“But the fact that a direct attempt has been made to kill you changes the picture in one important respect. Somebody else evidently knows what’s going on—and that makes it appear that Giard may have been the real target throughout. If the beef herds on our contract ranches can be destroyed and the sleds that work for us starved out of their area, our operations on Nandy-Cline would be shot, perhaps permanently. Agenes and a few others would have the field to themselves.
“My guess is now that the business with the Tuskason pack and the trouble with the sea beef were two different maneuvers, though carried out by the same people, and that the stuff that’s affected the beef was scattered out over the Continental Rift not far north of the coastal ranches with the idea of letting the Meral carry it south.”
Nile shook her head.
“I think you came closer with your other idea,” she said.
“What makes you say so?”
“Two things I discovered while you were gone. I’ll let you see for yourself.” She nodded toward the rear of the car. “You’ll find your trunks and diving gear back there. If you’ll climb into them, we’ll go for a dip.”
“Here? Why?”
“To get your unprejudiced impression of something I noticed a few hours ago. Use the helmet instead of the breather so we can talk.”
The water was comfortably warm. Quite dark, but the combined pulse of the two anchor engines made a beacon of sound behind them. A glimmer of phosphorescence came from the surface fifteen feet above. Nile Etland was a vague shadow on Parrol’s left.
“All right, we’re here,” Parrol said. “Now what?”
“Let’s circle around the cars at about this level,” the helmet communicator told him.
Parrol turned to the left, aware that she was turning with him. He stroked along twenty or thirty yards was about to speak impatiently again when Nile asked, “You can hold your breath just under four minutes, can’t you, Dan?”
“As you know.”
“Just establishing the fact. Start holding it now and keep on swimming.”
“What’s the . . . ” Parrol broke off. She seemed dead serious about this. He stopped breathing, stroked on, turning gradually to keep the sound of the sea anchors at the same distance to his left. The shadow-shape of Nile dropped back behind him.
Irritation was simmering in Parrol, but so was curiosity. He was quite certain—certain in a somehow unpleasant way—that Nile wasn’t playing some game in order to be mysterious. He kept moving along, jumbled questions and surmises flashing through his mind. After a time, his lungs labored heavily for breath, became quiet again. The sea water suddenly seemed colder. He realized the double pulse of the anchor engines had receded somewhat, turned in more sharply towards them. How long had he been swimming by now? It must be—
“Dan?”
He opened his mouth, took in a lungful of air.
“Yes?” he said hoarsely.
“How do you feel?”
“Fine.”
“Liar! You’re scared spitless! I don’t blame you. You’ve been holding your breath since I asked you to?”
“Yes—until now.”
“That’s been”—a pause—”eight minutes and fifteen seconds, Dan!”
For a moment it made no sense. Then it did. Parrol felt numbed. He said at last, “That was the unprejudiced observation you wanted me to make?”
“Yes. Let’s go up and get back into the car.”
She swung herself into the PanElemental ahead of him, turned as he started to follow her. “Better stay out till you’re dry, Dan. You’d soak the upholstery. Climb on the hood and I’ll toss you a towel.”
Parrol inquired presently, drying himself, “Same thing with you?”
“It would have been if I’d been holding my breath.”
“That old herd bull we were monkeying with this morning . . . ”
“Uh-huh. He might come to the surface occasionally but not because he had to breathe. Same thing again with a lot of the other beef that’s stayed on the ranches. That’s why the spot checks were so far off. Something the matter?”
Parrol had sworn aloud in surprise. The towel in his hand was dripping wet now, while he didn’t seem to be any drier. “Toss me another towel, will you?”
Nile made an odd, choking sound. “Here it is, Dan.”
He caught it, looked over at her suspiciously, looked down again at himself. Water was trickling over every portion of his skin as freely as if he’d just climbed out of the sea.
“What the devil’s going on?” he demanded.
She made the choked sound again. “I . . . don’t worry about it, Dan! It’ll stop in a minute or two. The same thing happened to me this afternoon. I’d probably have to dissect you under a microscope to be able to say exactly what’s happening.”
“An educated guess will do for now.”
“An educated guess? Well—the thing that we, and the beef, picked up has developed some biological mechanism for drawing water in through our skin, extracting the oxygen from the water, and expelling the water again. We’ve become gills all over, so to speak. Did you feel your lungs start trying to work while you were holding your breath?”
Parrol reflected, nodded. “For just an instant.”
“That,” Nile said, “seems to be what brings the water-breathing mechanism into action—the first oxygen-shortage reflex. I think you can dry yourself and stay dry now, by the way. You noticed a feeling of cold immediately afterwards?”
Parrol asked distastefully, “That was the sea water coming through my skin?”
“Yes. As I say, I don’t think it’s anything to worry about. The mechanism should dissolve again in a day or two if we don’t pick up any more of the stuff.”
“No permanent changes?”
“At a guess again, no. If you hadn’t held your breath while you were under water just now, you probably never would have known there had been any change in you. You look like you’re going to stay dry now, so come on inside.”
III
She held out a sandwich as he swung down into the car’s interior. “Still hungry?”
“No. I—” Parrol broke off, looked surprised. “I certainly am! Like that bull beef stuffing himself, eh?”
“Yes. Whatever that breathing mechanism is, it eats up a lot of energy fast. Here, take it—I’ve been piling away calories all afternoon. And here’s my other piece of evidence.”
She thrust the sandwich into his hand, swung a camera recorder out of its compartment, settled it on the instrument shelf before Parrol. Her fingers spun the dial setting back a few turns, pushed the start button. The front surface of the recorder turned into a viewscreen.
“Fire forest,” Parrol said, chewing. A flat stretch of sea floor had appeared in the screen, shot from a slight angle above it. Dotting the silt were clumps of shrublike and treelike growths, burning eerily with all the colors of the spectrum. Towards the background they blended into a single blanket of blazing white which forced the gloom of the abyss up a hundred feet above the floor. Parrol asked, “The local one?”
“Yes,” Nile said. “The section immediately beneath us. I put in the last couple of hours prowling around the floor of the Rift. Now watch!”
The pickup swung about to a point where a cluster of giant yellow blooms was being slowly agitated by something dark moving through them. The view blurred for an instant as magnification cut in, then cleared.
Parrol paused on a bite of the sandwich, swallowed, leaned forward.
“Oh, no!” he said. “The floor’s over a half-mile down! That isn’t . . . but it is, of course!”
“Sea beef down in the Rift, alive—and feeding!” Nile agreed. “That’s where something like eighty per cent of the missing stock seems to be now. I can show you whole herds in a minute. They’re thickest a little farther south. Here’s a closer look at this specimen.”
The magnification stepped up again. After a moment Parrol said, “You get the impression it’s lost half its blubber! No wonder the thing’s gorging on fire plants. Energy loss through adaptation again, I suppose?”
“Of course,” Nile said. “There’d be rather drastic changes needed to let sea beef live even a minute down there.”
“Lungs, ears, sinuses . . . yes, there would. It’s almost unbelievable! But wait a second! Supposing we—”
“Apparently,” Nile said, “the process is similar to that of the development of the underwater breathing mechanism. The outer stimulus is required. As the beef moved down into the Rift, it adapted to deep-water living. The ones that stayed in the ranches weren’t subjected to the same succession of stimuli, therefore didn’t change.”
Parrol cleared his throat. “So you think that if we started swimming down without suits . . .
“Well, we might find ourselves starting to adapt. Care to try it?”
“Not for anything!”
“Nor I. The sea beef’s taking it, evidently. What would happen to a human body is something I don’t care to discover in person. That’s the end of the sequence. Want to see the herds to the south now?”