“Come on,” said Fletcher. “Let’s search the raft.”

  They looked everywhere — processing house, the cupola on the mast, all the nooks and crannies a man might take it into his head to explore. The barges were all at dock; the launch and catamaran swung at their moorings; the helicopter hulked on the deck with drooping blades.

  Agostino was nowhere aboard the raft. No one knew where Agostino had gone; no one knew exactly when he had left.

  The crew of the raft collected in the mess hall, making small nervous motions, looking out the portholes over the ocean.

  Fletcher could think of very little to say. “Whatever is after us — and we don’t know what it is — it can surprise us and it’s watching. We’ve got to be careful — more than careful!”

  Murphy pounded his fist softly on the table. “But what can we do? We can’t just stand around like silly cows!”

  “Sabria is theoretically a safe planet,” said Damon. “According to Stryzkal and the Galactic Index, there are no hostile life forms here.”

  Murphy snorted, “I wish old Stryzkal was here now to tell me.”

  “He might be able to theorize back Raight and Agostino.” Dave Jones looked at the calendar. “A month to go.”

  “We’ll only run one shift,” said Fletcher, “until we get replacements.”

  “Call them reinforcements,” muttered Mahlberg.

  “Tomorrow,” said Fletcher, “I’m going to take the water-bug down, look around, and get an idea what’s going on. In the meantime, everybody better carry hatchets or cleavers.”

  There was soft sound on the windows, on the deck outside. “Rain,” said Mahlberg. He looked at the clock on the wall. “Midnight.”

  The rain hissed through the air, drummed on the walls; the decks ran with water and the mast-head lights glared through the slanting streaks.

  Fletcher went to the streaming windows, looked toward the process house. “I guess we better button up for the night. There’s no reason to —” he squinted through the window, then ran to the door and out into the rain.

  Water pelted into his face, he could see very little but the glare of the lights in the rain. And a hint of white along the shining gray-black of the deck, like an old white plastic hose.

  A snatch at his ankles: his feet were yanked from under him. He fell flat upon the streaming metal.

  Behind him came the thud of feet; there were excited curses, a clang and scrape; the grip on Fletcher’s ankles loosened.

  Fletcher jumped up, staggered back against the mast. “Something’s in the process house,” he yelled.

  The men pounded off through the rain; Fletcher came after.

  But there was nothing in the process house. The doors were wide; the rooms were bright. The squat pulverizers stood on either hand, behind were the pressure tanks, the vats, the pipes of six different colors.

  Fletcher pulled the master switch; the hum and grind of the machinery died. “Let’s lock up and get back to the dormitory.”

  Morning was the reverse of evening; first the green gloom of Atreus, warming to pink as Geideon rose behind the clouds. It was a blustery day, with squalls trailing dark curtains all around the compass.

  Fletcher ate breakfast, dressed in a skin-tight coverall threaded with heating-filaments, then a waterproof garment with a plastic head-dome.

  The water-bug hung on davits at the east edge of the raft, a shell of transparent plastic with the pumps sealed in a metal cell amidships. Submerging, the hull filled with water through valves, which then closed; the bug could submerge to four hundred feet, the hull resisting about half the pressure, the enclosed water the rest.

  Fletcher lowered himself into the cockpit; Murphy connected the hoses from the air tanks to Fletcher’s helmet, then screwed the port shut. Mahlberg and Hans Heinz winged out the davits. Murphy went to stand by the hoist-control; for a moment he hesitated, looking from the dark pink-dappled water to Fletcher, and back at the water.

  Fletcher waved his hand. “Lower away.” His voice came from the loudspeaker on the bulkhead behind them.

  Murphy swung the handle. The bug eased down. Water gushed in through the valves, up around Fletcher’s body, over his head. Bubbles rose from the helmet exhaust valve.

  Fletcher tested the pumps, then cast off the grapples. The bug slanted down into the water.

  Murphy sighed. “He’s got more nerve than I’m ever likely to have.”

  “He can get away from whatever’s after him,” said Damon. “He might well be safer than we are here on the raft.”

  Murphy clapped him on the shoulder. “Damon, my lad — you can climb. Up on top of the mast you’ll be safe; it’s unlikely that they’ll come there to tug you into the water.” Murphy raised his eyes to the cupola a hundred feet over the deck. “And I think that’s where I’d take myself — if only someone would bring me my food.”

  Heinz pointed to the water. “There go the bubbles. He went under the raft. Now he’s headed north.”

  The day became stormy. Spume blew over the raft, and it meant a drenching to venture out on deck. The clouds thinned enough to show the outlines of Geideon and Atreus, a blood-orange and a lime.

  Suddenly the winds died; the ocean flattened into an uneasy calm. The crew sat in the mess hall drinking coffee, talking in staccato uneasy voices.

  Damon became restless and went up to his laboratory. He came running back down into the mess hall.

  “Dekabrachs — they’re under the raft! I saw them from the observation deck!”

  Murphy shrugged. “They’re safe from me.”

  “I’d like to get hold of one,” said Damon. “Alive.”

  “Don’t we have enough trouble already?” growled Dave Jones.

  Damon explained patiently. “We know nothing about dekabrachs. They’re a highly developed species. Chrystal destroyed all the data we had, and I should have at least one specimen.”

  Murphy rose to his feet. “I suppose we can scoop one up in a net.”

  “Good,” said Damon. “I’ll set up the big tank to receive it.”

  The crew went out on deck where the weather had turned sultry. The ocean was flat and oily; haze blurred sea and sky together in a smooth gradation of color, from dirty scarlet near the raft to pale pink overhead.

  The boom was winged out, a parachute net was attached and lowered quietly into the water. Heinz stood by the winch; Murphy leaned over the rail, staring intently down into the water.

  A pale shape drifted out from under the raft. “Lift!” bawled Murphy.

  The line snapped taut; the net rose out of the water in a cascade of spray. In the center a six-foot dekabrach pulsed and thrashed, gill slits rasping for water.

  The boom swung inboard; the net tripped; the dekabrach slid into the plastic tank.

  It darted forward and backward; the plastic dented and bulged where it struck. Then it floated quiet in the center, head-tentacles folded back against the torso.

  All hands crowded around the tank. The black eye-spot looked back through the transparent walls.

  Murphy asked Damon, “Now what?”

  “I’d like the tank lifted to the deck outside the laboratory where I can get at it.”

  “No sooner said than done.”

  The tank was hoisted and swung to the spot Damon had indicated; Damon went excitedly off to plan his research.

  The crew watched the dekabrach for ten or fifteen minutes, then drifted back to the mess hall.

  Time passed. Gusts of wind raked up the ocean into a sharp steep chop. At two o’clock the loudspeaker hissed; the crew stiffened, raised their heads.

  Fletcher’s voice came from the diaphragm. “Hello aboard the raft. I’m about two miles northwest. Stand by to haul me aboard.”

  “Hah!” cried Murphy, grinning. “He made it.”

  “I gave odds against him of four to one,” Mahlberg said. “I’m lucky nobody took them.”

  “Get a move on; he’ll be alongside before we’re ready.”

  The crew trooped out to the landing. The water-bug came sliding over the ocean, its glistening back riding the dark disorder of the waters.

  It slipped quietly up to the raft; grapples clamped to the plates fore and aft. The winch whined, the bug lifted from the sea, draining its ballast of water.

  Fletcher, in the cockpit, looked tense and tired. He climbed stiffly out of the bug, stretched, unzipped the waterproof suit, pulled off the helmet.

  “Well, I’m back.” He looked around the group. “Surprised?”

  “I’d have lost money on you,” Mahlberg told him.

  “What did you find out?” asked Damon. “Anything?”

  Fletcher nodded. “Plenty. Let me get into clean clothes. I’m wringing wet — sweat.” He stopped short, looking up at the tank on the laboratory deck. “When did that come aboard?”

  “We netted it about noon,” said Murphy. “Damon wanted to look one over.”

  Fletcher stood looking up at the tank with his shoulders drooping.

  “Something wrong?” asked Damon.

  “No,” said Fletcher. “We couldn’t have it worse than it is already.” He turned away toward the dormitory.

  The crew waited for him in the mess hall; twenty minutes later he appeared. He drew himself a cup of coffee, sat down.

  “Well,” said Fletcher. “I can’t be sure — but it looks as if we’re in trouble.”

  “Dekabrachs?” asked Murphy.

  Fletcher nodded.

  “I knew it!” Murphy cried in triumph. “You can tell by looking at the blatherskites they’re up to no good.”

  Damon frowned, disapproving of emotional judgments. “Just what is the situation?” he asked Fletcher. “At least, as it appears to you?”

  Fletcher chose his words carefully. “Things are going on that we’ve been unaware of. In the first place, the dekabrachs are socially organized.”

  “You mean to say — they’re intelligent?”

  Fletcher shook his head. “I don’t know for sure. It’s possible. It’s equally possible that they live by instinct, like social insects.”

  “How in the world —” began Damon; Fletcher held up a hand. “I’ll tell you just what happened; you can ask all the questions you like afterwards.” He drank his coffee.

  “When I went down under, naturally I was on the alert and kept my eyes peeled. I felt safe enough in the water-bug — but funny things have been happening, and I was a little nervous.

  “As soon as I was in the water I saw the dekabrachs — five or six of them.” Fletcher paused, sipped his coffee.

  “What were they doing?” asked Damon.

  “Nothing very much. Drifting near a big monitor which had attached itself to the seaweed. The arm was hanging down like a rope — clear out of sight. I edged the bug in just to see what the deks would do; they began backing away. I didn’t want to waste too much time under the raft, so I swung off north, toward the Deeps. Halfway there I saw an odd thing; in fact I passed it, and swung around to take another look.

  “There were about a dozen deks. They had a monitor — and this one was really big. A giant. It was hanging on a set of balloons or bubbles — some kind of pods that kept it floating, and the deks were easing it along. In this direction.”

  “In this direction, eh?” mused Murphy.

  “What did you do?” asked Manners.

  “Well, perhaps it was all an innocent outing — but I didn’t want to take any chances. The arm of this monitor would be like a hawser. I turned the bug at the bubbles, burst some, scattered the rest. The monitor dropped like a stone. The deks took off in different directions. I figured I’d won that round. I kept on going north, and pretty soon I came to where the slope starts down into the Deeps. I’d been traveling about twenty feet under; now I lowered to two hundred. I had to turn on the lights, of course — this red twilight doesn’t penetrate water too well.” Fletcher took another gulp of coffee. “All the way across the Shallows I’d been passing over coral banks and dodging forests of kelp. Where the shelf slopes down to the Deeps the coral gets to be something fantastic — I suppose there’s more water movement, more nourishment, more oxygen. It grows a hundred feet high, in spires and towers, umbrellas, platforms, arches — white, pale blue, pale green.

  “I came to the edge of a cliff. It was a shock — one minute my lights were on the coral, all these white towers and pinnacles — then there was nothing. I was over the Deeps. I got a little nervous.” Fletcher grinned. “Irrational, of course. I checked the fathometer — bottom was twelve thousand feet down. I still didn’t like it, and turned around, swung back. Then I noticed lights off to my right. I turned my own off, moved in to investigate. The lights spread out as if I was flying over a city — and that’s just about what it was.”

  “Dekabrachs?” asked Damon.

  Fletcher nodded. “Dekabrachs.”

  “You mean — they built it themselves? Lights and all?”

  Fletcher frowned. “That’s what I can’t be sure of. The coral had grown into shapes that gave them little cubicles to swim in and out of, and do whatever they’d want to do in a house. Certainly they don’t need protection from the rain. They hadn’t built these coral grottoes in the sense that we build a house — but it didn’t look like natural coral either. It’s as if they made the coral grow to suit them.”

  Murphy said doubtfully, “Then they’re intelligent.”

  “No, not necessarily. After all, wasps build complicated nests with no more equipment than a set of instincts.”

  “What’s your opinion?” asked Damon. “Just what impression does it give?”

  Fletcher shook his head. “I can’t be sure. I don’t know what kind of standards to apply. ‘Intelligence’ is a word that means lots of different things, and the way we generally use it is artificial and specialized.”

  “I don’t get you,” said Murphy. “Do you mean these deks are intelligent or don’t you?”

  Fletcher laughed. “Are men intelligent?”

  “Sure. So they say, at least.”

  “Well, what I’m trying to get across is that we can’t use man’s intelligence as a measure of the dekabrach’s mind. We’ve got to judge him by a different set of values — dekabrach values. Men use tools of metal, ceramic, fiber: inorganic stuff — at least, dead. I can imagine a civilization dependent upon living tools — specialized creatures the master-group uses for special purposes. Suppose the dekabrachs live on this basis? They force the coral to grow in the shape they want. They use the monitors for derricks or hoists, or snares, or to grab at something in the upper air.”

  “Apparently, then,” said Damon, “you believe that the dekabrachs are intelligent.”

  Fletcher shook his head. “Intelligence is just a word — a matter of definition. What the deks do may not be susceptible to human definition.”

  “It’s beyond me,” said Murphy, settling back in his chair.

  Damon pressed the subject. “I am not a metaphysicist or a semanticist. But it seems that we might apply, or try to apply, a crucial test.”

  “What difference does it make one way or the other?” asked Murphy.

  Fletcher said, “It makes a big difference where the law is concerned.”

  “Ah,” said Murphy, “the Doctrine of Responsibility.”

  Fletcher nodded. “We could be yanked off the planet for injuring or killing intelligent autochthones. It’s been done.”

  “That’s right,” said Murphy. “I was on Alkaid Two when Graviton Corporation got in that kind of trouble.”

  “So if the deks are intelligent, we’ve got to watch our step. That’s why I looked twice when I saw the dek in the tank.”

  “Well — are they or aren’t they?” asked Mahlberg.

  “There’s one crucial test,” Damon repeated.

  The crew looked at him expectantly.

  “Well?” asked Murphy. “Spill it.”

  “Communication.”

  Murphy nodded thoughtfully. “That seems to make sense.” He looked at Fletcher. “Did you notice them communicating?”

  Fletcher shook his head. “Tomorrow I’ll take a camera out, and a sound recorder. Then we’ll know for sure.”

  “Incidentally,” said Damon, “why were you asking about niobium?”

  Fletcher had almost forgotten. “Chrystal had a chunk on his desk. Or maybe he did — I’m not sure.”

  Damon nodded. “Well, it may be a coincidence, but the deks are loaded with it.”

  Fletcher stared.

  “It’s in their blood, and there’s a strong concentration in the interior organs.”

  Fletcher sat with his cup halfway to his mouth. “Enough to make a profit on?”

  Damon nodded. “Probably a hundred grams or more in the organism.”

  “Well, well,” said Fletcher. “That’s very interesting indeed.”

  Rain roared down during the night; a great wind came up, lifting and driving the rain and spume. Most of the crew had gone to bed: all except Dave Jones the steward and Manners the radio man, who sat up over a chess board.

  A new sound rose over wind and rain — a metallic groaning, a creaking discord that presently became too loud to ignore. Manners jumped to his feet, went to the window.

  “The mast!”

  Dimly it could be seen through the rain, swaying like a reed, the arc of oscillation increasing with each swing.

  “What can we do?” cried Jones.

  One set of guy-lines snapped. “Nothing now.”

  “I’ll call Fletcher.” Jones ran for the passage to the dormitory.

  The mast gave a sudden jerk, poised long seconds at an unlikely angle, then toppled across the process house.

  Fletcher appeared, stared out the window. With the mast-head light no longer shining down, the raft was dark and ominous. Fletcher shrugged, turned away. “There’s nothing we can do tonight. It’s worth a man’s life to go out on that deck.”

  In the morning, examination of the wreckage revealed that two of the guy-lines had been sawed or clipped cleanly through. The mast, of lightweight construction, was quickly cut apart, and the twisted segments dragged to a corner of the deck. The raft seemed bald and flat.