From the Ocean from teh Stars (22 page)

reau'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 psycho
logical factors, a bright young plant inspector discovered that some of the bloody 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 fu
ture 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
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 some
where 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 bu
reau'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 anticipated 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 sup
posed 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. Essen
tially, it's a long-range sonar scanner that explores a volume of space
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 some
where 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 Frankhn 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-fashioned sixteen-millimeter film—still unsurpassed in its own field as a re-

cording medium. He looked at thousands of echoes as he projected the
film, condensing into minutes the comings and goings of giant sea crea
tures 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 scan
ner. 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 passed.

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

A very large animal, too long and thin to be any of the known crea
tures of the sea, lived at the astonishing 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 sud
denly 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.

☆
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Y
ou 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
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
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 embarrassed.

"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 embarrassed.

"Well—ah—it isn't Marie. I was just trying to say good-by to
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"
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 ship slanted swiftly down into the eternal night. It was not strictly true, of course; even though he had now been promoted to a permanent shore 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 multitudinous 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 ship, 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 gratitude 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 re-create 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 space his empire. There was only a wistful sadness, not even wholly unpleasant, and a mild regret for the inconstancy of sorrow.