shadows of the pool appeared as no more than phantoms. Here and there phosphorescent creatures glowed, and occasionally a fish glimmered brightly as the moonlight caught its scales.
Josh Malani turned on a flashlight, and everything changed once more. The ocean came alive with creatures attracted by the light, and the water that only a moment ago seemed populated by nothing more than a few ghostly floating shapes was transformed into a whirling kaleidoscope of lemon tangs, damselfish, and butterfly fish. Beyond the brilliant cone emanating from Josh’s flashlight, there was only an inky blackness, and suddenly Michael wished Josh hadn’t turned on the light at all. He was about to signal Josh to turn it off when a large shape drifted into the light, startling Michael for a moment before he recognized it as a sea turtle. The turtle swam gracefully toward them, hovered in the light for a few seconds, then turned away, disappearing into the surrounding darkness. Maneuvering close to Josh, Michael motioned for him to kill the light, and a second later both boys were plunged momentarily into total blackness.
Michael’s night vision slowly returned as the pale glow of moonlight filtered through the curtain of black. With Josh just ahead of him, Michael drifted through the water, feeling lazily disconnected from the world beyond the crystalline basin. The water was no more than fifteen feet deep, and even in the dim moonlight the bottom was clearly visible. The tendrils of anemones waved gently in the nearly still water, and the dark spines of sea urchins protruded from holes in the lava.
Time seemed to slow as the ghostly shapes of fish floated around him.
A large sea snail crept along the lava floor of the pool, antennae extended, mantle partially covering its bright shell. Michael dove deeper, intent on getting a closer look at the snail, when something else attracted his attention.
There was a crevice in the lava, with something protruding from it.
Michael changed course, moved closer to the crevice, then recognized what he was seeing.
A moray eel! Its rows of sharp teeth glistened in the moonlight as it slowly flexed its jaw.
Carefully, trying to move slowly enough not to disturb the eel, Michael inched closer.
The eel, seeing him coming, opened its jaw wide. Its entire body seemed to tense.
It waited, watching, ready to strike.
Josh Malani hovered about six feet beneath the surface, watching an octopus that appeared to be staring right back at him. Twice he’d reached out to try to touch the small cephalopod, but each time it shrank away from him, and Josh had the eerie sense that the little creature felt as strange in the moonlit water as he did himself. The fact was, he kind of wanted to turn the flashlight back on, if for no other reason than to regain the sense of familiarity that the bright colors of the coral and the fish would bring him. Being in the dark was kind of like wandering in a graveyard: he was sure there wasn’t anything in the pool that could really hurt him, but the shadowy water alone was enough to make him nervous. Thus, when the first touch came, he was so startled he almost yanked on his emergency cord.
Then he realized it had to be Michael, letting him know he was there.
Then the second touch came.
Not gentle like the first, but sharp — as if claws had raked across his side.
Reflexively jerking away, Josh once again had to resist the instinctive urge to jerk on the emergency cord that would release the CO2 cartridge, inflating his life vest and shooting him to the surface. Forcing himself not to give in to the surge of panic that shot through him at the clawing touch, he twisted around in the water, searching for the source of the attack.
At first he saw nothing. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he spotted a shape moving toward him. For an instant he felt the strictures of panic close once more around him. But then he realized what the shape was.
A turtle! Nothing but the sea turtle coming back for another look at the odd-looking creatures that had invaded its environment. Probably the same one he and Michael had seen a little while ago.
Michael!
Where was he? Josh looked quickly around but saw no sign of his friend. He’d just been there, right behind him, just a couple of feet to the right!
Hadn’t he?
Suddenly he remembered the octopus. How long had he been watching it? You tended to lose track of time underwater; everyone did. And the darkness only made it worse. Damn! How long had it been since he’d actually seen Michael?
Josh twisted frantically in the water now, searching for a glimpse of Michael. What the hell had he been thinking of, bringing Michael out here in the middle of the night? Just because Michael had managed to pull him out of the reef didn’t make him an expert diver! He should have known better. And he sure shouldn’t have let Michael out of his sight, even for a second.
He switched on his flashlight and shined it around.
Nothing.
Now he aimed the beam downward, raking it back and forth across the bottom, silently praying that when the light picked Michael out of the darkness, he would be moving, not just—
Before the words could form in Josh’s mind, he saw him.
Michael was twenty to twenty-five feet off to the left, and ten or twelve feet below. And he was moving.
Josh’s panic subsiding now that he’d located Michael, he automatically sucked in a breath of air in preparation for the dive down to make sure his friend was all right.
But the familiar pressure from the regulator had disappeared, as if the tank had run out of air. That didn’t make any sense — they’d only been in the water for maybe forty minutes, and the tank should have held enough air for an hour.
Unless it hadn’t been full when they’d started.
But he’d checked it! He could distinctly remember checking the tank he was wearing, as well as Michael’s and Jeff Kina’s.
He looked down again. Was Michael really moving?
Suddenly he couldn’t tell.
What if Michael had run out of air, too?
What if he’d forgotten what to do, and panicked?
His fear for Michael flooding back, Josh reached back and jerked the lever over to the reserve position, then frantically dived down toward Michael. He was just coming into the murky part of the water when he saw Michael drop his weights and pull the cord that activated the CO2 cartridge on his life vest. The vest instantly inflated, and Michael popped to the surface, shooting past Josh. Not bothering with his own emergency cord, Josh swam quickly to the surface, pulling the regulator out of his mouth the second his head popped out of the water.
“You okay?” he asked. But even in the dim light he could see that something had happened to Michael.
“I–I think so,” Michael stammered. “I just — I don’t know — all of a sudden I couldn’t breathe!”
“Damn it!” Josh Malani exclaimed. “Let me see your gauge.” He maneuvered himself around behind Michael, switched on the flashlight, and shined it on the gauge. “It’s the damned tanks,” he told Michael. “Mine’s running out, too! I was going down to get you when you pulled the cord. Let’s get back to the beach and make sure the other guys are okay.”
Inflating his own vest to make swimming on the surface easier, Josh started toward the beach, keeping pace with Michael. It wasn’t until they were scrambling out of the water onto the beach that they saw Jeff Kina trying to get a small pile of kiawe burning in a makeshift fire pit.
“What happened?” Josh asked. “How come you’re out already? You’re always down till you start breathing water.”
“And that wasn’t very long ago,” Jeff replied. “The gauge said the tank was full when I went in, but I ran out of air ten minutes ago.” He scowled in the moonlight, then glared at the offending tank. “And we can’t even complain to Ken about it, since he didn’t exactly rent this stuff to us!” He struck another match. The small pile of kindling under the kiawe branches sputtered, then burst into flame.
A few minutes later, as the fire crept up through the kiawe, which burned brighter every minute, Rick and Kioki emerged from the water, too. “What happened to you guys?” they asked.
Josh shrugged. “Tanks weren’t full.”
Kioki frowned. “Yours, too? I figured it was only mine.”
