“I haven’t heard him say any of those things, young lady,” said Morton drily, “but they’re true. And I don’t like the idea of a sea monster being in the lagoon anyhow. Especially one that tries to kill people. Still, fighting it…”
“There are a couple of bazookas on the Esperance,” said Terry sharply. He looked at Davis. “If you’re willing to risk the yacht, we can drive the beast aground, or at least to shallow water, with the submarine horn. Then the bazookas should be able to destroy it. Will you take the risk?”
“Of course you’ll use the Esperance,” said Davis. “Of course!”
“Then I’llwant,” said Terry, unconsciously taking command, “somebody at the engine and somebody at the wheel. I’ll run the horn. But, frankly, if that monster lays one sucker-arm on the Esperance, it may be goodbye. Any volunteers?”
In minutes the Esperance, her engine rumbling, pulled away from the dock. She had on board all her original company except Deirdre—firmly left ashore by her father and Terry—and in addition she carried Dr. Morton and the most enthusiastic amateur photographer of the tracking station staff. He was shaky but resolute, and was hanging about with an imposing array of cameras, for both still and motion pictures. The Esperance’s sails were furled and she went into battle under bare poles. Davis was busy manufacturing improvised hand grenades for himself and Morton.
The sun was nearly overhead. Terry asked Morton questions about the lagoon. They finally chose a minor inlet as the place to which the creature must be driven, if possible. There it could be immobilized by the intolerable sound from the recorder. There it could be destroyed.
“I wonder,” said Morton wryly, “if I can present a dead giant squid as part of the explanation for my computed orbits for the last two bolides!”
The Esperance moved steadily toward the place where Terry had nearly been killed.
The enterprise was risky. The Esperance was sixty-five feet long. The creature it was to attack was much larger, and if one of its kind had crushed the bathyscaphe, it had sufficient strength and ferocity to make a battle cruiser a much more suitable antagonist. But the true folly of the effort was its purpose.
It all started when afishing boat—La Rubia—went to sea and caught remarkable quantities of fish, of which four specimens had had plastic artefacts fastened to them. Then Terry began checking on certain noises he beard in the sea which provoked an incomprehensible crowding of millions of fish into a small area, from which they swam down to depths where they could not survive. Now the killing of this squid was supposed to cast alight on the mystery of the nine bolides which had fallen into a particular part of the ocean.
Terry had the undersea horn turned vertically so that it would transmit ablade of sound wherever he aimed it, instead of spreading all through the lagoon. He turned it on.
The water before the Esperance suddenly speckled and splashed from the maddened leaps of fish of every possible size. He turned it off. He aimed it where the ripples showed the presence of something huge beneath the surface. He turned it on again.
There were convulsive writhings. A long tentacle emerged briefly and then splashed under again. The writhings continued. Terry adjusted his aim. Crazy leapings of smaller creatures showed the line of the sound-beam, as tracer-bullets show the paths of bullets from a machine gun. He cut off the sound for an instant and turned it on again at full volume, pointed where the monster must be. There was explosive tumult underwater. Huge arms flailed above the surface. But once again the creature fled.
The Esperance followed slowly, now. The monster had reacted to the stinging sound-beam as if cowed. But it was a deep-sea creature. It did not know how to move when squeezed into a shallow water which hampered its movements. It seemed frightened to discover itself trapped between the lagoon-bottom and the surface. And it was dazzled by the brightness to which it had been driven. Left unattacked, even for an instant, it tried to burrow away from the light, and again it made a dense cloud of mud from the bottom. Then it became quiet, as if hiding.
Grimly, Terry lanced it with the painful noise. The water frothed. Monstrous tentacles appeared and disappeared, and once part of the creature’s body itself emerged. It was cornered into a minor inlet, and there the water grew more shallow and the monster did not want to go to where its motions would be even more confined.
It seemed to flow into the deepest part of the miniature bay. It was as if it felt certain of a haven there. When the tormenting noise-beam struck again, the abyssal monster flung itself about crazily. A terrible, frustrated rage filled it. Its arms fumbled here and there, above water and below. It hauled itself upright so that a part of its torpedo-shaped body broke through the surface. The monster was mad with fury. It plunged toward the Esperance, not swimming now, but crawling with all its eight legs in water too shallow to submerge it. Its effort was desperate. It lifted everything from the water, and splashed everything down again, all the while crawling toward its enemy.
Terry saw Nick and Jug steady the aim of their bazookas. Davis ran toward the bow with hand grenades. The huge squid came crawling, and with every foot of advance the pain-noise grew more unendurable. Suddenly the creature uttered a mooing cry and retreated. The cry was like the mooing noise Terry had picked up from the depths.
It went aground. It struggled to climb ashore, to do anything to escape its tormentors. It foamed and splashed…
Despairing, it turned to face its tormentors. Its body reared almost entirely out of the water, now. It sagged flabbily. It reeled as its arms strained. Its eyes rose above the surface, blinded by the light. They were huge eyes. Squids alone, among the invertebrates, have eyes like those of land beasts. They flamed demoniac hatred. A beak appeared, not unlike a parrot’s, but capable of rending steel plates. The beak opened and closed with clicking sounds that were singularly horrifying. It snapped at the yacht, which was beyond reach. One of the tentacles wrenched violently at something. It gave. The arm rose above the water. A thorny mass of branched coral flew through the air and splashed close beside the Esperance.
“Shoot!” said Terry, somehow sickened. “Dammit, shoot!”
Nick and Tony aimed closely. The bazookas made their peculiar, inadequate sounds. The bazooka-shells, like small rocket-missiles, sped through the short distance. They struck. Their shaped charges detonated, again with inadequate loudness. They did not explode in a fashion to tear the creature to bits. Instead, they sent lancing flames a thousand times more deadly than bullets into the squid’s flesh.
It fought insanely. It uttered shrill cries. Its arms tore at its own wounds, at the water, at the lagoon-bed as if it would rend and shatter all the universe in its rage.
The bazookas fired again and again.
It was the eighth missile from the bazooka which ended the battle. Then the enormous body went limp. Its horny beak ceased to try to crush all creation. But the long, thick, sucker-disked arms thrashed aimlessly for a long time. Even when they ceased to throw themselves about, they quivered and rippled for a considerable period more. And when it seemed that all life had left the gigantic beast, and the men from the satellite-tracking station stepped on the monstrous body, it suddenly jerked once more, in a last attempt to murder.