He missed a stroke. Hell, he’d forgotten to take a single picture! Not one lousy shot! AH he had by way of proof was the corroborative statement of Elaine— worth nothing in such august publications as the Journal of Marine Biology—and a couple of teeth that they’d treat as he first had. He would have cried, but it would have ruined his vision.
The curved bottom of the Vatai became visible just ahead and above, its anchor cable hardly moving in the calm sea. The platform occasionally broke the surface. He looked regretfully down at his camera.
An unmistakable shape, a slate-gray torpedo, was coming up fast behind them. This time it wasn’t a lazy chase. The attack was as sharply defined as death. Sunlight flashed on teeth that could snap through steel plate.
They swam for their lives. Panic filled him, terror made jelly of his muscles. Only adrenalin pushed him through the clean glass water.
160
He
They weren’t going to make it. He wasn’t a fish. He was the devil himself, Beelzebub, all the things that go bump in the night, the terrors of childhood and of little-boy darkness.
Elaine was falling behind. He slowed.
Goddammit, it was only a fish.
He turned and waited. Elaine paused only to give him a stricken look in passing and then was gone. Perfectly calm, he was. Relaxed and peaceful in the cool water. Inside, his one major concern was that no one would be able to record this for the Journal. Pity. Then there was no sea bottom, no reef, no sunlight. Only He and me, thought Poplar,
He kicked with every bit of energy in his legs, exploding to his right. He had a brief glimpse of an obscene eye as big as a saucer, a black gullet as deep as a well. It touched him. Consciousness departed as he jabbed with the shark stick.