“We’ll be too busy to give a running commentary,” answered Don with a grin, “but we’ll do our best. And if anything goes wrong, trust us to yell right away. All set, Walt?”
“O.K.,” said Franklin, climbing down into the hatch. “See you in five hours, with Percy — I hope.”
They wasted no time in diving to the seabed; less than ten minutes later there was four thousand feet of water overhead, and the familiar rocky terrain was imaged on TV and sonar screen. But there was no sign of the pulsing star that should have indicated the presence of Percy.
“Hope the beacon hasn’t packed up,” said Franklin as he reported this news to the hopefully waiting scientists. “If it has, it may take us days to locate him again.”
“Do you suppose he’s left the area? I wouldn’t blame him,” added Don.
Dr. Roberts’ voice, still confident and assured, came down to them from the distant world of Sun and light almost a mile above.
“He’s probably hiding in a cleft, or shielded by rock. I suggest you rise five hundred feet so that you’re well clear of all the seabed irregularities, and start a high-speed search. That beacon has a range of more than a mile, so you’ll pick him up pretty quickly.”
An hour later even the doctor sounded less confident, and from the comments that leaked down to them over the sonar communicator it appeared that the reporters and TV networks were getting impatient.
“There’s only one place he can be,” said Roberts at last. “If he’s there at all, and the beacon’s still working, he must have gone down into the Miller Canyon.”
“That’s fifteen thousand feet deep,” protested Don. “These subs are only cleared for twelve.”
“I know — I know. But he won’t have gone to the bottom. He’s probably hunting somewhere down the slope. You’ll see him easily if he’s there.”
“Right,” replied Franklin, not very optimistically. “We’ll go and have a look. But if he’s more than twelve thousand feet down, he’ll have to stay there.”
On the sonar screen, the canyon was clearly visible as a sudden gap in the luminous image of the seabed. It came rapidly closer as the two subs raced toward it at forty knots — the fastest creatures, Franklin mused, anywhere beneath the surface of the sea. He had once flown low toward the Grand Canyon, and seen the land below suddenly whipped away as the enormous cavity gaped beneath him. And now, though he must rely for vision solely on the pattern of echoes brought back by his probing sound waves, he felt exactly that same sensation as he swept across the edge of this still mightier chasm in the ocean floor.
He had scarcely finished the thought when Don’s voice, high-pitched with excitement, came yelling from the speaker.
“There he is! A thousand feet down!”
“No need to break my eardrums,” grumbled Franklin. “I can see him.”
The precipitous slope of the canyon wall was etched like an almost vertical line down the center of the sonar screen. Creeping along the face of that wall was the tiny, twinkling star for which they had been searching. The patient beacon had betrayed Percy to his hunters.
They reported the situation to Dr. Roberts; Franklin could picture the jubilation and excitement up above, some hints of which trickled down through the open microphone. Presently Dr. Roberts, a little breathless, asked: “Do you think you can still carry out our plan?”
“I’ll try,” he answered. “It won’t be easy with this cliff face right beside us, and I hope there aren’t any caves Percy can crawl into. You ready, Don?”
“All set to follow you down.”
“I think I can reach him without using the motors. Here we go.”
Franklin flooded the nose tanks, and went down in a long, steep glide — a silent glide, he hoped. By this time, Percy would have learned caution and would probably run for it as soon as he knew that they were around.
The squid was cruising along the face of the canyon, and Franklin marveled that it could find any food in such a forbidding and apparently lifeless spot. Every time it expelled a jet of water from the tube of its siphon it moved forward in a distinct jerk; it seemed unaware that it was no longer alone, since it had not changed course since Franklin had first observed it.
“Two hundred feet — I’m going to switch on my lights again,” he told Don.
“He won’t see you — visibility’s only about eighty today.”
“Yes, but I’m still closing in — he’s spotted me! Here he comes!”
Franklin had not really expected that the trick would work a second time on an animal as intelligent as Percy. But almost at once he felt the sudden thud, followed by the rasping of horny claws as the great tentacles closed around the sub. Though he knew that he was perfectly safe, and that no animal could harm walls that had been built to withstand pressures of a thousand tons on every square foot, that grating, slithering sound was one calculated to give him nightmares.
Then, quite suddenly, there was silence. He heard Don exclaim, “Christ, that stuff acts quickly! He’s out cold.” Almost at once Dr. Roberts interjected anxiously: “Don’t give him too much! And keep him moving so that he’ll still breathe!”
Don was too busy to answer. Having carried out his role as decoy, Franklin could do nothing but watch as his partner maneuvered dexterously around the great mollusk. The anesthetic bomb had paralyzed it completely; it was slowly sinking, its tentacles stretched limply upward. Pieces of fish, some of them over a foot across, were floating away from the cruel beak as the monster disgorged its last meal.
“Can you get underneath?” Don asked hurriedly. “He’s sinking too fast for me.”
Franklin threw on the drive and went around in a tight curve. There was a soft thump, as of a snowdrift falling from a roof, and he knew that five or ten tons of gelatinous body were now draped over the sub.
“Fine — hold him there — I’m getting into position.”
Franklin was now blind, but the occasional clanks and whirs coming from the water outside told him what was happening. Presently Don said triumphantly: “All set! We’re ready to go.”
The weight lifted from the sub, and Franklin could see again. Percy had been neatly gaffed. A band of thick, elastic webbing had been fastened around his body at the narrowest part, just behind the flukes. From this harness a cable extended to Don’s sub, invisible in the haze a hundred feet away. Percy was being towed through the water in his normal direction of motion — backward. Had he been conscious and actively resisting, he could have escaped easily enough, but in his present state the collar he was wearing enabled Don to handle him without difficulty. The fun would begin when he started to revive…
Franklin gave a brief eyewitness description of the scene for the benefit of his patiently waiting colleagues a mile above. It was probably being broadcast, and he hoped that Indra and Peter were listening. Then he settled down to keep an eye on Percy as the long haul back to the surface began.
They could not move at more than two knots, lest the collar lose its none-too-secure grip on the great mass of jelly it was towing. In any event, the trip back to the surface had to take at least three hours, to give Percy a fair chance of adjusting to the pressure difference. Since an air-breathing — and therefore more vulnerable — animal like a sperm whale could endure almost the same pressure change in ten or twenty minutes, this caution was probably excessive. But Dr. Roberts was taking no chances with his unprecedented catch.
They had been climbing for nearly an hour, and had reached the three-thousand-foot level, when Percy showed signs of life. The two long arms, terminating in their great sucker-covered palps, began to writhe purposefully; the monstrous eyes, into which Franklin had been staring half hypnotized from a distance of no more than five feet, began to light once more with intelligence. Quite unaware that he was speaking in a breathless whisper, he swiftly reported these symptoms to Dr. Roberts.
The doctor’s first reaction was a hearty sigh of relief: “Good!” he said. “I was afraid we might have killed him. Can you see if he’s breathing properly? Is the siphon contracting?”
Franklin dropped a few feet so that he could get a better view of the fleshy tube projecting from the squid’s mantle. It was opening and closing in an unsteady rhythm which seemed to be getting stronger and more regular at every beat.
“Splendid!” said Dr. Roberts. “He’s in fine shape. As soon as he starts to wriggle too hard, give him one of the small bombs. But leave it until the last possible moment.”
Franklin wondered how that moment was to be decided. Percy was now beginning to glow a beautiful blue; even with the searchlights switched off he was clearly visible. Blue, he remembered Dr. Roberts saying, was a sign
