The Deep Range

CHAPTER XV

‘How nice it is,” said Franklin, as he relaxed lazily in the contour-form chair on the porch, “to have a wife who’s not scared stiff of the job I’m doing.”

“There are times when I am,” admitted Indra. “I don’t like these deep-water operations. If anything goes wrong down there, you don’t have a chance.”

“You can drown just as easily in ten feet of water as ten thousand.”

“That’s silly, and you know it. Besides, no warden has ever been killed by drowning, as far as I’ve ever heard. The things that happen to them are never as nice and simple as that.”

“I’m sorry I started this conversation,” said Franklin ruefully, glancing around to see if Peter was safely out of earshot. “Anyway, you’re not worried about Operation Percy, are you?”

“No, I don’t think so. I’m as anxious as everybody else to see you catch him — and I’m still more interested to see if Dr. Roberts can keep him alive.” She rose to her feet and walked over to the bookshelf recessed into the wall. Plowing through the usual pile of papers and magazines that had accumulated there, she finally unearthed the volume for which she was looking.

“Listen to this,” she continued, “and remember that it was written almost two hundred years ago.” She began to read in her best lecture-room voice, while Franklin listened at first with mild reluctance, and then with complete absorption.

“In the distance, a great white mass lazily rose, and rising higher and higher, and disentangling itself from the azure, at last gleamed before our prow like a snow-slide, new slid from the hills. Thus glistening for a moment, as slowly it subsided, and sank. Then once more arose, and slightly gleamed. It seemed not a whale; and yet is this Moby Dick? thought Daggoo. Again the phantom went down, but on reappearing once more, like a stiletto-like cry that startled every man from his nod, the negro yelled out — ‘There! there again! there she breaches! Right ahead! The White Whale! The White Whale!”

“The four boats were soon on the water; Ahab’s in advance, and all swiftly pulling towards their prey. Soon it went down, and while, with oars suspended, we were awaiting its appearance, lo! in the same spot where it sank, once more it slowly rose. Almost forgetting for the moment all thoughts of Moby Dick, we now gazed at the most wondrous phenomenon which the secret seas have hitherto revealed to mankind. A vast pulpy mass, furlongs in length and breadth, of a glancing cream-colour, lay floating on the water, innumerable long arms radiating from its centre, and curling and twisting like a nest of anacondas, as if blindly to catch at any hapless object within reach. No perceptible face or front did it have; no conceivable token of either sensation or instinct; but undulated there on the billows, an unearthly, formless, chance-like apparition of life.

“As with a low sucking sound it slowly disappeared again, Starbuck still gazing at the agitated waters where it had sunk, with a wild voice exclaimed — ‘Almost rather had I seen Moby Dick and fought him, than to have seen thee, thou white ghost!”

“ “What was it, Sir?” said Flask.

“ “The great live squid, which, they say, few whaleships ever beheld, and returned to their ports to tell of it.”

“But Ahab said nothing; turning his boat, he sailed back to the vessel; the rest as silently following.”

Indra paused, closed the book, and waited for her husband’s response. Franklin stirred himself in the too-comfortable couch and said thoughtfully: “I’d forgotten that bit — if I ever read as far. It rings true to life, but what was a squid doing on the surface?”

“It was probably dying. They sometimes surface at night, but never in the daytime, and Melville says this was on “one transparent blue morning.” “

“Anyway, what’s a furlong? I’d like to know if Melville’s squid was as big as Percy. The photos make him a hundred and thirty feet from his flukes to the tips of his feelers.”

“So he beats the largest blue whale ever recorded.”

“Yes, by a couple of feet. But of course he doesn’t weigh a tenth as much.”

Franklin heaved himself from his couch and went in search of a dictionary. Presently Indra heard indignant noises coming from the living room, and called out: “What’s the matter?”

“It says here that a furlong is an obsolete measure of length equal to an eighth of a mile. Melville was talking through his hat.”

“He’s usually very accurate, at least as far as whales are concerned. But “furlong” is obviously ridiculous — I’m surprised no one’s spotted it before. He must have meant fathoms, or else the printer got it wrong.”

Slightly mollified, Franklin put down the dictionary and came back to the porch. He was just in time to see Don Burley arrive, sweep Indra off her feet, plant a large but brotherly kiss on her forehead, and dump her back in her chair.

“Come along, Walt!” he said. “Got your things packed? I’ll give you a lift to the airport.”

“Where’s Peter hiding?” said Franklin. “Peter! Come and say good-bye — Daddy’s off to work.”

A four-year-old bundle of uncontrollable energy came flying into the room, almost capsizing his father as he jumped into his arms.

“Daddy’s going to bring me back a “quid?” he asked.

“Hey — how did you know about all this?”

“It was on the news this morning, while you were still asleep,” explained Indra. “They showed a few seconds of Don’s film, too.”

“I was afraid of that. Now we’ll have to work with a crowd of cameramen and reporters looking over our shoulders. That means that something’s sure to go wrong.”

“They can’t follow us down to the bottom, anyway,” said Burley.

“I hope you’re right — but don’t forget we’re not the only people with deep-sea subs.”

“I don’t know how you put up with him,” Don protested to Indra. “Does he always look on the black side of things?”

“Not always,” smiled Indra, as she unraveled Peter from his father. “He’s cheerful at least twice a week.”

Her smile faded as she watched the sleek sportster go whispering down the hill. She was very fond of Don, who was practically a member of the family, and there were times when she worried about him. It seemed a pity that he had never married and settled down; the nomadic, promiscuous life he led could hardly be very satisfying. Since they had known him, he had spent almost all his time on or under the sea, apart from hectic leaves when he had used their home as a base — at their invitation but often to their embarrassment when there were unexpected lady guests to entertain at breakfast.

Their own life, by many standards, had been nomadic enough, but at least they had always had a place they could call home. That apartment in Brisbane, where her brief but happy career as a lecturer at the University of Queensland had ended with the birth of Peter; that bungalow in Fiji, with the roof that had a mobile leak which the builders could never find; the married quarters at the South Georgia whaling station (she could still smell the mountains of offal, and see the gulls wheeling over the flensing yards); and finally, this house looking out across the sea to the other islands of Hawaii. Four homes in five years might seem excessive to many people, but for a warden’s wife Indra knew she had done well.

She had few regrets for the career that had been temporarily interrupted. When Peter was old enough, she told herself, she would go back to her research; even now she read all the literature and kept in touch with current work. Only a few months ago the Journal of Selachians had published her letter “On the possible evolution of the Goblin Shark (Scapanorhynchus owstoni),” and she had since been involved in an enjoyable controversy with all five of the scientists qualified to discuss the subject.

Even if nothing came of these dreams, it was pleasant to have them and to know you might make the best of both worlds. So Indra Franklin, housewife and ichthyologist, told herself as she went back into the kitchen to prepare lunch for her ever-hungry son.

The floating dock had been modified in many ways that would have baffled its original designers. A thick steel mesh, supported on sturdy insulators, extended its entire length, and above this mesh was a canvas awning to cut out the sunlight which would injure Percy’s sensitive eyes and skin. The only illumination inside the dock came from a battery of amber-tinted bulbs; at the moment, however, the great doors at either end of the huge concrete box were open, letting in both sunlight and water.

The two subs, barely awash, lay tied up beside the crowded catwalk as Dr. Roberts gave his final instructions.

“I’ll try not to bother you too much when you’re down there,” he said, “but for heaven’s sake tell me what’s going on.”

“We’ll be too busy to give a running commentary,” answered Don with a grin, “but we’ll do our best. And if anything goes wrong, trust us to yell right away. All set, Walt?”

“O.K.,” said Franklin, climbing down into the hatch. “See you in five hours, with Percy — I hope.”

They wasted no time in diving to the seabed; less than ten minutes later there was four thousand feet of water overhead, and the familiar rocky terrain was imaged on TV and sonar screen. But there was no sign of the pulsing star that should have indicated the presence of Percy.

“Hope the beacon hasn’t packed up,” said Franklin as he reported this news to the hopefully waiting scientists. “If it has, it may take us days to locate him again.”

“Do you suppose he’s left the area? I wouldn’t blame him,” added Don.

Dr. Roberts’ voice, still confident and assured, came down to them from the distant world of Sun and light almost a mile above.

“He’s probably hiding in a cleft, or shielded by rock. I suggest you rise five hundred feet so that you’re well clear of all the seabed irregularities, and start a high-speed search. That beacon has a range of more than a mile, so you’ll pick him up pretty quickly.”

An hour later even the doctor sounded less confident, and from the comments that leaked down to them over the sonar communicator it appeared that the reporters and TV networks were getting impatient.

“There’s only one place he can be,” said Roberts at last. “If he’s there at all, and the beacon’s still working, he must have gone down into the Miller Canyon.”

“That’s fifteen thousand feet deep,” protested Don. “These subs are only cleared for twelve.”

“I know — I know. But he won’t have gone to the bottom. He’s probably hunting somewhere down the slope. You’ll see him easily if he’s there.”

“Right,” replied Franklin, not very optimistically. “We’ll go and have a look. But if he’s more than twelve thousand feet down, he’ll have to stay there.”

On the sonar screen, the canyon was clearly visible as a sudden gap in the luminous image of the seabed. It came rapidly closer as the two subs raced toward it at forty knots — the fastest creatures, Franklin mused, anywhere beneath the surface of the sea. He had once flown low toward the Grand Canyon, and seen the land below suddenly whipped away as the enormous cavity gaped beneath him. And now, though he must rely for vision solely on the pattern of echoes brought back by his probing sound waves, he felt exactly that same sensation as he swept across the edge of this still mightier chasm in the ocean floor.

He had scarcely finished the thought when Don’s voice, high-pitched with excitement, came yelling from the speaker.

“There he is! A thousand feet down!”

“No need to break my eardrums,” grumbled Franklin. “I can see him.”

The precipitous slope of the canyon wall was etched like an almost vertical line down the center of the sonar screen. Creeping along the face of that wall was the tiny, twinkling star for which they had been searching. The patient beacon had betrayed Percy to his hunters.

They reported the situation to Dr. Roberts; Franklin could picture the jubilation and excitement up above, some hints of which trickled down through the open microphone. Presently Dr. Roberts, a little breathless, asked: “Do you think you can still carry out our plan?”

“I’ll try,” he answered. “It won’t be easy with this cliff face right beside us, and I hope there aren’t any caves Percy can crawl into. You ready, Don?”

“All set to follow you down.”

“I think I can reach him without using the motors. Here we go.”

Franklin flooded the nose tanks, and went down in a long, steep glide — a silent glide, he hoped. By this time, Percy would have learned caution and would probably run for it as soon as he knew that they were around.

The squid was cruising along the face of the canyon, and Franklin marveled that it could find any food in such a forbidding and apparently lifeless spot. Every time it expelled a jet of water from the tube of its siphon it moved forward in a distinct jerk; it seemed unaware that it was no longer alone, since it had not changed course since Franklin had first observed it.

“Two hundred feet — I’m going to switch on my lights again,” he told Don.

“He won’t see you — visibility’s only about eighty today.”

“Yes, but I’m still closing in — he’s spotted me! Here he comes!”

Franklin had not really expected that the trick would work a second time on an animal as intelligent as Percy. But almost at once he felt the sudden thud, followed by the rasping of horny claws as the great tentacles closed around the sub. Though he knew that he was perfectly safe, and that no animal could harm walls that had been built to withstand pressures of a thousand tons on every square foot, that grating, slithering sound was one calculated to give him nightmares.

Then, quite suddenly, there was silence. He heard Don exclaim, “Christ, that stuff acts quickly! He’s out cold.” Almost at once Dr. Roberts interjected anxiously: “Don’t give him too much! And keep him moving so that he’ll still breathe!”

Don was too busy to answer. Having carried out his role as decoy, Franklin could do nothing but watch as his partner maneuvered dexterously around the great mollusk. The anesthetic bomb had paralyzed it completely; it was slowly sinking, its tentacles stretched limply upward. Pieces of fish, some of them over a foot across, were floating away from the cruel beak as the monster disgorged its last meal.

“Can you get underneath?” Don asked hurriedly. “He’s sinking too fast for me.”

Franklin threw on the drive and went around in a tight curve. There was a soft thump, as of a snowdrift falling from a roof, and he knew that five or ten tons of gelatinous body were now draped over the sub.

“Fine — hold him there — I’m getting into position.”

Franklin was now blind, but the occasional clanks and whirs coming from the water outside told him what was happening. Presently Don said triumphantly: “All set! We’re ready to go.”

The weight lifted from the sub, and Franklin could see again. Percy had been neatly gaffed. A band of thick, elastic webbing had been fastened around his body at the narrowest part, just behind the flukes. From this harness a cable extended to Don’s sub, invisible in the haze a hundred feet away. Percy was being towed through the water in his normal direction of motion — backward. Had he been conscious and actively resisting, he could have escaped easily enough, but in his present state the collar he was wearing enabled Don to handle him without difficulty. The fun would begin when he started to revive…

Franklin gave a brief eyewitness description of the scene for the benefit of his patiently waiting colleagues a mile above. It was probably being broadcast, and he hoped that Indra and Peter were listening. Then he settled down to keep an eye on Percy as the long haul back to the surface began.

They could not move at more than two knots, lest the collar lose its none-too-secure grip on the great mass of jelly it was towing. In any event, the trip back to the surface had to take at least three hours, to give Percy a fair chance of adjusting to the pressure difference. Since an air-breathing — and therefore more vulnerable — animal like a sperm whale could endure almost the same pressure change in ten or twenty minutes, this caution was probably excessive. But Dr. Roberts was taking no chances with his unprecedented catch.

They had been climbing for nearly an hour, and had reached the three-thousand-foot level, when Percy showed signs of life. The two long arms, terminating in their great sucker-covered palps, began to writhe purposefully; the monstrous eyes, into which Franklin had been staring half hypnotized from a distance of no more than five feet, began to light once more with intelligence. Quite unaware that he was speaking in a breathless whisper, he swiftly reported these symptoms to Dr. Roberts.

The doctor’s first reaction was a hearty sigh of relief: “Good!” he said. “I was afraid we might have killed him. Can you see if he’s breathing properly? Is the siphon contracting?”

Franklin dropped a few feet so that he could get a better view of the fleshy tube projecting from the squid’s mantle. It was opening and closing in an unsteady rhythm which seemed to be getting stronger and more regular at every beat.

“Splendid!” said Dr. Roberts. “He’s in fine shape. As soon as he starts to wriggle too hard, give him one of the small bombs. But leave it until the last possible moment.”

Franklin wondered how that moment was to be decided. Percy was now beginning to glow a beautiful blue; even with the searchlights switched off he was clearly visible. Blue, he remembered Dr. Roberts saying, was a sign of excitement in squids. In that case, it was high time he did something.

“Better let go that bomb. I think he’s getting lively,” he told Don.

“Right — here it is.”

A glass bubble floated across Franklin’s screen and swiftly vanished from sight.

“The damn thing never broke!” he cried. “Let go another one!”

“O.K. — here’s number two. I hope this works; I’ve only got five left.”

But once again the narcotic bomb failed. This time Franklin never saw the sphere; he only knew that instead of relaxing into slumber once more Percy was becoming more active second by second. The eight short tentacles — short, that is, compared with the almost hundred-foot reach of the pair carrying the grasping palps — were now beginning to twine briskly together. He recalled Melville’s phrase: “Like a nest of anacondas.” No; somehow that did not seem to fit. It was more like a miser — a submarine Shylock — twisting his fingers together as he gloated over his wealth. In any event, it was a disconcerting sight when those fingers were a foot in diameter and were operating only two yards away…

“You’ll just have to keep on trying,” he told Don. “Unless we stop him soon, he’ll get away.”

An instant later he breathed a sigh of relief as he saw broken shards of glass drifting by. They would have been quite invisible, surrounded as they were by water, had they not been fluorescing brilliantly under the light of his ultraviolet searchlight. But for the moment he was too relieved to wonder why he had been able to see something as proverbially elusive as a piece of broken glass in water; he only knew that Percy had suddenly relaxed again and no longer appeared to be working himself into a rage.

“What happened?” said Dr. Roberts plaintively from above.

“These confounded knockout drops of yours. Two of them didn’t work. That leaves me with just four — and at the present rate of failure I’ll be lucky if even one goes off.”

“I don’t understand it. The mechanism worked perfectly every time we tested it in the lab.”

“Did you test it at a hundred atmospheres pressure?”

“Er — no. It didn’t seem necessary.”

Don’s “Huh!” seemed to say all that was needful about biologists who tried to dabble with engineering, and there was silence on all channels for the next few minutes of slow ascent. Then Dr. Roberts, sounding a little diffident, came back to the subject.

“Since we can’t rely on the bombs,” he said, “you’d better come up more quickly. He’ll revive again in about thirty minutes.”

“Right — I’ll double speed. I only hope this collar doesn’t slip off.”

The next twenty minutes were perfectly uneventful; then everything started to happen at once.

“He’s coming around again,” said Franklin. “I think the higher speed has waked him up.”

“I was afraid of that,” Dr. Roberts answered. “Hold on as long as you can, and then let go a bomb. We can only pray that one of them will work.”

A new voice suddenly cut into the circuit.

“Captain here. Lookout has just spotted some sperm whales about two miles away. They seem to be heading toward us; I suggest you have a look at them — we’ve got no horizontal search sonar on this ship.”

Franklin switched quickly over to the long-range scanner and picked up the echoes at once.

“Nothing to worry about,” he said. “If they come too close, we can scare them away.” He glanced back at the TV screen and saw that Percy was now getting very restive.

“Let go your bomb,” he told Don, “and keep your fingers crossed.”

“I’m not betting on this,” Don answered. “Anything happen?”

“No; another dud. Try again.”

“That leaves three. Here goes.”

“Sorry — I can see that one. It isn’t cracked.”

“Two left. Now there’s only one.”

“That’s a dud too. What had we better do, Doc? Risk the last one? I’m afraid Percy will slip off in a minute.”

“There’s nothing else we can do,” replied Dr. Roberts, his voice now clearly showing the strain. “Go ahead, Don.”

Almost at once Franklin gave a cry of satisfaction.

“We’ve made it!” he shouted. “He’s knocked cold again! How long do you think it will keep him under this time?”

“We can’t rely on more than twenty minutes, so plan your ascent accordingly. We’re right above you — and remember what I said about taking at least ten minutes over that last two hundred feet. I don’t want any pressure damage after all the trouble we’ve been to.”

“Just a minute,” put in Don. “I’ve been looking at those whales. They’ve put on speed and they’re coming straight toward us. I think they’ve detected Percy — or the beacon we put in him.”

“So what?” said Franklin. “We can frighten them with — oh.”

“Yes — I thought you’d forgotten that. These aren’t patrol subs, Walt. No sirens on them. And you can’t scare sperm whales just by revving your engines.”

That was true enough, though it would not have been fifty years ago, when the great beasts had been hunted almost to extinction. But a dozen generations had lived and died since then; now they recognized the subs as harmless, and certainly no obstacle to the meal they were anticipating. There was a real danger that the helpless Percy might be eaten before he could be safely caged.

“I think we’ll make it,” said Franklin, as he anxiously calculated the speed of the approaching whales. This was a hazard that no one could have anticipated; it was typical of the way in which underwater operations developed unexpected snags and complications.

“I’m going straight up to the two-hundred-foot level,” Don told him. “We’ll wait there just as long as it’s safe, and then run for the ship. What do you think of that, Doc?”

“It’s the only thing to do. But remember that those whales can make fifteen knots if they have to.”

“Yes, but they can’t keep it up for long, even if they see their dinner slipping away. Here we go.”

The subs increased their rate of ascent, while the water brightened around them and the enormous pressure slowly relaxed. At last they were back in the narrow zone where an unprotected man could safely dive. The mother ship was less than a hundred yards away, but this final stage in the climb back to the surface was the most critical of all. In this last two hundred feet, the pressure would drop swiftly from eight atmospheres to only one — as great a change in ratio as had occurred in the previous quarter of a mile. There were no enclosed air spaces in Percy which might cause him to explode if the ascent was too swift, but no one could be certain what other internal damage might occur.

“Whales only half a mile away,” reported Franklin. “Who said they couldn’t keep up that speed? They’ll be here in two minutes.”

“You’ll have to hold them off somehow,” said Dr. Roberts, a note of desperation in his voice.

“Any suggestions?” asked Franklin, a little sarcastically.

“Suppose you pretend to attack; that might make them break off.”

This, Franklin told himself, was not his idea of fun. But there seemed no alternative; with a last glance at Percy, who was now beginning to stir again, he started off at half-speed to meet the advancing whales.

There were three echoes dead ahead of him — not very large ones, but he did not let that encourage him. Even if those were the relatively diminutive females, each one was as big as ten elephants and they were coming toward him at a combined speed of forty miles an hour. He was making all the noise he could, but so far it seemed to be having no effect.

Then he heard Don shouting: “Percy’s waking up fast! I can feel him starting to move.”

“Come straight in,” ordered Dr. Roberts. “We’ve got the doors open.”

“And get ready to close the back door as soon as I’ve slipped the cable. I’m going straight through — I don’t want to share your swimming pool with Percy when he finds what’s happened to him.”

Franklin heard all this chattering with only half an ear. Those three approaching echoes were ominously close. Were they going to call his bluff? Sperm whales were among the most pugnacious animals in the sea, as different from their vegetarian cousins as wild buffaloes from a herd of prize Guernseys. It was a sperm whale that had rammed and sunk the Essex and thus inspired the closing chapter of Moby Dick; he had no desire to figure in a submarine sequel.

Yet he held stubbornly to his course, though now the racing echoes were less than fifteen seconds away. Then he saw that they were beginning to separate; even if they were not scared, the whales had become confused. Probably the noise of his motors had made them lose contact with their target. He cut his speed to zero, and the three whales began to circle him inquisitively, at a range of about a hundred feet. Sometimes he caught a shadowy glimpse of them on the TV screen. As he had thought, they were young females, and he felt a little sorry to have robbed them of what should have been their rightful food.

He had broken the momentum of their charge; now it was up to Don to finish his side of the mission. From the brief and occasionally lurid comments from the loudspeaker, it was obvious that this was no easy task. Percy was not yet fully conscious, but he knew that something was wrong and he was beginning to object.

The men on the floating dock had the best view of the final stages. Don surfaced about fifty yards away — and the sea behind him became covered with an undulating mass of jelly, twisting and rolling on the waves. At the greatest speed he dared to risk, Don headed for the open end of the dock. One of Percy’s tentacles made a halfhearted grab at the entrance, as if in a somnambulistic effort to avoid captivity, but the speed at which he was being hurried through the water broke his grip. As soon as he was safely inside, the massive steel gates began to close like horizontally operating jaws, and Don jettisoned the towrope fastened around the squid’s flukes. He wasted no time in leaving from the other exit, and the second set of lock gates started to close even before he was through. The caging of Percy had taken less than a quarter of a minute.

When Franklin surfaced, in company with three disappointed but not hostile sperm whales, it was some time before he could attract any attention. The entire personnel of the dock were busy staring, with awe, triumph, scientific curiosity, and even downright disbelief, at the monstrous captive now swiftly reviving in his great concrete tank. The water was being thoroughly aerated by the streams of bubbles from a score of pipes, and the last traces of the drugs that had paralyzed him were being flushed out of Percy’s system. Beneath the dim amber light that was now the sole illumination inside the dock, the giant squid began to investigate its prison.

First it swam slowly from end to end of the rectangular concrete box, exploring the sides with its tentacles. Then the two immense palps started to climb into the air, waving toward the breathless watchers gathered round the edge of the dock. They touched the electrified netting — and flicked away with a speed that almost eluded the eye. Twice again Percy repeated the experiment before he had convinced himself that there was no way out in this direction, all the while staring up at the puny spectators with a gaze that seemed to betoken an intelligence every wit as great as theirs.

By the time Don and Franklin came aboard, the squid appeared to have settled down in captivity, and was showing a mild interest in a number of fish that had been dropped into its tank. As the two wardens joined Dr. Roberts behind the wire meshing, they had their first clear and complete view of the monster they had hauled up from the ocean depths.

Their eyes ran along the hundred and more feet of flexible, sinewy strength, the countless claw-ringed suckers, the slowly pulsing jet, and the huge staring eyes of the most superbly equipped beast of prey the world had ever seen. Then Don summed up the thoughts that they were both feeling.

“He’s all yours, Doc. I hope you know how to handle him.”

Dr. Roberts smiled confidently enough. He was a very happy man, though a small worry was beginning to invade his mind. He had no doubt at all that he could handle Percy, and he was perfectly right. But he was not so sure that he could handle the director when the bills came in for the research equipment he was going to order — and for the mountains of fish that Percy was going to eat.