Creatures of the Abyss

by Murray Leinster

  _Seven_

  As the _Esperance_ sailed northward, she looked almost unreal. From adistance she might have been an artist's picture of an imaginary yachtheeled 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, andwhat had taken place where the _Pelorus_ lay now hull-down, stowing aruined bathyscaphe in her hold, had unquestionably taken place.

  Something monstrous and terrible was hidden in the dark abyss below theyacht. The ferocity of its attack on the bathyscaphe was daunting. Andferocity has always, somehow, a suggestion of madness about it. But thehumming sound in the sea was not the product of madness. It was atechnical achievement. And plastic objects with metal inclusions....

  Davis joined Deirdre and Terry. Before Davis could speak she said, "Ican'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 ifthere ever was an understatement, that's it! If there can be anyconceivable motive for the plastic objects, which the _Pelorus dismissesas hoaxes, the motive is to use them to find out_ something aboutsurface 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 ... thatwouldn't be curious about the surface!"

  "No-o-o-o," agreed Terry. "It wouldn't. But we'd set off a bomb downbelow to stir things up. A couple of hours later the bathyscaphe wentdown. A stupid and merely ferocious thing of the depths wouldn'tassociate a bomb that exploded with a bathyscaphe that came down twohours later. It took intelligence to make the association of two fallingobjects with danger."

  Deirdre beamed suddenly.

  "Of course! That's it! Go on!"

  "Curiosity implies intelligence," said Terry carefully, "andintelligence is a substitute for teeth or claws. We don't assume thatthe fish that carry the plastic gadgets made them. Why assume thatwhatever attacked the bathyscaphe did it of its own accord? We believethat something else makes the deep-sea fish come up into the ThrawnIsland 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 ofstrange types of intelligence, anyhow. If it's intelligence that isn'thuman ..."

  Nick came up from below.

  "Thrawn Island calling," he reported. "They say the hum at the lagoonopening stopped for some forty-odd hours and then started again. Theyask 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 youshould 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 ofanything that fitted the idea of something biting holes in three-inchsteel." He added, "I can't think of a proper comment, either."

  "We'll get to Thrawn Island after sunset," repeated Davis. "Then we'llsee 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-waveoperator. The science staff is all busy. He said they heard an hour agothat another possible bolide's been spotted by a space-radar back in theUS. 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 reasonwhatever. They cut across the yacht's bow and zestfully played aroundher two or three times, then went on, toward a faraway horizon. Theymanaged somehow to give the impression of creatures who have donesomething they consider important.

  "It's said," said Terry, "that porpoises have brains as good as men's. Iwish I could get one or two to talk! They might answer everything! I'mgetting 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 thanI believed existed!"

  He walked away. Deirdre smiled at Terry.

  "My father paid you a tribute," she said. "I think we've been wastingtime, you and I. We do a lot of talking to each other, but we haven'tbeen 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 thesea. Always over the Luzon Deep. Photographed by a plane less than amonth ago. Reported by fishermen much more often than you'd suspect. Atleast 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 aboutthat."

  They settled down on the after-cabin roof and began a discussion on thefoam-patches, for which there was no hint of an explanation. ThenDeirdre mentioned that when she was a little girl she'd always beenfascinated by the sight of her father shaving. The foam--thelather--entranced her. And somehow that led to something else, and thatto something else still. A full hour later they were talking enjoyablyabout matters of no conceivable relationship to large patches of foamseen floating on the ocean's surface where the water was forty-fivehundred 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 wasspotted from Palomar. It's been right there for two hours."

  Terry waited.

  "Morton," said Davis, "would like us to try to photograph it when itcomes in, back where the _Pelorus_ was this morning."

  Terry stared. Shooting stars are not rare. On an average summer nightanybody can see at least three in an hour's watch of any one quarter ofthe sky. Bolides are a rare kind of shooting star. Still, many peoplehave seen one or two in their lifetime. But nobody plans ahead of timeto observe a bolide, and still less does anybody ever plan in advance towatch 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 saysthere's no sense to it at all, and that if we do get photographs they'llbe considered fakes. He's really wrought up. But he asked if I thought Icould get a plane out from Manila to watch it fall--if it comes. I'mgoing to try that too." He added, more embarrassed still, "Of coursenobody'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 tohappen at that spot. The _Pelorus_ must have already reported that onepeculiar 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 veryhonest man with no scientific knowledge at all. Nobody with a scientificeducation would pay any attention, but I could get him to tell a fewothers who know as little as he does, and if the damned thing does turnup, there'll be proof it was foretold. If it doesn't arrive--" Terryshrugged, "I've no scientific reputation to lose."

  "Wonderful!" said Deirdre warmly. "But you wouldn't have proposed it butfor me! I'll put things in motion!"

  She vanished. Within minutes the _Esperance_ came about in a widesemicircle 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 totell Terry that Nick was calling on the short-wave set. He'd raised theflattop in Manila Bay. The flattop had raised the shore. Telephone callswere being made to here and there and everywhere to get Horta to ashort-wave station to take a call from Terry.

  It was near sunset when the complicated call
was ready and Horta's voicecame 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 knownow of something that's going to happen out at sea tonight. They'll beneeded to testify that they knew of the prediction before the event. Canyou 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 andprotest, "is that at twelve minutes after nine o'clock tonight a largemeteorite will fall into the sea where--hmm--where _La Rubia_ catchesher fish. No, you'd better not locate it that way. I'll give you theposition."

  Davis, standing by, wrote the position in latitude and longitude andhanded 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 amemorandum of the matter. Shall I tell three or four persons, or more? Ihave news for you also. Jimenez...."

  "Look here!" said Terry sharply. "I want this thing to be past alldoubt! Everybody who's ever been worried about _La Rubia_ should knowabout this! There should be no possible doubt about it! But there shouldbe disbelief, so people who don't believe will try to verify that itdidn't happen, so they can crow over the people who thought it would, ormight."

  "Ah!" said Horta. "You wish you stick out the neck! It is serious! Nowtell me again!"

  "At twelve minutes after nine tonight," said Terry doggedly, "A shootingstar will fall into the sea at...." He named the latitude and longitudeDavis had given him. "That is where _La Rubia_ catches her fish."

  "A shooting star will fall there?" protested Horta. "But who knows wherethey fall?"

  "You do," said Terry. "This one, anyhow. Now, will you see that a numberof 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 againto Jimenez.

  By sunset Doug had gotten out the gun-cameras. Doug held an impromptuclass on deck, showing the other crew-cuts exactly how to aim thecameras and expose the films, and what button to press to change filmautomatically between shots. He was unhappy because he did not know howbright the object to be photographed would be, for his lens-settings. Hewas even more unhappy because the bolide might travel at practically anyangular velocity, so he didn't know how to set the shutters. But thefocus would be infinity, and if he used the fastest possible film, hecould stop most motion with a hundredth second exposure.

  Instead of reaching Thrawn Island shortly after sunset, then, the_Esperance_ was back above the place where the dredge had been droppedand the bathyscaphe wrecked. The _Pelorus_ was gone. The people on boardthat ship must have been very upset. The bathyscaphe had cost more moneythan is usually allotted to most scientific researchers, and now it wassmashed. How would they justify themselves? They could hardly blame the_Esperance_.

  The yacht sailed in a closed pattern over this area of the Luzon Deep.Deirdre served dinner on deck. Stars shone down almost instantly after asunset of unusual magnificence, even for the China Sea. Tony brought hisguitar aft, and a contagious feeling of exhilaration spread about the_Esperance_ and an improvised party took place on deck. Maybe the moodfor festivity arose from the realization that at least nine-tenths ofthe world's population would have graded them as lunatics, had it knowntheir project for the evening.

  It would have been unjust, of course. Terry reflected that it had notbeen their idea to make an appointment with a shooting star. They weredoing it out of some sort of professional courtesy, "from one set ofcrackpots to another," Terry phrased it in his own mind. It was a wildattempt to secure proof of the starkly impossible. So there was chatter,singing, and some dancing. The high spot was perhaps the time when Jugbashfully serenaded the rigging and the stars above it with howlingmelodies he'd learned in college.

  Eventually, Nick went down to the short-wave set. Doug passed out thegun-cameras again, after checking each one. Nick popped his head out ofthe hatch.

  "Dr. Morton's been calling like crazy," he reported. "The bolide's madefour orbital turns, coming in all the while. It ought to touch theatmosphere next time around. ETO is nine-twelve-seventeen-seconds. Itold him we're all set."

  His head disappeared.

  "Don't forget!" Doug said anxiously. "The cameras will feel likeshotguns but don't lead your target! And don't forget to press thefilm-changer!"

  Terry lifted his gun-camera experimentally. It did feel like a shotgun.And then, suddenly, he disbelieved everything: the purpose of the_Esperance's_ original investigation; the phenomena that had beenobserved; the guesses that had been made. It was pure insanity! He felta quick impatience with himself for becoming entangled in anything soridiculous.

  Deirdre leaned toward him and whispered forlornly, "Terry! It'sdreadful! I've just had an attack of common sense! What are we doinghere? We're crazy!"

  He put his hand consolingly over hers. The act was unpremeditated andthe sensation was startling. He found that they were staring at eachother intently in the starlight.

  "I think ..." said Terry, unsteadily, "that it's very sensible to becrazy. We've got to ... talk this over."

  Deirdre smiled at him shakily.

  "Y-yes, we will."

  Then Davis pointed out positions for the camera operators. The bolide'scourse should be three hundred fifty degrees, not quite on a north-southline. It might land short of, or beyond, the _Esperance_. Or it mightpass many miles to the east or west. Dr. Morton needed as many picturesof it against recognizable stars as could possibly be secured.

  Suddenly, there was a faint, dull rumbling in the heavens. It grewlouder. Presently, cruising lights appeared in the sky. They maintaineda fixed relationship to each other. They looked like moving stars,flying in formation from star-cluster to star-cluster.

  Nick popped abovedecks again.

  "The planes just called us," he reported. "They've just had a Loranposition-check and they're on the mark. They've got orders to observeany unusual phenomena occurring around nine-twelve P.M., Manila time.Using civilian terminology, it sounds like they're saying the PhilippineGovernment asked them to come out and take a look."

  "It's five after nine now," said Davis.

  The _Esperance_ headed into the wind. Her bow rose and fell. Waveswashed past, and roarings trundled about under the stars overhead, andvery tiny lights moved in a compact group across the firmament.

  Time passed.

  At twenty-two seconds after nine-twelve--which is to say at twenty-onehours, twelve minutes, twenty-two seconds--a light appeared in the skyfrom the north. It grew steadily brighter. It suddenly flared verybrightly indeed, then dimmed, and continued to rise above the horizon.Seconds later it flared again, very briefly.

  Terry found himself aiming the gun-camera. He pulled trigger and changedfilm and pulled trigger and changed film.

  The bright light ceased to climb. It grew steadily brighter andbrighter, and then it flared for the third time--Terry's mind askedskeptically, 'Braking rockets?'--and the light was so intense that thecracks in the yacht's deck-planking could be seen. Then the extrabrilliance vanished, and suddenly the moving light was no longer white,but reddish.

  Terry aimed again and fired the gun-camera.

  The light passed almost directly overhead. Terry had the impression thathe felt its heat upon his skin.

  It plunged into the sea two miles beyond the _Esperance_. The shock-wavecaused by the impact tapped on the yacht's side-planking a few secondslater. Starlight shone upon a plume of steam.

  Then there was nothing but the noise of the circling planes above. Thena sound, as of thunder. It disappeared northward. It was the sound ofthe bolide's passage, arriving after the object itself had dived intothe sea.

  The people on the _Esperance_ were dumfounded. Nick went below and cameup again a few minutes latter.

 
"The planes were calling," he reported. "They say they noted the unusualphenomenon. They ask if they should stay around for something else."

  "I think," said Davis caustically, "that that's all that's scheduledjust now. Tell them so."

  The _Esperance_ went on steadily again, a trifle west of north. Daviswas below, talking via radio to Dr. Morton at the satellite trackingbase.

  Terry and Deirdre went to look for a place where they could talk oversomething privately. It was of enormous importance to them, but it wasnot connected with fish or meteorites or plastic objects or anything atall but the two of them. And to them the yacht seemed crowded withpeople, even though there was nobody else abovedecks but one of thecrew-cuts at the wheel.

  When the _Esperance_ entered the lagoon the next morning, though, theirprivate talk had evidently come to a satisfactory conclusion. Deirdresmiled at Terry without any reason whatever, and he looked at once smugand embarrassed and uneasy, as if he possessed a new status to which hewas still unaccustomed.

  The recorder, trailing a submarine ear overboard, had duly reported thepresence of the hum in the water, just outside the lagoon. It had notbeen operating for forty hours or thereabouts. During that time the fishinside could go out of the lagoon, if they chose. And other fish couldcome in. Terry said suddenly, as the yacht went under power toward thetracking station wharf, "Suppose there was a cone of noise just outsidethe lagoon, and the flanks of the submarine mountain under us wereincluded in the cone? And suppose the cone grew smaller, like the otherone. What would happen?"

  Deirdre shook her head, smiling at him.

  "The fish," said Terry, "could escape into the lagoon."

  "Probably," agreed Deirdre.

  "And if fish could be driven downward along a certain path," said Terry,"the way we saw it happen, why, fish could be driven up in a certainpath, too."

  "Obviously," said Deirdre.

  "So if something wanted to replace the fish in the lagoon, or to add totheir number, why, it would puncture their swim bladders far, far down,and then drive them up to the surface and into the lagoon, and then keepthe noise going to keep them inside."

  "Is this a new idea?" asked Deirdre.

  "N-n-o," admitted Terry. "I've had it for some time."

  "So," said Deirdre, "have I."

  The _Esperance's_ engine stopped, and she floated to gentle contact withthe wharf. Members of the tracking station staff made the yacht fast.With others, Dr. Morton came on board. His expression was the picture ofunrelieved gloom.

  "I'm in a nice spot!" he told Davis. "I predicted a second bolidecorrectly! I had to use a different retardation factor to make the mathcome out right. Now I'm asked to explain that! How can I tell them Iknew where it would fall, and only had to compute when?"

  "Come below and look at the pictures we got," said Davis.

  They disappeared down the after-cabin hatch. Terry knew about thepictures. Doug had developed them with sweating care, developing eachnegative separately and adjusting the development-time to the varyingexposures of the bright object.

  There was a total of twenty reasonably good pictures of the bolide, fromits first appearance to its plunge into the ocean, two miles from the_Esperance_. Doug had enlarged some of them. There were distinctstar-patterns in most. In nearly all, though, the object was more orless blurred by its own motion. In those taken when it flared mostbrightly, the blurriness was especially marked. There was only onepicture of professional, if accidental, quality, and it was the leastconvincing of all. It showed the fore-part of a conical shape travelingpoint-first. Nobody would conceivably believe that it was a meteorite.It looked artificial.

  Terry and Deirdre, as it happened, stayed on deck. The people of thetracking station made a babbling uproar. It appeared that the mostimportant event in history, as history was viewed on Thrawn Island, hadtaken place the night before. It was revealed--Terry had not suspectedhis own success--that in asking Horta to see that there wasforeknowledge of a meteoric fall, Terry had arranged for the matter tobe taken immediately to high Philippine Government officials. TheAmerican flattop, at their request, had sent planes to the place of thefall, with orders which were enigmatic only until the descending objectappeared. Then every man in every plane knew that he'd been sent thereto see it.

  So there could be no question but that Dr. Morton had predicted it. Thatmeant that he knew more about meteoric objects than anybody else in theworld. What he had to say was of vast importance, and Thrawn Islandshared in his achievement. But it was a strictly professional triumph.The news would not break in the newspapers. No ordinary reader wouldbelieve in it. And nobody anywhere would believe in Morton's knowledgeof the place of the fall before he began to calculate.

  Terry observed that the people of Thrawn Island were definitely nolonger interested in fish. They'd kept their eyes open for odditiesbecause a deep-sea fish with a plastic object attached had been caughtin the lagoon a long while before. They'd been intensely interested whenTerry herded all the lagoon fish into one small inner bay, and theyspeared sixty fish that had no business being at the surface. They'dfound eight more plastic objects. Such things had been interesting, ifnot important. But now the head of the Thrawn Island staff had computedthe place and time of arrival of a meteoric mass from space! And he didit when that mass was five thousand miles out! From a professionalstandpoint, this was stupendous! They tried to make Terry see howimportant it was.

  Davis and Morton came up from below. They headed for the shore. Thecrew-cuts trailed off to the land with most of the visitors. OnlyDeirdre and Terry remained on the yacht, with a mere short-wave operatorfrom the island.

  "We're going to have a fancy lunch, with champagne and speeches," theoperator said hopefully. "You'll come?"

  "Naturally!" said Terry. "But first we're going swimming. We haven't hada chance to be overboard since the last time we were here."

  "We'll be back in time for lunch," Deirdre assured the operator, "butswimming here is so wonderful! We've been talking about it for days!"

  She went below to change. The operator shrugged. After a further attemptto interest Terry in the celebration of an astronomical first, he wentashore. Terry went with him to get the outboard motorboat he and Deirdrehad used before. He was already wearing swimming trunks.

  A little later the small boat putt-putted away from the _Esperance_ uponthe glassy-rippled waters of the lagoon.

  There was a very great tranquillity everywhere. The booming roar of thesurf came from unseen rollers on the reef outside. Seabirds squawked.Palms along the edge of the lagoon waved their fronds very, very gently.

  "How far will you go before we swim?" asked Deirdre. "All the lagoon'sperfect. One place is as good as another."

  He cut off the motor.

  "Hmmm. There's a deep place yonder," he observed. "That's where I wentwith the aqualung and speared the freak fish. Stay away from it."

  She jumped over in a clean dive. He joined her in the water. She cameup, blowing bubbles.

  "All right, Terry. What are your troubles?"

  "That bolide bothers me," he told her. "It had a specific destination!It was meant to hit the water over the Luzon Deep!"

  She dived again. This time Terry followed her. The underwater world wasbeautifully bright, with ripplings making everything seem to shimmerbecause of the changing light. When they came up again Deirdre said,"Funny!"

  "It had a purpose!" insisted Terry. "There were others before it, andthey had a purpose too! That's not funny!"

  "I didn't mean that," said Deirdre. "I meant ... just now, under thewater.... What's that?"

  There was a swirling at the surface, some tens of yards away. It was notthe curling eddy made by a fish about to break surface. It was too big adisturbance for that. It looked as if something stirred, barelysubmerged, but something very large. Terry, staring, thought of aporpoise cavorting just below the ripples. Or perhaps a shark. Butsharks and porpoises are too small to have made this eddying. Itreappeared.

  "Get in the
boat!" snapped Terry. "Quick!"

  While she climbed in he let himself sink, his eyes open. There was aclouding of the water underneath, where the surface-disturbance hadbeen. It was mud from the bottom which had been stirred up. He could seenothing clearly through it, though nearby and around him he could easilysee the colorings of coral and fan sponges, and he could see small fishdarting here and there.

  He broke surface. Deirdre bent anxiously over the gunwale.

  "What is it?"

  "I don't know," he said curtly. "But give me a fish spear."

  "You won't...."

  "I just want to have something in my hand," he told her impatiently,"while I look."

  He took the spear she handed him, and sank once more. Again somethingmoved in the deeper part of the lagoon. It was a fretful motion, as if acreature or creatures tried to burrow away from the light shiningthrough the water. Whatever moved, a thick cloud of debris from thebottom floated all the way up to the surface.

  Terry came up for air.

  "There's something queer there," he said shortly. "I don't know what."

  He went under and swam cautiously nearer to the disturbance. He waswithin a few feet of the curling cloud of obscurity when something likea gigantic worm came out of it. Or maybe it was like an elephant'strunk, only no elephant ever had a trunk so huge. It was a dull andglistening writhing object. Its end was rounded. The tip of theworm-like thing must have been a foot in diameter, and it came out ofthe mud cloud for four feet, then six, then, fifteen feet. It thickenedonly slightly in that length. It groped blindly in the brightness.

  Terry swam back quickly, and the object reared up and made a gropingsweep through the clear water. Some peculiar white disks suddenlyappeared on the underside of the long tentacle. They looked likesucker-disks, able to grip anything at all. The monstrous tentaclefumbled for Terry, as if guided by the pressure-waves his movementsgenerated.

  Terry froze. Deirdre moved in the boat almost directly overhead.Something clanked in the boat and he heard it. The boat was probablyrocking, making the pressure-waves that a creature from the abyss woulddepend upon for guidance where eyes would not serve at all.

  The thick, bulging tentacle reached toward the sound at the surface, nowignoring Terry, though he was nearer. He was still. The whitesucker-disks on its under side had several rings of a horny, tooth-likesubstance at their rims. The smallest were about four inches wide. Thefumbling object felt blindly in the water. Deirdre stirred again in theboat. The visible portion of the groping monstrosity was already longerthan the boat. The whole creature would be enormous! If this groping armrested upon the gunwale of the boat, it could easily swamp it.

  It groped for the boat, coming horribly out of a cloud of mud. Itreached out. In another instant it would touch....

  Terry plunged his fish spear into the worm. It jerked violently. Therewere enormous thrashings. Other similar white-disked arms thrust intoview, fumbling somehow angrily for the creature--Terry--which had daredto attack it.

  He darted for the surface. Something unspeakably horrible touched him,but it was the smooth and not the suckered side of the groping worm.Terry's head was now above water. He grasped the gunwale to pull himselfin, in a fever of haste. But the thing that had touched him before cameback. It grazed his leg, for just a second. Where it touched, his fleshburned like fire.

  "Start ... motor!" gasped Terry. "Get away!"

  Something touched the stern-board of the boat. Deirdre pulled thestarter of the motor.

  "Get in!" she said tensely. "Quickly!"

  She saw him, straining every muscle by pure, agonized instinct againstthe irresistible force of whatever clung to his skin. The horribletentacle stretched, and part of its length took a new grip. It crawledupon him.... Deirdre saw the look on his face.

  She snatched up the second spear and stabbed past him, into the crawlingbeast. There was a most violent jerking. She stabbed again. She panted.She gasped. She stabbed and stabbed, sobbing with fear and horror. AndTerry tumbled in over the gunwale, released. As soon as he fell onto thefloor-boards he painfully dragged himself toward the motor at the stern.Something bumped the boat underneath. Terry pulled the starter and themotor suddenly roared. But the boat didn't start immediately, and itjerked once more. The whirling propeller-blades had touched one of thegroping tentacles and cut it. Tumult arose.

  The boat surged into motion and Terry, with clenched teeth, sent it intoa crazy, skidding turn to avoid a surface swirl, and then anotherfrantic swerve when something showed momentarily above the surface. Theboat zig-zagged along. A grisly, writhing object rose above the water,flailing, a fish-spear sticking in it. The small, skimming boat dodgedand twisted at its topmost speed.... It suddenly straightened out andalmost flew across the water toward the land.