“We have a contact on peripheral thermals,” Tina said, in a flat voice.
“Where?” Fletcher said.
“North. Approaching.”
And on the monitor, they saw the words:
I AM COMING.
They turned off both the interior and exterior lights. Norman peered through the porthole, straining to see out in the darkness. They had long ago learned that the darkness at this depth was not absolute; the waters of the Pacific were so clear that even a thousand feet down some light registered on the bottom. It was very slight-Edmunds had compared it to starlight-but Norman knew that on the surface you could see by starlight alone.
Now he cupped his hands by the sides of his face to block out the low light coming from Tina’s consoles, waited for his eyes to adjust. Behind him, Tina and Fletcher were working with the monitors. He heard the hiss of the hydrophones in the room.
It was all happening again.
Ted was standing by the monitor, saying, “Jerry, can you hear me? Jerry, are you listening?” But he wasn’t getting through.
Beth came up as Norman peered out the porthole. “You see anything?”
“Not yet.”
Behind them, Tina said, “Eighty yards and closing… Sixty yards. You want sonar?”
“No sonar,” Fletcher said. “Nothing to make ourselves interesting to him.”
“Then should we kill the electronics?”
“Kill everything.”
All the console lights went out. Now there was just the red glow of the space heaters above them. They sat in darkness and stared out. Norman tried to remember how long dark-vision accommodation required. He remembered it might be as long as three minutes.
He began to see shapes: the outline of the grid on the bottom and, dimly, the high fin of the spaceship, rising sharply up.
Then something else.
A green glow in the distance. At the horizon.
“It’s like a green sunrise,” Beth said.
The glow increased in intensity, and then they saw an amorphous green shape with lateral streaks. Norman thought, It’s just like the image we saw before. It looks just like that. He couldn’t really make out the details.
“Is it a squid?” he said. “Yes,” Beth said.
“I can’t see…”
“You’re looking at it end-on. The body is toward us, the tentacles behind, partially blocked by the body. That’s why you can’t see it.”
The squid grew larger. It was definitely coming toward them.
Ted ran from the portholes back to the consoles. “Jerry, are you listening? Jerry?”
“Electronics are off, Dr. Fielding,” Fletcher said. “Well, let’s try and talk to him, for God’s sake.”
“I think we’re past the talking stage now, sir.”
The squid was faintly luminous, the entire body a deep green. Now Norman could see a sharp vertical ridge in the body. The moving tentacles and arms were clear. The outline grew larger. The squid moved laterally.
“It’s going around the grid.”
“Yes,” Beth said. “They’re intelligent animals; they have the ability to learn from experience. It probably didn’t like hitting the grid before, and it remembers.”
The squid passed the spacecraft fin, and they could gauge its size. It’s as big as a house, Norman thought. The creature slid smoothly through the water toward them. He felt a sense of awe, despite his pounding heart.
“Jerry? Jerry!”
“Save your breath, Ted.”
“Thirty yards,” Tina said. “Still coming.”
As the squid came closer, Norman could count the arms, and he saw the two long tentacles, glowing lines extending far beyond the body. The arms and tentacles seemed to move loosely in the water, while the body made rhythmic muscular contractions. The squid propelled itself with water, and did not use the arms for swimming.
“Twenty yards.”
“God, it’s big,” Harry said.
“You know,” Beth said, “we’re the first people in human history to see a free-swimming giant squid. This should be a great moment.”
They heard the gurgling, the rush of water over the hydrophones, as the squid came closer.
“Ten yards.”
For a moment, the great creature turned sideways to the habitat, and they could see its profile-the enormous glowing body, thirty feet long, with the huge unblinking eye; the circle of arms, waving like evil snakes; the two long tentacles, each terminating in a flattened, leaf-shaped section.
The squid continued to turn until its arms and tentacles stretched toward the habitat, and they glimpsed the mouth, the sharp-edged chomping beak in a mass of glowing green muscle.
“Oh God…”
The squid moved forward. They could see each other in the glow through the portholes. It’s starting, Norman thought. It’s starting, and this time we can’t survive it.
There was a thump as a tentacle swung against the habitat. “Jerry!” Ted shouted. His voice was high, strained with tension.
The squid paused. The body moved laterally, and they could see the huge eye staring at them.
“Jerry! Listen to me!”
The squid appeared to hesitate.
“He’s listening!” Ted shouted, and he grabbed a flashlight off a wall bracket and shined it out the porthole. He blinked the light once.
The great body of the squid glowed green, then went momentarily dark, then glowed green again.
“He’s listening,” Beth said.
“Of course he’s listening. He’s intelligent.” Ted blinked his light twice in rapid succession.
The squid blinked back, twice. “How can he do that?” Norman said.
“It’s a kind of skin cell called a chromatophore,” Beth said. “The animal can open and close these cells at will, and block the light.”
Ted blinked three times.
The squid blinked three times. “He can do it fast,” Norman said.
“Yes, fast.”
“He’s intelligent,” Ted said. “I keep telling you. He’s intelligent and he wants to talk.”
Ted blinked long, short, short.
The squid matched the pattern.
“That’s a baby,” Ted said. “You just keep talking to me, Jerry.”
He flashed a more complex pattern, and the squid answered, but then moved off to the left.
“I’ve got to keep him talking,” Ted said.
As the squid moved, Ted moved, skipping from porthole to porthole, shining his light. The squid still blinked its glowing body in reply, but Norman sensed it had another purpose now.
They all followed Ted, from D into C Cyl. Ted flashed his light. The squid answered, but still moved onward. “What’s he doing?”
“Maybe he’s leading us…”
“Why?”
They went to B Cyl, where the life-support equipment was located, but there were no portholes in B. Ted moved on to A, the airlock. There were no portholes here, either. Ted immediately jumped down and opened the hatch in the floor, revealing dark water.
“Careful, Ted.”
“I’m telling you, he’s intelligent,” Ted said. The water at his feet glowed a soft green. “Here he comes now.” They could not see the squid yet, only the glow. Ted blinked his light into the water.
The green blinked back.
“Still talking,” Ted said. “And as long as he’s talking-” With stunning swiftness, the tentacle smashed up through the open water and swung in a great arc around the airlock. Norman had a glimpse of a glowing stalk as thick as a man’s body, and a great glowing leaf five feet long, swinging blindly past him, and as he ducked he saw it hit Beth and knock her sideways. Tina was screaming in terror. Strong ammonia fumes burned their eyes. The tentacle swung back toward Norman. He held up his hands to protect himself, touched slimy, cold flesh as the giant arm spun him, slammed him against the airlock’s metal walls. The animal was incredibly strong.
“Get out, everybody out, away from the metal!” Fletcher was shouting. Ted was scrambling up, away from the hatch and the twisting arm, and he had almost reached the door when the leaf swung back and wrapped around him, covering most of his body. Ted grunted, pushed at the leaf with his hands. His eyes were wide with horror.