He set up the recorder with its loop of fish-driving hum. He put the horn overboard, carefully oriented to spread its sound through all the enclosed shallow water of the lagoon. He turned the extra amplifier to maximum output, to increase the effectiveness of the noise, and turned on the apparatus.
The glassy look of the lagoon-water vanished immediately. Fish leaped crazily everywhere, from half-inch midgets to lean-flanked predators a yard and more in length. There was no square foot in all the shallows where a creature didn't struggle to escape the sensation of pins and needles all over its body. And these pins and needles pricked deep.
Flying-fish soared crazily, and they were the most fortunate because so long as they flew, the tormenting water-sound did not reach them. But many of them landed on the beach, and even among the palms.
In the spot where blind and snakelike arms had tried to destroy Terry and Deirdre, the lashing and swirling was of a different kind. Something there used enormous strength to offer battle to a noise. The water was whipped to froth. Twice Terry saw those rope-like arms rise above the water and flail it.
This particular sort of tumult, however, appeared only in one spot. So there was only one such creature in the lagoon.
When Davis and the others came down from the tracking station, Terry turned off the horn. He was applying soothing ointment to the raw flesh of his leg.
"There's a monstrous creature out there," he said evenly when a white-faced Davis demanded information. "Heaven knows how big it is, but it's something like a huge squid. It may be the kind that sperm whales feed on, down in the depths."
Others from the tracking station arrived, panting.
"Oh! I'm tired of being conservative!" added Terry fiercely. "I'm going to say what all of us think! There's something intelligent down at the bottom of the sea, five miles down!"
He glared challengingly around him.