One of the audience members raised his voice to interject. “You’re really asking us to climb back aboard warships after all this time?” he said.
“I saw that thing over in Ginza,” said another. “We have no chance of defeating it.”
“There’s not even proper weaponry left on those ships, is there?” asked a third.
The audience’s demeanor had devolved into outright heckling.
“Yeah, what do you even expect us to do?” shouted a voice.
“How ’bout a proper explanation already, huh?” yelled another.
As Hotta stood there flustered, suddenly Noda stepped onto the stage behind his back with microphone in hand.
“Er, yes, well…” he said. “I’d be happy to explain more about the plan itself, if you’ll all just simmer down for a moment.”
The other members of Shinsei Maru’s crew could hardly contain their shock at seeing Noda take the podium.
“Wait… Noda-san?” said Mizushima.
“First, allow me to introduce myself,” said Noda. “My name is Kenji Noda, and I’m an ex-naval technician. It was I who originally drafted the plan for the operation being proposed here today. Now, the first thing to note here is that Godzilla—the name by which the creature is known in Odo Island folklore and that I’ll be using to refer to the monster going forward—seems to be all but impervious to conventional firearms. I was there when it sank Takao and witnessed firsthand as it took several direct hits from the ship’s main battery, then completely regenerated a few moments later.”
This drew forth an even greater commotion from the audience.
“Wait, that thing sank Takao?” said one attendee.
“How the hell are we supposed to do anything to it, then?” said another.
Murmurs spread throughout the auditorium like wildfire. Everyone seemed to have considered Noda’s account of the ship’s fate as merely a rumor up until now. But it was no rumor; it was indeed Godzilla that sank Takao.
“Quiet, please,” said Noda. “Yes, I know it seems quite daunting. But that is precisely why I’m proposing a radically different approach.”
Noda then turned to face a large water tank that a man in a white lab coat had just brought in and placed next to him near the podium. “First, allow me to give you a simple demonstration,” he said. “Now, this tank is filled with salt water with the exact same density as seawater. And as you can see here, we have a little wooden figure meant to represent Godzilla—which we’ve made just heavy enough that it’s only barely able to remain afloat.”
Noda placed the wooden block—carved into the shape of Godzilla, attached to a platform connected to several tubes—into the tank. Although it was clearly bottom heavy, the figure’s upper half still floated above the surface of the water like Noda had said.
“But let’s see what happens,” he went on, “if we then pipe some Freon gas into the tank, enveloping the wooden block in bubbles…”
One of the audience members snorted derisively at this. “Psh,” he said. “Like a few bubbles are going to make a difference.”
“You wouldn’t think so, right? But you might be surprised,” said Noda.
Noda twisted the spigot on the compressed gas cylinder attached to the tubes feeding into the tank, and several streams of tiny Freon gas bubbles quickly enveloped the wooden Godzilla figure—which then suddenly began to sink, much to the audience’s disbelief.
“You see,” Noda explained, “the wooden block can only float because it’s slightly less dense than the seawater around it. But by enveloping in a pocket of gas, we create a layer of separation between the two, thereby leaving nothing to keep the block afloat. This is the basic principle behind the operation I’m suggesting: to sink Godzilla to the bottom of the ocean through the use of a similar mechanism.”
Akitsu leaned over to whisper in Mizushima’s ear.
“So hey, uh…” he said. “Since when has Doc been such a big shot?”
Noda then instructed his assistant to kill the lights and turn on the slide projector. Once the room was dark, the screen behind him lit up with a black and white contour line map of Sagami Bay.
“As you’re all no doubt aware,” he said, “the Sagami Trough is by far the deepest stretch of ocean within our immediate vicinity, with a maximum depth of over 2,500 meters. We propose to strap several massive tanks of Freon gas to Godzilla’s body, then letting them foam at the surface of the water to create a ‘bubble membrane’ around the submerged part of its body—thereby sending it plummeting to the bottom of Sagami Bay. The rapid change in pressure in such a short span of time should kill the beast instantly.”
Noda then turned away from the screen to face the audience again. With the map of Sagami Bay superimposed across his face as he stared against the projector, his usually amicable face now bore an eerie expression that no one in the audience—not even his crewmates—had ever seen from the man before.
“That is the plan: to defeat Godzilla by harnessing the power of the sea,” he said. “Welcome to Operation Wadatsumi.”
Out in the audience, Akitsu still had his doubts. He remembered the corpses of all the deep-sea fish, killed by the change in water pressure simply because they swam to the surface too quickly in an attempt to outrun Godzilla. Did this not imply that the beast itself was unaffected by water pressure altogether?
“Didn’t it come from the bottom of the sea, though?” he said, speaking up. “Wouldn’t that mean it can withstand any amount of pressure down there?”
“It’s not about the amount of pressure, per se,” Noda quickly responded. “It’s about the change in pressure. By my calculations, using the Freon gas method, after just thirty-five seconds of sinking, every square meter of its body will be under 250 atmospheres of pressure. Such a dramatic change in pressure is not something that any organism could possibly withstand, even if it can live and thrive on the ocean floor.”
“So then…” said Koichi, rising from his chair, “you’re sure that this will actually kill Godzilla, beyond a shadow of a doubt?”
Noda hesitated a moment. “Well, in fairness…there’s still much we don’t know about the beast, so it’s hard to say,” he conceded. “All we can do is postulate based on the laws of physics and build our strategy around that.”
The crowd stirred once more at his obvious lack of confidence.
“But I do genuinely believe this is our best bet!” Noda added in a fluster. “Especially since we now know that it’s impervious to firepower…”
“Can we kill it or not?” asked Koichi, still adamant.
Noda’s scientific integrity compelled him to answer honestly.
“…I can’t say for certain,” he confessed.
Upon hearing this, Koichi kicked his chair in frustration and started stomping out of the venue.
“But there’s a good chance!” Noda called after him. “Please, Shiki-san…just hear me out at least.”
Koichi stopped dead in his tracks, standing there motionless in the aisle a moment before begrudgingly retaking his seat.
“Now let me explain the actual logistics,” said Noda, indicating to his assistant to advance to the next slide. The projector screen now showed a diagram featuring two boats towing a long cable that ran between them with gas cylinders placed intermittently along its length. “As you can see here, we will be using two of our destroyers to first encircle Godzilla and wrap a large cable around it. Attached to that cable will be several large cylinders filled with Freon gas, which we will release all at once after creating a massive ‘bubble’ beneath the beast—using leftover 46cm explosive shells originally meant for Yamato. The initial acceleration due to gravity as Godzilla falls into this newly created air pocket, combined with the sudden surge of gas bubbles enveloping its entire body, will cause the creature to go into an effective state of free fall—losing all buoyancy and plunging 2,500 meters to the bottom of the ocean in a matter of seconds.”
“And what if that still doesn’t kill it?” Koichi demanded.
“Not to worry—there is a backup plan. If you’d all be so kind as to join me over by the windows…”
The audience members got up and followed Noda over to the windows. Down in the courtyard below were a group of workmen standing near a large box-shaped mechanism of some sort. When Noda gave the men the signal, they flipped a switch—and a gigantic, yellow raft-shaped balloon burst forth from the box-shaped mechanism with an explosive boom. Another man in workwear standing next to Noda proceeded to explain.
“I’m Itagaki, from the Toyo Balloon Company,” he began. “What you just saw was an inflatable flotation device based on those that were previously used on naval warships… It is, in essence, a giant life raft, which inflates almost instantaneously via the release of compressed carbon dioxide. And it is our plan to use a great number of these to bring Godzilla rushing back to the surface of the water as soon as it hits the ocean floor.”
“So even if the immense increase in pressure doesn’t kill it,” Noda said, taking over, “we find it extremely unlikely that the creature will be able to endure the intensity of such rapid intense decompression immediately thereafter. Again, there’s no guarantee it will work… But all we can do is try and exhaust every last option available to us.”