Gordon Dickson - Time Storm

Just before the sun was full overhead, one of the lizards lying near the edge of the raft, beyond which the shark was presently patrolling, got to his feet. He stood facing down at the shark in the water, and then he began to bounce as he stood, not moving his feet, but bending his knees slightly so that he bobbed up and down like someone on a diving board getting ready to dive.

Once started, he continued the bobbing steadily and with a sort of reflexive monotony of pace. The other lizards seemed to be paying no attention to him; but after perhaps half an hour, when I looked back over at where he was, after having my attention elsewhere for a while, I saw that another of the lizards, about ten feet from him, was now also on his feet and bobbing. The two of them matched their rhythms precisely, rising and falling together as if the same invisible spring was actuating them both.

An hour later, there were four of them on their feet and bobbing. Gradually, more and more of the others joined them in silent, continuous movement—until by mid-afternoon all the lizards on the ship were performing the same soundless, feet-in-place dance.

The shark, meanwhile, either having seen them on the edge of the raft, or—what is more likely—having been attracted by the vibrations of their movements through the logs and the water, was now patrolling in very short runs back and forth, almost within touching distance, it seemed, of the raft edge.

Suddenly, as the shark passed, one of the lizard figures leaped into the water upon its back... and all at once the air was full of lizards taking to the water, I ran to the side of the raft and looked out—and down. The shark was already at the bottom of the bay, moving rapidly away from the raft. But the lizards were all over him, like green-scaled dogs clinging to a bull. Their heavy jaws were tearing chunks out of the shark’s incredibly tough hide; and a filmy cloud of blood was spreading through the underwater. Not merely shark’s blood, either. I saw the huge selachian catch a lizard in its jaws and literally divide him in half.

Then the whole struggle moved away out of my sight, headed toward the open sea, as the shark evidently followed its reflex to go for deeper water.

For some moments I simply stood, staring—then the implications of the situation exploded on me. I ran to the girl and grabbed her by the arm.

“Come on,” I said. “Come on, now’s our chance! We can get ashore now, while they’re all gone.”

She did not answer. She only stared at me. I looked over at Sunday.

“Come, Sunday!”

He came. The girl came also. She did not hang back; but on the other hand, she only let {ne pull her toward the shoreside of the raft, which was its forward end.

“We’ve got to swim for the beach!” I shouted at her. “If you can’t swim, hang on to me. You understand?”

I roared the last two words at her as if she was deaf; but she only stared back at me. She was not hindering, but neither was she helping. The cold thought came through me that, once more, I was being put in a concerned situation. Why didn’t I go off and leave her—her and the leopard both, if it came to that? The important thing was that I live, not that I save other people’s lives.

But, you know, I could not. Somehow, to go ashore by myself and leave both of them here was unthinkable. But she would have to do something more than just stand there, not making an active effort to get ashore. I tried to tell her this; but it was at once like talking to someone who was deaf and someone who had given up thinking.

I was reaching the desperation point. I was about to throw her bodily into the water when the first of the lizards started coming back aboard the raft, and our chance to escape was past.

I gave up and turned back to watch them climb out of the water onto the logs. Those who had been hurt were the first to return. They crawled back up into the sunlight, one by one, and dropped down, to lie as still as if each of them had been knocked on the head.

Lizards kept coming back over the next half hour or so. The last dozen or so to come aboard had been very badly bitten by the shark. Three of these later died, and the surviving lizards simply pushed the bodies overside. The tide took them out in the late afternoon, and in the morning they were gone. There would be plenty of scavengers waiting for them.

The lizards did not go immediately back to their shell-fishing when day broke the following morning. They had evidently won their battle with the large shark—though my guess was that it had cost them at least a dozen of their number. But they seemed exhausted by the effort; and as the sun rose, the clear water of the bay showed itself to be full of small sharks, not more than two or three feet long but dashing around madly as if still excited by the gore and torn meat of the day before. Sunday, the girl and I were still uncaged; and I began to hope that, possibly, this would become the permanent state of affairs. If so, I appreciated it; although of course, I could always have cut myself out of my woven cage with my pocketknife and then freed the girl and Sunday.

I could not decide what was keeping the smaller sharks around us. There was nothing for them to feed on that I could see. Then that night the first storm I had ever known to ruffle that sea blew up, a heavy, tropical rainstorm type of atmospheric explosion; and I found out why they were still with us.

The wind began in the afternoon, and the sky piled up with white clouds which crowded together and darkened until we had an early twilight. Then the breeze died and the water beneath us became viscid and heavy. The raft rocked, rubbing on the floor of the bay with its undergrowth, swayed by a swell that came in on us from far out on the airless water, even though we felt no wind where we were.

Then lightning and thunder began to flicker and growl—high up in the clouds above us, but also far out, over the open water. A new, cold breeze sprang up, blowing shoreward, strengthening as the daylight faded; and the sound and activity of the storm grew, approaching us and coming lower, closer toward the surface of the sea. As the last of the sun’s illumination went, leaving us in a pitch darkness, the storm broke over us with its full power; and we clung in darkness to the now heavily pitching and rolling raft.

I had found a place to wedge myself among the trees of our “sail,” with one arm around the girl and the other holding on to Sunday. The girl trembled and shivered as the cold rainwater poured down on us; but the leopard took it stoically, pressing close to me but never moving. Around us, also wedged in among the trees, were some of the lizards. Where the rest of them were, I had no idea. It was impossible to see someone in the total darkness unless they were right beside you. In the total darkness, vision came only in brief glimpses, every few seconds or so, when there would be a crack of thunder and a vivid lightning flash that lit up the whole surface of the raft, streaming with the rain and plunging like a tethered horse as the black waves all around us tried to drive us up on the beach, and the raft’s undergrowth, grounded on the sand below, resisted.

The lightning flashes were like explosions in the mind. After the sudden brilliance of each was gone, the scene it revealed would linger for a second on the retina and in the mind before fading out. I got wild glimpses of the struggling raft—and wilder glimpses of the waters of the bay, not merely their surface but their depths, as sometimes the raft heeled over to hold us in a position staring almost directly down into the heaving sea.

The water was alive with marine life of all kinds, visible in the lightning flashes, dashing about in a frenzy. I had wondered what had brought all the small sharks into the bay after the fight with the big shark was over. Now I suddenly saw why. Like a great waterlogged mass bumping and rolling along the very floor of the bay, impelled by the storm and by the fly-like swarm of smaller fish tearing at its carcass, the huge shark, now dead, was with us again.