Mako’s facial expression had darkened and she didn’t pursue the conversation.
Billy Bright had been bent over the starboard railing. Now he pulled up the line in his hand and took the readings off the thermometers that had recorded temperatures at different depths. He squinted at the readings and took them under a brighter light to verify what he saw. He jotted numbers down on a pad and handed them to Mako. “She be high, sar. Four degrees over last night.”
Mako checked the readings and compared them to the other nightly numbers. “Odd,” he stated.
“No flying fish,” Billy told him. “Plenty last night.”
Puzzled, Judy said, “What’s flying fish got to do with anything?”
Mako shrugged again. “Just odd, is all. The islanders have something about rising water temperatures and no flying fish.”
“Billy?”
He gave her a noncommittal look and shrugged too.
Once again, the night air seemed cooler than it actually was and she wished she had another sweater.
Almost as if it knew that its picture had been taken, the formless mass reacted to the nature of its environment and gently let its own world smother it. There was no hurrying in its movements, just easy responding to its elements, knowing that it would go to the right place. The elongated form drove other things out of its path simply by being there, as if the smell of it were as offensive as its size and character.
Only the smaller fish seemed protected by its presence, the way pilot fish are by a shark, or like suckerfish adhered to a predator’s belly. When the mass rose, the small fish rose with it. When it turned in those very wide curves they would be alongside. Their safety was ignorance. Overhead daylight had put a pale glow on the surface and the movement of the great body caused it to ascend, bare inches at a time. Now it seemed to be looking. On the surface was the dark bottom of a boat and not far away was another, but the great thing was not looking for them. When it was ready, it would find what it was looking for.
Chapter Eleven
The diving party reached the assigned area thirty minutes after leaving the Sentilla’s floating dock. The bottom was thirty-two feet below the surface, but every detail, every contour was clearly visible. The ocean itself was placid, barely undulating at all. Only fish jumping here and there made an impression in that great greenish-blue expanse. For a change there were no strands of sargassum floating about, buoyed up by the bubbles along their fronds.
When Kim gave the signal the divers began dropping off the inflatables at regular intervals, going to the bottom, where they fanned out to follow the grid pattern Kim had given them. As he had said he would, Mako stayed behind Chana, thirty feet to the right of Judy but in plain sight of her.
The task was simple enough, pushing the marker flags eighteen inches into the sand, making sure their plastic triangles were fully unfurled. At preselected points they angled westward about twenty degrees, sloping downward very gradually. Twice the team went up to the inflatables to take another bundle of markers, then dove back to their positions for the final placements.
Nature was a living thing, the ocean currents part of her fluid mobility. Their changes in course and pattern were slight, but each variation caused some other force to alter its way and conform to a new avenue that could possibly alter conditions and situations above. Even here, in the warm, placid waters where they placed the flags, the recordings would indicate movements and speed that Woods Hole personnel would be able to sense and interpret.
Mako looked at his watch. They had been down for almost two hours but in shallow waters. There was no need for decompression, but the work was monotonous and he was beginning to think of how nice an ice-cold Lite beer would be. He waved over toward Judy and got her eye.
He got the eye of something else too. Suddenly it came up out of the sand, huge and black, its initial movement clouding the waters so all he could see was something gaping, something wide and monstrous, a horribly big and long thing that had no name, dangerously alive and vital. Its movements had a thrashing motion, powerful enough to churn the water into momentary, sandy translucency, and when it swept past Chana the force of its movements flipped her upside down, her arms and legs waving wildly. Judy had spotted it as soon as Mako did and she dove into the sand, fingers clawed to anchor herself. Up ahead some of the others had felt the pressure of movement in the sea, looked back and kicked furiously to get out of the area.
Mako’s back brushed the bottom and he was looking upward, a dive knife a futile weapon in his hand. He watched the extremities of the thing whip past him, estimated the length at least two hundred feet, made a slash with the knife at the very trailing edge and flipped over as the thing passed and disappeared out of sight.
When he reached Judy he saw that she was all right, her eyes behind the glass of the mask devoid of fear, but looking at him with a questioning expression. Mako nodded and pointed to the surface. Ten feet from the top the water cleared and they could see legs being pulled in over the sides of the inflatables.
With a single lunge Mako pulled himself into the boat, then reached down to give Judy a lift in. “You okay?” he asked her.
“Ask me that when my heart stops pounding.” She took a deep breath and gave him a small grin. “Damn, I don’t like that kind of excitement.”
Chana had stripped off her gear. It was evident that her diving was finished for the day. “Did you see that? Did you see that!”
There was no answer. Everybody had seen it, all right.
“That was as big as a football field!” She glanced at Mako, who just sat there quietly. “You saw it, didn’t you?”
He looked at her hands. They were shaking. Chana could stare down a gun barrel or charge a tank, but out of her element she was one scared operative. “I saw it, Chana,” he told her blandly.
“Wasit... the eater?”
Deliberately he looked around at all the faces. “Well, nobody seems to be missing here and they got all their body parts.”
A flush started in Chana’s neck and Mako saw her torso stiffen. A touch of her inward fury at Mako’s nonchalance crept into her face and she almost hissed, “That was no joking matter, Mako.”
“Nobody’s laughing, lady.”
“Hell, we could all be dead.”
“But we’re not.”
Chana’s composure was coming back slowly. Finally she announced very coolly, “I’d like a written, personal observation from everyone here. If you can accurately sketch what you saw, please add that.” She caught Mako’s eyes, suddenly heavy-lidded. “Do you agree, Mr. Hooker?”
“Oh, sure,” he said, but his tone told her that he wasn’t going to stand for anyone running in front of him. He smiled. Chana smiled back. There was no friendliness in either smile at all.
A news flash had already announced the possibility of the eater having been photographed by a camera plane from the Lotusland, promising viewers that the results would be seen on the evening news. Chana realized immediately what had happened and told Mako, “That original print is going to be on the movie ship. What we get will be a copy.”
“And there’s nothing you can do about it. Legally, that is.”
“This is still a U.S. operation.”
“Not out here, lady. We’re in foreign territory right now. This event you play with diplomacy, not guns.”
“So?”
“So we see the original print. They can show it for us on the Lotusland.”