Part 8 (1/2)
”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 establis.h.i.+ng 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 s.h.i.+ps, the Yanks lose s.h.i.+ps, the j.a.ps lose s.h.i.+ps but do the Russians lose s.h.i.+ps? 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 s.h.i.+ps, anyway.
Somebody else remembered that away back at the time when the Keweenaw was lost the Russians had lost a s.h.i.+p, 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 s.h.i.+ps 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 s.h.i.+ps 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 s.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+ps, 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...