Arthur Clarke: The Deep Range

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 vise, which slowed his movements without actually restricting them.

The light had now nearly gone, and as if in anticipation 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 seabed and sky, but it was reassuring 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.

And now he could hear, growing louder and louder each minute, the incessant roar of the great geyser of gas belching from the shaft which inquisitive and interfering man had drilled in the ocean bed. It shook the sea around him, already making it hard to hear the advice and comments of his helpers. There was a danger here as great as that of pressure itself; if the gas jet caught him, he might be tossed hundreds of feet upward in a matter of seconds and would explode like a deep-sea fish dragged suddenly to the surface.

“We’re nearly there,” said the pilot, after they had been sinking for what seemed an age. “You should be able to see the derrick in a minute; I’ll switch on the lower lights.”

Franklin swung himself over the edge of the now slowly moving sub and peered down the misty columns of light. At first he could see nothing; then, at an indeterminate distance, he made out mysterious rectangles and circles. They baffled him for a moment before he realized that he was seeing the air-filled drums which were now straining to lift the shattered derrick.

Almost at once he was able to make out the framework of twisted girders below them, and presently a brilliant star — fantastically out of place in this dreary underworld — burst into life just outside the cone of his searchlights. He was watching one of the cutting torches at work, manipulated by the mechanical hands of a sub just beyond visual range.

With great care, his own vessel positioned him beside the derrick, and for the first time he realized how hopeless his task would have been had he been compelled to rely on touch to find his way around. He could see the two girders to which he had to attach his charge; they were hemmed in by a maze of smaller rods, beams, and cables through which he must somehow make his way.

Franklin released his hold of the sub which had towed him so effortlessly into the depths, and with slow, easy strokes swam toward the derrick. As he approached, he saw for the first time the looming mass of the trapped sub, and his heart sank as he thought of all the problems that must still be solved before it could be extricated. On a sudden impulse, he swam toward the helpless vessel and banged sharply on the hull with the pair of wire cutters from his little tool kit. The men inside knew that he was here, of course, but the signal would have an altogether disproportionate effect on their morale.

Then he started work. Trying to ignore the throbbing vibration which filled all the water around him and made it difficult to think, he began a careful survey of the metal maze into which he must swim.

It would not be difficult to reach the nearest girder and place the charge. There was an open space between three I beams, blocked only by a loop of cable which could be easily pushed out of the way (but he’d have to watch that it didn’t tangle in his equipment when he swam past it). Then the girder would be dead ahead of him; what was more, there was room to turn around, so that he could avoid the unpleasant necessity of creeping out backward.

He checked again, and could see no snags. To make doubly sure, he talked it over with Commander Henson, who could see the situation almost as well on the TV screen of the sub. Then he swam slowly into the derrick, working his way along the metal framework with his gloved hands. He was quite surprised to find that, even at this depth, there was no shortage of the barnacles and other marine growths which always make it dangerous to touch any object which had been under water for more than a few months.

The steel structure was vibrating like a giant tuning fork; he could feel the roaring power of the uncapped well both through the sea surrounding him and through the metal beneath his hands. He seemed to be imprisoned in an enormous, throbbing cage; the sheer noise, as well as the awful pressure, was beginning to make him dull and lethargic. It now needed a positive effort of will to take any action; he had to keep reminding himself that many lives besides his own depended upon what he was doing.

He reached the girder and slowly taped the flat package against the metal. It took a long time to do it to his satisfaction, but at last the explosive was in place and he felt sure that the vibration would not dislodge it. Then he looked around for his second objective — the girder forming the other edge of the derrick.

He had stirred up a good deal of dirt and could no longer see so clearly, but it seemed to Franklin that there was nothing to stop him crossing the interior of the derrick and completing the job. The alternative was to go back the way he had come, and then swim right around to the other side of the wreckage. In normal circumstances that would have been easy enough — but now every movement had to be considered with care, every expenditure of effort made grudgingly only after its need had been established beyond all doubt.