Jeff Rovin - Fatalis

What does it say ? Grand thought. No one would play a trick like this and risk expulsion. And though he'd have tests run again, they were rarely wrong.

"Jim?" Hannah pressed.

"According to this, the hair I found belongs to a living animal that's been extinct for at least eleven thousand years."

"What animal?"

" Smilodon fatalis ," Grand said. He looked at her. "A saber-toothed cat."

The sun had gone down, the moon was rising, and the wind and currents were finally cooperating to bring the Hobie Cat almost within "walkin' distance" to shore. At least, that's how Patrick Vlaskovitz described where they were-six fathoms from the bottom at roughly a quarter of a mile out, which the young student knew he could swim if he had to. Whether Tim Douglass and Pancho d'Escoto could swim it, he didn't know.

Vlaskovitz also didn't care. After a shitload of hours just drifting out here, with the Cat's tail busted and d'Escoto not having remembered to bring the freaking phone, which was his responsibility, they were lucky to be within sight of shore at all. Only Vlaskovitz's skill with the sail had kept them from heading out to Japan or frigging Tonga on currents that were slightly stronger than the wind. At least Douglass had stuffed some Twix bars under the seat pad, so they had something to chew on while they waited for the tides and currents to become more favorable and help them toward shore.

In a way, as d'Escoto had lamely pointed out, it was a good thing they hadn't sailed shoreward sooner. When it was still daylight the southbound coastwise traffic lane-which was farthest out-and the northbound coastwise traffic lane were clogged with big motorboats going way too fast to watch out for stranded Hobie Cats. Hell, they'd almost gotten clocked by a weather buoy, and that sucker was standing still. Douglass didn't share his enthusiasm. The navy's Pacific Missile Range was located just north of San Miguel Island and they could easily have drifted into that. None of them had bothered to check in with the twice-daily radio warnings because they didn't expect to be stranded the hell out here.

But stranded they were, so the three young men just sat on the teal trampoline slung between the peapod-shaped blue pontoons, getting colder and colder and waiting-as Douglass put it-"for air and water to return us to the earth."

Douglass was the poet of the group. At least, he was the only one who didn't look out the window during English lit.

And they would be returned to the shore relatively soon, unless they got caught and stranded in kelp, which was all along this coastline stretch of the Santa Barbara Channel, according to the small, laminated chart they had. That would be the final indignity. Three hunky sailors, suntanned and cool, with a busted rudder, chocolate Twix smears on their mouths, and a Hobie Cat with a proud red, orange, and yellow sail snarled in large bundles of seaweed.

The skies darkened, the planets and stars began to show, and the Hobie Cat continued to bob in the right direction. The waters were insistently choppy and Vlaskovitz knew that by the time they got back to shore it would be the land that seemed unsteady. Hopefully-since they'd also left the cell phone in the car-they'd be close enough to a pay phone to call for someone to come and get them and bring them back to their own wheels.

Vlaskovitz consulted the chart by moonlight. The Hobie Cat was now about four hundred feet from shore. They were headed to an area of the beach that was only one fathom deep. As soon as they cleared the mooring buoy, he'd get off the damn Cat and pull it to-

The Hobie Cat shuddered violently and then stopped dead. The trampoline bulged in the center. The three men, who had been more or less lounging, were quickly alert.

"What the fuck?" d'Escoto blurted. He grabbed the forward crossbar, which rested between the pontoons, to keep from being tossed over.

"Submerged rock-" Douglass shouted.

"Shift to port," Vlaskovitz told the others. He wanted to try to alleviate the pressure on the center to keep the fabric from tearing. He held onto the halyard but let it go slack as he moved.

As the men slid to the left side of the vessel, the bulge suddenly sagged and vanished. The sailors stopped moving as the Hobie Cat once again bobbed restlessly on the restless sea.

"Ohhhhkay," d'Escoto said.

The other two sailors continued to watch the trampoline in silence. The slap of the dark water on the pontoons seemed unusually loud and active. It was stronger, Vlaskovitz decided as beads of water popped higher than before as the wavelets struck the pontoons.

Vlaskovitz tightened his hold on the halyard. They weren't far from shore and he wanted to get moving again. He didn't know what they'd hit, but he didn't want to run into it again.

As he began maneuvering the sail to catch the wind, the world flipped over. The Hobie Cat went up on its forward end, dropping the three men in the water, then stood on-end for a moment. The sailors popped back up just in time to see the catamaran pulled straight down. The vessel went under so hard and so fast that the mast bent back and snapped. The sail and heavy guylines whipped around before they submerged and then the catamaran was gone.

The cool waters calmed almost at once. Vlaskovitz dog-paddled in place as he waited for the Cat or some part of it to bob back up. It had to. They were only in ten or eleven feet of water and the vessel was nearly that long. But nothing came back up. Not even the chart.

"We got a fucking shark!" Douglass cried, spitting a mouthful of seawater across his chattering teeth.

They might. Vlaskovitz couldn't think of anything else that would have pulled the Cat down like that.

"Shit!" d'Escoto yelled.

The young man started swimming madly toward shore. Vlaskovitz and Douglass started after him.

"Slow it down, Pancho!" Vlaskovitz screamed. "If it's a shark, the motion may-"

D'Escoto stopped abruptly, straightened, and went down.

Vlaskovitz and Douglass stopped side by side. Moonlight swam across the still-swirling waters where the student had been.

"Shit sticks," Douglass said. "This is bad."

Vlaskovitz looked at his companion. They were vulnerable to attack and their body temperatures were dropping. They had to get out of there.

"Listen," Vlaskovitz said. "It's only about four hundred feet to shore. If we go in about a hundred feet more we can ride the breakers home."

"What about Pancho?"

"Swim," Vlaskovitz said.

"You mean we just leave him-?"

"We leave him or we join him," Vlaskovitz said. "Now let's go-but slowly. Don't kick if you can help it."

Vlaskovitz started out doing a slow, steady breast stroke. Douglass went with him.

"It's going to get us," Douglass said as he gulped down breaths.

"No way," Vlaskovitz said. He kept his eyes on the white-gold sand of the deserted beach. It wasn't that far away; all they needed to do was get there.

Their bodies rose and dipped with the swells, the water chilling them through their black, water-resistant suits. Despite his efforts to concentrate on the shore, Vlaskovitz was thinking about d'Escoto. He wondered if his friend died instantly or if he was alive long enough to realize what was happening to him. Maybe not. He hadn't screamed; he just seemed to freeze. Or maybe he was underwater by the time he figured it out, when it was too late to scream.

Jesus.

The current suddenly picked up beneath him. When Vlaskovitz felt the initial upward bump he thought it was something moving toward him from below. But then the wave began to roll him forward, fast, and he and Douglass were swept closer to shore. When the swell dissipated about one hundred feet from shore, the young man felt a slight undertow as the current pulled back. He resumed swimming slowly. Though the waters were probably only six or seven feet deep here, he didn't want to try and touch bottom yet. They'd get to shore faster if they continued to ride the waves.