A group of Oganoon approached the cargo lock again, guiding a burdened transport carrier. As they moved into the lighted area, the one in the lead leaped sideways and rolled over in the water, thrashing violently. The next in line drifted limply upward, long legs dangling. The ripping sound of Parrol’s UW reached Nile’s audio pickup a moment later.
There was abrupt milling confusion around and within the lock. The rest of the transport crew was struggling to get inside past the guards. Thumping noises indicated that a number of Parahuan weapons had gone off. A medley of watery voice sounds filled the pickup. Then one of the little boats was suddenly in purposeful motion, darting at a slant up from the ships toward the root floor of the island. The other followed.
“Boats have a fix on you and are coming, Dan!”
“I’m retreating.”
The boats reached the roots, edged in among them. The patrol above the smaller ship had dispersed, was now regrouping. Somebody down there evidently was issuing orders. Nile waited, heart hammering. Parrol’s rifle snarled, drew a heavier response, snarled again. Among the roots he had a vast advantage in mobility over the boats. A swarm of armed Parahuans jetted out from the smaller ship’s lock. One of them shifted aside, beckoned imperiously to the patrol above. They fell in line and the whole group moved quickly up to the roots. Their commanding officer dropped back into the lock, stood gazing after them.
“The infantry’s getting into the act,” Nile reported.
“Leaving the ships clear?”
“Clear enough.”
The transport crew had vanished inside the carrier. Its two guards floated in the lock, shifting their weapons about. The pair on duty in the other lock must still be there, but at the moment only the officer was in sight. Nile studied him. Small size, slight build—a Palach. He might be in charge of the local operation. . . . Parrol’s voice said, “I’ve given the otters the go-ahead. They’re hitting the infantry. Move any time!”
Nile didn’t answer. She slid the rifle barrel forward, sighted on one of the carrier guards, locked down the trigger, swung to the second guard as the first one began a back somersault. In the same instant she saw Spiff, half the distance to the carrier already behind him, doubling and thrusting as he drove down in a hunting otter’s awesomely accelerating sprint. He’d picked up his cue.
Now the Palach at the smaller ship floated in the rifle’s sights, unaware of events at the carrier. Nile held fire, tingling with impatience. The two guards there hadn’t showed again; she wanted them out of the way before Spiff arrived. The Palach glanced around, started back into the lock. She picked him off with a squeeze of her finger—and something dark curved down over the hull of the ship, flicked past the twisting body and disappeared in the lock.
Nile swallowed hard, slipped forward and down out of the cover of the roots. There were thumping sounds in the pickup; she couldn’t tell whether some of them came now from the ship. Her mind was counting off seconds. Parrol’s voice said something, and a moment later she realized she hadn’t understood him at all. She hung in the water, eyes fixed on the lock entrance. Spiff might have decided his second implosion bomb would produce a better effect if carried on into the spaceship’s guts—
A Parahuan tumbled out of the lock. Nile’s hand jerked on the rifle, but she didn’t fire. That Parahuan was dead! Another one. . . .
A weaving streak emerged from the lock, rocked the turning bodies in its passage, seemed in the same instant a hundred feet away in the water, two hundred—
Nile said shakily, “Bombs set, Dan! Jet off!”
She swung about, thumbed the rig’s control grip, held it down, became a glassy phantom rushing through the dimness in Spiff’s wake.
Lunatic beast—
Presently the sea made two vast slapping sounds behind them.
There was light at the surface now. Sun dazzle shifted on the lifting waves between the weed beds. The front of the floatwood island loomed a quarter of a mile to the north. Flocks of kesters circled and dipped above it, frightened into the upper air by the implosions which had torn out a central chunk of the lagoon floor.
“Can you see me?” Parrol’s voice asked.
“Negative, Dan!” Nile had shoved the rig goggles up on her head. Air sounds rolled and roared about her. “Too much weed drift! I can’t get far enough away from it for a clear look around.”
“Same difficulty here. We can’t be too far apart.”
“Nobody seems to be trailing us,” Nile said. “Let’s keep moving south and clear this jungle before we try to get together.”
Parrol agreed and she submerged again. Spiff and Sweeting were around, though not in view at the moment. The wild otters had stayed with Parrol. There was no real reason to expect pursuit; the little gunboats might have been able to keep up with them, but the probability was that they’d been knocked out among the roots by the bombs. She went low to get under the weed tangles, gave the otter caller a twist, glanced at her rig compass and started south. Parrol had a fix on the aircar. She didn’t; but he’d said it lay almost due south of them now.
Sweeting and Spiff showed up half a minute later, assumed positions to her right and left . . . then there was a sound in the sea, a vague dim rumbling.
“You getting that, Nile?”
“Yes. Engine vibrations?”
“Should be something of that order. But it isn’t exactly like anything I’ve ever heard. Any impression of direction?”
“No.” She was watching the otters. Their heads were turning about in quick darting motions. “Sweeting and Spiff can’t tell where it’s coming from either.” She added, “It seems to be fading at the moment.”
“Fading here too,” Parrol said. “Let’s keep moving.”
They maintained silence for a minute or two. The matted canopy of weeds still hung overhead. The strange sound became almost inaudible, then slowly swelled, grew stronger than before. There was a sensation as if the whole sea were shuddering faintly and steadily about her. She thought of the great spaceship which had been stationed in the depths below the floatwood drift these months. If they were warming up its drives, it might account for such a sound.
“Nile,” Parrol’s voice said.
“Yes?”
“Proceed with some caution! Our wild friends just showed up again. They indicate they have something significant to report. I’m shifting to the surface with them to hear what it is.”
“All right,” said Nile. “We’ll stay awake.”
She moved on, holding rig speed down to her companions’ best traveling rate. The dim sea thunder about them didn’t seem to change. She was about to address Parrol when his voice came again.
“Got the report,” he said. “There’s a sizable submersible moving about the area. Evidently it is not the source of the racket we’re hearing. It’s not nearly large enough for that. The otters have seen it three times—twice in deeper water, the third time not far from the surface. It was headed in a different direction each time. It may not be interested in us, but I get the impression it’s quartering this section. That seems too much of a coincidence.”
Nile silently agreed. She said, “Their detectors are much more likely to pick up your car than us.”
“Exactly.”
“What do we do, Dan?”
“Try to get to the car before the sub does. You hold the line south, keep near cover if you can. Apparently I’m somewhere ahead of you and, at the moment, closer to the sub. The otters are out looking for it again. If we spot it on the way to the car, I’ll tag it.”
“Tag it?”
“With bomb number three,” Parrol said. “Had a feeling it might be useful before we were through. . . . ”
Nile gave Spiff and Sweeting the alert sign, indicating the area before them. They pulled farther away on either side, shifted to points some thirty feet ahead of her. Trailing weed curtains began limiting visibility and the overhead blanket looked as dense as ever. The rumbling seemed louder again, a growing irritation to tight nerves. . . . Then soggy tendrils of vegetation suddenly were all about. Nile checked rig speed, cursing silently, pulled and thrust through the thicket with hands and feet. And stopped as she met Sweeting coming back.
Something ahead. . . . She followed the otter down through the thicket to the edge of open water. Other drift thickets in the middle distance. Sweeting’s nose pointed. Nile watched. For an instant then, she saw the long shadow outline of a submersible glide past below. Her breath caught. She cut in the rig, came spurting out of the growth, drove after the ship—
“Dan!”