“It’s hard to describe exactly,” Lieutenant Todd had answered slowly. “You see, it had four doodads hanging out of these vertical slits in its head. They were all mean looking—”
The doctor had come up and interrupted. “Gentlemen,” he had said with a perfect bedside smile, “my patient desperately needs rest. Surely some of these questions can wait until tomorrow.”
Commander Winters remembered an overpowering sense of bewilderment as he watched the gurney take Lieutenant Todd from the emergency operating room to the infirmary. As soon as Todd was out of earshot, the commander had turned to Lieutenant Ramirez. “And what do you make of all this, Lieutenant?”
“Commander, sir, I’m no medical expert…”
“I know that, Lieutenant. I don’t want your medical opinion. I want to know what you think about the, uh, carrot business.” Damn him, Winters had thought. Does he have so little imagination that he can’t even react to Todd’s story?
“Sir,” Ramirez had replied, “the carrot business is outside my experience.”
To say the least. Winters smiled to himself and flipped his cigarette into the water. He walked over to the little wheel-house and checked the navigator. They were only seven miles from the target boat and converging rapidly. He pulled back on the throttle and put the boat into neutral gear. Winters did not want to draw any closer to the Florida Queen until Ramirez and the other two seamen were awake and in position.
He estimated that it was still about forty minutes until sunrise. Winters laughed again about Ramirez’s unwillingness to venture a comment on Todd’s carrot story. But the young Latino is a good officer. His only mistake was following Todd. Winters remembered how quickly Ramirez had organized all the details of their current sortie, picking the high-tech converted trawler for speed and stealth, rousting the two bachelor seamen who worked for him in Intelligence, and establishing a special link between the base and the trawler so that the whereabouts of the Florida Queen would be known at all times.
“We must follow them. We really have no choice,” Lieutenant Ramirez had said firmly to Winters after they had verified that Nick’s boat had indeed left the Hemingway Marina just after two o’clock. “Otherwise there’s no way we could ever justify our having taken them into custody in the first place.”
Winters had reluctantly agreed and Ramirez had organized the chase. The commander had told the younger men to get some sleep while he formulated the plan. Which is simple. Okay, you guys, come with us and answer the questions or we’ll charge you under the sedition act of 1991. Now, after putting the boat in idle, Winters was ready to wake Ramirez and the other two men. He intended to apprehend Nick, Carol, and Troy as soon as it was daylight.
The wind around the boat changed direction and Winters stopped a minute to check the weather. He turned his face toward the moon. The air suddenly felt warmer, almost hot, and he was reminded of a night off the coast of Libya eight years earlier. The worst night of my life, he thought. For a few moments his resolve to carry out his plan wavered and he asked himself if he was about to make another mistake.
Then he heard a trumpet blast, followed maybe four seconds later by a similar but quieter sound. Winters looked around him in the placid ocean. He saw nothing. Now he heard a group of trumpets and their echo, both sounds distinctly coming from the west. The commander strained his eyes in the direction of the moon. Silhouetted against its face he saw what appeared to be a group of snakes dancing out of the water. He went inside the wheelhouse to fetch a pair of binoculars.
By the time the commander returned to the railing a magnificent symphony surrounded him. Where is this incredible music coming from? he asked at first, before he succumbed completely to its mesmerizing beauty. He stood powerless against the railing, listening intently. The music was rich, emotional, full of evocative longing. Winters was swept away. not only into his own past where his deepest memories were stored, but also onto another planet in another era where proud and dignified serpents with blue necks called to their loved ones during their short annual mating rite.
He was spellbound. Tears were already flooding into his eyes when he at last mechanically lifted the binoculars and focused on the strange, sinuous shapes underneath the moon. The ghostlike images were completely transparent; the moonlight went right through them. As Winters watched what was a thousand necks dancing above the water, cavorting back and forth in perfect rhythm, and as he heard the music build toward the concluding crescendo of the Canthorean mating symphony, his tired eyes blurred and he swore that what he saw across the water in front of him, calling to him with a song of longing and desire, was an image of Tiffani Thomas. His heart was devastated by the combination of the music and the sight of her. Winters was aware of an intense sense of loss unparalleled in his life.
Yes, he said to himself as Tiffani continued to beckon in the distance, I’m coming. I’m sorry Tiffani darling. Tomorrow I will come to see you. We will… He stopped his interior monologue to wipe his eyes. The music had now entered the final crescendo. signaling the actual mating dance of the pairs of Canthorean serpents. Winters looked through his binoculars again. The image of Tiffani was gone. He adjusted his glasses. Joanna Carr came into focus, smiled briefly, and disappeared. A moment later the little Arab girl from the Virginia beach seemed to dance just under the moon. She was happy and gay. She too was gone in an instant.
The music was all around him. Bursts of sound, powerful, full, expressing pleasure no longer anticipated but now being experienced. He looked through his binoculars one more time. The moon was setting. As it fell into the ocean the image created against its illuminated disc by the dancing serpents was unmistakable. Winters clearly saw the faces of his wife, Betty, and his son, Hap. They were smiling at him together with a deep and abiding affection. They remained there in his vision until the moon sank completely into the ocean.
3
Carol struggled to adjust her diving equipment. “Do you need some help, angel?” Troy asked. He came over and stood beside her in the predawn dark. He was already fully prepared for the dive.
“I haven’t worn anything like this since my first set of scuba lessons,” she said, fidgeting uncomfortably with the old-fashioned gear.
Troy tightened the weight belt around her waist. “You’re scared, aren’t you, angel?” Carol didn’t answer right away. “Me too. My pulse rate must be twice normal.”
Carol’s equipment seemed to please her finally. “You know, Troy, even after the last three days my brain is having a hard time convincing the rest of me that all this is really happening. Imagine writing it down for someone to read. “As we were preparing to return to the alien spaceship…’ ”
“Hey, you guys, come here,” Nick called from the other side of the canopy. Carol and Troy walked around to the front of the boat. Nick was staring out across the ocean to the east. He handed a small pair of binoculars to Carol. “Do you see a light out there in the distance, just to the left of that island?”
Carol could barely make out the light. “Uh huh,” she said to Nick. “But so what? Isn’t it reasonable that somewhere out in the ocean there would be another boat?”
“Of course,” Nick answered. “But that light hasn’t moved for fifteen minutes. It’s just sitting there. Why would a fishing boat, or any other kind of boat, be—”
“Sh,” interrupted Troy. He put his fingers to his lips. “Listen,” he whispered, “I hear music.”
His companions stood quietly on the deck. Behind them the moon disappeared into the ocean. Above the gentle lapping of the waves all three of them could hear what sounded like the climax of a symphony, played by a full orchestra. They listened for thirty seconds. The music reached a peak, faded slightly, and then ceased abruptly.