«It interests me, yes,» he said. «But also I must bring home the pearls. We have come too far to do otherwise. Besides, if we bring home no pearls, many will wonder what we did here. They will ask questions that I do not want to have to answer.»
Since the machine was designed for a crew of beings nine feet tall, there was plenty of room inside it in spite of the damage. Blade swam about freely, examining the equipment as well as he could in the dim light and the short time he had on each dive.
He was able to recognize many familiar objects. There was a small computer with a print-out device. There were the remains of a radar set. There were various items of scientific gear, including a spectroscope, a centrifuge, sampling devices, chemical-analysis equipment, and much that was less easily identifiable. There was a cargo compartment aft, holding boxes and tubes of many different sizes with as many different markings. On the floor lay a number of the electronic implants for the brains of the sea reptiles, spilled from a broken box.
From each dive Blade brought up some small piece of Menel equipment. The pile of bits and pieces in his end of the canoe grew, like Fudan's pile of shells in his end.
Blade kept on diving until the first warning twinges of pain in his joints and muscles told him that he was approaching his limit for the day. It was maddening to have to leave the machine with so much of it still a mystery, but there was no helping it. He'd already collected as much as he could hope to analyze himself, perhaps more. He'd also collected ten times more than he could ever hope to bring back to Home Dimension.
On his last dive he went down determined to examine the ceiling of the machine. So far he'd been too busy searching and stripping the floor. He swam in through the crack in the fuselage, turned on his back, and looked up.
A large squarish shape seemed to be hanging from the ceiling at an impossible angle. At first Blade thought it was another piece of broken equipment, then he realized that it was floating freely. He reached up and drew it down to him.
It was a large black-covered book of some sort, scaled in a waterproof sack with a small cylinder at one end for buoyancy. Obviously it was designed to survive and float free in the event of a crash. Did the Menel keep diaries or logs? If so, then this might be one. Blade clutched the book under his arm and dove out of the machine. Excitement drove him up to the surface. He threw the book into the canoe, hauled himself out of the water, and caught his breath.
Fudan looked at Blade, experienced eyes noting his fatigue. «Blade, I hope that was your last dive for the day?»
Blade nodded. «I'll stay in the canoe, until you've finished your diving.»
«That will not be much longer,» said Fudan. «I see in the sky that a great storm will come in from the sea in another day. If I dive much more, we shall have to spend the night here. With a storm coming, that would not be wise.»
As Fudan slipped over the side again, Blade relaxed into the healthy fatigue that came after a long day's work well done. He looked up at the sky. The faintest hints of sunset colors were beginning to glow in the west. Above the colors rode the mackerel-scale clouds that indeed promised foul weather not far off. Except for those clouds and the wheeling sea birds, the sky was empty.
A sudden splash alongside the canoe made Blade turn. He expected to see Fudan's head emerge dripping from the water. Instead he looked straight into a pair of glittering golden eyes, set in a totally hideous face. It was a death-eel, the most sinister-looking and voracious creature in the seas of this Dimension, one that sometimes attacked even the great sea reptiles.
The mouth opened, exposing two rows of needle-sharp teeth. Blade's eyes ran from the bulging head back along the coal-black body and he swallowed. This death-eel could not be an inch under thirty feet long.
What had brought it here, Blade didn't know. What he did know was that in no more than a minute Fudan would be rising from the bottom, straight into the creature's striking range, straight into those gaping, teeth-studded jaws. Fudan would not see it until it was too late. There would be no escaping the eel's enormous speed and agility.
Somehow, though, the eel didn't seem to be paying any attention to Blade. Somehow he'd failed to register in its tiny, hunger-filled mind as either a possible prey or a possible enemy. He had a few seconds at least to act.
Blade started to pick up one of the crossbows. As he did, the eel's head sank down and vanished under the raft. Blade swore. Now he couldn't get a killing shot in before the eel noticed Fudan. There was only one thing to do. Catching up a knife in one hand and a spear in the other, Blade rolled over the side of the canoe and into the water. Before the eel could react, he was gripping the slimy body with both legs. As the body began to twist, Blade reached forward with his knife and his spear and drove the points of both deep into the eel's head.
He'd hoped to reach the brain with one weapon or the other. Instead he drove the eel into a sudden fury. Its body arched from nose to tail; and its head plunged down into the depths. Blade barely had a chance to gulp a breath of air before he was dragged under. At least he'd drawn its attention away from Fudan.
If Blade hadn't had his knife gripped firmly and driven in deeply, he would have been torn loose from the eel. As it was, the force of the water tore the spear point out of the eel's head and the spear shaft out of Blade's hand. The spear vanished, and Blade drew his belt dagger.
The eel chose that moment to shake its head from side to side in a desperate effort to get rid of its tormentor. Blade felt his left arm nearly dragged out of its socket, but he held on. As long as he held on where he was, the eel could not twist around and reach him. The moment he let go, it would be looping around and those tooth-studded jaws would be reaching out for him, perhaps closing on him.
Blade thrust his dagger into the black flesh. Blood flowed, pale green in the underwater light. The eel twisted convulsively, but showed no sign of weakening. It continued its plunge toward the bottom.
Blade realized that it must be planning to try scraping him off against the rocks on the bottom. He also realized that even if it didn't do that and even if his knives held, the breath in his lungs was almost gone. He might already be so far down that he could never hope to reach the surface alive. But he could not and would not let go, as long as there was any chance that Fudan hadn't made it to safety.
Blade knew that he was only moments away from death, either by drowning or in the jaws of the eel. None of his life passed before his eyes-his mind was still working too furiously, trying to think how to strike a lethal blow against the eel. It would go on working like that until the last brain cell winked out from lack of oxygen.
Then the eel was twisting more furiously than ever. Blade held on to both knives, but the eel's twisting tore them free. Blade found himself floating upward as the eel curved around underneath him, the head rising toward him, the jaws opening, the teeth ready to tear his flesh and a crossbow bolt suddenly standing out from the black head, squarely between the golden eyes.
That was the last thing Blade knew until he awoke, facedown in the bottom of the canoe, with Fudan pounding his back and heaving his arms up and down. It was a crude form of artificial respiration, but it worked. Blade gulped in air until his head stopped swimming, then slowly sat up. Once more he looked into the eyes of the death-eel alongside the canoe, but now the eyes were closed and the thirty feet of sinister black body floated limply in death.