ed, "After gun secure." Hans Cronje's
voice, a moment later, said, "Forward gun secure," and then Ramon
Llewellyn said, "Ship secure; ready to submerge."

Then the _Javelin_ began to settle, and the water came up over the
window. I didn't know what the radar was picking up. All I could see
was the screen and the window; water lighted for about fifty feet in
front and behind. I saw a cloud of screwfish pass over and around us,
spinning rapidly as they swam as though on lengthwise axis--they
always spin counterclockwise, never clockwise. A couple of
funnelmouths were swimming after them, overtaking and engulfing them.

Then the captain yelled, "Get set for torpedo," and my helper and I
each grabbed a stanchion. A couple of seconds later it seemed as
though King Neptune himself had given the ship a poke in the nose; my
hands were almost jerked loose from their hold. Then she swung slowly,
nosing up and down, and finally Joe Kivelson spoke again:

"We're going to surface. Get set to run the guns out and start
shooting as soon as we're out of the water."

"What happened?" I asked my helper.

"Must have put the torp right under him and lifted him," he said. "He
could be dead or stunned. Or he could be live and active and spoiling
for a fight."

That last could be trouble. The _Times_ had run quite a few stories,
some with black borders, about ships that had gotten into trouble with
monsters. A hunter-ship is heavy and it is well-armored--install
hyperdrive engines in one, and you could take her from here to
Terra--but a monster is a tough brute, and he has armor of his own,
scales an inch or so thick and tougher than sole leather. A lot of
chair seats around Port Sandor are made of single monster scales. A
monster strikes with its head, like a snake. They can smash a ship's
boat, and they've been known to punch armor-glass windows out of their
frames. I didn't want the window in front of me coming in at me with a
monster head the size of a couple of oil drums and full of big tusks
following it.

The _Javelin_ came up fast, but not as fast as the monster, which
seemed to have been injured only in his disposition. He was on the
surface already, about fifty yards astern of us, threshing with his
forty-foot wing-fins, his neck arched back to strike. I started to
swing my gun for the chest shot Joe Kivelson had recommended as soon
as it was run out, and then the ship was swung around and tilted up
forward by a sudden gust