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.
“The circle’s only eight hundred yards across, now,” said Davis, uneasily. “The fish can’t crowd together any closer! But Doug went overboard with diving goggles, and he says there’s a column of brightness as far down as he can make out.”
Terry looked up.
“He went overboard? Didn’t he tingle?”
“He said it was like baby nettles all over,” Davis protested, as if it were someone’s fault. “But he didn’t sting after he came out. It must be… ”
A mooing sound came out of the recorder. It was fainter than the other sounds and very far away. It must have been of terrific volume where it originated. It lasted for many seconds, then stopped.
“I should have been recording,” said Terry. “That sound comes up about every five minutes. I’ll catch it next time.”
Davis went away, as if he wanted to miss the noise and the decision it would force upon him. Yet Terry told himself obstinately that there was no reason to connect the mooing sound with the crazed fish herd half a mile away. But somehow he couldn’t help thinking there might be a connection.
The ship’s clock sounded seven bells. Deirdre said, “The brightness is really smaller now!” The patch of flashes was no more than half its original size. Terry pressed the recording button and straightened up to look more closely. Right then Deirdre said sharply, “Listen!”
Something new and quite unlike the mooing noise now came out of the recorder.
“Get your father,” commanded Terry. “Something’s coming from somewhere!”
Deirdre ran across the heaving deck. Terry shifted position so he could manipulate the microphone hanging over the yacht’s side into the water. Davis arrived. His voice was suddenly strained and grim. “Something’s coming?” he demanded. “Can you hear any engine noise?”
“Listen to it,” said Terry. “I’m trying to get its bearing.”
He turned the wire by which the submarine ear hung from the rail. The chirpings and squealings and squeakings changed volume as the microphone turned. But the new sound, of something rushing at high speed through the water—that did not change. Terry rotated the mike through a full circle. The fish noises dwindled to almost nothing, and then increased again. The volume of the steady hum changed with them. But the rushing sound remained steady. Rather, it grew in loudness, as if approaching. But the directional microphone didn’t register any difference, whether it received sound from the north, east, south, or west.
It was a booming sound. It was a rushing sound. It was the sound of an object moving at terrific speed through the water. There was no engine noise, but something thrust furiously through the sea, and the sound grew louder and louder.
“It’s not coming from any compass course,” said Terry shortly. “How deep is the water here?”
“We’re just over the edge of the Luzon Deep,” said Davis. “Four thousand fathoms. Five. Maybe six.”
“Then it can only be coming from one direction,” said Terry. “It’s coming from below. And it’s coming up.”
For three heartbeats Davis stood perfectly still. Then he said, with extreme grimness, “Since you mention it, that would be where it’s coming from.”
He turned away and shouted a few orders. The crewmen scurried swiftly. The yacht’s head fell away from the wind. Terry listened again to the rushing sound. There seemed to be regular throbbings in it, but still no engine noise. It was a steady drone.
“Bazooka shells ought to discourage anything,” Davis said in an icy voice. “If it attacks, let go at it. But try to use the gun-cameras first.”
The Esperance rolled and wallowed. Her bows lifted and fell. Her sails were black against the starry sky overhead. Two of the crew-cuts settled themselves at the starboard rail. They had long tubes in their hands, tubes whose details could not be seen. The wind hummed and thuttered in the rigging. Reef-points pattered. Near the port rail the recorder poured out the amplified sounds its microphone picked up from the sea.
The sound of the corning thing became louder than all the other noises combined. It was literally a booming noise. The water started to bubble furiously as it parted to let something rise to the surface from unthinkable depths.
Doug put two magazine-rifles beside Terry and Deirdre, then he moved away. Deirdre had a clumsy object in her hands. It had a rifle-stock and a trigger. What should have been the barrel was huge—six inches or more in diameter—but very short. That was the flashbulb reflector. The actual camera was small and on top, like a sight.
“We’ll aim these at anything we see,” said Deirdre composedly, “and pull the trigger. Then we’ll pick up the real rifles and see if we must shoot. Is that all right?”
She faced the shining patch of ocean. Davis and the crew-cut at the wheel faced that way. Tony and Jug stood with the clumsy tubes of bazookas facing the same direction. Doug had taken a post forward, with a camera-gun and a magazine rifle. He had the camera in hand, to use first.
It seemed that hours passed, but it must have been just a few minutes. Nothing out of the ordinary seemed to be taking place anywhere. The moon now shone down from a sky in which a few thin wisps of cloud glowed among the stars. Sharp-peaked waves came from one horizon and sped busily toward the other. The yacht pitched and rolled, its company strangely armed and expectant. The recorder gave out a droning, booming, rushing sound which grew louder with ever-increasing rapidity. Now the sound reached a climax.
From the very center of the glinting circle of sea, there was a monstrous splashing sound. A phosphorescent column rose furiously from the waves. It leaped. Water fell back and… something soared into the air. Sharp, stabbing flashes of almost intolerably white light flared up. The gun-cameras fired their flash bulbs without a sound.
It was then that Terry saw it—in mid-air. He swung the gun-camera, and a flash from another gun showed him that he would miss. He jerked the gun to bear and pulled the trigger. The flash illuminated it vividly. Then night again.
It was torpedo-shaped and excessively slender but very long. It could have been a living thing, frozen by the instantaneous flash. It could have been something made of metal. It leaped a full fifty feet clear of the waves and then tumbled back into the ocean with a colossal splash. Then there was silence, except for the sounds of the sea. Terry had the magazine-rifle still in his hands. Tony and Jug waited with their bazookas ready. It occurred to Terry that yachts are not customarily armed with bazookas.
“That—wasn’t a whale,” said Deirdre unsteadily.
The recorder bellowed suddenly. It was the hum that had been heard before: the nasty, sixty-cycle hum that surrounded the captive fish. But it was ten, twenty, fifty times as loud as before.