The Deep Range Part 13

"Our att.i.tude is based on something deeper and more fundamental than food prejudices, which are usually only a matter of conditioning. What is more, we believe that most reasonable men, whether their religious beliefs are the same as ours or not, will eventually accept our point of view.

"It can be summed up very simply, though it is the result of twenty-six centuries of thought. We consider that it is wrong to inflict injury or death on any living creature, but we are not so foolish as to imagine that it can be avoided altogether. Thus we recognize, for example, the need to kill microbes and insect pests, much though we may regret the necessity.

"But as soon as such killing is no longer essential, it should cease. We believe that this point has now arrived as far as many of the higher animals are concerned. The production of all types of synthetic protein from purely vegetable sources is now an economic possibility-or it will be if the effort is made to achieve it. Within a generation, we can shed the burden of guilt which, however lightly or heavily it has weighed on individual consciences, must at some time or other have haunted all thinking men as they look at the world of life which shares their planet.

"Yet this is not an att.i.tude which we seek to enforce on anyone against his will. Good actions lose any merit if they are imposed by force. We will be content to let the facts we will present speak for themselves, so that the world may make its own choice."

It was, thought Franklin, a simple, straightforward speech, quite devoid of any of the fanaticism which would have fatally prejudiced the case in this rational age. And yet the whole matter was one that went beyond reason; in a purely logical world, this controversy could never have arisen for no one would have doubted man's right to use the animal kingdom as he felt fit. Logic, however, could be easily discredited here; it could be used too readily to make out a convincing case for cannibalism.

The Thero had not mentioned, anywhere in his argument, one point which had made a considerable impact on Franklin. He had not raised the possibility that man might someday come into contact with alien life forms that might judge him by his conduct toward the rest of the animal kingdom. Did he think that this was so far-fetched an idea that the general public would be unable to take it seriously, and would thus grow to regard his whole campaign as a joke? Or had he realized that it was an argument that might particularly appeal to an ex-astronaut? There was no way of guessing; in either event it proved that the Thero was a shrewd judge both of private and public reactions.

Franklin switched off the receiver; the scenes it was showing now were quite familiar to him, since he had helped the Thero to film them. The Marine Division, he thought wryly, would now be regretting the facilities it had offered His Reverence, but there was nothing else it could have done in the circ.u.mstances.

In two days he would be appearing to give his evidence; already he felt more like a criminal on trial than a witness. And in truth he was on trial-or, to be more accurate, his conscience was. It was strange to think that having once tried to kill himself, he now objected to killing other creatures. There was some connection here, but it was too complicated for him to unravel-and even if he did, it would not help him to solve his dilemma.

Yet the solution was on the way, and from a totally unexpected direction.

Twenty-Three.

FRANKLIN WAS BOARDING the plane that would take him to the hearings when the "Sub-Smash" signal came through. He stood in the doorway, reading the scarlet-tabbed message that had been rushed out to him, and at that moment all his other problems ceased to exist.

The SOS was from the Bureau of Mines, the largest of all the sections of the Marine Division. Its t.i.tle was a slightly misleading one, for it did not run a single mine in the strict sense of the word. Twenty or thirty years ago there had indeed been mines on the ocean beds, but now the sea itself was an inexhaustible treasure chest. Almost every one of the natural elements could be extracted directly and economically from the millions of tons of dissolved matter in each cubic mile of sea water. With the perfection of selective ion-exchange filters, the nightmare of metal shortages had been banished forever.

The Bureau of Mines was also responsible for the hundreds of oil wells that now dotted the sea beds, pumping up the precious fluid that was the basic material for half the chemical plants on earth-and which earlier generations, with criminal shortsightedness, had actually burned for fuel. There were plenty of accidents that could befall the bureau's world-wide empire; only last year Franklin had lent it a whaling sub in an unsuccessful attempt to salvage a tank of gold concentrate. But this was far more serious, as he discovered after he had put through a few priority calls.

Thirty minutes later he was airborne, though not in the direction he had expected to be going. And it was almost an hour after he had taken off before all the orders had been given and he at last had a chance of calling Indra.

She was surprised at the unexpected call, but her surprise quickly turned to alarm. "Listen, dear," Franklin began. "I'm not going to Berne after all. Mines has had a serious accident and has appealed for our help. One of their big subs is trapped on the bottom-it was drilling a well and hit a high-pressure gas pocket. The derrick was blown over and toppled on the sub so that it can't get away. There's a load of VIP's aboard, including a senator and the director of Mines. I don't know how we're going to pull them out, but we'll do our best. I'll call you again when I've got time."

"Will you have to go down yourself?" asked Indra anxiously.

"Probably. Now don't look so upset! I've been doing it for years!"

"I'm not not upset," retorted Indra, and Franklin knew better than to contradict her. "Good-by, darling," he continued, "give my love to Anne, and don't worry." upset," retorted Indra, and Franklin knew better than to contradict her. "Good-by, darling," he continued, "give my love to Anne, and don't worry."

Indra watched the image fade. It had already vanished when she realized that Walter had not looked so happy for weeks. Perhaps that was not the right word to use when men's lives were at stake; it would be truer to say that he looked full of life and enthusiasm. She smiled, knowing full well the reason why.

Now Walter could get away from the problems of his office, and could lose himself again, if only for a while, in the clear-cut and elemental simplicities of the sea.

"There she is," said the pilot of the sub, pointing to the image forming at the edge of the sonar screen. "On hard rock eleven hundred feet down. In a couple of minutes we'll be able to make out the details."

"How's the water clarity-can we use TV?"

"I doubt it. That gas geyser is still spouting-there it is- that fuzzy echo. It's stirred up all the mud for miles around."

Franklin stared at the screen, comparing the image forming there with the plans and sketches on the desk. The smooth ovoid of the big shallow-water sub was partly obscured by the wreckage of the drills and derrick-a thousand or more tons of steel pinning it to the ocean bed. It was not surprising that, though it had blown its buoyancy tanks and turned its jets on to full power, the vessel had been unable to move more than a foot or two.

"It's a nice mess," said Franklin thoughtfully. "How long will it take for the big tugs to get here?"

"At least four days. Hercules Hercules can lift five thousand tons, but she's down at Singapore. And she's too big to be flown here; she'll have to come under her own steam. You're the only people with subs small enough to be airlifted." can lift five thousand tons, but she's down at Singapore. And she's too big to be flown here; she'll have to come under her own steam. You're the only people with subs small enough to be airlifted."

That was true enough, thought Franklin, but it also meant that they were not big enough to do any heavy work. The only hope was that they could operate cutting torches and carve up the derrick until the trapped sub was able to escape.

Another of the bureau's scouts was already at work; someone, Franklin told himself, had earned a citation for the speed with which the torches had been fitted to a vessel not designed to carry them. He doubted if even the s.p.a.ce Department, for all its fabled efficiency, could have acted any more swiftly than this.

"Captain Jacobsen calling," said the loud-speaker. "Glad to have you with us, Mr. Franklin. Your boys are doing a good job, but it looks as if it will take time."

"How are things inside?"

"Not so bad. The only thing that worries me is the hull between bulkheads three and four. It took the impact there, and there's some distortion."

"Can you close off the section if a leak develops?"

"Not very well," said Jacobsen dryly. "It happens to be the middle of the control room. If we have to evacuate that, we'll be completely helpless."

"What about your pa.s.sengers?"

"Er-they're fine," replied the captain, in a tone suggesting that he was giving some of them the benefit of a good deal of doubt. "Senator Chamberlain would like a word with you."

"h.e.l.lo, Franklin," began the senator. "Didn't expect to meet you again under these circ.u.mstances. How long do you think it will take to get us out?"

The senator had a good memory, or else he had been well briefed. Franklin had met him on not more than three occasions-the last time in Canberra, at a session of the Committee for the Conservation of Natural Resources. As a witness, Franklin had been before the C.C.N.R. for about ten minutes, and he would not have expected its busy chairman to remember the fact.

"I can't make any promises, Senator," he answered cautiously. "It may take some time to clear away all this rubbish. But we'll manage all right-no need to worry about that."

As the sub drew closer, he was not so sure. The derrick was over two hundred feet long, and it would be a slow business nibbling it away in sections that the little scoutsubs could handle.

For the next ten minutes there was a three-cornered conference between Franklin, Captain Jacobsen, and Chief Warden Barlow, skipper of the second scoutsub. At the end of that time they had agreed that the best plan was to continue to cut away the derrick; even taking the most pessimistic view, they should be able to finish the job at least two days before the Hercules Hercules could arrive. Unless, of course, there were any unexpected snags; the only possible danger seemed to be the one that Captain Jacobsen had mentioned. Like all large undersea vessels, his s.h.i.+p carried an air-purifying plant which would keep the atmosphere breathable for weeks, but if the hull failed in the region of the control room all the sub's essential services would be disrupted. The occupants might retreat behind the pressure bulkheads, but that would give them only a temporary reprieve, because the air would start to become foul immediately. Moreover, with part of the sub flooded, it would be extremely difficult even for the could arrive. Unless, of course, there were any unexpected snags; the only possible danger seemed to be the one that Captain Jacobsen had mentioned. Like all large undersea vessels, his s.h.i.+p carried an air-purifying plant which would keep the atmosphere breathable for weeks, but if the hull failed in the region of the control room all the sub's essential services would be disrupted. The occupants might retreat behind the pressure bulkheads, but that would give them only a temporary reprieve, because the air would start to become foul immediately. Moreover, with part of the sub flooded, it would be extremely difficult even for the Hercules to Hercules to lift her. lift her.

Before he joined Barlow in the attack on the derrick, Franklin called Base on the long-range transmitter and ordered all the additional equipment that might conceivably be needed. He asked for two more subs to be flown out at once, and started the workshops ma.s.s producing buoyancy tanks by the simple process of s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g air couplings onto old oil drums. If enough of these could be hitched to the derrick, it might be lifted without any help from the submarine salvage vessel.

There was one other piece of equipment which he hesitated for some time before ordering. Then he muttered to himself: "Better get too much than too little," and sent off the requisition, even though he knew that the Stores Department would probably think him crazy.

The work of cutting through the girders of the smashed derrick was tedious, but not difficult. The two subs worked together, one burning through the steel while the other pulled away the detached section as soon as it came loose. Soon Franklin became completely unconscious of time; all that existed was the short length of metal which he was dealing with at that particular moment. Messages and instructions continually came and went, but another part of his mind dealt with them. Hands and brain were functioning as two separate ent.i.ties.

The water, which had been completely turbid when they arrived, was now clearing rapidly. The roaring geyser of gas that was bursting from the sea bed barely a hundred yards away must have sucked in fresh water to sweep away the mud it had originally disturbed. Whatever the explanation, it made the task of salvage very much simpler, since the subs' external eyes could function again.

Franklin was almost taken aback when the reinforcements arrived. It seemed impossible that he had been here for more than six hours; he felt neither tired nor hungry. The two subs brought with them, like a long procession of tin cans, the first batch of the buoyancy tanks he had ordered.

Now the plan of campaign was altered. One by one the oil drums were clipped to the derrick, air hoses were coupled to them, and the water inside them was blown out until they strained upward like captive balloons. Each had a lifting power of two or three tons; by the time a hundred had been attached, Franklin calculated, the trapped sub might be able to escape without any further help.

The remote handling equipment on the outside of the scoutsub, so seldom used in normal operations, now seemed an extension of his own arms. It had been at least four years since he had manipulated the ingenious metal fingers that enabled a man to work in places where his unprotected body could never go-and he remembered, from ten years earlier still, the first time he had attempted to tie a knot and the hopeless tangle he had made of it. That was one of the skills he had hardly ever used; who would have imagined that it would be vital now that he had left the sea and was no longer a warden?

They were starting to pump out the second batch of oil drums when Captain Jacobsen called.

"I'm afraid I've got bad news, Franklin," he said, his voice heavy with apprehension. "There's water coming in, and the leak's increasing. At the present rate, we'll have to abandon the control room in a couple of hours." This was the news that Franklin had feared. It transformed a straightforward salvage job into a race against time-a race hopelessly handicapped, since it would take at least a day to cut away the rest of the derrick.

"What's your internal air pressure?" he asked Captain Jacobsen.

"I've already pushed it up to five atmospheres. It's not safe to put it up any farther."

"Take it up to eight if you can. Even if half of you pa.s.s out, that won't matter as long as someone remains in control. And it may help to keep the leak from spreading, which is the important thing."

"I'll do that-but if most of us are unconscious, it won't be easy to evacuate the control room."

There were too many people listening for Franklin to make the obvious reply-that if the control room had to be abandoned it wouldn't matter anyway. Captain Jacobsen knew that as well as he did, but some of his pa.s.sengers might not realize that such a move would end any chance of rescue.

The decision he had hoped he would not have to make was now upon him. This slow whittling away of the wreckage was not good enough; they would have to use explosives, cutting the fallen derrick at the center, so that the lower, unsupported portion would drop back to the sea bed and its weight would no longer pin down the sub.

It had been the obvious thing to do, even from the beginning, but there were two objections: one was the risk of using explosives so near the sub's already weakened hull; the other was the problem of placing the charges in the correct spot. Of the derrick's four main girders, the two upper ones were easily accessible, but the lower pair could not be reached by the remote handling mechanisms of the scoutsubs. It was the sort of job that only an unenc.u.mbered diver could do, and in shallow water it would not have taken more than a few minutes.

Unfortunately, this was not shallow water; they were eleven hundred feet down-and at a pressure of over thirty atmospheres.

Twenty-Four.

"IT'S TOO GREAT a risk, Franklin. I won't allow it." It was not often, thought Franklin, that one had a chance of arguing with a senator. And if necessary he would not merely argue; he would defy.

"I know there's a danger, sir," he admitted, "but there's no alternative. It's a calculated risk-one life against twenty-three."

"But I thought it was suicide for an unprotected man to dive below a few hundred feet."

"It is if he's breathing compressed air. The nitrogen knocks him out first, and then oxygen poisoning gets him. But with the right mixture it's quite possible. With the gear I'm using, men have been down fifteen hundred feet." But with the right mixture it's quite possible. With the gear I'm using, men have been down fifteen hundred feet."

"I don't want to contradict you, Mr. Franklin," said Captain Jacobsen quietly, "but I believe that only one man has reached fifteen hundred-and then under carefully controlled conditions. And And he wasn't attempting to do any work." he wasn't attempting to do any work."

"Nor am I; I just have to place those two charges."

"But the pressure!"

"Pressure never makes any difference, Senator, as long as it's balanced. There may be a hundred tons squeezing on my lungs-but I'll have a hundred tons inside and won't feel it."

"Forgive me mentioning this-but wouldn't it be better to send a younger man?"

"I won't delegate this job, and age makes no difference to diving ability. I'm in good health, and that's all that matters." Franklin turned to his pilot and cut the microphone switch.

"Take her up," he said. "They'll argue all day if we stay here. I want to get into that rig before I change my mind."

He was wrestling with his thoughts all the way to the surface. Was he being a fool, taking risks which a man in his position, with a wife and family, ought never to face? Or was he still, after all these years, trying to prove that he was no coward, by deliberately meeting a danger from which he had once been rescued by a miracle?

Presently he was aware of other and perhaps less flattering motives. In a sense, he was trying to escape from responsibility. Whether his mission failed or succeeded, he would be a hero-and as such it would not be quite so easy for the Secretariat to push him around. It was an interesting problem; could one make up for lack of moral courage by proving physical bravery?

When the sub broke surface, he had not so much resolved these questions as dismissed them. There might be truth in every one of the charges he was making against himself; it did not matter. He knew in his heart that what he was doing was the right thing, the only thing. There was no other way in which the men almost a quarter of a mile below him could be saved, and against that fact all other considerations were meaningless. The escaping oil from the well had made the sea so flat that the pilot of the cargo plane had made a landing, though his machine was not intended for amphibious operations. One of the scoutsubs was floating on the surface while her crew wrestled with the next batch of buoyancy tanks to be sunk. Men from the plane were helping them, working in collapsible boats that had been tossed into the water and automatically inflated.

Commander Henson, the Marine Division's master diver, was waiting in the plane with the equipment. There was another brief argument before the commander capitulated with good grace and, Franklin thought, a certain amount of relief. If anyone else was to attempt this mission, there was no doubt that Henson, with his unparalleled experience, was the obvious choice. Franklin even hesitated for a moment, wondering if by stubbornly insisting on going himself, he might not be reducing the chances of success. But he had been on the bottom and knew exactly what conditions were down there; it would waste precious time if Henson went down in the sub to make a reconnaissance.

Franklin swallowed his pH pills, took his injections, and climbed into the flexible rubber suit which would protect him from the near-zero temperature on the sea bed. He hated suits -they interfered with movement and upset one's buoyancy -but this was a case where he had no choice. The complex breathing unit, with its three cylinders-one the ominous red of compressed hydrogen-was strapped to his back, and he was lowered into the sea.

Commander Henson swam around him for five minutes while all the fittings were checked, the weight belt was adjusted, and the sonar transmitter tested. He was breathing easily enough on normal air, and would not switch over to the oxyhydrogen mixture until he had reached a depth of three hundred feet. The change-over was automatic, and the demand regulator also adjusted the oxygen flow so that the mixture ratio was correct at any depth. As correct as it could be, that is, for a region in which man was never intended to live....

At last everything was ready. The explosive charges were securely attached to his belt, and he gripped the handrail around the tiny conning tower of the sub. "Take her down," he said to the pilot. "Fifty feet a minute, and keep your forward speed below two knots."

"Fifty feet a minute it is. If we pick up speed, I'll kill it with the reverse jets."

Almost at once, daylight faded to a gloomy and depressing green. The water here on the surface was almost opaque, owing to the debris thrown up by the oil well. Franklin could not even see the width of the conning tower; less than two feet from his eyes the metal rail blurred and faded into nothingness. He was not worried; if necessary, he could work by touch alone, but he knew that the water was much clearer on the bottom.

Only thirty feet down, he had to stop the descent for almost a minute while he cleared his ears. He blew and swallowed frantically before the comforting "click" inside his head told him that all was well; how humiliating it would have been, he thought, had he been forced back to the surface because of a blocked Eustachian tube! No one would have blamed him, of course; even a mild cold could completely incapacitate the best diver-but the anticlimax would have been hard to live down.

The light was fading swiftly as the sun's rays lost their battle with the turbid water. A hundred feet down, he seemed to be in a world of misty moonlight, a world completely lacking color or warmth. His ears were giving him no trouble now, and he was breathing without effort, but he felt a subtle depression creeping over him. It was, he was sure, only an effect of the failing light-not a premonition of the thousand feet of descent that still lay ahead of him.

To occupy his mind, he called the pilot and asked for a progress report. Fifty drums had now been attached to the derrick, giving a total lift of well over a hundred tons. Six of the pa.s.sengers in the trapped sub had become unconscious but appeared to be in no danger; the remaining seventeen were uncomfortable, but had adapted themselves to the increased pressure. The leak was getting no worse, but there were now three inches of water in the control room, and before long there would be danger of short circuits.

"Three hundred feet down," said Commander Henson's voice. "Check your hydrogen-flow meter-you should be starting the switch-over now."

Franklin glanced down at the compact little instrument panel. Yes, the automatic change-over was taking place. He could detect no difference in the air he was breathing, but in the next few hundred feet of descent most of the dangerous nitrogen would be flushed out. It seemed strange to replace it with hydrogen, a far more reactive-and even explosive- gas, but hydrogen produced no narcotic effects and was not trapped in the body tissues as readily as nitrogen.

It seemed to have grown no darker in the last hundred feet; his eyes had accustomed themselves to the low level of illumination, and the water was slightly clearer. He could now see for two or three yards along the smooth hull he was riding down into the depths where only a handful of unprotected men had ever ventured-and fewer still returned to tell the story.

Commander Henson called him again. "You should be on fifty per cent hydrogen now. Can you taste it?"

"Yes-a metallic sort of flavor. Not unpleasant, though."

"Talk as slowly as you can," said the commander. "It's hard to understand you-your voice sounds so high-pitched now. Are you feeling quite O.K.?"

"Yes," replied Franklin, glancing at his depth gauge. "Will you increase my rate of descent to a hundred feet a minute? We've no time to waste."

At once he felt the vessel sinking more swiftly beneath him as the ballast tanks were flooded, and for the first time he began to feel the pressure around him as something palpable. He was going down so quickly that there was a slight lag as the insulating layer of air in his suit adjusted to the pressure change; his arms and legs seemed to be gripped as if by a huge and gentle vice, which slowed his movements without actually restricting them.

The light had now nearly gone, and as if in antic.i.p.ation of his order the pilot of the sub switched on his twin searchlights. There was nothing for them to illumine, here in this empty void midway between sea bed and sky, but it was rea.s.suring to see the double nimbus of scattered radiance floating in the water ahead of him. The violet filters had been removed, for his benefit, and now that his eyes had something distant to focus upon he no longer felt so oppressively shut in and confined.

Eight hundred feet down-more than three quarters of the way to the bottom. "Better level off here for three minutes," advised Commander Henson. "I'd like to keep you here for half an hour, but we'll have to make it up on the way back."

Franklin submitted to the delay with what grace he could. It seemed incredibly long; perhaps his time sense had been distorted, so that what was really a minute appeared like ten. He was going to ask Commander Henson if his watch had stopped when he suddenly remembered that he had a perfectly good one of his own. The fact that he had forgotten something so obvious was, he realized, rather a bad sign; it suggested that he was becoming stupid. However, if he was intelligent enough to know that he was becoming stupid things could not be too bad.... Luckily the descent started again before he could get too involved in this line of argument.