Arthur Clarke - The Deep Range

“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.