“So what are you doing up there?”

  “I’ve strapped myself in the chair. I’m watching things roll around the floor right now.”

  I looked up and out again. I saw one darker shadow in the forest.

  “Are you praying or swearing?”

  “Damned if I know. But if this were the Slider—if only this were the Slider!”

  “He¢ out there?”

  I nodded, forgetting that he couldn’t see me.

  Big, as I remembered him. He’d only broken surface for a few moments, to look around. There is no power on Earth that can be compared with him who was made to )ar no one. I dropped my cigarette. It was the same as before.

  Paralysis and an unborn scream.

  “You all right, Carl?”

  He had looked at me again. Or seemed to. Perhaps that mindless brute had been waiting half a millenium to ruin the life of a member of the most highly developed species in business ....

  “You okay?” ·.. Or perhaps it had been ruined already, long before their encounter, and theirs was just a meeting of beasts, the stronger bumping the weaker aside, body to psyche ....

  “Carl, dammit! Say something!”

  He broke again, this time nearer. Did you ever see the trunk of a tornado? It seems like something alive, moving around in all that dark. Nothing has a right to be so big, so strong, and moving. It’s a sickening sensation. “Please answer me.”

  He was gone and did not come back that day. I finally made a couple of wisecracks at Mike, but I held my next cigarette in my right hand.

  The next seventy or eighty thousand waves broke by with a monotonous similarity. The five days that held them were also without distinction. The morning of the thirteenth day out, though, our luck began to rise. The bells broke our coffee-drenched lethargy into small pieces, and we dashed from the galley without hearing what might have been Mike’s finest punch-line.

  “Aft!” cried someone. “Five hundred meters!”

  I stripped to my trunks and started buckling. My stuff is always within grabbing distance.

  I flipflopped across the deck, girding myself with a deflated squiggler. “Five hundred meters, twenty fathoms!” boomed the speakers.

  The big traps banged upward and the Slider grew to its full height, m’lady at the console. It rattled past me and took root ahead. Its one arm rose and lengthened.

  I breasted the Slider as the speakers called, “Four-eighty, twenty!”

  “Status Red!”

  A belch like an emerging champagne cork and the line arced high over the waters.

  “Four-eighty, twenty!” it repeated, all Malvern and static. “Baitman, attend!”

  I adjusted my mask and hand-over-handed it down the side. Then warm, then cool, then away.

  Green, vast, down. Fast. This is the place where I am equal to a squiggler. If something big decides a baitman looks tastier than what he’s carrying, then irony colors his title as well as the water about it.

  I caught sight of the drifting cables and followed them down. Green to dark green to black. It had been a long cast, too long. I’d never had to follow one this far down before. I didn’t want to switch on my torch.

  But I had to.

  Bad! I still had a long way to go. I clenched my teeth and stuffed my imagination into a straightjacket.

  Finally the line came to an end.

  I wrapped one arm about it and unfastened the squiggler. I attached it, working as fast as I could, and plugged in the little insulated connections which are the reason it can’t be fired with the line. Ikky could break them, but by then it wouldn’t matte r.

  My mechanical eel hooked up, I pulled its section plugs and watched it grow. I had been dragged deeper during this operation, which took about a minute and a half. I was near—too near—to where I never wanted to be.

  Loathe as I had been to turn on my light, I was suddenly afraid to turn it off. Panic gripped me and I seized the cable with both hands. The squiggler began to glow, pinkly. It started to twist. It was twice as big as I am and doubtless twice as attractive to pink squiggler-eaters.

  I told myself this until I believed it, then I switched off my light and started up.

  If I bumped into something enormous and steel-hided my heart had orders to stop beating immediately and release me—to dart fitfully forever along Acheron, and gibbering.

  Ungibbering, I made it to green water and fled back to the nest.

  As soon as they hauled me aboard I made my mask a necklace, shaded my eyes, and monitored for surface turbulence. My first question, of course, was: “Where is he?”

  “Nowhere,” said a crewman; “we lost him right after you went over.

  Can’t pick him up on the scope now. Musta dived.”

  “Too bad.”

  The squiggler stayed down, enjoying its bath. My job ended for the time being, I headed back to warm my coffee with rum.

  From behind me, a whisper: “Could you laugh like that afterwards?”

  Perceptive Answer: “Depends on what he’s laughing at.”

  Still chuckling, I made my way into the center blister with two cupfuls. “Still hell and gone?”

  Mike nodded. His big hands were shaking, and mine were steady as a surgeon’s when I set down the cups.

  He jumped as I shrugged off the tanks and looked for a bench.

  “Don’t drip on that panel! You want to kill yourself and blow expensive fuses?”

  I toweled down, then settled down to watching the unfilled eye on the wall. I yawned happily; my shoulder seemed good as new.

  The little box that people talk through wanted to say something, so Mike lifted the switch and told it to go ahead. “Is Carl there, Mister Dabis?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Then let me talk to him.” Mike motioned and I moved. “Talk,” I said.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yes, thanks. Shouldn’t I be?”

  “That was a long swim. I—I guess I overshot my cast.”

  “I’m happy,” I said. “More triple-time for me. I really clean up on that hazardous duty clause.”

  “I’ll be more careful next time,” she apologized. “I guess I was too eager. Sorry—” Something happened to the sentence, so she ended it there, leaving me with half a bagful of replies I’d been saving.

  I lifted the cigarette from behind Mike’s ear and got a light from the one in the ashtray.

  “Carl, she was being nice,” he said, after turning to study the panels.

  “I know,” I told him. “I wasn’t.”

  “I mean, she’s an awfully pretty kid, pleasant. Head-strong and all that.

  But what’s she done to you?”

  “Lately?” I asked.

  He looked at me, then dropped his eyes to his cup. “I know it’s none of my bus—” he began. “Cream and sugar?”

  Ikky didn’t return that day, or that night. We picked up some Dixieland out of Lifeline and let the muskrat ramble while Jean had her supper sent to the Sliden Later she had a bunk assembled inside. I piped in “Deep Water Blues” when it came over the air and waited for her to call up and cuss us out. She didn’t, though, so I decided she was sleeping.

  Then I got Mike interested in a game of chess that went on until daylight. It limited conversation to several “checks,” one “checkmate,” and a “damn!” Since he’s a poor loser it also effectively sabotaged subsequent talk, which was fine with me. I had a steak and fried potatoes for breakfast and went to bed.

  Ten hours later someone shook me awake and I propped myself on one elbow, refusing to open my eyes.

  “Whassamadder?”

  “I’m sorry to get you up,” said one of the younger crewmen, “but Miss Luharich wants you to disconnect the squiggler so we can move on.”

  I knuckled open one eye, still deciding whether I should be amused.

  “Have it hauled to the side. Anyone can disconnect it.”

  “It’s at the side now, sir. But she said it’s in your contract and we’d better do things right.”

  “That’s very considerate of her. I’m sure my Local appreciates her remembering.”‘ “Uh, she also said to tell you to change your trunks and comb your hair, and shave, too. Mister Anderson’s going to film it.”

  “Okay. Run along; tell her I’m on my way—and ask if she has some toenail polish I can borrow.”

  I’ll save on details. It took three minutes in all, and I played it properly, even pardoning myself when I slipped and bumped into Anderson’s white tropicals with the wet squiggler. He smiled, brushed it off; she smiled, even though Luharich Complectacol or couldn’t completely mask the dark circles under her eyes; and I smiled, waving to all our fans out there in videoland. —Remember, Mrs. Universe, you, too, can look like a monster-catcher. Just use Luharich face cream.

  I went below and made myself a tuna sandwich, with mayonnaise.

  Two days like icebergs—bleak, blank, half-melting, all frigid, mainly out of sight, and definitely a threat to peace of mind—drifted by and were good to put behind. I experienced some old guilt feelings and had a few disturbing dreams. Then I called Lifeline and checked my bank balance.

  “Going shopping?” asked Mike, who had put the call through for me.

  “Going home,” I answered. “Huh?”

  “I’m out of the baiting business after this one, Mike. The Devil with Ikky! The Devil with Venus and Luharich Enterprises! And the Devil with you!”

  Up eyebrows.

  “What brought that on?”

  “I waited over a year for this job. Now that I’m here, I’ve decided the whole thing stinks.”

  “You knew what it was when you signed on. No matter what else you’re doing, you’re selling face cream when you work for face cream sellers.”

  “Oh, that’s not what’s biting me. I admit the commercial angle irritates me, but Tensquare has always been a publicity spot, ever since the first time it sailed.”

  “What, then?”

  “Five or six things, all added up. The main one being that I don’t care any more. Once it meant more to me than anything else to hook that critter, and now it doesn’t. I went broke on what started out as a lark and I wanted blood for what it cost me. Now I realize that maybe I had it coming. I’m beginning to feel sorry for Ikky.”

  “And you don’t want him now?”

  “I’ll take him if he comes peacefully, but I don’t feel like sticking out my neck to make him crawl into the Hopkins.”

  “I’m inclined to think it’s one of the four or five other things you said you added.”

  “Such as?”

  He scrutinized the ceiling.

  I growled.

  “Okay, but I won’t say it, not just to make you happy you guessed right.” He, smirking: “That look she wears isn’t just for Ikky.”

  “No good, no good.” I shook my head. “We’re both fission chambers by nature. You can’t have jets on both ends of the rocket and expect to go anywhere—what’s in the middle just gets smashed.”

  “That’s how it was. None of my business, of course—”

  “Say that again and you’ll say it without teeth.”

  “Any day, big man”—he looked up—“any place ...”

  “So go ahead. Get it said!”

  “She doesn’t care about that bloody reptile, she came here to drag you back where you belong. You’re not the baitman this trip.”

  “Five years is too long.”

  “There must be something under that cruddy hide of yours that people like,” he muttered, “or I wouldn’t be talking like this. Maybe you remind us humans of some really ugly dog we felt sorry for when we were kids. Anyhow, someone wants to take you home and raise you—also, something about beggars not getting menus.”

  “Buddy,” I chuckled, “do you know what I’m going to do when I hit Lifeline?”

  “I can guess.”

  “You’re wrong. I’m torching it to Mars, and then I’ll cruise back home, first class. Venus bankruptcy provisions do not apply to Martian trust funds, and I’ve still got a wad tucked away where moth and corruption enter not. I’m going to pick up a big old mansion on the Gulf and if you’re ever looking for a job you can stop around and open bottles for me.”

  “You are a yellowbellied fink,” he commented. “Okay,” I admitted, “but it’s her I’m thinking of, too.”

  “I’ve heard the stories about you both,” he said. “So you’re a heel and a goofoff and she’s a bitch. That’s called compatibility these days. I dare you, baitman, try keeping something you catch.”

  I turned.

  “If you ever want that job, look me up.”

  I closed the door quietly behind me and left him sitting there waiting for it to slam.

  The day of the beast dawned like any other. Two days after my gutless flight from empty waters I went down to rebait. Nothing on the scope.

  I was just making things ready for the routine attempt.

  I hollered a “good morning” from outside the Slider and received an answer from inside before I pushed off. I had reappraised Mike’s words, sans sound, sans fury, and while I did not approve of their sentiment or significance, I had opted for civility anyhow So down, under, and away. I followed a decent cast about two hundred-ninety meters out. The snaking cables burned black to my left and I paced their undulations from the yellowgreen down into the darkness.

  Soundless lay the wet night, and I bent my way through it like a cock-eyed comet, bright tail before.

  I caught the line, slick and smooth, and began baiting. An icy world swept by me then, ankles to head. It was a draft, as if some one had opened a big door beneath me. I wasn’t drifting downwards that fast either.

  Which meant that something might be moving up, something big enough to displace a lot of water. I still didn’t think it was Ikky. A freak current of some sort, but not Ikky. Ha!

  I had finished attaching the leads and pulled the first plug when a big, rugged, black island grew beneath me ....

  I flicked the beam downward. His mouth was opened.

  I was rabbit.

  Waves of the death-fear passed downward. My stomach imploded. I grew dizzy.

  Only one thing, and one thing only. Left to do. I managed it, finally. I pulled the rest of the plugs.

  I could count the scaly articulations ridging his eyes by then. The squiggler grew, pinked into phosphorescence. squiggled! Then my lamp.

  I had to kill it, leaving just the bait before him. One glance back as I jammed the jatoes to life.

  He was so near that the squiggler reflected on his teeth, in his eyes.

  Four meters, and I kissed his lambent jowls with two jets of backwash as I soared. Then I didn’t know whether he was following or halted. I began to black out as I waited to be eaten.

  The jatoes died and I kicked weakly.

  Too fast, I felt a cramp coming on. One flick of the beam, cried rabbit. One second, to know ...

  Or end things up, I answered. No, rabbit, we don’t dart before hunters. Stay dark.

  Green waters finally, to yellowgreen, then top.

  Doubling, I beat off toward Tensquare. The waves from the explosion behind pushed me on ahead. The world closed in, and a screamed, “He’s alive!” in the distance.

  A giant shadow and a shock wave. The line was alive, too. Happy Fishing Grounds. Maybe I did something wrong ....

  Somewhere Hand was clenched. What’s bait?

  A few million years. I remember starting out as a one-celled organism and painfully becoming an amphibian, then an air-breather. From somewhere high in the treetops I heard a voice.

  “He’s coming around.”

  I evolved back into homosapience, then a step further into a hangover.

  “Don’t try to get up yet.”

  “Have we got him?” I slurred.

  “Still fighting, but he’s hooked. We thought he took you for an appetizer.”‘ “So did I.”

  “Breathe some of this and shut up.”

  A funnel over my face. Good. Lift your cups and drink ....

  “He was awfully deep. Below scope range. We didn’t catch him till he started up. Too late, then.”

  I began to yawn.

  “We’ll get you inside now.”

  I managed to uncase my ankle knife. “Try it and you’ll be minus a thumb.”

  “You need rest.”

  “Then bring me a couple more blankets. I’m staying.”

  I fell back and closed my eyes.

  Someone was shaking me. Gloom and cold. Spotlights bled yellow on the deck. I was in a jury-rigged bunk, bulked against the center blister.

  Swaddled in wool, I still shivered.

  “It’s been eleven hours. You’re not going to see anything now.” I tasted blood. “Drink this.”

  Water. I had a remark but I couldn’t mouth it.

  “Don’t ask how I feel,” I croaked. “I know that comes next, but don’t ask me. Okay?”

  “Okay. Want to go below now?”

  “No. Just get me my jacket.”

  “Right here.”

  “What’s he doing?”

  “Nothing. He’s deep, he’s doped but he’s staying down.”

  “How long since last time he showed?”

  “Two hours, about.”

  “Jean?”

  “She won’t let anyone in the Slider. Listen, Mike says come on in.

  He’s right behind you in the blister.”

  I sat up and turned. Mike was watching. He gestured; I gestured back.

  I swung my feet over the edge and took a couple of deep breaths. Pains in my stomach. I got to my feet and made it into the blister.

  “Howza gut?” queried Mike.

  I checked the scope. No Ikky. Too deep. “You buying?”

  “Yeah, coffee.”

  “Not coffee.”

  “You’re ill. Also, coffee is all that’s allowed in here.”

  “Coffee is a brownish liquid that burns your stomach. You have some in the bottom drawer.”

  “No cups. You’ll have to use a glass.”

  He poured.

  “You do that well. Been practicing for that job?”

  “What job?”

  “The one I offered you—” A bolt on the scope!

  “Rising, ma’am! Rising!” he yelled into the box. “Thanks, Mike.

  I’ve got it in here,” she crackled. “Jean!”

 

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