"Incidentally," Scotty reminded Rick, "in the confusion below we forgot to send up a buoy. Hope we can find the place again."
"We can."
"What confusion?" Zircon asked.
Rick told him. "A freshly killed chicken was dropped near us. And it must have been bleeding when it hit the water, because we suddenly had a shark convention around us." He pointed to the boat tied at the pier, now far behind them because the Water Witch had been moving. "And we think that was the boat that dropped it."
"It was weighted," Scotty added.
The scientists looked at each other. Tony grunted. "It makes no sense, Hobart. Why would anyone weight a freshly killed chicken and throw it over the side?"
"No reason at all," the big scientist said, "unless he wanted to create mischief below."
"But just the act of dropping a chicken wouldn't ensure harm to divers below," Tony objected.
"That's why I said mischief. Inexperienced divers might panic under such circumstances and attract the sharks to themselves."
Rick hazarded a guess. "What if they just wanted to keep people from diving in the area?"