The Murderer's breathing stopped as he made out something quivering up there. "What is it?"
"Animal, vegetable or mineral," Barney wheezed. "If it's animal, I don't want to be around when whatever laid these eggs comes back."
Swaying up there on the underside of the ice in a gelatinous mass at least twenty feet across, it resembled a mass of gigantic frog's eggs.
But the Murderer decided there was too great a variation in size for them to be eggs. Those nearest the outside of the mass seemed clearer, more transparent, than the surrounding gelatinous substance. The Murderer's excitement began to fade.
"They're not eggs," he said disappointedly. "I think they're only bubbles encased in some sort of soft plastic."
"Mineral," Barney said with some relief in his voice. "Now I see that dark part in the middle has the shape of a can. The bubbles must be to float a mine or secret mechanism," his voice ended excitedly. Barney wanted nothing to do with live things; he liked mechanical devices that clicked and buzzed and could be taken apart and then put back together.
He eased the minisub up toward the gelatinous mass.
"Don't bring the minisub too close," the Murderer gasped, imagining a mechanical click as the impersonal gadgetry within the can detected their approach and cocked the lifeless steel prongs of a detonator.
Barney laughed in excited contrast. "Even our air tanks are non-magnetic. Or if it's hydrophonic, the noise level to set it off would have to be plenty high, because of all the crunching sounds every day in the ice. I'm going to find out what it is."
Barney rose from his cockpit, trailing his green-stained canvas bag of non-magnetic tools.