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. . . ." 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
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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 combing 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 a 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!"
"Yes?"
"If you see that sub, don't try to tag it!"
"Why not?"
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"Because it's ours, idiot! I was looking down on it just now. It's a Narcotics
Control boat! And at a guess the reason it's been beating around here is that
it has its detectors locked on the Parahuan command ship -"
The receiver made a muffled sound of surprise. Then, quickly "It's probably
not alone!"
"Probably not. How far do you register from your car?"
"Nine hundred yards," Parrol's voice said. "By the time we get together and
make it there, we might -"
"We might be in the middle of a hot operation!"
"Yes. Let's get back upstairs and see what we can see."
Nile jetted up through the water, trailed by darting otter shapes, broke
surface in a surging tangle of drift growth, began splashing and crawling out
of the mess. Morning sun blazed through wind-whipped reeds about and above
her.
"Nile," snapped the intercom, "their ship's here!"
"Their ship?"
"It's got to be the Parahuan. Something beneath me - lifting! Looks like the
bottom of the ocean coming up. Keep out of the way - that thing is big! I'm
scrambling at speed."
The intercom went silent. Nile stumbled across a pocket of water, lunged
through a last tangle of rubbery brown growth, found open sea before her. The
drift was rising sluggishly on a great swell. She shoved the goggles up on her
head. Something shrieked briefly above. An aircar swept past, was racing back
into the sky. Higher up, specks glinted momentarily, circling in the sun. A
chain of patrol cars, lifting toward space, cutting through the aliens'
communication blocks -
The swell had surged past; the weed bed was dropping toward its trough, shut
off by a sloping wall of water to the south: Nile knifed into the sea, cut in
the rig, swept upward, reached and rode the shifting front of the wave.. View
unobstructed.
"Sleds coming, Dan! Three of them."
His voice said something she didn't catch. Off to the right, less than half a
mile away, the black hull of the Parahuan command ship lifted glistening from
the sea. Rounded back of a giant sea beast. Nile tried to speak again and
couldn't. Wind roar and sea thunder rolled about her. Out of the west, knifing [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]