“If he exists,” said Don skeptically.
“Don’t forget those six-inch sucker marks. What do you think made them — mice?”
“Hey!” said Don. “Have a look at that echo on bearing 250, range 750 feet. Looks like a rock, but I thought it moved then.”
Another false alarm, Franklin told himself. No — the echo did seem a bit fuzzy. By God, it was moving!
“Cut speed to half a knot,” he ordered. “Drop back behind me — I’ll creep up slowly and switch on my lights.”
“It’s a weird-looking echo. Keeps changing size all the time.”
“That sounds like our boy. Here we go.”
The sub was now moving across an endless, slightly tilted plain, still accompanied by its inquisitive retinue of finned dragons. On the TV screen all objects were lost in the haze at a distance of about a hundred and fifty feet; the full power of the ultraviolet projectors could probe the water no farther than this. Franklin switched off his headlights and all external illumination, and continued his cautious approach using the sonar screen alone.
At five hundred feet the echo began to show its unmistakable structure; at four hundred feet there was no longer any doubt; at three hundred feet Franklin’s escort of fish suddenly fled at high speed as if aware that this was no healthy spot. At two hundred feet he turned on his visual lures, but he waited a few seconds before switching on the searchlights and TV.
A forest was walking across the seabed — a forest of writhing, serpentine trunks. The great squid froze for a moment as if impaled by the searchlights; probably it could see them, though they were invisible to human eyes. Then it gathered up its tentacles with incredible swiftness, folding itself into a compact, streamlined mass — and shot straight toward the sub under the full power of its own jet propulsion.
It swerved at the last minute, and Franklin caught a glimpse of a huge and lidless eye that must have been at least a foot in diameter. A second later there was a violent blow on the hull, followed by a scraping sound as of great claws being dragged across metal. Franklin remembered the scars he had so often seen on the blubbery hides of sperm whales, and was glad of the thickness of steel that protected him. He could hear the wiring of his external illumination being ripped away; no matter — it had served its purpose.
It was impossible to tell what the squid was doing; from time to time the sub rocked violently, but Franklin made no effort to escape. Unless things got a little too rough, he proposed to stay here and take it.
“Can you see what he’s doing?” he asked Don, rather plaintively.
“Yes — he’s got his eight arms wrapped around you, and the two big tentacles are waving hopefully at me. And he’s going through the most beautiful color changes you can imagine — I can’t begin to describe them. I wish I knew whether he’s really trying to eat you — or whether he’s just being affectionate.”
“Whichever it is, it’s not very comfortable. Hurry up and take your photos so that I can get out of here.”
“Right — give me another couple of minutes so I can get a movie sequence as well. Then I’ll try to plant my harpoon.”
It seemed a long two minutes, but at last Don had finished. Percy still showed none of the shyness which Dr. Roberts had rather confidently predicted, though by this time he could hardly have imagined that Franklin’s sub was another squid.
Don planted his dart with neatness and precision in the thickest part of Percy’s mantle, where it would lodge securely but would do no damage. At the sudden sting, the great mollusk abruptly released its grip, and Franklin took the opportunity for going full speed ahead. He felt the horny palps grating over the stern of the sub; then he was free and rising swiftly up toward the distant sky. He felt rather pleased that he had managed to escape without using any of the battery of weapons that had been provided for this very purpose.
Don followed him at once, and they circled five hundred feet above the seabed — far beyond visual range. On the sonar screen the rocky bottom was a sharply defined plane, but now at its center pulsed a tiny, brilliant star. The little beacon — less than six inches long and barely an inch wide — that had been anchored in Percy was already doing its job. It would continue to operate for more than a week before its batteries failed.
“We’ve tagged him!” cried Don gleefully. “Now he can’t hide.”
“As long as he doesn’t get rid of that dart,” said Franklin cautiously. “If he works it out, we’ll have to start looking for him all over again.”
“I aimed it,” pointed out Don severely. “Bet you ten to one it stays put.”
“If I’ve learned one thing in this game,” said Franklin, “it’s not to accept your bets.” He brought the drive up to maximum cruising power, and pointed the sub’s nose to the surface, still more than half a mile away. “Let’s not keep Doc Roberts waiting — the poor man will be crazy with impatience. Besides, I want to see those pictures myself. It’s the first time I’ve ever played a starring role with a giant squid.”
And this, he reminded himself, was only the curtain raiser. The main feature had still to begin.
CHAPTER XV
‘How nice it is,” said Franklin, as he relaxed lazily in the contour-form chair on the porch, “to have a wife who’s not scared stiff of the job I’m doing.”
“There are times when I am,” admitted Indra. “I don’t like these deep-water operations. If anything goes wrong down there, you don’t have a chance.”
“You can drown just as easily in ten feet of water as ten thousand.”
“That’s silly, and you know it. Besides, no warden has ever been killed by drowning, as far as I’ve ever heard. The things that happen to them are never as nice and simple as that.”
“I’m sorry I started this conversation,” said Franklin ruefully, glancing around to see if Peter was safely out of earshot. “Anyway, you’re not worried about Operation Percy, are you?”
“No, I don’t think so. I’m as anxious as everybody else to see you catch him — and I’m still more interested to see if Dr. Roberts can keep him alive.” She rose to her feet and walked over to the bookshelf recessed into the wall. Plowing through the usual pile of papers and magazines that had accumulated there, she finally unearthed the volume for which she was looking.
“Listen to this,” she continued, “and remember that it was written almost two hundred years ago.” She began to read in her best lecture-room voice, while Franklin listened at first with mild reluctance, and then with complete absorption.
“In the distance, a great white mass lazily rose, and rising higher and higher, and disentangling itself from the azure, at last gleamed before our prow like a snow-slide, new slid from the hills. Thus glistening for a moment, as slowly it subsided, and sank. Then once more arose, and slightly gleamed. It seemed not a whale; and yet is this Moby Dick? thought Daggoo. Again the phantom went down, but on reappearing once more, like a stiletto-like cry that startled every man from his nod, the negro yelled out — ‘There! there again! there she breaches! Right ahead! The White Whale! The White Whale!”
“The four boats were soon on the water; Ahab’s in advance, and all swiftly pulling towards their prey. Soon it went down, and while, with oars suspended, we were awaiting its appearance, lo! in the same spot where it sank, once more it slowly rose. Almost forgetting for the moment all thoughts of Moby Dick, we now gazed at the most wondrous phenomenon which the secret seas have hitherto revealed to mankind. A vast pulpy mass, furlongs in length and breadth, of a glancing cream-colour, lay floating on the water, innumerable long arms radiating from its centre, and curling and twisting like a nest of anacondas, as if blindly to catch at any hapless object within reach. No perceptible face or front did it have; no conceivable token of either sensation or instinct; but undulated there on the billows, an unearthly, formless, chance-like apparition of life.