' three two one NOW!'
On the last word a rocket sprang from the raft, trailing red smoke as it climbed.
'Bomb away!' said the voice.
We waited.
For a long time, as it seemed, everything was intensely still. Around the vision screens no one spoke. Every eye was on one or another of the frames which showed the raft calmly afloat on the blue, sunlit water. There was no sign that anything had occurred there, save the plume of red smoke drifting slowly away. For the eye and the ear there was utter serenity; for the feelings, a sense that the whole world held its breath.
Then it came. The placid surface of the sea suddenly belched into a vast white cloud which spread, and boiled, writhing upwards. A tremor passed through the ship.
We left the screens, and rushed to the ship's side. Already the cloud was above our horizon. It writhed and convolved upon itself in a fashion that was somehow obscene as it climbed monstrously up the sky. Only then did the sound reach us, in a buffeting roar. Much later, amazingly delayed, we saw the dark line which was the first wave of turbulent water rushing towards us.
That night we shared a dinner-table with Mallarby of The Tidings and Bennell of The Senate. I claim no credit for being included in such illustrious company except in so far as I had had the good sense to marry Phyllis and got her used to having me around before she perceived how widely she could have chosen. This was her show. We have a technique for that. I come off the sidelines just enough to show sociable, but not enough to interfere with her plan of campaign. The rest of the time I watch and admire. It is something like a combination of skilled juggling with expert chess, and her recoveries from an unexpected move are a delight to follow. She seldom loses. This time she had them more or less where she wanted them between the entree and the joint.
'It's been the reluctance to postulate an intelligence that's been the chief stumbling block,' Mallarby remarked, 'but here, at last, we have a half-admission.'
'I'd still question "intelligence",' Bennell replied. 'The line between instinctive action and intelligent action, particularly as regards self-defence, can be very uncertain if only because both may often produce the same response.'
'But you can't deny that whatever is the cause of it, it is an entirely new factor,' Mallarby said.
At this point I saw Phyllis relax from her efforts to get them going, and settle down to listen.
'I could,' Bennell told him. 'I could say that the factor may have been down there for centuries, but that it remained uninterested in us so long as we did not disturb it by probing into its environment.'
'You could,' agreed Mallarby, 'but if I were you, I wouldn't Beebe and Barton went down deep, and nothing happened to them. You're disregarding the fused cables, too. There's certainly nothing instinctive there.'
Bennell grinned. 'They're awkward, I admit, but any theory I've heard so far has half a dozen factors quite as troublesome.'
'And the electrification of that American ship? just static, I suppose?'
'Well do we know enough of the conditions to be sure that it wasn't?'
Mallarby snorted.
'For heaven's sake! Lulling is for babes and nitwits.'
'Uh-huh. But if the choice lies between that and accepting the Bocker line, I'm inclined to prefer it.'
'I'm no Bocker champion. I doubt whether the thing as presented by him sounds more ludicrous to you than it does to me, but look what we're facing: a lot of explanations that will neither wash singly nor hang together; or Bocker's line. And however we feel about it, he does tie in more factors than anyone else.'
'So, without a doubt, would Jules Verne,' observed Bennell.
The introduction of this Bocker element set me all at sea, and Phyllis, too, though it would have been hard to guess it from the way she said:
'Surely the Bocker line can't be altogether dismissed?' frowning a little as she spoke.
It worked. In a little time we were adequately briefed on the Bocker view, and without either of them guessing that as far as we were concerned he had come into it for the first time.
The name of Alastair Bocker was not, of course, entirely unknown to us: it was that of an eminent geographer, customarily followed by several groups of initials. However, the information on him that Phyllis now prompted forth was something quite new to us. When re-ordered and assembled it amounted to this:
Almost a year earlier Bocker had presented a memorandum to the Admiralty in London. Because he was Bocker it succeeded in getting itself read at some quite important levels although the gist of its argument was as follows:
The fused cables and electrification of certain ships must be regarded as indisputable evidence of intelligence at work in certain deeper parts of the oceans.
Conditions, such as pressure, temperature, perpetual darkness, etc., in those regions made it inconceivable that any intelligent form of life could have evolved there and this statement he backed with several convincing arguments.
It was to be assumed that no nation was capable of constructing mechanisms that could operate at such depths as indicated by the evidence, nor would they have any purpose in attempting to do so.
But, if the intelligence in the depths were not indigenous, then it must have come from elsewhere. Also, it must be embodied in some form able to withstand a pressure of two tons per square inch, or possibly twice as much. Now, where else on earth could a form find conditions of such pressure wherein to evolve? Clearly, nowhere.
Very well, then if it could not have evolved on earth, it must have evolved somewhere else say, on a large planet where the pressures were normally very high. If so, how did it cross space and arrive here?
Bocker then recalled attention to the 'fireballs' which had aroused so much speculation a few years ago, and were still occasionally to be seen. None of these had been known to descend on land; none, indeed, had been known to descend anywhere but in areas of very deep water. Moreover, such of them as had been struck by missiles had exploded with such violence as to suggest that they had been retaining a very high degree of pressure.
It was significant, also, that these 'fireball' globes invariably sought the only regions of the earth in which high-pressure conditions compatible with movement were available.
Therefore, Bocker deduced, we were in the process, while almost unaware of it, of undergoing a species of interplanetary invasion. If he were to be asked the source of it, he would point to Jupiter as being most likely to fulfil the conditions of pressure.
His memorandum had concluded with the observation that such an incursion need not necessarily be regarded as hostile. There was such a thing as flight to refuge from conditions that had become intolerable. It seemed to him that the interests of a type of creation which existed at fifteen pounds to the square inch were unlikely to overlap seriously with those of a form which required several tons per square inch. He advocated, therefore, that the greatest efforts should be made to develop some means of making a sympathetic approach to the new dwellers in our depths with the aim of facilitating an exchange of science, using the word in its widest sense.
The views expressed by Their Lordships upon these elucidations and suggestions are not publicly recorded. It is known, however, that no long interval passed before Bocker withdrew his memorandum from their unsympathetic desks, and shortly afterwards presented it for the personal consideration of the Editor of The Tidings. Undoubtedly The Tidings, in returning it to him, expressed itself with its usual tact. It was only for the benefit of his professional brethren that the Editor remarked: