Blank faces turned to Terry. He licked his lips and looked for Deirdre. Then he said evenly, “We go into the lagoon. And if we come out again—if!—we leave Deirdre ashore, unless these readings have been cleared up. There are chances I’m not willing to take.”
The Esperance headed in. It was not possible for the new instrument to tell what the large objects were. They could be monstrous living creatures, perhaps squids, and one could only guess that their errand was to deal with the surface-creatures—men—who speared fish and giant squids and set off explosions in the Luzon Deep.
Or the rising objects could be, say, bolides which had dived into the Deep from outer space and were now coming to the surface to make sure that the natives of the earth did not again disturb the depths taken over by beings from another planet.
Nine
The sun rose high in the sky as the Esperance returned to the wharf. Davis went ashore and held lengthy conversations with Manila by short-wave radio. The biologists essayed to investigate the squid. La Rubia still attempted to catch fish. All efforts seemed to tend toward frustration.
When Terry walked over to see his victim at close range, he found the biologists balked by the mere huge size of the squid. There were literally tens of tons of flesh to be handled. Squid have no backbone, but a modified internal shell is important to biologists for study. The biologists wanted it. The gills needed to be examined, and their position under the mantle noted, and their filaments counted. The nervous system of the huge creature must have its oddities. But the actual preservation of the squid was out of the question. The mere handling of so large an object was an engineering problem.
Terry consulted the frenziedly swearing Capitan Saavedra, who was ready to weep with sheer rage as he contemplated torn nets, and fish he could not capture. Squids were an article of commerce. Terry took the Capitan to view this one. His crew would help the biologists get at the scientifically important items, and for reward they would have the rest of the giant—more than they could load upon La Rubia. This would make their voyage profitable, and the Capitan would have the opportunity to tell the most stupendous story of his capture and killing of the giant. With the evidence he’d have, people might believe him.
Presently, the crewmen of La Rubia clambered over the monster, huge knives at work under the direction of the men from Manila. There was bitter dispute with the tracking station cook, who objected to the use of his refrigeration space to freeze biological material before it was sent to Manila by helicopter.
In mid-afternoon the Esperance left the lagoon again. The sonar-depth-finder probed the depths delicately. The objects in mid-sea, it appeared, had been rising steadily. Their previous position had averaged twenty-five hundred fathoms deep. They were now less than two thousand fathoms down, and there were many of them. Unfortunately, the Esperance was not a steady enough platform for the instrument. But a fairly accurate calculation was made, and if the unidentified objects continued their ascent at their present rate, they would surface not long after sunrise. Then what?
Increasingly urgent queries came by short-wave, asking for Dr. Morton’s explanation of how he had computed the landing place and time of the latest bolide. His accuracy was not disputed. But astronomers and physicists wanted to be able to do it themselves. How had he done it?
Terry came upon him sitting gloomily before a cup of coffee in the tracking station. Davis was there too.
“I wish I hadn’t done it,” Morton confided. “It’s one of those things that shouldn’t happen. It’s bad enough to have a giant squid to account for. They tell me it’s a new species, by the way. Never found or even described before. One of the Pelorus men tells me it’s an immature specimen, too. It’s not full-grown! What will a grown-up one be like?”
“I have a hunch we’ll find out when those submerged giants reach the surface,” said Davis unhappily.
Terry said, “The one we killed couldn’t get out of the water. I wonder if the adult forms can walk over the land!”
Davis stared. “Should we send Deirdre to safety on the Esperance?”
“Safety?” asked Terry. “On a boat? When a mass of bubbles from undersea could provoke such a turmoil in the water that no ship could stay afloat? That’s how one ship disappeared. It might be the Esperance’s turn next. Who knows?” Then he added, “There’s no limit to the size of a swimming creature!”
A bald-headed member of the tracking station staff walked in. He carried an object of clear plastic. It was a foot and a half long, about six inches in diameter. There was an infinite complexity of metallic parts enclosed in the plastic.
“I caught one of the fishermen making off with this,” he said in a flat voice. “It was fastened to one of the squid’s shorter arms. The fishermen didn’t want to give it up. The skipper claimed it as treasure-trove.”
He put it down on the table. Davis, Terry and Morton looked at it. Then Morton shrugged his shoulders, almost up to his ears.
“The intelligent being that made it,” said Davis, “apparently came down from the sky in a bolide. That’s easier to believe than that a submarine civilization of earthly origin lives down in the depths. But why would anybody prefer the bottom of the sea to—anywhere else on earth? Where would such a creature come from?”
Deirdre walked in and stood by the table, watching Terry’s face. The bald-headed man said, “I could believe some pretty strange things, but you can’t make me believe that a creature can develop intelligence without plenty of oxygen. There’s not much free oxygen at the bottom of the sea.”
“But there’s something intelligent down there,” said Davis doggedly. “If it has to have free oxygen, you’ve only raised the question of where it gets it. Maybe it brings it.”
Deirdre shook her head. “Foam,” she said.
The four men stared at her. Then Terry said sharply, “That’s it! On the Esperance there’s a picture of a huge mass of foam on the sea. A ship dropped right out of sight right into it. Deirdre found the answer! Something down below needs free oxygen. In quantity. Why not get it from the water? What to do with the hydrogen that is left? Let it loose! It’ll come to the surface, make a foam-patch…”
Dr. Morton said with a sort of mirthless geniality, “I add a stroke of pure genius! Davis just asked what would be the origin of a creature which preferred the depths of the sea to any other place on earth. What’s to be found down there that’s missing everywhere else? Cold? No. Moisture? No. Just two things! Darkness and pressure! At the bottom of the Luzon Deep the pressure is over seven tons to the square inch. There’s no light—I repeat, none—below three hundred fathoms. Down at the sea-bottom it’s black, black, black! Now, where in the universe could there be creatines capable of riding down here in a bolide, and in need of an environment like that?”
Terry shook his head. He remembered seeing a book on the solar planets, in the after-cabin of the Esperance. He hadn’t read it. The others on the yacht must have.
“How about Jupiter?” asked Deirdre. “The gravity’s four times the earth’s, and the atmosphere is thousands of miles thick. The pressure at the surface should be tons to the square inch.”
Morton nodded. With the same false geniality he added, “And there’ll be no light. Sunlight will never get through that muggy thick atmosphere! So we consider ourselves to be rational beings and guess that the bolides come from Jupiter! But I must admit that the last bolide was headed inward toward the sun, and from the general direction of Jupiter. So-o-o-o, do we warn the world that creatures from Jupiter are descending in space ships and are settling down under water, at a depth of forty-five hundred fathoms? Like hell we do!”