But he still gave her something to chew on. “Whales dive deeper than sonar can track them. They lose touch below six thousand feet, yet they come up well fed and covered with sucker scars from giant squid.”
Judy’s eyes widened at the thought of his description and she let her breath out, not conscious of the way she had been holding it in. “You’re just kidding about that... aren’t you?”
“Nope. Besides, you’re not scared.”
“The hell I’m not.”
“Can I put my arms around you and comfort you?”
She licked her lips and bobbed her head. “Sure.”
Mako slid an arm around her shoulders. “How’s that?”
“Big man,” she said, “I’m real scared.”
Before Mako could do anything about it, Billy’s head poked out the wheelhouse window. “Mr. Hooker, sar, the glass, she has fallen two points.”
“Call Miami and get a current report.”
“I did that, sar. They said our barometer may be...”
“Defective?”
“Yes. That is the word they used.”
“What do you think, Billy?”
“I can feel it, sar. The glass, she is good. Miami does not understand.”
Under his hand he felt Judy shudder gently. On the horizon, both of them could see the thin darkening line of clouds starting to form. There was something ominous about them.
Mako said, “Quit calling me ‘sar,’ Billy.”
“Yes, sar,” Billy called right back. He had seen the clouds too. His hand nudged the throttle a little and the Clamdip picked up a few extra knots of speed toward Reboka Island.
Mako poured the both of them a Miller Lite beer and they leaned on the starboard rail, enjoying the moment, the only sound that of the waves lashing tiny tongues along the hull of the boat.
But moments like that were never made to last. Billy Bright had heard the click of a sending key, flipped the switch to the speaker and picked up the tight, disciplined voice of Chana Sterling saying, “Drifter, this is the Tellig calling. Please give us your position.”
Almost immediately a heavy male voice responded with, “Tellig, this is Drifter. We are at B dash seven on your blue chart.”
Mako grunted in disgust. They weren’t using the regular nautical charts but had instituted one of their own so as not to give away their position.
“Roger, Drifter. We have located a disturbance. It may be what we are looking for. We will need your diver. How soon can you join us?”
A hurried calculation was made and the voice came back, “Forty-five minutes will do it.”
“Roger and out,” Chana said.
Hesitantly, Judy asked, “Diver?”
“That would be the robot,” Mako explained. “I’d sure like to know what kind of disturbance she was talking about.”
“Could that be some kind of... ruse?”
“Not with Chana. She’s all business.”
“Why would she put it on the air like that?”
“Two reasons,” Mako told her. “One is that she needs the robot. The other is that she wants everyone to know she nailed this sucker. In the area she works in, overt deeds of heroism make for rapid promotions.”
“How high does she want to go?”
“Far enough to control the world.”
“Or maybe just you,” she added mischievously.
This time Mako gave her a sour glance. “She’d just like to shoot me again. In a way I hope she gets the chance.”
“Why?”
“Then I can really kick her butt.”
“What do you think that disturbance was she mentioned?”
“Could be a pod of whales.”
Once again Billy’s voice came out of the wheelhouse. “We can go see, sar. That is, if you want.”
“I told you,” Mako said, “that guy’s got ears like a cat.”
“Sar...?”
“How would you know where they were, Billy?”
“The other day at the dock I see the big blue square on Tellig’s map. Others were in different colors. Blue part was over where Poca and Lule Malli catch the big marlin we all feast on.”
“That was in open water, Billy. Poca didn’t even have a map on board.”
“I know the place,” Billy said simply.
“But you don’t really want to go there, do you?”
Instead of answering, Billy just shook his head.
“Okay, we continue on course. If they find the eater, good. They can take it back with them. If they get in trouble we’ll go look for them.”
“Suppose the eater gets them?” Judy suggested.
“Then we’ll pour a cold beer over their watery grave. Or maybe half a beer.”
At the wheel, Billy started whistling. They were staying on course and he was happy for everybody on board the Clamdip. But he was concerned about the Tellig and the Drifter. The clouds on the horizon were a little heavier now and the barometer had gone down another full point. The lady boss on the Tellig had said they had sighted a disturbance and whatever it was, he was sure it was the eater. And right now he was heading away from it. He touched the throttles again and the needles on the tachometer showed another ten RPM increase.
Fear was an emotion Chana Sterling would never admit to. Fear was something that belonged to cowards who fled from a confrontation with danger rather than face it. Right now the hair on the back of her neck felt a little stiff, but fear hadn’t put a crimp in her actions.
Beside her Lee Colbert stood, one leg propped on the rail, the sporting rifle loaded with armor piercing explosive bullets held casually in his hand. It was that “masculine attitude” that annoyed Chana, that demeanor that didn’t reek of fear at all but held the calmly interested expression she had seen on lab technicians peering into a microscope.
On their port side, ten miles out, the low cloud bank had a slow rolling motion. Every minute or so a yellow burst of light was visible along the line. “Lee,” Chana asked, “did you ever see a weather front like that one?”
“Yeah, several times.”
She knew he was deliberately making her wait, not finishing the explanation. Finally, exasperated, she said as quietly as she could, “Where?”
“Off the coast of Alaska during World War Two. They’d build up, then burst just as suddenly. Scared the hell out of the rookies.” He gave her a meaningful glance and suppressed a smile.
Chana passed off this remark and kept staring at the ocean. The light chop that gave life to the water’s surface suddenly flattened in a wild circle; the gulls that had been following the Tellig abruptly let out a series of raucous screams and wheeled off into disturbed flight. “There it is again,” she said.
Lee Colbert’s eyes were on her, but she wouldn’t acknowledge his unspoken question. She reached for the binoculars, focused them in and scanned the area. It hadn’t changed in shape and seemed to be travelling in the same direction they were.
The big oval area seemed calm until it reached the rolling edges of its perimeter, where the waves chewed at it. The coloration was deeper, and blue in contrast to the green of the ocean itself. She stared even harder, analyzing what she was looking at. “There’s a pressure under the surface,” she said.
“Could it be a vent hole in the bottom spewing up magma?” He was grinning at her again.
“Lee, quit being an ass. This is the Atlantic,” she spit at him, very annoyed now.
With the suddenness that it had appeared with, the flat calm gave way to the ocean’s wave action again. She didn’t put the glasses down. Here and there the surface would flatten again in a small area, then just as suddenly disappear.
When she took the binoculars away from her face, she said, “Lee...”