Murray Leinster - Creatures of the Abyss

She went below. Terry continued to watch, while figures at the stern of the schooner went through an involved process of visual measurement. It was not simple to determine the dimensions of a patch of shimmering light flashes from a boat in motion. But presently, Davis came toward him.

“It’s thirteen hundred yards across,” he told Terry. “Plus or minus twenty.”

“I didn’t expect all this,” Davis said, frowning. “I’ve been making guesses and hoping fervently that I was wrong. And I have been, but each time the proof that I was wrong has led to new guesses, and I’m afraid to think those guesses may be right.”

“I can’t begin to guess yet,” said Terry.

“You will!” Davis assured him. “You will! You try to add up things…A half-mile-wide patch of foam that piles up thirty feet above the sea… ”

“And into which,” Terry interrupted, “a sailing ship does not sink but drops out of sight as if there were a hole in the sea.”

Davis turned sharply toward him.

“There were some photographs and a newspaper clipping on the cabin table,” explained Terry. “I suspected they might have been put there for me lo see.”

“Deirdre, perhaps,” said Davis. “She’s resolved to involve you in this. You’ve got scruples, so she suspects you of having brains. Yes. You’ll add those things up. You’ll include the remarkable success of a fishing boat named La Rubia and the fact that she sometimes brings in very strange fish … And then you’ll add … ”

His eyes flickered aloft. A shooting star streaked across one-third of the sky leaving a trail of light behind it. Then it went out.

“You’ll even be tempted,” said Davis, “to include something like that in your guesses! And then you’ll try to come up with a total for the lot. Then you’ll be as troubled as I am.”

He paused a moment.

“You said you wanted to be put ashore as soon as the gadget you made today was tested. I hope you’ve changed your mind, or will. That tape-recording may mean something to somebody. We wouldn’t have heard that very singular noise but for you.”

“I withdraw the business of going ashore,” said Terry uncomfortably. “I’m going to ask another question. What are those little spheres that I saw in the photographs on the cabin table? Were they found fastened to the fish?”

“So I’m told,” said Davis. “They are made of plastic. One was on a fish caught by a chief petty officer of the United States Navy. Four have been found on fish brought into the market by La Rubia. They could conceivably be a joke, but it’s very elaborate! Somebody tried to cut one open and it burst to hell-and-gone. Terrific pressure inside. The metal parts inside were iridium. The others haven’t been cut open. They’re—” Davis’ tone was dry. “They’re being studied.”

A figure came out of the forecastle and walked aft. It was Nick. He stopped to say, “I called Manila and got a loran fix on us. We’re right at the place La Rubia heads for every time she sneaks away from the rest of the fishing fleet. It seems that she hauls her nets yonder.”

He nodded toward the circular area of luminosity on the sea. “It looks smaller than when I went below deck.”

Davis stared. He seemed to stiffen.

“It does. We’ll make sure.”

He went aft. Deirdre came up with sandwiches. Terry took the tray from her and followed her toward the others.

“Cigars, cigarettes, candy, sandwiches?” she asked cheerfully.

Davis was back at the task of measuring the angle subtended by the patch of shining sea, and then closely estimating its distance from the Esperance. He said, “It is smaller. Eleven hundred yards, now.”

“When La Rubia was here today,” said Terry, “it might have been a couple of miles across. Even that would be a terrific concentration of fish! They’re not all at the surface.”

Davis said with impatience, seemingly directed against himself, “It’s narrowed two hundred yards in the past half-hour. It must be tending toward something! There has to be a conclusion to it! Something must be about to happen!”

Deirdre said slowly, “If it’s the equivalent of a seine being hauled, with a hum instead of a net, what’s going to happen when it’s time for the fish to be boated?”

Davis ignored her for a moment. Then he said irritably, “Everyone seems to have more brains than I do! Tony, break out those gun-cameras. Nick, get back and report if the bright spot’s getting any smaller. I wish you weren’t here, Deirdre!”

The two crew-cuts moved to obey. Terry, alone, had no specific duty assigned to him on the yacht, unless tending to the recorder was it. He bent over the instrument which was playing in the air anything that a trailing microphone picked up under water. He raised the volume a trifle. He could still hear the singular noises of the agitated fish mixed in with the thin, strangely offensive humming sound. He heard small thumpings, and realized that they were the footfalls of his companions on the deck of the Esperance, transmitted to the water. He heard…

Tony came abovedecks with an armful of mysterious-looking objects which could not be seen quite clearly in the slanting moonlight. He put two of them down by the wheel and passed out the others. He silently left one for Terry and another for Deirdre, while Terry adjusted tone and volume on the recorder for maximum clarity.

“What arc those?” asked Terry.

“Cameras,” said Deirdre. “Mounted on rifle stocks, with flash bulbs in the reflectors. You aim, pull the trigger, and the shutter opens as the flash bulb goes off. So you get a picture of whatever you aim at, night or day.”

“Why…”

“There was a time when my father thought they might be useful,” said Deirdre. “Then it looked like they wouldn’t. Now it looks like they may.”

Terry was tempted to say, “Useful for what?” But Davis’ vague talk of unpleasant wrong guesses which led to even less pleasant ones had already been an admission that no convincing answer could be given him. Davis came over to him.

“This has me worried,” he said in a frustrated tone of indecision. “We must be near the end of some process that I didn’t suspect, and the conclusion of which I can’t guess. I don’t know what it is, and I don’t know what it’s for. I only know what it’s tied in with.”

Terry said absorbedly, “Two or three times I’ve picked up some new kinds of sounds. You might call them mooing noises. They’re very faint, as if they were far away, and there are long intervals between them. I don’t think they come from the surface.”

Davis made an irresolute gesture. He seemed to hesitate over something he was inclined to accept. Deirdre protested before he could speak. “I don’t think what you’re thinking is right!” she said firmly. “Not a bit of it! Whatever happens will be connected with the fish. La Rubia has been around this sort of thing over and over again! We haven’t been running the engine and we haven’t been making any specific noises in the water to arouse curiosity! If anything were going to happen to us, it would have happened to La Rubia before now! It would be ridiculous to run away just because I’m on board!”

Terry, bent intently over the recorder, suddenly felt a cold chill run up and down his spine. His mind told him it was ridiculous to associate distant mooing sounds, underwater, with a completely unprecedented, frantic gathering of fish into one small area, and come up with the thought that something monstrous and plaintive was coming blindly to feed upon fellow creatures of the sea. There was nothing to justify the thought. It was out of all reason. But his spine crawled, just the same.