A Meeting With Medusa Read Online Free PDF Page B

of authority, had already decided that all he’d get for his trouble would be a nice letter of thanks.
    ‘The boys won’t go down,’ he said. ‘They think it’s a bomb. Want to leave it alone.’
    ‘Tell ‘em not to worry,’ replied Tibor. ‘I’ll handle it.’ He tried to keep his voice normal and unemotional, but this was too good to be true. If the other divers heard the tapping from the capsule, his plans would have been frustrated.
    He gestured to the island, green and lovely on the skyline.
    ‘Only one thing we can do. If we can heave it a couple of feet off the bottom, we can run for the shore. Once we’re in shallow water, it won’t be too hard to haul it up on the beach. We can use the boats, and maybe get a block and tackle on one of those trees.’
    Nick considered the idea without much enthusiasm. He doubted if they could get the sputnik through the reef, even on the leeward side of the island. But he was all in favour of lugging it away from this patch of shell; they could always dump it somewhere else, buoy the place, and still get whatever credit was going.
    ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Down you go. That two-inch rope’s the strongest we’ve got—better take that. Don’t be all the bloody day; we’ve lost enough time already.’
    Tibor had no intention of being all day. Six hours would be quite long enough. That was one of the first things he had learned, from the signals through the wall.
    It was a pity that he could not hear the Russian’s voice; but the Russian could hear him, and that was what really mattered. When he pressed his helmet against the metal and shouted, most of his words got through. So far, it had been a friendly conversation; Tibor had no intention of showing his hand until the right psychological moment.
    The first move had been to establish a code—one knock for ‘yes,’ two for ‘no.’ After that, it was merely a matter of framing suitable questions; given time, there was no fact or idea that could not be communicated by means of these two signals. It would have been a much tougher job if Tibor had been forced to use his indifferent Russian; he had been pleased, but not surprised, to find that the trapped pilot understood English perfectly.
    There was air in the capsule for another five hours; the occupant was uninjured; yes, the Russians knew where it had come down. That last reply gave Tibor pause. Perhaps the pilot was lying, but it might very well be true. Although something had obviously gone wrong with the planned return to Earth, the tracking ships out in the Pacific must have located the impact point—with what accuracy, he could not guess. Still, did that matter? It might take them days to get here, even if they came racing straight into Australian territorial waters without bothering to get permission from Canberra. He was master of the situation; the entire might of the USSR could do nothing to interfere with his plans—until it was much too late.
    The heavy rope fell in coils on the sea bed, stirring up a cloud of silt that drifted like smoke down the slow current. Now that the sun was higher in the sky, the underwater world was no longer wrapped in a grey, twilight gloom. The sea bed was colourless but bright, and the boundary of vision was now almost fifteen feet away. For the first time, Tibor could see the space capsule in its entirety. It was such a peculiar-looking object, being designed for conditions beyond all normal experience, that there was an eye-teasing wrongness about it. One searched in vain for a front or a rear; there was no way of telling in what direction it pointed as it sped along its orbit.
    Tibor pressed his helmet against the metal and shouted.
    ‘I’m back,’ he called. ‘Can you hear me?’
    Tap
    ‘I’ve got a rope, and I’m going to tie it on to the parachute cables. We’re about three kilometres from an island, and as soon as we’ve made you fast we’ll head toward it. We can’t lift you out of the water with the gear