The Molecule Men and The Monster of Loch Ness by Fred Hoyle

Author:Fred Hoyle [Hoyle, Fred]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Sci-Fi
Publisher: Harper & Row
Published: 1972-10-06T23:00:00+00:00

THE MONSTER OF LOCH NESS

CHAPTER ONE - A FREAK STORM

The Highlands of Scotland are split by a trench, the Great Glen, stretching one hundred and fifty miles from Oban in the south to Inverness in the north. The two parts belong to different bits of the earth’s crust, which move slowly against each other. Because of the grinding process and the glaciers of ten thousand years ago, the trench has been scoured deep, deep below sea level in some places.

From Oban an area of sea runs north for some fifty miles to Fort William. Here the land rises for ten miles before falling farther north to the bed of Loch Lochy. From Invergarry to Fort Augustus the land rises once more only to plunge into the abyss of Loch Ness which extends almost to Inverness.

Tom Cochrane was hard asleep, around midnight, when the storm broke. So intense was the rain that a torrent of water eventually found its way through the sturdy mountaineering tent. Sleep waned fast and suddenly Tom was wide awake, hearing the rushing water, feeling the wet soggy sleeping-bag, but seeing nothing. He cursed roundly the fact that he’d left his Land-Rover near Prince Charlie’s cave, to the West of Loch Lochy and slightly east of Loch Arkaig. From that starting point he’d set out up Glen Cia-aig 141 following a rough track for some five miles. The next morning he intended to climb Sron k Choire Ghairbh and Meall an Teangah for the simple reason that he’d never climbed them before. Then instead of returning to camp he would drop down to the western shore of Loch Lochy, make his way to Invergarry to stay with friends, and return to his camp the following day.

Tom’s teeth chattered from time to time as he leant on an elbow listening to the rain. Not gentle drops, but the lashing of some cyclone let loose on this little valley just west of the Great Glen.

Tom Cochrane looked at himself in the mirror of reflective darkness. A one time reader in the department of geography at Edinburgh University, he had retired from this post at the early age of fifty-five. The university pension settlement wasn’t much but it was at least something. More important to his financial position were three successful textbooks. Two were widely used in schools, the third, hand Forms and Weather, was now a standard university text throughout Britain and the Commonwealth, with some popularity in the U.S. as well.

Tom’s capacity for liking people as people, not people in the abstract, was enormous. He would happily have gone on teaching if the whole trend in university education hadn’t been towards a human battery farm producing disgruntled, egotistical chickens. Row upon row of long-haired bedraggled students wearied him, not for their appearance but for their lack of individuality, for which modern society was responsible. If only one of these same students had declared himself as an individual it would have been different.

Then there was Tom’s wife, Flora. Temperamentally Flora was just the other way round.

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