IT GUARDS THE INSHORE SEA But there had been more. Elsewhere in town, two men wearing cloth masks sat at a table on which lay a sawn-off shotgun and cartridges for it. "Are you sure the consignment's had it? If so, this'll be lot gone west." said one of them. "Yes, I smelled the stuff burning when their caretaker cleared everything out. What's the good of us keeping proper secrecy if silly tramps follow us calling attention to the place?" said the other. "Some time we may settle a few accounts.". "Some time.". [251] "Causers of `bad luck' need sorting out." said one of them, "One lot got ashore and was on its way to Birmingham when the car it was in was in a multiple pile up caused by some silly businessman working through the night to catch up. Car written off, and that man Wernicke's Transformers helped to clear up the wreckage [see 68-75]. The `stuff' spilt out of its bag, and one of those robots knows no better than to go up to a cop with the stuff smeared down its leg! Cop's dog noticed what it was, and that was the end of that. The men delivering it were nicked. Another bagful got as far as Droitwich, when the man we'd trusted to deliver it himself, instead passed the job onto some aggressive punk schoolboy bully, who didn't do the job himself either but passed the job on again. Consignment found. Contacts all nicked. [see 135-139 & 144-146] Another lot we sent in on a speedboat to a cove near Crabhaven. It vanished, with men and boat. I reckon that Captain Hurlock's `Sea Patrol' got them. The men in our boat wouldn't have deserted with the consignment, we'd `made sure' they wouldn't want to. Captain Hurlock had been a navy captain, he wouldn't let any outsider sail or scuba dive anywhere near if he could stop it legally or illegally. [This guess was true. Captain Hurlock and Polwerran intercepted the gang's boat, and their claim to be in an official uniformed Sea Patrol was believed. Search revealed no diving or fishing gear to seize, but, when Polwerran found things including bags of white powder on board, the `sea-patrolmen', ignoring the crew's pleas about the gang boss's threats, summarily scuttled craft and crew and cargo, not wanting their village to be ordered about by a drug gang or fought over by gangs and police. Afterwards they told Aphanistor (the village's destructor recycler equipped dredgersub) to clean up below.] Captain Hurlock and his men were caught, for actions against scuba divers and others, and illegal weapons, but that didn't bring our consignment back. Before that, we'd tried to send in a batch by three scuba divers swimming carrying it into a cove, but them and the batch vanished also, and work and risk and money likely ended with them being located and shot for poachers from the surface with a high-powered ultrasonic gun by some dirty inshore fisherman who didn't even see them except as sonar screen blips and didn't care which they were of what they call `the three S's that plague us' (that is, seals and scuba divers and sharks). And the usual lot that get nosed out by Customs men's dogs at ports and airports, and suchlike. Now Captain Hurlock's out of the way. But now there's this new news of a plague of caterpillars among the stuff where it grows. What next?" "I know what next!" said the other man. [252] Meanwhile at Wernicke's, James Wernicke and Prowl were making some computer parts for a customer. As with most people, routine took most of their time, but takes much less to describe than the occasional exciting or interesting interruptions. "I wonder what the M.O.D. want this lot for? I always said that Nimrod [an airborne radar system] should have had a neurocomputer. I wonder if they've revived that?" Prowl was saying, as the telephone started to ring. "Mr.James Wernicke?" said Mr.Malton's voice over the phone when Mr.Wernicke answered it. "Yes." said Mr.Wernicke. "Mr.Malton here. Can Wheeljack or Huffer take two of my men to Red Wharf in Anglesey on Monday?" said Mr.Malton. "What's the matter?" asked Mr.Wernicke. "Inshore fishing port's dredgersub needs servicing. One of Optimus's people'd be useful to handle the heavy bits. More versatile than a mobile crane.". "Huffer'll be free then.". "Outside my works at 8 a.m. Monday. Thankyou.". "Can you go to Anglesey on Monday? A job for Mr.Malton." said Mr.Wernicke in his garage to Huffer, "Only I thought I better check. I don't book use of people's time or property without checking with the owner first.". "Yes, it all helps to pay the fuel bills." said Huffer. Via Smith & Malton's no.2 gate many had left without what they had come for, and often without some of what they had come with, who had entered other than via a gate. Nor was there any point trying to get back in for it past the well-trained riotsquad-equipped workmen on gate guard duty. Door to door pesterers and unwanted reps soon learned, sometimes the hard way, that at Smith & Malton's the first "no" means "no". A crowd of football rowdies with assorted aggressive-sounding gang names and personal nicknames, confident that nothing could stand before their knives in their search for drink and loot and rival fans, had thought that their claim to have been invited to a works party had been believed, and that they had brushed aside all opposition to roaming about in the factory wherever they wished, until in a storage yard near Assembly Building no.3 they learned the hard way as a callout squad of Smith & Malton's workmen enclosed them with a whirl of pickaxe handles inside a wall of shields, nicknamed the `pulping mill', which did its work as thoroughly and as unaffected by cutting edges and stabbing points as one of their firm's security destructors grinding up seized gang weapons and spying equipment, or as the dredgersubs which their firm make are by knives and spearguns and explosive spearheads. (The people living near the football ground shed no tears.) But the guards knew Huffer and let him in on sight, after brief surprise at seeing him, a large orange two-axled artic cab going driverless. As Huffer drove in, a Smith & Malton's van drove out. In the van, John Milne, naturalist, strained at his gag and handcuffs and regretted his lost observing gear. "Out you get! The free ride's over!" said a guard as they freed him and let him go. "Ack! Those 'cuffs have cut my wrists!" he thought, "This land should be common-land. `Should be' isn't `is'. That Mr.Malton's `greater villain loose / who steals the common from the goose'.". Inside the van, the squad leader wrote in his notebook "We arrested a Mr.John Milne on our back-land ... He claimed he didn't know the land was private, although he must have climbed our wire ... We seized his observing equipment and notebooks ... The film from his camera was developed and proved to include several shots of our non-ferrous store. Ditto the tape from his videocamera ...", and reflected on the amount and variety of rare birds and plants found by trespassers near where his factory stored valuable items. Inside the gate guardhouse, a guard's bodyweight on a long steel lever powered a small crusher as, inside it, opposing meshing sharp pyramidal steel teeth bit on John Milne's Hasselblad camera. Nothing happened, so the guard threw himself up and down twice on the lever; the teeth bit through. Torn metal and bits of glass and plastic fell into the crusher's bin as the guard stood up and released the lever, muttering "That was a tough one.". Binoculars and cassette recorder followed the camera, and were broken up easier. Two bites of the crusher were needed to break up the videocamera; soundproofing hid the loud crunching noises. The notebook went into a confidential wastepaper bin, which, together with the crusher's bin, was later emptied into a destructor. "What did you do that for?" said Huffer, who saw it through the window, not quite approving of it. "Ahh?!" said the guard in surprise, then looked out and saw Huffer's steel bulk with his unattractively functional high-capacity diesel exhaust system going unconcealed up the back of his cab and not hidden under his chassis. "Oh, it's you, Huffer." he said, "Look, if I let nature studiers in, ten'll be all right, and the eleventh'll be reconnoitring to steal or spy. I daren't risk it. Like those two we caught climbing in over our wire for something about dredgersubs that they wouldn't explain. There's all they needed to know about the dredging equipment we make, in our brochures.". "Oh yes." said Huffer, "The Simmonses. That was when Captain Hurlock was here about his dredgersub. They'd been snooping round Captain Hurlock's harbour before. Then, later, they went there to snoop in scuba gear and vanished. Our Bumblebee was upset, he'd given them the lift there.". [see 175-181] "Oh, those diver disappearances." said the guard, "They'll find what it is some time. If you ask me, it's just untrainedness and monkeydom. Underwater's a risky place.". Huffer got to Smith & Malton's Building 4 to collect the men who were to go in him. A foreman said to him: "Mr.Malton says, he's got something that you lot may like.". This proved to be three aeroplane jet engines each about four feet long, bought for a special order for a customer who had then cancelled. They were too big for toy planes, too small for man-carrying planes, and Smith & Malton's had been stuck with them. Optimus was wanting something like that, and Huffer said so. [254] Huffer picked up the two dredgersub repairmen (named Jack and Alf) chosen to go with him, and drove outside. "Anyone at Wernicke's who can carry two hundredweight of goods?" Huffer radioed. "Hoist here." came a reply. "Collect three small aero jet engines from Smith & Malton's no.2 gate for Optimus." Huffer radioed. "Will do." Hoist radioed in reply. "I'm off to Red Wharf now." Hoist radioed, then said to the men there: "I'm off now. Hoist (he's a green towtruck with orange back gear) 'll come to No.2 gate for the jet engines today.". There was not much holiday traffic, so Huffer saved distance by turning off the M6 onto the A5 and following it across Shropshire, across the eastern Welsh moors, down the huge trench valley of Nant Ffrancon whose flat bottom had once been a deep lake now full of silt and peat, along the new Bangor and Llanfair-PG bypass which uses a new upper deck that the Britannia Bridge now has, until he turned off and came to the inlet of Red Wharf on the east coast of Anglesey. Several inshore fishermen came to meet him. [255] The two Smith & Malton's men got out of him. They wore works issue overalls with Smith & Malton's badges; but they realized that was not enough proof of identity by itself, as firm's overalls stray sometimes. "Good morning, we're two of Smith & Malton's men. Your harbourmaster wanted us to service your dredgersub. Here's my I.D." said one of them, showing a laminated identity card. "Yes, it's this way." said a fisherman, "What's going to lift the heavy bits? I thought you'd do the job now, not keep us waiting while you went for stuff. Where's the crane?". "Our lorry will, it's Huffer." said Jack. "How? It's just a lorry." said the fisherman. "It can transform. You'll see." said Jack, "There's eleven of them now. A computer maker near us made a real Optimus Prime, and it went on from there.". "Oh help, a funny one. I better humour him. He thinks his lorry's a real Transformer like in those children's stories." the fisherman thought in dismay, and said: "What, like the toys? My son's got some, and we've got videocartoons of them.". With clicks and hisses, the load-handlers going up the back corners of Huffer's cab folded and turned to lean on the ground, untelescoped, and became arms. "What!?" said the fisherman, and gaped vacantly as Huffer heaved himself up onto his rear end, which split into legs. Huffer's cab collapsed, revealing his head, over twenty feet above the road. "Ye gods!" the fisherman gasped, "It a real Transformer! I thought that newspaper article was a hoax! He was right!". "I told you so!" said Jack. Huffer transformed back to lorry form and drove to the edge of the quay where Conway and Red Wharf's type G3 grab-dredgersub, named Big Jim, was docked, 40-foot-long rounded-ended cylindrical hull floating awash, dangerous-looking grab-arm folded on his roof. Jack and Alf jumped onto the sub and started to unscrew an access hatch in its hind roof. A voice came from the steel hull: "What are you two doing, crawling about on me?". Alf twitched in surprise, for he had forgotten that those dredgersubs had intelligent computer-brains from Wernicke's in them. "Only servicing you. You're about due for it." he said. Huffer reached out and lifted the access hatch. Jack crawled inside. The electrosynthesized voice spoke again: "'Ere? What you two doing? Who you? What are you nosying after?". "Look, big boy." said a fisherman into a walkietalkie, "It's all right, they're two of Smith & Malton's men, that's the firm that made you.". "You two! Show your I.D. to one of my eyes. There's one just to port of the one of you that's going in my aft hatch." said Big Jim. "I hope it trusts us. Its mind's got like some suspicious inshore fisherman's, and that sort of mentality in a body that size and strength ..." thought Alf, who was back on the quay. Inside, a six-foot-diameter tube led into the side of a thick-walled cylindrical flat-ended drum. A drive shaft and smaller tubes also led in or out of it. On it were maker's plates: "Smith & Malton" and "rotary grinder Mk.4D". Jack operated its safety stop and a release lever, removed an access hatch, and crawled half in. In the `made safe for servicing' state, its counter-rotating breaker drums were easily rotated and examined by Jack, who muttered: "What on earth have you been picking up? Your grinder blades are well worn down.". He examined and cleaned everything and pushed some of the parts aside to make a clear passage, and crawled inside. Big Jim opened his 5-foot-wide clamshell grab. Alf crawled inside, saying: "Oo-er. If cleaner fish can trust sharks etc to let them safely in and out of their mouths to pick the parasites and bits out, I suppose I can trust you when I'm in here. Well scratched and dented in here as well. And a few barnacles have managed to settle inside. Odd place to choose to live.". He scraped them off and crawled further inside, examining the pusher and cutter bars inside the grab. As his feet vanished inside, Big Jim closed his grab and extended his grab- arm. A wriggling bulge in the intake cover marked how far Alf was getting as he examined Big Jim's intake as it ran down the underside of his grab-arm and into the front of his steel hull. "Hurry up cleaning inside there or I may be tempted. Lucky you've got manual override on my grab-intake mechanism." said Big Jim. "Even a clump of mussels among the rack-conveyor's teeth just here" said Alf, then a surprised "hello?" as if he had noticed something. "Oo-er." he said, "the `one-way road' - lucky there's `light at the end of the tunnel' this time!". "Yes, the `one-way road ...'." Big Jim thought silently. "All ri', all ri'." said Alf irritatedly a bit later, "I've got to service everything properly while I'm in here. This part of you's important.", and, working by his helmet-light, scraped more mussels off the steel-toothed rack-conveyor as he lay on his back on the strong flexible intake-cover. He saw another torn piece of foam rubber sheet at the edge of the conveyor, but thought little of it, since harbour dredgersubs pick up all sorts of rubbish. The bulge of Alf vanished ominously into the sub's sea-hardy deep-dredging steel hull, but a little later he reappeared out of the grinder's access hatch, having travelled Big Jim's `one-way road' and lived to tell of it. "Phew! That's another `Operation Jonah' over'" he said to Jack who was just outside, "These things give me the willies sometimes!". They put the grinder back into normal operating mode and went to check the navigation equipment. [257] Alf climbed about on Big Jim's grab-arm, examining the joints and hydraulics. One flexible tube had a small leak; Alf replaced it. Not far below him was the intake, a road safely travelled only by such as him, mechanics servicing it. He remembered the two pieces of torn foam rubber sheet he had found in there, and the flakes of anticorrosion paint found in the grinder and downstream to the digester, and wondered what Big Jim been disposing of since his previous servicing. "Nah. No point `raising waves', starting an alarm which may not prove anything. It'll do the firm no good `raking muck up'. This thing's for tracelessly disposing of muck, not for spreading it about." he thought, then said: "Crumbs, it's only when I get close up to you that I realize the swallowing capacity of your intake. I wouldn't like to meet you alone in a small boat!". "No, you wouldn't, if you try poaching." Big Jim warned, "Once the tripper nuisance element ignored the notice and left an outboard inflatable on a trailer on the quay. While they were back in their cars having their lunch, so did I. You firm makes good grinders and destructor/recyclers! Back they went to Manchester. Their planned fortnight of seagull-watching and hauling our pots and getting in the way round our harbour was over before it started. This is a working harbour, not a marina, and it's staying so. Those amateur Columbuses and Cousteaus usually bring all their own stuff, leave mess, spend no money, and block up the harbour with parked cars.". (The boat and trailer referred to had been left beside a notice saying "Inflatables are not to be launched in this harbour.". A local man walkietalkied and chose the right moment. It did not take long for Big Jim to surface and come inshore and for his hard steel grab to crush boat and trailer and load into a cylindrical bale for swallowing, and for him to submerge. One of the trippers, hearing a noise, came out of the pub just too late to see his party's boat's motor and deflated rear end and broken transom, and the crushed back end of the trailer, vanishing down Big Jim's throat. None of the locals admitted remembering seeing anything.) "Captain Hurlock at Crabhaven got arrested. It was in the papers." Big Jim continued, "Some citified character's been appointed instead of him. But they say that that dredgersub of his (CR79, `Aphanistor' it's called) gets a lot of the actual work there. It may sound silly, but I dream like humans, my brain has to `sweep and tidy' itself, like organic brains. I keep dreaming I'm on land like a human, career in the Navy, till I commit the capital offence of becoming a year too old, so I'm out like a redundant docker. Then I'm a TV repairman in Taunton, then I'm back to the sea. Odd. I suppose it's the life story of some man that helped to program and set up my mind and personality.". Meanwhile Jack was on Big Jim's stern checking the working of the four steering fins around his propeller. "That's checked your top two fins. Roll over so I can check your other two fins." he said. Inside Big Jim, Alf crawled into more awkward corners. He went into an empty but still dirty dredgings tank, hosed it down, opened another hatch, and crawled through to look at the front navigation gear. "Hello?" he said, looking at it, "`D4SD sonar'? Smith & Malton's never fitted !". He checked the electrics; everything seemed OK. He backed out. [258] Among steel-cased dredgings processing equipment that looked as if it would give away few secrets of what it had passed on or consumed down the months, he came to a strong steel box. Lead seals with `Autobot badges' such as many of the Transformers bore, covered the heads of the screws that held its lid on. On the lid was a larger Autobot badge and a Smith & Malton's logo and the words "Braincase. Only to be opened by authorized personnel". He left it alone. He was only a mechanics and ordinary electrics man and not skilled to interfere in there, the seat of an intelligent independent mind, a brain not of organic matter but of silicon, the ultimate container of `Big Jim' and all his memories and skills and emotions and loyalties. Jack briefly wondered what secrets of the deep were in that alien mind deep in that powerful mechanical body, and went on to the next part of his servicing routine. Jack finally emerged from cramped mechanical corners into the sunlight of Red Wharf. Seagulls circled and a few small cumulus clouds slowly passed over; people on the quay watched. He removed the various safety-stops and set everything back to normal working mode. Huffer put the hatch in place, and Jack screwed it in, and then thought: "Phew. That's over. I always feel safer out of and away from these things. The ultimate in lethal-looking refuse disposal equipment! Somebody's `customized' him a bit: `Hurlock special' sonars front and rear, and some funny connections in that compartment. Those sonars can be used as underwater loudhailers, and for modulated ultrasound signalling, or to make a beam powerful to stun or kill. To be expected: seals round fishermen's nets are every expletive in the dictionary, or so fishermen say. If it only seals they are used against ...". Jack and Alf got off Big Jim onto the quay. "That's it, Big Jim, you're fit for another hard year's work cleaning up all the rubbish and lost stuff that gets in the sea, and keeping the men's boats in fuel from organic matter in the seabed that you dredge up." Jack said, then to Alf: "I know which'd win if it and scuba divers met underwater and didn't agree over salvaging or shellfishing rights! Ugh! Forget it, it won't happen, Captain Blowtorch's [= Mr.Malton's] electronics consultant Mr.Wheeljack programs this sort of device to refuse any orders to act as an underwater antipersonnel craft. Good thing, from what I know of some inshore fishermen.". "Uh, that dream it said it had -" said Alf as he and Jack drove back to Smith & Malton's, "close contact with someone who had been in the Navy, then mended TVs in Taunton - doesn't sound like any of our people or Wernicke's. Curious.". "Never mind." Jack replied, "It does what the fishermen want it for. It keeps them in fuel, it brings back no end of recovered metals, it keeps the seabed clean where they net. No point `raising waves', risking our firm's reputation. It's already paid them its cost back three times over.". "Have the repairmen finished, or will they be back?" a fisherman asked Big Jim, who still floated by the quay at Red Wharf. "They've finished. Everything's OK." replied Big Jim. "Them poking about inside - anything untoward?" the fisherman asked. "No. I emptied my system and washed it through thoroughly before they came. No `inside evidence' left." said Big Jim. "Tripper anglers keep moaning about losing their hooks on seaweed." said the fisherman. "They would. More and more Californian giant kelp starting, although I keep clearing it away." said Big Jim. A wire extended from a small hole in Big Jim's hull. He carefully held it in a corner of his grab and plugged it into a socket on the face of the quay. He made the telephone dialling signals himself, and from Crabhaven across the width of many counties came a reply from Aphanistor, who Big Jim knew would probably be in port just then. Their voices went from brain directly through wires to brain, scrambled, without any audible sound that trippers or other nosy ears could hear at either end or between. "What's happening at your end, since happened?" Big Jim asked. "Bad." Aphanistor's electrosynthesized voice replied from far to the south, "Ten good men in prison for defending their prison [see 195-203] against the amateur frogman plague and tripperdom in general. Captain Hurlock got five years, the rest got six months. Five families on social security. Three boys old enough to fish, but the school won't let them go without their fathers here to tell the school attendance officer's Gestapo to %^& off. We've two good men left, plus two who are too old to be much use. Scuba divers' magazines boasting of a great victory.". "Bunch of seagull-watchers tried it on here. Football fan types. We don't want round here! I soon had their inflatable, trailer and all, when they left it unwatched." said Big Jim. "I get the same pests here." said Aphanistor, "If I had a tankful of fuel for every inflatable I've swallowed, until they learn that `No Inflatables' means what it says. My recycler turns all that rubber into fuel. Inflatables are no use to us. Hooks hole them, and we can't carry a good load of pots or fish in them.". "Only useful inflatable here's the inshore rescue boat, and gets most of its work rescuing careless trippers. We inshore fishermen know not to fool about with the sea, we live with it." said Big Jim. "Usually the same." said Aphanistor, "They drive in and ask Captain Hurlock if they can park their boat there. He says nothing, and they assume that no answer means `yes'. They go off to drink or sightsee or hang about obstructing my men's work, and when they come back, one less inflatable and trailer. One lot were the same lot that mucked about our pots at Black Rock Head that time. `If they want the police, I'm them!' said Polwerran as he and N.Mickelson pushed their inflatable and trailer down the slip to me.". "Same here!" Big Jim replied, "I break the transom and the removable thwart, turn it endways, and down my intake it goes, motor and all. Nobody saw anything, when they come back and ask. Cops find nothing, load of officious landlubbers. This is a harbour, and it's staying so.". "Sometimes I save the motor, if it's a make that we use. For example, that time Trelane got the motor so he would have two to fit side by side for fast chasing on patrol and action callouts. I surfaced beside Nick Mickelson at sea and rolled starboard side up, and he took it out of my side hatch. He doesn't use outboards, he has an inboard engine, so he passed it on." said Aphanistor. "I bet that scuba diving magistrate's on cloud nine! putting ten of your men down." said Big Jim, "But I bet he still eats fish, thinks it appears from nowhere on the shop shelf.". "He , for a while." said Aphanistor significantly, "He stuck to diving inland and away only. But after that trial he celebrated his victory by diving at Dobbits Cleft near here, in the sea, thought it was safe now - `He is here', as the stork said in one of Rudyard Kipling's stories. Ten men put in prison like common thieves, for defending their livelihoods. I don't go dredging up their houses, they shouldn't mess our fishing about.". "And that new townified harbourmaster they sent you?" Big Jim asked. "He leaves most of the work to John Tregear and me!" Aphanistor replied, "He keeps coming to me to ask things. If you ask me, I bet he's sharing his time with private business or another job. He's got a new house on mortgage, it seems, and mortgages cost. [260] Another time, I was in port when a flashy cabin cruiser arrived and tied up. `Excuse? Hello? Harbourmaster?' a man in a posh suit on its stern deck said through a loudhailer. `Hold it there!' I said. `What? Who? Where are you?' he said, looking everywhere except at me. `What?' he said when he eventually saw me, `Oh, one of those subs, he must be in that.'. `I'll go fetch someone.' I said, and aimed my rear sonar in message mode at an underwater fixed sonar connected to Tregear's house and the telephone system. The doctor had told him not to sail because of an ear infection, so he was at home mending pots and nets. I told him to come, but he had his boat motor indoors in pieces servicing it. Nor did his silly dog have anything useful to suggest, except `wuff' in the background. Everybody else was at sea. (Luckily we still have all our boats. During the confusion of the arrests I sank them all out of sight, than I helped to refloat them afterwards.) `Help! In this version, St.George rides the dragon!? Now what's it going to do?' said the cabin cruiser man, as I approached with Tregear in his sea patrol gear riding on my grab. `What on earth's that!?' said another man in the cabin cruiser. `We want to berth here each night for the next ten nights.' said the first man, overcoming his fright somewhat. I suspect he still thought my voice was from a man driving me. A lot of people do. `£15 per night mooring fee. Vacate the berth if a fishing boat wants it. Lights out when our house lights go out at night.' I said, for my men need their sleep for their work next morning. My left grab-eye saw something through the cabin cruiser's window. `I see you've got scuba diving gear on board.' I said, `You must put it all away in its cupboards and lock them. I will put my man on board [261] and he will put my harbour authority's seal-stamp over the door-openings. If any of those seals are found to be damaged, I will impound the boat and its contents. I will do any necessary underwater work for you.'. The cabin cruiser men argued but had to obey. `But we came here for the diving. The water's so clear here.' one of them bleated. The usual reason. `Aye, too clear, too popular, so are our shellfish. Where I come from, diving's work, diving gear's work kit, not for skylarking about underwater poaching and getting in the way.' I said and put my grab on his deck. Tregear climbed off it and sealed their diving gear up in its lockers. Our harbour seal has `Crabhaven Harbour Authority' in a circle with a lobster inside. They hung about on shore until dark, then went on board to bed. Next morning the cabin cruiser left. As they left, a big parabolic microphone on our harbour office roof followed them, and I overheard what they were saying on their stern deck:- `Well, that's over after only one night and no dives. Usual stale accusation. I thought that ten getting arrested here had stopped the funny business and the rough stuff. I bet that thing's got a lot of fancy long-range sonar gear onboard. Those things bring up so much recovered metals that salvage scubadiving doesn't pay like it used to. livelihoods vanished down machines' intakes. Lets try somewhere else, and hope for a more friendly welcome than that rough-looking riot-equipped fisherman type riding on that great steel grab.' said one of them. `Oohhh. Lets leave this place.' said another of them, `Him riding on that five-foot-wide bin-sized toothed hollow clamshell grab operated by powerful-looking hydraulics and with a wide-capacity intake going back from it along the underside of the grab-arm into I don't like the idea of what machinery in that hull. That thing could swallow a dozen divers two at a time and nobody'd find a trace of it next day, the way they dissolve and process and sort everything. I get some thug-minded fisherman's driving it.'. `If anybody is.' said the first man. They went down inside and sailed out of sight. They went to that BSAC place at Porthkerris, as I thought they would.".