She looked relieved. "Then you'll stay with the _Esperance_
until--things are settled one way or another? I mean, you're really
enlisted?"
"Until there are no more ways left for me to blunder," said Terry
distastefully. "I'm about through the list, though."
"Not at all!" protested Deirdre. "Tapping numbers was really a very good
idea. I was horrible! I scolded because you'd kept it a secret from me.
I'd have been proud if I'd thought of it first!"
Nick came back and spoke to Davis. Davis came aft.
"The _Pelorus_ will send a boat as soon as we've anchored," he told
them. "They've heard something and want to see the plastic objects."
"I'd like the long end of a bet that they don't believe in them, or us,"
Terry said abruptly. "They're established authorities on the ocean
bottom. They know a lot. They probably know so much they can't really
believe there's anything more to know than what they're busy finding out
now."
Davis shook his head. He was confident. The _Esperance_ anchored, almost
exactly where she'd been when Terry first came on board. Within half an
hour a boat arrived from the _Pelorus_. Terry repeated his refusal to go
along. Deirdre went along with her father.
They came back a little over an hour later. At first Davis was almost
speechless with fury. Then he told Terry, choking on his rage,
"According to them, the plastic objects are a hoax. The hum is a school
of fish. We aren't trained observers. At Thrawn Island they're
astronomers and they simply don't know anything about biology. And we
should realize that it's starkly impossible for intelligence to develop
where the oxygen supply is limited. It's unthinkable that abyssal fish
should have their swim bladders punctured so they won't explode from
release of pressure when they come to the surface. Those in the lagoon
aren't abyssal fish, just unfamiliar species!"
"Well?" Terry asked.
"Oh, they're going to make a bathyscaphe dive!" said Davis as angrily as
before. "As a matter of courtesy to somebody--not us. They'll make it
where we found fish packed in a circle. That happens to be the deepest
part of the Luzon Deep, in any case. They don't object to our sending
our dredge down first. They will be politely interested if it comes back
up."
"I," announced Deirdre, "I am so mad I could spit!"
"There's no use in our staying here," said Davis, seething. "Our dredge
should be ready. We'll go up to Barca and tow it to the point we want to
send it down."
He ordered Nick to get ready to lift anchor.
"One question," Terry said finally. "Did you mention the bolides?"
"No!" snapped Davis. "Would I want them to think I was crazy?"
He stamped away.
The _Esperance_ put to sea again. She sailed north along the coast. At
dinner everybody was quiet. It was the only meal, since Terry's joining,
that had not been enlivened by an elaborate argument on some subject or
other. Davis was still in an abominable mood. He knew it, and held
himself to silence.
Later, Terry and Deirdre talked together. They refrained tacitly from
speaking of marine biology or any reasons for tapping plastic objects
against the _Esperance's_ hull. They discussed only trivia, but somehow
Terry found any subject absorbing, when he was with Deirdre.
After a while she went below, and he stayed abovedecks, smoking. The
moon had not yet risen when he turned in.
They sailed into the small harbor of Barca at ten in the morning. By
twelve, local boatmen had towed out an ungainly object some thirty-two
feet long. They tethered it to bitts at the _Esperance's_ stern. By one
o'clock they had loaded on her deck a large, folded sack of sailcloth
and half a dozen specially-cast concrete blocks with eyed iron rods
cemented in them. At half-past one Deirdre, who had gone ashore in one
of the yacht's own boats, came back with innumerable supplies she'd
bought. At two o'clock the _Esperance_ went out to sea again.
The towed object was a construction around a central wooden spar with an
iron tube at its top end and half a dozen lesser spars linked loosely to
its bottom. A mass of fishnet was fastened to the smaller spars and
heavy ropes were holding the spars and the net in place during its tow.
There was a hook for attaching the main spar to the concrete sinkers.
"It opens like an umbrella," explained Deirdre. "We'll hoist it upright
barely out of the water, and fasten on the weights. The canvas bag fits
on that iron pipe. When you let it go, it sinks like an umbrella that's
tightly closed, but when it touches bottom the weights spread it out and
an explosive charge automatically goes off in that iron tube. It's
special explosive. The gas it makes inflates the canvas bag, which can't
burn underwater, and that floats the whole thing back up with the ribs
of the umbrella stretched out and spreading the net between them. It
should catch anything it encounters as it rises. As the pressure lowers,
the excess gas can escape through a relief-valve. This dredge is
experimental. If it works, it can be modified to do lots of things."
"Such as poking at things we don't believe in," said Terry drily. "That
explosion ought to stir up anything in its neighborhood. It'll be much
more disturbing and audible than a few light taps against the
_Esperance's_ hull!"
Deirdre grinned ruefully and did not answer.
The bulky tow slowed the yacht. She did not reach the position of the
fish-filled circle until after nightfall, and it was necessary to have
plenty of light by which to locate the inflated bag when it came to the
surface, so nothing could be tried until the following morning. A short
while before daybreak, lights appeared at the horizon. Red and green
sidelights, and white central lights. It was a steamer. It came closer
and closer. Presently, it turned and headed upwind and went dead slow,
barely keeping steerage. It was the _Pelorus_.
Dawn arrived in a golden radiance which thrust aside the night. The
_Pelorus_ shone brightly in the first rays of the sun. A large object
was hoisted out of her hold. Its shape was that of a gravid goldfish,
with a smaller sphere hanging beneath it. It went overside, slowly, and
there it floated, rolling wildly on the waves. For a very long time
nothing seemed to happen. Then the water-level of the float sank a
little. It was being filled with gasoline, which is lighter than water
and practically incompressible.
On the _Esperance_, the tow had been pulled alongside and the yacht's
powerful winch hauled it upright. The yacht heeled over from the weight.
The crew-cuts fastened the canvas sack in place, and Davis loaded the
explosive charge into the iron tube. The crew-cuts cleared the nets.
This preliminary operation seemed promising, and it was quite likely
that the dredge would operate as it was designed to do.
The _Pelorus_ whistled impatiently. Nick abandoned his job and went
below to the short-wave set. He returned shortly after.
"The _Pelorus_ says she'll be ready to send the bathyscaphe down for a
test dive in two hours," he reported. "She says she will object if our
gadget is floating free at the time, on the chance that it might
interfere with the bathyscaphe. She asks if you can send our dredge down
right away and get it over with."
"Tell them yes," said Davis. "In five minutes."
He compressed his lips. The _Esperance's_ device, though clumsy, was
fundamentally simple. Five minutes later the top of the central spar was
level with the water. "Cut away," said Davis.
Doug slashed the single rope holding the dredge. It sank immediately.
The recorder gave off the sound of waves. Occasionally, very
occasionally, a chirping or a grunt could be heard. Twenty minutes.
Thirty.
There was a "crump!" from the loudspeaker which reported underwater
events. The sound seemed to come from very far below. Even a small
amount of explosive makes a very considerable concussion when it goes
off so far down, and the shock travels in all directions instead of
merely upward. The recorder picked up that concussion as a deep-bass
sound.
The sun shone. The wind increased. Waves marched in serried ranks from
here to there.
A long, long time later the inflated canvas bag came up and was floating
on top of the waves. The _Pelorus_ whistled. Nick went below. A few
minutes later he came up again to report.
"The _Pelorus_ says not to cast our dredge adrift. They're sending the
bathyscaphe down unmanned, to test all apparatus before a manned dive.
They don't want any debris in the sea."
"Tell them we send them a kiss," snapped Davis, "and they needn't
worry!"
The _Esperance_ approached the floating bag. Jug swung out on the
lifting boom and hooked it. The winch hauled it out of the water. The
concrete weights were gone. What the nets had captured was not pretty to
see. A dead fish with foliated appendages had come up from far below, to
judge by what its unpunctured swim bladder had done to it in
uncontrolled expansion. Davis said curtly it was _Linophrine arborifer_,
belonging two thousand fathoms below. An angry-looking creature,
similarly dead, was _Opisthoproctus grimaldi_. It belonged deeper than
the other. There were other specimens. A _genostoma_ of a species the
books didn't picture; a _Myctophum_; and various other creatures, mostly
as grotesque as their scientific names. All were abyssal fish. They had
died while rising from a pressure of several tons per square inch to
surface-pressure only.
"It worked," said Davis curtly. "I almost wish it hadn't. Let it down
into the water again. We'll jettison it when the _Pelorus_ gives us
permission."
Time passed. More time. Still more. The bathyscaphe was now in the
water, practically awash. Only a small conning tower showed above the
waves. Men swarmed around it.
There came a query from the _Pelorus_. The _Esperance_ gave assurance
that the deep-sea dredge had returned to the surface and would be kept
there.
The bathyscaphe was allowed to sink.
The recorder on the yacht began to pick up deep-toned mooing sounds from
the depths.
Presently, the mooing sounds ceased.
Two hours later, waves broke over an object completely awash on the
ocean. The _Pelorus_ steamed cautiously toward it. Boats went down from
her sides and surrounded the float.
After a long time the _Pelorus_ got alongside and men quickly fastened
the huge buoy to the ship. Then the down-wind sea changed its
appearance. A reek of gasoline reached the _Esperance_.
"Something happened," said Davis dourly. "They're dumping the
gasoline--not even pumping it aboard. Let's get out of the stink."
The _Esperance_ beat to windward. The _Pelorus_ began to lift something
large and ungainly out of the water. The _Esperance_ went down-wind to
take a look at it.
The yacht went past no more than fifty yards away, just as the
bathyscaphe left the water and swung clear.
The bathyscaphe's conning-tower was gone. It had been torn away by brute
force. The three-inch-thick steel globe.... Half of it was gone. The
rest was crushed. The sphere, which had been designed to resist a
crushing pressure of ten tons per square inch, had been ripped in half!
It had been bitten through. Bitten!
There was no comment by anybody on the _Esperance_.
Half a mile from the oceanographic ship, Davis said in a peculiarly flat
voice, "Cut away the dredge. We won't try to use it again."
Someone slashed the inflated canvas bag. It collapsed. Somebody cut away
a rope. The free dredge sank, slowly. It would never come up again.
The _Esperance_ changed course. She headed north by west. There was
still no conversation at all. The yacht seemed to tiptoe away from the
scene of the bathyscaphe's destruction.
A long time later, Deirdre said tentatively, "Have you been making
guesses, Terry?"
"Guesses, yes," he admitted.
"Such as?"
"Your father denied that the dredge was designed to stir up whatever
gathered the fish together and then carried them down to the bottom of
the sea. I was right there with him in the denial, but that's what we
intended, just the same. We said we didn't believe there was anything
there, so it couldn't do any harm to poke it. We poked, all right! Our
dredge, and then the bathyscaphe...."
"But what ..."
"And a bolide fell right there a couple of nights ago," said Terry
irrelevantly. "I wonder what the entity on the ocean-bottom thought of
the bolide. Hm." He paused. "I wonder, too, what the bolide thought of
what it found down there. Is that too crazy for a sane man to think,
Deirdre?"
She shook her head.
"Why is my father working on this business?" she asked. "And why are the
boys helping, and why do radar stations tell us what they find out, and
why did the Philippine Government ask the _Pelorus_ to make a
bathyscaphe dive at just that spot?"
Terry blinked at her.
"Too crazy for official notice, eh?" he said, "but too dangerous not to
check up on! Is it absolutely certain that the bolides are bolides?"
"No."
"Thanks," said Terry. He pursed his lips as if to whistle. "I've been
thinking of this thing as a puzzle. But it isn't. I'm very much afraid
it's a threat!" He paused. "Y-y-es. I've just made a new guess. It adds
everything together. I do hope it's wrong, Deirdre! I've got cold chills
running up and down my spine!"
_Seven_
As the _Esperance_ sailed northward, she looked almost unreal. From a
distance she might have been an artist's picture of an imaginary yacht
heeled over in the wind, sailing splendidly over a non-existent ocean.
The sky was a speckless blue, the sun was high.
But she was real enough, and the China Sea around her was genuine, and
what had taken place where the _Pelorus_ lay now hull-down, stowing a
ruined bathyscaphe in her hold, had unquestionably taken place.
Something monstrous and terrible was hidden in the dark abyss below the
yacht. The ferocity of its attack on the bathyscaphe was daunting. And
ferocity has always, somehow, a suggestion of madness about it. But the
humming sound in the sea was not the product of madness. It was a
technical achievement. And plastic objects with metal inclusions....
Davis joined Deirdre and Terry. Before Davis could speak she said, "I
can't imagine any guess that will add everything together, Terry."
Davis made a jerky gesture.
"Today's business is beyond all reason," he said unhappily, "and if
there ever was an understatement, that's it! If there can be any
conceivable motive for the plastic objects, which the _Pelorus dismisses
as hoaxes, the motive is to use them to find out_ something about
surface conditions; that is, for surface conditions to be reported back.
And that's not easy to imagine. But try to think of something easier!
And yet, such mindless ferocity as attacked the bathyscaphe ... that
wouldn't be curious about the surface!"
"No-o-o-o," agreed Terry. "It wouldn't. But we'd set off a bomb down
below to stir things up. A couple of hours later the bathyscaphe went
down. A stupid and merely ferocious thing of the depths wouldn't
associate a bomb that exploded with a bathyscaphe that came down two
hours later. It took intelligence to make the association of two falling
objects with danger."
Deirdre beamed suddenly.
"Of course! That's it! Go on!"
"Curiosity implies intelligence," said Terry carefully, "and
intelligence is a substitute for teeth or claws. We don't assume that
the fish that carry the plastic gadgets made them. Why assume that
whatever attacked the bathyscaphe did it of its own accord? We believe
that something else makes the deep-sea fish come up into the Thrawn
Island lagoon, don't we? Or do we?"
"We pretend we don't," said Deirdre.
Davis nodded reluctantly.
"Yes, we pretend we don't," he agreed. "But if intelligence is involved,
I find myself getting frightened! We humans are always terrified of
strange types of intelligence, anyhow. If it's intelligence that isn't
human ..."
Nick came up from below.
"Thrawn Island calling," he reported. "They say the hum at the lagoon
opening stopped for some forty-odd hours and then started again. They
ask if we're coming. I said we were on the way. They're standing by.
Anything we should tell them?"
"We'll get there some time after sunset," said Davis. "And maybe you
should tell them about the _Pelorus_ and the bathyscaphe."
Nick grinned briefly. "I did. And the guy on Thrawn Island said 'Hooray'
and then explained that he said that because he couldn't think of
anything that fitted the idea of something biting holes in three-inch
steel." He added, "I can't think of a proper comment, either."
"We'll get to Thrawn Island after sunset," repeated Davis. "Then we'll
see what we find in the lagoon--if anything."
Nick started back toward the bow. He stopped.
"Oh, yes! It wasn't a scientific guy talking, just the short-wave
operator. The science staff is all busy. He said they heard an hour ago
that another possible bolide's been spotted by a space-radar back in the
US. It was picked up farther out than one's ever been spotted before.
Five thousand miles high."
Davis nodded without comment. Nick went forward and disappeared below.
A school of porpoises appeared astern. They caught up with the
_Esperance_. They went rocketing past, leaping exuberantly for no reason
whatever. They cut across the yacht's bow and zestfully played around
her two or three times, then went on, toward a faraway horizon. They
managed somehow to give the impression of creatures who have done
something they consider important.
"It's said," said Terry, "that porpoises have brains as good as men's. I
wish I could get one or two to talk! They might answer everything! I'm
getting obsessed by this infernal business!"
"I've been at it for months," said Davis. "In the past week, though,
with you on board, I have found out more things I don't understand than
I believed existed!"
He walked away. Deirdre smiled at Terry.
"My father paid you a tribute," she said. "I think we've been wasting
time, you and I. We do a lot of talking to each other, but we haven't
been applying our massive brains to matters of real importance."
"Such as what?" asked Terry dourly.
"Foam," said Deirdre. "Big masses of foam seen to be floating on the
sea. Always over the Luzon Deep. Photographed by a plane less than a
month ago. Reported by fishermen much more often than you'd suspect. At
least once a ship sailed into a foam-patch and dropped out of sight,
exactly as if there were a hole in the sea there. Let's talk about
that."
They settled down on the after-cabin roof and began a discussion on the
foam-patches, for which there was no hint of an explanation. Then
Deirdre mentioned that when she was a little girl she'd always been
fascinated by the sight of her father shaving. The foam--the
lather--entranced her. And somehow that led to something else, and that
to something else still. A full hour later they were talking enjoyably
about matters of no conceivable relationship to large patches of foam
seen floating on the ocean's surface where the water was forty-five
hundred fathoms deep.
Davis came to a halt beside them.
"Morton's just been talking to me from Thrawn Island," he said abruptly.
"He's very much upset. It's about that prospective bolide that was
spotted from Palomar. It's been right there for two hours."
Terry waited.
"Morton," said Davis, "would like us to try to photograph it when it
comes in, back where the _Pelorus_ was this morning."
Terry stared. Shooting stars are not rare. On an average summer night
anybody can see at least three in an hour's watch of any one quarter of
the sky. Bolides are a rare kind of shooting star. Still, many people
have seen one or two in their lifetime. But nobody plans ahead of time
to observe a bolide, and still less does anybody ever plan in advance to
watch a meteorite arrive on the earth's surface, whether on land or sea.
It is simply not thinkable.
"We'll go back and try," said Davis. He seemed embarrassed. "Morton says
there's no sense to it at all, and that if we do get photographs they'll
be considered fakes. He's really wrought up. But he asked if I thought I
could get a plane out from Manila to watch it fall--if it comes. I'm
going to try that too." He added, more embarrassed still, "Of course
nobody'd pay attention if I explained why the plane should go there.
I'll have to say that I'm just looking for something else peculiar to
happen at that spot. The _Pelorus_ must have already reported that one
peculiar thing has happened."
Terry opened his mouth, and closed it again. Davis went away.
"You had an idea," said Deirdre accusingly. "What?"
"I was thinking of Horta," said Terry. "Police Captain Horta. A very
honest man with no scientific knowledge at all. Nobody with a scientific
education would pay any attention, but I could get him to tell a few
others who know as little as he does, and if the damned thing does turn
up, there'll be proof it was foretold. If it doesn't arrive--" Terry
shrugged, "I've no scientific reputation to lose."
"Wonderful!" said Deirdre warmly. "But you wouldn't have proposed it but
for me! I'll put things in motion!"
She vanished. Within minutes the _Esperance_ came about in a wide
semicircle and headed in the direction from which she had just come.
Deirdre stayed out of sight for a long while. When she came up it was to
tell Terry that Nick was calling on the short-wave set. He'd raised the
flattop in Manila Bay. The flattop had raised the shore. Telephone calls
were being made to here and there and everywhere to get Horta to a
short-wave station to take a call from Terry.
It was near sunset when the complicated call was ready and Horta's voice
came into a pair of headphones Terry was wearing in the _Esperance's_
radio room.
"I need," said Terry slowly, "to have a number of people in Manila know
now of something that's going to happen out at sea tonight. They'll be
needed to testify that they knew of the prediction before the event. Can
you arrange it?"
"_Por supuesto_," said Horta's voice cheerfully. "Are we not _amigos_?
What is the prediction and who should know?"
"The prediction," said Terry doggedly, anticipating disbelief and
protest, "is that at twelve minutes after nine o'clock tonight a large
meteorite will fall into the sea where--hmm--where _La Rubia_ catches
her fish. No, you'd better not locate it that way. I'll give you the
position."
Davis, standing by, wrote the position in latitude and longitude and
handed it to him. He read it into the transmitter.
"Have you got it?" he demanded. "Is it written down?"
"Ah, yes," said Horta tranquilly. "I will see that they make a
memorandum of the matter. Shall I tell three or four persons, or more? I
have news for you also. Jimenez...."
"Look here!" said Terry sharply. "I want this thing to be past all
doubt! Everybody who's ever been worried about _La Rubia_ should know
about this! There should be no possible doubt about it! But there should
be disbelief, so people who don't believe will try to verify that it
didn't happen, so they can crow over the people who thought it would, or
might."
"Ah!" said Horta. "You wish you stick out the neck! It is serious! Now
tell me again!"
"At twelve minutes after nine tonight," said Terry doggedly, "A shooting
star will fall into the sea at...." He named the latitude and longitude
Davis had given him. "That is where _La Rubia_ catches her fish."
"A shooting star will fall there?" protested Horta. "But who knows where
they fall?"
"You do," said Terry. "This one, anyhow. Now, will you see that a number
of people know about it?"
"It is cr-azy!" objected Horta. Then he said, "I will do it."
The short-wave call ended, with Horta too much disturbed to refer again
to Jimenez.
By sunset Doug had gotten out the gun-cameras. Doug held an impromptu
class on deck, showing the other crew-cuts exactly how to aim the
cameras and expose the films, and what button to press to change film
automatically between shots. He was unhappy because he did not know how
bright the object to be photographed would be, for his lens-settings. He
was even more unhappy because the bolide might travel at practically any
angular velocity, so he didn't know how to set the shutters. But the
focus would be infinity, and if he used the fastest possible film, he
could stop most motion with a hundredth second exposure.
Instead of reaching Thrawn Island shortly after sunset, then, the
_Esperance_ was back above the place where the dredge had been dropped
and the bathyscaphe wrecked. The _Pelorus_ was gone. The people on board
that ship must have been very upset. The bathyscaphe had cost more money
than is usually allotted to most scientific researchers, and now it was
smashed. How would they justify themselves? They could hardly blame the
_Esperance_.
The yacht sailed in a closed pattern over this area of the Luzon Deep.
Deirdre served dinner on deck. Stars shone down almost instantly after a
sunset of unusual magnificence, even for the China Sea. Tony brought his
guitar aft, and a contagious feeling of exhilaration spread about the
_Esperance_ and an improvised party took place on deck. Maybe the mood
for festivity arose from the realization that at least nine-tenths of
the world's population would have graded them as lunatics, had it known
their project for the evening.
It would have been unjust, of course. Terry reflected that it had not
been their idea to make an appointment with a shooting star. They were
doing it out of some sort of professional courtesy, "from one set of
crackpots to another," Terry phrased it in his own mind. It was a wild
attempt to secure proof of the starkly impossible. So there was chatter,
singing, and some dancing. The high spot was perhaps the time when Jug
bashfully serenaded the rigging and the stars above it with howling
melodies he'd learned in college.
Eventually, Nick went down to the short-wave set. Doug passed out the
gun-cameras again, after checking each one. Nick popped his head out of
the hatch.
"Dr. Morton's been calling like crazy," he reported. "The bolide's made
four orbital turns, coming in all the while. It ought to touch the
atmosphere next time around. ETO is nine-twelve-seventeen-seconds. I
told him we're all set."
His head disappeared.
"Don't forget!" Doug said anxiously. "The cameras will feel like
shotguns but don't lead your target! And don't forget to press the
film-changer!"
Terry lifted his gun-camera experimentally. It did feel like a shotgun.
And then, suddenly, he disbelieved everything: the purpose of the
_Esperance's_ original investigation; the phenomena that had been
observed; the guesses that had been made. It was pure insanity! He felt
a quick impatience with himself for becoming entangled in anything so
ridiculous.
Deirdre leaned toward him and whispered forlornly, "Terry! It's
dreadful! I've just had an attack of common sense! What are we doing
here? We're crazy!"
He put his hand consolingly over hers. The act was unpremeditated and
the sensation was startling. He found that they were staring at each
other intently in the starlight.
"I think ..." said Terry, unsteadily, "that it's very sensible to be
crazy. We've got to ... talk this over."
Deirdre smiled at him shakily.
"Y-yes, we will."
Then Davis pointed out positions for the camera operators. The bolide's
course should be three hundred fifty degrees, not quite on a north-south
line. It might land short of, or beyond, the _Esperance_. Or it might
pass many miles to the east or west. Dr. Morton needed as many pictures
of it against recognizable stars as could possibly be secured.
Suddenly, there was a faint, dull rumbling in the heavens. It grew
louder. Presently, cruising lights appeared in the sky. They maintained
a fixed relationship to each other. They looked like moving stars,
flying in formation from star-cluster to star-cluster.
Nick popped abovedecks again.
"The planes just called us," he reported. "They've just had a Loran
position-check and they're on the mark. They've got orders to observe
any unusual phenomena occurring around nine-twelve P.M., Manila time.
Using civilian terminology, it sounds like they're saying the Philippine
Government asked them to come out and take a look."
"It's five after nine now," said Davis.
The _Esperance_ headed into the wind. Her bow rose and fell. Waves
washed past, and roarings trundled about under the stars overhead, and
very tiny lights moved in a compact group across the firmament.
Time passed.
At twenty-two seconds after nine-twelve--which is to say at twenty-one
hours, twelve minutes, twenty-two seconds--a light appeared in the sky
from the north. It grew steadily brighter. It suddenly flared very
brightly indeed, then dimmed, and continued to rise above the horizon.
Seconds later it flared again, very briefly.
Terry found himself aiming the gun-camera. He pulled trigger and changed
film and pulled trigger and changed film.
The bright light ceased to climb. It grew steadily brighter and
brighter, and then it flared for the third time--Terry's mind asked
skeptically, 'Braking rockets?'--and the light was so intense that the
cracks in the yacht's deck-planking could be seen. Then the extra
brilliance vanished, and suddenly the moving light was no longer white,
but reddish.
Terry aimed again and fired the gun-camera.
The light passed almost directly overhead. Terry had the impression that
he felt its heat upon his skin.
It plunged into the sea two miles beyond the _Esperance_. The shock-wave
caused by the impact tapped on the yacht's side-planking a few seconds
later. Starlight shone upon a plume of steam.
Then there was nothing but the noise of the circling planes above. Then
a sound, as of thunder. It disappeared northward. It was the sound of
the bolide's passage, arriving after the object itself had dived into
the sea.
The people on the _Esperance_ were dumfounded. Nick went below and came
up again a few minutes latter.
"The planes were calling," he reported. "They say they noted the unusual
phenomenon. They ask if they should stay around for something else."
"I think," said Davis caustically, "that that's all that's scheduled
just now. Tell them so."
The _Esperance_ went on steadily again, a trifle west of north. Davis
was below, talking via radio to Dr. Morton at the satellite tracking
base.
Terry and Deirdre went to look for a place where they could talk over
something privately. It was of enormous importance to them, but it was
not connected with fish or meteorites or plastic objects or anything at
all but the two of them. And to them the yacht seemed crowded with
people, even though there was nobody else abovedecks but one of the
crew-cuts at the wheel.
When the _Esperance_ entered the lagoon the next morning, though, their
private talk had evidently come to a satisfactory conclusion. Deirdre
smiled at Terry without any reason whatever, and he looked at once smug
and embarrassed and uneasy, as if he possessed a new status to which he
was still unaccustomed.
The recorder, trailing a submarine ear overboard, had duly reported the
presence of the hum in the water, just outside the lagoon. It had not
been operating for forty hours or thereabouts. During that time the fish
inside could go out of the lagoon, if they chose. And other fish could
come in. Terry said suddenly, as the yacht went under power toward the
tracking station wharf, "Suppose there was a cone of noise just outside
the lagoon, and the flanks of the submarine mountain under us were
included in the cone? And suppose the cone grew smaller, like the other
one. What would happen?"
Deirdre shook her head, smiling at him.
"The fish," said Terry, "could escape into the lagoon."
"Probably," agreed Deirdre.
"And if fish could be driven downward along a certain path," said Terry,
"the way we saw it happen, why, fish could be driven up in a certain
path, too."
"Obviously," said Deirdre.
"So if something wanted to replace the fish in the lagoon, or to add to
their number, why, it would puncture their swim bladders far, far down,
and then drive them up to the surface and into the lagoon, and then keep
the noise going to keep them inside."
"Is this a new idea?" asked Deirdre.
"N-n-o," admitted Terry. "I've had it for some time."
"So," said Deirdre, "have I."
The _Esperance's_ engine stopped, and she floated to gentle contact with
the wharf. Members of the tracking station staff made the yacht fast.
With others, Dr. Morton came on board. His expression was the picture of
unrelieved gloom.
"I'm in a nice spot!" he told Davis. "I predicted a second bolide
correctly! I had to use a different retardation factor to make the math
come out right. Now I'm asked to explain that! How can I tell them I
knew where it would fall, and only had to compute when?"
"Come below and look at the pictures we got," said Davis.
They disappeared down the after-cabin hatch. Terry knew about the
pictures. Doug had developed them with sweating care, developing each
negative separately and adjusting the development-time to the varying
exposures of the bright object.
There was a total of twenty reasonably good pictures of the bolide, from
its first appearance to its plunge into the ocean, two miles from the
_Esperance_. Doug had enlarged some of them. There were distinct
star-patterns in most. In nearly all, though, the object was more or
less blurred by its own motion. In those taken when it flared most
brightly, the blurriness was especially marked. There was only one
picture of professional, if accidental, quality, and it was the least
convincing of all. It showed the fore-part of a conical shape traveling
point-first. Nobody would conceivably believe that it was a meteorite.
It looked artificial.
Terry and Deirdre, as it happened, stayed on deck. The people of the
tracking station made a babbling uproar. It appeared that the most
important event in history, as history was viewed on Thrawn Island, had
taken place the night before. It was revealed--Terry had not suspected
his own success--that in asking Horta to see that there was
foreknowledge of a meteoric fall, Terry had arranged for the matter to
be taken immediately to high Philippine Government officials. The
American flattop, at their request, had sent planes to the place of the
fall, with orders which were enigmatic only until the descending object
appeared. Then every man in every plane knew that he'd been sent there
to see it.
So there could be no question but that Dr. Morton had predicted it. That
meant that he knew more about meteoric objects than anybody else in the
world. What he had to say was of vast importance, and Thrawn Island
shared in his achievement. But it was a strictly professional triumph.
The news would not break in the newspapers. No ordinary reader would
believe in it. And nobody anywhere would believe in Morton's knowledge
of the place of the fall before he began to calculate.
Terry observed that the people of Thrawn Island were definitely no
longer interested in fish. They'd kept their eyes open for oddities
because a deep-sea fish with a plastic object attached had been caught
in the lagoon a long while before. They'd been intensely interested when
Terry herded all the lagoon fish into one small inner bay, and they
speared sixty fish that had no business being at the surface. They'd
found eight more plastic objects. Such things had been interesting, if
not important. But now the head of the Thrawn Island staff had computed
the place and time of arrival of a meteoric mass from space! And he did
it when that mass was five thousand miles out! From a professional
standpoint, this was stupendous! They tried to make Terry see how
important it was.
Davis and Morton came up from below. They headed for the shore. The
crew-cuts trailed off to the land with most of the visitors. Only
Deirdre and Terry remained on the yacht, with a mere short-wave operator
from the island.
"We're going to have a fancy lunch, with champagne and speeches," the
operator said hopefully. "You'll come?"
"Naturally!" said Terry. "But first we're going swimming. We haven't had
a chance to be overboard since the last time we were here."
"We'll be back in time for lunch," Deirdre assured the operator, "but
swimming here is so wonderful! We've been talking about it for days!"
She went below to change. The operator shrugged. After a further attempt
to interest Terry in the celebration of an astronomical first, he went
ashore. Terry went with him to get the outboard motorboat he and Deirdre
had used before. He was already wearing swimming trunks.
A little later the small boat putt-putted away from the _Esperance_ upon
the glassy-rippled waters of the lagoon.
There was a very great tranquillity everywhere. The booming roar of the
surf came from unseen rollers on the reef outside. Seabirds squawked.
Palms along the edge of the lagoon waved their fronds very, very gently.
"How far will you go before we swim?" asked Deirdre. "All the lagoon's
perfect. One place is as good as another."
He cut off the motor.
"Hmmm. There's a deep place yonder," he observed. "That's where I went
with the aqualung and speared the freak fish. Stay away from it."
She jumped over in a clean dive. He joined her in the water. She came
up, blowing bubbles.
"All right, Terry. What are your troubles?"
"That bolide bothers me," he told her. "It had a specific destination!
It was meant to hit the water over the Luzon Deep!"
She dived again. This time Terry followed her. The underwater world was
beautifully bright, with ripplings making everything seem to shimmer
because of the changing light. When they came up again Deirdre said,
"Funny!"
"It had a purpose!" insisted Terry. "There were others before it, and
they had a purpose too! That's not funny!"
"I didn't mean that," said Deirdre. "I meant ... just now, under the
water.... What's that?"
There was a swirling at the surface, some tens of yards away. It was not
the curling eddy made by a fish about to break surface. It was too big a
disturbance for that. It looked as if something stirred, barely
submerged, but something very large. Terry, staring, thought of a
porpoise cavorting just below the ripples. Or perhaps a shark. But
sharks and porpoises are too small to have made this eddying. It
reappeared.
"Get in the boat!" snapped Terry. "Quick!"
While she climbed in he let himself sink, his eyes open. There was a
clouding of the water underneath, where the surface-disturbance had
been. It was mud from the bottom which had been stirred up. He could see
nothing clearly through it, though nearby and around him he could easily
see the colorings of coral and fan sponges, and he could see small fish
darting here and there.
He broke surface. Deirdre bent anxiously over the gunwale.
"What is it?"
"I don't know," he said curtly. "But give me a fish spear."
"You won't...."
"I just want to have something in my hand," he told her impatiently,
"while I look."
He took the spear she handed him, and sank once more. Again something
moved in the deeper part of the lagoon. It was a fretful motion, as if a
creature or creatures tried to burrow away from the light shining
through the water. Whatever moved, a thick cloud of debris from the
bottom floated all the way up to the surface.
Terry came up for air.
"There's something queer there," he said shortly. "I don't know what."
He went under and swam cautiously nearer to the disturbance. He was
within a few feet of the curling cloud of obscurity when something like
a gigantic worm came out of it. Or maybe it was like an elephant's
trunk, only no elephant ever had a trunk so huge. It was a dull and
glistening writhing object. Its end was rounded. The tip of the
worm-like thing must have been a foot in diameter, and it came out of
the mud cloud for four feet, then six, then, fifteen feet. It thickened
only slightly in that length. It groped blindly in the brightness.
Terry swam back quickly, and the object reared up and made a groping
sweep through the clear water. Some peculiar white disks suddenly
appeared on the underside of the long tentacle. They looked like
sucker-disks, able to grip anything at all. The monstrous tentacle
fumbled for Terry, as if guided by the pressure-waves his movements
generated.
Terry froze. Deirdre moved in the boat almost directly overhead.
Something clanked in the boat and he heard it. The boat was probably
rocking, making the pressure-waves that a creature from the abyss would
depend upon for guidance where eyes would not serve at all.
The thick, bulging tentacle reached toward the sound at the surface, now
ignoring Terry, though he was nearer. He was still. The white
sucker-disks on its under side had several rings of a horny, tooth-like
substance at their rims. The smallest were about four inches wide. The
fumbling object felt blindly in the water. Deirdre stirred again in the
boat. The visible portion of the groping monstrosity was already longer
than the boat. The whole creature would be enormous! If this groping arm
rested upon the gunwale of the boat, it could easily swamp it.
It groped for the boat, coming horribly out of a cloud of mud. It
reached out. In another instant it would touch....
Terry plunged his fish spear into the worm. It jerked violently. There
were enormous thrashings. Other similar white-disked arms thrust into
view, fumbling somehow angrily for the creature--Terry--which had dared
to attack it.
He darted for the surface. Something unspeakably horrible touched him,
but it was the smooth and not the suckered side of the groping worm.
Terry's head was now above water. He grasped the gunwale to pull himself
in, in a fever of haste. But the thing that had touched him before came
back. It grazed his leg, for just a second. Where it touched, his flesh
burned like fire.
"Start ... motor!" gasped Terry. "Get away!"
Something touched the stern-board of the boat. Deirdre pulled the
starter of the motor.
"Get in!" she said tensely. "Quickly!"
She saw him, straining every muscle by pure, agonized instinct against
the irresistible force of whatever clung to his skin. The horrible
tentacle stretched, and part of its length took a new grip. It crawled
upon him.... Deirdre saw the look on his face.
She snatched up the second spear and stabbed past him, into the crawling
beast. There was a most violent jerking. She stabbed again. She panted.
She gasped. She stabbed and stabbed, sobbing with fear and horror. And
Terry tumbled in over the gunwale, released. As soon as he fell onto the
floor-boards he painfully dragged himself toward the motor at the stern.
Something bumped the boat underneath. Terry pulled the starter and the
motor suddenly roared. But the boat didn't start immediately, and it
jerked once more. The whirling propeller-blades had touched one of the
groping tentacles and cut it. Tumult arose.
The boat surged into motion and Terry, with clenched teeth, sent it into
a crazy, skidding turn to avoid a surface swirl, and then another
frantic swerve when something showed momentarily above the surface. The
boat zig-zagged along. A grisly, writhing object rose above the water,
flailing, a fish-spear sticking in it. The small, skimming boat dodged
and twisted at its topmost speed.... It suddenly straightened out and
almost flew across the water toward the land.
_Eight_
Echoes of the outboard's roaring motor came back from the trunks of palm
trees that lined the lagoon's shore as the tiny boat raced across the
water. Deirdre was ashen-white. She turned her eyes from the water, and
they fell on the round raw places on Terry's leg where the sucker-disks
had bruised it horribly. She shuddered. She still had the sensation of
being pursued by the monster. Back where Deirdre's spear had finally
liberated Terry, startled and convulsive motions continued, followed by
a final gigantic splash. Terry drove the boat on at top speed.
The monster sank again in the spot where the lagoon was deepest. It had
come from depths where there was no light; from an abyss where blackness
was absolute. Now, having lost its victim, it returned peevishly to such
darkness as it could secure.
Terry said curtly, as the small boat raced for the _Esperance_ and the
wharf, "That creature was driven up from the Luzon Deep into the lagoon
to replace the gadget-carrying fish we speared!"
Deirdre stammered a little.
"Your l-leg.... You're bleeding...."
"I'm pretty well skinned in a couple of places," he said shortly.
"That's all."
"Could it be poisonous?"
"Poison," said Terry, "is a weapon for the weak. This thing's not weak!
I'm all right. And I'm lucky!"
"I'd have jumped over with my spear, if ..."
"Idiot!" said Terry gently. "Never think of such a thing! Never! Never!"
"I wouldn't want to l-live--"
A new reverberating quality came into the echoes from the shore. The
pilings of the wharf were nearby, now. They multiplied the sounds they
returned. The _Esperance_ loomed up. Terry cut off the motor, the little
boat drifted to contact, and Deirdre scrambled to the yacht's deck, and
then took the bow line and fastened it. This was absurdly commonplace.
It was exactly what would have been done on the return from any usual
ride.
"Go tell the others what we found," said Terry. "I'm going to see if
there's more than one of those things around."
"Not ..."
"No," he assured her. "I'm only going to use the fish-driving horn."
Deirdre looked at him in distress.
"Be careful! Please!" She kissed him suddenly, scrambled to the wharf,
and set off at a run toward the shore. Terry stared hungrily after her.
They'd come to a highly personal decision the night before on the
_Esperance_, but it still seemed unbelievable to him that Deirdre felt
about him the way he felt about her.
He went forward to set up the fish-driving combination. One part of him
thought vividly of Deirdre. The other faced the consequences that might
follow if the bolides were not bolides, and if the plastic gadgets and
the nasty-sounding underwater hums were products of an intelligence
which could make bolides change their velocity in space; which made them
fall in the Luzon Deep in the China Sea and nowhere else.
He set up the recorder with its loop of fish-driving hum. He put the
horn overboard, carefully oriented to spread its sound through all the
enclosed shallow water of the lagoon. He turned the extra amplifier to
maximum output, to increase the effectiveness of the noise, and turned
on the apparatus.
The glassy look of the lagoon-water vanished immediately. Fish leaped
crazily everywhere, from half-inch midgets to lean-flanked predators a
yard and more in length. There was no square foot in all the shallows
where a creature didn't struggle to escape the sensation of pins and
needles all over its body. And these pins and needles pricked deep.
Flying-fish soared crazily, and they were the most fortunate because so
long as they flew, the tormenting water-sound did not reach them. But
many of them landed on the beach, and even among the palms.
In the spot where blind and snakelike arms had tried to destroy Terry
and Deirdre, the lashing and swirling was of a different kind. Something
there used enormous strength to offer battle to a noise. The water was
whipped to froth. Twice Terry saw those rope-like arms rise above the
water and flail it.
This particular sort of tumult, however, appeared only in one spot. So
there was only one such creature in the lagoon.
When Davis and the others came down from the tracking station, Terry
turned off the horn. He was applying soothing ointment to the raw flesh
of his leg.
"There's a monstrous creature out there," he said evenly when a
white-faced Davis demanded information. "Heaven knows how big it is, but
it's something like a huge squid. It may be the kind that sperm whales
feed on, down in the depths."
Others from the tracking station arrived, panting.
"Oh! I'm tired of being conservative!" added Terry fiercely. "I'm going
to say what all of us think! There's something intelligent down at the
bottom of the sea, five miles down!"
He glared challengingly around him.
"Who doesn't believe that?" he demanded. "Well, the reporting gadgets
don't report any more. We killed the fish that carried them. So that
whatever-it-is down on the sea-bed has very cleverly sent up something
we ignorant savages wouldn't dare to meddle with! We would be terrified.
But we'll show _it_ what men are like!"
Dr. Morton said gently, "Perhaps we should notify the _Pelorus_. The
biologists on board there...."
"No!" said Terry grimly. "I have a private quarrel with this monster. It
might have killed Deirdre! And Davis already tried to tell those
biologists something! Tell them about this, and they'll want proofs they
wouldn't look at anyhow. We'll handle this ourselves! It's too important
for them!"
"Much too important," said Deirdre firmly. "The shooting stars aren't
shooting stars and there's something down in the depths just like Terry
says. He's right that we can't consider sharing our world with--beings
that come down from the sky, even if they only want our oceans and don't
care about the land. He says that we wouldn't get along with creatures
that know more than we do, and we would especially resent any space
ships coming uninvited to start colonies on our world while we're not
advanced enough to stop them! If that's what they're doing, they have to
be fought from the very first instant to the very last moment there's
one of them hiding in our seas! Terry's right!"
"I haven't heard him say any of those things, young lady," said Morton
drily, "but they're true. And I don't like the idea of a sea monster
being in the lagoon anyhow. Especially one that tries to kill people.
Still, fighting it...."
"There are a couple of bazookas on the _Esperance_," said Terry sharply.
He looked at Davis. "If you're willing to risk the yacht, we can drive
the beast aground, or at least to shallow water, with the submarine
horn. Then the bazookas should be able to destroy it. Will you take the
risk?"
"Of course you'll use the _Esperance_," said Davis. "Of course!"
"Then I'll want," said Terry, unconsciously taking command, "somebody at
the engine and somebody at the wheel. I'll run the horn. But, frankly,
if that monster lays one sucker-arm on the _Esperance_, it may be
good-bye. Any volunteers?"
In minutes the _Esperance_, her engine rumbling, pulled away from the
dock. She had on board all her original company except Deirdre--firmly
left ashore by her father and Terry--and in addition she carried Dr.
Morton and the most enthusiastic amateur photographer of the tracking
station staff. He was shaky but resolute, and was hanging about with an
imposing array of cameras, for both still and motion pictures. The
_Esperance's_ sails were furled and she went into battle under bare
poles. Davis was busy manufacturing improvised hand grenades for himself
and Morton.
The sun was nearly overhead. Terry asked Morton questions about the
lagoon. They finally chose a minor inlet as the place to which the
creature must be driven, if possible. There it could be immobilized by
the intolerable sound from the recorder. There it could be destroyed.
"I wonder," said Morton wryly, "if I can present a dead giant squid as
part of the explanation for my computed orbits for the last two
bolides!"
The _Esperance_ moved steadily toward the place where Terry had nearly
been killed.
The enterprise was risky. The _Esperance_ was sixty-five feet long. The
creature it was to attack was much larger, and if one of its kind had
crushed the bathyscaphe, it had sufficient strength and ferocity to make
a battle cruiser a much more suitable antagonist. But the true folly of
the effort was its purpose.
It all started when a fishing boat--_La Rubia_--went to sea and caught
remarkable quantities of fish, of which four specimens had had plastic
artefacts fastened to them. Then Terry began checking on certain noises
he heard in the sea which provoked an incomprehensible crowding of
millions of fish into a small area, from which they swam down to depths
where they could not survive. Now the killing of this squid was supposed
to cast a light on the mystery of the nine bolides which had fallen into
a particular part of the ocean.
Terry had the undersea horn turned vertically so that it would transmit
a blade of sound wherever he aimed it, instead of spreading all through
the lagoon. He turned it on.
The water before the _Esperance_ suddenly speckled and splashed from the
maddened leaps of fish of every possible size. He turned it off. He
aimed it where the ripples showed the presence of something huge beneath
the surface. He turned it on again.
There were convulsive writhings. A long tentacle emerged briefly and
then splashed under again. The writhings continued. Terry adjusted his
aim. Crazy leapings of smaller creatures showed the line of the
sound-beam, as tracer-bullets show the paths of bullets from a machine
gun. He cut off the sound for an instant and turned it on again at full
volume, pointed where the monster must be. There was explosive tumult
underwater. Huge arms flailed above the surface. But once again the
creature fled.
The _Esperance_ followed slowly, now. The monster had reacted to the
stinging sound-beam as if cowed. But it was a deep-sea creature. It did
not know how to move when squeezed into a shallow water which hampered
its movements. It seemed frightened to discover itself trapped between
the lagoon-bottom and the surface. And it was dazzled by the brightness
to which it had been driven. Left unattacked, even for an instant, it
tried to burrow away from the light, and again it made a dense cloud of
mud from the bottom. Then it became quiet, as if hiding.
Grimly, Terry lanced it with the painful noise. The water frothed.
Monstrous tentacles appeared and disappeared, and once part of the
creature's body itself emerged. It was cornered into a minor inlet, and
there the water grew more shallow and the monster did not want to go to
where its motions would be even more confined.
It seemed to flow into the deepest part of the miniature bay. It was as
if it felt certain of a haven there. When the tormenting noise-beam
struck again, the abyssal monster flung itself about crazily. A
terrible, frustrated rage filled it. Its arms fumbled here and there,
above water and below. It hauled itself upright so that a part of its
torpedo-shaped body broke through the surface. The monster was mad with
fury. It plunged toward the _Esperance_, not swimming now, but crawling
with all its eight legs in water too shallow to submerge it. Its effort
was desperate. It lifted everything from the water, and splashed
everything down again, all the while crawling toward its enemy.
Terry saw Nick and Jug steady the aim of their bazookas. Davis ran
toward the bow with hand grenades. The huge squid came crawling, and
with every foot of advance the pain-noise grew more unendurable.
Suddenly the creature uttered a mooing cry and retreated. The cry was
like the mooing noise Terry had picked up from the depths.
It went aground. It struggled to climb ashore, to do anything to escape
its tormentors. It foamed and splashed....
Despairing, it turned to face its tormentors. Its body reared almost
entirely out of the water, now. It sagged flabbily. It reeled as its
arms strained. Its eyes rose above the surface, blinded by the light.
They were huge eyes. Squids alone, among the invertebrates, have eyes
like those of land beasts. They flamed demoniac hatred. A beak appeared,
not unlike a parrot's, but capable of rending steel plates. The beak
opened and closed with clicking sounds that were singularly horrifying.
It snapped at the yacht, which was beyond reach. One of the tentacles
wrenched violently at something. It gave. The arm rose above the water.
A thorny mass of branched coral flew through the air and splashed close
beside the _Esperance_.
"Shoot!" said Terry, somehow sickened. "Dammit, shoot!"
Nick and Tony aimed closely. The bazookas made their peculiar,
inadequate sounds. The bazooka-shells, like small rocket-missiles, sped
through the short distance. They struck. Their shaped charges detonated,
again with inadequate loudness. They did not explode in a fashion to
tear the creature to bits. Instead, they sent lancing flames a thousand
times more deadly than bullets into the squid's flesh.
It fought insanely. It uttered shrill cries. Its arms tore at its own
wounds, at the water, at the lagoon-bed as if it would rend and shatter
all the universe in its rage.
The bazookas fired again and again.
It was the eighth missile from the bazooka which ended the battle. Then
the enormous body went limp. Its horny beak ceased to try to crush all
creation. But the long, thick, sucker-disked arms thrashed aimlessly for
a long time. Even when they ceased to throw themselves about, they
quivered and rippled for a considerable period more. And when it seemed
that all life had left the gigantic beast, and the men from the
satellite-tracking station stepped on the monstrous body, it suddenly
jerked once more, in a last attempt to murder.
The squid's body, without the tentacles, was thirty-five feet long. The
largest squid, the Atlantic variety, captured before had a mantle no
longer than twenty feet. That relatively familiar creature,
_Architeuthis princeps_, came to a maximum total length of fifty-two
feet. Counting the two longest arms of this one, it reached eighty. It
could not possibly swim in water less than six yards deep. It did not
belong in a coral lagoon, but it was there.
It was close to sunset when the last tremors of the great mass of flesh
were stilled. Terry was in no mood for eating, afterward. He skipped the
evening meal altogether, and paced up and down the veranda of the dining
hall, at the satellite-tracking station. Inside, there was a clatter of
dishes and a humming of voices. Outside, there was a soft, warm, starlit
night. The surf boomed on the reef outside the lagoon.
Deirdre came out and walked quickly into Terry's arms. She kissed him
and then drew back.
"Darling!" she said softly. Her voice changed. "How is your leg? Does it
still hurt?"
"It's nothing to worry about," said Terry. "I'm worried about something
else. Two things, in fact."
"Name one!" said Deirdre, smiling.
"I'd like to get married soon," said Terry ruefully.
"To whom?" she asked, jokingly.
"But I have to have a business or an income first. I think, though, that
with a little hard work I can start up my _especialidades electrónicas y
físicas_ again, and if you don't mind skimping a little ..."
"I'll adore it," said Deirdre enthusiastically. "What else would I
want? What's the other thing you worry about?"
"That monster," said Terry with some grimness.
"Pouf!" said Deirdre. "You've killed it!"
"I don't mean that one," said Terry more grimly. "I mean the one that
sent it. I wish I knew what it is and what it intends to do!"
"You've already found out more than anybody else even dared to guess!"
she protested.
"But not enough. We've stirred it up. It sent small fish in the lagoon
here and elsewhere to report back to it. We can't guess what the fish
reported, but we know some of it was about human beings. Whatever is
down at the bottom of the sea must be interested in men. Remember? It
made a patch of foam that swallowed up one ship and all its crew. It's
interested in men, all right!"
"True, but...."
"We dropped the dredge, which implied that we were interested in it. The
bathyscaphe indicated more interest on our part. To discourage that
interest--or perhaps in self-defense--it wrecked the bathyscaphe."
"It, Terry?" asked Deirdre. "Or _ellos_, they?"
"They," he corrected himself coldly. "We killed the fish that were
reporting men's doings from here. That was insolence on our part. So the
hum at the lagoon entrance went off and, after two nights, started
again--and then this huge squid was found in the lagoon. It should have
been able to defend itself against us. It was sent up here because it
was capable of defending itself! But we've killed it just the same. So
now what will come up out of the depths? And what will it do?"