you something important.”
He saw the glint of excitement in my eye, smiled and sat down
obediently. I poured out two whiskies and said, “I’m going to give you
a little lecture on basic oceanography. I hope you won’t be bored.”
“Go ahead, Mike.” “At the bottom of the oceans – particularly the
Pacific there is a fortune in metallic ores in the form of small lumps
lying on the seabed.” I took the half-nodule from my pocket and put it
on the table. “Like this lump here. There’s no secret about this.
Every oceanographer knows about them.” Geordie picked it up and
examined it. “What’s this white bit in the middle?” “A shark’s
tooth.”
“How the hell did that get in the middle of a piece of rock?” “That
comes later,” I said impatiently,”in the second lesson.
Now, these lumps are composed mainly of manganese dioxide, iron oxide
and traces of nickel, cobalt and copper, but to save time they’re
usually referred to as manganese nodules.
I won’t tell you how they got onto the seabed – that comes later too
but the sheer quantity is incredible.” I turned to the atlas and moved
my forefinger from south to north off the shoreline of the Americas,
starting at Chile and moving towards Alaska. “Proved deposits here, at
the average of one pound a square foot, cover an area of two million
square miles and involve twenty-six billion tons of nodules.” I swept
my finger out to Hawaii. “This is the mid-Pacific Rise. Four million
square miles – fifty-seven billion tons of nodules.” “Hell’s
teeth,”said Geordie. “You were right about incredible figures.” I
ignored this and moved my finger south again, to Tahiti.
“Fourteen million square miles to as manganese nodules.
I won’t tell you how they got onto the seabed – that comes later too
but the sheer quantity is incredible.” I turned to the atlas and moved
my forefinger from south to north off the shoreline of the Americas,
starting at Chile and moving towards Alaska. “Proved deposits here, at
the average of one pound a square foot, cover an area of two million
square miles and involve twenty-six billion tons of nodules.” I swept
my finger out to Hawaii. “This is the mid-Pacific Rise. Four million
square miles – fifty-seven billion tons of nodules.” “Hell’s
teeth,”said Geordie. “You were right about incredible figures.” I
ignored this and moved my finger south again, to Tahiti.
“Fourteen million square miles in central and southeastern Pacific.
Two hundred billion tons of nodules. Like grains of dust in the
desert.”
All “Why haven’t I heard about this before? It sounds like front page
news.” “There’s no reason why you shouldn’t have, but you won’t find
it in the newspapers. It’s not very interesting. You’d have to read
the right technical journals. There’s been no secret made of it; they
were first discovered as far back as 1870 during the Challenger
expedition.”
“There must be a snag. Otherwise somebody would have done something
about it before this I smiled. “Oh yes, there are snags – as always.
One of them is the depth of the water – the average depth at which
these things lie is over fourteen thousand feet. That’s a good deal of
water to go through to scoop up nodules, and the pressure on the.bottom
is terrific. But it could be done. An American engineer called John
Mero did a post-graduate thesis on it. He proposed dropping a thing
like a giant vacuum-cleaner and sucking the nodules to the surface.
the capitalization on a scheme like that would run into millions and
the profit would be marginal at one pound a square foot of ocean bed.
It’s what we’d call a pretty lean ore if we found it on land.” Geordie
said, “But you have a card up your sleeve.” “Let me put it this way.
The
information I’ve given you is based on the I.G.Y surveys, andthe one
pound a square foot is a crude approximation.” I stabbed my finger at
the eastern Pacific. “Zenkevitch, of the Soviet Institute of
Oceanology – the Russians are very interested, by the way – found 3.7
pounds a square foot right there. You see, the stuff lies in varying
concentrations. Here they found five pounds a square foot, here they
found eight, and here, seven.” Geordie had been listening with keen
interest. “That sounds as though it brings it back in line as an
economic proposition.” I shook my head tiredly. “No, it doesn’t.
Manganese isn’t in short supply, and neither is iron. If you started
picking up large quantities of nodules all that would happen is that
you’d saturate the market, the price would slip accordingly, and you’d
be back where you started – with a marginal profit in fact, it would be
worse than that. The big metals firms and mining houses – the only
people with the massed capital to do anything about it – aren’t
interested. They already run manganese mines on land, and if they
started anything like this they end up by wrecking their own land-based
investments.” “It seems that you’re running in circles,” said Geordie
acidly. “Where is all this getting us?” “Have patience.
I’m making a point. Now, I said there are traces of other metals in
these nodules – copper, nickel and cobalt. You can forget the
copper.
But here, in the south-east Pacific, the nodules run to about 1.6
percent nickel and about .3 percent cobalt. The Mid-Pacific Rise gives
as much as 2 percent cobalt. Keep that in mind, because I’m going to
switch to something else.” “For God’s sake, Mike , don’t spin it out
too long.” I was and I knew it, and enjoyed teasing him. “I’m coming
to it,” I said. “All the figures I’ve given you are based on the I.G.Y
surveys.” I leaned forward. “Guess how many sites they surveyed.
“I couldn’t begin to make a guess.” I took a sip of whisky. “They
dredged and photographed sixty sites. A lousy sixty sites in
sixty-four million square miles of Pacific.” Geordie stared at me.
“Is that all? I wouldn’t hang a dog on evidence like that.” “The
orthodox oceanographer says, “The ocean bed is pretty much of a piece
it doesn’t vary greatly from place to place – so what you find at site
X, which you’ve checked, you’re pretty certain to find at site Y, which
you haven’t checked.”‘ I tapped the atlas. “I’ve always been
suspicious of that kind of reasoning. Admittedly, the ocean bed is
pretty much of a piece, but I don’t think we should rely on it sight
unseen. And neither did Mark.” “Did Mark work together with you on
this?” “We never worked together,” I said shortly. “To continue.
In 1955 the Scripps expedition fished up a nodule from about here.” I
pointed to the spot. “It was two feet long, twenty inches thick and
weighed a hundred and twenty-five pounds.
In the same year a British cable ship was grappling for a broken cable
here, in the Philippines Trench. They got the cable up, all right,
from 17,000 feet, and in a loop of cable they found a nodule 4 feet
long and 3 feet in diameter. That one weighed 1700 pounds.” “I begin
to see what you’re getting at.” “I’m trying to put it plainly.
The orthodox boys have sampled sixty spots in sixty-four million square
miles and have the nerve to think they know all about it. I’m banking
that there are places where nodules he fifty pounds to the square
foot
– and Mark knew of such places, if I read enough of his notes
correctly.” “I think you had a point to make about cobalt, Mike. Come
across ‘with it I let my excitement show. “This is the clincher.
The highest assay for cobalt in any nodule has been just over 2
percent.” I pushed the half-nodule on the table with my finger. “I
assayed this one today. It checked out at ten percent cobalt – and
cobalt, Geordie, is worth more than all the rest put tog ether and the
rocket metallurgists can’t get enough of itV We ate Geordie’s stew and
very good it was, and by midnight we had just about talked the subject
to death. At one stage I said, returning to a sore point, “I wish I
still had those notebooks. They were only rough working notes and Mark
seemed to have gone up a lot of false trails – some of the assumptions
seemed completely cockeyed – but I wish they hadn’t been pinched.”
Geordie sucked on his pipe, which gurgled. “I could do with knowing
why they were pinched – and who pinched them.” “Then you agree that it
has something to do with Mark’s death?” it must do, boy. He got hold
of something valuable. . .
“And was murdered for it,” I finished. “But who killed him?
Kane? That’s unlikely – it’s an odd murderer who travels halfway round