Beast by Peter Benchley Page B

the ball rolling.
    There had been no stopping it.
    Did Lucas think he could find the Admiral Durham again?
    Probably, with the new electronics on the boat.
    Would he be willing to try?
    What for?
    Because (Susie said) they were bored with the diving around Bermuda; they’d seen nearly everything, and they wanted to get some real diving in before the summer was gone and they were both trapped indoors in jobs or grad school or whatever. Also, they couldn’t go to some other island to dive right now, because they were waiting for their parents to come down from New York.
    Well … he didn’t know, he was pretty busy.
    They’d make it worth his while.
    He had to be honest with them, he said, he had a charter party on hold for tomorrow. (Charter party! Where had he come up with that? He’d never taken a charter party out in his life; he had no idea what you did with one or how much you charged them.) He wished he could help them, they seemed like nice kids and all, but he couldn’t sacrifice that charter fee.
    And how much was that?
    Well … full day … fifteen hundred (a fat figure, plucked out of the air).
    No problem. In fact, if he could guarantee to put them on the shipwreck, they’d pay two thousand. But if he didn’t find it (Scott was playing Mr. Big-Time Hard-Nose), they’d ride for free.
    Fair enough, but Lucas had to ask, were they sure they were up to a two-hundred-foot dive? Ever done it before? Did they know about the bends, which could cripple or kill them; about nitrogen narcosis, the notorious “rapture” that could cause them to lose their bearings … about all the other stuff that happened at depth?
    Oh sure, they were supercareful, they knew all the chemistry and physics. And if they hadn’t actually gone to two hundred feet before, they’d both been down well over a hundred (Scott was positive, Susie pretty sure), and there wasn’t really that much difference, was there, only nine or ten stories of an office building.
    And three more atmospheres of pressure, Lucas thought—three steps up on the squeeze ladder, three times the chance of a mishap that could end in a funeral. But he didn’t say anything because by now he was convinced Susie had eyes for him, and besides, Scott was running on about their expertise.
    Scott listed all the places they’d dived and in what kinds of weather. They brandished their C-cards and logbooks listing every time they’d gotten their feet wet.
    Okay, then, he’d take them, but he’d have to send them down the anchor line alone, he couldn’t go with them ‘cause he didn’t have a mate and he couldn’t leave the boat unmanned—safety was his first concern, he had a reputation around the island. ‘Cause if the boat should happen to break away, they didn’t want to have to swim to shore after a two-hundred-foot dive … unless they cared to spring for another couple of hundred to hire a mate for the day.
    Susie said, Gosh, they didn’t need a nursemaid, they’d swim right down the old anchor line, take a lot of pictures and be back before he knew it.
    Scott said, So let’s raise a glass to the dive of a lifetime.
    And they had done just that, several glasses, in fact, until the time came when Lucas decided to make his move on Susie and suggested they slip away for a quiet dinner somewhere.
    She had laughed at him—not a nasty laugh but a kind of sweet motherly laugh that he couldn’t get mad at— and ruffled his hair and said, See you tomorrow.
    Lucas gave Southwest Breaker a wide berth. There was no breeze to speak of, just a light sou’westerly, but the sea still boiled around the treacherous fang of rock sticking up from the bottom, yearning to puncture pass-ersby.
    Fresh air cleared Lucas’s head, a handful of peppermints killed the taste of rot in his mouth and a breakfast beer restored him to where he could look on the bright side of things.
    Two thousand dollars was more than he could make in a month netting flying fish or helping a chummy haul