of wind. While I was struggling to get the
sights back on the monster, the ship gave another lurch and the cross
hairs were right on its neck, about six feet below the head. I grabbed
the trigger, and as soon as the shot was off, took my eyes from the
sights. I was just a second too late to see the burst, but not too
late to see the monster's neck jerk one way out of the smoke puff and
its head fly another. A second later, the window in front of me was
splashed with blood as the headless neck came down on our fantail.

Immediately, two rockets jumped from the launcher over the gun turret,
planting a couple of harpoons, and the boat, which had been circling
around since we had submerged, dived into the water and passed under
the monster, coming up on the other side dragging another harpoon
line. The monster was still threshing its wings and flogging with its
headless neck. It takes a monster quite a few minutes to tumble to the
fact that it's been killed. My helper was pounding my back black and
blue with one hand and trying to pump mine off with the other, and I
was getting an ovation from all over the ship. At the same time, a
couple more harpoons went into the thing from the ship, and the boat
put another one in from behind.

I gathered that shooting monsters' heads off wasn't at all usual, and
hastened to pass it off as pure luck, so that everybody would hurry up
and deny it before they got the same idea themselves.

We hadn't much time for ovations, though. We had a very slowly dying
monster, and before he finally discovered that he was dead, a couple
of harpoons got pulled out and had to be replaced. Finally, however,
he quieted down, and the boat swung him around, bringing the tail past
our bow, and the ship cut contragravity to specific-gravity level and
settled to float on top of the water. The boat dived again, and payed
out a line that it brought up and around and up again, lashing the
monster fast alongside.

"All right," Kivelson was saying, out of the intercom. "Shooting's
over. All hands for cutting-up."

I pulled on a parka and zipped it up and went out onto the deck.
Everybody who wasn't needed at engines or controls was there, and
equipment was coming up from below--power saws and sonocutters and
even a solenoid jackhammer. There were half a dozen floodlights, on
small contragravity lifters; they were run up on lines fifty feet
above the ship's deck. By this time it was completely dark and fine
s