Finn raised his hand. “Yes, Delaney?” Forrester said. “What happens if these people start issuing demands before we’re able to do anything about them?”
“In that case,” said Forrester, grimly, “we’re going to do exactly what they tell us to. The situation’s just too damn scary to attempt calling their bluff.”
Another soldier raised his hand. “Captain Sullivan?” said Forrester.
Sullivan stood up. “What about clocking a warp grenade out to Jan Mayan Island and blowing it off the face of the map before the hijacking could occur? Then the hijackers would wind up materializing in the middle of the Arctic Ocean. They wouldn’t survive more than a few minutes, at the very most.”
“The trouble with that suggestion is it would also kill the personnel at the meteorological station there,” said Forrester. “The question of whether or not that could be justified under the circumstances is highly debatable. It would entail some risk, in any case. However, what makes the point moot is the presence of the Soviet sub just off Jan Mayan. The last thing we want to do is set off any large explosions in the vicinity of a strategic missile carrier. It could have unfortunate consequences. Besides, any interference with the hijackers before the fact would raise the possibility of creating a timestream split. We already have proof they’ve managed to bring off the hijacking successfully. If we go back and prevent it, we’d be creating a temporal disruption and risking the creation of a parallel timeline in which there was a nuclear sub on the loose.”
Sullivan made a wry face. “I’m sorry, sir, I should have thought of that.”
“Nothing to be sorry about, Captain. You have a few things to learn yet about this unit. When you transferred in from Ordnance, you left the regular corps behind. In the First, no one’s going to jump on you for making mistakes. Here in Plus Time, it’ll only help you learn. In Minus Time, it’ll cost you. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes, Captain. Just be sure you make them here.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you.”
“All right then, if there are no other questions, let’s get the show on the road. We’ve got us a submarine to sanction. Dismissed.”
2
“Professor-”
“Please,” said the thin, elegantly dressed neatly bearded man, smiling in a self-effacing manner and holding up his hand. He spoke in English, but with a French accent. “While I am flattered at having a professorship thus conferred upon me, I do not merit the title. I am trained as an attorney. Besides, I am only thirty-eight years old. Being addressed as Professor makes me feel rather like a hoary academician.”
The reporter from The New York Times smiled. “All right, then. But you did write Mysteries of the Great Submarine Grounds, so let’s not be too modest about your reputation in academic circles.”
“Only in a somewhat obscure branch of natural history,” said the man, with a slight smile. He was all too well aware of how American reporters had a tendency to blow things out of proportion. One small, theoretical work, published in France in two slim volumes in an exceedingly small print run, and they were ready to seize upon it as an excuse to quote him as an expert. He had far too many friends in the scientific community and far too much respect for their accomplishments to want to be cast as a colleague on an equal footing.
“Well, we won’t split hairs,” said the reporter from The New York Times. “The point is you have been invited to represent your country on this expedition and obviously-”
“No, no, please,” said the man, looking pained. “Really, sir, you quite embarrass me. I beg you to communicate the details correctly to your readers, if only to spare me future discomfort when I arrive back home. In point of fact, the kind invitation from Secretary Hobson did mention your government would be pleased to see France represented in this enterprise, however, he was speaking purely as a matter of form, you understand. In truth, it was I who requested permission to sail with Commander Farragut aboard the Abraham Lincoln. I practically begged myself a berth. Your government was merely humoring a somewhat presumptuous novelist who only dabbles in scientific matters.”
“Nevertheless, Mr. Verne,” the reporter persisted, “the very fact your request was granted obviously indicates that your opinion as a ‘dabbler in scientific matters,’ as you say, is valued. In that context, surely you have some theories as to the nature of this phenomenon?”
“Well,” said Jules Verne, “I prefer to keep an open mind. However, I do have some ideas, and I stress that they are merely ideas, theories, you understand. We have, as yet, no empirical evidence to support them, so making any sort of conclusions would be extremely premature.”
“Yes, well, what do you think it might be?” the reporter pressed him, anxious for a good quote.
Somewhat hesitantly, Verne replied. “After examining one by one the different theories, rejecting all nonsensical suggestions, it seems necessary to admit the possibility of the existence of a marine animal of enormous power.”
The reporters on the dock scribbled hastily.
“The great depths of the ocean are entirely unknown to us,” continued Verne. “Soundings cannot reach them. What passes in those remote depths-what beings live, or can live, twelve or fifteen miles beneath the surface of the waters-is something we can scarcely conjecture. Either we do know all the varieties of beings which exist upon our planet or we do not. If we do not know them all, if Nature still has secrets in the deep for us, nothing is more conformable to reason than to admit the possibility of the existence of fishes or cetaceans or even of new species heretofore unknown inhabiting the regions inaccessible to soundings. It is certainly within the realm of possibility that an accident or an event of some sort has brought such a creature at long intervals to the upper levels of the ocean.”
“So you’re saying a sea monster, then?” said another man, from the Tribune, excitedly.
“No, sir, I said no such thing,” said Verne, carefully. “I merely said the possibility exists that there are creatures on the ocean floor belonging to species which have not as yet been discovered. If, on the other hand, such is not the case, which is also a possibility, we must necessarily seek for the animal in question amongst those marine beings already classed. In such a case, I should be disposed to suspect the existence of a gigantic narwhal.”
“What exactly is that, Professor?” one of the other reporters called out.
Verne winced slightly. “The common narwhal, or unicorn of the sea, is a large mammalian creature which often attains a length of sixty feet. Increase its size fivefold or tenfold, give it strength proportionate to its size and you will have the animal required. It will have the proportions determined by the officers of the Shannon.”
“So you’re saying it’s just a big whale and that’s all?” said the man from The New York Times, with some disappointment. “How would you account, then, for the sinking of the Scotia just last week?”
“I do not account for it,” said Verne. “I do not have access to all of the details. True, the last transmission from the Scotia did report the sighting of a ‘monster,’ however, we have no evidence suggesting it was this so-called monster which caused the sinking of the ship.”
“But suppose it was the monster,” the man from the Telegraph called out. “I mean, how could a whale sink a steamship? How do you account for the explosion witnessed by the Moravian from several miles away?”
“Well, so long as we all understand that what we are dealing with here is merely supposition,” Verne said, “we can suppose the narwhal-if it is a narwhal-might have caused the sinking. Such a creature would be more than just a big whale, as you say. The narwhal is armed with a sort of ivory sword, a halberd, according to the expression of certain naturalists. The principal tusk has the hardness of steel. Some of these tusks have been found buried in the bodies of whales. Others have been drawn out, not without trouble, from the bottoms of ships, which they had pierced through and through. The Museum of the Faculty of Medicine in Paris possesses one of these defensive weapons, two yards and a quarter in length and fifteen inches in diameter at the base. Very well.”-He paused for breath-”Suppose this weapon to be six times stronger and the animal ten times more powerful. Launch it at the rate of twenty miles an hour and you obtain a shock capable of producing the catastrophe required. As to the explosion, there is a better explanation for that than to imagine some sort of sea monster capable of breathing fire. Remember the Scotia was a munitions ship. Given an accident, something undoubtedly caused a fire on board, thereby resulting in the powerful explosion which the men of the Moravian saw from their great distance. Until further information, therefore, I shall be predisposed to suspect our phenomenon might be a sea-unicorn of colossal dimensions, armed not with a halberd, but with a real spur, as the armored frigates or the ‘rams’ of war, whose massiveness and motive power it would possess at the same time.”