What bothered Billy was the night. And the eater. A surface storm could be enough to rouse that thing below and there would be no way at all to avoid it. They were held tightly to the bottom in seventy feet of water and if the eater could roam in that depth, they could be dead meat.
Mako and Judy were holding hands. With their free ones, they grasped the built-in handholds of another sort. Nobody heard Billy when he said, “Crazy ‘Mericans. Storm up here, eater down below. Pretty soon they be kissing!” He grinned at the thought and shut up.
A half mile away there was an awakening below. It was a subtle rolling motion, a mere disturbance. The storm had come in too quickly, spending its force with a single, paralyzing punch that might destroy an unprepared opponent but just stagger a real pro who was ready for it. The force of its might was on the surface only, never quite gravitating down to any appreciable depth. The disturbance was merely a nudge that didn’t awaken the sleeping giant at all. The gentle drift of the current kept it in constant movement and when it was ready it would find what it wanted.
Chapter Twelve
The storm didn’t ease up. It stopped with the startling suddenness of tropical disturbances in that area, the low clouds rolling away like a retreating army. The nasty chop of the waves rounded off into gentle swells, and overhead the flickering light of the stars made the sky come alive.
Judy looked at Hooker and he nodded. Billy Bright let a smile grow on his face, wiping out the concern that had etched it earlier. Mako said, “Where are we, Billy?”
“Over the deep coral heads, sar. You want anchors to get lifted?”
“Weighed, Billy.”
“I know how much she weigh. You want I lift them?”
Hooker didn’t argue the point. “You go ahead and lift ‘em, then.”
When Billy went up to the bow Judy asked, “Aren’t you going to help him?”
“Lady,” he said pleasantly, “when I outfitted this boat I didn’t plan to mess around with big old navy-style anchors. They got motors to do those things.”
“Sorry I asked.”
“Only way you’ll ever learn, doll,” he told her, with a grin, then switched on his fish finder. In a few moments the face of the instrument blossomed into life, registering depths below, showing the flurry of action schools of fish made and picking up images of big singles that still lurked below, wary of the power of nature that could rile up the ocean to its very bottom.
Judy pointed to the odd shadowy things on the screen. “What are those?”
“Coral heads. They’re stretched out for another three miles.”
She put her finger on the numbers indicating the depth. “Aren’t they down awfully deep? Most of the ones I’ve seen were in one atmosphere, about thirty feet.”
“No telling what’s happened to the bottom in this area. Undersea disturbances are pretty damn common. How do you think all these islands were formed? Right now the Sentilla is probing beneath the sea for an indication of activity.”
They heard the growl of the chains coming in and the final thunk as the anchors were snaked onto the deck. And while Billy Bright was lashing them into place, Hooker nudged the throttles and the Clamdip, almost as if she were happy, dug her forefoot into the chop and picked up speed.
Above them the dots of the stars gave way to the grayish light of dawn, disappearing slowly, and were gone when the sun let a tip of itself show above the horizon to the east.
A soft, rain-cooled breeze came across the boat. Billy had made the coffee, gave one to Judy in the stern and brought another to Mako. He put it down beside the wheel along with two pink packets of sweetener. “Why that stuff work, sar?”
“Because,” Hooker explained to him, and Billy nodded as though it made some sense.
But Hooker had forgotten about the coffee. He was watching the fish finder and very gently pulling the throttles back as Billy walked away and picked up the binoculars to search the area ahead, as though looking for the Sentilla. Billy and Judy, who had reacted to the boat slowing down, knew what Mako was doing but didn’t pay any more attention.
Mako wasn’t looking ahead. He was staring at the images on the fish finder, wondering if what he was seeing was real. Something was there, all right. It had no definite form, but there it lay amongst the coral heads like some strange, deadly anomaly, a something that didn’t belong.
The sun hadn’t penetrated deep enough to define the thing; it was a great, dark blob, distorted along its outlines, the coral heads making the whole scene seem unreal. It could well have been a trench area, or an underwater garden of weed. Had he fished this area often he would have known what the mass was, but Billy had always put him over the top spots where the fish they wanted fed. For a minute he thought of calling to his mate, but there was no sense in upsetting Billy again. He had survived the night into a new day and that dark thing whose shape wasn’t really discernible at all made it an ambiguous deal not worth pursuing.
Suddenly it was not there anymore and the coral heads thinned out until they were gone altogether. Up ahead on the surface he could see the tiny shapes of the Sentilla and the cruise ship. Nearly blanked out by their sizes would be Lotusland. He looked back at Judy and pointed up ahead.
A minute later Billy joined Hooker at the wheel, waited a few seconds, then said, “Sar, what is it you see?”
Hooker scowled and glanced at the Carib. “What are you talking about, Billy?”
The mate nodded at the fish finder. It was off and the screen was blank. “This thing you see down there.”
“What thing?”
“The one you don’t want to tell me about.” Before he could ask, Billy explained, “Easier to see through glasses when at speed in this boat, sar.” He looked directly at his boss and grinned. “So...?”
“I saw something big and dark.”
“Many things big and dark down there, sar.”
“How come you’re not scared, Billy?”
Billy pointed to the barometer. “The glass, sar, she is steady.” His finger pointed off the starboard side at the splashes in the water and the low cloud of what looked like low-flying birds and said, “The flying fish, sar.” His nose went skyward and he breathed deeply, filling his lungs with air. He did it again. “It is not a day for the eater, sar. Today is a good day.”
“And when it gets dark?”
A little frown clouded Billy’s eyes momentarily, and then the grin came back. “Like the man says, sar, what will be will sure as hell be.”
“Tell me that when something comes up out of the water and breathes on you.”
Billy twisted his head very slowly and stared at Mako for a long time. “Sar, you are fooling me?”
“Yeah,” Hooker told him, “I’m fooling you.” He let out a small snort and hoped Billy believed him.
Captain Watts ushered Mako into the wheelhouse of the Sentilla, checked the gauges, then pulled out a couple of high-backed stools to sit in. “You’re a big believer in this eater business, aren’t you?”
“Somebody has to be. You pick up anything on sonar yet?”
“Nothing that couldn’t be explained. We put out three scout boats with some new technology aboard and they covered everything in this site for three miles. There’s nothing under us except the usual species of fish. One of them located an old hulk from World War Two and the burned remains of a fishing schooner. If you’re making another dive, believe me, nothing is going to eat you.”