A little fish, perhaps lost from its school, peered into the Murderer's glass face-plate. Its wondrous eye grew inquisitively larger, and he thought of the millions of cooperating cells that made up its eye and optic nerve and receiving brain and the marvel that the individually drifting cells of two billion years ago could have achieved this.
There was a contradiction, he thought. He was amazed by life and yet he speared fish. Did he enjoy feeling life wriggle on the end of his spear?
"I've reached the top," Barney's voice croaked. "There's a rod here—get this, a vertical rod. It extends up into the ice like with the aerials of our picket buoys. I knew it wasn't a mine. This is how they plan to detect our atomic submarines. This will make a very interesting present for Admiral Rickover—"
At this instant there was a darkening slap against the Murderer's mask. His eardrums burst inward. His intestines squeezed up into his chest from the force of the underwater explosion. He blacked out.
Ice water seared his face. He was drowning. Convulsively, his hand groped for his mask. The glass was intact. His hand dragged the mask back to a proper fit upon his face, and compressed air forced out the sea water. He could feel the telephone cord pulling at his mask.
Everything was blinding white, and he realized he was belly up beneath the ice. "Barney?"
The telephone wire began to drag him down head first, and he went down it hand over hand toward the slowly sinking minisub. "Barney?"
Further down, he saw Barney's black rubber suit spread-eagled and sinking, and he swam clumsily down past the minisub. He clutched Barney's black rubber arm and dragged it toward the minisub. The black rubber suit seemed to have no bones. Everything drooped and swayed as he tried to fit Barney into the stern cockpit. When he wrapped Barney's wires to tie him in, they came face to face. There was no glass in Barney's mask. The glass had burst where the face had been.