Murray Leinster - Creatures of the Abyss

“Why argue only for Jupiter?” asked Deirdre. “Venus is supposed to be mostly ocean. There could be abyssal life there.”

The crew-cuts joined in the argument, but tentatively, because there were many experts present.

Midnight came. The open sea outside the reef showed nothing unusual. The waves glittered palely at their tips. There were little flashings in the water where an occasional surface fish darted. The stars shone. The moon was not yet risen.

Two o’clock came. The Esperance people were divided. Terry and Davis were too apprehensive to sleep. Deirdre’d gone confidently to the yacht to turn in. The crew-cuts slept peacefully, too. Davis said uneasily, “I’ve got a feeling that the… objects are at the surface, or very close to it, but that they simply aren’t showing themselves. I think they’re lying in ambush. The squid that was killed must have had trouble getting into the lagoon. They probably won’t try to get the big ones in. They’ll wait… ”

Terry shook his head.

“We killed that little one—save the mark!—and its death was probably reported in some fashion. So maybe they’ll use the big ones on the surface as bait for another kind of weapon. Foam, for example. We know how a ship simply dropped out of sight, as if into a hole.”

“I know!” said Davis drearily. “I told the flattop about that. But I don’t think they really believe it.”

At two-thirty Davis and Terry went down to the yacht. They stood on the deck. They kept watch by mere instinct. There was no activity anywhere. Faint noises were coming from La Rubia. Maybe her crew was repacking the hastily loaded masses of squid-flesh. The last-quarter moon rose at long last, and shone upon the glassy-rippled water of the lagoon. Star-images danced beside its reflection.

A little after three, quite abruptly, the Diesels of La Rubia rumbled and boomed. The dark silhouette of the ship headed across the lagoon toward its opening. Terry swore.

“She lifted her anchor without making a noise,” he said angrily. “Her skipper wants to get to Manila with his catch before it spoils! Damnation! I told him not to leave without warning. Anything could be waiting outside!”

He raced for the shore and the outboard motorboat Davis shouted down the forecastle and pelted after him. Terry had the outboard in the water by the time Davis arrived. He jumped in and pulled the starter. The motor caught.

The outboard went rushing across the water. Its wake was a brilliant bluish luminescence.

The booming of the Diesels grew louder. Capitan Saavedra thought he had put over a fast one on los americanos, who had moved the fish from where he regularly captured them in vast quantities and gathered them in a lagoon where his nets tore. They had given him most of a monster squid, true, but they had reserved certain parts for themselves. They were undoubtedly the most valuable parts. So when labor officially ceased at sundown, La Rubia’s skipper only pretended to accept the idea. In the last hour his crew had quietly completed loading La Rubia with squid. They’d been carefully silent. They’d lifted anchor without noise. Now La Rubia headed for the lagoon entrance, heavy in the water but with precise information about what coral heads needed to be dodged. She had on board a cargo history had no parallel for. Her skipper expected to be rewarded with fame, as well as cash.

When the outboard motor rushed toward La Rubia, Capitan Saavedra zestfully gave his engines full throttle.

When the racketing, roaring motorboat arrived beside his ship, and Terry shouted to him to stop, he chuckled and drove on. In fact, he left La Rubia’s pilot-house to wave cheerfully at the two men. They frantically ran close and shouted to him above the rat-tat-tatting of their own motor and the rumble of his Diesels.

La Rubia reached the lagoon entrance with the smaller boat close at her side, and Terry still shouting.

But Capitan Saavedre did not believe. Maybe he did not understand. Certainly he did not obey. Ocean swells lifted and tossed the motorboat. It became necessary to slow down, for safety. But La Rubia went grandly on, into the open sea.

“We can’t force him to stop,” said Davis in a despairing voice. “He won’t. I only hope we’re wrong, and he gets through!”

The outboard stayed where it was, and swells tossed it haphazardly. La Rubia switched on her navigation lights. She drove zestfully to the southward. She sailed on, dwindling in size, as the drone of her Diesels diminished in volume.

Looking back, Terry saw the Esperance approaching from the lagoon, dark figures on her deck. Terry shouted, cries answered him, and the Esperance came to a stop as the motorboat drew alongside.

Terry and Davis scrambled to her deck while one of the crew-cuts led the smaller boat astern and tethered it.

“We’re safe enough here,” Terry said bitterly, “and since you’ve come, we can stay and watch if anything happens. If only she keeps on going…”

But La Rubia did not. Her lights showed that she had changed course. She changed course again. Her masthead light began to waver from side to side. She wallowed in such a way that it was clear she was neither on course nor in motion any longer.

Nobody gave orders, but the Esperance’s engine roared. The action from this point on became an automatic and quick response to an emergency.

The schooner-yacht plunged ahead at top speed. Terry switched on the recorder and the ultrapowerful sound projector. Davis bent over the searchlight. Two of the crew-cuts readied the bazookas.

Suddenly, a flare went off on La Rubia’s deck. Her stubby masts and spars became startlingly bright. Screams came across the waves, even above the growling of the surf and above the noise of the Esperance’s engine.

The flare shot through the air. It arched in a high parabola, bright in the sky, and fell into the sea. Another flare was ignited.

The Esperance’s searchlight flicked on. A long pencil of light reached across the waves as she raced on. More screamings were heard. Another flare burned. It arched overside. The Esperance plunged on, shouldering aside the heavier waves of open water.

A half-mile. A quarter-mile. La Rubia wallowed crazily, and more shrieks came from her deck. Then the fishing boat seemed to swing. Beyond her, a conical, glistening and utterly horrifying monster emerged, a mere few yards from her rail. Enormous eyes glittered in the searchlight rays. A monstrous tentacle with a row of innumerable sucker-disks reached over the stern of La Rubia.

Another flare swept from the fishing boat’s deck in the direction of the giant squid. It fell upon wetted, shining flesh. The monster jerked, and La Rubia was shaken from stem to stern. Hurriedly, Terry pressed the power-feed button, and the sound projector was on. Its effect was instantaneous. The monster began to writhe convulsively. It was gigantic. It was twice, three times the size of the squid captured in the lagoon. Terry heard his own voice cry out, “Bazookas! Use ’em! Use ’em!”

Flaring rocket missiles sped toward the giant. Davis flung one of the hand grenades he’d manufactured. The yacht plunged on toward the clutched, half-sunk fishing boat. The hand grenade exploded against the monster’s flesh. Simultaneously, the bazooka-missiles hit their target and flung living, incandescent flame deep into the creature’s body. Those flames would melt steel. They bored deeply into the squid, and they were infinitely more damaging than bullets.

The creature leaped from the water, as chunks of its flesh exploded. It was a mountainous horror risen from the sea. As it leaped, it had squirted the inky substance which is the squid’s ultimate weapon of defense. But, unlike small squid, this beast of the depths squirted phosphorescent ink.