_Six_
Fourteen hours later the _Esperance_ made ready to sail from ThrawnIsland. Her purpose was to carry the plastic objects to Manila, wherethey would be turned over to specialized laboratories to be studied.Five such objects had been found before: one in the Thrawn Islandlagoon, while the satellite-tracking station was under construction, andfour attached to exotic fish brought to market by the commercial fishingboat _La Rubia_. Now there were eight more, of four different kinds. Tothe laboratories would go Terry's observation that one kind of theseobjects absorbed sound at audible frequencies and retransmitted it atmuch higher ones, but only under water. All this was very interestingand very puzzling.
But a serious disturbance had arisen at the tracking station.
Dr. Morton came to the _Esperance_ before her departure. He had aproblem. He'd predicted to the minute, and almost to the mile, thelanding of the bolide of the night before. That was the first accurateprediction of the kind in history. But his forecast stood alone in itsprecision. Nobody else had even come near being right. Now he was beinginsistently queried by astronomers the world over. They wanted to knowhow he'd done it. In particular, they wanted to know how he'd figuredthat the bolide would lose just so many feet per second velocity,neither more nor less, in a three-quarter orbit around the world. Nobodyelse had such a figure in his equation for the landing spot. Dr. Mortonhad. His prediction had been exact. Where did he get that necessary butinexplicable figure?
He beckoned Davis and Terry to go below with him, in the _Esperance's_after cabin. Terry hesitated.
"You may as well hear my troubles," said Morton vexedly. "You're largelyresponsible for them."
Terry followed uneasily. He didn't see how Dr. Morton could hold themresponsible. He had guarded his own guesses about the _Esperance's_discoveries against even the slightest expression. He couldn't lethimself believe in their correctness, but he was appalled at theinadequacy of all other explanations of past events.
"In sixteen months," said Morton annoyedly, down below, "we've spottedsix bolides coming in to land in the Luzon Deep. That's out of allreason! Of course, it could be a mathematical series of wildly unlikelycoincidences, such as probability says may happen sometimes. Up to lastnight that seemed to be a possible explanation."
Davis nodded. His expression was odd.
"But now," said Morton somehow indignantly, "that's ruled out! It'sruled out by last night's bolide, and yesterday's fishing experiment,and that business of the shining sea, plus those damned plastic gadgetsand deep sea fish thriving in shallow water! There's no reasonableexplanation for such things, and they're not mere coincidences!"
"I'm afraid," admitted Davis, "that they're not."
"The obvious explanation," said Morton doggedly, "I refuse to name orconsider. But nevertheless the question is not whether a theory or anexplanation is unlikely or not. The question is whether it's true!"
Davis nodded. Terry had to agree. But the way people are trained inmodern times puts a great emphasis on reason, often at the expense offact. Terry felt the customary civilized reluctance to accept astatistically improbable idea.
"I'm on a spot," fumed Morton. "I calculated that the damned bolidewould slow after it went into orbit around the earth. I calculated thatit would slow exactly so much. Do you want to know how I figured howmuch it should slow down? I'll tell you! I calculated exactly how muchit would have to slow to be able to fall into the Luzon Deep! It didslow. It did fall there. But how am I going to explain that toWashington?"
Terry suddenly felt a warm sympathy for Morton. It is bad enough todispute with oneself when something incredible happens. But Dr. Mortonhad gone out on a limb. He'd been caught psychologically naked tellingthe truth, and now he was asked to explain it. And he couldn't.
"This thing has got to come to a head!" he said angrily. "Sooner orlater they'll find out that I don't calculate where it'll land by itsbehavior in space but by its landing spot! Davis, you've talked aboutstirring something up. For Heaven's sake, do it! You may save myreputation! And you...."
"I'll try to think of something," said Davis reservedly.
"I've got to have proof that my suspicions are right or wrong before I'mruined. I know what you're planning to do. Do it! Is there anything thatcan be done here to help?"
Davis spread out his hands helplessly. But Terry said, "Yes. Send a boatevery so often to listen at the gap in the reef. Put an oar overboardand put your ear to the handle. You should hear the underwater hum, ifit's still there. It was there this morning."
Morton looked at him suspiciously.
"Why check on it? Should it change?"
"Perhaps," said Terry. "We've speared most of the deep-sea fish in thelagoon. Maybe we've interfered with ... the reports from the plasticobjects, telling what was happening up here. There may be a reaction. Ifso, most likely the humming will stop, and after a longer or shortertime begin again. And then, if my guess is right, there'll be moredeep-sea creatures in the lagoon."
"Ha," said Morton. "I think you and I have the same kind of delusions!All right. I'll see that that's done. You two do the rest."
He went abovedecks. When Terry got on deck, Dr. Morton's angular figurewas already marching along the wharf to the shore.
There was no ceremony of departure. The _Esperance_ cast off and herengine started. She moved toward the lagoon entrance under power only,but her sails were hoisted as she floated on, and Jug Bell was trimmingthe jib when she cleared the opening to the sea.
The humming in the water was still audible to the submarine ear, closeto the land. It occurred to Terry to take a bearing on the source of thesound, noting both the compass direction and the vertical angle fromthe reef. If his vertical-angle reading was accurate, a line from thereef to the source of the sound would touch the bottom at twenty-seventhousand feet down, between four and five miles away.
The _Esperance_ sailed on. The humming duly faded away. Terry left therecorder picking up undersea sounds, without recording them. It relayedthe underwater sounds to the people on deck. It was in Terry's mind tokeep at least half an ear cocked to it, in case the mooing sounds, heardand recorded elsewhere, should come again.
They did not. The _Esperance_ went methodically on her way, headed southby east, under sail. A slowly swaying horizon of unbroken sea was allabout. There was nothing in the least unusual or mysterious to be seenanywhere.
Presently, Terry found himself in conversation with Deirdre, and theworld seemed so blatantly normal that their talk dodged all unusualtrends. They talked about their childhoods, about things they had doneand places they had seen.
At about four in the afternoon Nick bellowed, "_Thar she blows!_" in afine attempt at proper whaling ship style, and all the _Esperance's_company joined to watch a spouting far ahead. The yacht changed course alittle, and presently reached a pod of sperm whales at the surface. Thehuge dark bodies moved leisurely through the water. Jud displayed greaterudition on the subject and explained in detail how their spoutingproved them to be sperm whales. Deirdre pointed out a baby whale closebeside a larger one.
They sailed on, leaving the whales behind. The crew-cuts, inevitably,argued about them. They canvassed all the information and misinformationthey possessed and came up with a heated discussion about whales, howthey can swim down to the enormous depths without suffering from thebends on rising again. Then the conversation turned to the food theyeat. Whalers, in the old days, had found snouts of squids and undigestedsections of squids' tentacles in the stomachs of harpooned sperm whales.There were reports of sections of tentacles four feet thick, implying astartling total size, all of which proved that the whales had been atthe bottom of the ocean, where such gigantic squids can be found. Thesewere the reports of reliable whaling skippers. Certainly the scars madeby the tentacular arms of huge squids, indicating battle, have beenfound on the skin of sperm whales, and there have been reports ofbattles on the surface between whales and squids of sizes mostnaturalists would be unwilling to certify. In such cases it wa
s assumedthat the squids had been attacked at the bottom of the sea and hadfollowed the whale to the surface when it came up in need of air.Certainly only an enormous squid would be able to sustain a battle witha whale.
Terry listened to the discussion. Everybody had his own opinion.
"You'd never settle the argument, unless you could put a camera and aflash gun on a whale and get an instrument-report from it."
Which was not a new idea, of course. But it was curious that the thoughtof sending self-reporting instruments down to the bottom of the sea hadbeen suggested by his own suspicion that similar instruments had beensent up from below. Sounding lines had been lowered with thermometersand nets and sampling machines. Core-takers had been dropped to getsamplings of abyssal mud. But tethered instrumentation is never morethan so useful.
Deirdre said something. Terry realized that she'd repeated it. He'dbecome absorbed in the possibilities of instrument-reporting from thesurface to the depths and back again.
"You're not listening," protested Deirdre. "I'm talking about thebathyscaphe that ought to be in Manila any day now."
"I'm trying to picture myself going down in a bathyscaphe," said Terryhastily. "I don't think I'd like it."
A bathyscaphe is a metal sphere with walls and windows of enormousthickness, hung from a metal balloon filled with gasoline for flotation.It is lowered to appalling depths with the help of heavy ballast, and isequipped with electric motors for independent motion. It carriespowerful electric reflectors which allow as much as thirty or forty feetof visibility. It rises to the surface again when its ballast isdumped. There are only three such undersea exploring devices in thewhole world.
"I'm not at all sure you wouldn't like it," said Deirdre.
Terry scowled at his own thoughts. There are opinions a man holds firmlywithout ever being aware of them, unless they are challenged, and ifthat happens, he is deeply suspicious of the challenge because itsuggests that his opinion needs to be re-examined. Terry had beengathering scraps of information here, and unquestionable items there,resisting a conclusion all the while.
It seemed fantastic to think that the plastic objects carried bydeep-sea fish out of their natural environment were actually man-madeinstruments--telemetering apparatus closely comparable to the devicesused to transmit information from outer space. It was wildly imaginativeto suppose that they transmitted information from the water surface tothe depths of the ocean; that fish had been driven up from the abyss inorder to report what went on at the surface. Report to whom? It was themost fantastic of fantasies to think that there was curiosity, in theLuzon Deep, about the manners and customs of the inhabitants of thesurface waters and of those areas not covered by the sea.
But Terry stopped short. There were limits to the ideas he would allowhis brain to think about.
Deirdre walked away, and he assured himself he never thought of anythingso ridiculous as the conclusions he had just reached. Presently, dinnerwas served, and Terry painstakingly acted like a perfectly rationalperson. After dinner Davis, as usual, settled himself down to enjoy aprogram of symphonic music from San Francisco, many thousands of milesaway. And Deirdre vanished from sight again.
Later on Terry found himself alone on the _Esperance's_ deck, except forNick at the wheel--a mere dark figure seen only by the light of thebinnacle lamp. There was a diffused, faint glow coming from theafter-cabin hatch. Up forward, one of the crew-cuts plucked a guitar,and Terry could imagine Doug dourly trying to read poetry despite thenoise. The sails were black against the sky. The deck was darker thanthe sea.
Terry's guesses haunted him. He assured himself that he did notentertain them even for an instant. They were absurd! A part of his mindargued speciously that if they were absurd there was no reason not totest them. If he was afraid to try, it would imply that at least part ofhim believed them.
He picked up one of the plastic objects, and moved the recorder close tothe lee rail. It still transmitted faithfully, at minimum volume, thewashing of the waves as heard from beneath, and occasional small soundsfrom living creatures, generally far away in the sea. Heeled over as the_Esperance_ was, his hand could reach down into the rushing watersoverside.
He came to a resolution. He felt foolish, but by now he was determinedto try an experiment. Tiny light-blue sparks flashed where the waterraced past the yacht's planking. When he dipped his hand, water piled upagainst his wrist and a streak of brightness trailed away behind.
He tapped the plastic object against the hull. One tap, two taps, threetaps, four taps. Then five, six, seven, eight. He went back to one. Onetap, two, and three and four. Five and six and seven and eight.
The recorder gave out the tappings the underwater microphone had pickedup. It seemed to Terry that the loudspeaker struggled to emit theshrillest imaginable sounds in strict synchrony with the tappings.
Then Deirdre's voice came quietly, very near.
"I don't think," she said evenly, "that that's a fair thing to do."
He'd been bent over the rail in an awkward position. He straightened up,guiltily.
"I know it's nonsense, but I was ... ashamed to admit ..."
"To admit," Deirdre concluded for him, "that by tapping numbers with aplastic spy-device, you hoped to say to whom it might concern that we'vefound a communicator, and we know what it is, and we're trying to get intouch with the intelligent creatures who made it."
To hear his own self-denied guesses spoken aloud was appalling. Terryinstantly disbelieved them entirely.
"It's ridiculous, of course," he protested. "It's childish...."
"But it could be true," said Deirdre. "And, if true, it could bedangerous. Suppose whatever put those plastic gadgets on the fishdoesn't want to be communicated with? Suppose it feels that it shoulddefend the secret of its existence by killing those who suspect it? Iwasn't spying on you," she added. "I heard the tappings down below."
Then she was gone. He saw the interruption in the light from theafter-cabin hatch as she went below.
He was suddenly filled with horror at the idea that if his guesses didprove to be right, he might have endangered Deirdre. And then he ceasedto feel foolish. He felt like a criminal instead.
For a long, long time he listened with desperate intensity to therecorder, lest he hear some reply to his signals.
But no answer came. The sounds from undersea remained utterlycommonplace.
When morning arrived he was in a state of desperate gloom. At breakfastDeirdre acted as if she considered the incident closed. And, such beingthe nature of men, Terry felt worse than before.
He was not wholly at ease again, even when that afternoon the_Esperance_ sailed in past Cavite and Corregidor and into Manila Bay. Anew ship was at anchor in the harbor. It was a stubby, stocky ship whichDavis regarded with interest.
"That's the _Pelorus_," he told Terry as the yacht passed within a mile,on the way to her former anchorage. "She's the hydrographic ship withthe bathyscaphe on board. We'll visit her. I'll get Nick to call her onshort-wave."
He went forward, where Nick was making ready to drop the anchor. Davistook over the chore, and Nick went below.
"Are you going ashore?" asked Deirdre.
Terry shrugged. "I've no reason to."
She looked relieved. "Then you'll stay with the _Esperance_until--things are settled one way or another? I mean, you're reallyenlisted?"
"Until there are no more ways left for me to blunder," said Terrydistastefully. "I'm about through the list, though."
"Not at all!" protested Deirdre. "Tapping numbers was really a very goodidea. I was horrible! I scolded because you'd kept it a secret from me.I'd have been proud if I'd thought of it first!"
Nick came back and spoke to Davis. Davis came aft.
"The _Pelorus_ will send a boat as soon as we've anchored," he toldthem. "They've heard something and want to see the plastic objects."
"I'd like the long end of a bet that they don't believe in them, or us,"Terry said abruptly. "They're established authoritie
s on the oceanbottom. They know a lot. They probably know so much they can't reallybelieve there's anything more to know than what they're busy finding outnow."
Davis shook his head. He was confident. The _Esperance_ anchored, almostexactly where she'd been when Terry first came on board. Within half anhour a boat arrived from the _Pelorus_. Terry repeated his refusal to goalong. Deirdre went along with her father.
They came back a little over an hour later. At first Davis was almostspeechless with fury. Then he told Terry, choking on his rage,"According to them, the plastic objects are a hoax. The hum is a schoolof fish. We aren't trained observers. At Thrawn Island they'reastronomers and they simply don't know anything about biology. And weshould realize that it's starkly impossible for intelligence to developwhere the oxygen supply is limited. It's unthinkable that abyssal fishshould have their swim bladders punctured so they won't explode fromrelease of pressure when they come to the surface. Those in the lagoonaren't abyssal fish, just unfamiliar species!"
"Well?" Terry asked.
"Oh, they're going to make a bathyscaphe dive!" said Davis as angrily asbefore. "As a matter of courtesy to somebody--not us. They'll make itwhere we found fish packed in a circle. That happens to be the deepestpart of the Luzon Deep, in any case. They don't object to our sendingour dredge down first. They will be politely interested if it comes backup."
"I," announced Deirdre, "I am so mad I could spit!"
"There's no use in our staying here," said Davis, seething. "Our dredgeshould be ready. We'll go up to Barca and tow it to the point we want tosend it down."
He ordered Nick to get ready to lift anchor.
"One question," Terry said finally. "Did you mention the bolides?"
"No!" snapped Davis. "Would I want them to think I was crazy?"
He stamped away.
The _Esperance_ put to sea again. She sailed north along the coast. Atdinner everybody was quiet. It was the only meal, since Terry's joining,that had not been enlivened by an elaborate argument on some subject orother. Davis was still in an abominable mood. He knew it, and heldhimself to silence.
Later, Terry and Deirdre talked together. They refrained tacitly fromspeaking of marine biology or any reasons for tapping plastic objectsagainst the _Esperance's_ hull. They discussed only trivia, but somehowTerry found any subject absorbing, when he was with Deirdre.
After a while she went below, and he stayed abovedecks, smoking. Themoon had not yet risen when he turned in.
They sailed into the small harbor of Barca at ten in the morning. Bytwelve, local boatmen had towed out an ungainly object some thirty-twofeet long. They tethered it to bitts at the _Esperance's_ stern. By oneo'clock they had loaded on her deck a large, folded sack of sailclothand half a dozen specially-cast concrete blocks with eyed iron rodscemented in them. At half-past one Deirdre, who had gone ashore in oneof the yacht's own boats, came back with innumerable supplies she'dbought. At two o'clock the _Esperance_ went out to sea again.
The towed object was a construction around a central wooden spar with aniron tube at its top end and half a dozen lesser spars linked loosely toits bottom. A mass of fishnet was fastened to the smaller spars andheavy ropes were holding the spars and the net in place during its tow.There was a hook for attaching the main spar to the concrete sinkers.
"It opens like an umbrella," explained Deirdre. "We'll hoist it uprightbarely out of the water, and fasten on the weights. The canvas bag fitson that iron pipe. When you let it go, it sinks like an umbrella that'stightly closed, but when it touches bottom the weights spread it out andan explosive charge automatically goes off in that iron tube. It'sspecial explosive. The gas it makes inflates the canvas bag, which can'tburn underwater, and that floats the whole thing back up with the ribsof the umbrella stretched out and spreading the net between them. Itshould catch anything it encounters as it rises. As the pressure lowers,the excess gas can escape through a relief-valve. This dredge isexperimental. If it works, it can be modified to do lots of things."
"Such as poking at things we don't believe in," said Terry drily. "Thatexplosion ought to stir up anything in its neighborhood. It'll be muchmore disturbing and audible than a few light taps against the_Esperance's_ hull!"
Deirdre grinned ruefully and did not answer.
The bulky tow slowed the yacht. She did not reach the position of thefish-filled circle until after nightfall, and it was necessary to haveplenty of light by which to locate the inflated bag when it came to thesurface, so nothing could be tried until the following morning. A shortwhile before daybreak, lights appeared at the horizon. Red and greensidelights, and white central lights. It was a steamer. It came closerand closer. Presently, it turned and headed upwind and went dead slow,barely keeping steerage. It was the _Pelorus_.
Dawn arrived in a golden radiance which thrust aside the night. The_Pelorus_ shone brightly in the first rays of the sun. A large objectwas hoisted out of her hold. Its shape was that of a gravid goldfish,with a smaller sphere hanging beneath it. It went overside, slowly, andthere it floated, rolling wildly on the waves. For a very long timenothing seemed to happen. Then the water-level of the float sank alittle. It was being filled with gasoline, which is lighter than waterand practically incompressible.
On the _Esperance_, the tow had been pulled alongside and the yacht'spowerful winch hauled it upright. The yacht heeled over from the weight.The crew-cuts fastened the canvas sack in place, and Davis loaded theexplosive charge into the iron tube. The crew-cuts cleared the nets.This preliminary operation seemed promising, and it was quite likelythat the dredge would operate as it was designed to do.
The _Pelorus_ whistled impatiently. Nick abandoned his job and wentbelow to the short-wave set. He returned shortly after.
"The _Pelorus_ says she'll be ready to send the bathyscaphe down for atest dive in two hours," he reported. "She says she will object if ourgadget is floating free at the time, on the chance that it mightinterfere with the bathyscaphe. She asks if you can send our dredge downright away and get it over with."
"Tell them yes," said Davis. "In five minutes."
He compressed his lips. The _Esperance's_ device, though clumsy, wasfundamentally simple. Five minutes later the top of the central spar waslevel with the water. "Cut away," said Davis.
Doug slashed the single rope holding the dredge. It sank immediately.
The recorder gave off the sound of waves. Occasionally, veryoccasionally, a chirping or a grunt could be heard. Twenty minutes.Thirty.
There was a "crump!" from the loudspeaker which reported underwaterevents. The sound seemed to come from very far below. Even a smallamount of explosive makes a very considerable concussion when it goesoff so far down, and the shock travels in all directions instead ofmerely upward. The recorder picked up that concussion as a deep-basssound.
The sun shone. The wind increased. Waves marched in serried ranks fromhere to there.
A long, long time later the inflated canvas bag came up and was floatingon top of the waves. The _Pelorus_ whistled. Nick went below. A fewminutes later he came up again to report.
"The _Pelorus_ says not to cast our dredge adrift. They're sending thebathyscaphe down unmanned, to test all apparatus before a manned dive.They don't want any debris in the sea."
"Tell them we send them a kiss," snapped Davis, "and they needn'tworry!"
The _Esperance_ approached the floating bag. Jug swung out on thelifting boom and hooked it. The winch hauled it out of the water. Theconcrete weights were gone. What the nets had captured was not pretty tosee. A dead fish with foliated appendages had come up from far below, tojudge by what its unpunctured swim bladder had done to it inuncontrolled expansion. Davis said curtly it was _Linophrine arborifer_,belonging two thousand fathoms below. An angry-looking creature,similarly dead, was _Opisthoproctus grimaldi_. It belonged deeper thanthe other. There were other specimens. A _genostoma_ of a species thebooks didn't picture; a _Myctophum_; and various other creatures, mostlyas grotesque as their scientific name
s. All were abyssal fish. They haddied while rising from a pressure of several tons per square inch tosurface-pressure only.
"It worked," said Davis curtly. "I almost wish it hadn't. Let it downinto the water again. We'll jettison it when the _Pelorus_ gives uspermission."
Time passed. More time. Still more. The bathyscaphe was now in thewater, practically awash. Only a small conning tower showed above thewaves. Men swarmed around it.
There came a query from the _Pelorus_. The _Esperance_ gave assurancethat the deep-sea dredge had returned to the surface and would be keptthere.
The bathyscaphe was allowed to sink.
The recorder on the yacht began to pick up deep-toned mooing sounds fromthe depths.
Presently, the mooing sounds ceased.
Two hours later, waves broke over an object completely awash on theocean. The _Pelorus_ steamed cautiously toward it. Boats went down fromher sides and surrounded the float.
After a long time the _Pelorus_ got alongside and men quickly fastenedthe huge buoy to the ship. Then the down-wind sea changed itsappearance. A reek of gasoline reached the _Esperance_.
"Something happened," said Davis dourly. "They're dumping thegasoline--not even pumping it aboard. Let's get out of the stink."
The _Esperance_ beat to windward. The _Pelorus_ began to lift somethinglarge and ungainly out of the water. The _Esperance_ went down-wind totake a look at it.
The yacht went past no more than fifty yards away, just as thebathyscaphe left the water and swung clear.
The bathyscaphe's conning-tower was gone. It had been torn away by bruteforce. The three-inch-thick steel globe.... Half of it was gone. Therest was crushed. The sphere, which had been designed to resist acrushing pressure of ten tons per square inch, had been ripped in half!It had been bitten through. Bitten!
There was no comment by anybody on the _Esperance_.
Half a mile from the oceanographic ship, Davis said in a peculiarly flatvoice, "Cut away the dredge. We won't try to use it again."
Someone slashed the inflated canvas bag. It collapsed. Somebody cut awaya rope. The free dredge sank, slowly. It would never come up again.
The _Esperance_ changed course. She headed north by west. There wasstill no conversation at all. The yacht seemed to tiptoe away from thescene of the bathyscaphe's destruction.
A long time later, Deirdre said tentatively, "Have you been makingguesses, Terry?"
"Guesses, yes," he admitted.
"Such as?"
"Your father denied that the dredge was designed to stir up whatevergathered the fish together and then carried them down to the bottom ofthe sea. I was right there with him in the denial, but that's what weintended, just the same. We said we didn't believe there was anythingthere, so it couldn't do any harm to poke it. We poked, all right! Ourdredge, and then the bathyscaphe...."
"But what ..."
"And a bolide fell right there a couple of nights ago," said Terryirrelevantly. "I wonder what the entity on the ocean-bottom thought ofthe bolide. Hm." He paused. "I wonder, too, what the bolide thought ofwhat it found down there. Is that too crazy for a sane man to think,Deirdre?"
She shook her head.
"Why is my father working on this business?" she asked. "And why are theboys helping, and why do radar stations tell us what they find out, andwhy did the Philippine Government ask the _Pelorus_ to make abathyscaphe dive at just that spot?"
Terry blinked at her.
"Too crazy for official notice, eh?" he said, "but too dangerous not tocheck up on! Is it absolutely certain that the bolides are bolides?"
"No."
"Thanks," said Terry. He pursed his lips as if to whistle. "I've beenthinking of this thing as a puzzle. But it isn't. I'm very much afraidit's a threat!" He paused. "Y-y-es. I've just made a new guess. It addseverything together. I do hope it's wrong, Deirdre! I've got cold chillsrunning up and down my spine!"