Читать книгу Danny Dunn on the Ocean Floor - Jay Williams - Страница 10

CHAPTER FOUR

Dr. Grimes’s Plans

There was silence for a moment, and then Dr. Grimes’s expression slowly changed from annoyance to interest. He looked at the plastic-shelled football in the Professor’s hands, and then he said, “I see. You really think there is a possibility—?”

Danny had been gazing in perplexity at the two scientists, and now he said, “Professor, I’m sorry if there’s something wrong. It’s my fault for telling Joe to throw the ball to me. But you wanted me to get rid of the plastic anyway…”

“There’s nothing wrong, my boy,” said the Professor. “On the contrary, it may be very right. Sit down, all three of you.”

The young people made themselves comfortable, all in a row, on the edge of the lab bench, swinging their legs. Then he went on, “You see, Dr. Grimes is planning a remarkable project for the exploration of the ocean floor. He intends to build a bathyscaphe.”

“A what?” Joe interrupted. “A bathtub on skates?”

“Not quite, Joe,” laughed Professor Bullfinch. “Bathy—from the Greek word for deep, and scaphe from the word meaning boat. A deep-diving submarine in which men can go three or four miles down into the sea. Actually, the word ‘submarine’ is wrong. It is more like a balloon. But instead of floating up into the air, it floats down into the ocean.”

The Professor paused and filled his pipe. Then he continued, “The bathyscaphe was developed by Professor Auguste Piccard, the famous Swiss scientist, about 1948. Before that, Professor William Beebe had made his deep-sea descents in an iron ball called a bathysphere, which was dropped at the end of a steel cable. Professor Piccard’s bathyscaphe consists of a ball-shaped cabin underneath a large tank of lightweight gasoline. The gasoline, being lighter than water, makes the ship very buoyant. In order to sink into the sea, heavy ballast, of iron pellets, is taken aboard; the vessel sinks to the bottom; and when its passengers wish to rise, they drop the ballast and float back up to the surface.

“The bathyscaphe has allowed men to go farther down into the ocean than ever was possible before. Professor Piccard, in his vessel the Trieste, descended to nearly two miles. Then the French diver, Captain Cousteau, with his companions Huout and Willm, reached a depth of two and a half miles in one called the F.N.R.S. 3. Not long ago, Professor Piccard’s son, Jacques, along with a U.S. Navy Lieutenant named Don Walsh, went down seven miles in the Trieste.”

“And Dr. Grimes is going to build one of these bathyscaphes?” asked Danny. “Gosh, what an adventure that would be!”

“He has the promise of enough money for the project from the Academy of Scientific Research,” said the Professor. “Money has always been the biggest problem. It’s hard to make people see the importance of diving into the ocean depths.”

“Why?” said Joe. “I should think they’d want to find all that buried treasure that must be lying around down there.”

“Trivial!” cried Dr. Grimes, snapping his fingers. “The thing we must understand is that the sea is our next frontier—just as the old West was a hundred years ago.”

“Isn’t that what people are always saying about outer space?” asked Irene.

“Yes, my dear,” said the Professor. “Men have been working hard to get into outer space, but right here, at our very doorstep, lie uncharted regions that we know almost nothing about. Three-quarters of our earth is under water, yet we know less about some of it than we do about the moon. And in the seas and oceans, and in the rocks and mud at their bottoms, lie oil, precious minerals, and food enough for the whole planet. Why, just think,” he exclaimed, his eyes shining with enthusiasm, “almost everything mankind needs is in the sea! Life came out of the sea in the first place! The big job for science now is to go into the depths and study that wonderful world.”

Dr. Grimes had been pacing up and down with his hands behind his back. He put in, “I want to build more than a bathyscaphe. I want to build a real undersea laboratory.”

“Exactly,” the Professor nodded. “You see, when you go down as far as two miles, the pressure of the water is about two and a half tons on every square inch of surface. An ordinary submarine cannot go much farther down than about a thousand feet. Deeper than that, it would be crushed flat. The little round cabin of the present bathyscaphes is very small and made of very strong steel—it’s about seven feet in diameter, and its walls are over three inches thick. There isn’t much room in it, as you can imagine. What Dr. Grimes wants to build is something with enough space for several men and plenty of equipment. Something shaped like this, for example.” He tapped the football. “Ordinary plastics, Plexiglas for instance, are not as strong as steel. But this plastic may be what we are looking for.”

“Let’s not jump to conclusions,” said Dr. Grimes sourly. “We’ll have to test it. And what about duplicating the formula?”

“Ah, yes,” said the Professor. “Danny, do you think you can remember the temperature at which you reheated it? And how long you let it cool?”

“I think I can remember,” Danny said. His eyes were dancing with excitement. “It means that we’re really partly the discoverers of the plastic, doesn’t it?”

“Well, I imagine it does, in a way,” agreed the Professor.

“Then—then maybe we can go with you in the ship you build. Can we, Professor?”

The Professor glanced sidelong at Dr. Grimes. “I must say this certainly changes matters, Grimes. But we have a great deal to do before we have to face that decision. We must get to work at once!”

He clapped his hands together. “A laboratory on the ocean floor. One that can move freely about, like a submarine, but two miles down! What marvelous things are waiting to be discovered, I wonder?”

Danny, Irene, and Joe stared at each other. Then Joe said in a gloomy voice. “I’ll bet I know the answer to that, if Danny goes along. Trouble!”