The Atlantic Abomination by John Brunner Page B

were crew in company uniform. Others were passengers in miscellaneous casual clothing. Now and then one or two would walk forward together to face something dark, canopied under an awning, in the middle of the horseshoe’s open end.
    Suddenly, one of those called forward turned and tried to run. The lines broke. Men and women surged forward, seized him, dragged him to the rail and flung him bodily down to the leaden sea.
    A shout so loud that it overcame the droning of the ’copter engine rang out, and they exclaimed together. Now they were circling in close enough to see faces through their binoculars; haggard, drawn faces, eyes ringed with dark circles indicative of sleeplessness. A group of stewards in soiled white jackets was beating on trays as though they were gongs.
    “Have they all gone raving mad?” the pilot demanded.
    “No …” said Peter, his stomach churning in revulsion. “Can’t you see what that is under the awning? It’s another of those creatures like the one we dragged up from Atlantica—only this one’s alive. …”
    And at the moment he uttered the words, a blast of raw pain hit him, not in his body, but in his mind. In an instant he and the pilot both were slumped unconscious.
    Uncaring, unknowing, George flew the ’copter on.

XII
    “Y OU’RE GOING to be all right,” a comforting male voice was saying. Peter blinked his eyes open and found himself looking at a square-jawed face under a peaked naval cap.
    “What—” he said, struggling to sit up. The man in the naval cap helped him, putting an arm behind his shoulders to support him. Peter shook his head dizzily, and looked about him.
    He was sitting on the deck of the aircraft carrier. The ’copter was being shunted away on a trolley towards the elevators, and a group of men and women were clustered, talking excitedly, around the pilot. The pilot must have recovered more quickly. He was standing, although he looked pale.
    “Something blanked you out,” the man was saying to Peter. “But you’re perfectly all right physically. Just a bit of shock is your trouble.”
    “Blanked me out? Oh yes, I remember. When we were flying over the
Alexandra
. We found her!” Peter seized the other’s arm. “We found her! And that’s not all!”
    “Easy now,” the man said soothingly. “We know already. Your pilot told us before you woke up. We’re developing the pictures now. Your autopilot brought the ’copter back and we landed you under remote control. Now what you need, I’d say, is a drink and a chance to relax for a bit. Suppose you come down to the messroom. Can you walk all right, you think?”
    Peter tested his limbs gingerly. He had the illusion that he ought to be unable to move. His memory was full of a pain so excruciating it seemed he must have broken every bone in his body. But the pain was only in memory, he could move freely, and after a moment, normally.
    “We don’t know what happened to you,” his companion said, watching him. “Whatever it was, it’s a cinch to be the same as what kept the other search parties from reporting the liner. What puzzles me is why the hell we haven’t lost anybody. If your ’copter hadn’t been on auto, you’d most likely have gone down in the sea.”
    Peter frowned. “Maybe we weren’t meant to see as much as we did,” he suggested. “I don’t know what was going on. It looked like some crazy sort of ceremony, though. Maybe thecreature was distracted, didn’t notice us till we’d come in quite close. Then he hit us with all he’d got because he was surprised.” He shrugged. “I’m just guessing. Did anybody tell my wife I was all right?”
    “I’ll check.” The other turned away to make inquiries of one of the group surrounding the pilot. Peter went on testing his movements experimentally, his mind dazed by the power of the blow that had been struck at it.
    The gray overcast seemed to lower at the sea. A chill wind was creaming the waves into hesitant foam, and