Audio-a.s.sessment told us later that the feature had an excellent reception figure. Coming so soon after the American announcement, we hit the peak of popular interest. Their Lordships were pleased, too. It gave them the opportunity of showing that they did not always have to follow the American lead-though I still think there was no need to make the U. S. a present of the first publicity. Anyway, in view of what has followed, I don't suppose it greatly matters.

In the circ.u.mstances, Phyllis rewrote a part of the script, making greater play with the fusing of the cables than before. A flood of correspondence came in, but when all the tentative explanations and suggestions had been winnowed none of us was any wiser than before.

Perhaps it was scarcely to be expected that we should be. Our listeners had not even seen the maps, and at this stage it had not occurred to the general public that there could be any link between the diving catastrophes and the somewhat demode topic of fireb.a.l.l.s.

But if, as it seemed, the Royal Navy was disposed simply to sit still for a time and ponder the problem theoretically, the U. S. Navy was not. Deviously we heard that they were preparing to send a second expedition to the same spot where their loss had occurred. We promptly applied to be included, and were refused. How many other people applied, I don't know, but enough for them to allocate a second small craft. We couldn't get a place on that either. All s.p.a.ce was reserved for their own correspondents and commentators who would cover for Europe, too.

Well, it was their own show. They were paying for it. All the same, I'm sorry we missed it because, though we did think it likely they would lose their apparatus again, it never crossed our minds that they might lose their ship as well...

About a week after it happened one of the NBC men who had been covering it came over. We more or less shanghaied him for lunch and the personal dope.

"Never saw anything like it-never want to," he said. "They were using an automatic instrument pretty much like the one you people lost. The idea was to send that down first, and if it came up again okay, then they'd take another smack at it with a manned depth-chamber what's more, they had a couple of volunteers for it, too; funny the way you can always find a few guys who seem kind of bored with life on Earth.

"Anyway, that was the project. We lay off a couple of hundred yards or more from the research ship, but we had a cable slung between us to relay the television, so we could watch it on our screens just as well as they could on theirs.

"We did-awhile, but I guess it's one of those subjects you have to have majored in to keep the interest up. The way we saw it, it was more of a test-out. We were aiming to get our real stuff from the depth-chamber dive where there'd be the human angle, even though it'd not go down so far.

"Well, we watched the thing slung overside, then we went into our saloon to look at the screens. I guess what we saw'd likely be what you saw; sometimes it was foggy, sometimes clear, and sometimes there'd be quite a few screwy-looking fish and squids, and whole flocks of things that don't have any names I ever heard of, and, I'd say, don't need 'em, either.

"Over the screens was a lighted panel recording the depth-which was a good idea on account of it all looked like it might be going around on an endless band, anyway. By one mile down all the guys with better-trained consciences had taken them up on deck under the awning, with smokes and cold drinks. By two miles down, I was out there, with them, leaving two or three puritanical characters to cover it and tell us if anything new showed up. After a bit more, one of them quit, too, and joined me.

"Two and a half miles, and the last half-mile as dark as the Tunnel of Love and that wouldn't interest even fish a lot, from what they tell me," he said.

"He drew himself a c.o.ke and started to move over towards me. Then he stopped short.

"Christ!" he said. And simultaneously there was some kind of yell from inside the saloon.

"I turned my head and looked the way he was looking-at the research ship.

"A moment before she had been lying there placid, without a visible movement aboard her, and only the sound of the winch coming over the water to tell you she wasn't derelict. And now she was...

"Well, I don't know what kind of thunderstorms you folks have over here, but in some places they have a kind where the lightning looks like it's running around all over a building. And that was the way the research ship looked just then. You could hear it crackle, too.

"She can't have looked that way for more than a few seconds, though it seemed a lot longer. Then she blew up...

"I don't know what they had aboard her, but she sure did blow. Every one of us. .h.i.t the deck in a split second. And then there was spray and sc.r.a.p coming down all over. When we looked again there wasn't anything there but a lot of water just getting itself smoothed out.

"We didn't have a lot to pick up. A few bits of wood, half a dozen lifebuoys, and three bodies, all badly burnt. We collected what there was, and came home."

During the longish pause Phyllis poured him another cup of coffee.

"What was it?" she asked.

He shrugged. "It could have been coincidence, but say we rule that out, then I'd guess that if ever lightning were to strike upwards from the sea, that'd be about the way it'd look."

"I never heard of anything like that," Phyllis said.

"It certainly isn't on the record," he agreed. "But there has to be a first time."

"Not very satisfactory," Phyllis commented.

He looked us over.

"Seeing that you two were on that British fishing-party, do I take it you know why we were there?"

"I'd not be surprised," I told him.

He nodded. "Well, look," he said, "I'm told it isn't possible to persuade a high charge, say a few million volts, to run up an uninsulated hawser in sea-water, so I must accept that; it's not my department. All I say is that if it were possible, then I guess the effect might be quite a bit like what we saw."

"There'd be insulated cables, too-to the cameras, microphones, thermometers, and things," Phyllis said.

"Sure. And there was an insulated cable relaying the TV to our ship; but it couldn't carry that charge, and burnt out-which was a darned good thing for us. That would make it look to me like it followed the main hawser-if it didn't so happen that the physics boys won't have it."

"They've no alternative suggestions?" I asked.

"Oh, sure. Several. Some of them could sound quite convincing-to a fellow who'd not seen it happen."

"If you arc right, this is very queer indeed," Phyllis said, reflectively.

The NBC man looked at her. "A nice British back-hand understatement but it's queer enough, even without me," he said, modestly. "However they explain this away, the physics boys are still stumped on those fused cables, because, whatever this may be, those cable severances couldn't have been accidental."

"On the other hand, all that way down, all that pressure...?" Phyllis said.

He shook his head. "I'm making no guesses. I'd want more data than we've got, even for that. Could be we'll get it before long."

We looked questioning.

He lowered his voice. "Seeing you're in this, too, but strictly under your hats, they've got a couple more probes lined up right now. But no publicity this time-the last lot had a nasty taste."

"Where?" we asked, simultaneously.

"One off the Aleutians, some place. The other in a deep spot in the Guatemala Basin. What're your folks doing?"

"We don't know," we said, honestly.

He shook his head. "Always kinda close, your people," he said, sympathetically.

And close they remained. During the next few weeks we kept our ears uselessly wide open for news of either of the two new investigations, but it was not until the NBC man was pa.s.sing through London again a month later that we learnt anything. We asked him what had happened. He frowned.

"Off Guatemala they drew blank," he said. "The ship south of the Aleutians was transmitting by radio while the dive was in progress. It cut out suddenly. She's reported as lost with all hands."

Official cognizance of these matters remained underground-if that can be considered in acceptable term for their deep-sea investigations. Every now and then we would catch a rumour which showed that the interest had not been dropped, and from time to time a few apparently isolated items could, when put in conjunction, be made to give hints. Our naval contacts preserved an amiable evasiveness, and we found that our opposite numbers across the Atlantic were doing little better with their naval sources. The consoling aspect was that had they been making any progress we should most likely have heard of it, so we took silence to mean that they were stalled.

Public interest in fireb.a.l.l.s was down to zero, and few people troubled to send in reports of them any more. I still kept my files going though they were now so unrepresentative that I could not tell how far the apparently low incidence was real.

As far as I knew, the two phenomena had never so far been publicly connected, and presently both were allowed to lapse unexplained, like any silly-season sensation.

In the course of the next three years we ourselves lost interest almost to vanishing point. Other matters occupied us. There was the birth of our son, William-and his death, eighteen months later. To help Phyllis to get over that I w.a.n.gled myself a travelling-correspondent series, sold up the house, and for a time we roved.

In theory, the appointment was simply mine; in practice, most of the gloss and finish on the scripts which pleased the EBC were Phyllis's, and most of the time when she wasn't dolling up my miff she was working on scripts of her own. When we came back home, it was with enhanced prestige, a lot of material to work up, and a feeling of being set on a smooth, steady course.

Almost immediately, the Americans lost it cruiser off the Marianas.

The report was scanty, an Agency message, slightly blown up locally; but there was a something about it-just a kind of feeling. When Phyllis read it in the newspaper, it struck her, too. She pulled out the atlas, and considered the Marianas.

"It's pretty deep round three sides of them," she said.

"That report's not handled quite the regular way. I can't exactly put my finger on it. But the approach is a bit off the line, somehow, "I agreed.

"We'd better try the grape-vine," Phyllis decided.

We did, without result. It wasn't that our sources were holding out on us; there seemed to be a blackout somewhere. We got no further than the official handout: this cruiser, the Keweenaw, had, in fair weather, simply gone down. Twenty survivors had been picked up. There would be an official enquiry.

Possibly there was: I never heard the outcome. The incident was somehow overlayed by the inexplicable sinking of a Russian ship, engaged on some task never specified, to eastward of the Kurils, that string of islands to the south of Kamchatka. Since it was axiomatic that any Soviet misadventure must be attributable in some way to capitalist jackals or reactionary fascist hyenas, this affair a.s.sumed an importance which quite eclipsed the more serious American loss, and the acrimonious innuendoes went on echoing for some time. In the noise of vituperation the mysterious disappearance of the survey-vessel Utskarpen, in the Southern Ocean, went almost unnoticed outside her native Norway.

Several others followed, but I no longer have my records to give me the details. It is my impression that quite half a dozen vessels, all seemingly engaged in ocean research in one way or another, had vanished before the Americans suffered again off the Philippines. This dm they lost a destroyer, and, with it, their patience.

The ingenuous announcement that since the water about Bikini was too shallow for a contemplated series of deep-water atomic-bomb tests the locale of these experiments would be shifted westwards by a little matter of a thousand miles or so, may possibly have deceived a portion of the general public, but in radio and newspaper circles it touched off a scramble for a.s.signments.

Phyllis and I had better standing now, and we were lucky, too. We flew out there, and a few days later we formed part of the complement of a number of ships lying at a strategic distance from the point where the Keweenaw had gone down off the Marianas.

I can't tell you what that specially designed depth-bomb looked like, for we never saw it. All we were allowed to see was a raft supporting a kind of semi-spherical, metal hut which contained the bomb itself, and all we were told was that it was much like one of the more regular types of atomic bomb, but with a ma.s.sive casing that would resist the pressure at five miles deep, if necessary.

At first fight on the day of the test a tug took the raft in tow, and chugged away over the horizon with it. From then on we had to observe by means of unmanned television cameras mounted on floats. In this way we saw the tug cast off the raft, and put on full speed. Then there was an interval while the tug hurried out of harm's way and the raft pursued a calculated drift towards the exact spot where the Keweenaw had disappeared. The hiatus lasted for some three hours, with the raft looking motionless on the screens. Then a voice through the loudspeakers told us that the release would take place in approximately thirty minutes. It continued to remind us at intervals until the time was short enough for it to start counting in reverse, slowly and calmly. There was a complete hush as we stared at the screens and listened to the voice: "-three, two, one, NOW!"

On the last word a rocket spring from the raft, trailing red smoke as it climbed.

"Bomb away!" said the voice.

We waited.

For a long time, as it seemed, everything was intensely still. Around the vision screens no one spoke. Every eye was on one or another of the frames which showed the raft calmly afloat on the blue, sunlit water. There was no sign that anything had occurred there, save the plume of red smoke drifting slowly away. For the eye and the ear there was utter serenity; for the feelings, a sense that the whole world held its breath.

Then it came. The placid surface of the sea suddenly belched into a vast white cloud which spread, and boiled, writhing upwards. A tremor pa.s.sed through the ship.

We left the screens, and rushed to the ship's side. Already the cloud was above our horizon. It writhed and convolved upon it, elf in a fashion that was somehow obscene as it climbed monstrously up the sky. Only then did the sound reach us, in a buffeting roar. Much later, amazingly delayed, we saw the dark line which was the first wave of turbulent water rushing towards us.

That night we shared a dinner-table with Mallarby of The Tidings and Bennell of The Senate. I claim no credit for being included in such ill.u.s.trious company except in so far as I had had the good sense to marry Phyllis and got her used to having me around before she perceived how widely she could have chosen. This was her show. We have a technique for that. I come off the sidelines just enough to show sociable, but not enough to interfere with her plan of campaign. The rest of the time I watch and admire. It is something like a combination of skilled juggling with expert chess, and her recoveries from an unexpected move are a delight to follow. She seldom loses. This time she had them more or less where she wanted them between the entree and the joint.

"It's been the reluctance to postulate in intelligence that's been the chief stumbling block," Mallarby remarked, "but here, at last, we have a half-admission."

"I'd still question 'intelligence'," Bennell replied. "-the line between instinctive action and intelligent action, particularly as regards self-defence, can be very uncertain if only because both may often produce the same response."

"But you can't deny that whatever is the cause of it, it is in entirely new factor," Mallarby said.

At this point I saw Phyllis relax from her efforts to get them going, and settle down to listen.

"I could," Bennell told him. "I could say that the factor may have been down there for centuries, but that it remained uninterested in us so long as we did not disturb it by probing into its environment."

"You could," agreed Mallarby, "but if I were you, I wouldn't. Beebe and Barton went down deep, and nothing happened to them. You're disregarding the fused cables, too. There's certainly nothing instinctive there."

Bennell grinned. "They're awkward, I admit, but any theory I've heard so far has half a dozen factors quite as troublesome."

"And the electrification of that American ship?-just static, I suppose?"

"Well-do we know enough of the conditions to be sure that it wasn't?"

Mallarby snorted.

"For heaven's sake! Lulling is for babes and nitwits."

"Uh-huh. But if the choice lies between that and accepting the Bocker line, I'm inclined to prefer it."

"I'm no Bocker champion. I doubt whether the thing as presented by him sounds more ludicrous to you than it does to me, but look what we're facing: a lot of explanations that will neither wash singly nor hang together; or Bocker's line. And however we feel about it, he does tie in more factors than anyone else."

"So, without a doubt, would Jules Verne," observed Bennell.

The introduction of this Bocker element set me all at sea, and Phyllis, too, though it would have been hard to guess it from the way she said: "Surely the Bockerline can't be altogether dismissed?" frowning a little as she spoke.

It worked. In a little time we were adequately briefed on the Bocker view, and without either of them guessing that as far as we were concerned he had come into it for the first time.

The name of Alastair Bocker was not, of course, entirely unknown to us: it was that of an eminent geographer, customarily followed by several groups of initials. However, the information on him that Phyllis now prompted forth was something quite new to us. When reordered and a.s.sembled it amounted to this: Almost a year earlier Bocker had presented a memorandum to the Admiralty in London. Because he was Bocker it succeeded in getting itself read at some quite important levels although the gist of its argument was as follows: The fused cables and electrification of certain ships must be regarded as indisputable evidence of intelligence at work in certain deeper parts of the oceans.

Conditions, such as pressure, temperature, perpetual darkness, etc., in those regions made it inconceivable that any intelligent form of life could have evolved there-and this statement he backed with several convincing arguments.

It was to be a.s.sumed that no nation was capable of constructing mechanisms that could operate at such depths as indicated by the evidence, nor would they have any purpose in attempting to do so.

But, if the intelligence in the depths were not indigenous, then it must have come from elsewhere. Also, it must be embodied in some form able to withstand a pressure of two tons per square inch, or possibly twice as much. Now, where else on earth could a form find conditions of such pressure wherein to evolve? Clearly, nowhere.

Very well, then if it could not have evolved on earth, it must have evolved somewhere else-say, on a large planet where the pressures were normally very high. If so, how did it cross s.p.a.ce and arrive here?

Bocker then recalled attention to the "fireb.a.l.l.s" which had aroused so much speculation a few years ago, and were still occasionally to be seen. None of these had been known to descend on land; none, indeed, had been known to descend anywhere but in areas of very deep water. Moreover, such of them as had been struck by missiles had exploded with such violence as to suggest that they had been retaining a very high degree of pressure.

It was significant, also, that these "fireball" globes invariably sought the only regions of the earth in which high-pressure conditions compatible with movement were available.

Therefore, Bocker deduced, we were in the process, while almost unaware of it, of undergoing a species of interplanetary invasion. If he were to be asked the source of it, he would point to Jupiter as being most likely to fulfil the conditions of pressure.

His memorandum had concluded with the observation that such an incursion need not necessarily be regarded as hostile. There was such a thing as flight to refuge from conditions that had become intolerable. It seemed to him that the interests of a type of creation which existed at fifteen pounds to the square inch were unlikely to overlap seriously with those of a form which required several tons per square inch. He advocated, therefore, that the greatest efforts should be made to develop some means of making a sympathetic approach to the new dwellers in our depths with the aim of facilitating in exchange of science, using the word in its widest sense.

The views expressed by Their Lordships upon these elucidations and suggestions are not publicly recorded. It is known, however, that no long interval pa.s.sed before Bocker withdrew his memorandum from their unsympathetic desks, and shortly afterwards presented it for the personal consideration of the Editor of The Tidings. Undoubtedly The Tidings, in returning it to him, expressed itself with its usual tact. It was only for the benefit of his professional brethren that the Editor remarked: "This newspaper has managed to exist for more than one hundred years without a comic-strip, and I see no reason to break that tradition now."

In due course, the memorandum appeared in front of the Editor of The Senate, who glanced at it, called for a synopsis, lifted his eyebrows, and dictated an urbane regret.

Subsequently it occurred upon two other editorial desks of the more cloistered kind, but after that it ceased to circulate, and was known only by word of mouth within a small circle.

"What I have never understood about it," Phyllis said, with a slight frown and an air of having been familiar with the situation for years, "is why something like The Daily Tape or The Lens hasn't run it? Isn't it just their stuff? Or what about the American tabloids?"

"The Tape very nearly did," Mallarby told her. "Only Bocker said he'd sue them if they mentioned his name-he's after respectable publication, or none at all. So the Tape tried to get some other well-known figure to sponsor the idea as if it were his own. n.o.body was keen. Bocker got his stuff printed, deposited it, and claimed copyright, so that was off. They dropped it because without some weighty kind of backing it would be just another Tape scare, and the circulation figures hadn't justified their last two scares. The Lens and the others are in roughly the same jamb. One small American paper did use a chewed-up version, but as it was their third interplanetary danger in four months it didn't register well. The others thought it over and reckoned that it would be too easy to be, accused of making cheap capital out of the loss of American lives in the Keweenaw, so they threw it out. But it will come. Before long, one or another of them is bound to splash it, with or without Bocker's name and consent-and almost certainly without his main point, which was to try to make some kind of contact. They'll stress just what Bennett, here, stressed just now the comic-horrific-strip aspect. Make-your-flesh-creep stuff."