Murray Leinster - Creatures of the Abyss

“I need,” said Terry slowly, “to have a number of people in Manila know now of something that’s going to happen out at sea tonight. They’ll be needed to testify that they knew of the prediction before the event. Can you arrange it?”

“Por supuesto,” said Horta’s voice cheerfully. “Are we not amigos? What is the prediction and who should know?”

“The prediction,” said Terry doggedly, anticipating disbelief and protest, “is that at twelve minutes after nine o’clock tonight a large meteorite will fall into the sea where—hmm—where La Rubia catches her fish. No, you’d better not locate it that way. I’ll give you the position.”

Davis, standing by, wrote the position in latitude and longitude and handed it to him. He read it into the transmitter.

“Have you got it?” he demanded. “Is it written down?”

“Ah, yes,” said Horta tranquilly. “I will see that they make a memorandum of the matter. Shall I tell three or four persons, or more? I have news for you also. Jimenez …”

“Look here!” said Terry sharply. “I want this thing to be past all doubt! Everybody who’s ever been worried about La Rubia should know about this! There should be no possible doubt about it! But there should be disbelief, so people who don’t believe will try to verify that it didn’t happen, so they can crow over the people who thought it would, or might.”

“Ah!” said Horta. “You wish you stick out the neck! It is serious! Now tell me again!”

“At twelve minutes after nine tonight,” said Terry doggedly, “A shooting star will fall into the sea at… “ He named the latitude and longitude Davis had given him. “That is where La Rubia catches her fish.”

“A shooting star will fall there?” protested Hora. “But who knows where they fall?”

“You do,” said Terry. “This one, anyhow. Now, will you see that a number of people know about it?”

“It is cr-azy!” objected Horta. Then he said, “I will do it.”

The short-wave call ended, with Horta too much disturbed to refer again to Jimenez.

By sunset Doug had gotten out the gun-cameras. Doug held an impromptu class on deck, showing the other crew-cuts exactly how to aim the cameras and expose the films, and what button to press to change film automatically between shots. He was unhappy because he did not know how bright the object to be photographed would be, for his lens-settings. He was even more unhappy because the bolide might travel at practically any angular velocity, so he didn’t know how to set the shutters. But the focus would be infinity, and if he used the fastest possible film, he could stop most motion with a hundredth second exposure.

Instead of reaching Thrawn Island shortly after sunset, then, the Esperance was back above the place where the dredge had been dropped and the bathyscaphe wrecked. The Pelorus was gone. The people on board that ship must have been very upset. The bathyscaphe had cost more money than is usually allotted to most scientific researchers, and now it was smashed. How would they justify themselves? They could hardly blame the Esperance.

The yacht sailed in a closed pattern over this area of the Luzon Deep. Deirdre served dinner on deck. Stars shone down almost instantly after a sunset of unusual magnificence, even for the China Sea. Tony brought his guitar aft, and a contagious feeling of exhilaration spread about the Esperance and an improvised party took place on deck. Maybe the mood for festivity arose from the realization that at least nine-tenths of the world’s population would have graded them as lunatics, had it known their project for the evening.

It would have been unjust, of course. Terry reflected that it had not been their idea to make an appointment with a shooting star. They were doing it out of some sort of professional courtesy, “from one set of crackpots to another,” Terry phrased it in his own mind. It was a wild attempt to secure proof of the starkly impossible. So there was chatter, singing, and some dancing. The high spot was perhaps the time when Jug bashfully serenaded the rigging and the stars above it with howling melodies he’d learned in college.

Eventually, Nick went down to the short-wave set. Doug passed out the gun-cameras again, after checking each one. Nick popped his head out of the hatch.

“Dr. Morton’s been calling like crazy,” he reported. “The bolide’s made four orbital turns, coming in all the while. It ought to touch the atmosphere next time around. ETO is nine-twelve-seventeen-seconds. I told him we’re all set.”

His head disappeared.

“Don’t forget!” Doug said anxiously. “The cameras will feel like shotguns but don’t lead your target! And don’t forget to press the film-changer!”

Terry lifted his gun-camera experimentally. It did feel like a shotgun. And then, suddenly, he disbelieved everything: the purpose of the Esperance’s original investigation; the phenomena that had been observed; the guesses that had been made. It was pure insanity! He felt a quick impatience with himself for becoming entangled in anything so ridiculous.

Deirdre leaned toward him and whispered forlornly, “Terry! It’s dreadful! I’ve just had an attack of common sense! What are we doing here? We’re crazy!”

He put his hand consolingly over hers. The act was unpremeditated and the sensation was startling. He found that they were staring at each other intently in the starlight.

“I think …” said Terry, unsteadily, “that it’s very sensible to be crazy. We’ve got to… talk this over.” Deirdre smiled at him shakily. “Y-yes, we will.”

Then Davis pointed out positions for the camera operators. The bolide’s course should be three hundred fifty degrees, not quite on a north-south line. It might land short of, or beyond, the Esperance. Or it might pass many miles to the east or west. Dr. Morton needed as many pictures of it against recognizable stars as could possibly be secured.

Suddenly, there was a faint, dull rumbling in the heavens. It grew louder. Presently, cruising lights appeared in the sky. They maintained a fixed relationship to each other. They looked like moving stars, flying in formation from star-cluster to star-cluster.

Nick popped abovedecks again.

“The planes just called us,” he reported. “They’ve just had a Loran position-check and they’re on the mark. They’ve got orders to observe any unusual phenomena occurring around nine-twelve P.M., Manila time. Using civilian terminology, it sounds like they’re saying the Philippine Government asked them to come out and take a look.”

“It’s five after nine now,” said Davis.

The Esperance headed into the wind. Her bow rose and fell. Waves washed past, and roarings trundled about under the stars overhead, and very tiny fights moved in a compact group across the firmament.

Time passed.

At twenty-two seconds after nine-twelve—which is to say at twenty-one hours, twelve minutes, twenty-two seconds—a light appeared in the sky from the north. It grew steadily brighter. It suddenly flared very brightly indeed, then dimmed, and continued to rise above the horizon. Seconds later it flared again, very briefly.

Terry found himself aiming the gun-camera. He pulled trigger and changed film and pulled trigger and changed film.

The bright light ceased to climb. It grew steadily brighter and brighter, and then it flared for the third time—Terry’s mind asked skeptically, ‘Braking rockets?’—and the light was so intense that the cracks in the yacht’s deck-planking could be seen. Then the extra brilliance vanished, and suddenly the moving light was no longer white, but reddish.