The first one was a map of the world hatched over with fine lines, each numbered and dated in minute figures. At first glance it looked as if a spider's web had been applied to it; and, here and there, there were clusters of little red dots, looking much like the money-spiders who had spun it.
Captain Winters picked up a magnifying-glass and held it over the area south-east of the Azores.
'There's your first contribution,' he told me.
Looking through it, I presently distinguished one red dot with a figure 5 against it, and the date-time when Phyllis and I had leant over the Guinevere's rail watching the fireballs vanish in steam. There was quite a number of other red dots in the area, each labelled, and more of them were strung out to the north-east.
'Each of these dots represents the descent of a fireball?' I asked.
'One or more,' he told me. 'The lines, of course, are only for those on which we have had good enough information to plot the course. What do you think of it?'
'Well,' I told him truthfully, 'my first reaction is to realize that there must have been a devil of a lot more of them than I ever imagined. The second is to wonder why in thunder they should group in spots, like that.'
'Ah!' he said. 'Now stand back from the map a bit. Narrow your eyes, and get a light and shade impression.'
I did, and saw what he meant.
'Areas of concentration,' I said.
He nodded. 'Five main ones, and a number of lesser. The densest of the lot to the south-west of Cuba; another, six hundred miles south of the Cocos Islands; pretty heavy concentrations off the Philippines, Japan, and the Aleutians. I'm not going to pretend that the proportions of density are right in fact, I'm pretty sure that they are not. For instance, you can see a number of courses converging towards an area north-east of the Falklands, but only three red dots there. It very likely means simply that there are precious few people around those parts to observe them. Anything else strike you?'
I shook my head, not seeing what he was getting at. He produced a bathymetric chart, and laid it beside the first. I looked at it.
'All the concentrations are in deep-water areas?' I suggested.
'Exactly. There aren't many reports of descents where the depth is less than four thousand fathoms, and none at all where it is less than two thousand.'
I thought that over, without getting anywhere.
'So just what?' I inquired.
'Exactly,' he said again. 'So what?'
We contemplated the proposition awhile.
'All descents,' he observed. 'No reports of any coming up.'
He brought out maps on a larger scale of the various main areas. After we had studied them a bit I asked:
'Have you any idea at all what all this means or wouldn't you tell me if you had?'
'On the first part of that, we have only a number of theories, all unsatisfactory for one reason or another, so the second doesn't really arise.'
'What about the Russians?'
'Nothing to do with them. As a matter of fact, they're a lot more worried about it than we are. Suspicion of capitalists being part of their mother's milk, they simply can't shake themselves clear of the idea that we must be at the bottom of it somehow, and they just can't figure out, either, what the game can possibly be. But what both we and they are perfectly satisfied about is that the things are not natural phenomena, nor are they random.'
'And you'd know if it were any other country pulling it?'
'Bound to not a doubt of it.'
We considered the charts again in silence.
'People,' I told him, 'are continually quoting to me things that the illustrious Holmes said to my namesake, but this time I'll do the quoting: "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." Which is to say that if it is no terrestrial nation that is doing this, then?'
'That isn't the kind of solution I like,' he said.
'It's not the kind of solution anyone would like,' I agreed. 'And yet,' I went on, 'it does seem somewhat far-fetched to suggest that something in the deeps has been following an evolutionary line of its own, and has now blossomed out with a well-developed technology. That appears to be the only remaining possibility.'
'And slightly less credible even than the other,' he remarked.
'In which case, we must have eliminated a possible along with some of the impossibles. The bottom of the sea would be a very good place to hide if one could manage the technical difficulties,' I said.
'Undoubtedly,' he agreed, 'but among those technical difficulties happens to be pressure of four or five tons per square inch in the interesting areas.'
'H'm. Perhaps we'd better think some more about that,' I conceded. 'The other obvious question is, of course, what do they seem to be doing?'
'Yes,' he said.
'Meaning, no clue?'
'They come,' he said. 'Maybe they go. But preponderantly they come. That's about all.'
I looked down at the maps, the criss-crossing lines, and the red-dotted areas.
'Are you doing anything about it? Or shouldn't I ask?'
'Oh, that's why you're here. I was coming round to that,' he told me. 'We're going to try an inspection. Just at the moment it is not considered to be a matter for a direct broadcast, nor even for publication, but there ought to be a record of it, and we shall need one ourselves. So if your people happened to feel interested enough to send you along with some gear for the job '
'Where would it be?' I inquired.
He circled his finger round an area.
'Er my wife has a passionate devotion to tropical sunshine: the West Indian kind, in particular,' I said.
'Well, I seem to remember that your wife has written some pretty good documentary scripts,' he remarked.
'And it's the kind of thing EBC might be very sorry about afterwards if they'd missed it,' I reflected.
Not until we had made our last call and were well out of sight of land were we allowed to see the large object which rested in a specially constructed cradle aft. When the Lieutenant-Commander in charge of technical operations ordered the shrouding tarpaulin to be removed, there was quite an unveiling ceremony. But the mystery revealed was something of an anti-climax: it was simply a sphere of metal some ten feet in diameter. In various parts of it were set circular, porthole-like windows; at the top, it swelled into a protuberance which formed a massive lug. The Lieutenant-Commander, after regarding it awhile with the eye of a proud mother, addressed us in the manner of a lecturer.
'This instrument that you now see,' he said, impressively, 'is what we call the Bathyscope.' He allowed an interval for appreciation.
'Didn't Beebe ?' I whispered to Phyllis.
'No,' she said. 'That was the bathysphere.'
'Oh,' I said.
'It has been constructed,' he went on, 'to resist a pressure approaching two tons to the square inch, giving it a theoretical floor of fifteen hundred fathoms. In practice we do not propose to use it at a greater depth than twelve hundred fathoms, thus providing for a safety factor of some 720 pounds to the square inch. Even at this it will considerably surpass the achievements of Dr Beebe who descended a little over five hundred fathoms, and Barton who reached a depth of seven hundred and fifty fathoms ' He continued in this vein for a time, leaving me somewhat behind. When he seemed to have run down for a bit I said to Phyllis:
'I can't think in all these fathoms. What is it in God's feet?'
She consulted her notes.
'The depth they intend to go to is seven thousand two hundred feet; the depth they could go to is nine thousand feet.'
'Either of them sounds an awful lot of feet,' I said.