Creatures of the Abyss, Murray Leinster [read after .txt] 📗

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,