The Kraken Wakes

Certain new alloys recently developed in Japanese laboratories had, it seemed, been used, for the first time on any considerable scale, in the construction of the Yatsushiro. Metallurgical experts conceded it as not impossible that some, or one, of these alloys might, if the ship's engines were to produce vibrations of a certain critical periodicity, become fatigued, and therefore brittle. A fracture of one member so affected would throw on others a sudden strain which, in their weakened state, they might be unable to take. Thus, the collapse of susceptible members might be rapidly successive and conducive to speedy disintegration of the whole. Or, one might put it that the whole ship was ready to fall apart at the drop of a hat.

This could not, at the moment, be positively established as the sole cause of the disaster since detailed examination of the structure was at present precluded by circumstances. Or, again, five or six miles of water.

It had been decided, however, that all work on the Yatsushiro's sister-ship, now on the stocks, would be suspended pending the application of exhaustive tests regarding the crystalline structure of the alloys intended for use in her construction.

'Ah! The blinding light of science,' I said after reading several closely similar versions in different papers. 'A bit hard on that shipyard, and not, perhaps, very consoling to the relatives, but a pretty piece of work, all the same. So reassuring for all the rest of us. Observe the nicer points: not just general metal-fatigue, nor even weld-fatigue, which might alarm people about welded ships in general; no, just the fatigue of an unspecified alloy or two used in one Japanese ship. No other ship is likely to suffer from this deciduous complaint: no need for the sea-faring public to feel the least concern lest any other ship should get a touch of this ague and shake itself to bits. And the sea …? Nothing to do with it. The sea is as safe as ever it was.'

'But it could be so, couldn't it?' said Phyllis.

'That's the beauty of it. It had to be something that could be — if only just. And I think they'll very likely get away with it. The general public will take it, and the technical men won't stand to gain anything by contesting it — in public, anyway.'

'I'd like to believe it,' said Phyllis. 'I think I even might, if I hadn't given myself to a cynic — and, of course, if the thing hadn't happened to happen just where it did.'

I pondered.

'I imagine,' I said, 'that marine insurance rates will be pegged at the moment, to preserve confidence — but we ought to keep an eye on the prices of shipping shares.'

Phyllis got up and went to the window. From where she stood, at the side of it, she had a view of the blue water stretching to the horizon.

'Mike,' she said, 'I'm sorry about yesterday. The thing — this ship going down like that — suddenly got me. Until now this has been a sort of guessing game, a puzzle. Losing the bathyscope with poor Wiseman and Trant was bad, and so was losing the naval ships. But this — well, it suddenly seemed to put it into a different category — a big liner full of ordinary, harmless men, women, and children peacefully asleep, to be wiped out in a few seconds in the middle of the night! It's somehow a different class of thing altogether. Do you see what I mean? Naval people are always taking risks doing their jobs — but these people on a liner hadn't anything to do with it. It made me feel that those things down there had been a working hypothesis that I had hardly believed in, and now, all at once, they had become horribly real. I don't like it, Mike. I suddenly started to feel afraid. I don't quite know why.'

I went over and put an arm round her.

'I know what you mean,' I said. 'I think it is part of it — the thing is not to let it get us down.'

She turned her head. 'Part of what?' she asked, puzzled.

'Part of the process we are going through — the instinctive reaction. The idea of an alien intelligence here is intolerable to us, we must hate and fear it. We can't help it — even our own kind of intelligence when it goes a bit off the rails in drunks and crazies alarms us not very rationally.'

'You mean I'd not be feeling quite the same way about it if I knew that it had been done by — well, the Chinese, or somebody?'

'Do you think you would?'

'I — I'm not sure.'

'Well, for myself, I'd say I'd be roaring with indignation. Knowing that it was somebody hitting well below the belt, I'd at least have a glimmering of who, how, and why, to give me focus. As it is, I've only the haziest impressions of the who, no idea about the how, and a feeling about the why that makes me go cold inside, if you really want to know.'

She pressed her hand on mine.

'I'm glad to know that, Mike. I was feeling pretty lonely yesterday.'

'My protective coloration isn't intended to deceive you, my sweet. It is intended to deceive me.'

She thought.

'I must remember that,' she said, with an air of extensive implication that I am not sure I have fully understood yet.

One of the grubs in the raspberry at Rose Cottage was that our guests almost invariably arrived in the middle of the night, having (a) over-estimated the average speed they would maintain, (b) spent longer over dinner on the way than they had intended, (c) developed in the course of the last few miles a compulsion towards bacon and eggs.

Harold and Tuny were no exception. Two-ten a.m. on Saturday was the time when I heard their car draw up. I went out into the moonlight and found Harold pulling things out of the boot, while Tuny who had not been there before looked about her with a doubtful expression which cleared somewhat as she recognized me.

'Oh, it is the right place,' she said. 'I was just telling Harold it couldn't be because —'

'I'm sorry,' I apologized, 'we shall really have to grow some. Everybody expects it of us — except the natives.'

'I've explained,' said Harold, 'but she won't have it.'

'All you kept on saying was that in Cornwall rose doesn't mean rose.'

'It doesn't,' I told her, 'it means "heath".'

'Well, then I don't see why you don't call it Heath Cottage, to make it plainer.'

'Let's go inside,' I suggested, laying hold of a case.

Wondering why one's friends chose to marry the people they did is unprofitable, but recurrent. One could so often have done so much better for them. For instance, I could think of three girls who would have been better for Harold, in their different ways; one would have pushed him, another would have looked after him, the third would have amused him. It is true that they were none of them quite as decorative as Tuny, but that's not — well, it's something like the difference between the room you live in and the one at the Ideal Home Exhibition. However, there it was, and, as Phyllis said, a girl who makes good with a name like Petunia must at least have something her parents didn't have.

The bacon and eggs made their appearance. Tuny admired the plates, which were part of a set that we had found in Milan, and presently she and Phyllis were well away. After a while I asked Harold how the metal-fatigue theory was going down. He held a public-relations job with a large engineering firm, so he'd be likely to know. He looked at me, and gave a quick glance at Tuny who was still chatting china.

'It's not pleasing our people a lot,' he said, briefly, and then switched over to telling me of some minor noise that his car had developed on the way down.

Untraceable noises in other people's cars tend to bore: this one was so mysterious in its habits that I suggested that we put it down to metal-fatigue, and leave it at that until the morning, at least. Across the table, Tuny caught the phrase. She gave a — well, there used to be something called a 'tinkling laugh'; this was probably it.