“The shark with your front name, sar, he...”
“You see him, Billy?”
“He is a quiet mister, that one, sar.”
“But he’s not here, Billy.”
Very solemnly, Billy Bright said, “Everything’s got to be someplace, sar.”
This time Hooker let out a short laugh. No way was he ever going to get the better of the Carib. “Okay, pal, you take care of topsides while we check this thing out.” He paused a moment and added, “You sure this isn’t the eater, Billy?”
Billy, still very solemn, nodded his head. “Sar, I am very sure.”
And Hooker stopped grinning because Judy had come up from the cabin carrying her dive mask and fins and for a second he thought she was totally naked, until he saw the tiny pink bikini she was wearing, and all he could say was, “You diving like that?”
Judy’s eyes flashed over to Kim Sebring, who was hoisting her single tank onto her back. She had on the same outfit in black.
When she smiled coyly Hooker said, “Yeah, but she sure isn’t built like you, doll.”
“We’re going after something that won’t notice the difference, aren’t we?”
Hooker just shook his head and she leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. Then she walked over to get her tank out of the rack and check its pressure. When she was satisfied it was okay she started to lift it into position and a young diver started to give her a hand. But he was too slow. Hooker jumped in himself, adjusting her bindings, then she gave him another kiss on the cheek.
How Billy saw the action he didn’t know, but Hooker heard him say very softly, “Yes, sar, everybody’s got to be someplace.”
Mako slipped on his tank, got squared away and jumped in right after Kim Sebring. Judy followed with the two young divers behind them. The group dropped down twenty feet below the Clamdip, where they all checked the compasses on their wrists, then fanned out and swam toward the dory of Peter-from-the-market, whose line was still snagged into an unknown thing another fifty feet below them where visibility was cloudy, and the unknown, no matter what it was, posed a threat like walking through a minefield.
They all felt it. Unconsciously, they tightened up their small formation, well within sight of each other. Mako saw the men firm their grip on the bang sticks and then the movement of their flippers stopped.
The eighty-pound nylon test line that started at Peter-from-the-market’s dory angled right down in front of them. There was no slack in the line at all, and as they watched, it began to veer to the left as something on the other end pulled it that way.
It was Hooker’s move now. He reached out and felt the line between his fingers, sensed the vibration coursing up it. Undoubtedly, old Peter had tied on a number 14/0 hook used for marlin and sharks. He had snagged something and wasn’t about to lose his rig no matter what it was. Peter had already had a brush with the eater, and from his initial radio contact to his staying on the scene without cutting his line, he had the same feeling about what he had caught that Billy had.
The divers were watching him closely now, then Judy and Kim came up beside him and he was thinking how stupid it was to have the girls down there on a trial run like this. Judy’s eyes were clear behind the mask and he knew that whatever he did, she would follow, so he pointed down and they followed the heavy strand of nylon.
About three hundred feet of line was run out, taking them down to eighty feet. Churned-up sand made the water murkier than ever. Twice, fish about three feet long passed languidly in front of them, then swam away leisurely with no sign of fear.
Fish have no sense, Hooker thought.
And at that moment he saw the waving black thing in front of them, a hideous mass that seemed to have no dimensions at all, and the nylon line was tied in securely to its body and it was pulling forward, ever so slowly, but pulling. Peter-from-the-market had put no anchor out, and Hooker knew the dory would be following whatever was on the line and that the scout boat from the Sentilla and the Clamdip would be following right along. Right about now, no matter what he believed, Billy Bright would be having a fit. He would be able to see the bubbles coming up from their diving gear, but if they stopped there was no telling what Billy would do.
Hooker went hand over hand down the line. The thing hit him in the face before he got to the first hook and with one hand he tried to wave it away, but his fingers sank into it and before he could shake loose he knew what it was and hung on.
They all saw him turn, wave them up, shaking the other arm that was seemingly into the very flesh of the indescribably wild thing, then up close they could see what it was. Peter-from-the-market had inadvertently hooked into an old drift net that had been floating loose in the sea.
But something else was caught in the other end.
Hooker gave a thumbs-up sign to return to the top and the team swam toward the surface.
On board the Clamdip Mako gave the two men the end of the three-quarter-inch braided nylon anchor rope to take down and tie around the net. The other end ran around the pulleys on the ship’s winch. When the divers came back up, Hooker started up the auxiliary engine, put the lever in gear and began to pull in the line.
“What do you think it is?” Judy asked him.
“We’ll know in a few minutes.”
The end of the net came over the side and Hooker stopped the winch. All hands began taking in the net, and when the weight got too great they tied it off, reset it into the winch and powered it in some more. At least a football-field length was piled on the deck and right below them was the monstrous, nearly dead body of a manta ray, its wings spreading well over twenty-five feet across.
Billy said, “That is one big mister for sure.”
“And he only eats krill. Little tiny krill.”
“How he get so big, sar?”
“He ate a lot of krill,” Mako told him. He looked up and smiled. “You feel like eating this baby?”
“Maybe I like him better if we cut him loose.”
Kim Sebring came away from studying the giant ray still entangled in the net below the boat and said, “You know what this is, don’t you?”
“Sure,” Hooker said cheerfully, “this is what scared the hell out of us when it came up out of the sand and took off dragging that net behind it. Here we were thinking the damn eater had us and we got all shook up.”
“I think Billy had the best idea, Mako.”
Judy stood there, wet and glistening, that tiny bikini seemingly highlighting her chilling beauty. Hooker wondered if he was the only one who could feel whatever it was that radiated from her.
What Judy had said was almost like an order. Minutes later the net was cut free and the manta ray was loose. It sensed its freedom and its giant wings waved slowly, gratefully, and it swam away from the boat. Almost as one, they started to clap.
On board the Sentilla, Captain Don Watts saw the underwater action, and the capture and release of the manta ray, and he grunted his approval. “That’s first-class photography, Colonel Hooker. No wonder the guests on the cruise ships passed up your invitation of a dive. Just watching what the cameras caught raised their heart rate up considerably. That manta was gigantic.”
“And totally harmless,” Hooker said, then added, “unless they get tangled in an anchor line and tow some poor sucker miles from home.”
“The Lotusland people like it?”
“Did they! Right now a story conference is going on and they’re going to rebuild some of the boats that have been hit, principally the Soucan. Their money men got right to the ones who photographed the damage on the Arico Queen. The story is almost writing itself, and with the reallive action stuff that will go in, they’ll have one hell of a hit.”