The Torian Pearls

Blade looked at the Menel, and couldn't help feeling slightly sorry for it. It reminded him of the body of an RAF pilot he'd seen, washed ashore after a high-speed plane crash into the sea. It had suffered a wretched death he wouldn't wish on any intelligent creature, human or not, friendly or not.

Blade saw no other bodies floating. If there'd been any other Menel aboard the machine, they were probably trapped in the wreckage. Fudan said nothing, although this must have been his first sight of one of the Sky People. Perhaps to a man used to the strange creatures of the sea, even a being from outer space would not look strange.

Another hundred yards, and Blade saw a dark shape on the bottom below. Its outlines were distorted by the water and by crash damage, but it was unmistakably what they were looking for. Fudan threw the anchor overboard and counted the knots on the line as it ran out. Finally the stone touched bottom and the canoe swung gently to and fro.

«Nine dzor,» said Fudan, as he laid his paddle in the bottom of the canoe. The dzor was a measure of depth equal to about seven feet. So the wreck lay about sixty feet down, easy diving depth.

Blade pulled off his sandals and began strapping on the fish-skin fins. Then he tied the weight belt with its pouches of gravel around his waist and picked up a sack and his crossbow.

«With your permission, Fudan?» he said. The first dive on a fishing expedition had a certain ritual quality. Normally Blade would have let Fudan go first, but he didn't know how much time they would have. If the crashed machine had been able to get off any sort of a distress signal ….

Fudan nodded. He was silently pulling on his own diving gear, watching both sky and water as he did so. There was no need to tell him to keep alert. The Hauri knew the basic safety rule for diving: one man in the water, the other in the boat, alert and ready to help if needed.

Blade clung to the side of the canoe, breathing deeply to fill his system with oxygen. At last he let go of the canoe, flipped upside down, and plunged toward the wreck below.

He seemed to drift down through the gree

It lay with its nose crushed against a cluster of boulders and its tail standing up like a tombstone. The canopy was gone, both hatches blown off, and the metal skin amidships torn open like a paper bag. Blade swam up to the gaping opening left by the missing canopy and looked down into the cockpit.

Two of the Menel lay there in the wreckage, their bodies mangled almost beyond recognition. Among the smashed controls and what must have been seats, Blade could see the twisted shape of one of the beamers. Farther back in the fuselage he could make out a third Menel, crushed under several items of heavy equipment torn loose from the walls and floor by the impact of the crash.

That was all he could make out before his chest began to tighten up from lack of air. He backed out of the machine and thrust himself steadily back to the surface, the sunlight, and the air.

For the next two hours, Blade and Fudan alternated diving and keeping watch. Dive after dive, Blade explored the machine. Dive after dive, Fudan brought up pearl oysters and piled them in the bow. He paid no attention to the machine.

«It interests me, yes,» he said. «But also I must bring home the pearls. We have come too far to do otherwise. Besides, if we bring home no pearls, many will wonder what we did here. They will ask questions that I do not want to have to answer.»

Since the machine was designed for a crew of beings nine feet tall, there was plenty of room inside it in spite of the damage. Blade swam about freely, examining the equipment as well as he could in the dim light and the short time he had on each dive.

He was able to recognize many familiar objects. There was a small computer with a print-out device. There were the remains of a radar set. There were various items of scientific gear, including a spectroscope, a centrifuge, sampling devices, chemical-analysis equipment, and much that was less easily identifiable. There was a cargo compartment aft, holding boxes and tubes of many different sizes with as many different markings. On the floor lay a number of the electronic implants for the brains of the sea reptiles, spilled from a broken box.

From each dive Blade brought up some small piece of Menel equipment. The pile of bits and pieces in his end of the canoe grew, like Fudan's pile of shells in his end.

Blade kept on diving until the first warning twinges of pain in his joints and muscles told him that he was approaching his limit for the day. It was maddening to have to leave the machine with so much of it still a mystery, but there was no helping it. He'd already collected as much as he could hope to analyze himself, perhaps more. He'd also collected ten times more than he could ever hope to bring back to Home Dimension.

On his last dive he went down determined to examine the ceiling of the machine. So far he'd been too busy searching and stripping the floor. He swam in through the crack in the fuselage, turned on his back, and looked up.

A large squarish shape seemed to be hanging from the ceiling at an impossible angle. At first Blade thought it was another piece of broken equipment, then he realized that it was floating freely. He reached up and drew it down to him.

It was a large black-covered book of some sort, scaled in a waterproof sack with a small cylinder at one end for buoyancy. Obviously it was designed to survive and float free in the event of a crash. Did the Menel keep diaries or logs? If so, then this might be one. Blade clutched the book under his arm and dove out of the machine. Excitement drove him up to the surface. He threw the book into the canoe, hauled himself out of the water, and caught his breath.

Fudan looked at Blade, experienced eyes noting his fatigue. «Blade, I hope that was your last dive for the day?»

Blade nodded. «I'll stay in the canoe, until you've finished your diving.»

«That will not be much longer,» said Fudan. «I see in the sky that a great storm will come in from the sea in another day. If I dive much more, we shall have to spend the night here. With a storm coming, that would not be wise.»

As Fudan slipped over the side again, Blade relaxed into the healthy fatigue that came after a long day's work well done. He looked up at the sky. The faintest hints of sunset colors were begi

A sudden splash alongside the canoe made Blade turn. He expected to see Fudan's head emerge dripping from the water. Instead he looked straight into a pair of glittering golden eyes, set in a totally hideous face. It was a death-eel, the most sinister-looking and voracious creature in the seas of this Dimension, one that sometimes attacked even the great sea reptiles.

The mouth opened, exposing two rows of needle-sharp teeth. Blade's eyes ran from the bulging head back along the coal-black body and he swallowed. This death-eel could not be an inch under thirty feet long.

What had brought it here, Blade didn't know. What he did know was that in no more than a minute Fudan would be rising from the bottom, straight into the creature's striking range, straight into those gaping, teeth-studded jaws. Fudan would not see it until it was too late. There would be no escaping the eel's enormous speed and agility.