"You think you could do that?" He rose to face her, body tense, poised, hands lifted as if to strike or parry as the need arose. The stance of a man accustomed to facing danger. That of the hunter he professed to be-or that of the fighter he had taken pains to hide.
Dumarest said, "Haven't we enough trouble as it is? Sit down, man. Dilys, what have you to report?"
For a moment she hesitated, then, as Bochner sat, she said, "The generator's out, as you know, and can't be repaired. We have power enough to run the life support systems until we starve. We can recycle air and get water enough, but food is limited. Why, Earl? You knew all this."
"The others didn't, or may have forgotten."
"So?" The last of her anger vanished with her shrug. "All right, I'm sorry. I should have managed to control myself. But I can't stand a man who hits women."
"Or a woman who kills men?" Dumarest met her eyes. "She could have a poisoned needle attached to her finger," he explained. "Or a lethal paste set beneath a sharpened nail. Like Bochner, I, too would have taken precautions had she slapped at my face."
"And slapped her back?"
"It's one way to teach a lesson." He changed the subject. "Have you anything which could be adapted to give underwater protection? Masks, air tanks, suits?"
"Tanks, yes," she said. "Masks could be made and we could use padding to protect bodies. And, of course, we have the emergency sacs."
The last resort, should a vessel be destroyed while in space, but only the insanely optimistic would ever use them. Transparent membranes containing air and other supplies which could maintain life for awhile; bubbles drifting in the void with those inside them, hoping against hope that some nearby vessel would hear their radio beacon and come to the rescue. The wise chose to die with their ship.
"The sacs!" The mercenary lifted his head like a dog smelling food. "The beacon-don't you have one fitted to the Entil?"
"Or a radio?" Roster added his suggestion. "We are on a listed world and it must have a field and people of some kind. We could contact them. Ask for rescue."
At a price which would leave them stripped of all assets but, dead, they would have lost everything anyway.
Zeda mistook Egulus's hesitation. "The radio, man! Are you afraid of losing your vessel as salvage?"
"It's lost anyway," said the captain. "But the radio's useless."
"And the beacon?"
Jumoke had overlooked it, as had Dumarest and the captain, both assuming the navigator had done his worst. Dilys sucked in her breath as she drew it from its housing; a small, compact piece of electronic wizardry which operated only when the generator failed and the field collapsed, sending a coded electronic "shout" which, even in the Rift, could be heard by a ship which was close, or by a nearby world. Even in the Quillian Sector.
And the thing had operated twice.
"A line," said Dilys. "If anyone heard both signals they could draw a line, extend it, and know just where we are."
"They won't be able to see us," said Egulus. "They could come looking and pass right over us."
But they would keep looking. A ship in distress was a fortune in salvage. Add to that the price of cargo, rescue fees and rewards, and no captain of a hungry trader would give up too soon.
And neither, Dumarest knew, would others who must be searching for him.
He said, "What now?"
"We wait." Bochner joined the discussion. "We sit and wait until someone comes to help us. Why not? We have air and food and water. We have wine and certain other comforts." He glanced at Gale Andrei. "So why risk death outside?"
"Perhaps we could rig up a new radio?" suggested Charl Zeda. "I've some experience in electronics and, with the emergency beacon intact, we have a viable base on which to build. And it doesn't have to be an ultra-radio-all we want is something which can contact someone locally and serve to guide them to us. You'll help me, Shan?"
"You need help?"
"For the assembly, yes." The mercenary gestured at his damaged shoulder. "I'm not too good at fine work at the best of times, and you're accustomed to handling delicate fabrications. If we could use the facilities in the engine room?"
"Sure," said Dilys. "Why not? I'll even-" She broke off with a catch of breath. "What-what's that? What the hell's happening?"
The ship had moved.
It rolled a little, lifting to settle again, bumping to rest, to roll once more as, from the hull, came an ugly grating. A sound as if something hard had dragged over the metal. As the sound faded into silence, Gale said, "God, what's that?"
The screens answered her. In them loomed the shape of madness, scaled, tentacular, spines tipped with barbs, mouths lined with rows of savage teeth. A monstrous creature of the depths attracted by the shock of their landing, now busy investigating the intruder into its realm. And it was big. Big.
"It's like a mountain," whispered Fele Roster. With the others, he stood crammed into the control room and his whisper was an automatic defense mechanism; what the thing couldn't hear it couldn't be aware of. "A living mountain."
One which spread in formless confusion, fogging at the edge of visibility, coils writhing in seemingly endless profusion, tentacles filing its watery world. The Entil rolled like an egg in its grip, its bottom lifting to bang against the rocky bottom, to send metallic verberations echoing from the stricken metal, gongs to herald doom.
"The hull." Threnond's voice, while controlled, betrayed his strain. "How thick is it?"
"God knows." Egulus was somber. "We lost a lot of metal by vaporization as we came down. Half the thickness, and maybe more." He remembered the streaming incandescence which had accompanied them during their desperate journey through the atmosphere. Glowing gases born of disrupted molecules, the metal of the hull converted to light and heat by the friction of their descent. "But it'll hold."
A conviction Dumarest didn't share. He examined the screens and the thing they revealed, following lines, guessing as to size and mass. The ship, engulfed, would be small in comparison. The thing could lift it and slam it down until it broke. Or it could wait, maintaining the pressure of its grip until the hull yielded.
"We could seal the various compartments," said Gale Andrei. "But no, we have no way of telling which will go first."
"We could."-Dilys broke off, then appealed to the one man she felt confident had the answer which could save their lives. "Earl-what should we do?"
Dumarest made no comment, looking at the ulterior of the vessel, moving from the control room to the greater spaciousness of the salon. Space ships were not built to operate as submarines. Strength of hull was not as important in the void as it would have been at great depths, but the fabric itself was strong to endure the strains and stresses of electronic storms and the warping effect of the Erhaft field. Strength, which meant weight. Struts and stanchions fitted on a geometric pattern so as to make the entire vessel an integrated unit. The immediate danger wasn't in crushing, but in the weakened hull plates yielding to admit the rush of water. A flood which would drown them like rats in a trap.
"Earl?"
"We can wait," he said. "Hope that the thing will tire and leave us before it manages to crack us open. But that's a gamble I prefer not to take."
"Why not?"
"Sound." Dumarest looked at Bochner, wondering why he had asked the question. Surely a hunter would know? "We move and hit things and talk. Vibrations transmitted through the fabric to the hull where that thing can sense them. It must know we aren't inanimate and, if it follows the usual pattern, it will be unwilling to give up its search for food."