“Yes, sir,” I said, taking the notebook and lodging it in the crook of my left elbow.
“Two,” said Desperandum. “Well be just on the fringes of the horde for a few minutes, so you can take it easy. Stay alert though. You want to look before they arrive?”
Without waiting for an answer he handed me the binoculars. I stooped to get them at the level of the visor, which was set at Desperandum’s height. I focused the binoculars.
The cloud resolved itself into thousands of individual fish, foot-long creatures with thin, brightly colored wings. They dipped and pirouetted like the molecules of a gas.
“They look like butterflies,” I said.
“What are butterflies?”
“Earth fauna. Six-legged invertebrates with multicolored wings. They sometimes travel in swarms.”
“Are they aquatic?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, the analogy might be worth pursuing anyway,” Desperandum rumbled. “Eighty-seven.”
I wrote the number down. A complex pattern of clumped and scattered dots appeared on Desperandum’s television screen; he did a quick sketch of the pattern on graph paper in his notebook. “See how many we have in the nets,” he said.
I crouched to look out.
“Uh . . . Captain . . .
“What?”
“They’re slicing the nets to pieces out there. Their wings are as sharp as razors.”
Desperandum’s ruddy face turned pale. He looked out the window and grunted, as if he had been struck in the stomach. He looked down with an attitude of intense concentration and touched two switches on his tally box.
“Three hundred and ninety-three,” he said.
There was a light metallic thud as a flying fish struck our pillbox. Desperandum flinched. There were more thuds.
The main body of the swarm was passing over the Lunglance. “One four nine four three,” Desperandum said, sketching frantically. The television screen was alive with swarming dots. “Aren’t we catching any of them?” Desperandum demanded.
I looked out and flinched myself when a fish struck the window. “No, sir,” I said. “The nets are completely shredded now, they’re just lying on the deck. There’re a few fish on the deck by the mizzenmast, though. Wait a minute. They just flew off.”
“Five five six two seven,” Desperandum said. The air was growing dark. There were millions of them out there. “No matter,” said Desperandum, recovering his poise. “We’ve still got the radar to analyze their flying pattern. Their spawning grounds are in a bay just behind the Brokenfoot Islands. We can stop there and pick up a few specimens.”
“That’s a bit of a detour, Captain,” I said. It was an unwise remark.
“IH thank you to remember that I am the captain of this ship,” Desperandum said.
“I apologize, sir. I was out of line.”
It sounding like hail on the top of our pillbox; dozens of fish were colliding and rebounding. “Two oh five, eight eighty-three,” Desperandum said.
Then, suddenly, part of Desperandum’s television screen went dark, a long narrow vertical band on the left side of the screen. Desperandum frowned mightily and touched switches with his thick, blunt fingers. The band stayed dead.
“They must have sliced the wiring from one of my radar sets,” Desperandum said. “That means I’ll have to multiply the rest of the values by a sixth. Make a note of that. One eighty-five, nine forty-one.”
I glanced at the screen. White dots were pouring off the live portions of the screen into the dead area. None were re-emerging.
“What are they doing out there?” Desperandum asked himself. He peered through the visor; three fish, their thin crystalline wings splashed with yellow and crimson, collided with it at once. Desperandum flinched back.
Another band of the screen went dead. “One oh one three two,” Desperandum said. “Are they thinning out, or are they just flying into the dead areas?”
I bent and looked out. “It does seem to be getting a little clearer, Captain.”
“Any in the nets?”
“No, sir. But there are several dozen by the radar installations. One of them isn’t moving. Its wing seems to be shrivelled. It must have been electrocuted. Now a thick band of them is coming over the rail. They just hit a radar box and knocked it over.”
I glanced down at Desperandum’s screen. The radar was pointing straight upwards, and its values did not mesh with the others’. There was no longer a coherent image; dots were leaping madly in and out of existence along the zone between the areas on the screen that were covered by the fourth and fifth radar sets.
“We’re going blind;” Desperandum said.
“They seem to be attacking the boxes,” I said. Another area of the screen winked out.
“Yes,” Desperandum said. “They must operate by radar themselves. The signals probably confuse their own flying patterns. That’s why they collide with the boxes. It would be interesting to see how they do it.” Another section of the screen went dead. I looked out the window.
“Only the first, fourth, and fifth boxes are working, Captain,” I said. “That’s where all the fish are, too. The other boxes are deserted. Hmmm. I was mistaken about that electrocuted fish. Captain. It’s still alive, and trying to fly off. It’s having difficulties though.”
“I must have one of those specimens,” Desperandum said tightly, shutting off the screen with a snap. The fish rose and fluttered away. “Put your mask on, Newhouse. I’m going to open the door.”
I grabbed my dustmask. “Don’t do it, Captain. You’ll be sliced to ribbons.”
“Don’t try to stop me,” Desperandum bristled. “When I aim to find something out, I don’t let anything stand in my way.” He put his arm against my shoulder and brushed me casually out of the way. I slammed into the back of the pillbox and saw stars. Hurriedly I pulled on my dustmask, then reached out and slammed the door shut.
I heard a flutter. Somehow one of the damnable little beasts had flown inside the pillbox. I grabbed the notebook with both hands and looked around wildly. Something touched my sleeve near the elbow and I saw a red and yellow flash out the corner of my eye. I swung quickly, heard a solid whop and a thud as the fish struck the wall. It slid, crippled and thrashing to the ground, leaking ichor from around one of its fiat, lidless eyes. Its dotted wings were broken, but their razor edges still gleamed evilly in the light from the overhead bulb. It did look a lot like a butterfly. I had seen one in a book once.
I looked at my sleeve. There was a neat two-inch slash just above my elbow, but the skin was untouched.
I dropped the notebook on the crippled fish, pinning it down, and looked out to see how Desperandum was doing.
He had seized a whaling spade from somewhere and broken it, leaving a five-foot metal stub with a flat spade at one end, like a flyswatter. The fish were not attacking him. What few were left were evading him with insolent ease and fluttering languidly off to join their brothers in the departed swarm. Desperandum swung at them with all his massive strength, but they floated serenely up and around the edges of the spade.
Suddenly one dipped and swooped near him. It seemed to miss Mm, but suddenly a bright red line appeared on the side of his neck. Desperandum bellowed and swiped at the thing with one hand, knocking it to the deck. Blood dripped from his fingers. The creature struggled to rise, but Desperandum leapt suddenly and mashed it to paste under the heels of his boot. Blood was trickling down the side of his neck and into his shirt. A quick feint with the spade and a stab downed another; he swatted it to the deck. It splattered. Then he rah after the retreating cluster of fish and halved one with the spade’s metal edge. Its head flew overboard. Another fish swooped down from nowhere and scored his arm. With astonishing speed Desperandum snatched it in midair and squeezed it juicily, earning more cuts in the process. More splatters of blood marred the deck.