“Me?” Billy tried to sound surprised. “Why they want me to do the looking? Everybody else sees. They tell me later.”
“Hey, pal, you were all gung ho to get out there.” He waved his thumb toward the crowd. “Look at them, kiddo. They know what you did. Right now you’re their hero.”
Billy frowned. He didn’t like to be pointed out as someone special. He looked pointedly at Mako. “Sar, you were there too. It was your boat. The eater could have bit us. I saw your face. You did not... have the scare.”
“How do you know, Billy?”
“I see your face.”
“Okay, I wasn’t scared, but that’s what makes you the hero. You were scared and did it anyway.”
Billy started to grin at him and silent laughter shook his shoulders.
“What’s so funny?” Hooker asked him.
Rather than answer, Billy’s eyes moved toward the sea. When Hooker followed his glance he spotted the dot of a small outboard runabout heading straight for the Clamdip. Whoever was running it was crouched behind the windshield, running a good fifty or sixty miles an hour. As it got closer he saw a pair of the new black Johnson 130s powering it, but it was a craft he hadn’t seen before.
“That’s Miss Judy,” Billy told him.
“Damn, and I haven’t even had a bath,” Hooker muttered.
Judy cut the power; the boat came off the plane and settled gradually, taking up a position at the dock behind the Clamdip. She tied the fore and aft lines off, then climbed the ladder, where Hooker gave her a hand to the dock.
“You were really flying there,” Mako said.
“Was anybody hurt?”
“Willie’s launch took a lick, but he won’t know for a few hours yet. Nobody got a scratch. Little Jimbo was pretty shook up, but that was all.”
“What did they see?”
“Something was there, all right. It got fouled in Willie’s nets and right after we got there it snatched itself loose.”
“Willie called in and said the nets were sliced through.”
“I don’t know,” Hooker told her. “Could be.”
Judy looked at Hooker very carefully. After a few seconds she stated, “You saw something, didn’t you?”
“Yes, something.”
“What was it?” she demanded softly.
“Keep it to yourself?”
She nodded seriously, her eyes wide.
“It was big,” Hooker said.
“How big?”
“I only saw part of it. It was night, it was a hundred feet or more away and I only saw part of it... and it was big. In three seconds it was gone.”
“How about Willie... did he see it?”
“I doubt it. He was too busy trying to haul in his nets to see anything. I think Billy got a glimpse of something out there, but he’s not about to admit it now. Later he might tell about it around a campfire with his own friends, but he doesn’t want to know if there is a boat eater or not. Right now he’s not a very happy camper. At least you took his mind off the trip. How did you get the word?”
“My crew and I were washing down some pilings with the pressure hose. When one of them went back to get some coffee for us after sunup he heard the chatter on the radio. The way the story was blown up it sounded like the battle of Midway. Then when he said it was you out there helping... Judy paused in midsentence and a look of confusion swept across her face.
Mako’s mouth cracked in a smile. “Damn,” he said, “you were worried about me.”
“Don’t be preposterous! I just thought...”
“Yeah?”
“Oh, hell.” She grinned back. “Now I’m talking like a sailor.”
Mako just kept looking and his grin got bigger.
“Okay, I was worried,” she admitted.
He was close to her now. He could feel the warmth of her body and smell the sweetness she had brought with her. There was a strange brightness in her eyes and the breeze made her hair wave in its caress. Hooker said, “Lick your lips,” and with a slow, sensuous move her tongue flicked out and did as he said; her lips were full and moist and a deep red, and when he kissed her gently and softly she shuddered under his hands. She reached out, her hands barely touching him, her eyes almost closed, then by mutual consent they drew back and this time when they looked at each other they both knew that something very strange had happened.
Billy tried to be quiet, but his audible gasp of pure delight broke into the stillness and Hooker said, “I am going to give you a shark name, Billy.”
And Billy got quiet and moved down toward the end of the dock, where his admirers were waiting. Being named after a shark, any kind of shark, was something Billy certainly didn’t want.
It was fat Charlie Berger who saw them coming and got up and held out his hand to invite them to his table. Lee Colbert pushed himself to his feet and Chana did the feminine thing and just sat there, politely smiling. Alley was on the spot with two extra chairs and they all managed to get seated again, but without any feeling of closeness whatever.
“I understand your reputation has grown to heroic proportions,” Berger addressed Hooker.
“Anything can set that crowd off,” Hooker told him. “Actually, nothing really happened.”
“That’s not what Willie Pender said,” Chana cut in.
“Oh, something got snagged in his nets, all right. Those sports fishermen still come down here from Miami looking for that two-thousand-pound marlin and occasionally basking sharks show up. No boat eaters.”
“What hit Willie’s boat?”
“We’ll know when the tide goes out,” Hooker said.
Lee Colbert came right to the point. “What do you think it was, Hooker?”
After a few seconds’ reflection, Mako said, “I don’t know. All I got was a quick partial look. It was dark, something churned the water and then it was gone. Have you seen Willie’s nets yet?”
“Billy Haines is down there now.”
“Who brought in the robot?” Hooker asked suddenly.
The three of them were too well trained to give away information with a sudden, sly look. “Robot,” Chana said. It was almost a question, but not quite.
Then Mako dropped the ax. “Your instructions were to... coordinate with me.” His tone was cold and the message was clear.
Chana said, “I thought you were out of the business.”
“So did I,” he told her bluntly, “but the option is mine.”
“The robot was the Company’s idea,” Chana said abruptly. “That group will act under our orders.”
“Which are?”
This time Berger, Lee and Chana all looked at Judy Durant and said nothing. Hooker grinned and stood up. “Don’t let Judy here shake you up, kids. She’s in with some pretty heavy hitters too.” He looked down at her and added, “Let’s go, doll.”
Alley gave Mako a strange look when he moved with Judy to a table near the bar and signaled for two coffees instead of the usual beer. Across the rooms he could see Chana and the two men in a serious discussion, but they gave no indication of what it was all about.
Judy noticed his casual glance and said, “What robot?”
Alley set the coffees down, gave Mako a knowing wink of approval and walked away.
“Underwater exploration,” Mako told her.
“Why?”
“Because some agency of the United States wants to know what’s happening around here. That team will lay out a grid pattern and let the robot send up TV pictures of everything on the bottom. They have other electronic equipment on board to scan for anything within range that moves.”
Judy was watching him carefully now, sensing something she hadn’t quite realized. She sipped at her coffee, then put the cup down. “Can I ask you something?”