* * * * *
When Jeff Aubray pulled himself up from the planking, the apparitions
were gone. His knees shook and perspiration crawled cold on his face,
but he managed to haul Jennifer up with him.
"Come out of it, will you?" he yelled ungallantly in her ear. "If a
thing like that is loose on the island, we've got to get help!"
* * * * *
Jennifer did not respond and he slapped her, until her eyes fluttered
angrily.
"There's an EI communicator in my cabin," Jeff said. "Let's go."
Memory lent Jennifer a sudden vitality that nearly left Jeff behind in
their dash for the cottage up the beach.
"The door," Jeff panted, inside. "Fasten the hurricane bolt. Hurry."
While she secured the flimsy door, he ripped through his belongings,
aligning his EI communicator again on his breakfast table. Finding out
where the islanders got their calm-crystals had become suddenly
unimportant; just then, he wanted nothing so much as to see a well-armed
patrol ship nosing down out of the Calaxian sunrise.
He was activating the screen when Jennifer, in a magnificent rage in
spite of soaked blouse and dungarees, advanced on him.
"You're an Earth Interests spy after all," she accused. "They said in
the Township you are no artist, but Uncle Charlie and I--"
Jeff made a pushing motion. "Keep away from me. Do you want that devil
tearing the cabin down around us?"
She fell quiet, remembering the Zid, and he made his call. "Aubray,
Chain 147. Come in, Consulate!"
There was a sound of stealthy movement outside the cabin and he flicked
sweat out of his eyes with a hand that shook.
"EI, for God's sake, come in! I'm in trouble here!"
The image on his three-inch screen was not Consul Satterfield's but the
startled consulate operator's. "Trouble?"
Jeff forced stumbling words into line. The EI operator shook his head
doubtfully.
"Consul's gone for the day, Aubray. I'll see if I can reach him."
"He was about to send out an EI patrol ship to take over here in the
islands," Jeff said. "Tell him to hurry it!"
He knew when he put down the microphone that the ship would be too late.
EI might still drag the secret of the calm-crystal source out of the
islanders, but Jeff Aubray and Jennifer Mack wouldn't be on hand to
witness their sorry triumph. The flimsy cabin could not stand for long
against the sort of brute the owls had shown him, and there was no sort
of weapon at hand. They couldn't even run.
"There's something outside," Jennifer said in a small voice.
Her voice seemed to trigger the attack.
* * * * *
The Zid lunged against the door with a force that cracked the wooden
hurricane bolt across and opened a three-inch slit between leading edge
and lintel. Jeff had a glimpse of slanted red eyes and white-fanged
snout before reflex sent him headlong to shoulder the door shut again.
"The bunk," he panted at Jennifer. "Shove it over."
Between them, they wedged the bunk against the door and held it in
place. Then they stood looking palely at each other and waiting for the
next attack.
It came from a different quarter--the wide double windows that
overlooked the bay. The Zid, rearing upright, smashed away the flimsy
rattan blinds with a taloned seizing-hand and looked redly in at them.
Like a man in a dream, Jeff caught up his communicator from the table
and hurled it. The Zid caught it deftly, sank glistening teeth into the
unit and demolished it with a single snap.
Crushed, the rig's powerful little battery discharged with a muffled
sputtering and flashing of sparks. The Zid howled piercingly and dropped
away from the window.
That gave Jeff time enough to reach the storm shutters and secure
them--only to rush again with Jennifer to their bunk barricade as the
Zid promptly renewed its ferocious attack on the door.
He flinched when Jennifer, to be heard above the Zid's ragings, shouted
in his ear: "My Scoop should have the _Queen_ afloat by now. Can we
reach her?"
"Scoop?" The Zid's avid cries discouraged curiosity before it was well
born. "We'd never make it. We couldn't possibly outrun that beast."
The Zid crashed against the door and drove it inches ajar, driving back
their barricade. One taloned paw slid in and slashed viciously at
random. Jeff ducked and strained his weight against the bunk,
momentarily pinning the Zid's threshing forelimb.
Chafi Three chose that moment to reappear, nearly causing Jeff to let go
the bunk and admit the Zid.
"Your female's suggestion is right," the Ciriimian croaked. "The Zid
does not swim. Four and I are arranging escape on that premise."
The Zid's talons ripped through the door, leaving parallel rows of
splintered breaks. Both slanted red eyes glared in briefly.
"Then you'd damn well better hurry," Jeff panted. The door, he
estimated, might--or might not--hold for two minutes more.
The Ciriimian vanished. There was a slithering sound in the distance
that sounded like a mountain in motion, and with it a stertorous
grunting that all but drowned out the Zid's cries. Something nudged the
cottage with a force that all but knocked it flat.
"_My Scoop!_" Jennifer exclaimed. She let go the barricade and ran to
the window to throw open the storm shutters. "Never mind the door. This
way, quick!"
* * * * *
She scrambled to the window sill and jumped. Numbly, Jeff saw her
suspended there, feet only inches below the sill, apparently on empty
air. Then the door sagged again under the Zid's lungings and he left the
bunk to follow Jennifer.
He landed on something tough and warm and slippery, a monstrous tail
fluke that stretched down the beach to merge into a flat purplish
acreage of back, forested with endless rows of fins and spines and
enigmatic tendrils. The Scoop, he saw, and only half believed it, had
wallowed into the shallows alongside his dock. It had reversed its
unbelievable length to keep the head submerged, and at the same time had
backed out of the water until its leviathan tail spanned the hundred-odd
yards of sloping beach from surf to cabin.
Just ahead of him, Jennifer caught an erect fin-spine and clung with
both arms. "Hang on! We're going--"
The Scoop contracted itself with a suddenness that yanked them yards
from the cottage and all but dislodged Jeff. Beyond the surf, the
shallows boiled whitely where the Scoop fought for traction to draw its
grounded bulk into the water.
Jeff looked back once to see the Zid close the distance between and
spring upward to the tail fluke behind him. He had an instant conviction
that the brute's second spring would see him torn to bits, but the Scoop
at the moment found water deep enough to move in earnest. The Zid could
only sink in all six taloned limbs and hold fast.
The hundred-odd yards from cabin to beach passed in a blur of speed. The
Scoop reached deeper water and submerged, throwing a mountainous billow
that sent the _Island Queen_ reeling and all but foundered her.
Jeff was dislodged instantly and sank like a stone.
He came up, spouting water and fighting for breath, to find himself a
perilous twenty feet from the Zid. The Zid, utterly out of its element,
screamed hideously and threshed water to froth, all its earlier ferocity
vanished under the imminent and unfamiliar threat of drowning. Jeff sank
again and churned desperately to put distance between them.
He came up again, nearly strangled, to find that either he or the Zid
had halved the distance between them. They were all but eye to eye when
Jennifer caught him and towed him away toward the doubtful safety of the
_Island Queen_.
Chafis Three and Four appeared from nowhere and stood solemnly by while
the Zid weakened and sank with a final gout of bubbles.
"We must have your friend's help," Chafi Three said to Jennifer then,
"to recover our investment."
Jeff wheeled on him incredulously. "_Me_ go down there after that
monster? Not on your--"
"He means the Scoop," Jennifer said. "They brought it ashore to help us
out of the cabin. Why shouldn't it help them now?"
* * * * *
The Scoop came up out of the water so smoothly that the _Island Queen_
hardly rocked, dangling the limp form of the Zid from its great rubbery
lips like a drowned kitten.
"Here," Jennifer said.
The Scoop touched its vast face to the _Queen's_ rail and dropped the
unconscious body to the deck. The Zid twitched weakly and coughed up
froth and water.
Jeff backed away warily. "Damn it, are we going through all that again?
Once it gets its wind back--"
Chafi Three interrupted him this time. "The crystal now. We must have it
to quiet the Zid until it is safely caged again."
Jennifer turned suddenly firm. "No. I won't let this EI informer know
about that."
The Ciriimians were firmer.
"It will not matter now. Galactic Adjustment will extend aid to both
Calaxia and Terra, furnishing substitutes for the crystals you deal in.
There will be no loss to either faction."
"No loss?" Jennifer repeated indignantly. "But then there won't be any
demand for our crystals! We'll lose everything we've gained."
"Not so," Chafi Three assured her. "Galactic will offer satisfactory
items in exchange, as well as a solution to Terra's problems."
The Scoop, sensing Jennifer's surrender, slid its ponderous bulk nearer
and opened its mouth, leaving half an acre of lower jaw resting flush
with the _Island Queen's_ deck. Without hesitation, Jennifer stepped
over the rail and vanished into the yawning pinkish cavern beyond.