He kept on swimming, and the water seemed to get bluer and then darker and blacker. Sudden fear shot up his spine as the thought of passing out assailed him. His lungs were ready to explode. There was no more air in his body, and the lake began to waver and shimmer before his eyes. He kept his eyes on the layer of sunshine above him, and when his head broke the surface he watched the layer disappear in a filigree splash of gold. He pulled Denise’s head to the surface, his eyes opening wide when he saw the color of her face. He gulped at the sweet, clean, fresh air, filling his lungs, resting for only a moment and then striking out for the raft.
“Chuck!”
The voice cut through his senses like a dull-edged knife. It was a long time reaching him.
“Chuck!”
The voice was Arthur’s, good old Arthur’s. Good old Arthur. Good old buddy back on the raft, waiting to help him aboard, waiting with a blanket, maybe.
The second voice that spoke was not Arthur’s.
It was a booming voice that spoke with authority, a voice that cracked ominously and then was still.
It was the voice of a high-powered rifle.
It took a long time for this to penetrate. When it did, Chuck rejected it in confusion. Why were they shooting at him?
The gun went off again, and a geyser of water spouted into the air some three feet to Chuck’s left.
“Chuck! Behind you!” This was the voice of Dr. Perry. “An ichthyosaur!”
Ichthyosaur? Chuck’s mind yanked the word out of his memory, turned it over so that he could examine it more carefully.
The rifle went off again and again. He didn’t look back. He kept towing Denise, keeping her head above water, trying to remember what an ichthyosaur was, and wondering why Dr. Perry was so excited, and wondering also what everyone was shooting at.
Large. Yes, surely an ichthyosaur was large.
The rifle sounded again, closer now as he approached the raft.
A powerfully huge body, 25 to 30 feet long, with four flippers, and it swam through the water by lateral undulations of body and tail. A fish? No, not a fish. Simply a reptile that had adapted itself to the water. A reptile with a sharklike dorsal fin and a powerful tail with two vertical lobes. Enormous eyes set in a three-foot-long head. An elongated snout set with as many as 200 sharp teeth. A conical head and slender, beaklike jaws.
This was
With jaws that could tear open the toughest hide of the strongest reptile, and teeth that could rip out the flesh.
A flesh eater, the ichthyosaur.
A flesh eater!
“Behind you, Chuck!” and then the bellow of the rifle again. He turned his head over his shoulder, saw the rapier-like jaws, the teeth glinting in the rays of the sun. Sudden fear covered his body with a clammy chill. He swallowed hard and heard the rifle erupt again. The ichthyosaur leaped out of the water, its deep gray flanks gleaming wetly, its white belly looking cold and hard and uncompromising.
Then a flower blossomed on the belly.
There was the boom of the rifle, and the flower appeared magically-a brilliant red bloom against the snow-white flesh. The bloom spread as the fishlike reptile wrenched violently in midair, great jaws snapping, the blood spreading until it was washed away in the water as the ichthyosaur splashed down beneath the surface.
Then it was all over, Chuck thought. The ichthyosaur was gone, and all he had to do was tow Denise back to the raft and then relax, with the sun warming his bones and his muscles.
“Good gravy! Another one!” a voice shouted.
The rifles started firing, all of them this time, their voices ringing with wrathful thunder. A spout of water leaped into the air on the starboard side of the raft and then cascaded down in a silvery shower that revealed a massive brown head. Arthur.
Chuck watched Arthur and then he saw the glint of the ax clutched in his right hand.
“I’m coming,” Arthur shouted. “Hold on, Chuck!”
Chuck took a deep breath and turned his head over his shoulder. Behind him he saw the huge dorsal fin of the ichthyosaur as it sliced through the water, the long jaws snapping in fury, the blood of its slaughtered mate spreading around it in deep red silence.
Chuck pulled Denise closer to him and struck out against the water with his free arm.
Behind him he heard the thrash of the water as the reptile gained on him.
Chuck felt strange, as if he had no part in it at all.