair enough," answered Don. "I'll bet you ten to one-"

He never completed the sentence. This time the hammer blow was no more violent, but it was sustained. The entire ocean seemed to be in travail as the shock waves, traveling at almost a mile a second, were reflected back and forth between surface and sea bed. Franklin shouted the one word "Up!" and tilted the sub as steeply as he dared toward the distant sky.