From the Ocean from teh Stars (23 page)

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

"We're just passing 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 ship? It just takes a bit longer to go down, and a bit
longer to come up. These subs 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
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. Noth
ing 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 im
portant, 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 God—what was
that?"

"Some damn fool is letting off explosives," Franklin replied, rage and
frustration completely banishing 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 brushing briefly
against his mind during their descent. At once the immeasurable weight
of the waters crushed down upon him like a physical burden; his sturdy
craft seemed the frailest of cockleshells, 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 equilib
rium. 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 re
lieved. 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.

But the sky was gone. The sharply defined plane which marked the
water-air interface on the sonar screen had vanished, replaced by a mean
ingless jumble of hazy echoes. For a moment Franklin assumed 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 with
out 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 muffled 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 shifting 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 tur
bid, but no longer full of suspended matter. He could see for a mile—
then two—then three.

And in all that space there was no sign of the sharp and brilliant echo
that would mark Don's ship. 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 III
The Bureaucrat

☆
CHAPTER 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 advertisement was familiar enough; it had appeared in all the major magazines during the past week, and must have cost the Space Department a small xortune.

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 Jurassic 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 illustrator his artistic license in the matter of underwater clarity.