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.
The beast splashed back into the sea, and the wave of its descent swept over the deck of La Rubia. The fishing boat nearly capsized. But the monster had not escaped the anguish of its wounds. It fought the injured spots as though an enemy still gnawed there. It was a struggling madness in the sea.
The Esperance swung to approach the half-sunken trawler, and Terry kept the searchlight on the turmoil. The beast knew panic. It was wounded, and the abyss is not a place where the weak or wounded can long survive. Its fellows would be coming…
They did. Something enormous moved swiftly under the sea toward the wounded monster. It could be seen by the phosphorescence its motion created, as it approached the surface. There was a jar, a jolt. Some part of it actually touched the Esperance’s keel. The huge monster moved ahead, but a trailing tentacle flicked up to what it had touched a moment before.
The ugly tentacle trailed over the yacht’s rail. The rail shattered. The forecastle hatch was wiped out. The bowsprit became mere debris which dangled foolishly from the standing rigging.
The Esperance bucked wildly at this fleeting contact. Nick fired a bazooka-shell, but it missed. Holding fast, Davis flung a grenade. It detonated uselessly. It was then that Deirdre screamed.
Terry froze for an instant. There had simply been no time for him to think that Deirdre might be aboard. It was inexcusable, but nothing could be done now.
Tony had been knocked overside by the shock of the contact with the giant, and was swimming desperately trying to follow the yacht and climb back on board. Terry flashed the searchlight about. He found Tony, splashing. The Esperance swung in her own length while Terry kept the searchlight beam focused. More shrieks came from La Rubia. Davis threw a rope and Tony caught it. They hauled him aboard, and the Esperance turned again to pluck away the trawler’s crewmen.
There were unbelievable splashings off to port. Terry flung the lightbeam in that direction. It fell upon unimaginable conflict. The monster that had passed under the yacht now battled the wounded squid. They fought on the surface, horribly. A maze of intertwining tentacles glistened in the light, and their revolting bodies appeared now and again as the battered creature fought to protect itself, and the other to devour. Other enormous squids came hurrying to the scene. They flung themselves into the gruesome fight, tearing at the dying monster and at each other. There were still others on the way…
The sea resounded with desperate mooing sounds.
The Esperance bumped against La Rubia. Frantic, hysterically frightened men clambered up from the deck of the sinking trawler to the yacht. As soon as they were aboard they implored their rescuers to head for land, immediately.
“Get ’em all off!” bellowed Terry, in command by simple virtue of having clear ideas of what had to be done. “Get ’em all off!”
The stout skipper of La Rubia jumped over the yacht’s rail. Without orders, the yacht’s engine bellowed. The Esperance turned toward the shore, which now seemed very far away.
Something splashed to starboard. The sea glowed all around it. Terry poured the pain-sound exactly in that direction. The monster went into convulsions. The yacht swerved away to keep its distance. She raced on, past the spot where the giant flailed its tentacles insanely about. It mooed.
The Esperance raced at full speed toward the island. About a mile ahead, the surf roared and foamed on the coral reef almost awash.