The Deep Range - Arthur C. Clarke [65]
He was in England, giving evidence as an expert witness before the Whaling Commission—the bureau’s state-appointed watchdog—when he received a plaintive call from Dr. Lundquist, who had taken over when Dr. Roberts had left the Bureau of Whales to accept a much more lucrative appointment at the Marineland aquarium.
“I’ve just had three crates of gear delivered from the Department of Scientific Research. It’s nothing we ever ordered, but your name is on it. What’s it all about?”
Franklin thought quickly. It would arrive when he was away, and if the director came across it before he could prepare the ground there would be fireworks.
“It’s too long a story to give now,” Franklin answered. “I’ve got to go before the committee in ten minutes. Just push it out of the way somewhere until I get back—I’ll explain everything then.”
“I hope it’s all right—it’s most unusual.”
“Nothing to worry about—see you the day after tomorrow. If Don Burley comes to Base, let him have a look at the stuff. But I’ll fix all the paper work when I get back.”
That, he told himself, would be the worst part of the whole job. Getting equipment that had never been officially requisitioned on to the bureau’s inventory without too many questions was going to be at least as difficult as locating the Great Sea Serpent.…
He need not have worried. His new and influential ally, the secretary of the Department of Scientific Research, had already anticipated most of his problems. The equipment was to be on loan to the bureau, and was to be returned as soon as it had done its job. What was more, the director had been given the impression that the whole thing was a D.S.R. project; he might have his doubts, but Franklin was officially covered.
“Since you seem to know all about it, Walter,” he said in the lab when the gear was finally unpacked, “you’d better explain what it’s supposed to do.”
“It’s an automatic recorder, much more sophisticated than the ones we have at the gates for counting the whales as they go through. Essentially, it’s a long-range sonar scanner that explores a volume of space fifteen miles in radius, clear down to the bottom of the sea. It rejects all fixed echoes, and will only record moving objects. And it can also be set to ignore all objects of less than any desired size. In other words, we can use it to count the number of whales more than, say, fifty feet long, and take no notice of the others. It does this once every six minutes—two hundred and forty times a day—so it will give a virtually continuous census of any desired region.”
“Quite ingenious. I suppose D.S.R. wants us to moor the thing somewhere and service it?”
“Yes—and to collect the recordings every week. They should be very useful to us as well. Er—there are three of the things, by the way.”
“Trust D.S.R. to do it in style! I wish we had as much money to throw around. Let me know how the things work—if they do.”
It was as simple as that, and there had been no mention at all of sea serpents.
Nor was there any sign of them for more than two months. Every week, whatever patrol sub happened to be in the neighborhood would bring back the records from the three instruments, moored half a mile below sea level at the spots Franklin had chosen after a careful study of all the known sightings. With an eagerness which slowly subsided to a stubborn determination, he examined the hundreds of feet of old-fashioned sixteen-millimeter film—still unsurpassed in its