Japan Sinks

by Sakyo Komatsu

  “Should we make a descent following the line of the slope, Professor?” Onodera asked.

  “Hey, take it easy, will you!” Yuki’s voice came in from the Tatsumi Maru on the VLF radio. “We thought you smashed into it for sure.”

  “Try circling the crest,” said Tadokoro. “And then we’ll go down the slope.”

  “Professor Tadokoro,” said Onodera as he started to move the vessel forward, “even with the ocean floor sinking nearly six hundred feet in two days, there was no tidal wave or anything. Why not, do you suppose?”

  “I don’t know!” Tadokoro barked in answer. “Somehow equilibrium was maintained, I suppose, but I have no idea how. I just don’t know!”

  I just don’t know—that’s the same refrain I’ve heard ever since last evening, Onodera thought.

  The Wadatsumi kept a distance of about 150 yards from the crest of the undersea island as it began to circle it at a speed of three knots. They were close enough to see clearly the creases that ran down the crater wall of the old volcano. As soon as he turned on the searchlight, even Onodera, layman though he was, was able to perceive the difference between water and wind erosion. The diameter of the crater at its mouth was some 200 to 300 yards. On its inside the sides of the crater fell away in a sheer, almost perpendicular drop. There was a deep V-shaped crevice in the crater wall. It seemed to have been caused not by the eruption, but by some earlier disturbance. The fathometer showed a depth of about 300 feet at the crater. Onodera felt a chill as the thought struck him that Tadokoro might say, “Let’s go down into there for a look.” There was no evidence of volcanic activity at the time of the island’s sinking.

  Just as though it had been there forever, the black bulk of the island lay in the cold gloom of the ocean depths, a pall of heavy silence shrouding it.

  Onodera began his descent. Using the sonar to ensure the greatest safety, he fixed upon the slope line of the volcano, pointing the nose down at an angle of nearly thirty degrees.

  “We’re going down the slope, Yuki,” he said into the micro phone. “Keep a sharp watch.”

  “I’ve got you.”

  Onodera turned the rheostat lever. The sound of flowing water penetrated the thick metal of the gondola casing, and the vibrations of the engine shook it as the Wadatsumi began its descent at a speed of two knots. Professor Tadokoro and the young engineer tightened their seat belts, their eyes like saucers as they looked out the observation window and at the TV screen. The dull, twanging echo of the sonar reverberated through the gondola.

  Schools of fish and huge shadows which might have been sharks crossed the screen. The side of the undersea crater loomed up outside the right window until at last the unmistakable traces of sea erosion came into view.

  “Go back up to the water line,” said Tadokoro.

  Onodera raised the nose of the submarine until the erosion mark was opposite the window.

  “Where’s your level?” asked Tadokoro.

  “In the drawer there.”

  Tadokoro laid the level on the ledge of the observation win dow and studied it with rapt attention. Finally he spoke abruptly: “If that’s the sea-level mark as of three days ago, the whole island has tipped four to five degrees to the east.”

  “Should I continue down?” asked Onodera.

  Tadokoro signaled his assent with a tap on the shoulder. The Wadatsumi resumed its descent. . . . 600 feet . . . 800 feet . . . The sun was apparently high in the sky by now, for visibility remained fairly constant. The water outside the window, how ever, quickly took on a bluish cast. At 1,000 feet Onodera slowly brought up the nose of the submarine. The slope of the crater was gradually growing less steep as its skirts trailed down into the indigo-blue depths of the ocean floor. Onodera turned off both the television and the lights inside the gondola. A ghostly blue light poured in from the round observation windows. At 1,200 feet, the Wadatsumi, now almost level, continued to follow the gradual slope which trailed far off to the vanishing point in the darkness of the ocean floor. He jettisoned a small amount of ballast.

  “We’ll reach the bottom in just a bit,” Onodera announced.

  He turned on the searchlight. Beyond the cloudy wall of water ahead, the sea floor came dimly into view. The guide chain trailing from the bottom of the submarine struck with a thump, transmitting the shock to the gondola. Phosphorescent fish swam up to the window. The floor of the sea, beneath the powerful glare of the searchlight, seemed to loom up like some massive gray living thing. Onodera dropped their speed to a half-knot. The guide chain stirred up mud from the bottom as the Wadatsumi finally came to a gradual stop. There were only six feet between it and the ocean floor.

  The bottom of the sea, as far as Onodera was concerned, showed nothing unusual. For the two men behind him, how ever, there was something that gave rise to great excitement.

  “Ripple marks ...” muttered the young engineer.

  “Volcanic rock projectiles—right out in the open like that!” exclaimed Tadokoro excitedly.

  “It’s obvious, isn’t it, that mud on the bottom shifted violently just a little while ago?” said the engineer. “Take a look—there!”

  “Hmmmmm.” Tadokoro nodded. “The sea floor here, keeping the same slope, seems to have shifted over a broad area, doesn’t it?”

  “Rather than shifted, wouldn’t you say that there might have been something like a landslide?”

  “Onodera,” said Tadokoro, “what we have to do next is to see what we can see on the eastern part of the shelf.”

  Professor Yukinaga and a specialist in volcanoes from the expedition went aboard for the second dive. This time Onodera went down at full power and brought the submarine rapidly to a depth of 2,000 feet. And from there, following the slope of the shelf, they dove to the ocean floor, a depth of 6,050 feet. Again the two observers came across a wealth of exciting discoveries. Once even the ever-composed Yukinaga cried out shrilly. The sea was beginning to get rough when they surfaced again.

  “We’ll postpone the third dive until tomorrow,” said Tadokoro. “The Daito Maru seems to have discovered some thing unusual about ninety miles east of here, in the Ogasawara Trench. This time well go down to the bottom of the trench to have a look. No difficulty in that?”

  “No, sir,” said Onodera.

  6

  Visibility was bad when the Wadatsumi slipped below the surface the next day, with Tadokoro and Yukinaga aboard. It plunged into the jaws of a vast black watery void, and at 3,000 feet darkness swallowed it up completely. The force of the water coming to bear upon a portion of metal no larger than the palm of a hand was more than 100 tons. The Wadatsumi continued its dive smoothly at a speed of three knots an hour into that freezing hell of crushing pressure, like a specimen sealed in blue glass. The interior of the gondola became cold. Moisture condensed in drops upon the inner walls.

  “It would be good to put on your jackets,” said Onodera.

  The control board glowed with a green, firefly-like light. At 5,000 feet Onodera turned on the searchlight, and the water seemed to envelop the Wadatsumi like a gray-blue fog. From time to time, strange creatures of the deep floated up into the spotlight and then swam casually away without showing the least interest in the odd invader.

  “Ten thousand feet,” said Onodera, his eyes on the water-pressure gauge. “To the left there . . . the trench slope begins. The distance is eight miles. The slope angle is twenty-five degrees. According to the charts, it should be much steeper.”

  The temperature continued to drop. Yukinaga unobtrusively pulled his jacket collar tighter about him. The dehumidifier had begun to take effect. The drops of moisture on the walls and the pipes had disappeared. The inside of the gondola had the hush of a graveyard at dusk. The submarine seemed to Yukinaga like a metal coffin drawn ever deeper into the terrible pressure of the abyss.

  Fifteen thousand feet. Professor Yukinaga felt his skin prickle at the thought of the water crowding against the outside of the metal wall a bare twenty inches
from his shoulder. He heard a faint crackling noise, and he looked furtively about him.

  “Everything’s in good shape,” said Onodera, noticing Yukinaga’s concern. “The instruments contract and pull at their fittings when the temperature drops. Should I turn on the heater?”

  “No . . .” said Tadokoro. “We’ll soon be at the bottom?”

  “We’re at 17,200 feet,” said Onodera, looking up at the pres sure gauge. “The bottom should be . . .”

  There was a loud ping as a downward sound wave gave back an immediate echo.

  “. . . 5,850 feet farther.”

  Only rarely now did any living thing pass through the search light beam. Sometimes a small jellyfish or shellfish, immune to the terrible pressure, would flash by. When Onodera turned off the searchlight, however, living creatures, like scattered stars, shone with blue-white phosphorescence in the pitch-black void. The water temperature fell to 1.8 degrees Centigrade. One hour and forty-two minutes had passed since they had left the surface behind.

  “Twenty-two thousand feet ...”

  “That there!” exclaimed Yukinaga, a quaver to his voice. “Is it a ray?”

  Outside the left window, a creature like a huge curtain was flapping its way slowly through the searchlight beam.

  “Surely,” said Tadokoro, his voice hoarse, “something that big couldn’t be a living thing.”

  The creature, caught in the outer circle of light, took a good five or six seconds to pass by. It seemed to be more than 100 feet in length.

  “Could we try to track it with the sonar?” asked Yukinaga.

  “It’s already way above us,” answered Onodera. “We’ll soon be at the bottom.”

  Suddenly there was a loud thump as the submarine took a shocking blow upon its side. The Wadatsumi shuddered, and its nose twisted sharply to the left more than twenty degrees, then thirty degrees back to the right.

  “What is it?” Yukinaga asked, his voice harsh. “An accident?”

  “No,” answered Onodera calmly. “It seems like it was an undersea tidal current.”

  “At a spot this deep?” asked Tadokoro. “A current that strong? How’s that?”

  “I don’t know,” answered Onodera. “Sometimes we run into them. But I’ve never hit one that strong before.”

  “There’s the bottom,” said Yukinaga, his voice like a sigh.

  Directly below them two mustard-colored circles seemed to loom dimly, the targets of the two powerful searchlights pointing straight down from the front and rear of the submarine. Gradually they got brighter, their outlines growing quite distinct. At several points doughnut-shaped clouds of mud whirled up, rising as they broadened, stirred by released ballast. The guide chain struck the sea floor, and the Wadatsumi, halting its descent, pursued a course barely five feet from the bottom.

  The water was clear at this depth. Once the flowing clouds of ooze had thinned, there was almost nothing to catch the light cast by the searchlight. The melancholy brown desert of the sea floor stretched all around them. The distant portion was grayish with a tinge of indigo. Beyond that was blackness.

  “Well ...” said Onodera, breaking silence, his voice harsh, “this is the floor of the trench. The depth is 23,840 feet.”

  As though jarred by Onodera’s voice, the two scientists began to exchange low, hurried whispers.

  “Look there!” exclaimed Tadokoro, pointing his finger.

  Yukinaga nodded. Running from west to east across the sea floor were any number of ripple marks.

  “That over there,” said Tadokoro, “what’s that long thing like a rut?”

  “I don’t know,” answered Yukinaga, shaking his head. He spoke to Onodera: “Could we turn in that direction?”

  Onodera released a small amount of ballast. Once more a cloud of mud rose up outside the window. The Wadatsumi climbed a bit, and Onodera guided the nose of the submarine in the direction Yukinaga wanted by careful use of his jets rather than by the control stick, moving forward at extremely slow speed.

  The long trench on the sea floor, some seven or eight feet wide, came into view through the cloud of muddy water. It looked as though some creature of fantastic size had dragged itself through the ooze.

  “Over there, too,” Yukinaga whispered. “Why, there are all kinds of them.,,

  “What do you think they are?” asked Tadokoro.

  “I don’t know.” Onodera shook his head. “I’ve gone down into a trench two or three times now, but this is the first time I’ve ever seen anything like this.”

  The sea floor was covered with these broad ruts. They ranged from fifteen feet in width to twenty or more. They extended east and west beyond the limits of the submarine’s field of vision. Something had caused the sea floor to shift. Some force of unimaginable power.

  “Could it be that there was some extraordinary gravitational variation in this area?” Yukinaga asked.

  “No idea,” answered Tadokoro. “Let’s follow along and have a look.”

  Turning the wireless up to its full capacity, Onodera at tempted contact with the Tatsumi Maru. At length Yuki’s voice came through. The reception was terribly weak and marred by static.

  “What is it?” came the faint response. “We lost all trace of you just now. We had been monitoring your sonar vibrations.”

  “We ran into some strange-looking ruts at the bottom of the trench,” said Onodera. “So what we’re going to do now is follow them, going east. Take a verification of my position.”

  “All right,” answered Yuki. “In one minute give me a signal. And then let’s have a sound wave every minute after that.”

  His eye on his stopwatch, Onodera let a minute elapse and then sent up a signal from the ultrasonic oscillator. When he had gotten a reply verifying his position, Onodera set the oscillator at one-minute intervals and started the submarine forward. He steered it into a shallow curve, and, passing over two ruts, he lined up the vessel’s axis with the third and then moved forward at a speed of three knots. Apparently they had not yet reached the deepest part of the sea trench. In front of them there was a gentle grade of about twenty degrees, which fell off to the east. The vessel moved ahead, its guide chain maintaining a fixed distance from the sea floor. The water pressure began to climb slightly. After they had gone a mile and a half, the rut broadened, almost doubling in width, and it also grew shallower. Finally it disappeared into the ooze. All was silent save for the faint ping of the oscillator and the quiet vibration of the motor.

  “We’re down to 23,950,” said Onodera. “The slope of the floor is getting steep all of a sudden.”

  “The water’s gotten muddy,” said Tadokoro.

  Suddenly the nose of the vessel rose up with a thumping noise. It climbed some sixty feet above the sea floor before Onodera could check it.

  “Are we all right?” asked Yukinaga, gripping his chair as the submarine pitched forward and back. The dim cabin light showed his forehead beaded with sweat.

  Without answering, Onodera gripped the control stick and brought the vessel some ninety feet farther up. The pitching lessened at once. How incredible, thought Onodera, a current so violent that close to the floor of a trench! He leveled out on a course 180 feet from the bottom. The vibrations ceased almost entirely.

  “Should we go down again?” Onodera asked.

  “No ...” muttered Tadokoro as though uncertain.

  “How about a flare?”

  “Give it a try.”

  Onodera opened the lid of a small control box to his right and depressed one of the six levers it contained. There was a faint shock. Then in the upper portion of the television screen a dazzling sphere of brilliance burst into view. Surrounded by a frenzied mass of bubbles, it slanted slowly downward.

  The two scientists, clinging to the edge of the observation window, gasped with surprise. Onodera fixed his eyes on the television screen. What had come into view, lit by the blue-white glare of that underwater sun, was peak upon peak of gray-yellow clouds of mud, wavering
in the current and stretching far into the distance like a vast sea of stratocumuli seen from an airplane.

  “Can we go down?” muttered Tadokoro.

  “We can try 150 feet,” said Onodera.

  “All right. Be careful ...” said Tadokoro. “Make sure that we can go back up at any moment.”

  Onodera released a spurt of gasoline from the small tank used to trim the vessel, and the Wadatsumi began to sink rapidly. Startled, Onodera let go some ballast and lessened the rate of descent. They were already in the midst of the muddy clouds, however. Once more the vessel began to tremble violently. Gradually Onodera brought it up forty-five feet, climbing out of the clouds. Another blow struck the Wadatsumi, and it began to rock from side to side.

  “Let’s try another flare,” said Tadokoro, absorbed in the instruments and oblivious to the new crisis.

  As he fired the flare, however, Onodera, reacting to some instinct of danger, released a large quantity of ballast, and the whirlpool of brown cloud beneath them suddenly fell away. An instant later a fierce rush of water hit the Wadatsumi broadside, tipping it over and sweeping it far off course before Onodera could reassert control and start the engine. The submarine then began to rise steadily.

  “Professor Tadokoro! Look there!” Yukinaga cried.

  The flare that had been released before the current struck them was drifting in the distance, shedding its light upon the yellow-brown chaos below. At the extreme edge of the light, some huge thing was churning with terrible force—a mass of mud cloud tinged with green. Swelling as it came, it was pouring down the sloping side of the trench, down out of the darkness above.

  “A turbulent mud current!” shouted Tadokoro, his voice uncharacteristically shrill. “We’re the first ones to actually lay eyes on one.”

  “But . . . at this depth?” asked Yukinaga, trembling with excitement. “It looks as though it’s pouring out of the side of the trench.”

  “I’m going to take us all the way up,” said Onodera, regaining his voice. “There was a message from the ship. The surface is getting rough.”

  The Wadatsumi began its lonely ascent at a point some 240 feet above the rolling sea of mud which filled the trench. Like a balloon cut loose from its moorings, it soared upward with steadily increasing speed toward the silver sky that glinted nearly 24,000 feet above it. Onodera fired off the three remaining flares. They burst and hung suspended above the Wadatsumi, their burning blue-white glare creating a circle of light more than a mile in diameter.