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 circumstances.
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 title 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 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 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 Space 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 passengers?”
“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.”
“Hello, Franklin,” began the senator. “Didn’t expect to meet you again under these circumstances. 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 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 ship 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 lift her.