Creatures of the Abyss

by Murray Leinster

  _Five_

  When Terry awoke, next morning, the reflections of sunlight on watercame in through the porthole of his cabin. He watched the shimmeringcontortions of the light spots on the wall. His thoughts went instantlyback to the subject they'd dwelt on before he went to sleep. The manwith the spectacles--Dr. Morton, but his doctorate was in astronomyinstead of medicine--had said that Deirdre and his father had discussedenlisting him in the _Esperance's_ company a month ago. Deirdre'd comeinto the shop of Jimenez y Cia. only four days before. Some of the delaycould have been caused by time spent in simple sailing from one place toanother, mostly on wholly futile errands. They'd gotten a fish-drivingpaddle at Alua. That'd take some days of sailing each way. Apparently,they'd been fumbling at some vague idea of trying to find out what wouldproduce the facts they'd noted. 'Very queer fish,' Davis had said ofsome of the catches _La Rubia_ had made. The abyssal fish mentioned lastnight would be very queer fish to catch in a lagoon. Yes....

  He lay still, surveying other aspects of the situation. Davis had calledon an aircraft carrier for electronic items, and the _Esperance_ was inconstant touch with somebody by short-wave radio. It might be the samecarrier. The Manila police department was on very cordial terms withDavis, and the staff of a satellite-tracking installation saved oddspecimens of fish for him.

  The _Esperance's_ enterprise was plainly not a brand-new adventure. Ithad been carried on for some time. They had had technical aid of thevery highest caliber, but they hadn't gotten anywhere yet. It didappear that Terry had added a minor specialty to the arsenal ofinvestigative techniques. Without the data gathered on recorder-tape,their idea of the events of two nights before would be very different.The sea would have seemed very bright, then the glowing area would havebeen noted to have grown smaller, and something resembling a whale wouldhave been seen leaping high above the water. Then the brightness wouldhave faded out. It would have been mysterious enough, but an entireaspect of the phenomenon would have gone unnoticed. There was still noanswer to any of the far-reaching questions Terry had asked himself, butmost of them had never been asked before. Sea noises had proved to beclosely connected to whatever had to be found out. What was known aboutthem was due to his findings. He'd established a new frame of reference.

  And he'd discovered the solution of a minor problem before the problemwas even stated. He had only to prove it. Then, of course, there wouldbe other problems arising from it.

  He got up, put on swimming trunks, and duck trousers over them. Heslipped into a sweat shirt and went upon deck. Deirdre hailed him.

  "Good morning! Everybody's over at the tracking station, arguing aboutthe bolide that went over last night. According to the radar, it plungedinto the sea, miles and miles away."

  "What should it have done?" asked Terry. "I'm not familiar withmeteorites. Are they planning to dive for it?"

  "Hardly!" Deirdre laughed. "It landed in the Luzon Deep." She waved ahand in an inclusive gesture. "This island's on the brink of it. Abathyscaphe might go down there--in fact, I think it's scheduled; youknow, the one I said was coming to Manila on the oceanographic ship? Abathyscaphe can go that deep, but it's not likely to hunt formeteorites."

  "Ah," said Terry judicially. "Then what difference does it make where ithit?"

  "It didn't fall the way it should have," said Deirdre. "It was spottedby space radar away out, and they tried to compute its path, but theyfigured it wrong. Now they're trying to make it come out right byallowing for the effect of the earth's magnetic field on a metalmeteorite. They're arguing and waving equations at each other."

  "Let them," said Terry. "I have trouble enough with fish. Do you think Icould borrow a boat?"

  "We've always been able to," said Deirdre. Then she added, "I've keptyour breakfast hot. While you eat it I'll get a boat."

  She went below, and instants later was up again.

  "I have a feeling," she said, "that something interesting is going tohappen. I'll be back."

  She swung lightly to the wharf and headed for land. Terry went below, tofind his breakfast laid out on the cabin table. He settled down to it,but first pulled a book from the shelves. It was a volume onoceanography, and its pages showed that it had often been referred to.He found the Luzon Deep described. Its area was relatively small, a mereninety-mile-long chasm in the sea-bed. But it was second only to theMindanao Deep in its soundings, and a close second at that. Its maximumdepth was measured at twenty-seven thousand feet. Over five miles. Therewas a mention of Thrawn Island as being on the very edge of the Deep.According to the book, the island was the peak of one of the mostprecipitous and tallest submarine mountains in the world. Three milesfrom where Thrawn Island lay, there were soundings of twenty-eightthousand feet and upward. This depth extended as a trench....

  The staccato roaring of an outboard motor sounded some distance away. Itbellowed toward the yacht, swung about, and cut off. Terry gulped downhis coffee and went abovedecks, just as Deirdre was fastening the smallcraft alongside the yacht.

  "Taxi?" she asked amiably. "I got the boat. Where to?"

  Terry swung down and took the steering grip. He headed the boat away.There was a box for bait, a few fishing lines, and even two highlyprofessional fish-spears on board. Fishing was not necessarily asedentary pastime here.

  "We try the lagoon entrance," he said. "I've an idea. I noticedsomething last night, when we came in."

  "Do you want to brief me?"

  "I'd rather not," he admitted.

  Deirdre shrugged without resentment. The little craft went sturdilytoward the passageway to the open sea. She formed an arrowhead of wavesas she moved. She neared the points of land at the ends of the coralformation enclosing the lagoon. Thrawn Island was not an atoll. But thebeaches were made of snow-white coral sand. Outside there was clearwater for a space and then a reef on which the seas broke.

  Terry headed the boat toward the open sea. Almost immediately after,there was nothing but the reef and the sea between the boat and thehorizon. He slowed the boat almost to a stop, well within the reef'stumult. She swayed and rolled on the surging water.

  "Stay here," he commanded. "I want to swim out and back."

  He pulled the sweat shirt over his head. He jumped overboard, leavingDeirdre in charge of the boat.

  The world looked strange to him when waves rolled by higher than hishead. A few times the sky narrowed to the space between wave-crests.Other times he was lifted upon a wave-peak, and the sky was illimitablyhigh and large, and the breaking seas on the nearby reef merely roaredand grumbled to themselves.

  He swam out, away from the land. Suddenly his body began to tingle. Hestopped and paddled, analyzing the sensation. One side of his body feltas if the most minute of electric currents entered his skin. It was notan unpleasant sensation. Deirdre, in the small boat, was fifty yardsbehind, watching him. As he swam on, the tingling grew stronger. Hedived. The tingling did not vary with depth. He came up, and he wasfarther out than he'd realized.

  He suddenly knew that he'd been incautious. There are currents whichflow in and out of lagoons. A barrier of reef affects them, too. Terryfound himself swimming in an outward-bound current, which pushed him outand away from the island.

  Within seconds the sensation in his body changed from a mere tinglingto torment. For a moment it was just very much stronger and slightlypainful, but a moment later it felt as if he swam among flames. It wasunbearable. His muscles were not contracted, as if by an electric shock,but he couldn't control their reflexes. He found himself splashingcrazily, trying to fight his way out of the anguish which engulfed him.

  He went under. His body had taken complete control over his mind, and hefound himself swimming frantically, underwater. He couldn't reach thesurface. His body tried to escape the intolerable agony in which it wasimmersed but couldn't.

  He heard a roaring sound, but it meant nothing. The roaring grew louder.Finally, he did break surface for a few seconds, and he gasped horribly,but then he went under. The roaring grew thunderous
, and he brokesurface again....

  Something seized his flailing arm and pulled him up. The arm ceased toexperience the horrible sensation of being in boiling oil. His handrecognized a gunwale. He swarmed up the solid object with hands helpinghim, and found himself in the boat, gasping and shivering, and cringingat the bare memory of the suffering he'd undergone.

  Deirdre stared at him, frightened. She swung the boat's bow shoreward.The outboard motor roared, and the boat raced past the gap in the reefand rushed toward the lagoon opening.

  "Are you all right? What happened? You were swimming and suddenly...."

  He swallowed. His hands quivered. He shook his head and then saidunsteadily, "I meant to ... check the reason those queer fish stay inthe lagoon. I thought that if they belonged in the depths and weresomehow carried out of them, they would try to get back. I found out!"

  He felt an unreasonable relief when the lagoon entrance was behind theboat. The glassy water was reassuring. The _Esperance_ looked likesafety itself.

  "I think I know how they got here, now," he added. "We underestimatedwhat we're trying to understand. I'll be all right in a minute."

  It was less than a minute before he shook himself and managed to grinwryly at Deirdre.

  "Was there a hum in the water?" asked Deirdre, still staring at him. "Ithought I heard it on the bottom of the boat. Was that the trouble?"

  "Yes. I wouldn't call it a hum," Terry admitted. "Not any longer. Now Iknow what a slow fire feels like."

  "You frightened me," said Deirdre, "the way you splashed...."

  "I heard the humming sound," said Terry, "last night when the yacht cameup to the island. We were perhaps a half-mile off-shore. It was veryfaint, but I had the amplifier turned down low. The hum was at itsloudest just before we passed the reef, but nobody else noticed. WhenDr. Morton said there were abyssal fish in the lagoon, I knew why they'dbe there. I made a guess at what might drive them there. I went to findout if I was right. I found out!"

  "The hum?" asked Deirdre again. When he nodded, she said: "What are yougoing to do now? What do you think makes the hum?"

  "I'm trying hard not to guess what makes the hum," Terry told her."Insufficient data. I need more. I think I'll ask what other oddphenomena have turned up in this neighborhood. Foam-patches on the sea?I can't imagine a connection, but still...."

  He swung the little boat alongside the docked _Esperance_ and held outhis hand to help Deirdre to the dock. His hand was wholly steady again.She accepted the help.

  "We'll go to the tracking station?"

  "Yes. Everybody seems to be there," said Terry.

  They heard a babble of voices coming from the satellite-trackingstation. As they approached the buildings, Terry looked around. Off atone side there was the very peculiar aerial system by which tinyartificial moons circling the earth could be detected by their ownsignals. Minute spheres and cylinders and spiky objects andfoolish-looking paddle-wheels, whirling in their man-appointed rounds,sent down signals with powers of mere fractions of a watt. This systemof aerials picked up those miniature broadcasts and extractedremarkable amounts of information from them. It was possible todetermine the satellites' distance more accurately, by a comparison ofphase-changes in their signals, than if steel tape measures werestretched up to make physical contact with them. The accuracy was of theorder of inches at hundreds of miles. Floating where the stars werebright and unwinking lights against blackness and the sun was a diskwith writhing arms of fire, the small objects sent back information thatmen had never possessed before and did not wholly know what to do withnow that they did. And there were other objects in the heavens, too.There were satellites which no longer signaled back to earth. Some hadtheir equipment worn out. Some objects were satellites which had failedto function from the beginning. Some were mysteries.

  The bolide of the night before was a mystery. As Terry and Deirdreentered the wide verandah of the recreation building for the station'spersonnel, they heard Dr. Morton protesting, "But that's out of thequestion! I agree that we never know any more about what the Russiansthrow out to space than what we find out for ourselves. That's true! Butthis wasn't a terrestrial object! If it was a satellite that wasn'tlaunched right, it had to be sent up from Russian territory. It wasn't.That's positive! If we assume it was a satellite that had already madeseveral orbital turns, we must admit it would be an impossible shift inapogee for it to come down at the angle it did!"

  Deirdre and Terry sat down as someone else said hotly, "Our observationswere wrong. They had to be! The earth's magnetic field couldn't affectthe speed of an object _outside_ the atmosphere! Our observations say itslowed down. It couldn't!"

  Davis lifted a hand in greeting. The argument stopped for a moment.Deirdre was known, but Terry had to be introduced. He was sitting besidea bald young man who explained in a low tone, as the argument resumed."They're having fun. They argued for days when our radar picked up anempty second stage in orbit. They're still ready to dispute for hoursabout a supposed retrograde satellite that was spotted last year, waswatched for four turns, and then disappeared. Beer?"

  "Too early," said Terry. "Thanks just the same."

  Davis said earnestly, at the other side of the room, "I'd feel a lotbetter if that thing last night hadn't splashed where it did."

  "The bolide," said a voice humorously, "is a free animal."

  The discussion went on. Terry saw Deirdre talking to a middle-aged womanwith a splendid sun-tan and a placid expression on her face. Doug andTony sat watchfully on the side lines, listening. Doug had been offered,and had accepted, a sandwich. He ate it methodically.

  Terry had a sudden feeling of unreality. Less than half an hour beforehe'd been in torment and, but for Deirdre, on his way to death. On the_Esperance_ there'd been so much that was absorbing in the way of fishbehavior that he'd forgotten some people were interested in otherthings. Here a dozen people squabbled over the behavior of a meteorite.Nothing could be of less consequence to the outside world. But in theoutside world, people argued about baseball, or golf, or politics....

  Doug excused himself and slipped outside. Terry joined him there alittle later. Doug was smoking a cigarette, looking at the sky and thepalms.

  "Pretty heavy discussion," said Terry.

  "It's over my head," said Doug. "I got lonesome. It made me think of mygirl. She likes to talk like this. That's why ..."

  He stopped.

  "Is there an aqualung outfit on the _Esperance_?" asked Terry.

  "Sure! Two or three of them. Mr. Davis had an idea they'd be useful.Used one of them last week to look at the _Esperance's_ bottom-planks.Why?"

  "I'd like to poke around the bottom of the lagoon a little," said Terry,with unconscious grimness. "Would you help?"

  "Sure!" said Doug.

  They went back to the _Esperance_. Doug got out two aqualung outfits.They checked the valves and tanks and connections. Doug brought out twospring guns. In half an hour they were in the outboard, headed for whatDoug said was the deepest part of the lagoon.

  Arrived there, Terry tested the water with his finger and then wentoverside. Instead of a spring gun, he used one of the fish spears thatseemed to be standard equipment for fishing, here. Doug stayed in theboat to watch.

  Terry'd guessed that what he looked for would be in the deepest part ofthe lagoon. He was right. Within half an hour he'd speared five fish oftypes that had no business being within two thousand fathoms of thesurface. He ignored the lagoon's normal inhabitants. He picked on fishof a dark-red color, which is predominant in the depths but notelsewhere. When the fish had extremely small eyes or extremely largeones, he hunted them determinedly, knowing they were deep-sea fish. Hecaught five, which was a good haul, even considering his previoussuspicions.

  Doug inspected the catch as the outboard went back to the yacht. Terryreplaced his spear under the gunwale.

  "They're queer fish," observed Doug. "I wouldn't want to eat them."

  "Neither would I," agreed Terry. "But I feel a certai
n sympathy forthem. I think we've shared an experience."

  He did. Fish so far from their normal environment would not havemigrated unless they'd been forced to. So these fish must have beendriven up from the blissful utter blackness of the abyss, which wastheir habitat. He had a vivid memory of the kind of urging they'dreceived, because of his recent swim outside the reef opening. That wasthe experience he believed they shared.

  He got his catch onto the _Esperance's_ deck and found some sharp knivesin the galley, while Doug put the aqualungs away. When Doug cameabovedecks again, he looked distastefully at the work Terry hadundertaken.

  "Do you like to do that sort of thing?" he asked.

  "Hardly!" said Terry. "But I want to get it done."

  Doug watched for a moment or two.

  "I'm pretty keen about poetry. Sometimes I feel I've got to sweat overa poem that I need to get written. It's hard work. There's no real senseto it. But I feel it's got to be done. I guess that's the way you feelnow."

  "Perhaps," said Terry.

  It wouldn't have occurred to him to liken the writing of verses to thedissection of dead deep-sea fish, but Doug had a point. He went awaypresently, and Terry completed the highly unpleasant task. He had justfinished flushing the deck clean when Deirdre came back from thetracking station. He was already at work on the recorder when shestepped onto the deck.

  "You didn't stay," said Deirdre. "I was waiting for a chance to tell myfather about the hum outside the lagoon, but he was as deep in themeteor argument as any of them. I still haven't told him."

  "There's something else to tell him now," Terry remarked. "I went downwith an aqualung. Doug was standing by," he added at her gesture ofprotest, "and speared some fish that don't belong here. I've dissectedthem. Their swim bladders had been very skillfully punctured, so if theywent or were driven into lesser pressure, they'd leak instead ofbursting. That's how they survived coming up from the depths. But themain thing is this."

  He held out a small plastic object in his hand. It was about an inch indiameter and two in length, and there were inclusions in the clearmaterial. There were plates and threads of metal. They had that look ofmysterious purpose that highly-developed technical devices have.

  "This was fastened to the fin of a fish that belongs as far down as afish can go," he said. "I've found out one of its purposes. When it isin the water, it makes a sound more acute than a whistle every timeanother sound strikes it. Try that on your piano!"

  Deirdre stared.

  "I'm saying," he repeated, "that it takes in one sound and gives outanother. It's ... it could be a relay. What is that for? What's it allabout? What does it mean? And I ask just those questions because I don'tdare ask who and why!"

  "What ... what will you do?" asked Deirdre absurdly.

  "I've no idea," Terry told her. "I've got a feeling that the wise thingto do would be to settle down somewhere and buy a shop, and forget allthis. If I don't think about it, maybe it'll go away."

  "I'll get my father and see what he says."

  "Tell him," commanded Terry, "that I want to try out my fish-drivinghorn. I'd like to have witnesses. If this foolishness has to be reportedto somebody, we need evidence of the facts. I want to drive fish and seehow many deep-sea ones there are in this lagoon, and how many of themhave spy-devices on them."

  Deirdre turned away. Then she turned back.

  "Spy-dev--"

  "I slipped," said Terry. "I shouldn't have said that. Forget it. Justtell your father I have an extremely urgent impulse to drive fish, andwould he come and help."

  Deirdre looked at him strangely, and went onto the wharf to search forher father.

  Terry paced back and forth on the _Esperance's_ deck. In a few minutesDavis and the crew-cuts appeared with Deirdre. But they were not alone.Straggling behind them came nearly all the personnel of the trackingstation. There would be somebody on official duty, of course. But herewas the bespectacled Dr. Morton; the bald young man who'd offered Terrybeer; and the installation cook; a typist, and specialists in radar andother abstruse subjects.

  Deirdre said, "I told them about the fish-driving business and they wantto see. They stopped arguing about last night's bolide to take ringsideseats. All right?"

  Terry shrugged. He had the recorder already set up. He'd taken a sectionof the tape made where the sea was bright, at the place where theloudest of the unpleasant humming noise was recorded. He'd made a loopof it so it would play over and over.

  He played the much-amplified sound through the underwater horn held inthe air. The result was a raucous bellowing noise. He lowered it intothe water. The horn touched the surface and went under.

  Instantly, the fish of the lagoon seemed to go crazy. All the surfacebroke and writhed and splashed. There was an incredible number of fish.Terry turned the horn on one side. In this way, not all the water wasfilled with the intolerable noise, but only a net-like beam of it racedacross the water. Within that line the fish continued to leapfrenziedly. The rest of the lagoon suddenly quieted down. In a littlewhile the beam's space, also, grew quiet. But that was because the fishthat had been previously caught in it had escaped.

  "I'm afraid," said Terry, "that this isn't going to be veryentertaining. I'm going to sweep the beam across the lagoon, pushing thefish ahead of it, until I should have them all in one small area."

  It was curious that he felt uncomfortable as he set about his task. Buthe'd experienced the sensation this sound produced. And it was not verypleasant.

  He turned the beam around, slightly. Again, there were suddensplashings. They died away. He turned the beam again. It was a nasty,snarling vibration in the water. So far as fish were concerned, it wasmore like a wall than a net, because not even the tiniest livingcreature could penetrate it. Not only fish fled before it. Shrimps andcrabs and all types of crustaceans jerked and crawled and swam ahead ofits motion. Jellyfish writhed when it touched them. Sea cucumberscontorted themselves. Everything that lived in the lagoon and could swimor crawl or writhe moved before the invisible barrier. Presently, theeffect of crowding could be seen, and fish began to leap out of water.

  "This is a great advance in civilization," said Dr. Morton. "Meninvented guns and destroyed the buffalo and the passenger pigeon! Youmay have made it possible to depopulate the sea!"

  Terry did not answer. The morning sun shone brightly, a gentle breezemade ripplings on the lagoon, the palms waved their fronds in languidgestures, and the surf could be heard booming and splashing on the outerreef. And about two dozen people stood on the wharf or on the_Esperance's_ deck and watched a spliced section of recorder-tape gothrough and through a recorder, which was set to make a sound underwaterthat could not be heard by the people above.

  The fish of the lagoon had crowded themselves into a minor embayment ofthe shore. There were innumerable leapings there.

  "There should be plenty of fish collected now," said Terrydistastefully. "I certainly can't herd them ashore."

  The outboard boat pushed away from the yacht, its motor roaring. Itreached the area in which the water seemed to seethe and surge with themotion of densely-crowded swimming creatures. The people in the boatexamined the surrounding water, then the boat came back at top speed.

  "They're there!" called Davis. "And thick enough to walk on! I clearlysaw some freaks that must come up from the bottom! We want to collectthem!"

  "I speared five just now," Terry told him, "and one of them was wearingthis."

  He held up the plastic object he'd found. There was silence for amoment. Then Dr. Morton said briskly, "We'll want fish spears. We'lltake all the boats and go after some more of these piscatory oddities.Who's best with a spear?"

  Davis would go. He could use the two fish spears that were standardequipment for the outboard. The staff of the tracking station scatteredto launch other boats. Only Terry and Deirdre remained on the_Esperance_. It was necessary for someone to stand by the recorder.

  Boats moved away across the water. One stout member of the island'sstaff t
rudged along the shore.

  "You're driving them," said Deirdre. "You are right."

  "I wish I weren't," said Terry.

  "Why?"

  "You know how these weird fish got here," he said impatiently. "Theywere driven here. You know how they've been kept here. I experiencedthat! I told you why they didn't die when they came up from thousands offathoms! Now, what's the only possible purpose for their being here? Putit more scientifically! What is the consequence of these happenings, sothat to some biological entity it would be a favorable happening?" Histone was sardonic, at the end.

  "I don't know."

  "I hope I don't either," said Terry dourly.

  He was in no amiable mood. He'd made too many guesses like those Davishad mentioned. He was beginning to have less and less hope that theywere untrue. Each new development made any imaginable cause of theseevents just so much more appalling to think about.

  In an hour, three boats came back from the small bay into which all thefish of the lagoon had been crowded. Terry turned off the underwaterhorn. A stout man walked slowly along the shore with a heavy burden ofknown edible fish. He was the island's cook, and he had speared themfrom the beach. The boats, altogether, had speared and captured not lessthan sixty specimens of fish normally found only many thousand feetbelow the ocean's surface. Upon inspection, all of them were found tohave deftly punctured swim bladders, punctured with so slender a barbthat the opening would close by itself, except when serving for therelease of intolerably expanding gas.

  Before noon, seven more plastic objects had been found among thedeep-sea fish. Three seemed identical to the one Terry had found. Twoothers were identical to each other but of a different kind, and thelast two were of two different types altogether. Only those like the onetested by Terry seemed sensitive to sounds, which they changed intoother sounds at a twenty-thousand-cycle frequency, or higher. The restdid nothing that could be detected.

  During the afternoon, news came to distract the absorption of thetracking station staff in the lagoon's fish. The short-wave operatorcame running to the wharf, waving a written message. The deck of the_Esperance_ was not a pretty sight, just then, with the dissection thathad been taking place on it. Jug was beginning to flush the debrisoverside.

  The short-wave operator arrived. Dr. Morton read the message. He raisedhis voice.

  "Here's a fancy one!" he told the assembled company. "Space-radar'spicked up a new object coming in from nowhere. It will probably orbitonce before it hits the air and burns. By the line of motion it shouldpass nearly overhead here. We're alerted to get it under observationand watch it!" He waved the message in a large gesture. "We've got toget ourselves set up! The argument on the path of last night's bolideand why it fell where it did is again in order. We'll see what we can doabout computing the fall-point of this!"

  He headed for the shore. The staff followed, babbling. Somebody'smathematics would be verified, and with it his views on the possibleeffects of terrestrial magnetism on objects approaching the earth.

  "We ought to get these plastic things to Manila," Davis said slowly."They need to be compared to others. But I think we'll wait and see thisbolide first."

  A heated argument started in the tracking station staff. From Dr. Mortondownward, almost to the station's cook, the most varied predictions weremade. The official computation from Washington, made from the observedcourse and height and speed, predicted that the bolide would landsomewhere in the South Pacific. Dr. Morton predicted a fall in the ChinaSea, within a certain precisely stated number of miles from ThrawnIsland. Other predictions varied.

  At exactly fourteen minutes after eight--a time way ahead of theofficial schedule but exactly as Dr. Morton had predicted--the bolidepassed overhead. It was an amazing spectacle. It left a trail of flamebehind, across thirty degrees of sky. It went on and on....

  Less than ten minutes later the short-wave radio informed the islandthat the shooting star had been seen to fall in the sea. It had beenobserved by a plane which was then circling over the area in which the_Esperance_ had encountered the circle of shining sea. The plane wasthere to see if the phenomenon would occur again. It didn't.

  But the plane saw the bolide as it struck the sea, and huge masses ofsteam and spray arose. The bolide was not white-hot, then, as when itpassed over Thrawn Island. It was barely of dull-red brightness. It hitthe sea and sank, leaving steam behind.

  The water was forty-five hundred fathoms deep at that point.