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Page 16.

The dark shapes below him in the sea at first glance resembled a pile of buoys.

Swimming down, he saw they were on the ocean floor below, and far too big to be buoys. Whatever they were, there were a half dozen or more and they were approximately the same size, 90 feet long by 20 feet wide, give or take, and roughly bullet shaped.

He came up for air, and then dove down again, about six feet. Yes, there was a jumble of huge cylindrical shapes down there. Could they be evidence of something manmade? Or were they just another cruel illusion, a hoax of nature played on his wishfully thinking mind?

He couldn’t get near them—their tips loomed up out of the shadows at least two fathoms down. They were heavily embossed with all sorts of sea life, and glowed uniformly dark blue-green in the sunlight that penetrated so far and no farther. Perhaps they were just giant rock formations.

As he dove down repeatedly, he noticed a shadow racing past him. The shadow flitted by so fast it was just a flicker. Alex stopped in the water, backpedaling with his hands and feet.

Now he spotted several sharks among the cylinder shapes. The sharks glided in wide circles, cruising, and he could see their dark eyes panning for targets.

Time to move on, thank you. If even one of them took an interest in him now, he’d be finished. To speed his way, he dropped his knife and his belt, so that he was stark naked.

His heart beat rapidly, and he could feel a cold sweat breaking out on his torso even in the water. He thrust one arm forward, lay on his side, and crawled rapidly away on the surface in a smooth scissoring swim that he hoped would earn him as little attention as possible.

The band of sand looked far away as he kept crawling toward it.

Once or twice he looked back, noticing the sharks swimming in agitated figure eights around the colony of upright cylinder rocks.

Looking forward, he saw that the land was still agonizingly far away.

He kicked and stroked until he was exhausted, but in time he felt warm sand in shallow water gently melting under the touch of his hand, and he staggered ashore with a cry of relief.

He was safe from the sharks, but was unarmed and defenseless on land as well, and he quickly scanned about for signs of the rippers.

He staggered naked and choking on a sandbar 100 feet offshore.

Winded and blinded from his encounter with the huge sharks, and from his hard swim, he threw himself on the hot sand. There he lay on his stomach, coughing and spluttering water while slamming his palms down on the sand as he regained his

Slowly recovering, he rolled over onto his back. He half sat up on his elbows, scanning the horizon on all sides. The sea looked mystically still, hiding its secrets. At the moment, he appeared to be safe. He was on a bar of sand in the middle of the mile-wide bay. On either side of him flowed a noisy, turbulent arm of blue-green water pushed to the sea. Each of the streams was about 100 feet wide and not a place the rippers liked to venture into.

He looked at the sun, which stood high in the sky. Must be around midday, and the time would be growing short for him to make any long explorations toward the southwest, much as he was curious to learn what had slammed down to earth the other day.

He coughed again, spurting water convulsively from nose and mouth. Effortfully, he raised himself, hands and knees on the sand, then up on his feet. He’d lost his fine knife in the water, and he cursed roundly. He’d spent hours chipping away, sharpening and polishing until the tool had been almost like a thing of steel. And yet—he had all the time in the world, literally—he could start on a newer and better one, maybe a little longer and better balanced. He chortled to himself, almost cynically, as he started to turn around to dive in and swim back to his stronghold.

Then he froze in place.

His eyes grew wide as he looked down at the sand, and chills ran up and down his spine.

There was a footprint in the sand, not his own.