"Maybe," said Terry. "Your father once mentioned an instrument he'd like
to have to take a relief map of the ocean bottom. Changed around a
little, it might be something we need very badly indeed. The horn we've
got is good, but not good enough. I'll talk to the electronics men
here."
There was a noise of scraping chairs, inside the dining hall. People
came out, talking cheerfully. There was much to talk about on Thrawn
Island today. The killing of a giant squid had been preceded by a
specific guess that linked it to meteoric falls in the Luzon Deep.
Logically, the excitement had grown.
Terry found his electronics specialists, and explained to them the type
of apparatus he was interested in. He asked if it was included in the
island's technical stores. He wanted to assemble something capable of
emitting underwater noises of special quality and unprecedented power.
There is not much power involved in sound through the air. A cornet
player manages with much effort to convert four-tenths of a watt of
power into music. A public-address system for a large area may give out
fifteen watts of noise. Terry described a device which could use a small
amount of power, serving as a sonar or a depth-finding unit, and then,
with the throw of a switch, turn kilowatts into vibrations underneath
the sea. If powerful and shrill enough, such vibrations could be lethal.
A technical argument ensued. Terry's demands were toned down to fit the
equipment at hand. Then three men went with him to the island's
workshop. They took off their coats and set to work.
Three hours later someone noticed an unknown vessel making its way into
the lagoon. She was stubby and small, and had short thick masts with
heavy booms tilted up at steep angles. Her Diesel engines boomed
hollowly, louder than the surf. As she entered the lagoon, a searchlight
winked on and flicked here and there. It finally found the wharf where
the _Esperance_ was moored.
Men of the tracking station staff went down to the wharf to meet the
small row boat that was now coming ashore.
A short, stout, irate fishing boat skipper waved his arms and shouted
angrily. What had _los americanos_ done to keep _La Rubia_ from catching
fish? Why had they changed the arrangement by which the starving wives
and children of _La Rubia's_ crew were fed? He would protest to the
Philippine Government! He would expose the villainy of _los americanos_
to the world! He demanded that now, instantly, the original state of
affairs be restored!
A fish leaped out of the water nearby. Where it leaped, and where it
fell back, bright specks of luminosity appeared. Even the ripples of the
splashes glowed faintly as they spread outward. The skipper of _La
Rubia_ stared. And now the people of the island realized that the look
of the water was not altogether commonplace. Little bluish flames under
the surface showed that many fish darted there. There were more fish
than usual in the lagoon. Many more. The lagoon had suddenly become a
fine place to catch fish. Some care would be needed, of course. There
were doubtless coral heads in plenty. But still ...
The skipper of _La Rubia_ abruptly returned to his fury and his
protests. _La Rubia_ had gone to the place where she always found fish.
Always! There was a humming in the water there, and fish were to be
found in quantity. But yesterday the American ship had been there, and
also this very yacht! _La Rubia_ stayed out of sight lest the
_americanos_ learn her fishing secrets. But it was useless. When the two
American ships were gone, there was no longer a humming in the sea and
no more fish for the crew of _La Rubia_ to capture for their hungry
wives and children. And therefore he, Capitán Saavedra, demanded that
the _americanos_ restore the previous state of affairs.
Davis would have intervened, but the chubby skipper erupted into wilder
and more theatrical accusations still.
Let them not deny what they had done! Fish were always to be found where
there was a humming in the sea that _las orejas de ellos_ heard and
reported to him. But that humming was not in its former place. It was
here! At the entrance of the lagoon! The fish were here, also! _Los
americanos_ had moved the fish so the crewmen of _La Rubia_ could not
feed their wives and children. _Los americanos_ wished to take all the
fish for themselves! But fish were the property of all men, especially
fishermen with starving wives and children. So he, Capitán Saavedra,
would fish in this lagoon, and he defied anyone to stop him.
"Certainly," said Terry. "_Seguramente!_" He added in Spanish: "We'll
lend you a short-wave contact with Manila to make any complaints you
please. I'm sure all the other fishing boats will be glad to hear where
you've been catching fish, and where you've found the fish have moved
to! Calm yourself, Capitán, and help yourself to the fish of the lagoon,
and any time you want to call Manila we'll arrange it!"
He moved away. He went back to the electronics shop, while Morton and
Davis and the others talked encouragingly to Capitán Saavedra. Presently
they suggested that he accept their hospitality, and the Capitán and his
oarsmen went up to the dining hall, where they were served dinner, and a
more friendly mood developed. In time the Capitán said happily that he
would wait till sunrise to lower his nets, because he didn't want to
risk losing them on the coral heads. A few drinks later the Capitán
boasted about his own system of fishing, as practised by _La Rubia_. The
starving condition of his crew's wives and children ceased to be
mentioned.
In the presence of so accomplished a liar, nobody of the tracking
station staff mentioned a giant squid hauled partly, but only partly,
out of the water. They suspected that he would not believe it. They were
sure that he would top their real feat by an imaginary one. So the four
crew-cuts listened politely, and fed him more drinks, and learned much.
In the workshop the most unlikely device Terry'd described took form. In
effect, it was an underwater horn which was much more powerful than it
looked. Submerged, and with power from a group of amplifiers in
parallel, it would create a tremendous volume of underwater noise. That
sound would run through a tube shaped like a gun-barrel. It would travel
in a straight line, spreading only a little.
The same projection tube could also send out the tentative
beep-beep-beep of sonar gear, or the peculiar noise a depth-finder
makes. So the instrument could search out a distance or find a target,
and then fling at it a beam of humming torment equal to bullets from a
machine gun.
It would have taken Terry, alone, a long time to build. But he had
three assistants, two of whom were very competent. By dawn, they had it
ready to be mounted upon the _Esperance_. It was placed hanging from the
bow, mounted on gimbals, so that it could point in any direction. It was
firmly fixed to the yacht's planking.
There was plenty of activity on _La Rubia_, too, at daybreak. That squat
and capable fishing boat prepared to harvest the fish in the lagoon. She
got her nets over. She essayed to haul them. Some got caught on the
coral heads rising from the lagoon's bottom toward the surface. Capitán
Saavedra swore, and untangled them. He tried again. Again coral heads
baulked the enterprise. The nets tore.
A helicopter came rattling into view from the south. It grew in size and
loudness, and presently hovered over the tracking station. Then it made
a wide, deliberate circuit of the lagoon. At the inlet where the squid
lay almost entirely in the water--but fastened by ropes lest it drift
away--above that spot, the helicopter hovered for a long time. It must
have been taking photographs. Presently, it lowered one man by a line to
the ground. Obviously, the man could not endure any delay in getting at
so desirable a biological specimen. Then the helicopter went droning and
rattling to the tracking station, and landed with an air of weariness.
_La Rubia_ continued to try to catch fish. They were here in plenty. But
the coral heads were everywhere. Nets tore. Ropes parted. Capitán
Saavedra waved his arms and swore.
The _Esperance_ rumbled and circled away from the wharf, and headed for
the lagoon entrance. The singular contrivance built during the night was
in place at her bow. She passed _La Rubia_, on whose deck men
frantically mended nets.
The _Esperance_ passed between the small capes and the first of the
ocean swells raised her bow and rocked her. She proceeded beyond the
reef. The bottom of the sea dropped out of sight. Terry switched on the
submarine ear and listened. The humming sound was to be expected here.
It had stopped. It was present yesterday, and even during the night,
when _La Rubia_ came into the lagoon. But now the sea held no sound
other than the multitudinous random noises of fish and the washing,
roaring, booming of the surf.
Deirdre was aboard, of course. She watched Terry's face. He turned to
the new instrument, and then dropped his hand.
"I think," he said carefully to Davis, "that I'd like to make a sort of
sweep out to sea. It's just possible we'll find the hum farther out."
Deirdre said quickly, "I think I know what you're up to. You want to
survey a large area of the ocean while something comes up. Then you can
direct that "something" to the lagoon mouth by using your sound device,
so the ... whatever-it-is has to take refuge in the lagoon. Since we've
killed the squid...."
"That's it," said Terry. "Something like that happened when we speared
the fish. The squid took their place. Now we've killed the squid. Just
possibly...."
They found the humming sound in the water four miles off-shore. They
traced it through part of a circle. If something were being driven
upward, it could not pass through that wall of humming sound.
"That proves your point," Davis said. "Now what?"
Without realizing it, he'd yielded direction of the enterprise to Terry,
who had unconsciously assumed it.
"Let's go back to the island," said Terry thoughtfully. "I've got a
crazy idea--really crazy! I want to be where we can duck into shallow
water when we try the new projector."
The _Esperance_ swung about and headed back toward the island. The sea
and the distant island looked comfortingly normal and beautiful in the
sunshine. Under so blue a sky it did not seem reasonable to worry about
anything. Events or schemes at the bottom of the sea seemed certainly
the last things to be likely to matter to anyone.
Terry had the _Esperance_ almost between the reefs before he tried the
new contrivance. If it worked, it should be possible to make a relief
map of the ocean bottom with every height and depth on the sea-bed
plotted with precision.
He started to operate the new instrument. First he traced the steep
descent from the flanks of the submarine mountain whose tip was Thrawn
Island. He traced them down to the abyss which was the Luzon Deep. Then
he began to trace the ocean bottom at its extreme depth, on what should
have been submarine plains at the foot of the submerged mountain. The
instrument began to give extraordinary readings. The bottom, in a
certain spot, read forty-five hundred fathoms down. But suddenly there
was a reading of twenty-five hundred. There was a huge obstruction,
twelve thousand feet above the bottom of the sea, more than twenty
thousand feet below the surface. The instrument scanned the area.
Something else was found eighteen hundred fathoms up. These were objects
of enormous size, floating, or perhaps swimming in the blackness. They
were not whales. Whales are air-breathers. They cannot stay too long in
deep waters, motionless between the top and the bottom of the sea.
The instrument picked up more and more such objects. Some were
twenty-five hundred fathoms from the bottom, and two thousand from the
surface. Some were twenty-two hundred up, and twenty-three hundred down.
There were eighteen hundred-fathom readings, and twenty-one, and
twenty-four, and nineteen. The readings were of objects bigger than
whales. They rose very slowly, and appeared to rest, then rose some
more, and rested....
Blank faces turned to Terry. He licked his lips and looked for Deirdre.
Then he said evenly, "We go into the lagoon. And if we come out
again--if!--we leave Deirdre ashore, unless these readings have been
cleared up. There are chances I'm not willing to take."
The _Esperance_ headed in. It was not possible for the new instrument to
tell what the large objects were. They could be monstrous living
creatures, perhaps squids, and one could only guess that their errand
was to deal with the surface-creatures--men--who speared fish and giant
squids and set off explosions in the Luzon Deep.
Or the rising objects could be, say, bolides which had dived into the
Deep from outer space and were now coming to the surface to make sure
that the natives of the earth did not again disturb the depths taken
over by beings from another planet.
_Nine_
The sun rose high in the sky as the _Esperance_ returned to the wharf.
Davis went ashore and held lengthy conversations with Manila by
short-wave radio. The biologists essayed to investigate the squid. _La
Rubia_ still attempted to catch fish. All efforts seemed to tend toward
frustration.
When Terry walked over to see his victim at close range, he found the
biologists balked by the mere huge size of the squid. There were
literally tens of tons of flesh to be handled. Squid have no backbone,
but a modified internal shell is important to biologists for study. The
biologists wanted it. The gills needed to be examined, and their
position under the mantle noted, and their filaments counted. The
nervous system of the huge creature must have its oddities. But the
actual preservation of the squid was out of the question. The mere
handling of so large an object was an engineering problem.
Terry consulted the frenziedly swearing Capitán Saavedra, who was ready
to weep with sheer rage as he contemplated torn nets, and fish he could
not capture. Squids were an article of commerce. Terry took the Capitán
to view this one. His crew would help the biologists get at the
scientifically important items, and for reward they would have the rest
of the giant--more than they could load upon _La Rubia_. This would make
their voyage profitable, and the Capitán would have the opportunity to
tell the most stupendous story of his capture and killing of the giant.
With the evidence he'd have, people might believe him.
Presently, the crewmen of _La Rubia_ clambered over the monster, huge
knives at work under the direction of the men from Manila. There was
bitter dispute with the tracking station cook, who objected to the use
of his refrigeration space to freeze biological material before it was
sent to Manila by helicopter.
In mid-afternoon the _Esperance_ left the lagoon again. The
sonar-depth-finder probed the depths delicately. The objects in mid-sea,
it appeared, had been rising steadily. Their previous position had
averaged twenty-five hundred fathoms deep. They were now less than two
thousand fathoms down, and there were many of them. Unfortunately, the
_Esperance_ was not a steady enough platform for the instrument. But a
fairly accurate calculation was made, and if the unidentified objects
continued their ascent at their present rate, they would surface not
long after sunrise. Then what?
Increasingly urgent queries came by short-wave, asking for Dr. Morton's
explanation of how he had computed the landing place and time of the
latest bolide. His accuracy was not disputed. But astronomers and
physicists wanted to be able to do it themselves. How had he done it?
Terry came upon him sitting gloomily before a cup of coffee in the
tracking station. Davis was there too.
"I wish I hadn't done it," Morton confided. "It's one of those things
that shouldn't happen. It's bad enough to have a giant squid to account
for. They tell me it's a new species, by the way. Never found or even
described before. One of the _Pelorus_ men tells me it's an immature
specimen, too. It's not full-grown! What will a grown-up one be like?"
"I have a hunch we'll find out when those submerged giants reach the
surface," said Davis unhappily.
Terry said, "The one we killed couldn't get out of the water. I wonder
if the adult forms can walk over the land!"