The Deep Range - Arthur C. Clarke [63]
“To utilize the wasted talents of the wardens?”
“Well, that’s putting it a little bluntly. I don’t want to give the idea that there is any inefficiency in the bureau.”
“I wouldn’t dream of suggesting such a thing,” smiled the secretary. “The other point is a more personal one. Why are you so keen on this project? You have obviously spent a lot of time and trouble on it—and, if I may say so, risked the disapproval of your superiors by coming directly to me.”
That question was not so easy to answer, even to someone you knew well, still less to a stranger. Would this man, who had risen so high in the service of the state, understand the fascination of a mysterious echo on a sonar screen, glimpsed only once, and that years ago? Yes, he would, for he was at least partly a scientist.
“As a chief warden,” explained Franklin, “I probably won’t be on sea duty much longer. I’m thirty-eight, and getting old for this kind of work. And I’ve an inquisitive type of mind; perhaps I should have been a scientist myself. This is a problem I’d like to see settled, though I know the odds against it are pretty high.”
“I can appreciate that. This chart of confirmed sightings covers about half the world’s oceans.”
“Yes, I know it looks hopeless, but with the new sonar sets we can scan a volume three times as great as we used to, and an echo that size is easy to pick up. It’s only a matter of time before somebody detects it.”
“And you want to be that somebody. Well, that’s reasonable enough. When I got your orginal letter I had a talk with my marine biology people, and got about three different opinions—none of them very encouraging. Some of those who admit that these echoes have been seen say that they are probably ghosts due to faults in the sonar sets or returns from discontinuities of some kind in the water.”
Franklin snorted. “Anyone who’s seen them would know better than that. After all, we’re familiar with all the ordinary sonar ghosts and false returns. We have to be.”
“Yes, that’s what I feel. Some more of my people think that the—let us say—conventional sea serpents have already been accounted for by squids, oarfish, and eels, and that what your patrols have been seeing is either one of these or else a large deep-sea shark.”
Franklin shook his head. “I know what all those echoes look like. This is quite different.”
“The third objection is a theoretical one. There simply isn’t enough food in the extreme ocean depths to support any very large and active forms of life.”
“No one can be sure of that. Only in the last century scientists were saying that there could be no life at all on the ocean bed. We know what nonsense that turned out to be.”
“Well, you’ve made a good case. I’ll see what can be done.”
“Thank you very much, Mr. Farlan. Perhaps it would be best if no one in the bureau knew that I’d come to see you.”
“We won’t tell them, but they’ll guess.” The secretary rose to his feet, and Franklin assumed that the interview was over. He was wrong.
“Before you go, Mr. Franklin,” said the secretary, “you might be able to clear up one little matter that’s been worrying me for a good many years.”
“What’s that, sir?”
“I’ve never understood what a presumably well-trained warden would be doing in the middle of the night off the Great Barrier Reef, breathing compressed air five hundred feet down.”
There was a long silence while the two men, their relationship suddenly altered, stared at each other across the room. Franklin searched his memory, but the other’s face evoked no echoes; that was so long ago, and he had met so many people during the intervening years.
“Were you one of the men who pulled me in?” he asked. “If so, I’ve a lot to thank you for.” He paused for a moment, then added, “You see, that wasn’t an accident.”
“I rather thought so; that explains everything. But before we change the subject, just what happened to Bert