A Meeting With Medusa Read Online Free PDF Page A

could speak.
    ‘What the hell’s going on here?’ demanded Nick. ‘Everyone knocking off work early?’
    It was then that Tibor realised that he was not the first to come up. Stephen was sitting amidships, smoking a cigarette and looking completely unconcerned. The stern diver, doubtless wondering what had happened, was being hauled up willy-nilly by his tender, since the Arafura had come to rest and all operations had been suspended until the trouble was resolved.
    ‘There’s some kind of wreck down there,’ said Tibor. ‘I ran right into it. All I could see were a lot of wires and rods.’
    To his annoyance and self-contempt, the memory set him trembling again.
    ‘Don’t see why that should give you the shakes,’ grumbled Nick. Nor could Tibor; here on this sun-drenched deck, it was impossible to explain how a harmless shape glimpsed through the mist could set one’s whole mind jangling with terror.
    ‘I nearly got hung up on it,’ he lied. ‘Blanco pulled me clear just in time.’
    ‘Hmm,’ said Nick, obviously not convinced. ‘Anyway, it ain’t a ship.’ He gestured toward the midships diver. ‘Steve ran into a mess of ropes and cloth—like thick nylon, he says. Sounds like some kind of parachute.’ The old Greek stared in disgust at the soggy stump of his cigar, then flicked it overboard. ‘Soon as Billy’s up, we’ll go back and take a look. Might be worth something—remember what happened to Jo Chambers.’
    Tibor remembered; the story was famous the whole length of the Great Barrier Reef. Jo had been a lone-wolf fisherman who, in the last months of the war, had spotted a DC-3 lying in shallow water a few miles off the Queensland coast. After prodigies of singlehanded salvage, he had broken into the fuselage and started unloading boxes of taps and dies, perfectly protected by their greased wrappings. For a while he had run a flourishing import business, but when the police caught up with him he reluctantly revealed his source of supply; Australian cops can be very persuasive.
    And it was then, after weeks and weeks of backbreaking underwater work, that Jo discovered what his DC-3 had been carrying besides the miserable few hundred quid’s worth of tools he had been flogging to garages and workshops on the mainland. The big wooden crates he’d never got round to opening held a week’s payroll for the US Pacific forces—most of it in twenty-dollar gold pieces.
    No such luck here, thought Tibor as he sank over the side again; but the aircraft—or whatever it was—might contain valuable instruments, and there could be a reward for its discovery. Besides, he owed it to himself; he wanted to see exactly what it was that had given him such a fright.
    Ten minutes later, he knew it was no aircraft. It was the wrong shape, and it was much too small—only about twenty feet long and half that in width. Here and there on the gently tapering body were access hatches and tiny ports through which unknown instruments peered at the world. It seemed unharmed, though one end had been fused as if by terrific heat. From the other sprouted a tangle of antennas, all of them broken or bent by the impact with the water. Even now, they bore an incredible resemblance to the legs of a giant insect.
    Tibor was no fool; he guessed at once what the thing was. Only one problem remained, and he solved that with little difficulty. Though they had been partly charred away by heat, stencilled words could still be read on some of the hatch covers. The letters were Cyrillic, and Tibor knew enough Russian to pick out references to electrical supplies and pressurising systems.
    ‘So they’ve lost a sputnik,’ he told himself with satisfaction. He could imagine what had happened; the thing had come down too fast, and in the wrong place. Around one end were the tattered remnants of flotation bags; they had burst under the impact, and the vehicle had sunk like a stone. The Arafura ’s crew would have to apologise to Joey; he