Clifford Simak - The Shipshape Miracle - And Other Stories

Hart had been wrong, apparently, about the Snider glass, but he had been right, that time before, about the Venusians. For there could be no doubt of it. The Venusians were coming to Earth—might have been coming to Earth these many years, roaring down out of the sky in their ships, diving into the ocean, their natural habitat—quietly taking over Earth’s oceans without making any sort of fuss.

And then Man, pressed by economic necessity, by the love of adventure, by the lure of wealth, spurred on by scientific and engineering developments, had invaded the sea himself. For centuries he had ridden on it and flown over it, and now he had walked into it, embarking upon the last great venture, invading the last frontier little old Earth had to offer.

Strange tales of flashing things that dropped into the sea—strange reports of mystery planes sighted in midocean, planes that had a strange look about them. Planes tearing upward into space or dropping like a flash into the water. For years those reports had been heard—way back in the twentieth century—even in some instances in the nineteenth century, when planes were yet a thing unheard of.

And tales much older yet—tales from antiquity—from the old days when men first pushed outward from the shore, talks of mermaids and mermen.

Could the Venusians have been coming to Earth for all these centuries? Quietly, unobtrusively dropping out of space—perhaps carrying on a lucrative trade for many years with treasures snatched from Earth’s ocean beds. Perhaps even now there were many Venusian colonies planted on The Bottom. That could easily be so, for Man as yet had only started his exploitation of the sea beds. His health and tourist resorts, his sea farms and oil fields, his floral gardens and mines only fringed the continental shelves, and at no point was The Bottom thickly settled. A few depth-dippy coots like Old Gus, spending their lives on The Bottom, caught by the mystic love of its silences and weird mystery, had pushed ever deeper and deeper, but they were few. The Bottom, to all intent and purpose, was still a wilderness. In that wilderness might be many colonies of Venusians.

Grant Nagle pondered the matter as he headed his tank back into the depths from Deep End, back to Old Gus’ dome.

He chuckled as he remembered the result of his visaphone call to Hart.

He could imagine Hart now—cussing up and down the office, ripping things wide open, laying down the law to Washington. By nightfall Hart would have every government submarine in the entire world combing the ocean bottoms.

Combing the ocean bottoms to ferret out Venusians and their deadly little chemical plants where they were manufacturing hydrofluoric acid.

Maybe they didn’t mean anything by manufacturing the acid. Maybe it was for some perfectly innocent purpose of their own. But the fact that hydrofluoric acid was the only acid known to have an effect on glass, the fact that quartz domes had been failing all tied up too neatly to be disregarded.

After all, wouldn’t that be the logical way for the Venusians to proceed if they wished to keep the oceans for themselves. If they wished to drive Earthmen from the beds of their own seas, how better might they do it than by making Earthmen fear the sea, by destroying their confidence in the quartz that made possible domes and submarines and tanks and underwater suits? Without quartz man would be practically helpless on The Bottom, for quartz was the eyes of men down here. In time to come, of course, television could be worked out so that quartz would be unnecessary, but that would be an unsatisfactory substitute—indirect sight instead of direct sight.

And if the worst came to worst, might it not be possible that the Venusians, with their chemical factories, might entirely alter the chemical content of the oceans? The material lay at hand. Fluorite for hydrogen fluoride. Most of the compounds in the oceans’ waters were chlorides—simple to juggle them chemically. Vast deposits of manganese.

Grant shuddered to think of the witches’ broth that well-directed chemical effort might stir up in these depths. A great job, truly—but not impossible—especially when one considered the Venusians might have developed chemical treatment, might hold knowledge of chemistry which was still a closed book to Man. That machine and the hopper and the cylinders—nothing like one would find in an Earthly chemical plant—but apparently efficient. With unlimited raw material, with many machines such as that—what might not the Venusians be able to do?

And it didn’t make a bit of difference to them. In Venus they lived in seas that frothed and bubbled and stank to the high heavens—seas that seethed with continual chemical change. A few chemical changes in Earth’s seas wouldn’t bother them at all, but it would the people and the creatures of the Earth. All sea life would die, men would be driven from The Bottom, perhaps many sections of country lying close to the sea would become virtually uninhabitable because of the fumes.

Grant cursed at himself. “You damn fool,” he said, “creating a world catastrophe when you aren’t absolutely certain of any fact as yet.”

No facts, of course, except that he had actually found a Venusian operating a machine which produced hydrofluoric acid. He studied his chart closely and corrected his course. He was getting close to Old Gus’ dome.

Half an hour later he sighted the black, shadowy cliffs and cruised slowly in toward them.

He didn’t see the dome until the tank was almost on top of it. Then he cried out in amazement, jerked the tank to a halt and flattened his face against the glass, playing the spotlight on the ruins of the dome.

Old Gus’ dome had been literally blown to bits. Only a few jagged stumps of its foundation, firmly anchored to the rock beneath, still stood. The rest was hurled in shattered fragments over The Bottom!

There was no sign of Old Gus. Apparently the old man had been away when the dome had crashed or his body had been carried away.

But there was little mystery as to what had caused the dome to fall. The broad wheel marks of a large undersea tank led away from the scene of destruction. Deep footprints still made a tracery about the dome site and the interior of the dome had plainly been rifled after the dome itself had been destroyed. This had been the work of men. A shell, loaded with high explosive, driven by compressed air, had smashed the dome.

“Robber’s Deep,” said Grant, half to himself, staring along the direction in which the tank trail led. The tale of Robber’s Deep, as he had heard it from Old Gus, had sounded like one of those tall tales for which The Bottom men were famous. Tales inspired by superstition, by loneliness, by the strange things that they saw. But maybe Robber’s Deep wasn’t just a tale—maybe there really was something to it after all.

Grant turned back to his waiting tank. “By Heaven,” he said, “I’m going to find out!”

The tread marks were easy to follow. They led straight away, down the slope toward the Big Deep, then angled sharply to the north, still leading down.

The water grew darker, became a dirty gray with all the blue gone from it. Sparks flittered in the darkness—flashes that came and went, betraying the presence of little luminous things—sea life carrying their own lanterns. Arrow worms slid across the vision plate, like white threads. Copepods, the insects of the deep, jerked along with oarlike strokes, like motes of dust dancing in the sunlight. A shrimp, startled, turned into a miniature firecracker, hurling out luminous fluid which seemed to explode almost in Grant’s face.

A swarm of fish with cheek and lateral lights flashed by the glass and a nightmare of a thing, with flame-encircled eyes, bobbing lantern barbells and silver tinsel on its body, crawled over the nose of the tank, perched there for a moment like a squatting ogre, then slipped out of sight.