The Deep Range

CHAPTER III

When Franklin first saw Indra Langenburg she was covered with blood up to her elbows and was busily hacking away at the entrails of a ten-foot tiger shark she had just disemboweled. The huge beast was lying, its pale belly upturned to the Sun, on the sandy beach where Franklin took his morning promenade. A thick chain still led to the hook in its mouth; it had obviously been caught during the night and then left behind by the falling tide.

Franklin stood for a moment looking at the unusual combination of attractive girl and dead monster, then said thoughtfully: “You know, this is not the sort of thing I like to see before breakfast. Exactly what are you doing?”

A brown, oval face with very serious eyes looked up at him. The foot-long, razor-sharp knife that was creating such havoc continued to slice expertly through gristle and guts.

“I’m writing a thesis,” said a voice as serious as the eyes, “on the vitamin content of shark liver. It means catching a lot of sharks; this is my third this week. Would you like some teeth? I’ve got plenty, and they make nice souvenirs.”

She walked to the head of the beast and inserted her knife in its gaping jaws, which had been propped apart by a block of wood. A quick jerk of her wrist, and an endless necklace of deadly ivory triangles, like a band saw made of bone, started to emerge from the shark’s mouth.

“No thanks,” said Franklin hastily, hoping she would not be offended. “Please don’t let me interrupt your work.”

He guessed that she was barely twenty, and was not surprised at meeting an unfamiliar girl on the little island, because the scientists at the Research Station did not have much contact with the administrative and training staff.

“You’re new here, aren’t you?” said the bloodstained biologist, sloshing a huge lump of liver into a bucket with every sign of satisfaction. “I didn’t see you at the last HQ dance.”

Franklin felt quite cheered by the inquiry. It was so pleasant to meet someone who knew nothing about him, and had not been speculating about his presence here. He felt he could talk freely and without restraint for the first time since landing on Heron Island.

“Yes — I’ve just come for a special training course. How long have you been here?”

He was making pointless conversation just for the pleasure of the company, and doubtless she knew it.

“Oh, about a month,” she said carelessly. There was another slimy, squelching noise from the bucket, which was now nearly full. “I’m on leave here from the University of Miami.”

“You’re American, then?” Franklin asked. The girl answered solemnly: “No; my ancestors were Dutch, Burmese, and Scottish in about equal proportions. Just to make things a little more complicated, I was born in Japan.”

Franklin wondered if she was making fun of him, but there was no trace of guile in her expression. She seemed a really nice kid, he thought, but he couldn’t stay here talking all day. He had only forty minutes for breakfast, and his morning class in submarine navigation started at nine.

He thought no more of the encounter, for he was continually meeting new faces as his circles of acquaintances steadily expanded. The high-pressure course he was taking gave him no time for much social life, and for that he was grateful. His mind was fully occupied once more; it had taken up the load with a smoothness that both surprised and gratified him. Perhaps those who had sent him here knew what they were doing better than he sometimes supposed.

All the empirical knowledge — the statistics, the factual data, the ins and outs of administration — had been more or less painlessly pumped into Franklin while he was under mild hypnosis. Prolonged question periods, where he was quizzed by a tape recorder that later filled in the right answers, then confirmed that the information had really taken and had not, as sometimes happened, shot straight through the mind leaving no permanent impression.

Don Burley had nothing to do with this side of Franklin’s training, but, rather to his disgust, had no chance of relaxing when Franklin was being looked after elsewhere. The chief instructor had gleefully seized this opportunity of getting Don back into his clutches, and had “suggested,” with great tact and charm, that when his other duties permitted Don might like to lecture to the three courses now under training on the island. Outranked and outmaneuvered, Don had no alternative but to acquiesce with as good grace as possible. This assignment, it seemed, was not going to be the holiday he had hoped.

In one respect, however, his worst fears had not materialized. Franklin was not at all hard to get on with, as long as one kept completely away from personalities. He was very intelligent and had clearly had a technical training that in some ways was much better than Don’s own. It was seldom necessary to explain anything to him more than once and long before they had reached the stage of trying him out on the synthetic trainers, Don could see that his pupil had the makings of a good pilot. He was skillful with his hands, reacted quickly and accurately, and had that indefinable poise which distinguishes the first-rate pilot from the merely competent one.

Yet Don knew that knowledge and skill were not in themselves sufficient. Something else was also needed, and there was no way yet of telling if Franklin possessed it. Not until Don had watched his reactions as he sank down into the depths of the sea would he know whether all this effort was to be of any use.

There was so much that Franklin had to learn that it seemed impossible that anyone could absorb it all in two months, as the program insisted. Don himself had taken the normal six months, and he somewhat resented the assumption that anyone else could do it in a third of the time, even with the special coaching he was giving. Why, the mechanical side of the job alone — the layout and design of the various classes of subs — took at least two months to learn, even with the best of instructional aids. Yet at the same time he had to teach Franklin the principles of seamanship and underwater navigation, basic oceanography, submarine signaling and communication, and a substantial amount of ichthyology, marine psychology, and, of course, cetology. So far Franklin had never even seen a whale, dead or alive, and that first encounter was something that Don looked forward to witnessing. At such a moment one could learn all that one needed to know about a man’s fitness for this job.

They had done two weeks’ hard work together before Don first took Franklin under water. By this time they had established a curious relationship which was at once friendly and remote. Though they had long since ceased to call each other by their surnames. “Don” and “Walt” was as far as their intimacy went. Burley still knew absolutely nothing about Franklin’s past, though he had evolved a good many theories. The one which he most favored was that his pupil was an extremely talented criminal being rehabilitated after total therapy. He wondered if Franklin was a murderer, which was a stimulating thought, and half hoped that this exciting hypothesis was true.

Franklin no longer showed any of the obvious peculiarities he had revealed on their first meeting, though he was undoubtedly more nervous and highly strung than the average. Since this was the case with many of the best wardens, it did not worry Don. Even his curiosity about Franklin’s past had somewhat lessened, for he was far too busy to bother about it. He had learned to be patient when there was no alternative, and he did not doubt that sooner or later he would discover the whole story. Once or twice, he was almost certain, Franklin had been on the verge of some revelation, but then had drawn back. Each time Don had pretended that nothing had happened, and they had resumed their old, impersonal relationship.

It was a clear morning, with only a slow swell moving across the face of the sea, as they walked along the narrow jetty that stretched from the western end of the island out to the edge of the reef. The tide was in, but though the reef flat was completely submerged the great plateau of coral was nowhere more than five or six feet below the surface, and its every detail was clearly visible through the crystal water. Neither Franklin nor Burley spared more than a few glances for the natural aquarium above which they were walking. It was too familiar to them both, and they knew that the real beauty and wonder of the reef lay in the deeper waters farther out to sea.

Two hundred yards out from the island, the coral landscape suddenly dropped off into the depths, but the jetty continued upon taller stilts until it ended in a small group of sheds and offices. A valiant, and fairly successful, attempt had been made to avoid the grime and chaos usually inseparable from dockyards and piers; even the cranes had been designed so that they would not offend the eye. One of the terms under which the Queensland government had reluctantly leased the Capricorn Group to the World Food Organization was that the beauty of the islands would not be jeopardized. On the whole, this part of the agreement had been well kept.

“I’ve ordered two torpedoes from the garage,” said Burley as they walked down the flight of stairs at the end of the jetty and passed through the double doors of a large air lock. Franklin’s ears gave the disconcerting internal “click” as they adjusted themselves to the increased pressure; he guessed that he was now about twenty feet below the water line. Around him was a brightly lighted chamber crammed with various types of underwater equipment, from simple lungs to elaborate propulsion devices. The two torpedoes that Don had requisitioned were lying in their cradles on a sloping ramp leading down into the still water at the far end of the chamber. They were painted the bright yellow reserved for training equipment, and Don looked at them with some distaste.

“It’s a couple of years since I used one of these things,” he said to Franklin. “You’ll probably be better at it than I am. When I get myself wet, I like to be under my own power.”

They stripped to swim trunks and pull-overs, then fastened on the harness of their breathing equipment. Don picked up one of the small but surprisingly heavy plastic cylinders and handed it to Franklin.

“These are the high-pressure jobs that I told you about,” he said. “They’re pumped to a thousand atmospheres, so the air in them is denser than water. Hence these buoyancy tanks at either end to keep them in neutral. The automatic adjustment is pretty good; as you use up your air the tanks slowly flood so that the cylinder stays just about weightless. Otherwise you’d come up to the surface like a cork whether you wanted to or not.”

He looked at the pressure gauges on the tanks and gave a satisfied nod.

“They’re nearly half charged,” he said. “That’s far more than we need. You can stay down for a day on one of these tanks when it’s really pumped up, and we won’t be gone more than an hour.”

They adjusted the new, full-face masks that had already been checked for leaks and comfortable fitting. These would be as much their personal property as their toothbrushes while they were on the station, for no two people’s faces were exactly the same shape, and even the slightest leak could be disastrous.

When they had checked the air supply and the short-range underwater radio sets, they lay almost flat along the slim torpedoes, heads down behind the low, transparent shields which would protect them from the rush of water sweeping past at speeds of up to thirty knots. Franklin settled his feet comfortably in the stirrups, feeling for the throttle and jet reversal controls with his toes. The little joy stick which allowed him to “fly” the torpedo like a plane was just in front of his face, in the center of the instrument board. Apart from a few switches, the compass, and the meters giving speed, depth, and battery charge, there were no other controls.

Don gave Franklin his final instructions, ending with the words: “Keep about twenty feet away on my right, so that I can see you all the time. If anything goes wrong and you do have to dump the torp, for heaven’s sake remember to cut the motor. We don’t want it charging all over the reef. All set?”

“Yes — I’m ready,” Franklin answered into his little microphone.

“Right — here we go.”

The torpedoes slid easily down the ramps, and the water rose above their heads. This was no new experience to Franklin; like most other people in the world, he had occasionally tried his hand at underwater swimming and had sometimes used a lung just to see what it was like. He felt nothing but a pleasant sense of anticipation as the little turbine started to whir beneath him and the walls of the submerged chamber slid slowly past.

The light strengthened around them as they emerged into the open and pulled away from the piles of the jetty. Visibility was not very good — thirty feet at the most — but it would improve as they came to deeper water. Don swung his torpedo at right angles to the edge of the reef and headed out to sea at a leisurely five knots.

“The biggest danger with these toys,” said Don’s voice from the tiny loudspeaker by Franklin’s ear, “is going too fast and running into something. It takes a lot of experience to judge underwater visibility. See what I mean?”

He banked steeply to avoid a towering mass of coral which had suddenly appeared ahead of them. If the demonstration had been planned, thought Franklin, Don had timed it beautifully. As the living mountain swept past, not more than ten feet away, he caught a glimpse of a myriad brilliantly colored fish staring at him with apparent unconcern. By this time, he assumed, they must be so used to torpedoes and subs that they were quite unexcited by them. And since this entire area was rigidly protected, they had no reason to fear man.

A few minutes at cruising speed brought them out into the open water of the channel between the island and the adjacent reefs. Now they had room to maneuver, and Franklin followed his mentor in a series of rolls and loops and great submarine switchbacks that soon had him hopelessly lost. Sometimes they shot down to the seabed, a hundred feet below, then broke surface like flying fish to check their position. All the time Don kept up a running commentary, interspersed with questions designed to see how Franklin was reacting to the ride.

It was one of the most exhilarating experiences he had ever known. The water was much clearer out here in the channel, and one could see for almost a hundred feet. Once they ran into a great school of bonitos, which formed an inquisitive escort until Don put on speed and left them behind. They saw no sharks, as Franklin had half expected, and he commented to Don on their absence.

“You won’t see many while you’re riding a torp,” the other replied. “The noise of the jet scares them. If you want to meet the local sharks, you’ll have to go swimming in the old-fashioned way — or cut your motor and wait until they come to look at you.”

A dark mass was looming indistinctly from the seabed, and they reduced speed to a gentle drift as they approached a little range of coral hills, twenty or thirty feet high.

“An old friend of mine lives around here,” said Don. “I wonder if he’s home? It’s been about four years since I saw him last, but that won’t seem much to him. He’s been around for a couple of centuries.”

They were now skirting the edge of a huge green-clad mushroom of coral, and Franklin peered into the shadows beneath it. There were a few large boulders there, and a pair of elegant angelfish which almost disappeared when they turned edge on to him. But he could see nothing else to justify Burley’s interest.

It was very unsettling when one of the boulders began to move, fortunately not in his direction. The biggest fish he had ever seen — it was almost as long as the torpedo, and very much fatter — was staring at him with great bulbous eyes. Suddenly it opened its mouth in a menacing yawn, and Franklin felt like Jonah at the big moment of his career. He had a glimpse of huge, blubbery lips enclosing surprisingly tiny teeth; then the great jaws snapped shut again and he could almost feel the rush of displaced water.

Don seemed delighted at the encounter, which had obviously brought back memories of his own days as a trainee here.

“Well, it’s nice to see old Slobberchops again! Isn’t he a beauty? Seven hundred and fifty pounds if he’s an ounce. We’ve been able to identify him on photos taken as far back as eighty years ago, and he wasn’t much smaller then. It’s a wonder he escaped the spear fishers before this area was made a reservation.”

“I should think,” said Franklin, “that it was a wonder the spear fishers escaped him.”

“Oh, he’s not really dangerous. Groupers only swallow things they can get down whole — those silly little teeth aren’t much good for biting. And a full-sized man would be a trifle too much for him. Give him another century for that.”

They left the giant grouper still patrolling the entrance to its cave, and continued on along the edge of the reef. For the next ten minutes they saw nothing of interest except a large ray, which was lying on the bottom and took off with an agitated flapping of its wings as soon as they approached. As it flew away into the distance, it seemed an uncannily accurate replica of the big delta-winged aircraft which had ruled the air for a short while, sixty or seventy years ago. It was strange, thought Franklin, how Nature had anticipated so many of man’s inventions — for example, the precise shape of the vehicle on which he was riding, and even the jet principle by which it was propelled.

“I’m going to circle right around the reef,” said Don. “It will take us about forty minutes to get home. Are you feeling O.K.?”

“I’m fine.”

“No ear trouble?”

“My left ear bothered me a bit at first, but it seems to have popped now.”

“Right — let’s go. Follow just above and behind me, so I can see you in my rearview mirror. I was always afraid of running into you when you were on my right.”

In the new formation, they sped on toward the east at a steady ten knots, following the irregular line of the reef. Don was well satisfied with the trip; Franklin had seemed perfectly at home under water — though one could never be sure of this until one had seen how he faced an emergency. That would be part of the next lesson; Franklin did not know it yet, but an emergency had been arranged.