Secret sea; (20 page)

So Pete took a long time while he tried to Revise an easier way to kill the octopus. B^t at last he stopped walking, and he stopped thinking about easier ways, for there were none. There was only the one way.

He could not use any sort of explosion around

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the Santa Ybel, The sHghtest jar might s^nd her tumbUng down the precipice. He had no pois'-n. He doubted if the shark chaser would work, but he would try it first. He could make a long, sharp spear and stab the thing from a distance beyond the reach of its tentacles, but he knew that if he missed a vital spot, which was very probable, the thing would kill him.

There was only one thing to do.

Pete turned and went back down the beach. Mike was still whacking at the tough, fibrous green hull of the coconut. "I'll show you how to open one of those things," Pete said. **Sometime."

"Where you going?" Mike asked as Pete got into the boat and slipped the oars out.

"Be back in a little while," Pete sad.

Aboard the Indra Pete got a one-volume encyclopedia and took it up to the cockpit. There was just enough light left to read by, and he found the entry "Octopus" and read it slowly and then read it again. One sentence stuck in his mind:

"The sucker-bearing arms, strong jaws, secreted poison, and sinister appearance of these animals have given them a name for ferocity which is not undeserved as their attacks on men are sufficiently well attested."

But, Pete thought, an octopus is only a cepha-lopod; it's kin to an oyster. It has a very small,

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rudimentary brain, and everything it does must follow a simple pattern of reflex action.

Pete shut the book and just sat looking vaguely at the island. In his mind he cleared away all other thoughts—as though sweeping debris from the floor of an empty room—and concentrated on the problem.

The octopus had a radula—a tongue—strong and sharp enough to tear through the twill and rubber of the diving suit. It had a paralyzing poison with which it killed its food. It had enormous strength. These were the things against which he must fight. These, and the fact that the battle would be fought far below the surface of the sea where he was dependent on an artificial supply of oxygen and would be greatly limited in his normal movements, whereas the octopus would be completely free.

What could he pit against these things? Pete thought. Compared to the strength of the octopus, his own strength was puny. There was no antidote for the poison once it was injected into him. He could not stop the radula from tearing his suit open if he got within range of it.

Pete had nothing but the mind of a human, a mind trained to think, to plan, to reason. A mind capable of foretelling the future by the events of the present and past. This was his only weapon. He knew a little about reflexes, about the be-

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havior of animals, about the instinctive reactions of brains unable to reason.

With this weapon Pete planned his attack, established in his mind the pattern which would enable him to predict with accuracy what the octopus would do when confronted with a chain of circumstances which Pete would try to rigidly control and present to the animal.

As he rowed back to the beach, Pete remembered again the week-end leave he had taken on Hawaii, the Big Island. With a rubber-and-glass face mask he had gone swimming in the lava-strewn sea around Hilo and had come upon some Hawaiian boys spear fishing. They were marvelous in the water, and he had seen some of them swim down as far as thirty feet to spear an uloa or some other big fish.

And then one of them had found an octopus— a small one—in a crevice. Pete had watched the boy as he calmly reached into the crevice and let the octopus wrap tentacles around his bare arm. Then, swiftly, he had jerked the animal out and held it up above water.

Pete remembered his revulsion at the sight of the squirming, slimy, shapeless thing as it had writhed in the boy's grip.

Then the boy had put the octopus to his face— just for a second—and the thing died and became perfectly limp, the tentacles dangling.

Pete had gone over and asked him what he had

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done to kill the thing so swiftly and the boy had showed him where he had simply bitten the animal close behind the pale yellow eyes, crushing the brain.

On the beach Mike had almost shucked the coconut and was sitting with it between his knees, scraping and pulling off the tough gray fibers. Pete, pulling out the Marine Corps combat knife, went up under the trees and got another nut and came back to sit beside Mike.

Without saying anything, Pete held the coconut, little end down, and swiftly whacked off green slices of the hull with the combat knife. Finally down into the white part, he took one more whack and sliced a clean round hole in the top of the nut itself. The sweet juice flowed slowly around the hole and Pete held it out to Mike.

"Boy, are you superior!" Mike said. "Know any more tricks?"

"Millions of 'em," Pete said, pulling a whetstone out of his hip pocket and a small can of oil out of his shirt pocket.

The double-edged stiletto blade of the knife gleamed almost gold in the dying light. Pete turned the seven-inch blade slowly over and looked at the scroll and the letters USMC on it. Then, with careful, slow strokes, he sharpened it.

The rest of that night was bad. Before they went to bed, he and Mike chatted a while, but Pete could not remember what they talked about.

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In his bunk he Hstened to the soft lapping of the lagoon against the hull of the bidra while he fought back waves of fear which, in the darkness, tried to engulf him.

In the morning he did not tell Mike what he planned to do, because he knew that it would start an argument and he did not want to bother with that.

Pete waited until long past noon, for he wanted the sun to be in the western sky so that it would throw a little more light into the interior of the ship.

Then it was time to go down. Pete put on the self-contained suit, strapped the knife on the belt on his right side. Then he put on a pair of heavy, flexible rubber gloves. He did not want the octopus to be able to touch his bare skin anywhere, or to feel the warmth of a living being.

As Mike lifted the helmet, ready to lower it over his head, Pete said quietly, "Mike, I'm going to try to get the octopus. There's nothing you can do to help me."

"What do you mean?"

"Just that. Okay, put it on."

"Wait a minute, wait a minute," Mike said, lifting the helmet. "What's going on, Pete?"

"I've got it figured out. Put the helmet on."

The helmet came down. Pete could hear Mike screwing the connections on, snapping on the life line.

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"One, two, three..." Mike said over the telephone.

"Five by five," Pete said in his microphone. "Lower away."

Pete looked up once at the silver surface of the water, broken by the hull of the Indra. Then, paddling, he went over to the black line of the anchor chain and held it lightly. Like sliding down the banisters, he thought.

On the bottom Pete adjusted the valves until he was featherlight, for he wanted the least possible resistance. Then into the mouthpiece he said, "Mike, I'm disconnecting the phone and the life line now. I'm snapping the end of the life line to the ringbolt in the anchor. I might need it again sometime.

"But if I don't, Mike ... if you don't hear from me within an hour and a half .. . just. . . call it a day. Remember those numbers, and get someone else to help you get the stuff. It'll be here."

"Pete! Wait a minute, ^ete, listen. . . ."

Pete unscrewed the watertight plug and heard the phone connection go dead. He unsnapped the life line and snapped it again on the ringbolt. Then he was completely free of any connection with the Indra.

"I feel naked," Pete said to himself as he stood looking at the life line and the bright brass prongs of the phone connection.

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Then he turned and walked toward the Santa Ybel,

He squeezed between the encrusted frames and stood in the first room. The slanting sunlight lit it well, and it was empty.

Pete was sick and weak with fear as he walked slowly through the room to the gaping door of the next one. At the door he hesitated for a moment and then stepped, carefully, through the opening and to one side so as not to block the light.

He stood for a long time waiting for his eyes to become accustomed to the gloom. Gradually, as he waited, he again became able to see the boxes and crates and lumps piled on the floor of the room, and at last he was able to make out the back wall and the two side walls.

Then, on the floor he saw the empty shells of many mollusks—cockles, whelks, limpets, mu-rices, cowries—and the empty hulls of crabs. And, lying in a space empty of objects he made out the bones of a man.

He had adjusted his buoyancy so that he almost floated as he walked, and now he took a step forward into the room. Then another. As he went away from the wall at his back, he felt lost and desolate. He took two more steps and reached a large, squarish lump crusted with sea growth.

And then—as though it had suddenly appeared there, and yet there had been no visible

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movement—he saw the rounded dome of the octopus and the hooded eyes, pale yellow with black slits, staring out at him from the darkness of the room with an intensity so baleful that he felt almost nauseated.

Pete stood perfectly still, the oxygen hissing quietly into the helmet. His mind was now cluttered with thoughts; utter loneliness was like a weight pressing down on him; uncontrollediear moved in the pit of his stomach. He waited, trying to breathe slowly, until his mind cleared and became familiar to him, became the mind of a controlled man holding to a single train of thought, concentrated entirely and with complete detachment on the plan of attack.

Still standing still, Pete slowly ripped open the packet of shark chaser at his belt. The dye spread slowly through the room, seeping along the floor. He watched as it reached and flowed around the dome of the octopus.

The animal did not move.

Pete watched it for a long time as the dye slowly dissipated. He had known that it would not work. There was no escape from the thing he had to do.

He could now make out the camouflaged tentacles of the octopus extending into the room, long and the color of dead flesh as they lay motionless on the dead surface of the sea growth. With an almost imperceptible movement Pete

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drifted toward the thing as he watched the hateful eyes, watched the motionless tentacles. Pete was stooped over a little, the combat knife bare in his right hand, his left arm across his chest, his left hand under his right armpit.

The plastic lens of the underwater light gleamed pale on the floor and Pete glanced down at it. When he looked up again, he saw the tentacle to his left moving. Inside the sucker-lined sheath muscles oozed back toward the hood, and the butt of the tentacle began to swell and then, slowly and smoothly rising from the floor, the tip end of the tentacle came up like the head of a cobra. For long seconds it undulated gently and then began its slow approach toward his body.

Pete stopped every movement of his muscles except his slow and gentle breathing. Requiring the total power of his mind, he stopped the involuntary trembling of his knees, the quivering of his lower lip, the convulsive reaction of his stomach pressing up against his diaphragm. He knew that the time for flight was forever gone; the conflict had been joined.

He could not stop the slow closing of his eyes, the tremor of their lids, or the thick swallowing in his throat. When he opened his eyes, the tentacle was reaching out toward him, and he watched the thin, death-gray tip of it as it came. He saw the circular mouths of the rows of suckers, and as the tactile tip touched him, the sucker

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mouths opened and shut in a convulsive movement all along the tentacle.

Through the diving dress he could not feel the tentacle at all, but he knew that it was sliding around his body, for he could see at the edge of the faceplate the diameter of it, just below his left elbow, growing, swelling, and he could see the rows of suckers sliding past.

The implacable eyes stared, unblinking; the mantle of the thing then began to convulse slowly.

The faceplate of the helmet sharply defined the area of Pete's vision, and he was startled when he saw the tip of the tentacle appear again on his right side. The squirming end of the thing moved more swiftly now as it continued to encircle him just above the hipbones. As though it was blind, it felt its way along, searching in the folds of the diving suit, sliding over small summits and into the valleys of them.

Pete could still feel nothing through the heavy dress. The tentacle continued, the tip now disappearing past the left edge of the faceplate, the band of the tentacle across his belly swelling steadily.

Then Pete felt the pressure. Not suddenly, not with a jerk or a squeeze. It was just a slowly growing pressure around his waist, particularly against his back. There was no feeling of constriction, just of compulsion. It was as though

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a solid wall was behind him, pushing him forward.

Then, with horror, Pete suddenly realized that the tentacle had pinned his right arm to his side, pinned the knife against his leg. His mind stopped the almost instantaneous impulse to raise his arm, free the knife. He forced himself to become completely relaxed, offering no resistance whatsoever as the tentacle drew him with increasing speed toward the dome of the animal.

Pete turned his eyes to those of the octopus, and they stared at each other steadily. Pete tried to penetrate through the eyes into the mind of the animal which held his life encircled, while his own mind coldly calculated distances, pressures, the length of the razor-sharp radula which could slice open the dress and let the enormous crush of the sea in upon his body.

Now he must lower his left arm, move it down outside the grasping tentacle, move the hand down until the fingers could reach and replace those of his right hand on the hilt of the knife. The action must be so slow that the octopus would not interpret it as a threatening movement, so slow that to the yellow eyes it would appear to be only drifting, and yet the movement had to be completed before his body was drawn close to the hood and the rake of the radula; it had to be completed before, in the violence of the animal's gluttony, the thing should