John Wyndham - The Kraken Wakes

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The Kraken Wakes

by John Wyndham

published in the United States under the title “Out of the Deeps”

ISBN: 0140010750

Other Books by John Wyndham

Tales of Gooseflesh and Laughter

The Midwich Cuckoos

Rebirth (also known as: The Chrysalids)

Sometime, Never (with William Golding and Mervyn Peake)

The Outward Urge (with V. Lucas)

Trouble with Lichen

The Infinite Moment

Chocky

The Secret People

The Day of the Triffids

Stowaway to Mars

Electronic Text created and proofed by HarleyD13.

Electronic Text created using the following Speech Recognition Software:

Kurzweil VoicePad (pages 1 through 36),

TalkIt TypeIt demo (pages 37 through 42)

Microsoft Dictation Pad (pages 43 to end)

Microsoft Dictation Pad is a sample C++ application included

with the Microsoft Speech SDK 5.1 (69,606 KB)

which can be downloaded for free (was still free as of 27 September 2004)

from http://www.microsoft.com/speech/download/sdk51/

The purchase of a good quality, head-set mounted, noise canceling microphone is

highly

recommended in order to get the best results from any speech recognition software

package.

CONTENTS

PHASE ONE

PHASE TWO

PHASE THREE

PHASE ONE BACK TO CONTENTS

I’m a reliable witness, you’re a reliable witness, practically all God’s children are

reliable witnesses in their own estimation - which makes it funny how such different

ideas of the same affair get about. Almost the only people I know who agree word for

word on what they saw on the night of July15th are Phyllis and I. And as Phyllis

happens to be my wife, people said, in their kindly way behind our backs, that I

“overpersuaded” her, a thought that could only proceed from someone who did know

Phyllis.

The time was 11:15 P.M.; the place, latitude 35, some 24 degrees west of Greenwich;

the ship, the Guinevere; the occasion, our honeymoon. About these facts there is no

dispute. The cruise had taken us to Madeira, the Canaries, Cape Verde Islands, and

had then turned north to show us the Azores on our way home. We, Phyllis and I,

were leaning on the rail, taking a breather. From the saloon came the sound of the

dance continuing, and the crooner yearning for somebody. The sea stretched in front

of us like a silken plain in the moonlight. The ship sailed as smoothly as if she were

on a river. We gazed out silently at the infinity of sea and sky. Behind us the crooner

went on baying.

“I’m so glad I don’t feel like him; it must be devastating,” Phyllis said. “Why, do you

suppose, do people keep on mass-producing these dreary moanings?”

I had no answer ready for that one, but I was saved the trouble of trying to find one

when her attention was suddenly caught elsewhere.

“Mars is looking pretty angry tonight, isn’t he? I hope it isn’t an omen,” she said.

I looked where she pointed at a red spot among myriads of white ones, and with some

surprise. Mars does look red, of course, though I had never seen him look quite as red

as that - but then, neither were the stars, as seen at home, quite as bright as they were

here. Being practically in the tropics might account for it.

“Certainly a little inflamed,” I agreed.

We regarded the red point for some moments. Then Phyllis said, “That’s funny. It’s

seems to be getting bigger.”

I explained that that was obviously an hallucination formed by staring at it. We went

on staring, and it became quite indisputably bigger. Moreover:

“There’s another one. There can’t be two Marses,” said Phyllis.

And sure enough there was. A smaller red point, a little up from, and to the right of,

the first. She added, “And another. To the left. See?”

She was right about that, too, and by this time the first one was glowing as the most

noticeable thing in the sky.

“It must be a flight of jets of some kind, and that’s a cloud of luminous exhaust we’re

seeing,” I suggested.

We watched all three of them slowly getting brighter and also sinking lower in the

sky until they were little above the horizon line, and reflecting in a pinkish pathway

across the water toward us.

“Five now,” said Phyllis.

We’ve both been asked many times since to describe them, but perhaps we are not

gifted with such a precise eye for detail as some others. What we said at the time, and

what we still say, is that on this occasion there was no real shape visible. The center

was solidly red, and a kind of fuzz round it was less so. The best suggestion I can

make is that you imagine a brilliantly red light as seen in a fairly thick fog so that

there is a strong halation, and you will have something of the effect.

Others besides ourselves were leaning over the rail, and in fairness I should perhaps

mention that between them they appear to have seen cigar-shapes, cylinders, discs,

ovoids, and, inevitably, saucers. We did not. What is more, we did not see eight, nine,

or a dozen. We saw five.

The halation may or may not have been due to some kind of jet drive, but it did not

indicate any great speed. The things grew in size quite slowly as they approached.

There was time for people to go back into the saloon and fetch their friends out to see,

so that presently a line of us leaned all along the rail, looking at them and guessing.

With no idea of scale we could have no judgment of their size or distance; all we

could be sure of was that they were descending in a long glide which looked as if it

would take them across our wake.

When the first one hit the water a great burst of steam shot up in a pink plume. Then,

swiftly, there was a lower, wider spread of steam which had lost the pink tinge, and

was simply a white cloud in the moonlight. It was beginning to thin out when the

sound of it reached us in a searing hiss. The water round the spot bubbled and seethed

and frothed. When the steam drew off, there was nothing to be seen there but a patch

of turbulence, gradually subsiding.

Then the second of them came in, in just the same way, on almost the same spot. One

after another all five of them touched down on the water with great whooshes and

hissings of steam. Then the vapor cleared, showing only a few contiguous patches of

troubled water.

Aboard the Guinevere, bells clanged, the beat of the engines changed, we started to

change course, crews turned out to man the boats, men stood by to throw lifebelts.

Four times we steamed slowly back and forth across the area, searching. There was no

trace whatever to be found. But for our own wake, the sea lay all about us in the

moonlight, placid, empty, unperturbed . . . .

The next morning I sent my card in to the captain. In those days I had a staff job with

the E.B.C., and I explained to him that they would be pretty sure to take a piece from

me on the previous night’s affair. He gave the usual response:

“You mean B.B.C.?”

The E.B.C. was comparatively young then. People long accustomed to the B.B.C.’s

monopoly of the British airwaves were still finding it difficult to become used to the

idea of a competitive radio service. Life would have been a great deal simpler, too, if

somebody had not had the idea in the early days of sailing as near the wind as

possible by calling us the English Broadcasting Company. It was one of those pieces

of foolishness that becomes more difficult to undo as time goes on, and led

continually to one’s explaining as I did now:

“Not the B.B.C.; the E.B.C. Ours is the largest all-British commercial radio network .

. .” etc. And when I was through with that I added:

“Our news-service is a stickler for accuracy, and as every passenger has his own

version of this business, I hoped you would let me check mine against your official

one.”

He nodded approval of that.

“Go ahead and tell me yours,” he invited me.

When I had finished, he showed me his own entry in the log. Substantially we were

agreed; certainly in the view that there had been five, and on the impossibility of

attributing a definite shape to them. His estimates of speed, size, and position were, of

course, technical matters. I noticed that they had registered on the radar screens, and

were tentatively assumed to have been aircraft of an unknown type.

“What’s your own private opinion?” I asked him. “Did you ever see anything at all

like them before?”

“No I never did,” he said, but he seemed to hesitate.

“But what - ?” I asked.

“Well, but not for the record,” he said, “I’ve heard of two instances, almost exactly

similar, in the last year. One time it was three of the things by night; the other, it was

half a dozen of them by daylight - even so, they seem to have looked much the same;

just a kind of red fuzz. They were in the Pacific, though, not over this side.”

“Why ‘not for the record’?” I asked.

“In both cases there were only two or three witnesses - and it doesn’t do a seaman any

good to get a reputation for seeing things, you know. The stories just get around

professionally, so to speak - among ourselves we aren’t quite as skeptical as

landsmen: some funny things can still happen at sea, now and then.”

“You can’t suggest an explanation I can quote?”

“On professional grounds I’d prefer not. I’ll just stick to my official entry. But

reporting it is a different matter this time. We’ve a couple of hundred witnesses and

more.”

“Do you think it’d be worth a search? You’ve got the spot pin-pointed.”

He shook his head. “It’s deep there - over three thousand fathoms. That’s a long way

down.”

“There wasn’t any trace of wreckage in those other cases, either?”

“No. That would have been evidence to warrant an inquiry. But they had no

evidence.”

We talked a little longer, but I could not get him to put forward any theory. Presently

I went away, and wrote up my account. Later, I got through to London, and dictated it

to an E.B.C. recorder. It went out on the air the same evening as a filler, just an oddity

which was not expected to do more than raise a few eyebrows.

So it was by chance that I was a witness of that early stage - almost the beginning, for

I have not been able to find any references to identical phenomena earlier than those

two spoken of by the captain. Even now, years later, though I am certain enough in

my own mind that this was the beginning, I can still offer no proof that it was not an

unrelated phenomenon. What the end that will eventually follow this beginning may

be, I prefer not to think too closely. I would also prefer not to dream about it, either, if

dreams were within my control.

It began so unrecognizably. Had it been more obvious - and yet it is difficult to see

what could have been done effectively even if we had recognized the danger.

Recognition and prevention don’t necessarily go hand in hand. We recognized the

potential dangers of atomic fission quickly enough - yet we could do little about them.

If we had attacked immediately - well, perhaps. But until the danger was well

established we had no means of knowing that we should attack - and then it was too

late.

However, it does no good to cry over our shortcomings. My purpose is to give a brief

account as I can of how the present situation arose - and, to begin with, it arose very

scrappily . . .

In due course the Guinevere docked at Southampton without being treated to any

more curious phenomena. We did not expect any more, but the event had been

memorable; almost as good, in fact as having been in a position to say, upon some

remote future occasion: “When your grandmother and I were on our honeymoon we

saw a sea serpent,” though not quite. Still, it was a wonderful honeymoon, I never

expect to have a better; and Phyllis said something to much the same effect as we

leaned on the rail, watching the bustle below.

“Except,” she added, “that I don’t see why we shouldn’t have one nearly as good,

now and then.”

So we disembarked, sought our brand-new home in Chelsea, and I turned up at the

E.B.C. offices the following Monday morning to discover that in absentia I had been

rechristened Fireball Watson. This was on account of the correspondence. They

handed it to me in a large sheaf, and said that since I had caused it, I had better do

something about it. One letter, referring to a recent experience off the Philippines, I

identified with fair accuracy as being a confirmation of what the captain of the

Guinevere had told me. One or two others seemed worth following up, too -

particularly a rather cagey approach which invited me to meet the writer at La Plume

D’Or, where lunch is always worth having.

I kept that appointment a week later. My host turned out to be a man two or three

years older than myself who ordered four glasses of Tio Pepe, and then opened up by

admitting that the name under which he had written was not his own, and that he was

a Flight Lieutenant, R.A.F.

“It’s a bit tricky, you see,” he said. “At the moment I am considered to have suffered

some kind of hallucination, but if enough evidence turns up to show that it was not a

hallucination, then they’re almost certain to make it an official secret. Awkward, you

see.”

I agreed that it must be.

“Still,” he went on, “the thing worries me, and if you’re collecting evidence, I’d like

you to have it - though maybe not to make direct use of it. I mean, I don’t want to

find myself on the carpet.”

I nodded understandingly. He went on:

“It was about three months ago. I was flying one of the regular patrols, a couple of

hundred miles or so east of Formosa - “

“I didn’t know we - ” I began.

“There are a number of things that don’t get publicity, though they’re not particularly

secret,” he said. “Anyway, there I was. The radar picked these things up when they

were still out of sight behind me, but coming up fast from the west.”

He had decided to investigate, and climbed to intercept. The radar continued to show

the craft on a straight course behind and above him. He tried to communicate, but

couldn’t raise them. By the time he was getting the ceiling of them they were in sight,

as three red spots, quite bright, even by daylight, and coming up fast though he was

doing close to five hundred himself. He tried again to radio them, but without success.

They just kept on coming, steadily overtaking him.

“Well,” he said, “I was there to patrol. I told base that they were a completely

unknown type of craft - if they were craft at all - and as they wouldn’t talk I proposed

to have a pip at them. It was either that, or just let ‘em go - in which case I might as

well not have been patrolling at all. Base agreed, kind of cautiously.”

“I tried them once more, but they didn’t take a damn bit of notice of either me or my

signals. And as they got closer I was doubtful whether they were craft at all. They

were just as you said on the radio - a pink fuzz, with a deeper red center: might have

been miniature red suns for all I could tell. Anyway, the more I saw of them the less I

liked ‘em, so I set the guns to radar-control, and let ‘em get on ahead.”

“I reckoned they must be doing seven hundred or more as they passed me. A second

or two later the radar picked up the foremost one, and the guns fired.”

“There wasn’t any lag. The thing seemed to blow up almost as the guns went off.

And, boy, did it blow! It suddenly swelled immensely, turning from red to pink to

white, but still with a few red spots here and there - and then my aircraft hit the

concussion, and maybe some of the debris too. I lost quite a lot of seconds, and

probably had a lot of luck, because when I got sorted out I found that I was coming

down fast. Something had carried away three-quarters of my starboard wing, and

messed up the tip of the other. So I reckoned it was time to try the ejector, and rather

to my surprise it worked.”

He caused reflectively. Then he added:

“I don’t know that it gives you a lot besides confirmation, but there are one or two

points. One is that they are capable of traveling a lot faster than those you saw.

Another is that, whatever they are, they are highly vulnerable.”

And that, as we talk it over in detail, was about all the additional information he did

provide - that, and the fact that when they hit they did not disintegrate into sections,

but exploded completely, which should, perhaps, have conveyed more than it seemed

to at the time.

During the next few weeks several more letters trickled in without adding much, but

then it began to look as if the whole affair were going the way of the Loch Ness

Monster. What there was came to me because it was generally conceded at E.B.C.

that fireball stuff was my pigeon. Several observatories confessed themselves puzzled

by detecting small red bodies traveling at high speeds, but were extremely guarded in

their statements. None of the newspapers really played it because, in editorial opinion,

the whole thing was suspect in being too similar to the flying saucer business, and

their readers would prefer more novelty in their sensations. Nevertheless, bits and

pieces did slowly accumulate - though it took nearly two years before they acquired

serious publicity and attention.

This time it was a flight of thirteen. A radar station in the north of Finland picked

them up first, estimating their speed as fifteen hundred miles per hour, and their

direction as approximately southwest. In passing the information on the described

them simply as “unidentified aircraft.” The Swedes picked them up as they crossed

their territory, and managed to spot them visually, describing them as small red dots.

Norway confirmed, but estimated the speed at under thirteen hundred miles per hour.

A Scottish station logged then at traveling at a thousand miles per hour, and just

visible to the naked eye. Two stations in Ireland reported them as passing directly

overhead, on a line slightly west of southwest. The more southerly station gave their

speed as eight hundred and claimed that they were “clearly visible.” A weather ship at

about 65 degrees North, gave a description which tallied exactly with that of the

earlier fireballs, and calculated a speed close to 500 m.p.h. They were not sighted

again.

There was a sudden spate of fireball observation after that. Reports came in from so

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TheKrakenWakesbyJohnWyndhampublishedintheUnitedStatesunderthetitle“OutoftheDeeps”Copyright1953byJohnWyndhamISBN:0140010750OtherBooksbyJohnWyndhamTalesofGoosefleshandLaughterTheMidwichCuckoosRebirth(alsoknownas:TheChrysalids)Sometime,Never(withWilliamGoldingandMervynPeake)TheOutwardUrge(withV.Lucas)T...

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