The Ghost from the Grand Banks

by Arthur C. Clarke

  J.J. was only half a kilometer away, going about its business with simpleminded concentration and devotion to duty. The monotonous ping… ping-ping call sign of its beacon filled Deep Jeep’s tiny bubble of air every ten seconds, and it was also clearly visible on the search sonar.

  Without much hope, Bradley retransmitted the emergency recall sequence, and continued to do so as he approached the recalcitrant robot. He was not surprised, or disappointed, at the total lack of response. Not to worry, he told himself; I’ve lots of other tricks up my sleeve.

  He saved the next one until they were only ten meters apart. Deep Jeep could easily outrun J.J., and Bradley had no difficulty in placing his vehicle athwart the robot’s precomputed track. Such underwater confrontations had often been arranged, to test J.J.’s obstacle avoidance algorithms—and these, at least, now operated exactly as planned.

  J.J. came to a complete halt, and surveyed the situation. At this point-blank range Bradley could just detect, with his unaided ears, a piccololike subharmonic as the robot scanned the obstacle ahead, and tried to identify it.

  He took this opportunity of sending out the recall command once more; no luck. It was pointless to try again; the problem must be in the software.

  J.J. turned ninety degrees left, and headed off at right angles to its original course. It went only ten meters, then swung back to its old bearing, hoping to avoid the obstruction. But Bradley was there already.

  While J.J. was thinking this over, Bradley tried a new gambit. He switched on the external sound transducer.

  “J.J.,” he said. “Can you hear me?”

  “Yes,” the robot answered promptly.

  “Do you recognize me?”

  “Yes, Mr. Bradley.”

  Good, thought Bradley. We’re getting somewhere…

  “Do you have any problems?”

  “No. All systems are normal.”

  “We have sent you a recall—Subprogram 999. Have you received it?”

  “No. I have not received it.”

  Well, thought Bradley, whatever science fiction writers may have pretended, robots won’t lie—unless they’re programmed to do so. And no one’s played that dirty trick on J.J.—I hope…

  “One has been sent out. I repeat: Obey Code 999. Acknowledge.”

  “I acknowledge.”

  “Then execute.”

  “Command not understood.”

  Damn. We’re going around in circles, Bradley realized. And we could do that, literally, until we both run out of power—or patience.

  While Bradley was considering his next step, Explorer interrupted the dialogue.

  “Deep Jeep—sorry you’re having no luck so far. But we’ve an update for you—and a message from the Prof.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “You’re missing some real fireworks. There’s been a—well, blowout’s the only word—around forty west, fifty north. Much too deep to do any serious damage to the offshore rigs, luckily—but hydrocarbon gas is bubbling up by the millions of cubic meters. And it’s ignited—we can see the glare from here—forget the aurora! You should see the Earthsat images: looks as if the North Atlantic’s on fire.”

  I’m sure it’s very spectacular, thought Bradley. But how does it affect me?

  “What’s that about a message from Dr. Zwicker?”

  “He asked us to tell you Tommy Gold was right. Said you’d understand.”

  “Frankly, I’m not interested in proving scientific theories at the moment. How long before I must come up?”

  Bradley felt no sense of alarm—only of urgency. He could drop his remaining ballast and blow his tanks in a matter of seconds, and be safely on his way up long before any submarine avalanche could overwhelm him. But he was determined to complete his mission, for reasons which were now as much personal as professional.

  “Latest estimate is one hour—you may have more. Plenty of time before it gets here—if it does.”

  An hour was ample; five minutes might be enough.

  “J.J.,” he commanded. “I am giving you a new program. Command Five Two Seven.”

  That was main power cutoff, which should leave only the backup systems running. Then J.J. would have no choice but to surface.

  “Command Five Two Seven accepted.”

  Good—it had worked! J.J.’s external lights flickered, and the little attitude-control propellers idled to a halt. For a moment, J.J. was dead in the water. Hope I haven’t overdone it, Bradley thought.

  Then the lights came on again, and the props started to spin once more.

  Well, it was a nice try. Nothing had gone wrong this time, but it was impossible to remember everything, in a system as complex as J.J.’s. Bradley had simply forgotten one small detail. Some commands only worked in the lab; they were disabled on operational missions. The override had been automatically overridden.

  That left only one option. If gentle persuasion had failed, he would have to use brute force. Deep Jeep was much stronger than J.J.—which in any case had no limbs with which to defend itself. Any wrestling match would be very one-sided.

  But it would also be undignified. There was a better way.

  Bradley put Deep Jeep into reverse, so that the submersible no longer blocked J.J. The robot considered the new situation for a few seconds, then set off again on its rounds. Such dedication was indeed admirable, but it could be overdone. Was it true that archaeologists had found a Roman sentry still at his post in Pompeii, overwhelmed by the ashes of Vesuvius because no officer had come to relieve him of his duty? That was very much what J.J. now seemed determined to do.

  “Sorry about this,” Bradley muttered as he caught up with the unsuspecting machine.

  He jammed Deep Jeep’s manipulator arm into the main prop, and pieces of metal flew off in all directions. The auxiliary fans spun J.J. in a half circle, then slowed to rest.

  There was only one way out of this situation, and J.J. did not stop to argue.

  The intermittent beacon signal switched over to the continuous distress call—the robot Mayday—which meant “Come and get me!”

  Like a bomber dropping its payload, J.J. released the iron ballast weight which gave it neutral buoyancy, and started its swift rise to the surface.

  “J.J.’s on the way up,” Bradley reported to Explorer. “Should be there in twenty minutes.”

  Now the robot was safe; it would be tracked by half a dozen systems as soon as it broke water, and would be back in the moon pool well before Deep Jeep.

  “I hope you realize,” Bradley muttered as J.J. disappeared into the liquid sky above, “that hurt me much more than it hurt you.”

  40. TOUR OF INSPECTION

  Jason Bradley was just preparing to drop his own ballast and follow J.J. up to the surface when Explorer called again.

  “Nice work, Jason—we’re tracking J.J. on the way up. The inflatables are already waiting for him.

  “But don’t drop your weights yet. There’s a small job the N-T group would like you to do—it will only take a minute or five.”

  “Do I have that long?”

  “No problem, or we wouldn’t ask. A good forty minutes before the thing hits—it looks like a weather front on our computer simulations. We’ll give you plenty of warning.”

  Bradley considered the situation. Deep Jeep could easily reach the Nippon-Turner site within five minutes, and he would like to have one last look at Titanic—both sections, if possible. There was no risk; even if the arrival estimate was wildly in error, he would still have several minutes of warning time and could be a thousand meters up before the avalanche swept past below.

  “What do they want me to do?” he asked, swinging Deep Jeep around so that the ice-shrouded stern was directly ahead on his sonar scan.

  “Maury has a problem with its power cables—can’t haul them up. May be snagged somewhere. Can you check?”

  “Will do.”

  It was a reasonable request, since he was virtually on the spot. The massive, neutral-buoyan
cy conductors which had carried down their enormous amperages to the wreck cost millions of dollars; no wonder the submarines were trying to winch them up. He assumed that Peter the Great had already succeeded.

  He had only Deep Jeep’s own lights to illuminate the ice mountain still tethered to the seabed, awaiting a moment of release that now might never come. Moving cautiously, to avoid the wires linking it with the straining oxy-hydrogen balloons, he skirted the mass until he came to the pair of thick power cables running up to the submarine far above.

  “Can’t see anything wrong,” he said. “Just give another good pull.”

  Only seconds later, the great cables vibrated majestically, like the strings of some gigantic musical instrument. It seemed to Bradley that he should feel the wave of infrasound spreading out from them.

  But the cables remained defiantly taut.

  “Sorry,” he said. “Nothing I can do. Maybe the shock wave jammed the release mechanism.”

  “That’s the feeling up here. Well, many thanks. Better come home—you’ve still plenty of time, but the latest estimate is that half a billion tons of mud is heading your way. They say it’s like the Mississippi in full spate.”

  “How many minutes before it gets here?”

  “Twenty—no, fifteen.”

  I’d like to visit the prow, Bradley thought wistfully, but I won’t press my luck. Even if I do miss the chance of being the very last man ever to set eyes on Titanic.

  Reluctantly, he jettisoned Number 1 ballast weight, and Deep Jeep started to rise. He had one final glimpse of the immense ice-encrusted framework as he lifted away from it; then he concentrated on the pair of cables glimmering in his forward lights. Just as the anchor chain of his boat gives reassurance to a scuba diver, they also provided Bradley with a welcoming link to the world far above.

  He was just about to drop the second weight, and increase his rate of ascent, when things started to go wrong.

  Maury was still hopefully jerking on the cables, trying to retrieve its expensive hardware, when something finally gave way. But not, unfortunately, what was intended.

  There was a loud ping from the anticollision sonar, then a crash that shook Deep Jeep and threw Bradley against his seat belt. He had a brief glimpse of a huge white mass soaring past him, and up into the heights above.

  Deep Jeep started to sink. Bradley dropped the remaining two ballast weights.

  His rate of descent dropped, almost to zero. But not quite; he was still sinking, very slowly, toward the seabed.

  Bradley sat in silence for a few minutes. Then, despite himself, he began to laugh. He was in no immediate danger, and it really was quite funny.

  “Explorer,” he said. “You’re not going to believe this. I’ve just been hit by an iceberg.”

  41. FREE ASCENT

  Even now, Bradley did not consider himself to be in real jeopardy; he was more annoyed than alarmed. Yet on the face of it, the situation seemed dramatic enough. He was stranded on the seabed, his buoyancy lost. The glancing blow from the ascending mini-iceberg must have sheared away some of Deep Jeep’s flotation modules. And as if that were not enough, the biggest underwater avalanche ever recorded was bearing down upon him, and now due to arrive in ten or fifteen minutes. He could not help feeling like a character in an old Steven Spielberg movie.

  First step, he thought: see if Deep Jeep’s propulsion system can provide enough lift to get me out of this…

  The submarine stirred briefly, and blasted up a cloud of mud which filled the surrounding water with a dazzling cloud of reflected light. Deep Jeep rose a few meters, then settled back. The batteries would be flat long before he could reach the surface.

  I hate to do this, he told himself. A couple of million bucks down the drain—or at least on the seabed. But maybe we can salvage the rest of Deep Jeep when this is all over—just as they did with good old Alvin, long ago.

  Bradley reached for the “chicken switch,” and unlatched the protective cover.

  “Deep Jeep calling Explorer. I’ve got to make a free ascent; you won’t hear from me until I reach the surface. Keep a good sonar lookout—I’ll be coming up fast. Get your thrusters started, in case you have to sidestep me.”

  Calculations had shown—and tests had confirmed—that shorn of its surrounding equipment Deep Jeep’s buoyant life-support sphere would hit forty klicks, and jump high enough out of the water to land on the deck of any ship that was too close. Or, of course, hole it below the water line, if it was unlucky enough to score a direct hit.

  “We’re ready, Jason. Good luck.”

  He turned the little red key, and the lights flickered once as the heavy current pulsed through the detonators.

  There are some engineering systems which can never be fully checked out, before the time when they are needed. Deep Jeep had been well designed, but testing the escape mechanism at four hundred atmospheres pressure would have required most of ISA’s budget.

  The twin explosive charges separated the buoyant life-support sphere from the rest of the vehicle, exactly as planned.

  But, as Jason had often said, the sea could always think of something else. The titanium hull was already stressed to its maximum safe value; and the shock waves, relatively feeble though they were, converged and met at the same spot.

  It was too late for fear or regret; in the fraction of a second that was left to him before the sphere imploded, Jason Bradley had time for only a single thought: This is a good place to die.

  42 THE VILLA, AT SUNSET

  As he drove his hired car past the elaborate iron gates, the beautifully manicured trees and flowerbeds triggered a momentary flashback. With a deliberate effort of will, Donald Craig forced down the upwelling memories of Conroy Castle. He would never see it again; that chapter of his life was over.

  The sadness was still there, and part of it would always be with him. And yet he also felt a sense of liberation; it was not too late—what was Milton’s most misquoted phrase?—to seek fresh woods and pastures new. I’m trying to reprogram myself, Donald thought wryly. Open a new file…

  There was a parking space waiting for him a few meters from the elegant Georgian house; he locked the hired car, and walked to the front door. There was a very new brass plate at eye level, just above the bell push and speaker grill. Though Donald could not see any camera lens, he did not doubt that one was observing him.

  The plate carried a single line, in bold lettering:

  Dr. Evelyn Merrick, Ph.D. (Psych)

  Donald looked at it thoughtfully for a few seconds, then smiled and reached for the bell push. But the door anticipated him.

  There was a faint click as it swung open; then Dame Eva said, in that probing yet sympathetic voice that would often remind him of Dr. Jafferjee: “Welcome aboard, Mr. Craig. Any friend of Jason’s is a friend of mine.”

  43. EXORCISM

  2012 April 15, 2:00 A.M.

  It was a bad time for the media networks—too early for the Americas, not late enough for the evening Euronews. In any case, it was a story that had peaked; few were now interested in a race that had been so well and truly lost.

  Every year, for a century now, the U.S. Coast Guard had dropped a wreath at this same spot. But this centennial was a very special one: the focus of so many vanished hopes and dreams—and fortunes.

  Glomar Explorer had been swung into the wind, so that her forward deckhouse gave her distinguished guests some protection from the icy gusts from the north. Yet it was not as cold as it had been on that immaculate night a hundred years ago, when the whole North Atlantic had lain all Danaë to the stars.

  There was no one aboard who had been present the last time Explorer had paid its tribute to the dead, but many must have recalled that secret ceremony on the other side of the world, in a bloodstained century that now seemed to belong to another age. The human race had matured a little, but still had far to go before it could claim to be civilized.

  The slow movement of Elgar’s Second Symphony eb
bed into silence. No music could have been more appropriate than this haunting farewell to the Edwardian Era, composed during the very years that Titanic grew in the Belfast shipyard.

  All eyes were on the tall, gray-haired man who picked up the single wreath and dropped it gently over the side. For a long time he stood in silence; though all his companions on the windswept deck could share his emotions, for some they were especially poignant. They had been with him aboard the Knorr, when the TV monitor had shown the first wreckage on the morning of 1 September 1985. And there was one whose dead wife’s wedding ring had been cast into these same waters, a quarter of a century ago.

  This time, Titanic was lost forever to the race that had conceived and built her; no human eyes would look upon her scattered fragments again.

  More than a few men were free at last, from the obsessions of a lifetime.

  44. EPILOGUE: THE DEEPS OF TIME

  The star once called the Sun had changed little since the far-off days when men had worshiped it.

  Two planets had gone—one by design, one by accident—and Saturn’s rings had lost much of their glory. But on the whole, the Solar System had not been badly damaged during its brief occupancy by a space-faring species.

  Indeed, some regions still showed signs of past improvements. The Martian oceans had dwindled to a few shallow lakes, but the great forests of mutated pines still survived along the equatorial belt. For ages to come, they would maintain and protect the ecology they had been designed to create.

  Venus—once called New Eden—had reverted to its former Hell. And of Mercury, nothing remained. The System’s mother lode of heavy metals had been whittled away through millennia of astroengineering. The last remnant of the core—with its unexpected and providential bonus of magnetic monopoles—had been used to build the worldships of the Exodus Fleet.