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fungus had got at them and had killed the sponge crop as surely as myxomatosis has
killed rabbits. Bond's black shadow flickered across the breathering lawn like a clumsy
bat. To the right of his shadow, the thin black lance cast by the barracuda moved with
quiet precision.
A dense mass of silvery small fry showed up ahead, suspended in midstream as if
they had been bottled in aspic. When the two parallel bodies approached, the mass
divided sharply, leaving wide channels for the two enemies, and then closing behind
them into the phalanx they adopted for an illusory protection. Through the cloud of fish
Bond watched the barracuda. It moved majestically on, ignoring the food around it as a
fox creeping up on the chicken run will ignore the rabbits in the warren. Bond sealed
himself in the armor of his rhythm, transmitting to the barracuda that he was a bigger, a
more dangerous fish, that the barracuda must not be misled by the whiteness of the
flesh.
Amongst the waving grass, the black barb of the anchor looked like another enemy.
The trailing chain rose from the bottom and disappeared into the upper mists. Bond
followed it up, forgetting the barracuda in his relief at hitting the target and in the
excitement of what he might find.
97
Now he swam very slowly, watching the white explosion of the moon on the surface
contract and define itself. Once he looked down. There was no sign of the barracuda.
Perhaps the anchor and chain had seemed inimical. The long hull of the ship grew out
of the upper mists and took shape, a great Zeppelin in the water. The folded
mechanism of the hydrofoil looked ungainly, as if it did not belong. Bond clung for a
moment to its starboard flange to get his bearings. Far down to his left, the big twin
screws, bright in the moonlight, hung suspended, motionless but somehow charged
with thrashing speed. Bond moved slowly along the hull toward them, staring upward
for what he sought. He drew in his breath. Yes, it was there, the ridge of a wide hatch
below the water line. Bond groped over it, measuring. About twelve feet square, divided
down the center. Bond paused for a moment, wondering what was inside the closed
doors. He pressed the switch of the Geiger counter and held the machine against the
steel plates. He watched the dial of the meter on his left wrist. It trembled to show the
machine was alive, but it registered only the fraction Leiter had told him to expect from
the hull. Bond switched the thing off. So much for that. Now for home.
The clang beside his ear and the sharp impact against his left shoulder were
simultaneous. Automatically, Bond sprang back from the hull. Below him the bright
needle of the spear wavered slowly down into the depths. Bond whirled. The man, his
black rubber suit glinting like armor in the moonlight, was pedaling furiously in the water
while he thrust another spear down the barrel of the CO2 gun. Bond hurled himself
toward him, flailing at the water with his fins. The man pulled back the loading lever and
leveled the gun. Bond knew he couldn't make it. He was six strokes away. He stopped
suddenly, ducked his head, and jackknifed down. He felt the small shock wave of the
silent explosion of gas and something hit his foot. Now! He soared up below the man
and scythed upward with his knife. The blade went in. He felt the black rubber against
his hand. Then the butt of the gun hit him behind the ear and a white hand came down
and scrabbled at his airpipe. Bond slashed wildly with the knife, his hand moving with
terrifying slowness through the water. The point ripped something. The hand let go of
the mask, but now Bond couldn't see. Again the butt of the gun crashed down on his
head. Now the water was full of black smoke, heavy, stringy stuff that clung to the glass
of his mask. Bond backed painfully, slowly away, clawing at the glass. At last it cleared.
The black smoke was coming out of the man, out of his stomach. But the gun was
coming up again slowly, agonizingly, as if it weighed a ton, and the bright sting of the
spear showed at its mouth. Now the webbed feet were hardly stirring, but the man was
sinking slowly down to Bond's level. Suspended straight in the water, he looked like one
of those little celluloid figures in a Ptolemy jar that rise and fall gracefully with pressure
on the rubber top to the jar. Bond couldn't get his limbs to obey. They felt like lead. He
shook his head to clear it, but still his hands and flippers moved only half consciously,
all speed gone. Now he could see the bared teeth round the other man's rubber
mouthpiece. The gun was at his head, at his throat, at his heart. Bond's hands crept up
his chest to protect him while his flippers moved sluggishly, like broken wings, below
him.
And then, suddenly, the man was hurled toward Bond as if he had been kicked in the
back. His arms spread in a curious gesture of embrace for Bond and the gun tumbled
slowly away between them and disappeared. A puff of black blood spread out into the
sea from behind the man's back and his hands wavered out and up in vague surrender
while his head twisted on his shoulders to see what had done this to him.
98
And now, a few yards behind the man, shreds of black rubber hanging from its jaws,
Bond saw the barracuda. It was lying broadside on, seven or eight feet of silver and
blue torpedo, and round its jaws there was a thin mist of blood, the taste in the water
that had triggered its attack.
Now the great tiger's eye looked coldly at Bond and then downward at the slowly
sinking man. It gave a horrible yawning gulp to rid itself of the shreds of rubber, turned
lazily three-quarters on, quivered in all its length, and dived like a bolt of white light. It
hit the man on the right shoulder with wide-open jaws, shook him once, furiously, like a
dog with a rat, and then backed away. Bond felt the vomit rising in his gorge like molten
lava. He swallowed it down and slowly, as if in a dream, began swimming with languid,
sleepy strokes away from the scene.
Bond had not gone many yards when something hit the surface to his left and the
moonlight glinted on a silvery kind of egg that turned lazily over and over as it went
down. It meant nothing to Bond, but two strokes later, he received a violent blow in the
stomach that knocked him sideways. It also knocked sense into him, and he began to
move fast through the water, at the same time planing downward toward the bottom.
More buffets hit him in quick succession, but the grenades were bracketing the blood
patch near the ship's hull and the shock waves of the explosions became less.
The bottom showed up the friendly waving fur, the great black toadstools of the dead
sponges and the darting shoals of small fish fleeing with Bond from the explosions.
Now Bond swam with all his strength. At any moment a boat would be got over the side
and another diver would go down. With any luck he would find no traces of Bond's visit
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