Chapter II: Part 2

Terry found himself fuming. He'd set to work to make something that Davis apparently wanted, but his most elementary questions still ran against a blank refusal to answer. Both Davis and Deirdre had spoken of oddities in the catches of _La Rubia_. There could not possibly be any reason for them to refuse to tell him what they were. Terry worked himself into irritability, recalling how he volunteered to come on the _Esperance_ but not thinking that he would be treated as someone who wasn't allowed to know what everybody else aboard most certainly did.

In the afternoon there was guitar music down in the forecastle, and Doug came out and settled himself on the bowsprit with a book of poetry. Presently Nick sat down close by Terry and watched interestedly as he put mysterious-looking electronic elements together into incomprehensible groups. When he had finished, Terry did not admire his handiwork. The noisemaking unit came last. The electrical part had to be enclosed, water-tight, with a diaphragm exposed to the water on one side and its working parts protected from all moisture on the other. The device looked cobbled, but it worked, and made monstrous sounds in the air.

Now he plugged the submarine ear into the recorder. He dropped it overside and taped the random noises of the sea: the washings of sea water against the _Esperance's_ hull, frequent splashings, and very faint, chirping noises from who-knew-what.

"Watch the volume, will you?" Terry pointed out the Indication that should not be exceeded. Nick nodded. "I'm going to whack the paddle overside and see what we get in the way of noise."

Nick hesitated. Then he said uneasily, "Wait a minute."

He went aft to Davis, apparently somnolent at the wheel. Deirdre joined the two of them in a seemingly very serious discussion. Then she walked over to Terry.

"I hate to say it," she told him with evident concern, "but my father thinks it would be wiser to try out the paddle in shallow water. Do you mind?"

"Yes," snapped Terry. "I do mind, since I'm not allowed to know the reason for that or anything else."

He put away his tools and the unused parts. He pointed to the machines he had already built.

"This is what your father wanted, I think. After it's tested I'll ask you to put me ashore."

He went below, where he fretted to himself. But no one came, either to inform him of Davis' reasons, or to tell him to do as he pleased. He felt like a child who isn't allowed to play with other children; who is arbitrarily excluded from the purpose and the excitement of his fellows. Thinking in such terms did not make him feel any better. His irritation increased. The _Esperance_ was engaged in an enterprise that these people considered very much worth doing. He'd joined them to accomplish it, and they wouldn't tell him what it was. He hadn't the temperament to be content with just following blindly. And somehow the fact that Deirdre was aboard and a participant in the secret made his exclusion an insult.

He felt about Deirdre that urgent concern that a man may feel about one or two, or at most three girls during his whole lifetime. It wasn't a romantic interest, at this stage, but he wanted to look well in her eyes, and he was enormously interested in anything she said and did. If he left the _Esperance_ and ceased to know her, he knew he'd be nagged at by the feeling that he'd made a very bad mistake. He didn't want to stop knowing her. But he refused to be patronized.

He saw an open book on the after-cabin table and glanced restlessly at it. There were three or four photographs and a newspaper clipping stuck into its pages. The book itself dealt with physics at post-graduate levels--which meant that it included a good deal about electronics.

Still fuming, Terry glanced at the pictures. The first was of a spherical object made of transparent plastic and probably of small size. It had a number of metallic elements clearly visible through the transparent case. It looked as if it might be an electronic device itself, but there was no sign of lead-in contacts, and the parts inside made no sense at all. The second and third photographs were of a similar yet slightly different object. The fourth photograph was a picture of what looked like ocean water, taken from a plane. The horizon showed in one corner. The center of the picture was an irregularly-shaped mass of white. On close examination it appeared to be foam. But it looked as if it were piled up in masses above the surface. If the water around it was ocean--and it was--and the visible crest-lines were of waves--and they were--that heap of foam must have been hundreds of yards in diameter and piled many feet high on the surface. Foam does not form in such masses in the open sea. It would not last if it did.

On the margin of this picture a date had been inked--three days before--and a position in degrees of latitude and longitude.

Terry turned to the chart rack. He pulled out a chart and looked up the position. Someone had made a pencil-dot there. It was close to Thrawn Island, on the very brink of the Luzon Deep, that incredible submarine chasm in which the entire Himalayan chain could be sunk without showing a single pinnacle above the surface.

He went back to the clipping. It was dated Manila, two years earlier. It was an obviously skeptical article on a report made by the crewmen of a sailing ship that stopped by Manila. Sailing ships are rare enough in modern times. This ship reported that she had sighted another of her own kind at sea. The two ships altered course to speak to each other. And the one which came into Manila declared that when the other vessel was no more than two miles away, white foam suddenly appeared on the sea just in front of her. A geyser of unsubstantial white stuff spouted up and spread, shooting up about thirty feet on the water. The bow of the other sailing ship entered the foam patch. And suddenly her bow tilted downward, her masts swayed forward, and the entire ship vanished into the white stuff, exactly as if she had sailed over a precipice. She did not sink. She dropped. She "fell" under water--under the foam--her sails still spread. One instant she sailed proudly. The next instant she was gone.

The position of such an incredible happening was roughly given. It was almost exactly the same as the position written on the photograph of foam taken from the air. At the margin of the Luzon Deep.

Terry found that his indignation had evaporated. The reason for it still remained, but now he wanted to know more about this happening and about the spheres of plastic with those deftly designed but enigmatic inclusions. The plastic objects had a purpose. He wanted to know what. And the news clipping....

Having announced crossly that he would ask to be set ashore as soon as the fish-driving unit was tested, he was ashamed to take it back. He stayed below, now angry at himself again. Nobody came below. Deirdre did not descend to cook. Night fell. Well after nightfall he heard movements on deck, and presently a voice which sounded oddly distant. The _Esperance's_ course changed abruptly. The quality of her motion altered once more.

He went abovedecks. Twilight was long over, but the moon was not yet up. Here and there a wave-tip frothed, and blue luminescence appeared. Here and there a streak of dim blue light could be seen under water, where some fish darted. But those dartings were rare. Despite the yacht's shining wake and the curling wave-tips, the sea was darker than usual.

Nick's voice came from aloft, faint and eerie and seeming to come from the stars.

"... farther to port.... Two points ..."

Terry could see the masthead weaving and swaying against the stars, with a small dark silhouette clinging to it: Nick. The yacht began to swing. On one bearing she pounded heavily. The seas could hit her squarely, and they did. Figures moved swiftly about the deck, loosening sheets or tightening them. Nick's voice again, from overhead.

"Stea-a-a-dy!"

The _Esperance_ ceased to turn. Rushing, pounding water sprayed in the air. The waves splashed upon the hull of the yacht, which was sweeping along on a quartering wind.

For a while no one talked. Tony stood at the wheel, with Davis nearby, by the binnacle light. Terry could see Davis glancing into the binnacle, then gazing at the horizon ahead, and then aloft, where Nick seemed to swing among low-hanging stars.

"Ri-i-i-ght!" he called from high overhead. "Steady as she goes."

The _Esperance_ sailed on, over the surging seas. Waves came out of nowhere, leaped beside the yacht and then went by--to nowhere. It was hard to believe that the yacht actually moved forward. She seemed to stay perpetually in the one spot. But there was a winding, sinuous wake, and there was froth under her forefoot.

Then a vague brightness appeared on the sea, at the limit of vision. It spread out more widely as the _Esperance_ approached. Presently it was clearly visible.

Dead ahead, the beam of the headlight suddenly revealed an incredible spectacle. Until then there had been just a few flashes in the water, where some fish darted away from the yacht's bulk. But here the entire surface of the water shone with thousands and thousands of fish. They were packed in a sharply delimited circle about a mile wide. When the _Esperance_ got close enough, she hauled up into the wind to look.

From a spot fifty yards ahead, the sea was alive with a million frantic dartings of swimming things. They were crowded, packed almost fin-to-fin. And it was not a surface phenomenon only. From the yacht's deck the streaks of light were visible deep down, as far as the clear water would let them be seen. They formed a column of glittering chaos. The vast circle, to an indefinite depth, was packed solid with agitated fish. At that edge of brightness the thronging creatures were splashing in a mad frenzy. Solid shining shapes leaped crazily from the water. Some leaped again and again, until they reached the spot where the flashes were thickest, and got lost in the multitude of their fellows. A few escaped to the darker surrounding sea. They seemed to run away in stark terror. But those were only a few. The greatest mass of fish milled crazily inside the circle. There were even porpoises, darting about as if frightened beyond all normal behavior, not even trying to feed on the equally fear-maddened creatures all about them.

_Three_

Terry stared incredulously. Someone moved beside him. It was Davis. He spoke in a dry voice.

"I would think," he said detachedly, "that _La Rubia_ could catch a boatload of fish in that water with a single haul of her nets. Certainly with two."

Terry turned his head.

"But what is it? What makes these fish gather like this?"

"An interesting question," said Davis. "We'll try to find out how it happens. Even more interesting, I'd like to know why."

He moved away along the deck. Terry went close to the side rail. A few minutes later the startling glare of one of the side searchlights smote upon the water away from the incredible scene. It moved slowly back and forth. Where the light struck, the sea seemed totally commonplace. No fish could be seen. Then the white beam swept here and there in jerky leapings. There was nothing unusual on the surface, nothing beyond the limit of brightness, where the sea turned dark.

Deirdre said at Terry's side, "We didn't really expect this! I'm going to get a sample of the water, Terry. Want to help?"

She ignored his haughty withdrawal of the afternoon, and he could not stand on his dignity in the presence of such an incredible phenomenon. She got a water bucket from the nearby rack. A wave sprung up as she tried to fill the bucket overside. It touched her hand and she cried out. Terry jerked her back by the shoulder. The bucket bumped against the _Esperance's_ side, hanging on the line attached to the rail.

"What's the matter?"

"It stung! The water stung! Like a nettle!" Shaking a little, Deirdre rubbed her wet hand with the other. "It doesn't hurt now, but it was like a stinging nettle--or an electric shock!"

Terry hauled in the bucket and set it down. He leaned far over the rail. He plunged his hand into a lifting pinnacle of the sea. Instantly, his skin felt as if pricked by ten thousand needles. But his muscles did not contract as they would in an electric shock. The sensation was on the surface of his skin alone.

He shook his head impatiently. He put his finger in the bucket he'd lifted to the deck. There was no unusual sensation. He dipped overside again. Again acute and startling hurt, from the mere contact with the water.

Deirdre still rubbed her hand. She said in a queer, surprised voice,

"Like pins and needles. It's like--like the fish-driving paddle! But worse! Much worse!"

Terry looked again at the sea glittering with the swarms of fish in hopeless, panicked agitation, confined in a specific narrow compass by something unguessable. The searchlight continued to flick here and there. The _Esperance_ drifted away from the edge of brightness. Terry put his hand overside once more, and once more he felt the stinging, nettle-like sensation. He got a fresh bucket of water from overside. On deck, there was no strange sensation when he dipped his hand in it.

The searchlight went out abruptly and only a faint and quickly dimming reddish glow came from it. That too died.

Davis' voice gave orders. Terry said sharply, "Wait a minute!" He began to explain about the stinging of the water. But then he said, "Deirdre, you tell him! I'm going to put a submarine ear overboard. At the least we'll get fish noises on a new scale. But I've got an idea ... don't sail into the bright circle yet."

He got out the submarine ear and the recorder he'd made ready that afternoon. He started the recorder. Then he trailed the microphone overside. The sounds would be heard live through the speaker and they would be taped at the same time. At first, a blaring, confused sound came through. Terry turned down the volume.

He heard gruntings and chirpings and rustlings. Fish made those noises--not all fish, but certain species. These shrill, squeaking noises were the protests of frightened porpoises. But under and through all other sounds, a steady, unvarying hum could be easily detected. Terry had never heard anything quite like it. Its pitch was the same as that of a sixty-cycle frequency, but its tone quality was somehow sardonic and snarling. The word that came into Terry's mind was "nasty." Yes, it was a nasty sound. One didn't like it. One would want to get away from it. In the air the same unpleasant sensation is produced by noises that make one's flesh crawl.

Terry straightened up from where the recorder played upon the wet deck. Davis and Deirdre had come to listen, in the strange darkness under the sails of the _Esperance_.

"I've got a sort of hunch," said Terry slowly. "Let's sail across the bright patch. I'll record the sea noises all the way. I've a feeling that that hum means something."

"It's not what you'd call an ordinary sound," said Davis.

He raised his voice. One of the crew-cuts was at the schooner's wheel. He spun it. The sails filled, and the rattling of flapping canvas died away. The _Esperance_ gathered way and moved swiftly from the glittering circle, came about, and sailed again toward the shining area. She got closer and closer to the boundary.

The recorder continued to give out the confused and frightened noises of the sea creatures, but under and through their sounds there remained the nasty and sardonic hum. It grew louder and more unpleasant--much louder in proportion to the fish sounds. At the very boundary of the bright space it was loudest of all.

But as the yacht went on, the hum dimmed. At the very center of the circle where the glitterings were brightest, the humming sound was overwhelmed by the submarine tumult of senseless fish voices. Terry dipped his hand here. The tingling was almost tolerable, but not quite.

Davis hauled more buckets of water to the deck. In two of them he found some fish, so dense was the finny multitude. Then the yacht neared the farthest limit of the bright circle. The hum from the recording instrument grew progressively louder. Again, at the very edge of the shining water, it was loudest.

The _Esperance_ sailed across the live boundary and into the dark sea. As the boat went on, the sound dimmed....

"Definitely loudest," said Terry absorbedly, "at the edge of the circle of fish. At the line the fish couldn't cross to escape. It is if there were an electric fence in the sea. It felt like that, too. But there isn't any fence."

Davis asked evenly, "Question: what holds them crowded?"

Terry said again, groping in his mind, "They act like fish in a closing net. I've seen something like this once, when a purse-seine was hauled. Those fish were frantic because they couldn't get away. Just like these."

"Why can't they get away?" asked Davis grimly. "We haven't seen anything holding them."

"But we heard something," pointed out Deirdre. "The hum. That may be what closes them in."

Her father made a grunting noise. "We'll see about that."

He moved away, back to the stern. In moments, the _Esperance_ was beating upwind. Presently, she headed back toward her previous position, but outside the brightness. Terry could see dark silhouettes moving about near the yacht's wheel. Then he saw another brightness at the eastern horizon, but that was in the sky. Almost as soon as he noticed it, the moon peered over the edge of the world, and climbed slowly to full view, and then swam up among the lower-hanging stars.

Immediately, the look of the sea was different. The waves no longer seemed to race the darkness with only star glitters on their flanks. The figures at the _Esperance's_ stern were now quite distinct in the moonlight.

"You said a very sensible thing, Deirdre," said Terry. "I thought of the fish-driving paddle and its effects, but I was ashamed to mention it. I thought it would sound foolish. But when you said it, it didn't."

"I have a talent," said Deirdre, "for making foolish things sound sensible. Or perhaps the reverse. I'm going to say a sensible thing now. We haven't had dinner. I'm going to fix something to eat."

"You won't get anybody to go belowdecks right now!" said Terry.

"I thought of that," she told him. "Sandwiches."

She went below. Terry continued to watch, while figures at the stern of the schooner went through an involved process of visual measurement. It was not simple to determine the dimensions of a patch of shimmering light flashes from a boat in motion. But presently, Davis came toward him.

"It's thirteen hundred yards across," he told Terry. "Plus or minus twenty."

"I didn't expect all this," Davis said, frowning. "I've been making guesses and hoping fervently that I was wrong. And I have been, but each time the proof that I was wrong has led to new guesses, and I'm afraid to think those guesses may be right."

"I can't begin to guess yet," said Terry.

"You will!" Davis assured him. "You will! You try to add up things.... A half-mile-wide patch of foam that piles up thirty feet above the sea...."

"And into which," Terry interrupted, "a sailing ship does not sink but drops out of sight as if there were a hole in the sea."

Davis turned sharply toward him.

"There were some photographs and a newspaper clipping on the cabin table," explained Terry. "I suspected they might have been put there for me to see."

"Deirdre, perhaps," said Davis. "She's resolved to involve you in this. You've got scruples, so she suspects you of having brains. Yes. You'll add those things up. You'll include the remarkable success of a fishing boat named _La Rubia_ and the fact that she sometimes brings in very strange fish ... And then you'll add ..."

His eyes flickered aloft. A shooting star streaked across one-third of the sky leaving a trail of light behind it. Then it went out.

"You'll even be tempted," said Davis, "to include something like that in your guesses! And then you'll try to come up with a total for the lot. Then you'll be as troubled as I am."

He paused a moment.

"You said you wanted to be put ashore as soon as the gadget you made today was tested. I hope you've changed your mind, or will. That tape-recording may mean something to somebody. We wouldn't have heard that very singular noise but for you."

"I withdraw the business of going ashore," said Terry uncomfortably. "I'm going to ask another question. What are those little spheres that I saw in the photographs on the cabin table? Were they found fastened to the fish?"

"So I'm told," said Davis. "They are made of plastic. One was on a fish caught by a chief petty officer of the United States Navy. Four have been found on fish brought into the market by _La Rubia_. They could conceivably be a joke, but it's very elaborate! Somebody tried to cut one open and it burst to hell-and-gone. Terrific pressure inside. The metal parts inside were iridium. The others haven't been cut open. They're--" Davis' tone was dry. "They're being studied."

A figure came out of the forecastle and walked aft. It was Nick. He stopped to say, "I called Manila and got a loran fix on us. We're right at the place _La Rubia_ heads for every time she sneaks away from the rest of the fishing fleet. It seems that she hauls her nets yonder."

He nodded toward the circular area of luminosity on the sea. "It looks smaller than when I went below deck."

Davis stared. He seemed to stiffen.

"It does. We'll make sure."

He went aft. Deirdre came up with sandwiches. Terry took the tray from her and followed her toward the others.

"Cigars, cigarettes, candy, sandwiches?" she asked cheerfully.

Davis was back at the task of measuring the angle subtended by the patch of shining sea, and then closely estimating its distance from the _Esperance_. He said, "It _is_ smaller. Eleven hundred yards, now."

"When _La Rubia_ was here today," said Terry, "it might have been a couple of miles across. Even that would be a terrific concentration of fish! They're not all at the surface."

Davis said with impatience, seemingly directed against himself, "It's narrowed two hundred yards in the past half-hour. It must be tending toward something! There has to be a conclusion to it! Something must be about to happen!"

Deirdre said slowly, "If it's the equivalent of a seine being hauled, with a hum instead of a net, what's going to happen when it's time for the fish to be boated?"

Davis ignored her for a moment. Then he said irritably, "Everyone seems to have more brains than I do! Tony, break out those gun-cameras. Nick, get back and report if the bright spot's getting any smaller. I wish you weren't here, Deirdre!"

The two crew-cuts moved to obey. Terry, alone, had no specific duty assigned to him on the yacht, unless tending to the recorder was it. He bent over the instrument which was playing in the air anything that a trailing microphone picked up under water. He raised the volume a trifle. He could still hear the singular noises of the agitated fish mixed in with the thin, strangely offensive humming sound. He heard small thumpings, and realized that they were the footfalls of his companions on the deck of the _Esperance_, transmitted to the water. He heard ...

Tony came abovedecks with an armful of mysterious-looking objects which could not be seen quite clearly in the slanting moonlight. He put two of them down by the wheel and passed out the others. He silently left one for Terry and another for Deirdre, while Terry adjusted tone and volume on the recorder for maximum clarity.

"What are those?" asked Terry.

"Cameras," said Deirdre. "Mounted on rifle stocks, with flashbulbs in the reflectors. You aim, pull the trigger, and the shutter opens as the flashbulb goes off. So you get a picture of whatever you aim at, night or day."

"Why ..."

"There was a time when my father thought they might be useful," said Deirdre. "Then it looked like they wouldn't. Now it looks like they may."

Terry was tempted to say, "Useful for what?" But Davis' vague talk of unpleasant wrong guesses which led to even less pleasant ones had already been an admission that no convincing answer could be given him. Davis came over to him.

"This has me worried," he said in a frustrated tone of indecision. "We must be near the end of some process that I didn't suspect, and the conclusion of which I can't guess. I don't know what it is, and I don't know what it's for. I only know what it's tied in with."

Terry said absorbedly, "Two or three times I've picked up some new kinds of sounds. You might call them mooing noises. They're very faint, as if they were far away, and there are long intervals between them. I don't think they come from the surface."

Davis made an irresolute gesture. He seemed to hesitate over something he was inclined to accept. Deirdre protested before he could speak. "I don't think what you're thinking is right!" she said firmly. "Not a bit of it! Whatever happens will be connected with the fish. _La Rubia_ has been around this sort of thing over and over again! We haven't been running the engine and we haven't been making any specific noises in the water to arouse curiosity! If anything were going to happen to us, it would have happened to _La Rubia_ before now! It would be ridiculous to run away just because I'm on board!"

Terry, bent intently over the recorder, suddenly felt a cold chill run up and down his spine. His mind told him it was ridiculous to associate distant mooing sounds, underwater, with a completely unprecedented, frantic gathering of fish into one small area, and come up with the thought that something monstrous and plaintive was coming blindly to feed upon fellow creatures of the sea. There was nothing to justify the thought. It was out of all reason. But his spine crawled, just the same.

"The circle's only eight hundred yards across, now," said Davis, uneasily. "The fish can't crowd together any closer! But Doug went overboard with diving goggles, and he says there's a column of brightness as far down as he can make out."

Terry looked up.

"He went overboard? Didn't he tingle?"

"He said it was like baby nettles all over," Davis protested, as if it were someone's fault. "But he didn't sting after he came out. It must be ..."

A mooing sound came out of the recorder. It was fainter than the other sounds and very far away. It must have been of terrific volume where it originated. It lasted for many seconds, then stopped.

"I should have been recording," said Terry. "That sound comes up about every five minutes. I'll catch it next time."

Davis went away, as if he wanted to miss the noise and the decision it would force upon him. Yet Terry told himself obstinately that there was no reason to connect the mooing sound with the crazed fish herd half a mile away. But somehow he couldn't help thinking there might be a connection.

The ship's clock sounded seven bells. Deirdre said, "The brightness is really smaller now!" The patch of flashes was no more than half its original size. Terry pressed the recording button and straightened up to look more closely. Right then Deirdre said sharply, "Listen!"

Something new and quite unlike the mooing noise now came out of the recorder.

"Get your father," commanded Terry. "Something's coming from somewhere!"

Deirdre ran across the heaving deck. Terry shifted position so he could manipulate the microphone hanging over the yacht's side into the water. Davis arrived. His voice was suddenly strained and grim. "Something's coming?" he demanded. "Can you hear any engine noise?"

"Listen to it," said Terry. "I'm trying to get its bearing."

He turned the wire by which the submarine ear hung from the rail. The chirpings and squealings and squeakings changed volume as the microphone turned. But the new sound, of something rushing at high speed through the water--that did not change. Terry rotated the mike through a full circle. The fish noises dwindled to almost nothing, and then increased again. The volume of the steady hum changed with them. But the rushing sound remained steady. Rather, it grew in loudness, as if approaching. But the directional microphone didn't register any difference, whether it received sound from the north, east, south, or west.

It was a booming sound. It was a rushing sound. It was the sound of an object moving at terrific speed through the water. There was no engine noise, but something thrust furiously through the sea, and the sound grew louder and louder.

"It's not coming from any compass course," said Terry shortly. "How deep is the water here?"

"We're just over the edge of the Luzon Deep," said Davis. "Four thousand fathoms. Five. Maybe six."

"Then it can only be coming from one direction," said Terry. "It's coming from below. And it's coming up."

For three heartbeats Davis stood perfectly still. Then he said, with extreme grimness, "Since you mention it, that would be where it's coming from."

He turned away and shouted a few orders. The crewmen scurried swiftly. The yacht's head fell away from the wind. Terry listened again to the rushing sound. There seemed to be regular throbbings in it, but still no engine noise. It was a steady drone.

"Bazooka shells ought to discourage anything," Davis said in an icy voice. "If it attacks, let go at it. But try to use the gun-cameras first."

The _Esperance_ rolled and wallowed. Her bows lifted and fell. Her sails were black against the starry sky overhead. Two of the crew-cuts settled themselves at the starboard rail. They had long tubes in their hands, tubes whose details could not be seen. The wind hummed and thuttered in the rigging. Reef-points pattered. Near the port rail the recorder poured out the amplified sounds its microphone picked up from the sea. The sound of the coming thing became louder than all the other noises combined. It was literally a booming noise. The water started to bubble furiously as it parted to let something rise to the surface from unthinkable depths.

Doug put two magazine-rifles beside Terry and Deirdre, then he moved away. Deirdre had a clumsy object in her hands. It had a rifle-stock and a trigger. What should have been the barrel was huge--six inches or more in diameter--but very short. That was the flashbulb reflector. The actual camera was small and on top, like a sight.

"We'll aim these at anything we see," said Deirdre composedly, "and pull the trigger. Then we'll pick up the real rifles and see if we must shoot. Is that all right?"

She faced the shining patch of ocean. Davis and the crew-cut at the wheel faced that way. Tony and Jug stood with the clumsy tubes of bazookas facing the same direction. Doug had taken a post forward, with a camera-gun and a magazine rifle. He had the camera in hand, to use first.

It seemed that hours passed, but it must have been just a few minutes. Nothing out of the ordinary seemed to be taking place anywhere. The moon now shone down from a sky in which a few thin wisps of cloud glowed among the stars. Sharp-peaked waves came from one horizon and sped busily toward the other. The yacht pitched and rolled, its company strangely armed and expectant. The recorder gave out a droning, booming, rushing sound which grew louder with ever-increasing rapidity. Now the sound reached a climax.

From the very center of the glinting circle of sea, there was a monstrous splashing sound. A phosphorescent column rose furiously from the waves. It leaped. Water fell back and ... something soared into the air. Sharp, stabbing flashes of almost intolerably white light flared up. The gun-cameras fired their flashbulbs without a sound.

It was then that Terry saw it--in mid-air. He swung the gun-camera, and a flash from another gun showed him that he would miss. He jerked the gun to bear and pulled the trigger. The flash illuminated _it_ vividly. Then night again.

It was torpedo-shaped and excessively slender but very long. It could have been a living thing, frozen by the instantaneous flash. It could have been something made of metal. It leaped a full fifty feet clear of the waves and then tumbled back into the ocean with a colossal splash. Then there was silence, except for the sounds of the sea. Terry had the magazine-rifle still in his hands. Tony and Jug waited with their bazookas ready. It occurred to Terry that yachts are not customarily armed with bazookas.

"That--wasn't a whale," said Deirdre unsteadily.

The recorder bellowed suddenly. It was the hum that had been heard before: the nasty, sixty-cycle hum that surrounded the captive fish. But it was ten, twenty, fifty times as loud as before.

The fish in the bright-sea area went mad. The entire surface whipped itself to spray, as fish leaped frenziedly to get out of the water, which stung and burned where it touched.

Then, very strangely, the splashing stopped. The brightness of the sea decreased. A while later the enormous snarling sound was noticeably less loud than it had been at that first horrible moment.

The wind blew. The waves raced. The _Esperance's_ bow lifted and dipped. The noise from the loudspeaker system--the noise from the sea--decreased even more. One could hear the squeakings and chitterings of fish again. But they were very much fainter. Presently the humming was no louder than before the strange apparition. By that time the fish-sound had died away altogether. The nearer normal noises remained. The hum was receding. Downward.

Davis came to Terry, where he stood by the recording instrument.

"The fish have gone," he said in a flat voice, "they've gone away. They didn't scatter. We'd have seen it. Do you realize where they went?"

Terry nodded.

"Straight down. Do you want to hear an impossible explanation?"

"I've thought of several," said Davis.

Doug came and picked up the gun-cameras that Terry and Deirdre had used and went away with them.

"There's a kind of sound," said Terry, "that fish don't like. They won't go where it is. They try to get away from it."

Deirdre said quietly, "I would too, if I were swimming."

"Sound," said Terry, "in water as in air, can be reflected and directed, just as light can be. A megaphone turns out one's voice in a cone of noise, like a reflector on a light. It should be possible to project it. One can project a hollow cone of light. Why not a hollow cone of sound, in water?"

Davis said with an unconvincingly ironic and skeptical air, "Indeed, why not?"

"If such a thing were done," said Terry, "then when the cone of sound was turned on, the fish inside it would be captured as if by a conical net. They couldn't swim through the walls of sound. And then one can imagine the cone made smaller; the walls drawn closer together. The fish would be crowded together in what was increasingly like a vertical, conical net, but with walls of unbearable noise instead of cord. It would be as if the sea were electrified and the fish were shocked when they tried to pass a given spot."

"Preposterous, of course," said Davis. But his tone was not at all unbelieving.

"Then suppose something were sent up to the top of the cone, and it projected some kind of a cover of sound on the top of the cone and imprisoned the fish with a lid of sound they couldn't endure. And then suppose that thing sank into the water again. The fish couldn't swim through the walls of noise around them. They couldn't swim through the lid of sound above them. They'd have to swim downward, just as if a hood were closing on them from above."

"Very neat," said Davis. "But of course you don't believe anything of the sort."

"I can't imagine what would produce that sound in that way and send up a cork of sound to take the fish below. And I can't imagine why it would be done. So I can't say I believe it."

Davis said slowly, "I think we begin to understand each other. We'll stay as close to this place as we can until dawn, when we will find nothing to show that anything out of the ordinary happened here."

"Still less," said Terry, "to hint at its meaning. I've been doing sums in my head. That bright water was almost solid with fish. I'd say there was at least a pound of fish to every cubic foot of sea."

"An underestimate," said Davis judicially.

"When the bright patch was a thousand yards across--and it was even more--there'd have been four hundred tons of fish in the top three-foot layer."

Davis seemed to start. But it was true. Terry added, "The water was clear. We could see that the packing went on down a long way. Say fifty yards at least."

"Y-yes," agreed Davis. "All of that."

"So in the top fifty yards, at one time, there were at least twenty thousand tons of fish gathered together. Probably very much more. What _La Rubia_ carried away couldn't be noticed. All those thousands of tons of fish were pushed straight down. Tell me," said Terry, "what would be the point in all those fish being dragged to the bottom? I can't ask who or what did it, or even why. I'm asking, what results from it?"

Davis grunted.

"My mind stalls on who or what and why. And I'd rather not mention my guesses. I.... No!"

He moved abruptly away.

The _Esperance_ remained under sail near the patch of sea that had glittered earlier and now looked exactly like any other square mile of ocean. The recorder verified the position by giving out, faintly, the same unpleasant humming noise, either louder or fainter. A soft warm wind blew across the waters. The land was somewhere below the horizon. The reel of recorder-tape ran out. It was notable that there were very few fish sounds to be heard, now. Very few. But the hum continued.

Toward morning it stopped abruptly. Then there was nothing out of the ordinary to be observed anywhere.

The sun rose in magnificent colorings. The sky was clear of clouds. Again the waves looked like living, leaping, joyous things. Gulls were squawking.

Doug came up from belowdecks. He carried some photographic prints in his hand. He'd developed and printed what the gun-cameras had photographed when the mysterious object, or beast, leaped clear of the sea. There were seven different pictures. Four showed flashbulb-lighted sections of empty ocean. One showed a column of sea water rising at fantastic height from the sea. Another one showed the edge of something at the very edge of the film.

The seventh picture Terry recognized. It was what he'd seen when the flashbulb of his gun-camera went off. The focus was not sharp. But it was neither a whale nor a blackfish--not even a small one--nor was it a shark. It was not a squid. It was not even a giant manta. The picture was a blurry representation of something unreal made for an unimaginable purpose, under abnormal conditions.

Deirdre looked at it over his shoulder. It could be a living creature. It could be ... anything.

"You said you didn't like mysteries," commented Deirdre. "Are you sorry you came?"

_Four_

The next morning the _Esperance_ headed southeast over a sunlit sea. First, of course, the crew examined the sea's surface for miles around. As expected, there was nothing remarkable to be observed. Davis did point out that there were no fish jumping, which was an indication that there were not as many fish as usual in this part of the ocean. But it was hard to be sure. There is no normal number of times when fish will be seen to jump. They usually jump to escape larger fish that want to eat them. The number is pure chance. But there seemed to be almost no jumps at all this morning.

It was not discussed at length, however. All the ship's company was curiously reluctant to refer to the events of the previous night. In broad daylight, a detached review was simply impractical. With gulls squawking all about, with seas glinting in the sunshine, with decks to be washed and breakfast to be eaten, and commonplace, routine ship-keeping to be done, the adventure of the patch of shining sea seemed highly improbable. Terry felt that it couldn't really have happened. To discuss it seriously would be like a daylight ghost tale. One was unable to believe it in daylight. It was better ignored.

Terry, though, did get out his tools to make a minor modification in the underwater microphone. It had been designed to be directional, so that the sound of surf or fish could be located by turning the mike, but he hadn't been able to point it vertically downward, and last night that had been the key direction--right under the yacht's keel. So now he improvised gimbals for the microphone, and a mounting for it similar to that of a compass, so it could tilt in any desired direction, as well as turn.

Which, of course, was a tacit admission that something peculiar had happened. Presently, Deirdre came and watched him.

"What's that for?" she asked, when he fitted the gimbals in place.

He told her. She said hesitantly, "Yesterday, when I asked you not to try the paddle until we got to shallow water, you got angry and said you'd ask to be put ashore. We're headed for Barca now. Someone there is building something for my father, the same thing I had asked you to build--a fish-driving instrument. If you still want to go, you can get a bus from there to Manila. But I hope you have changed your mind."

"I have," said Terry dourly. "I told your father so. I was irritated because I couldn't get any answers to the questions I asked. Now I've got some questions your father wants answers to. And I'm going to try to find them out."

Deirdre sighed, perhaps in relief.

"I put some pictures and a clipping in a book on the cabin table," she said. "Did you see them?"

He nodded.

"What did you think?"

"That you put them for me to see," he said.

"It was to make you realize that we can't answer every question, which you know now."

"I still think you could answer a few more than you have," he observed. "But let it go. Is the Barca harbor shallow?"

"Ten, fifteen feet at low tide," she informed him. "We're having a sort of dredge made there. Something to go down into the sea, take pictures, get samples of the bottom, and then come up again. There's an oceanographic ship due in Manila shortly, by the way. It will have a bathyscaphe on board. Maybe that will help find out some answers." Then she said uncomfortably, "I have a feeling the bathyscaphe isn't ... safe."

He glanced up.

"_Ellos?_" He grinned as she looked sharply at him. Then he said, "This dredge: isn't it pretty ambitious for a boat this size to try to dredge some thousands of fathoms down?"

"It's a free dredge," she said. "It will sink by itself and come up by itself. There's no cable. What are you doing now?"

He'd put away the submarine microphone he'd just altered and was now taking out the still untested underwater horn.

"I'm going to try to make this directional, too," he said. "In fact, I'm going to try to make it project sound in a beam shaped like a fan. A hollow cone may come later."

She was silent. The _Esperance_ sailed on.

"Ever talk to the skipper of _La Rubia_?" he asked presently.

She shook her head.

"You should. He's a stupendous, self-confident liar," said Terry. "He lies automatically. Gratuitously. A completely amiable man, but he can't tell the truth without stopping to think."

"We found that out," said Deirdre. "I didn't. Someone else."

"Is this another censored subject, or can I ask what happened?"

"I'd better see about lunch," said Deirdre quickly.

She got up and left. Terry shrugged. The day before yesterday, or even yesterday, he'd have been indignant. But then he'd known these people had secrets in which he had no share. Today he was beginning to share those secrets, and he had fabulously nonsensical material on which to work on his own. He had strange ideas about the event of last night. He did not quite believe them, but he thought he had devised some ways to see how much of truth they contained, if any. Deirdre could keep her secrets, so long as he did not have to disclose his own wildly imaginative ideas.

The routine of the yacht went on. It was in a way a very casual routine. Davis gave orders when the need arose, but there was no formal discipline; there was co-operation. Terry heard one of the crew-cuts ask Deirdre a question using her first name. It would have been highly improbable in a paid crew, but it was reasonable enough in a volunteer expedition. He heard Deirdre say, "Why don't you ask him?"

The crew-cut, Tony, came to the part of the deck where Terry worked.

"We got into an argument," he said without preface. "We were talking about that ... 'whale' last night."

Terry nodded. The use of the term "whale" was a deliberate pretense that the previous night's events were natural and normal.

"How fast do you think it was traveling when it broached?" asked Tony. "I know a whale can jump clear of the water. I've seen it in the movies. But that one jumped awfully high!"

"I hadn't tried to estimate it," said Terry.

"You've got a tape of the noise," said Tony. "Could you time the interval between the sound when it left the water, and the splash when it fell back?"

"Mmm. Yes," said Terry. He looked up. "Of course."

"It would be interesting to do it," said Tony, semicasually. Then he added hastily, "I've read somewhere that whales have been clocked at pretty high speeds. If we can find out how long its leap lasted, we could know how fast it was going."

Terry considered for a moment, and then got out the recorder. He played the tape for a moment, and skipped forward to later parts of the record until he came to the place where the unpleasant humming sound was loud, and finally reached the beginning of the rushing noise. That, in turn, had preceded the leap of the object photographed by the gun-cameras.

Terry glanced at his watch when the rushing started. He timed the period of ascent of the noise, while it grew louder and louder and became a booming sound, which was at its loudest the instant before it ceased. At that moment the mysterious object had leaped out of the sea. The splash of its re-entry came long seconds later.

Tony timed the leap. When the splash came he made his calculations absorbedly, while Terry switched off the recorder.

"It would take the same amount of time going up as it does coming down," said Tony, scribbling numbers. "Since we know how fast things fall, when we know how long they fall we can tell how fast they were traveling when they landed, and therefore when they leaped."

He multiplied and divided.

"Sixty miles an hour, roughly," he pronounced. "The whale was going sixty miles an hour straight up when it left the water! What can swim that fast?"

"That's your question," said Terry. "Here's one of mine. We heard it coming for five minutes ten seconds. How deep is the water where we were?"

"About forty-five hundred fathoms."

"If we assume that it came from the bottom, it must have been traveling at least sixty miles an hour when it broke surface," said Terry.

"But can a whale swim sixty miles an hour?"

"No," said Terry.

Tony hesitated, opened his mouth, closed it, and went away.

Terry returned to the changing of the submarine horn. Sound has its own tricks underwater. If you know something about them you can produce some remarkable results. A deliberately made underwater signal can be heard through an unbelievable number of thousands of miles of seawater. But, except through a yet untested fish-driving paddle, Terry had never heard of fish being herded by sound. Still, fish can be stunned or killed by concussions. They have been known to be made unconscious by the noise of a very near submarine bell. It wasn't unreasonable that a specific loud noise could make a barrier no fish would try to cross. But there were still some parts of last night's events that did not fit into any rational explanation.

Davis came over to Terry.

"I think," he said, "that we may have missed a lot of information by not having submarine ears before. There may have been all sorts of noises we could have heard."

"Possibly," agreed Terry.

"We're more or less in the position of savages faced with phenomena they don't understand," said Davis vexedly. "The simple problems of savages range from what produces thunder to what makes people die of disease. Savages come up with ideas of gods or devils doing such things for reasons of their own. We can't accept ideas of that sort, of course!"

"No," agreed Terry, "we can't."

"But what happened last night," said Davis, "is almost as mysterious to us as thunder to a savage. A savage would blame it on devils or whatnot."

"Or on _ellos_," said Terry.

"He'd imagine a personality behind it, yes," said Davis. "He does things because he wants to, so he thinks all natural phenomena occur because somebody wants them to. He has no idea of natural law, so he tries to imagine what kind of person--what kind of god or devil--does the things he notices. It's a natural way to think."

"Very likely," admitted Terry. "But the point?"

"Is that we mustn't fall into a savage's way of thinking about last night's affair."

Terry said, "I couldn't agree with you more. But just what are you driving at?"

"There's a dredge being made for me in Barca. I'm afraid you may suspect that I'm trying to--stir up something with it. To poke something we _know_ is somewhere but can't identify. I didn't want you to try the fish-paddle in deep water, that's true. But...."

"You're explaining," said Terry, "that you didn't want me to whack a fish-driving paddle overside in deep water."

Davis hesitated, and then nodded.

"The phenomena you're interested in are under water?"

"Yes," said Davis. "They are in the Luzon Deep area."

"Then, to be co-operative, I'll test this contrivance in ten to fifteen feet of water in the Barca harbor. And I will not get temperamental about your suggestions that I should not mess up your deep-water inquiries."

"Thanks," said Davis.

He went forward to meet Nick, just coming abovedecks with a slip of paper in his hand. It occurred to Terry, suddenly, that somebody went below down the forecastle hatch just about every hour on the hour. They must be in short-wave communication with Manila. It had been mentioned last night--a loran fix on the _Esperance's_ position. There were apparently frequent reports to somebody somewhere.

The afternoon went by. A tree-lined shore appeared to the eastward just when the gaudy colorings of a beautiful sunset filled all the western sky. The _Esperance_ changed course and followed the coast line, some miles out. Night fell. The yacht sailed with a fine smooth motion over the ocean swells.

After dinner Davis was below, fiddling with the knobs to pick up short-wave music from San Francisco, and the muted sound of an argument came occasionally from the forecastle where the four crew-cuts resided. Terry and Deirdre went on deck.

"My father," said Deirdre, "says you understand each other better, now. He doesn't think you're going to feel offended with us, and he's really pleased. He says your mind doesn't work like his, but you come to more or less the same conclusions, which makes it likely the conclusions are right."

Terry grimaced.

"My conclusion," he observed, "is that I haven't enough facts yet to come to any conclusion."