The Deep Range - Arthur C. Clarke [0]
DEEP RANGE
Arthur C. Clarke
Contents
Cover
Title
Dedication
Also by Arthur C. Clarke in Gollancz
Author’s Note
Preface to the 1988 Edition
Part One: The Apprentice
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Part Two: The Warden
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI
Chapter XVII
Part Three: The Bureaucrat
Chapter XVIII
Chapter XIX
Chapter XX
Chapter XXI
Chapter XXII
Chapter XXIII
Chapter XXIV
Chapter XXV
Copyright
To the memory of Mike Wilson aka Swami Siva Kalki: Film-maker, Diver, Mystic – who led me to the sea, and promised to meet me again in the Next World …
He glanced at the echo they had been chasing; it was moving much faster now.
‘I’ll bet you ten to one—’
He never completed the sentence. This time the hammer blow was no more violent, but it was sustained. The entire ocean seemed to be in travail as the shock waves, travelling at almost a mile a second, were reflected back and forth between surface and sea bed. Franklin shouted the one word ‘Up!’ and tilted the sub as steeply as he dared toward the distant sky.
But the sky was gone. The sharply defined plane which marked the water-air interface on the sonar screen had vanished, replaced by a meaningless jumble of hazy echoes. For a moment Franklin assumed that the set had been put out of action by the shocks; then his mind interpreted the incredible, the terrifying picture that was taking shape upon the screen.
‘Don,’ he yelled, ‘run for the open sea – the mountain’s falling!’
Also by Arthur C. Clarke in Gollancz
A Fall of Moondust
The Fountains of Paradise
Imperial Earth
Reach for Tomorrow
The Other Side of the Sky
The Wind From the Sun
The City and the Stars
Tales of Ten Worlds
The Collected Stories
By Arthur C. Clarke and Mike McQuay
Richter 10
By Arthur C Clarke and Stephen Baxter
Time’s Eye
Sunstorm
AUTHOR’S NOTE
In this novel I have made certain assumptions about the maximum size of various marine animals which may be challenged by some biologists. I do not think, however, that they will meet much criticism from underwater explorers, who have often encountered fish several times the size of the largest recorded specimens.
For an account of Heron Island as it is today, sixty-five years before the opening of this story, I refer the reader to The Coast of Coral, and I hope that the University of Queensland will appreciate my slight extrapolation of its existing facilities.
1956
PREFACE TO THE 1988 EDITION
The Deep Range began its existence as a 3,500 word story written in November 1953, and was first published in Frederik Pohl’s Star Science Fiction series (Number 3, 1954). I had just become seriously addicted to underwater exploration, and soon afterwards bought my first scuba set. Like a motorist in those pioneering days before any interfering bureaucrat had dreamed of driving licences, I simply ordered it from Abercrombie and Fitch, strapped it on, and plunged into the nearest convenient body of water.
This happened to be Florida’s famed Weeki-Wachi Springs, the crystal clarity of which must be unmatched anywhere in the world. I was carrying with me my first underwater camera—a Leica, in a cylindrical plastic case I’d purchased from a Life magazine photographer. Loading it with Kodachrome (a torpid ASA 10 or so in those days, if I remember correctly) and constructing a colour chart which I hoped would be waterproof, I headed for the swimming pool of the local YMCA to test my equipment.
And here (Atlanta, Georgia) I ran into an unexpected problem. To my embarrassed astonishment, I discovered that swimming costumes were forbidden in American YMCAs (maybe British ones too, for all that I know). So you can picture me for the next half hour, taking deep breaths and nervously focusing my camera on the tile-patterns at the bottom of the pool, while ignoring all the other nude swimmers and hoping