Terry stared incredulously. Someone moved beside him. It was Davis. He spoke in a dry voice.
"I would think," he said detachedly, "thatLa Rubiacould catch a boatload of fish in that water with a single haul of her nets. Certainly with two."
Terry turned his head.
"But what is it? What makes these fish gather like this?"
"An interesting question," said Davis. "We'll try to find out how it happens. Even more interesting, I'd like to know why."
He moved away along the deck. Terry went close to the side rail. A few minutes later the startling glare of one of the side searchlights smote upon the water away from the incredible scene. It moved slowly back and forth. Where the light struck, the sea seemed totally commonplace. No fish could be seen. Then the white beam swept here and there in jerky leapings. There was nothing unusual on the surface, nothing beyond the limit of brightness, where the sea turned dark.
Deirdre said at Terry's side, "We didn't really expect this! I'm going to get a sample of the water, Terry. Want to help?"
She ignored his haughty withdrawal of the afternoon, and he could not stand on his dignity in the presence of such an incredible phenomenon. She got a water bucket from the nearby rack. A wave sprung up as she tried to fill the bucket overside. It touched her hand and she cried out. Terry jerked her back by the shoulder. The bucket bumped against theEsperance'sside, hanging on the line attached to the rail.
"What's the matter?"
"It stung! The water stung! Like a nettle!" Shaking a little, Deirdre rubbed her wet hand with the other. "It doesn't hurt now, but it was like a stinging nettle—or an electric shock!"
Terry hauled in the bucket and set it down. He leaned far over the rail. He plunged his hand into a lifting pinnacle of the sea. Instantly, his skin felt as if pricked by ten thousand needles. But his muscles did not contract as they would in an electric shock. The sensation was on the surface of his skin alone.
He shook his head impatiently. He put his finger in the bucket he'd lifted to the deck. There was no unusual sensation. He dipped overside again. Again acute and startling hurt, from the mere contact with the water.
Deirdre still rubbed her hand. She said in a queer, surprised voice,
"Like pins and needles. It's like—like the fish-driving paddle! But worse! Much worse!"
Terry looked again at the sea glittering with the swarms of fish in hopeless, panicked agitation, confined in a specific narrow compass by something unguessable. The searchlight continued to flick here and there. TheEsperancedrifted away from the edge of brightness. Terry put his hand overside once more, and once more he felt the stinging, nettle-like sensation. He got a fresh bucket of water from overside. On deck, there was no strange sensation when he dipped his hand in it.
The searchlight went out abruptly and only a faint and quickly dimming reddish glow came from it. That too died.
Davis' voice gave orders. Terry said sharply, "Wait a minute!" He began to explain about the stinging of the water. But then he said, "Deirdre, you tell him! I'm going to put a submarine ear overboard. At the least we'll get fish noises on a new scale. But I've got an idea ... don't sail into the bright circle yet."
He got out the submarine ear and the recorder he'd made ready that afternoon. He started the recorder. Then he trailed the microphone overside. The sounds would be heard live through the speaker and they would be taped at the same time. At first, a blaring, confused sound came through. Terry turned down the volume.
He heard gruntings and chirpings and rustlings. Fish made those noises—not all fish, but certain species. These shrill, squeaking noises were the protests of frightened porpoises. But under and through all other sounds, a steady, unvarying hum could be easily detected. Terry had never heard anything quite like it. Its pitch was the same as that of a sixty-cycle frequency, but its tone quality was somehow sardonic and snarling. The word that came into Terry's mind was "nasty." Yes, it was a nasty sound. One didn't like it. One would want to get away from it. In the air the same unpleasant sensation is produced by noises that make one's flesh crawl.
Terry straightened up from where the recorder played upon the wet deck. Davis and Deirdre had come to listen, in the strange darkness under the sails of theEsperance.
"I've got a sort of hunch," said Terry slowly. "Let's sail across the bright patch. I'll record the sea noises all the way. I've a feeling that that hum means something."
"It's not what you'd call an ordinary sound," said Davis.
He raised his voice. One of the crew-cuts was at the schooner's wheel. He spun it. The sails filled, and the rattling of flapping canvas died away. TheEsperancegathered way and moved swiftly from the glittering circle, came about, and sailed again toward the shining area. She got closer and closer to the boundary.
The recorder continued to give out the confused and frightened noises of the sea creatures, but under and through their sounds there remained the nasty and sardonic hum. It grew louder and more unpleasant—much louder in proportion to the fish sounds. At the very boundary of the bright space it was loudest of all.
But as the yacht went on, the hum dimmed. At the very center of the circle where the glitterings were brightest, the humming sound was overwhelmed by the submarine tumult of senseless fish voices. Terry dipped his hand here. The tingling was almost tolerable, but not quite.
Davis hauled more buckets of water to the deck. In two of them he found some fish, so dense was the finny multitude. Then the yacht neared the farthest limit of the bright circle. The hum from the recording instrument grew progressively louder. Again, at the very edge of the shining water, it was loudest.
TheEsperancesailed across the live boundary and into the dark sea. As the boat went on, the sound dimmed....
"Definitely loudest," said Terry absorbedly, "at the edge of the circle of fish. At the line the fish couldn't cross to escape. It is if there were an electric fence in the sea. It felt like that, too. But there isn't any fence."
Davis asked evenly, "Question: what holds them crowded?"
Terry said again, groping in his mind, "They act like fish in a closing net. I've seen something like this once, when a purse-seine was hauled. Those fish were frantic because they couldn't get away. Just like these."
"Why can't they get away?" asked Davis grimly. "We haven't seen anything holding them."
"But we heard something," pointed out Deirdre. "The hum. That may be what closes them in."
Her father made a grunting noise. "We'll see about that."
He moved away, back to the stern. In moments, theEsperancewas beating upwind. Presently, she headed back toward her previous position, but outside the brightness. Terry could see dark silhouettes moving about near the yacht's wheel. Then he saw another brightness at the eastern horizon, but that was in the sky. Almost as soon as he noticed it, the moon peered over the edge of the world, and climbed slowly to full view, and then swam up among the lower-hanging stars.
Immediately, the look of the sea was different. The waves no longer seemed to race the darkness with only star glitters on their flanks. The figures at theEsperance'sstern were now quite distinct in the moonlight.
"You said a very sensible thing, Deirdre," said Terry. "I thought of the fish-driving paddle and its effects, but I was ashamed to mention it. I thought it would sound foolish. But when you said it, it didn't."
"I have a talent," said Deirdre, "for making foolish things sound sensible. Or perhaps the reverse. I'm going to say a sensible thing now. We haven't had dinner. I'm going to fix something to eat."
"You won't get anybody to go belowdecks right now!" said Terry.
"I thought of that," she told him. "Sandwiches."
She went below. Terry continued to watch, while figures at the stern of the schooner went through an involved process of visual measurement. It was not simple to determine the dimensions of a patch of shimmering light flashes from a boat in motion. But presently, Davis came toward him.
"It's thirteen hundred yards across," he told Terry. "Plus or minus twenty."
"I didn't expect all this," Davis said, frowning. "I've been making guesses and hoping fervently that I was wrong. And I have been, but each time the proof that I was wrong has led to new guesses, and I'm afraid to think those guesses may be right."
"I can't begin to guess yet," said Terry.
"You will!" Davis assured him. "You will! You try to add up things.... A half-mile-wide patch of foam that piles up thirty feet above the sea...."
"And into which," Terry interrupted, "a sailing ship does not sink but drops out of sight as if there were a hole in the sea."
Davis turned sharply toward him.
"There were some photographs and a newspaper clipping on the cabin table," explained Terry. "I suspected they might have been put there for me to see."
"Deirdre, perhaps," said Davis. "She's resolved to involve you in this. You've got scruples, so she suspects you of having brains. Yes. You'll add those things up. You'll include the remarkable success of a fishing boat namedLa Rubiaand the fact that she sometimes brings in very strange fish ... And then you'll add ..."
His eyes flickered aloft. A shooting star streaked across one-third of the sky leaving a trail of light behind it. Then it went out.
"You'll even be tempted," said Davis, "to include something like that in your guesses! And then you'll try to come up with a total for the lot. Then you'll be as troubled as I am."
He paused a moment.
"You said you wanted to be put ashore as soon as the gadget you made today was tested. I hope you've changed your mind, or will. That tape-recording may mean something to somebody. We wouldn't have heard that very singular noise but for you."
"I withdraw the business of going ashore," said Terry uncomfortably. "I'm going to ask another question. What are those little spheres that I saw in the photographs on the cabin table? Were they found fastened to the fish?"
"So I'm told," said Davis. "They are made of plastic. One was on a fish caught by a chief petty officer of the United States Navy. Four have been found on fish brought into the market byLa Rubia. They could conceivably be a joke, but it's very elaborate! Somebody tried to cut one open and it burst to hell-and-gone. Terrific pressure inside. The metal parts inside were iridium. The others haven't been cut open. They're—" Davis' tone was dry. "They're being studied."
A figure came out of the forecastle and walked aft. It was Nick. He stopped to say, "I called Manila and got a loran fix on us. We're right at the placeLa Rubiaheads for every time she sneaks away from the rest of the fishing fleet. It seems that she hauls her nets yonder."
He nodded toward the circular area of luminosity on the sea. "It looks smaller than when I went below deck."
Davis stared. He seemed to stiffen.
"It does. We'll make sure."
He went aft. Deirdre came up with sandwiches. Terry took the tray from her and followed her toward the others.
"Cigars, cigarettes, candy, sandwiches?" she asked cheerfully.
Davis was back at the task of measuring the angle subtended by the patch of shining sea, and then closely estimating its distance from theEsperance. He said, "Itissmaller. Eleven hundred yards, now."
"WhenLa Rubiawas here today," said Terry, "it might have been a couple of miles across. Even that would be a terrific concentration of fish! They're not all at the surface."
Davis said with impatience, seemingly directed against himself, "It's narrowed two hundred yards in the past half-hour. It must be tending toward something! There has to be a conclusion to it! Something must be about to happen!"
Deirdre said slowly, "If it's the equivalent of a seine being hauled, with a hum instead of a net, what's going to happen when it's time for the fish to be boated?"
Davis ignored her for a moment. Then he said irritably, "Everyone seems to have more brains than I do! Tony, break out those gun-cameras. Nick, get back and report if the bright spot's getting any smaller. I wish you weren't here, Deirdre!"
The two crew-cuts moved to obey. Terry, alone, had no specific duty assigned to him on the yacht, unless tending to the recorder was it. He bent over the instrument which was playing in the air anything that a trailing microphone picked up under water. He raised the volume a trifle. He could still hear the singular noises of the agitated fish mixed in with the thin, strangely offensive humming sound. He heard small thumpings, and realized that they were the footfalls of his companions on the deck of theEsperance, transmitted to the water. He heard ...
Tony came abovedecks with an armful of mysterious-looking objects which could not be seen quite clearly in the slanting moonlight. He put two of them down by the wheel and passed out the others. He silently left one for Terry and another for Deirdre, while Terry adjusted tone and volume on the recorder for maximum clarity.
"What are those?" asked Terry.
"Cameras," said Deirdre. "Mounted on rifle stocks, with flashbulbs in the reflectors. You aim, pull the trigger, and the shutter opens as the flashbulb goes off. So you get a picture of whatever you aim at, night or day."
"Why ..."
"There was a time when my father thought they might be useful," said Deirdre. "Then it looked like they wouldn't. Now it looks like they may."
Terry was tempted to say, "Useful for what?" But Davis' vague talk of unpleasant wrong guesses which led to even less pleasant ones had already been an admission that no convincing answer could be given him. Davis came over to him.
"This has me worried," he said in a frustrated tone of indecision. "We must be near the end of some process that I didn't suspect, and the conclusion of which I can't guess. I don't know what it is, and I don't know what it's for. I only know what it's tied in with."
Terry said absorbedly, "Two or three times I've picked up some new kinds of sounds. You might call them mooing noises. They're very faint, as if they were far away, and there are long intervals between them. I don't think they come from the surface."
Davis made an irresolute gesture. He seemed to hesitate over something he was inclined to accept. Deirdre protested before he could speak. "I don't think what you're thinking is right!" she said firmly. "Not a bit of it! Whatever happens will be connected with the fish.La Rubiahas been around this sort of thing over and over again! We haven't been running the engine and we haven't been making any specific noises in the water to arouse curiosity! If anything were going to happen to us, it would have happened toLa Rubiabefore now! It would be ridiculous to run away just because I'm on board!"
Terry, bent intently over the recorder, suddenly felt a cold chill run up and down his spine. His mind told him it was ridiculous to associate distant mooing sounds, underwater, with a completely unprecedented, frantic gathering of fish into one small area, and come up with the thought that something monstrous and plaintive was coming blindly to feed upon fellow creatures of the sea. There was nothing to justify the thought. It was out of all reason. But his spine crawled, just the same.
"The circle's only eight hundred yards across, now," said Davis, uneasily. "The fish can't crowd together any closer! But Doug went overboard with diving goggles, and he says there's a column of brightness as far down as he can make out."
Terry looked up.
"He went overboard? Didn't he tingle?"
"He said it was like baby nettles all over," Davis protested, as if it were someone's fault. "But he didn't sting after he came out. It must be ..."
A mooing sound came out of the recorder. It was fainter than the other sounds and very far away. It must have been of terrific volume where it originated. It lasted for many seconds, then stopped.
"I should have been recording," said Terry. "That sound comes up about every five minutes. I'll catch it next time."
Davis went away, as if he wanted to miss the noise and the decision it would force upon him. Yet Terry told himself obstinately that there was no reason to connect the mooing sound with the crazed fish herd half a mile away. But somehow he couldn't help thinking there might be a connection.
The ship's clock sounded seven bells. Deirdre said, "The brightness is really smaller now!" The patch of flashes was no more than half its original size. Terry pressed the recording button and straightened up to look more closely. Right then Deirdre said sharply, "Listen!"
Something new and quite unlike the mooing noise now came out of the recorder.
"Get your father," commanded Terry. "Something's coming from somewhere!"
Deirdre ran across the heaving deck. Terry shifted position so he could manipulate the microphone hanging over the yacht's side into the water. Davis arrived. His voice was suddenly strained and grim. "Something's coming?" he demanded. "Can you hear any engine noise?"
"Listen to it," said Terry. "I'm trying to get its bearing."
He turned the wire by which the submarine ear hung from the rail. The chirpings and squealings and squeakings changed volume as the microphone turned. But the new sound, of something rushing at high speed through the water—that did not change. Terry rotated the mike through a full circle. The fish noises dwindled to almost nothing, and then increased again. The volume of the steady hum changed with them. But the rushing sound remained steady. Rather, it grew in loudness, as if approaching. But the directional microphone didn't register any difference, whether it received sound from the north, east, south, or west.
It was a booming sound. It was a rushing sound. It was the sound of an object moving at terrific speed through the water. There was no engine noise, but something thrust furiously through the sea, and the sound grew louder and louder.
"It's not coming from any compass course," said Terry shortly. "How deep is the water here?"
"We're just over the edge of the Luzon Deep," said Davis. "Four thousand fathoms. Five. Maybe six."
"Then it can only be coming from one direction," said Terry. "It's coming from below. And it's coming up."
For three heartbeats Davis stood perfectly still. Then he said, with extreme grimness, "Since you mention it, that would be where it's coming from."
He turned away and shouted a few orders. The crewmen scurried swiftly. The yacht's head fell away from the wind. Terry listened again to the rushing sound. There seemed to be regular throbbings in it, but still no engine noise. It was a steady drone.
"Bazooka shells ought to discourage anything," Davis said in an icy voice. "If it attacks, let go at it. But try to use the gun-cameras first."
TheEsperancerolled and wallowed. Her bows lifted and fell. Her sails were black against the starry sky overhead. Two of the crew-cuts settled themselves at the starboard rail. They had long tubes in their hands, tubes whose details could not be seen. The wind hummed and thuttered in the rigging. Reef-points pattered. Near the port rail the recorder poured out the amplified sounds its microphone picked up from the sea. The sound of the coming thing became louder than all the other noises combined. It was literally a booming noise. The water started to bubble furiously as it parted to let something rise to the surface from unthinkable depths.
Doug put two magazine-rifles beside Terry and Deirdre, then he moved away. Deirdre had a clumsy object in her hands. It had a rifle-stock and a trigger. What should have been the barrel was huge—six inches or more in diameter—but very short. That was the flashbulb reflector. The actual camera was small and on top, like a sight.
"We'll aim these at anything we see," said Deirdre composedly, "and pull the trigger. Then we'll pick up the real rifles and see if we must shoot. Is that all right?"
She faced the shining patch of ocean. Davis and the crew-cut at the wheel faced that way. Tony and Jug stood with the clumsy tubes of bazookas facing the same direction. Doug had taken a post forward, with a camera-gun and a magazine rifle. He had the camera in hand, to use first.
It seemed that hours passed, but it must have been just a few minutes. Nothing out of the ordinary seemed to be taking place anywhere. The moon now shone down from a sky in which a few thin wisps of cloud glowed among the stars. Sharp-peaked waves came from one horizon and sped busily toward the other. The yacht pitched and rolled, its company strangely armed and expectant. The recorder gave out a droning, booming, rushing sound which grew louder with ever-increasing rapidity. Now the sound reached a climax.
From the very center of the glinting circle of sea, there was a monstrous splashing sound. A phosphorescent column rose furiously from the waves. It leaped. Water fell back and ... something soared into the air. Sharp, stabbing flashes of almost intolerably white light flared up. The gun-cameras fired their flashbulbs without a sound.
It was then that Terry saw it—in mid-air. He swung the gun-camera, and a flash from another gun showed him that he would miss. He jerked the gun to bear and pulled the trigger. The flash illuminateditvividly. Then night again.
It was torpedo-shaped and excessively slender but very long. It could have been a living thing, frozen by the instantaneous flash. It could have been something made of metal. It leaped a full fifty feet clear of the waves and then tumbled back into the ocean with a colossal splash. Then there was silence, except for the sounds of the sea. Terry had the magazine-rifle still in his hands. Tony and Jug waited with their bazookas ready. It occurred to Terry that yachts are not customarily armed with bazookas.
"That—wasn't a whale," said Deirdre unsteadily.
The recorder bellowed suddenly. It was the hum that had been heard before: the nasty, sixty-cycle hum that surrounded the captive fish. But it was ten, twenty, fifty times as loud as before.
The fish in the bright-sea area went mad. The entire surface whipped itself to spray, as fish leaped frenziedly to get out of the water, which stung and burned where it touched.
Then, very strangely, the splashing stopped. The brightness of the sea decreased. A while later the enormous snarling sound was noticeably less loud than it had been at that first horrible moment.
The wind blew. The waves raced. TheEsperance'sbow lifted and dipped. The noise from the loudspeaker system—the noise from the sea—decreased even more. One could hear the squeakings and chitterings of fish again. But they were very much fainter. Presently the humming was no louder than before the strange apparition. By that time the fish-sound had died away altogether. The nearer normal noises remained. The hum was receding. Downward.
Davis came to Terry, where he stood by the recording instrument.
"The fish have gone," he said in a flat voice, "they've gone away. They didn't scatter. We'd have seen it. Do you realize where they went?"
Terry nodded.
"Straight down. Do you want to hear an impossible explanation?"
"I've thought of several," said Davis.
Doug came and picked up the gun-cameras that Terry and Deirdre had used and went away with them.
"There's a kind of sound," said Terry, "that fish don't like. They won't go where it is. They try to get away from it."
Deirdre said quietly, "I would too, if I were swimming."
"Sound," said Terry, "in water as in air, can be reflected and directed, just as light can be. A megaphone turns out one's voice in a cone of noise, like a reflector on a light. It should be possible to project it. One can project a hollow cone of light. Why not a hollow cone of sound, in water?"
Davis said with an unconvincingly ironic and skeptical air, "Indeed, why not?"
"If such a thing were done," said Terry, "then when the cone of sound was turned on, the fish inside it would be captured as if by a conical net. They couldn't swim through the walls of sound. And then one can imagine the cone made smaller; the walls drawn closer together. The fish would be crowded together in what was increasingly like a vertical, conical net, but with walls of unbearable noise instead of cord. It would be as if the sea were electrified and the fish were shocked when they tried to pass a given spot."
"Preposterous, of course," said Davis. But his tone was not at all unbelieving.
"Then suppose something were sent up to the top of the cone, and it projected some kind of a cover of sound on the top of the cone and imprisoned the fish with a lid of sound they couldn't endure. And then suppose that thing sank into the water again. The fish couldn't swim through the walls of noise around them. They couldn't swim through the lid of sound above them. They'd have to swim downward, just as if a hood were closing on them from above."
"Very neat," said Davis. "But of course you don't believe anything of the sort."
"I can't imagine what would produce that sound in that way and send up a cork of sound to take the fish below. And I can't imagine why it would be done. So I can't say I believe it."
Davis said slowly, "I think we begin to understand each other. We'll stay as close to this place as we can until dawn, when we will find nothing to show that anything out of the ordinary happened here."
"Still less," said Terry, "to hint at its meaning. I've been doing sums in my head. That bright water was almost solid with fish. I'd say there was at least a pound of fish to every cubic foot of sea."
"An underestimate," said Davis judicially.
"When the bright patch was a thousand yards across—and it was even more—there'd have been four hundred tons of fish in the top three-foot layer."
Davis seemed to start. But it was true. Terry added, "The water was clear. We could see that the packing went on down a long way. Say fifty yards at least."
"Y-yes," agreed Davis. "All of that."
"So in the top fifty yards, at one time, there were at least twenty thousand tons of fish gathered together. Probably very much more. WhatLa Rubiacarried away couldn't be noticed. All those thousands of tons of fish were pushed straight down. Tell me," said Terry, "what would be the point in all those fish being dragged to the bottom? I can't ask who or what did it, or even why. I'm asking, what results from it?"
Davis grunted.
"My mind stalls on who or what and why. And I'd rather not mention my guesses. I.... No!"
He moved abruptly away.
TheEsperanceremained under sail near the patch of sea that had glittered earlier and now looked exactly like any other square mile of ocean. The recorder verified the position by giving out, faintly, the same unpleasant humming noise, either louder or fainter. A soft warm wind blew across the waters. The land was somewhere below the horizon. The reel of recorder-tape ran out. It was notable that there were very few fish sounds to be heard, now. Very few. But the hum continued.
Toward morning it stopped abruptly. Then there was nothing out of the ordinary to be observed anywhere.
The sun rose in magnificent colorings. The sky was clear of clouds. Again the waves looked like living, leaping, joyous things. Gulls were squawking.
Doug came up from belowdecks. He carried some photographic prints in his hand. He'd developed and printed what the gun-cameras had photographed when the mysterious object, or beast, leaped clear of the sea. There were seven different pictures. Four showed flashbulb-lighted sections of empty ocean. One showed a column of sea water rising at fantastic height from the sea. Another one showed the edge of something at the very edge of the film.
The seventh picture Terry recognized. It was what he'd seen when the flashbulb of his gun-camera went off. The focus was not sharp. But it was neither a whale nor a blackfish—not even a small one—nor was it a shark. It was not a squid. It was not even a giant manta. The picture was a blurry representation of something unreal made for an unimaginable purpose, under abnormal conditions.
Deirdre looked at it over his shoulder. It could be a living creature. It could be ... anything.
"You said you didn't like mysteries," commented Deirdre. "Are you sorry you came?"
The next morning theEsperanceheaded southeast over a sunlit sea. First, of course, the crew examined the sea's surface for miles around. As expected, there was nothing remarkable to be observed. Davis did point out that there were no fish jumping, which was an indication that there were not as many fish as usual in this part of the ocean. But it was hard to be sure. There is no normal number of times when fish will be seen to jump. They usually jump to escape larger fish that want to eat them. The number is pure chance. But there seemed to be almost no jumps at all this morning.
It was not discussed at length, however. All the ship's company was curiously reluctant to refer to the events of the previous night. In broad daylight, a detached review was simply impractical. With gulls squawking all about, with seas glinting in the sunshine, with decks to be washed and breakfast to be eaten, and commonplace, routine ship-keeping to be done, the adventure of the patch of shining sea seemed highly improbable. Terry felt that it couldn't really have happened. To discuss it seriously would be like a daylight ghost tale. One was unable to believe it in daylight. It was better ignored.
Terry, though, did get out his tools to make a minor modification in the underwater microphone. It had been designed to be directional, so that the sound of surf or fish could be located by turning the mike, but he hadn't been able to point it vertically downward, and last night that had been the key direction—right under the yacht's keel. So now he improvised gimbals for the microphone, and a mounting for it similar to that of a compass, so it could tilt in any desired direction, as well as turn.
Which, of course, was a tacit admission that something peculiar had happened. Presently, Deirdre came and watched him.
"What's that for?" she asked, when he fitted the gimbals in place.
He told her. She said hesitantly, "Yesterday, when I asked you not to try the paddle until we got to shallow water, you got angry and said you'd ask to be put ashore. We're headed for Barca now. Someone there is building something for my father, the same thing I had asked you to build—a fish-driving instrument. If you still want to go, you can get a bus from there to Manila. But I hope you have changed your mind."
"I have," said Terry dourly. "I told your father so. I was irritated because I couldn't get any answers to the questions I asked. Now I've got some questions your father wants answers to. And I'm going to try to find them out."
Deirdre sighed, perhaps in relief.
"I put some pictures and a clipping in a book on the cabin table," she said. "Did you see them?"
He nodded.
"What did you think?"
"That you put them for me to see," he said.
"It was to make you realize that we can't answer every question, which you know now."
"I still think you could answer a few more than you have," he observed. "But let it go. Is the Barca harbor shallow?"
"Ten, fifteen feet at low tide," she informed him. "We're having a sort of dredge made there. Something to go down into the sea, take pictures, get samples of the bottom, and then come up again. There's an oceanographic ship due in Manila shortly, by the way. It will have a bathyscaphe on board. Maybe that will help find out some answers." Then she said uncomfortably, "I have a feeling the bathyscaphe isn't ... safe."
He glanced up.
"Ellos?" He grinned as she looked sharply at him. Then he said, "This dredge: isn't it pretty ambitious for a boat this size to try to dredge some thousands of fathoms down?"
"It's a free dredge," she said. "It will sink by itself and come up by itself. There's no cable. What are you doing now?"
He'd put away the submarine microphone he'd just altered and was now taking out the still untested underwater horn.
"I'm going to try to make this directional, too," he said. "In fact, I'm going to try to make it project sound in a beam shaped like a fan. A hollow cone may come later."
She was silent. TheEsperancesailed on.
"Ever talk to the skipper ofLa Rubia?" he asked presently.
She shook her head.
"You should. He's a stupendous, self-confident liar," said Terry. "He lies automatically. Gratuitously. A completely amiable man, but he can't tell the truth without stopping to think."
"We found that out," said Deirdre. "I didn't. Someone else."
"Is this another censored subject, or can I ask what happened?"
"I'd better see about lunch," said Deirdre quickly.
She got up and left. Terry shrugged. The day before yesterday, or even yesterday, he'd have been indignant. But then he'd known these people had secrets in which he had no share. Today he was beginning to share those secrets, and he had fabulously nonsensical material on which to work on his own. He had strange ideas about the event of last night. He did not quite believe them, but he thought he had devised some ways to see how much of truth they contained, if any. Deirdre could keep her secrets, so long as he did not have to disclose his own wildly imaginative ideas.
The routine of the yacht went on. It was in a way a very casual routine. Davis gave orders when the need arose, but there was no formal discipline; there was co-operation. Terry heard one of the crew-cuts ask Deirdre a question using her first name. It would have been highly improbable in a paid crew, but it was reasonable enough in a volunteer expedition. He heard Deirdre say, "Why don't you ask him?"
The crew-cut, Tony, came to the part of the deck where Terry worked.
"We got into an argument," he said without preface. "We were talking about that ... 'whale' last night."
Terry nodded. The use of the term "whale" was a deliberate pretense that the previous night's events were natural and normal.
"How fast do you think it was traveling when it broached?" asked Tony. "I know a whale can jump clear of the water. I've seen it in the movies. But that one jumped awfully high!"
"I hadn't tried to estimate it," said Terry.
"You've got a tape of the noise," said Tony. "Could you time the interval between the sound when it left the water, and the splash when it fell back?"
"Mmm. Yes," said Terry. He looked up. "Of course."
"It would be interesting to do it," said Tony, semicasually. Then he added hastily, "I've read somewhere that whales have been clocked at pretty high speeds. If we can find out how long its leap lasted, we could know how fast it was going."
Terry considered for a moment, and then got out the recorder. He played the tape for a moment, and skipped forward to later parts of the record until he came to the place where the unpleasant humming sound was loud, and finally reached the beginning of the rushing noise. That, in turn, had preceded the leap of the object photographed by the gun-cameras.
Terry glanced at his watch when the rushing started. He timed the period of ascent of the noise, while it grew louder and louder and became a booming sound, which was at its loudest the instant before it ceased. At that moment the mysterious object had leaped out of the sea. The splash of its re-entry came long seconds later.
Tony timed the leap. When the splash came he made his calculations absorbedly, while Terry switched off the recorder.
"It would take the same amount of time going up as it does coming down," said Tony, scribbling numbers. "Since we know how fast things fall, when we know how long they fall we can tell how fast they were traveling when they landed, and therefore when they leaped."
He multiplied and divided.
"Sixty miles an hour, roughly," he pronounced. "The whale was going sixty miles an hour straight up when it left the water! What can swim that fast?"
"That's your question," said Terry. "Here's one of mine. We heard it coming for five minutes ten seconds. How deep is the water where we were?"
"About forty-five hundred fathoms."
"If we assume that it came from the bottom, it must have been traveling at least sixty miles an hour when it broke surface," said Terry.
"But can a whale swim sixty miles an hour?"
"No," said Terry.
Tony hesitated, opened his mouth, closed it, and went away.
Terry returned to the changing of the submarine horn. Sound has its own tricks underwater. If you know something about them you can produce some remarkable results. A deliberately made underwater signal can be heard through an unbelievable number of thousands of miles of seawater. But, except through a yet untested fish-driving paddle, Terry had never heard of fish being herded by sound. Still, fish can be stunned or killed by concussions. They have been known to be made unconscious by the noise of a very near submarine bell. It wasn't unreasonable that a specific loud noise could make a barrier no fish would try to cross. But there were still some parts of last night's events that did not fit into any rational explanation.
Davis came over to Terry.
"I think," he said, "that we may have missed a lot of information by not having submarine ears before. There may have been all sorts of noises we could have heard."
"Possibly," agreed Terry.
"We're more or less in the position of savages faced with phenomena they don't understand," said Davis vexedly. "The simple problems of savages range from what produces thunder to what makes people die of disease. Savages come up with ideas of gods or devils doing such things for reasons of their own. We can't accept ideas of that sort, of course!"
"No," agreed Terry, "we can't."
"But what happened last night," said Davis, "is almost as mysterious to us as thunder to a savage. A savage would blame it on devils or whatnot."
"Or onellos," said Terry.
"He'd imagine a personality behind it, yes," said Davis. "He does things because he wants to, so he thinks all natural phenomena occur because somebody wants them to. He has no idea of natural law, so he tries to imagine what kind of person—what kind of god or devil—does the things he notices. It's a natural way to think."
"Very likely," admitted Terry. "But the point?"
"Is that we mustn't fall into a savage's way of thinking about last night's affair."
Terry said, "I couldn't agree with you more. But just what are you driving at?"
"There's a dredge being made for me in Barca. I'm afraid you may suspect that I'm trying to—stir up something with it. To poke something weknowis somewhere but can't identify. I didn't want you to try the fish-paddle in deep water, that's true. But...."
"You're explaining," said Terry, "that you didn't want me to whack a fish-driving paddle overside in deep water."
Davis hesitated, and then nodded.
"The phenomena you're interested in are under water?"
"Yes," said Davis. "They are in the Luzon Deep area."
"Then, to be co-operative, I'll test this contrivance in ten to fifteen feet of water in the Barca harbor. And I will not get temperamental about your suggestions that I should not mess up your deep-water inquiries."
"Thanks," said Davis.
He went forward to meet Nick, just coming abovedecks with a slip of paper in his hand. It occurred to Terry, suddenly, that somebody went below down the forecastle hatch just about every hour on the hour. They must be in short-wave communication with Manila. It had been mentioned last night—a loran fix on theEsperance'sposition. There were apparently frequent reports to somebody somewhere.
The afternoon went by. A tree-lined shore appeared to the eastward just when the gaudy colorings of a beautiful sunset filled all the western sky. TheEsperancechanged course and followed the coast line, some miles out. Night fell. The yacht sailed with a fine smooth motion over the ocean swells.
After dinner Davis was below, fiddling with the knobs to pick up short-wave music from San Francisco, and the muted sound of an argument came occasionally from the forecastle where the four crew-cuts resided. Terry and Deirdre went on deck.
"My father," said Deirdre, "says you understand each other better, now. He doesn't think you're going to feel offended with us, and he's really pleased. He says your mind doesn't work like his, but you come to more or less the same conclusions, which makes it likely the conclusions are right."
Terry grimaced.
"My conclusion," he observed, "is that I haven't enough facts yet to come to any conclusion."
"Of course!" said Deirdre. "Just like my father!"
They sat in silence. It was not exactly a tranquil stillness. It was pleasant enough to be here on the slanting deck of a beautiful yacht, driving competently through dark seas under a canopy of stars. But now Terry realized he was constantly aware of Deirdre. He liked her. But he'd liked other people, male and female, without being continually conscious of their existence. Girls are usually more conscious of such things than men. At least ninety-nine per cent of the time, a man does not modify his behavior because of the age, sex, and marital status of the people he comes in contact with. It isn't relevant to most of what he says and does. But a girl frequently modifies her actions in just such circumstances. Deirdre was well aware of the slightly uneasy, extremely interested state of Terry's mind. There was silence for a long time. Then a shooting star went across the sky. It went out.
"Would you like to hear something really wild?" asked Deirdre, ruefully. "That shooting star, just then. It used to be true that more meteorites—shooting stars—had fallen and been recovered in Kansas than any other place in the world. But it would be ridiculous to think they aimed for Kansas, wouldn't it?"
Terry nodded, not following at all.
"At Thrawn Island," said Deirdre, "since the satellite-tracking station has been built, space-radars have picked up more bolides—big meteors—coming in to fall in the Luzon Deep than ever in Kansas or anywhere else. I think my father frets over that, simply because he's so concerned about the Luzon Deep."
Terry heard himself saying irrelevantly, "I'd like to ask you a few strictly personal questions, Deirdre. What's your favorite food? What music do you like? Where would you like best to live? When...."
Deirdre turned her head to smile at him.
"I've been wondering," she said, "if you thought of me only as a fellow researcher or whether you'd noticed that I'm a person, too. Hmmmmm. There's a restaurant in Manila where they still cut their steaks along the muscle instead of across it, but where they make some unheard-of dishes. That place has some of my favorite foods. And...."
"Next time we're in Manila we'll try it," said Terry. "Now, I know a place...."
TheEsperancewent on. Presently, the moon rose and moonlight glinted on the waves while the stars looked cynically down on the small yacht upon the sea. And two people talked comfortably and absorbedly about things nobody else would have thought very interesting.
When Terry turned in for the night he realized pleasantly that he was very glad he'd let himself be persuaded to join theEsperance'scompany.
Dawn came. Terry was already on deck when theEsperancethreaded her way into a small harbor. There were palm trees along the shore, and there was a Philippine town with edifices ranging from burnt brick to stucco to mere nipa huts on its outskirts. Two-man fishing boats were making their way out from the shore on which they'd been beached. From somewhere came the staccato, back-firing noise of an old automobile-engine being warmed up for the day's work. It would undoubtedly be the bus for Manila. But it was not thinkable that Terry should take it, now.
The yacht dropped anchor and lay indolently at rest while her crew breakfasted and the morning deck routine was being performed. Then Deirdre appeared in shore-going clothes of extreme femininity. Davis too was dressed otherwise than as usual.
"We're going ashore to the shipyard," he told Terry. "If you'd like to come—"
"I've something to do here," said Terry.
Two of the crew-cuts got a boat overside and headed it for the shore. Terry got out the recorder and the submarine ear and horn. He set up his apparatus for a test. Tony came from belowdecks and watched. Then he came closer.
"If I can help," he said tentatively.
"You can," Terry told him. "But let's listen to what the fish are saying, first."
He dropped over the submarine ear and started the recorder to play what it picked up, but without recording it. Sounds from underwater came out of the speakers. The slappings of tiny harbor-waves against the yacht's planking; the chunking, rhythmic sound of oars from a fishing boat which was rowing after the half-dozen that had gone out earlier; grunting sounds. Those were fish.
Terry listened critically, and Tony with interest. Then Terry brought out the fish-driving paddle. He turned on the tape, now, to have a record of the sound the paddle made.
"Whack this on the water," he suggested, "and we'll hear how it sounds."
Tony went down the ladder and gave the water surface a few resounding whacks. There were tiny, violent swirlings. For thirty or forty feet from theEsperance'sside there were isolated, minute turmoils in the water. Three or four fish actually leaped clear of the surface.
"Not bad!" said Tony. "Shall I whack some more?"
Terry reeled back a few feet of the tape which contained the whacking sounds. He re-played them, listening critically as before. Tony had returned to the deck. The whackings, as heard underwater, were not merely impacts. There was a resonance to them. Almost a hum. Rather grimly, Terry substituted this tape-reel with the recording he'd made the night before. He started the instrument and found the exact spot where the object from the depths had fallen back into the sea. He stopped the recorder right there. He hauled up the submarine ear and plugged in the horn to the audio-amplifier, as yet untested, which should multiply the volume of sound from the tape. Then he put the horn overside.
He switched on the recorder again. The tape-reel began to spin. The sound went out underwater from the horn. Underwater it was much louder than when it had been received by theEsperance'smicrophone. Here it was confined by the surface above and the harbor-bottom beneath. It must have been the equivalent of a loud shout in a closed room—only worse.
The fish in the harbor of Barca went mad. All the harbor-surface turned to spray. Creatures of all sizes leaped crazily above the surface, their fins flapping, only to leap again, more frantically still, when they fell back. A totally unsuspected school of very small flying fish flashed upward in such frenzied haste that some tried to climb too steeply and fell back and instantly flung themselves into the air again.
Terry turned off the playing recorder. The disorder at the top of the water ceased immediately. But he heard shrill outcries. Children had been wading at the edge of the shore. They stampeded for solid ground, shrieking. Where their feet and legs had been underwater they felt as if a million pins and needles had pricked them.
Something flapped heavily on theEsperance'sdeck. Tony went to see. It was a three-pound fish which had leaped clear of the water and over the yacht's rail to the deck.
Tony threw it back into the water.
"I guess there's not much doubt," he said painfully.
"Of what?" demanded Terry.
"Of what ... I had guessed," said Tony.
"And what did you guess?"
Tony hesitated.
"I guess," he said unhappily, "that I'd better not say."
He watched with a startled, uneasy expression on his face as Tony put the apparatus away.
Time passed. Davis and Deirdre had been ashore over an hour. Then Terry saw the small boat leave the shore and approach. It came deftly alongside, the two passengers climbed up to the deck, and all four crew-cuts hauled the boat back inboard and lashed it fast.
"Our dredge isn't ready yet," said Davis. "It looks good, but there'll be a delay of a few days."
Deirdre examined Terry's expression.
"Something's happened. What?"
Terry told her. Davis listened. Tony added what he'd seen, including the fish that had leaped high enough out of the water to land on theEsperance'sdeck.
"After the fact," said Davis, "I can see how it could happen. But...." He hesitated for a long time and then said, "This is another case where I've been making guesses and hoping I was wrong. And like the others, proof that my early guess was wrong makes another guess necessary. And I dislike the later guess much more than the first."
He moved restlessly.
"I'm glad you only tried it once, here," he said unhappily. "We're due up at Thrawn Island anyhow. You can work this trick out in the lagoon up there. If there's no reaction to the dredge when we try it, we can try this. But it might be a very violent poke at something we don't quite believe in. I'd rather try a gentle poke first."
He turned away. In minutes Nick was belowdecks starting the yacht's engine, two others of the crew-cuts were hauling up the anchor, and the fourth was at the wheel. Without haste, but with celerity, theEsperanceheaded for the harbor-mouth and the open sea.
They had their midday meal heading north by west. Late in the afternoon Deirdre found occasion to talk to Terry about Thrawn Island.
"It's the China Sea tracking station for satellites," she told him. "Some of the staff are friends of my father's. It's right on the edge of the Luzon Deep, and the island's actually an underwater mountain that just barely protrudes above the surface. There are some hills, a coral reef and a lagoon. It's also terrifically steep, and you can use the fish-driving device as much as you please without startling any Filipino fishermen."
"You've been there before," said Terry.
"Oh, yes! I told you a fish wearing a plastic object was caught in the lagoon there. That was when the station was being built. The men at the tracking station fish in the lagoon for fun, and now they're naturally watching out for more ... oddities."
TheEsperancesailed on. The crew-cuts went about their various chores and talked endlessly, among themselves and with Deirdre, when she joined in. Terry felt useless. He trailed the submarine ear overboard and set the recorder to work as an amplifier only. At low volume it played the sounds of things below. He kept half an ear cocked toward it for the mooing sound he'd picked up at the place where the ocean glittered. He heard it again now, and again found it difficult to imagine any cause for it. The sounds uttered by noisemaking fish are usually produced in their swim-bladders. The purpose of fish cries is as obscure as the reason for some insect stridulations, or the song of many birds. But a long-continued fish noise would involve a swim-bladder of large size. At great depths, if a considerable cavity were filled with gas, under pressures running into tons to the square inch.... Terry could not quite believe it.
He did not hear the mooing sound any more, as the yacht went on its way. Other underwater sounds became commonplace, and he tended not to hear them. From the deck around him, though, he heard arguments about wave mechanics, prospects in the World Series, the virtues of Dixieland jazz, ichthyology, Copeland's contribution to modern music, the possibility of life on other planets, and kindred topics. The crew-cuts were taking their summer vacations as able seamen on board theEsperance, but they had as many and as voluble opinions as any other undergraduates. They aired them on each other.
The afternoon passed. Night fell, and dinner was a session of learned discussion of different subjects, always vehemently argued. Later Terry took the yacht's wheel, Deirdre sat comfortably nearby, and they discussed matters suitable to their more mature status. They were much less intellectual than the crew-cuts. In a few days they developed an interest in each other, but each of them believed this was just a very pleasant friendship.
Eventually, the moon rose. It was close to midnight when Nick bobbed belowdecks and came up with a report that they'd been picked up by the Thrawn Island radar and were proceeding exactly on course. Half an hour later a tiny light appeared at the edge of the sea. TheEsperanceheaded for it, and presently there were breakers to port and starboard, the engine rumbled, down below, and the yacht lifted and fell more violently than ordinary. Then once more she was in glassy-smooth water; the air was very heavy with the smell of green vegetation. Certain rectangles of light became visible. They were the windows of the Thrawn Island satellite-tracking installation.
TheEsperance'ssails were lowered and she moved toward the lights on engine power only. There was no movement ashore, though Nick had talked with the island on short-wave.
After a little while the searchlight was put in operation and began to reach out like a pencil of brilliant white light. It darted here and there and found a wharf reaching out from the shore to deep water. TheEsperancefloated toward it, her engine barely turning over. There was still no sign of activity, except for the lighted windows.
The engine stopped, then reversed, and the yacht drifted gently until it contacted the wharfs snubber-pilings. Jug and Tony jumped ashore with lines to fasten the yacht. Still no sign of life.
"Queer," said Davis, staring ashore. "They knew we were coming!"
A moving light suddenly appeared in the sky. A fireball, which is an unusually lurid type of shooting star. It came over the tree-tops and crossed the zenith, leaving a trail of light behind it. It went on and on, seemingly slowing down, which meant that it was descending from a very high altitude. Its brilliance became more and more intense, then it dimmed. At this point the fireball seemed to plunge downward. Then its flame went out and only a faint, dull-red speck in motion could be seen.
It plunged down beyond the trees on the far side of the lagoon. Or so it seemed. Actually, it might have plunged into the sea, miles away. Then there was a faint noise which was something between a rumble and a hiss. The sound went back across the sky along the path the fireball had followed. It died away.
There was silence. Shooting stars as bright as this one are rare. Most meteors are very small, but they are visible because of the attrition produced by their falling bodies in the atmosphere that sets them on fire. They usually appear at around a seventy-mile height, but frequently they are vaporized before they have descended more than thirty miles. Sometimes they explode in mid-air and strew the earth with fragments. Sometimes they strike ground, leaving monstrous craters where they have fallen. Most meteors fall in the sea. But a meteor has to be at least down to twenty miles from sea level before its sound can be heard.
Someone came out of a building and moved toward the wharf, an electric lantern bobbing in his hand. Halfway out to the yacht he called, "Davis?"
"Yes," said Davis. "What's happened?"
"Nothing," said the man ashore. "We were watching for that bolide. It was picked up by space radar a couple of hours ago, but then we figured it to land farther on than it did."
It was an educated voice, a scholarly voice.
"Big?" asked Davis as the light drew nearer.
"We've seen them bigger, but not much." The man with the lantern reached the end of the wharf. "Glad to see you. We've got some fish for you, by the way. We caught them in the lagoon. They're waiting for you in the deep-freeze. There's aMacrourus violaceus, if we read the books right, and aGonostoma polypus. They match the pictures, anyhow. What do you make of that?"
"You haven't got them!" said Davis incredulously. "You can't have them! I'm no fish specialist, but those are abyssal fish! They can only be caught at a depth of two or more miles!"
"We caught 'em," said the man cheerfully, "on a hook and line, in the lagoon, at night. Come ashore! Everybody'll be glad to see you."
Davis protested, "I won't believe you've got that kind of fish until I see them!"
The man with the lantern stepped down to the yacht's deck.
"All you've got to do is look in the mess hall deep-freeze. The cook's complaining that they take up space. Nobody wants to find out if they're good to eat. Most unwholesome-looking creatures! And how are you, young lady?" he asked Deirdre. "We've missed you. Tony, Nick, Jug...."
Deirdre introduced Terry.
"Ha!" said the man. "They got you enlisted, eh? They were talking about it a month ago. You've solved the problem by now, I daresay. Including how these very queer fish happen to be in our lagoon instead of miles down in the Luzon Deep. When you find time, tell me!"
"I'll try," said Terry reservedly.
The man went down into the after-cabin and Davis followed him. Deirdre said amusedly:
"Dr. Morton's a dear! Don't take him seriously, Terry! He loves to tease. He'll hound you to tell him how deep-sea fish got up here and into a shallow lagoon. Please don't mind!"
"I won't," said Terry. "I'll tell him tomorrow, I think. I believe now I know how it happened, but I want to check it first."
When Terry awoke, next morning, the reflections of sunlight on water came in through the porthole of his cabin. He watched the shimmering contortions of the light spots on the wall. His thoughts went instantly back to the subject they'd dwelt on before he went to sleep. The man with the spectacles—Dr. Morton, but his doctorate was in astronomy instead of medicine—had said that Deirdre and his father had discussed enlisting him in theEsperance'scompany a month ago. Deirdre'd come into the shop of Jimenez y Cía. only four days before. Some of the delay could have been caused by time spent in simple sailing from one place to another, mostly on wholly futile errands. They'd gotten a fish-driving paddle at Alua. That'd take some days of sailing each way. Apparently, they'd been fumbling at some vague idea of trying to find out what would produce the facts they'd noted. 'Very queer fish,' Davis had said of some of the catchesLa Rubiahad made. The abyssal fish mentioned last night would be very queer fish to catch in a lagoon. Yes....
He lay still, surveying other aspects of the situation. Davis had called on an aircraft carrier for electronic items, and theEsperancewas in constant touch with somebody by short-wave radio. It might be the same carrier. The Manila police department was on very cordial terms with Davis, and the staff of a satellite-tracking installation saved odd specimens of fish for him.
TheEsperance'senterprise was plainly not a brand-new adventure. It had been carried on for some time. They had had technical aid of the very highest caliber, but they hadn't gotten anywhere yet. It did appear that Terry had added a minor specialty to the arsenal of investigative techniques. Without the data gathered on recorder-tape, their idea of the events of two nights before would be very different. The sea would have seemed very bright, then the glowing area would have been noted to have grown smaller, and something resembling a whale would have been seen leaping high above the water. Then the brightness would have faded out. It would have been mysterious enough, but an entire aspect of the phenomenon would have gone unnoticed. There was still no answer to any of the far-reaching questions Terry had asked himself, but most of them had never been asked before. Sea noises had proved to be closely connected to whatever had to be found out. What was known about them was due to his findings. He'd established a new frame of reference.
And he'd discovered the solution of a minor problem before the problem was even stated. He had only to prove it. Then, of course, there would be other problems arising from it.
He got up, put on swimming trunks, and duck trousers over them. He slipped into a sweat shirt and went upon deck. Deirdre hailed him.
"Good morning! Everybody's over at the tracking station, arguing about the bolide that went over last night. According to the radar, it plunged into the sea, miles and miles away."
"What should it have done?" asked Terry. "I'm not familiar with meteorites. Are they planning to dive for it?"
"Hardly!" Deirdre laughed. "It landed in the Luzon Deep." She waved a hand in an inclusive gesture. "This island's on the brink of it. A bathyscaphe might go down there—in fact, I think it's scheduled; you know, the one I said was coming to Manila on the oceanographic ship? A bathyscaphe can go that deep, but it's not likely to hunt for meteorites."
"Ah," said Terry judicially. "Then what difference does it make where it hit?"
"It didn't fall the way it should have," said Deirdre. "It was spotted by space radar away out, and they tried to compute its path, but they figured it wrong. Now they're trying to make it come out right by allowing for the effect of the earth's magnetic field on a metal meteorite. They're arguing and waving equations at each other."
"Let them," said Terry. "I have trouble enough with fish. Do you think I could borrow a boat?"
"We've always been able to," said Deirdre. Then she added, "I've kept your breakfast hot. While you eat it I'll get a boat."
She went below, and instants later was up again.
"I have a feeling," she said, "that something interesting is going to happen. I'll be back."
She swung lightly to the wharf and headed for land. Terry went below, to find his breakfast laid out on the cabin table. He settled down to it, but first pulled a book from the shelves. It was a volume on oceanography, and its pages showed that it had often been referred to. He found the Luzon Deep described. Its area was relatively small, a mere ninety-mile-long chasm in the sea-bed. But it was second only to the Mindanao Deep in its soundings, and a close second at that. Its maximum depth was measured at twenty-seven thousand feet. Over five miles. There was a mention of Thrawn Island as being on the very edge of the Deep. According to the book, the island was the peak of one of the most precipitous and tallest submarine mountains in the world. Three miles from where Thrawn Island lay, there were soundings of twenty-eight thousand feet and upward. This depth extended as a trench....
The staccato roaring of an outboard motor sounded some distance away. It bellowed toward the yacht, swung about, and cut off. Terry gulped down his coffee and went abovedecks, just as Deirdre was fastening the small craft alongside the yacht.
"Taxi?" she asked amiably. "I got the boat. Where to?"
Terry swung down and took the steering grip. He headed the boat away. There was a box for bait, a few fishing lines, and even two highly professional fish-spears on board. Fishing was not necessarily a sedentary pastime here.
"We try the lagoon entrance," he said. "I've an idea. I noticed something last night, when we came in."
"Do you want to brief me?"
"I'd rather not," he admitted.
Deirdre shrugged without resentment. The little craft went sturdily toward the passageway to the open sea. She formed an arrowhead of waves as she moved. She neared the points of land at the ends of the coral formation enclosing the lagoon. Thrawn Island was not an atoll. But the beaches were made of snow-white coral sand. Outside there was clear water for a space and then a reef on which the seas broke.
Terry headed the boat toward the open sea. Almost immediately after, there was nothing but the reef and the sea between the boat and the horizon. He slowed the boat almost to a stop, well within the reef's tumult. She swayed and rolled on the surging water.
"Stay here," he commanded. "I want to swim out and back."
He pulled the sweat shirt over his head. He jumped overboard, leaving Deirdre in charge of the boat.
The world looked strange to him when waves rolled by higher than his head. A few times the sky narrowed to the space between wave-crests. Other times he was lifted upon a wave-peak, and the sky was illimitably high and large, and the breaking seas on the nearby reef merely roared and grumbled to themselves.
He swam out, away from the land. Suddenly his body began to tingle. He stopped and paddled, analyzing the sensation. One side of his body felt as if the most minute of electric currents entered his skin. It was not an unpleasant sensation. Deirdre, in the small boat, was fifty yards behind, watching him. As he swam on, the tingling grew stronger. He dived. The tingling did not vary with depth. He came up, and he was farther out than he'd realized.
He suddenly knew that he'd been incautious. There are currents which flow in and out of lagoons. A barrier of reef affects them, too. Terry found himself swimming in an outward-bound current, which pushed him out and away from the island.
Within seconds the sensation in his body changed from a mere tingling to torment. For a moment it was just very much stronger and slightly painful, but a moment later it felt as if he swam among flames. It was unbearable. His muscles were not contracted, as if by an electric shock, but he couldn't control their reflexes. He found himself splashing crazily, trying to fight his way out of the anguish which engulfed him.
He went under. His body had taken complete control over his mind, and he found himself swimming frantically, underwater. He couldn't reach the surface. His body tried to escape the intolerable agony in which it was immersed but couldn't.
He heard a roaring sound, but it meant nothing. The roaring grew louder. Finally, he did break surface for a few seconds, and he gasped horribly, but then he went under. The roaring grew thunderous, and he broke surface again....
Something seized his flailing arm and pulled him up. The arm ceased to experience the horrible sensation of being in boiling oil. His hand recognized a gunwale. He swarmed up the solid object with hands helping him, and found himself in the boat, gasping and shivering, and cringing at the bare memory of the suffering he'd undergone.
Deirdre stared at him, frightened. She swung the boat's bow shoreward. The outboard motor roared, and the boat raced past the gap in the reef and rushed toward the lagoon opening.
"Are you all right? What happened? You were swimming and suddenly...."
He swallowed. His hands quivered. He shook his head and then said unsteadily, "I meant to ... check the reason those queer fish stay in the lagoon. I thought that if they belonged in the depths and were somehow carried out of them, they would try to get back. I found out!"
He felt an unreasonable relief when the lagoon entrance was behind the boat. The glassy water was reassuring. TheEsperancelooked like safety itself.