“I think we’ve lost him.” Lennar’s face was strangely impassive. “There’s nothing we can do about it.”
“Shouldn’t we go down and look for him?”
“How? There’s no air down there?”
“I’d forgotten.” Dan’s death was a trivial matter, Myrah suddenly realised, only significant in that it reduced their number from six to five. “The shells are far from here,” she heard herself saying. “How will we reach them?”
“Earth is the home of the human race,” Lennar replied. “The humans here can travel through the water at great speed. They will help us.”
“Supposing they don’t want to help?”
“Ka will see that they do,” Treece put in, smiling. “Nobody can refuse Ka anything.”
“But Ka isn’t here.”
“Isn’t he?” Treece met Myrah’s gaze squarely, and her smile grew wider. Salt water splashed over her face and into her mouth, but she appeared not to notice.
Myrah was suddenly afraid of Treece and turned away from her, but there was no escaping the alien presence behind her own brow. She understood then that she was still wedded to Ka, and that he could claim her at any time. The knowledge should have been insupportable—and the fact that she could accept it showed that she was no longer her own self….
“We may not be able to find anybody,” she said, trying to avoid the downward spiral of her thoughts. “The Earth is so big.”
“But the humans here are many. Look!” Lennar raised himself higher in the water and pointed at something in the distance.
Myrah forced her head upwards against the unceasing pull of the planet and looked in the direction Lennar had indicated. The abundance of light reflecting from the sea created a painful shimmering across her vision, but she picked out a low shape which was moving silently through the brilliance. The object was about the size of a large shark, and—using knowledge which was not her own—Myrah identified it as a boat.
By narrowing her eyes to slits she was able to discern that the boat had a single occupant.
She sank down into the water again and—silently, with their arms moving in unison—the group swam towards the lone sailor.
CHAPTER TEN
During the ride out to the northern rim of the farm Tarrant had used an ultra-fine saw to split the bullets in six cartridges. This had rendered them useless for anything but close-range shooting, but he had the comforting knowledge that he was now equipped to punch fist-sized holes through any sea creature, no matter how large, which came near his boat.
Reaching the end of the channel, he made a tight turn to the east and cut his motor. He looked along the slowly undulating line of the boom and, as he had expected, there was no sign of intruders or anything else out of the ordinary. One of the first things he had learned about hunting, whether for game or enemy aircraft, was that no quarry was ever obliging enough to show up exactly where anticipated. He nuzzled the boat to a halt at the first set of boom connectors and tied a length of wire around the plastic pins.
The warm green smell from the hectares of protein-rich soup was overpowering as he began a slow advance to the next joint, and by the time he had reached the fifth he was heartily sick of the whole project. In his impatience he approached the joint at too great a speed and had to brake by leaning over the side and grasping a connector loop. The boat swung wilfully around its prow and he found himself at full stretch just above the water, clinging to the slick plastic with his hands while trying to draw the boat back under him with his knees.
He was so intent on the struggle that it was several seconds before he became aware of the round, plate-sized object shimmering under the surface of the water just below his face. He stared down at it for a moment, bemused, then it moved slightly, and there was movement all about it, and he realised he was looking into the eye of a big squid.
Tarrant was unable to suppress a moan of panic. He contracted his body violently, trying to snap shut the menacing space between the boat and the boom, but it closed with agonising slowness, and all the time the great, rueful eye gazed up at him from a distance of less than an arm’s length. As he was on the point of recovering his balance the eye abruptly disappeared, the water heaved and he tensed for the encircling slap of a tentacle. The dreaded contact did not take place and in another instant he had thrown himself backwards into the boat.
He scrambled to his feet, picking up the rifle at the same time, and lunged to the opposite gunwale. Three of the monstrous and now-familiar shapes were spearing away to the north, the fluttering of their lateral fins churning the clear water. One of the squid was larger than the others and Tarrant recognised its mottled colouration. He threw the rifle to his shoulder for a quick shot, then froze with his finger curled around the trigger as he saw what had lured the squid away from him.
There were five people in the water less than a hundred metres from his boat.
Tarrant gaped at the swimmers in dawning appreciation of their danger. Appalled and baffled, he turned to the boat’s controls, selected maximum speed and swung north in pursuit of the squid. The little craft surged forward responsively, but the tentacled shapes were lost to sight beneath a welter of reflections and he had no way of knowing how far they were ahead of him.
“Look out!” Tarrant had a feeling his voice was being carried away in the sea breeze. “Look out below you!”
The swimmers came on steadily and he saw that three of them were women. Suddenly one of the men went beneath the surface and reappeared a second later in the grasp of a dark brown squid. A woman screamed as the water around the others began to boil with submarine activity.
Tarrant shut down his motor and skidded the boat into the edge of the group, colliding with the squid which had taken the man just as it was turning over to dive. The monster was visible alongside for perhaps a second, but Tarrant’s aerial gunnery training made the shot an easy one. Holding the rifle in one hand, he blasted a hole through the conical forebody. There was an explosion of inky fluid, followed by a raucous bark, and the squid released its victim.
Holding the boat in the tight circle, Tarrant sought another target. He glimpsed a massive, complex form slipping away beneath his stern and pumped two shots at it, sending foamy white trails far down into the water. The squid vanished from his view and all at once the sea was calm again, except for the sporadic movements of the man who had almost been lost. His unnaturally white skin was marked by a number of circular red blotches.
“Get him up here.” Tarrant pointed at the injured man and gestured for the others to lift him on board. They swam to aid their companion and Tarrant was jolted to see they were naked except for narrow belts at their waists. He caught hold of the man’s arm and dragged him over the gunwale, noticing as he did so that although the stranger appeared to be well nourished he was extremely weak. His lack of strength suggested he had been in the water a long time, yet he bore no traces of sunburn or exposure. While Tarrant was laying him out on the deck he stared about him in silence, through slitted eyes, seemingly fascinated by everything he saw.
“Next,” Tarrant said to the group in the water, and a slim red-haired girl was offered up to him.
She was even weaker than the man had been, apparently semi-conscious, and was unable to assist herself into the boat. Tarrant had to lift her in his arms and a pounding awareness of her nudity surged through him. It was accompanied by a feeling of guilt over taking advantage of her distress, but as he was putting her down beside the man he could not help examining her body in the bright sunlight, fascinated by all the ways in which femininity asserted itself in the topography and proportions of the human frame.