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*CHAPTER 07 -- SUBMERGING*
Quietly and rapidly, the flouwen submerged, luxuriating in the slow
surge of the ocean around them. As the humans had promised, the signals from
_Babble_ soon became only an occasional faint blip of sound at regular
intervals -- easily ignored. The three quickly discovered that swimming in the
strange suits was a different matter altogether from the freedom to which they
were accustomed. However, they soon adapted to the new sensation.
*Takes work, to swim in this bag,* grunted Little Red.
^But, being more compact, the glide is longer,^ demonstrated Little
White, forging ahead. The blobby, awkward-looking shapes increased their pace
with practice, and with powerful lunges headed towards the depths.
Although the light filtering down from the surface provided a weak
amount of illumination, the superb sonar of the flouwen gave them a bright and
clear picture of their surroundings, the highly flexible glassy-foil fabric of
the suits allowing the sonar pulses from their bodies to penetrate into the
water. Little Purple, emulating one of his favorite humans, commented
frequently on what they were "seeing" as they swam along. His observations
were converted by David's software algorithm into a high reliability
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communications code, and redundantly transmitted over a number of channels by
the sonar transmitter on Little Purple's chestpack back to _Babble_, to be
transmitted up through the commsat links to Joe on _Dragonfly_, who devolved
the code to reconstruct the message and pass it along to David, while copies
were sent to Josephine on _Victoria_ and James on _Prometheus_.
#Water getting warmer. No sign of anything moving. Tide is moving
against us. Wait. A funny echo...#
*Big!*
^Stop!^
The three flouwen attempted to stop simultaneously. Their normal
techniques, however, failed in the clumsy suits, so that instead of the easy
cessation of motion they expected, there was a collision of the three, which
distracted them. By the time Little Red had stopped blaming the other two, the
large distant echo had vanished, but the three explorers now proceeded more
slowly, surveying all the areas around them.
#Sea bottom now in range. Large crater down below. Not deep. Full of
plants. Inside crater hear bubbling sounds of vent field. Water getting warmer
as we go nearer. Funny echo again.#
Little Purple stopped transmitting, and all three stopped seeing around
them with their sonar pings, and instead switched to looking through the
lenses built into their helmets. Down below them, illuminated by the reddish
light trickling down from the surface above, a large and powerful form
undulated around the rim of the crater, sleek and silent as a snake. It was a
giant coelashark, larger than either a human or a flouwen.
#Big. Four legs, with fins on the ends. Four tentacles, stubby too,
coming from beneath, below mouth. Tentacles carry sharp stone. Moves in
s-curves, sideways.#
The coelashark's attention seemed to be concentrated on the warmer,
plant-choked waters inside the crater, and it did not notice or pay attention
to the silent bulk of the three aliens above it. The coelashark moved slowly,
effortlessly, but with a steady rhythm that seemed in no way idle; it was
watching the plants for something, and waiting with a purpose. It swam off and
disappeared around the opposite side of the seaweed bed, but the flouwen
stayed quietly where they were, also waiting and watching. After some time the
coelashark reappeared. It stopped to sharpen the already sharp point of its
stone on a rock, and continued its patrol of the vent field, its attention
still directed inward, and passed.
With tacit mutual consent, the flouwen kept sonar silence to prevent
being observed, swam over the edge of the crater to the inside, and began to
drop slowly downward. Behind, they could hear the approach of _Babble_, its
treads making a great deal of noise as it splashed across the ocean surface
above them. Thankful this time for the presence of the noisy machine, the
flouwen were able to use _Babble_'s pings and tread noise to keep track of the
large coelashark, while saving their own sonar chirps for the scanning of
things near to them.
Suddenly, they stopped. A sound was rapidly increasing through the
water, as though some creature was approaching them from out of the plant
cover, screaming as it came. They watched as two creatures approached,
swimming in frantic haste. The larger of the two was a coelashark, only a
quarter of the size of the one they had already seen, and it was hotly
pursuing another, still smaller, which was making the noise. The victim had
lost its tentacles, and some dark fluid flowed like smoke from a puncture in
its side, but it never slowed in its desperate flight outward toward the rim
of the crater. As the flouwen watched, both little coelasharks virtually
exploded, hit full on by the huge predator that had circled back. The screams
stopped, and nothing was left of the encounter but the languid motion of the
satiated coelashark, and the rapidly dissipating trace of the dark film of
liquid.
*Good hunting, two at once like that,* said Little Red in admiration.
The flouwen resumed their advance.
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The seabed above which they were slowly floating was rough, and
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