David Golemon - Legend

As Keating watched for any movement outside of his porthole, it was suddenly filled with a horrific face. He jumped back as the creature looked inside the interior of the bell. Sarah froze for a moment when she saw what had frightened the professor through the glass.

"Oh, my!" Ellenshaw said under his breath. The animal had swum quickly to his porthole and now he was face to face with it.

The creature had large black eyes and looked in with what Sarah thought was mere curiosity. The scales that covered its body were thick and appeared to be an exact match of the sample found on the body of the SEAL. The mouth opened and closed as its gills worked on either side just below the jawline. The back lower half of its head had a long row of leathery spines that angled downward. When the strange row of finlike spines was activated, they fanned out like a protective shield. The creature's large handlike protrusions swirled back and forth in an effort to maintain its position in front of the porthole.

"Jesus Christ!" Jenks yelled into the radio. "What in the hell is that?"

"Stop and hold your position, Chief. Stay clear, it's not aggressive , at least not yet ," Sarah called. "Jack, stop the winch," she said calmly. Just a moment later they felt a small jerk as the bell came to a stop just above the layer where they started receiving refracted light from the surface.

"Look at it, its part human! It has to be! You can just feel and see the intelligence," Ellenshaw said exuberantly.

"I agree, it's studying us." Keating was also mesmerized by the sight before him. "Professor, why would it have the spines running around the base of its head?"

"Your academic guess would be as good as mine, my friend. Perhaps they are a protective apparatus or simply a mating tool used by this animal."

The creature suddenly moved away from the porthole and went deep. It reappeared in front of Sarah and she did her best not to react at its sudden arrival. The large head tilted, swinging the large spines that looked almost like braids. Being this close, Sarah could see the spines ended in clear, pointed spikes. The beast opened its mouth and she could see very small, almost clear teeth inside. The face had no scales to speak of. Its features were smooth and tinted a whitish light green color as compared to its body, which was a darker shade of green with swirling highlights of silver and gold.

"Jack, tell me you're filming this," she said.

"We got it. That has to be what pulled me from the water and killed that plesiosaur. Mendenhall, make sure you get some full body shots of this thing."

"Filming with the nose camera," the sergeant answered.

The creature swam from porthole to porthole, watching the bell's occupants with immense curiosity. It kept reaching out only to be stopped by the glass. Then it slowly started backing away first by swirling its webbed fingers, and then by kicking with its powerful legs. It came up to the bubble canopy of the Turtle and swam in circles around it.

"Easy, Chief," Sarah called. "It's just showing you the same curiosity."

"Yeah, you had a three-inch titanium fence around you, but this monstrosity could sink this aluminum coffin just by wishing real hard."

"Really?" Mendenhall asked, not moving as the beast stopped and looked at him, only inches away.

The creature rubbed a hand over the canopy and then jerked it away. The master chief reduced power and the Turtle came to a hover fifty yards from Yoyo . The monster again reached out and touched the glass canopy just above Mendenhall's head. It took all of the sergeant's discipline not to duck as the eight-foot-long animal reached out. Then as suddenly as it had appeared, it darted off into the inkiness of the lagoon.

"That thing is five times faster than Turtle , Major. Get the bell up and out of here. We'll stand by until she's pulled aboard. Be careful and take it slow," Jenks said.

Jack hit the switch again to bring Yoyo in, never so happy to obey an order from the crusty old master chief.

As Turtle slowly wound its way around the diving bell, Yoyo was slowly pulled up. Sarah plotted the downward-angled cave the sonar had picked up far below the falls that may be a prehistoric lava vent, but without seeing it firsthand she couldn't be sure. But the water that flowed out of that particular vent was thirty degrees cooler than that of the lagoon at that depth.

The two professors were debating the existence of the animal they had just witnessed when a shudder coursed through the bell. Sarah held onto her clipboard full of calculations, and Ellenshaw and Keating stopped their bickering long enough to look above them at the rounded ceiling.

"Our visitor's back. Goddammit, it's messing with the umbilical lines!" the master chief called.

The creature first pulled on the steel cable, then on the rubber oxygen line, and then the electrical and oxygen lines together. It shook them lightly at first, then harder.

Sarah and the two professors were rocked in their seats as the bell was pulled from side to side. Then suddenly they stopped moving.

"It's coming down the line toward the bell," Jenks called.

The creature appeared at Ellenshaw's window and then quickly darted away. Then Keating made a frightened puppy sound as the thing suddenly came up in front of him. The half-man, half-animal placed a hand on the glass and tilted its large head. The thick lips parted as its gills worked. The black eyes narrowed and blinked three sets of clear eyelids.

"I don't care for this," Ellenshaw said. "This behavior is not common to an animal in the wild. It should exhibit curiosity and then move on."

"I agree, this is not right," Keating said.

"Oh, now you agree. Jesus!" Sarah said in exasperation as the beast raised a webbed hand and struck the glass in front of Ellenshaw.

"Uh-oh," Sarah said just as the beast struck the glass. "Jack, get us out of here!"

The bell immediately started to climb.

"It's bashing the hull!" Jenks hollered.

The creature swiped at the glass, then the titanium bell, and quickly kicked out with its legs. It rose to the umbilicus again and started pulling and swiping at the cables in a maddened frenzy.

"That does it, it's going to kill them," Jenks said as he applied forward thrust to Turtle .

Mendenhall grabbed for the two handholds along the top of the canopy, pushed back in his seat by their sudden acceleration as they rushed toward Yoyo at full speed.

The beast pulled up suddenly as it was struck by the pressure wave sent out from the advancing Turtle . It stopped its attack and hovered for a moment, eyeing the threat coming at it. Then it swam back toward the bell, going from window to window to look into the interior. Then an explosion of bubbles came from its mouth as it reached out toward the window Ellenshaw was close to and struck it hard, rocking the bell from side to side. Finally it suddenly broke off the attack and vanished into the darkness in a swirl of bubbles.

"Beats the hell out of looking for Bigfoot, doesn't it?" the shaking Keating said with a nervous chuckle.

Ellenshaw ignored the slight and continued to alternate between his window and the monitor mounted on the bell, trying desperately to find the beast once again.

"Okay, Jack, it's off the scope, bring us up," Sarah said as she slowly pulled off her headset and sank down into her seat.

Twenty minutes later, Sarah was back in Teacher , in navigation, plotting the underwater cave the sonar had picked up.

"It may just be an extinct lava vent, but look at this," she pointed at the graph laid out on the large map table. They saw that her hand was still shaking slightly from their encounter in the water. "See how perfectly round this is? It's about fifteen feet in diameter, I would say. I don't know, Jack, but if I were forced to guess at this point, I would say that cave is man-made and not a lava vent at all."