Back at the scene of the battle of monsters, there was a sudden break in the conflict. One of the wounded giants broke free. It may have been the one the Esperance had first attacked; perhaps it was another, which might have been partly devoured while still fighting.
In any case, one of them broke loose and fled, with the hellish pack after it. It is the instinct of squids, if injured, to try to find some submarine cavern in which to hide. The monster dived, and the others pursued it.
There was no opening in the reef barrier—not underwater. But there was an opening on the surface. The crippled beast had to find a refuge, or be torn to bits. It may have been guided by instinct, or perhaps the current flowing into or out of the lagoon furnished the clue. In any case, the fleeing creature darted crazily into the channel used by the Esperance for passage. For alittle way, it proceeded underwater. Then it grounded itself. Hopelessly.
And the pursuing pack arrived.
The sight from the Esperance’s deck was straight out of the worst possible nightmare. Glistening serpentine tentacles writhed and flailed the seas. They tore the swells to froth. The pursuers had flung themselves savagely upon the helpless one. The gap in the reef was closed by the battling giants. They slavered. They gripped. They tore. They rent each other. …
Terry saw a tentacle as thick as a barrel which had been haggled half through and dangled futilely as its stump still tried to fight.
And more giants came. Terry shouted, and the Esperance turned. He could see large patches of phosphorescence under the surface. And suddenly, he noticed that afew of them had swerved toward the Esperance. As they approached the sound-horn stung them. They went into convulsive struggling, as the sound played upon them, and they passed the Esperance by.
Davis found Terry beside the sound-weapon’s controls, watching the sea with desperate intensity.
“Listen,” said Davis fiercely, “we’re out at sea and we can’t get back into the lagoon! We’d better get away from here!”
“Across deep water?” demanded Terry. “That dangerous foam can come up from deep water, but maybe not from shallow water. We’ve got to stay close to the reef until the flattop comes and bombs these creatures—if it will ever come!”
Davis made a helpless gesture. Terry said crisply, “Get the ’copter to hang over the reef and report on the fighting there. Tell it to report to the flattop. They may not believe us, but they may send a plane anyway. And if the ships come, they’ll have to believe about the foam! Tell them to listen for it underwater. They’ve got sonar gear.”
Davis stumbled away. Presently, the dark figure of Nick lowered himself through what had been the forecastle hatch. Davis followed him.
Deirdre came over to Terry.
“Terry …”
“I’m going to beat in the heads,” said Terry, “of those idiots who came after your father and me without throwing you on the wharf first!”
“They’d have wasted precious time,” said Deirdre calmly. “I wouldn’t have let them. Do you think I want to be ashore when you… ”
There was the faintest of palings of the horizon to the east. Terry said grimly, “I’m going to try to find a passage through the surf, to get you ashore. I’m keeping the Esperance in shallow water—inside the hundred-fathom line—but I don’t trust it. Certainly I don’t trust aship to make you safer!”
“It’s going to be daybreak soon,” she protested. “Then…”
“Then we won’t be able to see what goes on underwater,” he told her. “Those … creatures down below are smart!”
There was a racketing, rumbling roar from the island. A light rose above the tree-tops. Presently a parachute-flare lit up. Then there was another, as if the men in the helicopter did not believe what they saw the first time.
“Terry,” said Deirdre shakily, “I’m… glad we found each other, no matter what happens…”
Davis came up from below.
“The flattop’s only a few miles away. They’re now proceeding at top speed. The mine layer’s following. They’ll be here by sunrise.”
Far away to the east, some brightness entered into the paling of the sky. A drab, colorless light spread over the sea. The ocean was a dark, slate blue. Swells flattened abruptly about a quarter-mile away. Terry aimed the sound-weapon and pressed the button. Something gigantic started up, and the top of a huge squid’s mantle pierced the surface. The giant leaped convulsively, high above the water, save for trailing tentacles. It was larger than a whale. It fell back into the sea with a loud splash, and moved away quickly.
Color came into the sky. The sun’s upper rim appeared. Flecks of gold spread upon the sea.
Far, far away at the horizon a dark speck appeared. As the sun climbed up over the edge of the world, the speck turned golden. There was a mist of smoke above it. A plane took off from the ship. Another plane followed.
Fighter planes flashed toward the island. One of them zoomed sharply, like a bird astonished at something it has seen below. It whirled and came back over that spot. There was the rasping whine of a machine gun. Something like a giant snake reared up and fell back again. And now more planes appeared.
Sunrise was suddenly complete. Terry stared out over the sea. And he could not believe his eyes, accustomed as he was to the highly unlikely, now. Giant squids were afloat at the surface. He saw one here, and another there, and another, and another… They were emerging by tens, by scores.
“They’ve been sent up,” said Terry very grimly, “by an entity that didn’t evolve on the earth. They’re… domesticated, in a way. They’re watchdogs for whatever arrives in bolides that fall in the Luzon Deep. They are the reason for the shining circle of sea from which thousands of tons of living fish were drawn down into the abyss. The creatures—the … ellos who listen to what fish and fishermen say—they keep these things as domestic animals. And they have to feed them. Those mooings were the… cries of these things waiting to be fed. Try to imagine that, Deirdre! In the blackness of the pit, in the abyss at the bottom of the sea…”
A tentacle broke surface. Terry swung the sound-beam. A mantle reared above the waves. A bazooka-shell hit it. Something huge and stupid and monstrous fought the inpalpable thing that hurt it. …
Davis approached.
“These,” he said absurdly, “aren’t the creatures who made the plastic objects. Maybe we ought to try to open communication with their masters. Why should we fight? If we prove we can defend ourselves…” think the same way, intelligently. If we landed on another planet, on some part of that planet that the natives didn’t use but we could, it wouldn’t be sensible for those natives to welcome us! Trade with us, perhaps. But let us settle down, no!”
There was a bomb explosion out at sea. A plane had dropped a hundred-pound bomb on a monster at the surface. The flattop was now distinct. Golden, almost horizontal sunlight struck upon it. Off to the west a plane dived steeply, something dropped from it, and the plane levelled off. A three-hundred-foot fountain erupted from the surface. Then there came absolute proof that intelligence lay behind all this. It was not human intelligence, to be sure. Men are tool-using creatures nowadays. They imagine robots for fighting, and nowadays they make them, but many centuries ago men ceased to try to use animals as combatants in war.
The creatures under the sea had not. They’d send up giant squids to do battle with men, as men once sent elephants against the Macedonian army. It was naive. But the generals, the tacticians, the strategists of the Deep did not remain wedded to the one weapon. Already, they saw that beasts could be fought by men. So their instruments of battle changed. Doubtless, orders were given, and five miles under the sea something— something men could not have duplicated—began the transformation of seawater into gas, in quantities past imagining. Tiny, tiny bubbles were produced by some unguessable engine, and rose toward the surface, in a steady stream. At the bottom they were under a pressure of tons to the square inch. But the pressure lessened as they rose, and as they rose they swelled. A bubble which was pinhead-size at the sea-bed grew to be the size of a basketball a half-mile up, and would have been the size of a house a mile up, except that then it separated into smaller ones. They rose and rose and expanded and separated. Five miles up from their origin, at little more than atmospheric pressure, they made a rising column of insubstantiality. At the surface they became foam. But under the foam there was more foam, and under that still more. A ship sailing from normal ocean water into such airy stuff would drop like a stone into the miles-long cone of semi-nothingness. Nothing solid could float there. Nothing substantial could rest its weight upon such rushing thistledown.