The Deep Range - Arthur C. Clarke [58]
He had scarcely finished the thought when Don’s voice, high-pitched with excitement, came yelling from the speaker.
“There he is! A thousand feet down!”
“No need to break my eardrums,” grumbled Franklin. “I can see him.”
The precipitous slope of the canyon wall was etched like an almost vertical line down the center of the sonar screen. Creeping along the face of that wall was the tiny, twinkling star for which they had been searching. The patient beacon had betrayed Percy to his hunters.
They reported the situation to Dr. Roberts; Franklin could picture the jubilation and excitement up above, some hints of which trickled down through the open microphone. Presently Dr. Roberts, a little breathless, asked: “Do you think you can still carry out our plan?”
“I’ll try,” he answered. “It won’t be easy with this cliff face right beside us, and I hope there aren’t any caves Percy can crawl into. You ready, Don?”
“All set to follow you down.”
“I think I can reach him without using the motors. Here we go.”
Franklin flooded the nose tanks, and went down in a long, steep glide—a silent glide, he hoped. By this time, Percy would have learned caution and would probably run for it as soon as he knew that they were around.
The squid was cruising along the face of the canyon, and Franklin marveled that it could find any food in such a forbidding and apparently lifeless spot. Every time it expelled a jet of water from the tube of its siphon it moved forward in a distinct jerk; it seemed unaware that it was no longer alone, since it had not changed course since Franklin had first observed it.
“Two hundred feet—I’m going to switch on my lights again,” he told Don.
“He won’t see you—visibility’s only about eighty today.”
“Yes, but I’m still closing in—he’s spotted me! Here he comes!”
Franklin had not really expected that the trick would work a second time on an animal as intelligent as Percy. But almost at once he felt the sudden thud, followed by the rasping of horny claws as the great tentacles closed around the sub. Though he knew that he was perfectly safe, and that no animal could harm walls that had been built to withstand pressures of a thousand tons on every square foot, that grating, slithering sound was one calculated to give him nightmares.
Then, quite suddenly, there was silence. He heard Don exclaim, “Christ, that stuff acts quickly! He’s out cold.” Almost at once Dr. Roberts interjected anxiously: “Don’t give him too much! And keep him moving so that he’ll still breathe!”
Don was too busy to answer. Having carried out his role as decoy, Franklin could do nothing but watch as his partner maneuvered dexterously around the great mollusk. The anesthetic bomb had paralyzed it completely; it was slowly sinking, its tentacles stretched limply upward. Pieces of fish, some of them over a foot across, were floating away from the cruel beak as the monster disgorged its last meal.
“Can you get underneath?” Don asked hurriedly. “He’s sinking too fast for me.”
Franklin threw on the drive and went around in a tight curve. There was a soft thump, as of a snowdrift falling from a roof, and he knew that five or ten tons of gelatinous body were now draped over the sub.
“Fine—hold him there—I’m getting into position.”
Franklin was now blind, but the occasional clanks and whirs coming from the water outside told him what was happening. Presently Don said triumphantly: “All set! We’re ready to go.”
The weight lifted from the sub, and Franklin could see again. Percy had been neatly gaffed. A band of thick, elastic webbing had been fastened around his body at the narrowest part, just behind the flukes. From this harness a cable extended to Don’s sub, invisible in the haze a hundred feet away. Percy was being towed through the water in his normal direction of motion—backward. Had he been conscious