Noon: 22nd Century

by Arkady Strugatsky

  “Yes?”

  “Listen, Kondratev, did you ever get the urge to study earthworms?”

  Kondratev bent over and groped into the darkness. Something clicked with a ringing sound, and an icy stream of oxygen hit Belov’s face. He breathed in greedily, yawning and choking. “Enough,” he said finally. “Thanks.”

  Kondratev turned off the oxygen. No, of course he wouldn’t give a damn about earthworms. The red needle crawled past the 300 mark. Belov called once more, “Kondratev?”

  “Yes?”

  “Are you sure it’s a giant squid?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “That a giant squid is what has been getting the whales?”

  “It’s probably a squid.”

  “But it could be grampuses?”

  “Could be.”

  “Or a sperm whale?”

  “It could be a sperm whale. But a sperm whale usually attacks females. There were plenty of females in the herd. And grampuses attack stragglers.”

  “No, it’s ika,” Akiko said in a small voice. “O-ika.”

  O-ika was the giant deep-sea squid. Fierce and quick as lightning. It had a powerful taut body, ten strong arms, and cruel, intelligent eyes. It would rush at a whale from below and instantly gnaw out its insides. Then it would force the carcass down to the bottom. Not even a shark, not even the hungriest, would dare to come close to it. It dug into the silt and feasted at leisure. If a submarine of the Oceanic Guard should catch up to it, it would not give way. It would accept battle, and sharks would gather to pick up the lumps of meat. Giant-squid meat was tough as rubber, but the sharks didn’t care.

  “Yes,” said Belov. “Probably it’s a giant squid.”

  “Probably,” said Kondratev. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a squid or not, he thought. Creatures even more fearsome than the giant squid could have set up housekeeping in depressions like this one. You have to find them and destroy them, for once they taste whale they’ll never leave you alone. Then he thought that if they should meet something really unknown, the trainees would doubtless hang all over his shoulders and demand that he let them “investigate.” Trainees always got the idea that a working submarine was a research bathyscaphe.

  Four hundred meters.

  It was very stuffy in the cabin. The ionizers weren’t correcting it. Kondratev heard Belov’s heavy breathing behind his back. On the other hand he couldn’t hear Akiko at all; you would think she wasn’t there. Kondratev let a little more oxygen into the cabin. Then he glanced at the compass. A strong current was swinging the submarine away from its course.

  “Belov,” Kondratev said, “make a note: warm current, depth four hundred forty meters, direction south-southwest, speed two meters per second.”

  Belov flicked the dictaphone switch with a squeak, and muttered something in a low voice.

  “A regular Gulf Stream,” said Kondratev. “A little Gulf Stream.”

  “Temperature?” Belov asked in a weak voice.

  “Twenty-four degrees Celsius.”

  Akiko said timidly, “A curious temperature. Unusual.”

  “It would be very quaint if there’s a volcano somewhere under us,” Belov moaned. “Have you ever tasted giant-squid soup, Akiko-san?” he asked. He started in English and finished in Russian.

  “Watch it,” said Kondratev. “I’m going to leave the current. Hang onto something.”

  “Easier said than done,” muttered Belov.

  “Aye, aye, Comrade Captain,” said Akiko.

  You can hang onto me, Kondratev wanted to suggest to her, but he was too shy. He rolled the submarine sharply over to the port side, and plunged almost straight down.

  “Uffff,” grunted Belov. He let go of the dictaphone, which hit Kondratev in the back of the head. Then Kondratev felt Akiko’s fingers grip his shoulder-grip and slide off. “Grab onto my shoulders,” he ordered.

  At that instant she almost fell face first onto the edge of the control panel. He barely managed to catch her arm, and she hit her face against his elbow. “Excuse me,” she said.

  “Ufff, easy there,” moaned Belov. “Take it easy, Kondratev!”

  It felt like an elevator coming to a sharp stop. Kondratev took his head away from the board, fumbled to his right, and encountered Akiko’s downy hair.

  “Did you hurt yourself?” he asked.

  “No, sir. Thank you for asking.”

  He bent down and caught hold of her by the arm. “Thank you,” she repeated. “Thank you. I can manage myself.”

  He let go of her and glanced at the bathymeter. Six hundred fifty… six hundred fifty-five… six hundred sixty.

  “Take it easy, Kondratev,” Belov pleaded in a weak voice. “Enough already.”

  Six hundred eighty meters. Three hundred seventy-two fathoms. Two thousand two hundred thirty feet. Kondratev leveled off. Belov hiccuped loudly and pushed away from the back of the seat.

  “That’s it,” Kondratev announced, and turned on the light.

  Akiko hid her nose with her hand; tears were running down her cheeks. “Eyes are sparking,” she said, smiling with difficulty.

  “I’m sorry, Akiko-san,” Kondratev said. He felt guilty. There had been no need for such a sharp dive. It was just that he had gotten tired of the endless spiral descent. He wiped sweat from his forehead and looked back. Belov sat hunched up, bare to the waist, holding his crumpled shirt near his mouth. His face was damp and gray, his eyes red.

  “Roast duck,” said Kondratev. “Remember, Belov.”

  “I’ll remember. Let me have some more oxygen.”

  “No. You’ll poison yourself.” Kondratev felt like saying a few more words about wine, but he restrained himself and turned out the light. The submarine again moved in a spiral and everyone, even Belov, kept silent for a long time. Seven hundred meters, seven hundred fifty, eight hundred…

  “There it is,” Akiko whispered.

  A hazy narrow spot was moving unhurriedly across the screen. The creature was still too far away—so far it was impossible to identify. It could be a giant squid, a sperm whale, a food whale away from the herd, a large whale shark, or some unknown animal. There were still many animals either unknown or little known to humans in the deep. The Oceanic Guard had reports of enormous long-legged and long-tailed turtles, of sea serpents, of deep-sea spiders that nested in the chasms to the south of the Bonin Islands, of sea gnats-little predatory fish that swarmed in herds of many thousands at a depth of a mile or a mile and a quarter and wiped out everything in their path. So far there had been neither the opportunity nor any special need to verify these reports.

  Kondratev quietly swung the submarine to keep the creature in its field of vision.

  “Let’s get a little closer to it,” Belov asked. “Get closer!” He breathed noisily in Kondratev’s ear. The submarine slowly began the approach.

  Kondratev turned on the sight, and crossed threads of light flashed onto the screen. The narrow spot was swimming near the crosshairs.

  “Wait,” said Belov. “There’s no hurry, Kondratev.”

  Kondratev got annoyed. He bent over, felt under his legs for the dictaphone, and poked it over his shoulder into the darkness.

  “What’s going on?” asked Belov, displeased.

  “The dictaphone,” Kondratev said. “Make a note: depth eight hundred meters, target sighted.”

  “We’ve got time.”

  “Let me,” said Akiko.

  “Beg your pardon.” Belov gave a cough. “Kondratev! Don’t even think of shooting it, Kondratev. We’ve got to have a look first.”

  “So look,” said Kondratev.

  The distance between the submarine and the animal lessened. Now it was clearly a giant squid. If it were not for the trainees, Kondratev would not have delayed. A worker of the Oceanic Guard had no business delaying. Not one other sea creature brought as much harm to whaleherding as did the giant squid. It was subject to instant annihilation whenever one encountered a submarine—the squid
’s blip would move within the crosshairs of the screen, and then the submarine would launch torpedoes. Two torpedoes. Sometimes three, to be certain. The torpedoes would dart along the ultrasonic beam and explode next to the target. And at the sound of the explosion, sharks would move in from all sides,

  Kondratev took his finger off the torpedo launch switch with regret. “Look,” he repeated.

  But there was not yet anything to look at. The limit of clear vision in the clearest ocean water did not exceed eighty or a hundred feet, and only the sonar allowed them to locate targets at distances of up to a third of a mile.

  “I wish it would show up,” Belov said excitedly.

  “Don’t be in such a hurry.”

  The minisubs of the Oceanic Guard were intended to guard plankton crops from whales, and to guard whales from sea predators. The submarines were not intended for research purposes. They were too noisy. If the squid did not feel like closer acquaintance with the submarine, it would move off before they could turn the searchlights on and look it over. To pursue it would be useless—giant cephalopods were capable of a speed twice that of the quickest minisub. Kondratev was relying only on the amazing fearlessness and cruelty of the squid, which sometimes would incite it into skirmishes with fierce sperm whales and herds of grampuses.

  “Careful, careful,” Belov repeated tenderly and imploringly.

  “Want some oxygen?” Kondratev asked savagely.

  Akiko softly touched him on the shoulder. She had been standing bent over the screen for several minutes, her hair tickling Kondratev’s ear and cheek,

  “Ika sees us,” she said,

  Belov shouted, “Don’t shoot!”

  The spot on the screen-now it was big and round-moved downward fairly rapidly. Kondratev smiled, pleased. The squid was coming out under the submarine in its attack position. It had no thought of fleeing. Instead, the squid was offering battle.

  “Don’t let it get away,” whispered Belov.

  Akiko said, “Ika is getting away.”

  The trainees did not yet understand what was going on. Kondratev began to lower the nose of the submarine. The squid’s blip once again flashed in the crosshairs. He had only to push the release to blow the vermin to shreds.

  “Don’t shoot,” Belov repeated. “Just don’t shoot.”

  I wonder what happened to his depth sickness, thought Kondratev. He said, “The squid will be under us now. I’m going to stand the sub on its bow. Get ready.”

  “Aye, aye, Comrade Captain,” said Akiko.

  Without speaking a word, Belov began moving energetically, getting himself settled. The submarine slowly rotated. The blip on the screen grew larger, and took on the form of a many-pointed star with winking rays. The submarine hung motionless nose down.

  Evidently the squid was puzzled by the strange behavior of its intended victim. But it only delayed a few seconds. Then it moved to the attack. Rapidly and surely, as it must have done thousands of times before in its unimaginably long life.

  The blip on the screen swelled and filled the whole screen.

  Kondratev immediately turned on all the searchlights, two on the hatch side and one fixed to the bottom. The light was very bright. The transparent water seemed yellow-green. Akiko sighed briefly. Kondratev looked at her out of the corner of his eye for a moment. She was squatting over the porthole, hanging onto the edge of the control panel with one hand. A bare, scratched knee was sticking out from under her arm.

  “Look,” Belov said hoarsely. “Look, there it is! Just look at it!”

  At first the shining haze beyond the porthole was motionless. Then some sort of shadows began to stir in it. Something long and supple showed briefly, and after a second they could see the squid. Or rather they could see a broad white body, two unwavering eyes in its lower part, and under the eyes, like a monstrous mustache, two bundles of thick, waving tentacles. In an instant all this moved over the porthole and blocked off the light from the searchlights. The submarine rocked strongly, and something repulsive-sounding, like a knife on glass, began to scrape over the plating.

  “There you are,” said Kondratev. “Have you enjoyed your fill?”

  “It’s enormous!” Belov breathed reverently. “Akiko-san, did you see how enormous it is?”

  “O-ika,” whispered Akiko.

  Belov said, “I have never come across a record of such an enormous specimen, I would estimate the distance between the eyes as something over two meters. What do you think, Kondratev?”

  “About that.”

  “And you, Akiko-san?”

  “One and one half to two meters,” Akiko answered after a silence.

  “Which with the usual proportions would give us…” Belov started counting on his fingers. “Would give us a body of at least thirty meters, and a weight—”

  “Listen,” Kondratev interrupted impatiently. “Have you looked enough?”

  Belov said, “No, wait. We’ve got to tear away from it somehow and photograph it whole.”

  The submarine rocked again, and once again the repulsive screech of horny jaws on metal could be heard.

  “We’re not a whale, dearie,” Kondratev muttered gloatingly, and said aloud, “It won’t leave us voluntarily now, and it’d crawl over the submarine for at least two hours, no less. So now I’ll shake it off, and it’ll fall under the jet of superheated water from the turbines. Then we’ll quickly turn around, photograph it, and shoot it. All right?”

  The submarine began to rock violently. It was obvious that the squid was turning nasty, was trying to bend the submarine in two. For several seconds one of the squid’s arms showed in the porthole—a violet hose as fat as a telephone pole, studded with greedily waving suckers. Black hooks sticking out of the suckers kicked against the spectrolite.

  “What a beauty,” Belov cooed. “Listen, Kondratev, can’t we surface with it?”

  Kondratev threw back his head and, narrowing his eyes, looked up at Belov. “Surface?” he said. “Maybe. He won’t unlatch from us now. How much did you say he could weigh?”

  “About seventy metric tons,” Belov said uncertainly.

  Kondratev whistled and once again turned to the board.

  “But that’s in air,” Belov added hurriedly. “In water—”

  “Still no less than ten tons,” said Kondratev. “We couldn’t make it. Get ready—we’re going to rotate.”

  Akiko hurriedly squatted down, without taking her eyes from the porthole. She was afraid of missing something interesting.

  If it weren’t for the trainees, Kondratev thought, I would have finished with this vermin long ago, and would be looking for its relatives. He did not doubt that somewhere on the bottom of the depression were hiding the children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren of the monster—potential, and perhaps already actual, pirates on the whale migration lanes.

  The submarine rotated into horizontal position.

  “It’s stuffy,” muttered Belov.

  “Hang on tighter,” said Kondratev. “Ready? Here we go!” He turned the speed handle as far as it would turn. Full speed, thirty knots. The turbines howled piercingly. Behind, something banged, and they heard a muffled yelp. Poor Belov, thought Kondratev. He dropped the speed and swung the helm about. The submarine went around in a semicircle and again pointed toward the squid.

  “Now look,” said Kondratev,

  The squid hung twenty yards in front of the submarine’s bow—pale, strangely flat, with drooping, writhing tentacles and a drooping body. It looked like a spider burned by a match. Its eyes were squinting thoughtfully off below and to one side, as if it were mulling something over. Kondratev had never seen a live squid so close, and he examined it with curiosity and loathing. It really was an unusually large specimen. Perhaps one of the largest in the world. But at that moment nothing about it gave the impression of a powerful and fearsome predator. For some reason Kondratev recalled the bundles of softened whale intestines in the enormous steeping vats of the whale-butchering comp
lex in Petropavlovsk.

  Several minutes went by. Belov lay with his stomach pressing on Kondratev’s shoulders, and aimed the whirring movie camera. Akiko muttered something into the dictaphone in Japanese without taking her eyes off the squid. Kondratev’s neck started to ache, and furthermore he was afraid that the squid would regain consciousness and would clear out, or else would throw itself on the submarine again, and then they would have to start over from the beginning.

  “Aren’t you about done yet?” inquired Kondratev.

  “And how!” Belov answered strongly but irrelevantly.

  The squid came to. A rippling shudder went through its arms.

  The enormous eyes, the size of soccer balls, turned like hinges in sockets, and stared at the light from the searchlights. Then the arms stretched out ramrod straight, and contracted again, and the pale violet skin filled with dark color. The squid was scalded, stunned, but it was preparing for another pounce. No, the giant squid was not leaving. It was not even considering leaving.

  “Well?” Kondratev asked impatiently.

  “Okay,” Belov said with dissatisfaction. “You can do it.”

  “Get off of me,” said Kondratev.

  Belov got off and rested his chin on Kondratev’s right shoulder. He had obviously forgotten about depth sickness. Kondratev glanced at the screen, then laid a linger on the release lever. “Too close,” he muttered. “Oh, well. Fire one!” The submarine shuddered. “Fire two!” The submarine shuddered again. The squid was slowly opening its arms when the two pyroxilyn torpedoes exploded one after the other below its eyes. Two dull flashes and two enormous peals of thunder: boo-oom, boo-oom. A black cloud obscured the squid and then the submarine was thrown on its stern; it turned over on its port side and began to dance about in place.

  When the agitation had ceased, the searchlight illuminated a gray-brown heaving mass from which spinning, formless, billowing shreds tumbled into the abyss. Some were still twisting and twitching in the beams of light, rushing into the yellow-green thickness of dusty twilight. Then they disappeared into the dark. On the sonar screen, one after another, four, five, seven blips had already appeared-unhurried, biding their time.