Collected Stories Of Arthur C. Clarke (126 page)

‘The great practical problem is that most of the elements present in sea water are in such low concentrations. The first seven elements make up about ninety-nine per cent of the total, and it’s the remaining one per cent that contains all the useful metals except magnesium.

‘All my life I’ve wondered how we could do something about this, and the answer came during the war. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the techniques used in the atomic-energy field to remove minute quantities of isotopes from solutions: some of those methods are still pretty much under wraps.’

‘Are you talking about ion-exchange resins?’ hazarded Harry.

‘Well – something similar. My firm developed several of these techniques on AEC contracts, and I realised at once that they would have wider applications. I put some of my bright young men to work and they have made what we call a “molecular sieve”. That’s a mighty descriptive expression: in its way, the thing
is
a sieve, and we can set it to select anything we like. It depends on very advanced wave-mechanical theories for its operation, but what it actually does is absurdly simple. We can choose any component of sea water we like, and get the sieve to take it out. With several units, working in series, we can take out one element after another. The efficiency’s quite high, and the power consumption negligible.’

‘I know!’ yelped George. ‘You’re extracting gold from sea water!’

‘Huh!’ snorted Dr Romano in tolerant disgust. ‘I’ve got better things to do with my time. Too much damn gold around, anyhow. I’m after the commercially useful metals – the ones our civilisation is going to be desperately short of in another couple of generations. And as a matter of fact, even with my sieve it wouldn’t be worth going after gold. There are only about fifty pounds of the stuff in every cubic mile.’

‘What about uranium?’ asked Harry. ‘Or is that scarcer still?’

‘I rather wish you hadn’t asked that question,’ replied Dr Romano with a cheerfulness that belied the remark. ‘But since you can look it up in any library, there’s no harm in telling you that uranium’s two hundred times
more
common than gold. About seven tons in every cubic mile – a figure which is, shall we say, distinctly interesting. So why bother about gold?’

‘Why indeed?’ echoed George.

‘To continue,’ said Dr Romano, duly continuing, ‘even with the molecular sieve, we’ve still got the problem of processing enormous volumes of sea water. There are a number of ways one could tackle this: you could build giant pumping stations, for example. But I’ve always been keen on killing two birds with one stone, and the other day I did a little calculation that gave the most surprising result. I found that every time the
Queen Mary
crosses the Atlantic, her screws chew up about a tenth of a cubic mile of water. Fifteen million tons of minerals, in other words. Or to take the case you indiscreetly mentioned – almost a ton of uranium on every Atlantic crossing. Quite a thought, isn’t it?

‘So it seemed to me that all we need do to create a very useful mobile extraction plant was to put the screws of any vessel inside a tube which would compel the slip stream to pass through one of my sieves. Of course, there’s a certain loss of propulsive power, but our experimental unit works very well. We can’t go quite as fast as we did, but the farther we cruise the more money we make from our mining operations. Don’t you think the shipping companies will find that very attractive? But of course that’s merely incidental. I look forward to the building of floating extraction plants that will cruise round and round in the ocean until they’ve filled their hoppers with anything you care to name. When that day comes, we’ll be able to stop tearing up the land and all our material shortages will be over. Everything goes back to the sea in the long run anyway, and once we’ve unlocked that treasure chest, we’ll be all set for eternity.’

For a moment there was silence on deck, save for the faint clink of ice in the tumblers, while Dr Romano’s guests contemplated this dazzling prospect. Then Harry was struck by a sudden thought.

‘This is quite one of the most important inventions I’ve ever heard of,’ he said. ‘That’s why I find it rather odd that you should have confided in us so fully. After all, we’re perfect strangers, and for all you know might be spying on you.’

The old scientist chortled gaily.

‘Don’t worry about
that
, my boy,’ he reassured Harry. ‘I’ve already been on to Washington and had my friends check up on you.’

Harry blinked for a minute, then realised how it had been done. He remembered Dr Romano’s brief disappearance, and could picture what had happened. There would have been a radio call to Washington, some senator would have got on to the Embassy, the Ministry of Supply representative would have done his bit – and in five minutes the Doctor would have got the answer he wanted. Yes, Americans were very efficient – those who could afford to be.

It was about this time that Harry became aware of the fact that they were no longer alone. A much larger and more impressive yacht than the
Valency
was heading towards them, and in a few minutes he was able to read the name
Sea Spray
. Such a name, he thought, was more appropriate to billowing sails than throbbing diesels, but there was no doubt that the
Spray
was a very pretty creature indeed. He could understand the looks of undisguised covetousness that both George and Dr Romano now plainly bore.

The sea was so calm that the two yachts were able to come alongside each other, and as soon as they had made contact a sunburned, energetic man in the late forties vaulted over onto the deck of the
Valency
. He strode up to Dr Romano, shook his hand vigorously, said, ‘Well, you old rascal, what are you up to?’ and then looked enquiringly at the rest of the company. The Doctor carried out the introductions: it seemed that they had been boarded by Professor Scott McKenzie, who’d been sailing
his
yacht down from Key Largo.

‘Oh no!’ cried Harry to himself. ‘This is
too
much! One millionaire scientist per day is all I can stand.’

But there was no getting away from it. True, McKenzie was very seldom seen in the academic cloisters, but he was a genuine professor none the less, holding the chair of geophysics at some Texas college. Ninety per cent of his time, however, he spent working for the big oil companies and running a consulting firm of his own. It rather looked as if he had made his torsion balances and seismographs pay quite well for themselves. In fact, though he was a much younger man than Dr Romano, he had even more money owing to being in a more rapidly expanding industry. Harry gathered that the peculiar tax laws of the sovereign State of Texas also had something to do with it …

It seemed an unlikely coincidence that these two scientific tycoons should have met by chance, and Harry waited to see what skullduggery was afoot. For a while the conversation was confined to generalities, but it was obvious that Professor McKenzie was extremely inquisitive about the Doctor’s other two guests. Not long after they had been introduced, he made some excuse to hop back to his own ship and Harry moaned inwardly. If the Embassy got two separate enquiries about him in the space of half an hour, they’d wonder what he’d been up to. It might even make the FBI suspicious, and then how would he get those promised twenty-four pairs of nylons out of the country?

He found it quite fascinating to study the relation between the two scientists. They were like a couple of fighting cocks circling for position. Romano treated the younger man with a downright rudeness which, Harry suspected, concealed a grudging admiration. It was clear that Dr Romano was an almost fanatical conservationist, and regarded the activities of McKenzie and his employers with the greatest disapproval. ‘You’re a gang of robbers,’ he said once. ‘You’re seeing how quickly you can loot this planet of its resources, and you don’t give a damn about the next generation.’

‘And what,’ answered McKenzie, not very originally, ‘has the next generation ever done for us?’

The sparring continued for the best part of an hour, and much of what went on was completely over Harry’s head. He wondered why he and George were being allowed to sit in on all this, and after a while he began to appreciate Dr Romano’s technique. He was an opportunist of genius: he was glad to keep them around, now that they had turned up, just to worry Professor McKenzie and to make him wonder what other deals were afoot.

He let the molecular sieve leak out bit by bit, as if it wasn’t
really
important and he was only mentioning it in passing. Professor McKenzie, however, latched on to it at once, and the more evasive Romano became, the more insistent was his adversary. It was obvious that he was being deliberately coy, and that though Professor McKenzie knew this perfectly well, he couldn’t help playing the older scientist’s game.

Dr Romano had been discussing the device in a peculiarly oblique fashion, as if it were a future project rather than an existing fact. He outlined its staggering possibilites, and explained how it would make all existing forms of mining obsolete, besides removing forever the danger of world metal shortages.

‘If it’s so good,’ exclaimed McKenzie presently, ‘why haven’t you made the thing?’

‘What do you think I’m doing out here in the Gulf Stream?’ retorted the Doctor. ‘Take a look at this.’

He opened a locker beneath the sonar set, and pulled out a small metal bar which he tossed to McKenzie. It looked like lead, and was obviously extremely heavy. The Professor hefted it in his hand and said at once: ‘Uranium. Do you mean to say …’

‘Yes – every gram. And there’s plenty more where that came from.’ He turned to Harry’s friend and said: ‘George – what about taking the Professor down in your submarine to have a look at the works? He won’t see much, but it’ll show him we’re in business.’

McKenzie was still so thoughtful that he took a little thing like a private submarine in his stride. He returned to the surface fifteen minutes later, having seen just enough to whet his appetite.

‘The first thing I want to know,’ he said to Romano, ‘is why you’re showing this to
me
! It’s about the biggest thing that ever happened – why isn’t your own firm handling it?’

Romano gave a little snort of disgust.

‘You know I’ve had a row with the board,’ he said. ‘Anyway, that lot of old dead beats couldn’t handle anything as big as this. I hate to admit it, but you Texas pirates are the boys for the job.’

‘This is a private venture of yours?’

‘Yes: the company knows nothing about it, and I’ve sunk half a million of my own money into it. It’s been a kind of hobby of mine. I felt someone had to undo the damage that was going on, the rape of the continents by people like—’

‘All right – we’ve heard that before. Yet you propose giving it to us?’

‘Who said anything about giving?’

There was a pregnant silence. Then McKenzie said cautiously: ‘Of course, there’s no need to tell you that we’ll be interested – very interested. If you’ll let us have the figures on efficiency, extraction rates, and all the other relevant statistics – no need to tell us the actual technical details if you don’t want to – then we’ll be able to talk business. I can’t really speak for my associates but I’m sure that they can raise enough cover to make any deal—’

‘Scott,’ said Romano – and his voice now held a note of tiredness that for the first time reflected his age – ‘I’m not interested in doing a deal with your partners. I haven’t time to haggle with the boys in the front room and their lawyers and their lawyer’s lawyers. Fifty years I’ve been doing that sort of thing, and believe me, I’m tired. This is
my
development. It was done with
my
money, and all the equipment is in
my
ship. I want to do a personal deal, direct with you. You can handle it from then on.’

McKenzie blinked.

‘I couldn’t swing anything as big as this,’ he protested. ‘Sure, I appreciate the offer, but if this does what you say, it’s worth billions. And I’m just a poor but honest millionaire.’

‘Money I’m no longer interested in. What would I do with it at my time of life? No, Scott, there’s just one thing I want now – and I want it right away, this minute. Give me the
Sea Spray
, and you can have my process.’

‘You’re crazy! Why, even with inflation, you could build the
Spray
for inside a million. And your process must be worth—’

‘I’m not arguing, Scott. What you say is true, but I’m an old man in a hurry, and it would take me a year to get a ship like yours built. I’ve wanted her ever since you showed her to me back at Miami. My proposal is that you take over the
Valency
, with all her lab equipment and records. It will only take an hour to swap our personal effects – we’ve a lawyer here who can make it all legal. And then I’m heading out into the Caribbean, down through the islands, and across the Pacific.’

‘You’ve got it all worked out?’ said McKenzie in awed wonder.