"I"ll try-though I don"t know what the optimism is to be founded on."
"Never mind about that; just express it. Your primary job is to help fix the thing in their minds as a fact, so that it keeps out this anti-Russian nonsense. Once that is well established we can find ways to keep it going."
"You think you"ll need to?" I asked "What do you mean?"
"Well, after the Yatsu, and now this, it looks to me as if the things may have gone over to the offensive, and these won"t be the only ones to suffer."
"I"d not know about that. The thing is, will you get down to this right away? When you"re through, ring us, and we"ll have a recorder fixed ready for you. You"ll give us a free hand to fiddle it around as necessary? The BBC are sure to have something along pretty similar lines."
"Okay, Freddy. You shall have it," I agreed, and hung up.
"Darling," I said, "work for us."
"Oh, not tonight, Mike. I couldn"t..."
"All right," I said "but it"s work for me." I handed on what Freddy Whittier had just told me. "It looks," I went on," as if the best way would be to decide the thesis and the style and approach, and then rake together the bits out of old scripts that will suit it. The devil of it is that most of the scripts and all the data are in London."
"We can remember enough. It doesn"t have to be intellectual-in fact, it mustn"t," Phyllis said. She thought for some moments. "We"ve got all that organised scoffing to break down," she added.
"If the papers really do their stuff tomorrow morning it ought to be cracked a bit. Our job is pressing home what they will have started."
"But we need a line. The first thing people are going to ask is: "If this thing is so serious, why has nothing been done, and why have we been hoodwinked?" Well, why?"
I considered.
"I don"t think that need be too difficult. Viz: the sober, sensible people of the West would have reacted wisely, and no doubt will; but the more emotional and excitable peoples elsewhere have less predictable reactions. It was therefore decided as a matter of policy that the Service Chiefs and scientists who have been studying the trouble should preserve discretion in the hope that it might be scotched before it became serious enough to cause public alarm. How"s that?"
"Um-yes. As good as we"re likely to get," she agreed.
"Then we can use Freddy"s unpreparedness angle as a challenge-the brains of the world getting together and turning the full force of modern science and technique on to the job of avenging the loss, and preventing any more. A duty to those who have been lost, and a crusade to make the seas safe."
"That"s what it is, Mike," Phyllis said, quietly, and with a reproving note.
"Of course it is, darling." Why do you so often think that I say what I say by accident?"
"Well, you start off as if truth is going to be the first casualty, as usual, and then end up like that. It"s kind of bewildering."
"Never mind, my Sweet. I intend to write it the right way. Now, you run up to bed, and I"ll get on with it."
"To bed? What on earth-?"
"Well, you said you couldn"t-"
"Don"t be absurd, darling. Do you think I"m going to let you loose on this on your own? Now, which of us had the atlas last...?"
It was eleven o"clock the next morning when I made my hazy way into the kitchen and subconsciously got together coffee and toast and boiled eggs, and fumbled back upstairs with them.
It had been after five that morning when I had finished dictating our combined work in the recording machine in London, by which time we had both been too tired to know whether it was good or bad, or to care.
Phyllis lit a cigarette to accompany the second cup of coffee.
"I think," she suggested, "that we had better go into Falmouth this morning."
So to Falmouth we went, and, in the course of duty, visited four of the most popular bars in that port.
Freddy Whittier had not exaggerated the need for swift action. The rumour of Russian responsibility for the loss of the Queen Anne was tentatively about already; noticeably stronger among the double-scotches than among the pints of beer. There could have been little doubt that it would have swept the field but for the unanimity with which the morning papers had laid responsibility on the things down below. In the circ.u.mstances, their solidarity succeeded in producing an impression that the anti-Russian talk must be an entirely local product sponsored by a few well-known local diehards and fire-eaters.
That did not mean, however, that the deep-sea menace was fully accepted. Too many people could recall their first uncritical alarm, followed by their swing to derision, to be able to make the new volte-face all at once. But the serious views in the morning"s leaders had got as far as damping the derision and causing many to wonder whether there might not have been something in it after all. It looked to me as if, a.s.suming that we had a fair sample, the first objective had been reached: the danger of a concerted popular demand for war on the wrong enemy had been averted. Undoing the effects of a year or more"s propaganda, and establishing the reality of an enemy that could not even be described, were matters for steady perseverance.
"Tomorrow," said Phyllis, knocking back the fourth gin-and-lime occasioned by our researches, "I think we ought to go back to London. You must have quite enough of those morganatic marriages in the bag to be going on with, and there"ll probably be quite a lot of work for us to do on this business." It was only in expressing the idea that she had forestalled me. The next morning we made our customary early start.
When we arrived at the flat, and switched on the radio, we were just in time to hear of the sinkings of the aircraft-carrier Meritorious, and the liner Carib Princess.
The Meritorious, it will be recalled, went down in mid-Atlantic, eight hundred miles south-west of the Cape Verde Islands: the Carib Princess not more than twenty miles from Santiago de Cuba: both sank in a matter of two or three minutes, and from each very few survived. It is difficult to say whether the British were the more shocked by the loss of a brand-new naval unit, or the Americans by their loss of one of their best-found cruising liners with her load of wealth and beauty: both had already been somewhat stunned by the Queen Anne, for in the great Atlantic racers there was community of pride. Now, the language of resentment differed, but both showed the characteristics of a man who has been punched in the back in a crowd, and is looking round, both fists clenched, for someone to hit.
The American reaction appeared more extreme for, in spite of the violent nervousness of the Russians existing there, a great many found the idea of the deep-sea menace easier to accept than did the British, and a clamour for drastic, decisive action swelled up, giving a lead to a similar clamour at home.
In a pub off Oxford Street I happened across the whole thing condensed. A medium-built man who might have been a salesman in one of the large stores was putting his views to a few acquaintances.
"All right," he said, "say, for the sake of argument they"re right, say there are these whats-its at the bottom of the sea: then what I want to know is why we"re not getting after "em right away? What do we pay for a Navy for? And we"ve got atom bombs, haven"t we? Well, why don"t we go out to bomb "em to h.e.l.l before they get up to more trouble? Sitting down here and letting "em think they can do as they like isn"t going to help. Show"em, is what I say, show"em quick, and show"em proper. Oh, thanks; mine"s a light ale."
Somebody raised the question of poisoning the ocean.
"Well, d.a.m.n it, the sea"s big enough. It"ll get over it. Anyway, you could use H. E., too," he suggested.
Somebody else agreed that the size of the sea was a point: indeed, there was an awful lot of it for games of blind man"s buff. The first man wouldn"t have that.
"They said the Deeps," he pointed out. "They"ve kept on talking about the Deeps. Then, for G.o.d"s sake why don"t they get cracking right away, and sock the Deeps good and hard. They do know where they are, anyway. Who bought this one? Here"s luck."
"I"ll tell you why, chum," said his neighbour, "if you want to know. It"s because the whole thing"s a lot of b.l.o.o.d.y eyewash, that"s why. Things in the frickin" Deeps, for crysake! Horse-marines, Dan Dare, and b.l.o.o.d.y Martians! Look, tell me this: we lose ships, the Yanks lose ships, the j.a.ps lose ships but do the Russians lose ships? Do they-h.e.l.l and I"d like to know why not."
Somebody suggested that it might be because the Russians hadn"t many ships, anyway.
Somebody else remembered that away back at the time when the Keweenaw was lost the Russians had lost a ship, and not quietly, either.
"Ah," said the complainant, "but where are the independent witnesses? That"s just the kind of camouflage you could expect from them."
The feeling of the meeting, however, was not with him. But neither was it altogether with the first speaker. A third man seemed to talk for most of them when he said: "You got to plan for it, like for anything else, I s"pose; but I must say well, thanks, old man, just one for the road I must say it"d make you feel easier to know somebody was really doing something about it."
Probably it was in deference to similar views, more vigorously expressed, that the Americans decided to make the gesture of depth-bombing the Cayman Trench close to the point where the Carib Princess had vanished-they can scarcely have expected any decisive result from the random bombing of a Deep some fifty miles wide and four hundred miles long.
The occasion was well publicised on both sides of the Atlantic. American citizens were proud that their forces were taking the lead in reprisals: British citizens, though vocal in their dissatisfaction at being left standing at the post when the recent loss of two great ships should have given them the greater incentive to swift action, decided to applaud the occasion loudly, as a gesture of reproof to their own leaders. The flotilla of ten vessels commissioned for the task was reported as carrying a number of H. E. bombs specially designed for great depth, as well as two atomic bombs. It put out from Chesapeake Bay amid an acclamation which entirely drowned the voice of Cuba plaintively protesting at the prospect of atomic bombs on her doorstep.
None of those who heard the broadcast put out from one of the vessels as the task-force neared the chosen area will ever forget the sequel. The voice of the announcer when it suddenly broke off from his description of the scene to say sharply: "Something seems to be-my G.o.d! She"s blown up!" and then the boom of the explosion. The announcer gabbling incoherently, then a second boom. A clatter, a sound of confusion and voices, a clanging of bells. Then the announcer"s voice again; breath short, sounding unsteady, talking fast: "That explosion you heard-the first one-was the destroyer, Cavort. She has entirely disappeared. Second explosion was the frigate, Redwood. She has disappeared, too. The Redwood was carrying one of our two atomic bombs. It"s gone down with her. It is constructed to operate by pressure at five miles depth...
"The other eight ships of the flotilla are dispersing at full-speed to get away from the danger area. We shall have a few minutes to get clear. I don"t know how long. n.o.body here can tell me. A few minutes, we think. Every ship in sight is using every ounce of power to get away from the area before the bomb goes off. The deck is shuddering under us. We"re going flat out... Everyone"s looking back at the place where the Redwood went down... Hey, doesn"t anybody here know how long it"d take that thing to sink five miles...? h.e.l.l, somebody must know... We"re pulling away, pulling away for all we"re worth... All the other ships, too. All getting the h.e.l.l out of it, fast as we can make it...... Anybody know what the area of the main spout"s reckoned to be...? For crysake! Doesn"t anybody know any d.a.m.n thing around here...? We"re pulling off now, pulling of... Maybe we will make it... Wish I knew how long...? Maybe... Maybe... Faster, now, faster, for heaven"s sake... Pull the guts out of her, what"s it matter?... h.e.l.l, slog her to bits... Cram her along...
"Five minutes now since the Redwood sank... How far"ll she be down in five minutes...? For G.o.d"s sake, somebody: How long does that d.a.m.n thing take to sink...?
"Still going... Still keeping going... Still beating it for all we"re worth... Surely to heaven we must be beyond the main spout area by now... Must have a chance now... We"re keeping it up... Still going... Still going flat out... Everybody looking astern... Everybody watching and waiting for it... And we"re still going... How can a thing be sinking all this time...? But thank G.o.d it is... Over seven minutes now... Nothing yet... Still going... And the other ships, with great white wakes behind them... Still going... Maybe it"s a dud... Or maybe the bottom isn"t five miles around here... Why can"t somebody tell us how long it ought to take...? Must be getting clear of the worst now... Some of the other ships are just black dots on white spots now.... Still going... We"re still hammering away... Must have a chance now... I guess we"ve really got a chance now.... Everybody still staring aft... Oh, G.o.d! The whole sea"s-"
And there it cut off.
But he survived, that radio announcer. His ship and five others out of the flotilla of ten came through, a bit radioactive, but otherwise unharmed. And I understand that the first thing that happened to him when he reported back to his office after treatment was a reprimand for the use of overcolloquial language which had given offence to a number of listeners by its neglect of the Third Commandment.
That was the day on which argument stopped, and propaganda became unnecessary. Two of the four ships lost in the Cayman Trench disaster had succ.u.mbed to the bomb, but the end of the other two had occurred in a glare of publicity that routed the sceptics and the cautious alike. At last it was established beyond doubt that there was something-and a highly dangerous something, too-down there in the Deeps.
Such was the wave of alarmed conviction spreading swiftly round the world that even the Russians sufficiently overcame their national reticence to admit that they had lost one large freighter and one unspecified naval vessel, both, again, off the Kuriles, and one more survey craft off eastern Kamchatka. In consequence of this, they were, they said, willing to cooperate with other powers in putting down this menace to the cause of world Peace...
The following day the British Government proposed that an International Naval Conference should meet in London to make a preliminary survey of the problem. A disposition among some of those invited to quibble about the locale was quenched by the unsympatheticallv urgent mood of the public. The Conference a.s.sembled in Westminster within three days of the announcement, and, as far as England was concerned, none too soon. In those three days cancellations of sea-pa.s.sages had been wholesale, overwhelmed air-line companies had been forced to apply priority schedules, the Government had clamped down fast on the sales of oils of all kinds, and was rushing out a rationing system for essential services, the bottom had dropped out of the shipping market, the price of many foodstuffs had doubled, and all kinds of tobacco had vanished under the counters.
On the day before the Conference opened Phyllis and I had met for lunch.
"You ought to see Oxford Street," she said. "Talk about panic-buying! Cottons particularly. Every hopeless line is selling out at double prices, and they"re scratching one another"s eyes out for things they wouldn"t have been seen dead in last week. Every decent piece of stuff has disappeared, presumably into store for later on. It"s a better picnic than any of the Sales."
"From what they tell me of the City," I told her, "it"s about as good there. Sounds as if you could get control of a shippingline for a few bob, but you couldn"t buy a single share in anything to do with aircraft for a fortune. Steel"s all over the place; rubbers are, too; plastics are soaring; distilleries are down; about the only thing that"s holding its own seems to be breweries."
"I saw a man and a woman loading two sacks of coffee-beans into a Rolls, in Piccadilly. And there were-" She broke off suddenly as though what I had been saying had just registered. "You did get rid of Aunt Mary"s shares in those Jamaican Plantations?" she enquired, with the expression that she applies to the monthly housekeeping accounts.
"Some time ago," I rea.s.sured her. "The proceeds went, oddly enough, into aero-engines, and plastics."
She gave an approving nod, rather as if the instructions had been hers. Then another thought occurred to her: "What about the Press Tickets for tomorrow?" she asked.
"There aren"t any for the Conference proper," I told her. "There will be a statement afterwards."
She stared at me. Aren"t any? For heaven"s sake! What do they think they"re doing?"
I shrugged. "Force of habit, I imagine. They are planning a campaign. When you plan a campaign, you tell the Press as much as it is good for it to know, later on."
"Well, of all the-"
"I know, darling, but you can"t expect a Service to change its spots overnight."
"It"s absolutely silly. More like Russia every day. Where"s the telephone in this place?"
"Darling, this is an International Conference. You can"t just go-"
"Of course I can. It"s sheer nonsense!"
"Well, whatever VIP you have in mind will be out at lunch now," I pointed out.
That checked her for a moment. She brooded. "I never heard of such rubbish. How do they expect us to do our job?" she muttered, and brooded some more.
When Phyllis said "our job" the words did not connote exactly what they would have implied a few days before. The job had somehow changed quality under our feet. The task of persuading the public of the reality of the unseen, indescribable menace had turned suddenly into one of keeping up morale in the face of a menace which everyone now accepted to the point of panic. EBC ran a feature called News-Parade in which we appeared to have a.s.sumed, as far as we understood the position, the roles of Special Oceanic Correspondents, without being quite sure how it had occurred. In point of fact, Phyllis had never been on the EBC staff, and I had technically left it when I ceased, officially, to have an office there some two years before; n.o.body, however, seemed to be aware of this except the Accounts Department which now paid by the piece instead of by the month. We had been briefed together on this change to a morale-sustaining angle by a director who was dearly under the impression that we were a part of his staff. The whole situation was anomalous, but not unrewarding. All the same, there was not going to be much freshness of treatment in our a.s.signment if we could get no nearer to the sources than official handouts. Phyllis was still brooding about it when I left her to go back to the office I officially didn"t have in EBC.
She rang me up there about five.
"Darling," she said, "you have invited Dr Matet to dine with you at your club at seven-thirty tomorrow evening. I shall be there, too. I explained how it was, and he quite agreed that it was a lot of nonsense. I tried to get Captain Winters to come as well, as he"s a friend of his-he thought it was a lot of nonsense, too, but he said the Service was the Service, and he"d better not come, so I"m having lunch with him tomorrow. You don"t mind?"
"I don"t quite see why the Service should be less the Service tete-a-tete," I told her, "but I appreciate the Matet move. So, darling, you may pat yourself on the back because this town must now be full of a.s.sorted "ographers that he"s not set eyes on for years."
"He"ll be seeing plenty of them by day," Phyllis said, modestly.
This time there was no need for Phyllis to coax Dr Matet. He started off like a man with a mission, over sherries in the bar.
"The Service makes its own rules, of course," he said, "but no pledges were required from the rest of us, so I choose to regard myself as at liberty to discuss the proceedings-I think it"s a duty to let people know all the main facts. You"ve heard the official p.r.o.nouncement, of course?"
We had. It amounted to little more than advice to all shipping to keep clear of the major Deeps when possible, until further notice. One imagined that many masters would already have taken this decision for themselves, but now they would at least have official advice to quote in any argument with their owners.
"Not very specific, "I told him. "One of our draughtsmen for television has produced a work of bathymetric-or do I mean hydrographic?-art showing areas over twenty thousand feet. Very pleased with it, he was, but last seen tearing his hair because someone had told him that it"s not technically a Deep unless it"s over twenty-five thousand."
"For present purposes the danger area is being reckoned as anything over four thousand," said Dr Matet.
"What?" I exclaimed, wildly.
"Fathoms," added Dr Matet.
"Twenty-four thousand feet, darling. You multiply by six," said Phyllis, kindly. She ignored my thanks, and went on to Dr Matet: "And what depth did you advise as marking the danger area, Doctor?"
"How do you know I did not advise four thousand fathoms, Mrs Watson?"
"Use of the pa.s.sive, Doctor Matet "-is being reckoned,"" Phyllis told him, smiling sweetly.
"And there are people who claim that French is the subtle language," he said. "Well, I"ll admit that I recommended that three thousand five hundred should be regarded as the safe maximum, but the shipping interests were all for keeping the extra distances involved as low as possible."
"Isn"t this supposed to be a Naval Conference?" Phyllis asked.
"Oh, they have the real say on strategy, of course, but this was in the first general session. And, anyway, the Navies agreed. You see, the more sea they declare unsafe, the worse it is for their prestige."
"Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Is it going to be one of those Conferences?" said Phyllis.
"Less so than most, I hope," Dr Matet replied.
We went in to dinner. Phyllis prattled lightly through the soup, and then steered gracefully back to the topic.
"The first time I came to see you was about that ooze that was coming up into currents-and you were dreadfully careful. What did you really think then?"
He smiled. "The same as I think now-that if you get yourself made a kind of mental outlaw, you also make your purposes very much harder to attain. Poor old Bocker-though everybody"s had to come round to accepting the second part of his contention now, yet he"s still out beyond the Pale. I could not afford to say it, but I believed then that he was right about the mining. One could think of nothing else that would account for it, so, as the genius of Baker Street once remarked to your husband"s namesake-"
I headed him off: "But you didn"t want to join Bocker in the wilderness."