Part 12 (2/2)

Then, as they went deeper, the colors gradually faded to a uniforraphs that the appearance was deceptive The colors reed

Scotty hooted four tier! Rick looked and saw a barracuda hovering near by He gulped The fish was easily five feet long Both boys lifted their spear guns just in case the 'cuda attacked, but the one with one powerful flick of his tail

Rick consulted his wrist depth gauge, holding it close to his face plate They were at bottole of about thirty degrees The boys planed doard, a few feet above the sand until Rick's gauge read 120 feet This was the li for decompression on the way up

He recalled that the waves cahtly northerly direction and motioned to Scotty that they should turn north Scotty moved out to the li of north, watching for any sign of a wreck Now and then a coral shelf extended out fro that could have been a wreck Once they swa and ten wide, and a huge eagle ray lifted frolided off like a weird futuristic airplane

It was quiet, except for the regular chuckle of their exhausts, and the light was subdued and even It was a world without shadows Still, Rick thought, there was plenty of light for photography Next ti his camera

The watch showed hione, and he hooted once to Scotty, then reversed course, heading back toward their floats

They approached the patch where they had seen the ray and Rick paused suddenly There was an odd shape on the sand near the patch He flippered over to it and examined it Scotty joined hi frole

Rick unsheathed his knife and poked at it The sharp tip penetrated for a fraction of an inch, then stopped It was either rock orfrom the shape, it was unlikely that it was rock He put his knife under it and pried, and the thing moved in the sand

Both boys went to work on it, scooping the sand fro like a durohere it had been above the sand, but fairly smooth under it

Rick took his belt slate and scribbled, ”Metal”

Scotty nodded Then both of them turned to look at the patch of ht their attention They looked up, but the surface was invisible

It was Tony and Zircon, Rick decided They probably had returned to the cottage and found the diving equip They could spot the location where the boys were diving easily enough, first by the floats, then by the bubbles of their exhausts

Scotty hooted suddenly, four times Rick turned quickly in time to see a six-foot shark speed past The tips of the pectoral fins and the second dorsal were darker than the rest of the fish, and Rick identified it as a black-tipped shark Obviously, the shark was on business of its own, not particularly interested in the alht up

[Illustration: _Rick turned in tiripped his arm and pointed More sharks! Another black tip And a ten-foot leopard shark! All rushi+ng upward

The boys watched tensely, and then out of the di sped down at them, followed by the sharks It landed in the clear sand just beyond the o for it, then the black tip was struck fro leopard In spite of his sudden apprehension, Rick couldn't help wishi+ng for his ca object was lifted fronized it A chicken! It was tied to a length of string froled a lead sinker The bird was dead, but apparently freshly so He knew that it was the chicken blood that had brought the sharks--and a giant barracuda! The great fish, a full six feet in length, slashed past the sharks and tore a chunk out of the bird

The leopard shark made a fast pass at the barracuda, then turned and snapped at a black tip Rick gulped A hole suddenly appeared in the black's side, as sh scooped out of ice cream And then the other sharks hit the wounded black tip

There werethe chicken and the wounded black tip like fierce dogs over scraps of et out of here!” He hooted twice at Scotty, the signal to ascend Scotty motioned to him to retreat Rick picked up the dumbbell-shaped object

It was heavy, but not too heavy to handle, and he started a slow retreat along the sand

The sharks were paying no attention to the boys, but Rick wasn't at all sure that they wouldn't, once the supply of chicken and wounded shark were exhausted His mind raced Where had the chicken come from? Whoever had tossed it into the water would have known that the blood would bring sharks It wasn't a casual toss, either Not when the chicken had been weighted with a fishi+ng sinker big enough to carry it to the botto Besides, they had no chickens