She extended a hand. Even in the dim light Cora could discern the tenseness in the youthful face across from her. "My name's Dawn. I'm the town librarian."

Cora resisted the urge to say something like, "That's not all you are, lynx." Besides, Cora was not going to lapse into adolescence now. She reached out with her own hand, tried to will the nerves to numbness as they shook.

"It's an honor to meet you." The girl spoke with ap- parent sincerity. "We all know -that you've been brought in by the government and the administration all the way from Terra to help us with our misfor- tunes. If anyone can solve them, I'm sure you can."

Come on, dear, Cora thought to herself. You're overdoing it. Nonetheless, staring at the unlined young face, she sensed that, given half a chance, this was a woman she could come to like. At the moment she

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was unsure whether she still hated her or merely felt sorry for her. This was an oceanographic expedition, no matter its aesthetic coloration. Not a sequence from a tired old tridee fiction chip. "Let's get going," she said briskly. "It's late. Very late." That was true enough. The sun would rise in another few hours.

Clouds blotted out the stars. A few drops, harbin- gers of nocturnal precipitation to come, dampened their now masked faces. Mataroreva produced a set of diving lights, tiny high-intensity beam throwers that could be held easily in one hand.

"What about predators?" Merced was speaking through his headphone system now. "I'd expect there

would be many, unless Cachalot's carnivores are all day feeders."

"They're not," Dawn informed him, "but the large pelagics never swim in the reef shallows. Those that do are too small to trouble more than one swimmer, and there are five of us."

How obvious, Cora mused. Was Merced trying to make the girl feel comfortable with them by pro- viding her with a chance to display some knowledge?

It had to be that. She had seen and heard enough of the little scientist to suspect him of several things, but naivete wasn't one of them.

Naturally there wouldn't be a swarm of dangerous predators about, or the cephalopods would not have chosen this place and time for mating.

One by one, they turned on their hand beams, the projectors clipped protectively to individual wrist latches, and slipped quietly into the water.

The beam throwers were necessary to illumine their surroundings. It was not necessary to search out a companion with the lights because the gelsuits, in ad- dition to being thermosensitive, were also thermolumi- escent. While the gel controlled body heat, that same heat was enough to excite the atoms of the suit ma-

154 CACHALOT.

terial to fluorescence. So each swimming figure glowed a soft yellow.

As they moved farther into the reef they encoun- tered a myriad of phosph.o.r.escent hexalates and other creatures, but nothing particularly unique. Cora had observed similar phenomena on other worlds.

Then the reef seemed to drop abruptly away on all sides and they were swimming in a vast open hollow, a natural underwater amphitheater. Within that watery bowl was one of the most magnificent sights anyone could imagine. For a time Cora forgot her worries about their a.s.signment, forgot any memories of the painful confrontation with Sam and Dawn back in the town library. Forgot everything. Before her was glory that eclipsed all anxiety.

If anything, Sam had underestimated the number of cephalopods they could expect to encounter. Tens of thousands wiggled and fluttered before them, around them. Some danced in threes and fours. Others were naturally partnered, while thousands more sought partners amid the iridescent orgy of liquid copulation.

Myriad searchlights flared and pulsed around her.

Soon something neither Sam nor Dawn had mentioned commenced about them.

The gelsuits shone yellow. Not red or blue. That mattered not. Driven by curiosity, pa.s.sion, or forces unimaginable to mankind, the cephalopods began to scurry around each bipedal figure. Cora discovered herself enveloped in a multiple waltz of other-worldly beauty and grace. She let herself drift, suspended in luminescence, as blue and red spheres jigged and courted about her hands and head and legs.

Peering through the tentacled brilliance, she saw the yellow figure of Rachael surrounded by an attentive court of dazzling luminaries, a flavescent nucleus or- bited by blue and crimson electrons.

She raised one of her hands. Immediately two of

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the blue cephalopods began a stately pirouette about her fingertips, twisting and somersaulting with gravity- defying grace. Another b.u.mped against her faceplate, making her jerk instinctively. But it was a soft, powder-puff collision. She stared into septuple alien eyes, cat-slitted and rich purple, trying to bridge a chasm of intelligence and evolution. Blankly, the dis- appointed creature drifted away with a hypnotic wave of its tentacles.

Treading water easily, she remained above the bot- tom, below the surface. There was no sky above, no ground below. She was adrift in a sea of stars. She had to force herself to think of the proximity of sharp hexalate blades which could rip gelsuit or airflow headpiece. In such light, devoid of reference points, one could easily become disoriented and swim into the reef wall.

Despite such dangers, she found herself wishing she could slip free of the suit skin to swim naked and clean in the dark water, convoyed by gently bobbing blue and red lights.

She held up both hands now, watched as a dozen males teased and courted her fingers. She moved her hands up and down and the ellipsoidal forms matched her movements exactly, never pausing in their gener- ative ballet. I'm a conductor, a conductor of life, she thought in wonder. She crossed her arms, and the hopeless suitors again changed their dance to mimic her motion. Bodies tumbled and spun, stubby fins pro- ducing astonishing agility in the water. Two opposing tentacles were always held stiffly out to the creature's sides, acting as stabilizers.

Wondering how they would react, she brought her two hands together, forming a single, larger yellow ma.s.s. Would they fight, or freeze in confusion at the unexpected merger?

The did neither. Instead, the obsessed dozen van-

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ished with appalling speed. She blinked, wondering if her vision was at fault. Not only were her suitors gone, they all were gone, as if they had never been there.

Thirty thousand azure and vermilion globes had dis- appeared as if cut off by the turning of a single bio- logical switch.

XI

F.

' or several long, horrifying moments she was ut- terly alone, suspended in black limbo save for the penetrating beam of her hand light.

Then she made out other swimming, yellow forms and their individual hand beams.

"What was that?" she inquired of everyone in gen- eral and no one in particular via her mask broadcast unit. "What happened?"

"Where did they go?" Rachael asked, sounding con- cerned.

"Did we frighten them?" Merced appeared on her right. The five figures came together.

"Dawn, I thought you said that there are no large predators in here." Predators did seem a likely ex- planation for the cephalopods' reaction. They would douse their lights and scatter for shelter.

"I don't think there are, Cora." The girl sounded curious, not defensive, which was why Cora was in- clined to believe her.

They were interrupted by a flash of dull light from overhead. Cora wasn't the only one who experienced an instant of panic before the explanation reached them in the form of a low rumble of thunder, muted by the water.

"Lightning," she muttered. "Could that scare them?"

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158.

CACHALOT.

"It's possible," Dawn agreed. "I'm not enough of a specialist to be able to say."

"Possible perhaps." Cora recognized Merced's thoughtful tone. "But why should other light startle them that way, when they generate such an immense display themselves? Maybe that particular wave- length? ..."