Creatures of the Abyss

by Murray Leinster

  _Four_

  The next morning the _Esperance_ headed 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 didpoint out that there were no fish jumping, which was an indication thatthere were not as many fish as usual in this part of the ocean. But itwas hard to be sure. There is no normal number of times when fish willbe seen to jump. They usually jump to escape larger fish that want toeat them. The number is pure chance. But there seemed to be almost nojumps at all this morning.

  It was not discussed at length, however. All the ship's company wascuriously reluctant to refer to the events of the previous night. Inbroad daylight, a detached review was simply impractical. With gullssquawking all about, with seas glinting in the sunshine, with decks tobe washed and breakfast to be eaten, and commonplace, routineship-keeping to be done, the adventure of the patch of shining seaseemed highly improbable. Terry felt that it couldn't really havehappened. 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 theunderwater microphone. It had been designed to be directional, so thatthe sound of surf or fish could be located by turning the mike, but hehadn't been able to point it vertically downward, and last night thathad been the key direction--right under the yacht's keel. So now heimprovised gimbals for the microphone, and a mounting for it similar tothat of a compass, so it could tilt in any desired direction, as well asturn.

  Which, of course, was a tacit admission that something peculiar hadhappened. 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 totry the paddle until we got to shallow water, you got angry and saidyou'd ask to be put ashore. We're headed for Barca now. Someone there isbuilding something for my father, the same thing I had asked you tobuild--a fish-driving instrument. If you still want to go, you can get abus from there to Manila. But I hope you have changed your mind."

  "I have," said Terry dourly. "I told your father so. I was irritatedbecause I couldn't get any answers to the questions I asked. Now I'vegot some questions your father wants answers to. And I'm going to try tofind them out."

  Deirdre sighed, perhaps in relief.

  "I put some pictures and a clipping in a book on the cabin table," shesaid. "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, whichyou 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 sortof dredge made there. Something to go down into the sea, take pictures,get samples of the bottom, and then come up again. There's anoceanographic ship due in Manila shortly, by the way. It will have abathyscaphe on board. Maybe that will help find out some answers." Thenshe 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, "Thisdredge: isn't it pretty ambitious for a boat this size to try to dredgesome thousands of fathoms down?"

  "It's a free dredge," she said. "It will sink by itself and come up byitself. There's no cable. What are you doing now?"

  He'd put away the submarine microphone he'd just altered and was nowtaking out the still untested underwater horn.

  "I'm going to try to make this directional, too," he said. "In fact, I'mgoing to try to make it project sound in a beam shaped like a fan. Ahollow cone may come later."

  She was silent. The _Esperance_ sailed on.

  "Ever talk to the skipper of _La Rubia_?" he asked presently.

  She shook her head.

  "You should. He's a stupendous, self-confident liar," said Terry. "Helies automatically. Gratuitously. A completely amiable man, but he can'ttell 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 evenyesterday, he'd have been indignant. But then he'd known these peoplehad secrets in which he had no share. Today he was beginning to sharethose secrets, and he had fabulously nonsensical material on which towork on his own. He had strange ideas about the event of last night. Hedid not quite believe them, but he thought he had devised some ways tosee how much of truth they contained, if any. Deirdre could keep hersecrets, so long as he did not have to disclose his own wildlyimaginative 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 formaldiscipline; there was co-operation. Terry heard one of the crew-cuts askDeirdre a question using her first name. It would have been highlyimprobable in a paid crew, but it was reasonable enough in a volunteerexpedition. 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 talkingabout that ... 'whale' last night."

  Terry nodded. The use of the term "whale" was a deliberate pretense thatthe 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 theinterval between the sound when it left the water, and the splash whenit fell back?"

  "Mmm. Yes," said Terry. He looked up. "Of course."

  "It would be interesting to do it," said Tony, semicasually. Then headded hastily, "I've read somewhere that whales have been clocked atpretty high speeds. If we can find out how long its leap lasted, wecould know how fast it was going."

  Terry considered for a moment, and then got out the recorder. He playedthe tape for a moment, and skipped forward to later parts of the recorduntil 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 periodof ascent of the noise, while it grew louder and louder and became abooming sound, which was at its loudest the instant before it ceased. Atthat moment the mysterious object had leaped out of the sea. The splashof its re-entry came long seconds later.

  Tony timed the leap. When the splash came he made his calculationsabsorbedly, 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, whenwe know how long they fall we can tell how fast they were traveling whenthey landed, and therefore when they leaped."

  He multiplied and divided.

  "Sixty miles an hour, roughly," he pronounced. "The whale was goingsixty miles an hour straight up when it left the water! What can swimthat fast?"

  "That's your question," said Terry. "Here's one of mine. We heard itcoming for five minutes ten seconds. How deep is the water where wewere?"

  "About forty-five hundred fathoms."

  "If we assume that it came from the bottom, it must have been travelingat 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 owntricks underwater. If you know something about them you can produce someremarkable results. A deliberately made underwater signal can be heardthrough an unbelievable number of thousands of miles of seawater. But,except through a yet untested fish-driving paddle, Terry had never heardof fish being herded by sound. Still, fish can be stunned or killed byconcussions. They have been known to be made unconscious by the noiseof a very near submarine bell. It wasn't unreasonable that a specificloud noise could make a barrier no fish would try to cross. But therewere still some parts of last night's events that did not fit into anyrational explanation.

  Davis came over to Terry.

  "I think," he said, "that we may have missed a lot of information by nothaving submarine ears before. There may have been all sorts of noises wecould have heard."

  "Possibly," agreed Terry.

  "We're more or less in the position of savages faced with phenomena theydon't understand," said Davis vexedly. "The simple problems of savagesrange from what produces thunder to what makes people die of disease.Savages come up with ideas of gods or devils doing such things forreasons 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 tous as thunder to a savage. A savage would blame it on devils orwhatnot."

  "Or on _ellos_," said Terry.

  "He'd imagine a personality behind it, yes," said Davis. "He does thingsbecause he wants to, so he thinks all natural phenomena occur becausesomebody wants them to. He has no idea of natural law, so he tries toimagine what kind of person--what kind of god or devil--does the thingshe 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 lastnight's affair."

  Terry said, "I couldn't agree with you more. But just what are youdriving at?"

  "There's a dredge being made for me in Barca. I'm afraid you may suspectthat I'm trying to--stir up something with it. To poke something we_know_ is somewhere but can't identify. I didn't want you to try thefish-paddle in deep water, that's true. But...."

  "You're explaining," said Terry, "that you didn't want me to whack afish-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 fifteenfeet of water in the Barca harbor. And I will not get temperamentalabout your suggestions that I should not mess up your deep-waterinquiries."

  "Thanks," said Davis.

  He went forward to meet Nick, just coming abovedecks with a slip ofpaper in his hand. It occurred to Terry, suddenly, that somebody wentbelow down the forecastle hatch just about every hour on the hour. Theymust be in short-wave communication with Manila. It had been mentionedlast night--a loran fix on the _Esperance's_ position. There wereapparently frequent reports to somebody somewhere.

  The afternoon went by. A tree-lined shore appeared to the eastward justwhen the gaudy colorings of a beautiful sunset filled all the westernsky. The _Esperance_ changed course and followed the coast line, somemiles out. Night fell. The yacht sailed with a fine smooth motion overthe ocean swells.

  After dinner Davis was below, fiddling with the knobs to pick upshort-wave music from San Francisco, and the muted sound of an argumentcame 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 reallypleased. He says your mind doesn't work like his, but you come to moreor less the same conclusions, which makes it likely the conclusions areright."

  Terry grimaced.

  "My conclusion," he observed, "is that I haven't enough facts yet tocome to any conclusion."

  "Of course!" said Deirdre. "Just like my father!"

  They sat in silence. It was not exactly a tranquil stillness. It waspleasant enough to be here on the slanting deck of a beautiful yacht,driving competently through dark seas under a canopy of stars. But nowTerry realized he was constantly aware of Deirdre. He liked her. Buthe'd liked other people, male and female, without being continuallyconscious of their existence. Girls are usually more conscious of suchthings than men. At least ninety-nine per cent of the time, a man doesnot modify his behavior because of the age, sex, and marital status ofthe people he comes in contact with. It isn't relevant to most of whathe says and does. But a girl frequently modifies her actions in justsuch circumstances. Deirdre was well aware of the slightly uneasy,extremely interested state of Terry's mind. There was silence for a longtime. 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 moremeteorites--shooting stars--had fallen and been recovered in Kansas thanany other place in the world. But it would be ridiculous to think theyaimed for Kansas, wouldn't it?"

  Terry nodded, not following at all.

  "At Thrawn Island," said Deirdre, "since the satellite-tracking stationhas been built, space-radars have picked up more bolides--bigmeteors--coming in to fall in the Luzon Deep than ever in Kansas oranywhere else. I think my father frets over that, simply because he's soconcerned about the Luzon Deep."

  Terry heard himself saying irrelevantly, "I'd like to ask you a fewstrictly personal questions, Deirdre. What's your favorite food? Whatmusic 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 fellowresearcher or whether you'd noticed that I'm a person, too. Hmmmmm.There's a restaurant in Manila where they still cut their steaks alongthe muscle instead of across it, but where they make some unheard-ofdishes. That place has some of my favorite foods. And...."

  "Next time we're in Manila we'll try it," said Terry. "Now, I know aplace...."

  The _Esperance_ went on. Presently, the moon rose and moonlight glintedon the waves while the stars looked cynically down on the small yachtupon the sea. And two people talked comfortably and absorbedly aboutthings nobody else would have thought very interesting.

  When Terry turned in for the night he realized pleasantly that he wasvery glad he'd let himself be persuaded to join the _Esperance's_company.

  Dawn came. Terry was already on deck when the _Esperance_ threaded herway into a small harbor. There were palm trees along the shore, andthere was a Philippine town with edifices ranging from burnt brick tostucco to mere nipa huts on its outskirts. Two-man fishing boats weremaking their way out from the shore on which they'd been beached. Fromsomewhere came the staccato, back-firing noise of an oldautomobile-engine being warmed up for the day's work. It wouldundoubtedly be the bus for Manila. But it was not thinkable that Terryshould take it, now.

  The yacht dropped anchor and lay indolently at rest while her crewbreakfasted and the morning deck routine was being performed. ThenDeirdre appeared in shore-going clothes of extreme femininity. Davis toowas dressed otherwise than as usual.

  "We're going ashore to the shipyard," he told Terry. "If you'd like tocome--"

  "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 hisapparatus for a test. Tony came from belowdecks and watched. Then hecame closer.

  "If I can help," he said tentatively.

  "You can," Terry told him. "But let's listen to what the fish aresaying, first."

  He dropped over the submarine ear and started the recorder to play whatit picked up, but without recording it. Sounds from underwater came outof the speakers. The slappings of tiny harbor-waves against
the yacht'splanking; the chunking, rhythmic sound of oars from a fishing boat whichwas rowing after the half-dozen that had gone out earlier; gruntingsounds. Those were fish.

  Terry listened critically, and Tony with interest. Then Terry broughtout the fish-driving paddle. He turned on the tape, now, to have arecord 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 resoundingwhacks. There were tiny, violent swirlings. For thirty or forty feetfrom the _Esperance's_ side there were isolated, minute turmoils in thewater. 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 whackingsounds. He re-played them, listening critically as before. Tony hadreturned to the deck. The whackings, as heard underwater, were notmerely impacts. There was a resonance to them. Almost a hum. Rathergrimly, Terry substituted this tape-reel with the recording he'd madethe night before. He started the instrument and found the exact spotwhere the object from the depths had fallen back into the sea. Hestopped the recorder right there. He hauled up the submarine ear andplugged in the horn to the audio-amplifier, as yet untested, whichshould multiply the volume of sound from the tape. Then he put the hornoverside.

  He switched on the recorder again. The tape-reel began to spin. Thesound went out underwater from the horn. Underwater it was much louderthan when it had been received by the _Esperance's_ microphone. Here itwas confined by the surface above and the harbor-bottom beneath. It musthave 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 turnedto spray. Creatures of all sizes leaped crazily above the surface, theirfins flapping, only to leap again, more frantically still, when theyfell back. A totally unsuspected school of very small flying fishflashed upward in such frenzied haste that some tried to climb toosteeply and fell back and instantly flung themselves into the air again.

  Terry turned off the playing recorder. The disorder at the top of thewater ceased immediately. But he heard shrill outcries. Children hadbeen wading at the edge of the shore. They stampeded for solid ground,shrieking. Where their feet and legs had been underwater they felt as ifa million pins and needles had pricked them.

  Something flapped heavily on the _Esperance's_ deck. Tony went to see.It was a three-pound fish which had leaped clear of the water and overthe 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 putthe apparatus away.

  Time passed. Davis and Deirdre had been ashore over an hour. Then Terrysaw the small boat leave the shore and approach. It came deftlyalongside, the two passengers climbed up to the deck, and all fourcrew-cuts hauled the boat back inboard and lashed it fast.

  "Our dredge isn't ready yet," said Davis. "It looks good, but there'llbe 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 thefish that had leaped high enough out of the water to land on the_Esperance's_ deck.

  "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 whereI'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 Idislike 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 dueup at Thrawn Island anyhow. You can work this trick out in the lagoon upthere. If there's no reaction to the dredge when we try it, we can trythis. But it might be a very violent poke at something we don't quitebelieve in. I'd rather try a gentle poke first."

  He turned away. In minutes Nick was belowdecks starting the yacht'sengine, two others of the crew-cuts were hauling up the anchor, and thefourth was at the wheel. Without haste, but with celerity, the_Esperance_ headed for the harbor-mouth and the open sea.

  They had their midday meal heading north by west. Late in the afternoonDeirdre 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 ofthe Luzon Deep, and the island's actually an underwater mountain thatjust barely protrudes above the surface. There are some hills, a coralreef and a lagoon. It's also terrifically steep, and you can use thefish-driving device as much as you please without startling any Filipinofishermen."

  "You've been there before," said Terry.

  "Oh, yes! I told you a fish wearing a plastic object was caught in thelagoon there. That was when the station was being built. The men at thetracking station fish in the lagoon for fun, and now they're naturallywatching out for more ... oddities."

  The _Esperance_ sailed on. The crew-cuts went about their various choresand talked endlessly, among themselves and with Deirdre, when she joinedin. Terry felt useless. He trailed the submarine ear overboard and setthe recorder to work as an amplifier only. At low volume it played thesounds of things below. He kept half an ear cocked toward it for themooing sound he'd picked up at the place where the ocean glittered. Heheard it again now, and again found it difficult to imagine any causefor it. The sounds uttered by noisemaking fish are usually produced intheir swim-bladders. The purpose of fish cries is as obscure as thereason for some insect stridulations, or the song of many birds. But along-continued fish noise would involve a swim-bladder of large size. Atgreat depths, if a considerable cavity were filled with gas, underpressures running into tons to the square inch.... Terry could notquite 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 hearthem. From the deck around him, though, he heard arguments about wavemechanics, prospects in the World Series, the virtues of Dixieland jazz,ichthyology, Copeland's contribution to modern music, the possibility oflife on other planets, and kindred topics. The crew-cuts were takingtheir summer vacations as able seamen on board the _Esperance_, but theyhad as many and as voluble opinions as any other undergraduates. Theyaired them on each other.

  The afternoon passed. Night fell, and dinner was a session of learneddiscussion of different subjects, always vehemently argued. Later Terrytook the yacht's wheel, Deirdre sat comfortably nearby, and theydiscussed matters suitable to their more mature status. They were muchless intellectual than the crew-cuts. In a few days they developed aninterest in each other, but each of them believed this was just a verypleasant friendship.

  Eventually, the moon rose. It was close to midnight when Nick bobbedbelowdecks and came up with a report that they'd been picked up by theThrawn Island radar and were proceeding exactly on course. Half an hourlater a tiny light appeared at the edge of the sea. The _Esperance_headed for it, and presently there were breakers to port and starboard,the engine rumbled, down below, and the yacht lifted and fell moreviolently than ordinary. Then once more she was in glassy-smooth water;the air was very heavy with the smell of green vegetation. Certainrectangles of light became visible. They were the windows of the ThrawnIsland satellite-tracking installation.

  The _Esperance's_ sails were lowered and she moved toward the lights onengine power only. There was no movement ashore, though Nick had talkedwith the island on short-wave.

  After a little while the searchlight was put in operation and began toreach 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. The_Esperance_ floated toward it, her engine barely turning over. There wasstill no sign of activity, except for the lighted windows.

  The engine stopped, then reversed, and the yacht drifted gently until itcontacted the wharfs snubber-pilings. Jug and Tony jumped ashore withlines 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 anunusually lurid type of shooting star. It came over the tree-tops andcrossed the zenith, leaving a trail of light behind it. It went on andon, seemingly slowing down, which meant that it was descending from avery high altitude. Its brilliance became more and more intense, then itdimmed. At this point the fireball seemed to plunge downward. Then itsflame 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 itseemed. Actually, it might have plunged into the sea, miles away. Thenthere 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 hadfollowed. It died away.

  There was silence. Shooting stars as bright as this one are rare. Mostmeteors are very small, but they are visible because of the attritionproduced by their falling bodies in the atmosphere that sets them onfire. They usually appear at around a seventy-mile height, butfrequently they are vaporized before they have descended more thanthirty miles. Sometimes they explode in mid-air and strew the earth withfragments. Sometimes they strike ground, leaving monstrous craters wherethey have fallen. Most meteors fall in the sea. But a meteor has to beat least down to twenty miles from sea level before its sound can beheard.

  Someone came out of a building and moved toward the wharf, an electriclantern 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. Itwas picked up by space radar a couple of hours ago, but then we figuredit 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 reachedthe end of the wharf. "Glad to see you. We've got some fish for you, bythe way. We caught them in the lagoon. They're waiting for you in thedeep-freeze. There's a _Macrourus violaceus_, if we read the booksright, and a _Gonostoma polypus_. They match the pictures, anyhow. Whatdo 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 becaught at a depth of two or more miles!"

  "We caught 'em," said the man cheerfully, "on a hook and line, in thelagoon, 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 Isee 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'scomplaining that they take up space. Nobody wants to find out if they'regood to eat. Most unwholesome-looking creatures! And how are you, younglady?" 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 aboutit a month ago. You've solved the problem by now, I daresay. Includinghow these very queer fish happen to be in our lagoon instead of milesdown 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. Deirdresaid amusedly:

  "Dr. Morton's a dear! Don't take him seriously, Terry! He loves totease. He'll hound you to tell him how deep-sea fish got up here andinto a shallow lagoon. Please don't mind!"

  "I won't," said Terry. "I'll tell him tomorrow, I think. I believe now Iknow how it happened, but I want to check it first."