Predators I Have Known - Alan Dean Foster [8]
Chaining our impatience, we settled down to wait. The literature and Carl’s judicious admonitions prepared us. We had books, games, diving and photographic equipment to see to, in addition to well-packed layers of patience. We were quite prepared to linger at the site for as long as it might take our quarry to arrive.
Exactly one hour and forty-five minutes after dropping anchor, Captain Ricov was heard singing out, “Shark!”
There ensued a mad scramble to vacate our constipated below-deck quarters the likes of which I have not experienced since I was in the army and it was announced that the mess hall that night was serving steak. Everyone rushed—no, rocketed—to the Nenad’s stern.
In the dark green-black water astern, two fins. The mind registers, evaluates, then corrects. No. One fin, one tail, both belonging to the same impossibly large fish. We gawked, entranced, at the water as though a vision from the Cretaceous had magically appeared before us. We were not far wrong.
Advancing with effortless, leisurely sweeps of its huge scythelike tail, the great white slipped casually through the chum to pass with utter indifference less than a yard from the stern. As it did so, it rolled onto its left side to eye us. That pupilless jet-black eye is like nothing else I have seen in Nature. As the shark opened its mouth, we were permitted a glimpse of dentition, a flash of pure white enamel whose individual components were triangular in shape and serrated like steak knives.
The shark dropped out of sight, and we discovered that we had all been holding our breath. A few moments later, it returned and began to circle the boat. It was a youngster, not very big, perhaps only nine feet long and weighing mere hundreds of pounds.
Andrew, Rodney, and Jack were in motion, setting out half tunas or mackerels secured to the ends of thin lines. These bleeding baits were put out to lure the shark in and keep it intrigued. To prevent the chunks of fish from sinking, ordinary colored balloons were attached to the bait lines. Bobbing up and down on the surface of a glassy and suddenly threatening sea, the cheap, brightly hued inflatable spheres were an incongruous sight in view of what was lurking in the water just beneath them.
Rodney informed us that the shark must take the bait or it would quickly lose interest and swim off. We waited and stared. Time passed—too much time.
Then a fin cut close, cut away, returned. A pointed nose momentarily cleaved the water, and the drifting hunk of fish vanished, the tough bait line snipped as easily as by scissors. Andrew hauled it in, its balloon float still attached and unharmed.
An hour later, a second shark appeared and took some bait. Carl was ecstatic, disbelieving. Two sharks the first day, almost within an hour of anchoring! Unbelievable. Rodney nodded, turned to us, and smiled.
“Anyone for a swim?”
That is what I traveled 8,000 miles for. That is why I’ve read science fiction since I was ten years old. The great shark is Van Vogt and Heinlein and Clarke become reality. It’s Sheckley and Russell and Vance. But it is not fiction, not words on paper. The fantastic has been made flesh and given mass and color and alien patterns of its own.
In minutes, I had donned my heavy neoprene wet suit. Because the cages float on the surface, we would be working and observing in only eight feet of water. In full cold-water suit, that meant forty pounds of lead on the weight belt secured around my waist, or else I’d float to the top of the cage and bob up and down as helpless as an unpowered blimp. Between the weights and the tank on my back, I felt about as agile as a ruptured hippo. Trying to maintain my balance, I lurched toward the stern, staggering like Kharis the mummy.
The open top of the cage gaped invitingly. Hanging tightly to the gunwale,