"We'll send down Newcomb," Nils said. He stood up and waved to the installation, where Newcomb was sitting placidly, already hooked up to cable, hose, and wire. Immediately Newcomb rose and clambered over the side, down the ladder.
Nils glanced at his watch again. Well, only an hour and ten minutes to go.
If an air lion didn't get you, there was the chance that your cable would wear loose or that your air hose would get snarled. The air hose, after all, was rubberoid and came down loose, not taut. You could get a kink in it very easily and not be aware of it until that sudden drowsiness that was oxygen starvation hit you. Then, if you could stay conscious long enough, you could gasp it into the microphone: "My air line's fouled!" And if they could get you to the surface fast enough, or even just get the kink high enough to straighten it out, then you were saved. If it took too long, you were gone.
Kerr said, "Missed him, damn it."
"Do you see him, Newcomb?" Nils asked.
"Not yet," came the cheerful reply.
"He's a big one," Kerr said.
Forty-five minutes to go. Well, at least there was a big air lion down there, if he hadn't been frightened off by Kerr's shot, and maybe he would still be down there when Nils made his plunge. So there was a chance, not a big one but a chance all the same, that Nils could pick up his seventh lion today.
But even if the lion was down there, it wasn't at all positive that Nils would get him. That went without saying. After all, when you went down every weekday for six months and got only six lions, then it was pretty obvious that you couldn't always bag one when you wanted it. There were—how many now?—twenty-four men on the raft, and so far they'd got only forty pelts. About one every four days. Sometimes weeks went by without a catch.
"I think I see him now," said Newcomb. "He is a big fellow. I don't think I've ever seen a bigger one."