They sailed into the small harbor of Barca at ten in the morning. By twelve, local boatmen had towed out an ungainly object some thirty-two feet long. They tethered it to bitts at the Esperance’s stern. By one o’clock they had loaded on her deck a large, folded sack of sailcloth and half a dozen specially-cast concrete blocks with eyed iron rods cemented in them. At half-past one Deirdre, who had gone ashore in one of the yacht’s own boats, came back with innumerable supplies she’d bought. At two o’clock the Esperance went out to sea again.
The towed object was a construction around a central wooden spar with an iron tube at its top end and half a dozen lesser spars linked loosely to its bottom. A mass of fishnet was fastened to the smaller spars and heavy ropes were holding the spars and the net in place during its tow. There was a hook for attaching the main spar to the concrete sinkers.
“It opens like an umbrella,” explained Deirdre. “We’ll hoist it upright barely out of the water, and fasten on the weights. The canvas bag fits on that iron pipe. When you let it go, it sinks like an umbrella that’s tightly closed, but when it touches bottom the weights spread it out and an explosive charge automatically goes off in that iron tube. It’s special explosive. The gas it makes inflates the canvas bag, which can’t burn underwater, and that floats the whole thing back up with the ribs of the umbrella stretched out and spreading the net between them. It should catch anything it encounters as it rises. As the pressure lowers, the excess gas can escape through a relief-valve. This dredge is experimental. If it works, it can be modified to do lots of things.”
“Such as poking at things we don’t believe in,” said Terry drily. “That explosion ought to stir up anything in its neighborhood. It’ll be much more disturbing and audible than a few light taps against the Esperance’s hull!”
Deirdre grinned ruefully and did not answer.
The bulky tow slowed the yacht. She did not reach the position of the fish-filled circle until after nightfall, and it was necessary to have plenty of light by which to locate the inflated bag when it came to the surface, so nothing could be tried until the following morning. A short while before daybreak, lights appeared at the horizon. Red and green sidelights, and white central lights. It was a steamer. It came closer and closer. Pressently, it turned and headed upwind and went dead slow, barely keeping steerage. It was the Pelorus.
Dawn arrived in a golden radiance which thrust aside the night. The Pelorus shone brightly in the first rays of the sun. A large object was hoisted out of her hold. Its shape was that of a gravid goldfish, with a smaller sphere hanging beneath it. It went overside, slowly, and there it floated, rolling wildly on the waves. For a very long time nothing seemed to happen. Then the water-level of the float sank a little. It was being filled with gasoline, which is lighter than water and practically incompressible.
On the Esperance, the tow had been pulled alongside and the yacht’s powerful winch hauled it upright. The yacht heeled over from the weight. The crew-cuts fastened the canvas sack in place, and Davis loaded the explosive charge into the iron tube. The crew-cuts cleared the nets. This preliminary operation seemed promising, and it was quite likely that the dredge would operate as it was designed to do.
The Pelorus whistled impatiently. Nick abandoned his job and went below to the short-wave set. He returned shortly after.
“The Pelorus says she’ll be ready to send the bathyscaphe down for a test dive in two hours,” he reported. “She says she will object if our gadget is floating free at the time, on the chance that it might interfere with the bathyscaphe. She asks if you can send our dredge down right away and get it over with.”
“Tell them yes,” said Davis. “In five minutes.”
He compressed his lips. The Esperance’s device, though clumsy, was fundamentally simple. Five minutes later the top of the central spar was level with the water. “Cut away,” said Davis.
Doug slashed the single rope holding the dredge. It sank immediately.
The recorder gave off the sound of waves. Occasionally, very occasionally, a chirping or a grunt could be heard. Twenty minutes. Thirty.
There was a “crump!” from the loudspeaker which reported underwater events. The sound seemed to come from very far below. Even a small amount of explosive makes a very considerable concussion when it goes off so far down, and the shock travels in all directions instead of merely upward. The recorder picked up that concussion as a deep-bass sound.
The sun shone. The wind increased. Waves marched in serried ranks from here to there.
A long, long time later the inflated canvas bag came up and was floating on top of the waves. The Pelorus whistled. Nick went below. A few minutes later he came up again to report.
“The Pelorus says not to cast our dredge adrift. They’re sending the bathyscaphe down unmanned, to test all apparatus before a manned dive. They don’t want any debris in the sea.”
“Tell them we send them a kiss,” snapped Davis, “and they needn’t worry!”
The Esperance approached the floating bag. Jug swung out on the lifting boom and hooked it The winch hauled it out of tie water. The concrete weights were gone. What the nets had captured was not pretty to see. A dead fish with foliated appendages had come up from far below, to judge by what its unpunctured swim bladder had done to it in uncontrolled expansion. Davis said curtly it was Linophrine arborifer, belonging two thousand fathoms below. An angry-looking creature, similarly dead, was Opisthoproctus grimaldi. It belonged deeper than the other. There were other specimens. A genostoma of a species the books didn’t picture; a Myctophum; and various other creatures, mostly as grotesque as their scientific names. All were abyssal fish. They had died while rising from a pressure of several tons per square inch to surface-pressure only.
“It worked,” said Davis curtly. “I almost wish it hadn’t Let it down into the water again. We’ll jettison it when the Pelorus gives us permission.”
Time passed. More time. Still more. The bathyscaphe was now in the water, practically awash. Only a small conning tower showed above the waves. Men swarmed around it.
There came a query from the Pelorus. The Esperance gave assurance that the deep-sea dredge had returned to the surface and would be kept there.
The bathysphere was allowed to sink.
The recorder on the yacht began to pick up deep-toned mooing sounds from the depths.
Presently, the mooing sounds ceased.
Two hours later, waves broke over an object completely awash on the ocean. The Pelorus steamed cautiously toward it. Boats went down from her sides and surrounded the float.
After a long time the Pelorus got alongside and men quickly fastened the huge buoy to the ship. Then the down-wind sea changed its appearance. A reek of gasoline reached the Esperance.
“Something happened,” said Davis dourly. “They’re dumping the gasoline—not even pumping it aboard. Let’s get out of the stink.”
The Esperance beat to windward. The Pelorus began to lift something large and ungainly out of the water. The Esperance went downwind to take a look at it.
The yacht went past no more than fifty yards away, just as the bathyscaphe left the water and swung clear.
The bathyscaphe’s conning-tower was gone. It had been torn away by brute force. The three-inch-thick steel globe … Half of it was gone. The rest was crushed. The sphere, which had been designed to resist a crushing pressure of ten tons per square inch, had been ripped in half! It had been bitten through. Bitten!