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 whatsits 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 hell 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, damn 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 God'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 bloody eyewash, that's why. Things in the frickin' Deeps, for crysake! Horse-marines, Dan Dare, and bloody Martians! Look, tell me this: we lose ships, the Yanks lose ships, the Japs lose ships but do the Russians lose ships? Do they hell and I'd like to know why not'
Somebody suggested that it might be because the Russians hadn't many ships, anyway.
Somebody else remembered that away back at the time when the Keweenaw was lost the Russians had lost a ship, 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 publicized 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 ships 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 God! 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 ships 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. Nobody here can tell me. A few minutes, we think. Every ship 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'll take that thing to sink five miles ? Hell, somebody must know . We're pulling away, pulling away for all we're worth . All the other ships, too. All getting the hell 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 damn 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? Hell, slog her to bits Cram her along .
'Five minutes now since the Redwood sank . How far'll she be down in five minutes ? For God's sake, somebody: How long does that damn thing take to sink ?
'Still going . Still keeping going . Still beating it for all we're worth . Surely to heaven we must be beyond the main spout area by now . Must have a chance now . We're keeping it up . Still going . Still going flat out . Everybody looking astern . Everybody watching and waiting for it . And we're still going . How can a thing be sinking all this time ? But thank God it is Over seven minutes now . Nothing yet . Still going . And the other ships, with great white wakes behind them . Still going . Maybe it's a dud . Or maybe the bottom isn't five miles around here . Why can't somebody tell us how long it ought to take ? Must be getting clear of the worst now . Some of the other ships are just black dots on white spots now. . Still going . We're still hammering away . Must have a chance now. ... I guess we've really got a chance now. . Everybody still staring aft . Oh, God! The whole sea's '
And there it cut off.
But he survived, that radio announcer. His ship and five others out of the flotilla often came through, a bit radio-active, but otherwise unharmed. And I understand that the first thing that happened to him when he reported back to his office after treatment was a reprimand for the use of over-colloquial language which had given offence to a number of listeners by its neglect of the Third Commandment.
That was the day on which argument stopped, and propaganda became unnecessary. Two of the four ships lost in the Cayman Trench disaster had succumbed to the bomb, but the end of the other two had occurred in a glare of publicity that routed the sceptics and the cautious alike. At last it was established beyond doubt that there was something and a highly dangerous something, too down there in the Deeps.
Such was the wave of alarmed conviction spreading swiftly round the world that even the Russians sufficiently overcame their national reticence to admit that they had lost one large freighter and one unspecified naval vessel, both, again, off the Kuriles, and one more survey craft off eastern Kamchatka. In consequence of this, they were, they said, willing to co-operate with other powers in putting down this menace to the cause of world Peace.