DIVE-IN [346] As new technology comes, the balance swings, and later swings back. As some scuba divers were launching an inflatable off its trailer at Crabhaven, one said: "The big day. At least five clubs coming. To celebrate us winning that court case, and that lot here being seen off when that lot of divers that they tried to order off turned out to be all cops.". "I heard of it!" said another, "The looks on those bossy lobstermen's faces when they found they'd tried to order Bristol police station diving club off!". "Hurlock's nine men are out of prison and back here as fishermen again; but Hurlock's in for a long stretch." said another. "I still think his anti-diver patrol won't be on action again. Quit chattering. Clear the slip for the next lot.". In John Tregear's house near Crabhaven, K.Walton, inshore fisherman, in dark blue sailor's waterproofs, with `7' on his dark blue crash helmet and on his armbands, and pickaxe handle hanging from belt, was with Pendane, who wore his village's standard issue all- black frogman's kit with long-duration rebreather, round airpilot-like breathing mask showing only his eyes, and a small outline image of Aphanistor the dredgersub on his shoulder-badges. The number `10' was on the sides of his helmet. "Ha ha! Plymouth at home to Manchester United! Long live the football hooligans! to give the %$#@&* landlubber cops something else to do than not defending our fishing and not letting us defend it! We will restore Captain Hurlock's spirit and control of our fishing areas! Right! All planned! To the boats and off! Them trying to swamp us to say they've won." said Walton triumphantly. Pendane replied, sounding a bit muffled through his breathing mask: "I'm ready also! I was a marines commando frogman, trained to defend the sea, and I helped to train the other men here! Too long we've fought nothing but shellfish and conger eels. Today this changes! We use our underwater ability to its full. Affy [= Aphanistor] told us to be as hard as his grab and as thorough as his grinder and as traceless as his recycler. The sea doesn't go informer like the land with its footprints and scent for dogs to follow. We set off now!". "Aye, too true." said Walton, "The dry land `grasses' in both senses of the word.". Six divers who had set off set off in their inflatable from Crabhaven, reached the wreck site. One said, "Well, here's the Eurynome - good old satellite navigator, no point asking those fishermen if we can get lost gear up for them, they've got their own men who can dive - rough-looking lot they are, I'd as soon meet a great white shark underwater as them, I overheard them say once that their dive- leaders are called Pendane and Affy. I know Pendane but not Affy.". "I knew a man called MacAfee, but not here." said another. They stopped and anchored their boat, and dived. As their dive leader swam down, he thought: "Pendane and Affy - MacAfee - some one of those hard frogman-trained thugs who try to `teach us a lesson'. Yes, they have, such as about helmets and identity numbers stuck on and bits of hard plastic over particular places and fullface masks so I can give orders underwater.". He wore a two cylinder single hose aqualung with a full-window fullface mask that showed his whole face; the letter `K' was stuck to each side of his helmet. "There it is. Stay together and don't go inside it. Wrecks can be risky." he said. The Smith and Malton's type G3 destructor/recycler-equipped grab-dredgersub's sentient computer-brain examined its sonar scans. It quickly identified the usual clutter of irrelevant echoes: in its front sonar scan was the sunken wreck of the Eurynome; a diffuse echo from a shoal of fish; ghost reflections created by a thermocline (= where warm water lies on cold water); a seal; an impossibly fast and big pattern of moving objects `created' by someone else sonar scanning at nearly the same pulse rate. But also, in the surface wave clutter was a wooden boat at speed approaching an idling inflatable under which were several echoes which it recognized as submerged divers and their bubbles. Other divers were diving towards the wreck. A largish hard submerged echo was also going towards the wreck. There was a loud sonar zap from somewhere, and the seal stopped moving. In its rear sonar scan, several echoes with the size and speed of porpoises dived on a shoal of fish above some upstanding sunken rocks. At the surface, a wooden boat had just arrived at speed and stopped by an idling inflatable. Below the boats, some divers swam fast down towards some other divers. Something seemed slightly odd - then it realized that the upper group of divers had no bubbles. It readied both of its sonars and aimed. A risky use, but one which it had heard of working before. [347] "Never mind that lot trying to keep the sea to themselves. The sea's everybody's, and we keep on diving." Peter their dive leader thought as they settled on the seabed by the Eurynome's stern, then he ordered: "All stay together and we swim round the outside of the ...", but broke off. All the diving party's heads suddenly felt strange and dizzy, with a high-pitched noise in their ears. He wondered in alarm why his ears had chosen just then to go wrong; then it got worse. "Go inside the wreck ." said a voice, sounding remote but yet from inside his own head. "Lyssa [= Greek goddess of madness] preserve me, I better not admit to !, or I'm for the ..." he thought, but the voice continued: "Right inside. Stay inside, until I come. Enemies are about.". Seeing all his diving companions swimming at full speed towards the old torpedo hole in the ship's hold despite his previous order, he had other thoughts: "If you heard that voice also, it's real! Better obey it. What's going on?" he shouted. They got into the Eurynome's huge hollow hold. Peter counted - up to five. At the torpedo hole there was a brief movement and some indeterminate noises, then nothing. "1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 5 - Kenneth? Kenneth!" said Peter, "I thought that lot at Crabhaven had started leaving us alone. Back to as before, ordering us about through underwater loudspeakers. Now what? Lucky these modern high pressure cylinders last up to 3 to 4 hours at this depth, and they're still nearly full.". "So many diver disappearances." he thought, "Is this place haunted, and their spirits tried to warn - akh, me saying that in the 20th century! Those bursts of `sonic noise' - something still seems to be telling me to go out to rescue him, despite all usual rules.". He remembered that one of the noises outside had been a deep hollow metal-bin-like "clommp". A mile away, other submerged divers also heard the high-pitched noise and a voice in their heads, and had similar fears. One wondered if some fish that he had eaten had contained hallucinogenic poison. "Surface and in your boat ! and full speed southeastwards! Other divers need help !" the voice ordered. They obeyed. [348] On the surface, two Crabhaven wooden inshore fishing boats were at speed together. The crew of one of the boats wore dark blue sailor's waterproofs and riotsquad gear. "Those trippers are getting too confident again, just because a bunch of off-duty cops tried it on and we had to leave them. That mocking cartoon series about us in their club magazine was the last straw. Big football match at Plymouth's pulled all the cops away. Now the `diverbusters' set off again!" Trelane, its skipper, thought, looking about through binoculars, then he said to his men: "Those two inflatablefuls of them have split! ^&# making us split our forces. As well, I suppose, we can't use frogmen ultrasound guns in the same place, too easy to get mixed up who's who in all those sonar screen blips.". "How many of our own divers 've we got, boss?" asked a crewman. "None!" Trelane ordered, "Divers not welcome! We don't want the weekend poaching and wreck-thieving sort; and our own men in diving gear are called `frogmen', to distinguish! Right! Frogmen take the left lot, keep back till they're all in. We take the right lot. Check your ultrasound guns, then see if we're needed at the Eurynome.". He saw scuba divers rolling in backwards from their inflatable, leaving one in the boat as surface-cover. "Noisy splashy way of going in." he thought. Crabhaven's `diving hard squad' of frogman-trained inshore fishermen in their identical issue rebreather kit and efficient-looking hard round breathing masks with small eye-windows, soon reached and attacked the inflatable. "It's those lobstermen in diving gear, twice as bad as ordinary ones, ^&*$ thugs, toughened by years of pot and net hauling, and some sort of commando frogman training on top of it." the scuba diver kneeling in it realized as surface cover as he tried to defend himself and slap the water to try to warn his mates; but the slapping was lost in the noise of waves against the inflatable's underside and his small inflatable-oars hit the attackers' helmets in vain as despite his own helmet he went down in an eddy of pickaxe handles. They quickly stripped him to his wetsuit and bound and gagged him, then silently slid into the sea down rubber chutes clipped to their boat's transom on each side of its rudder, for they had many raided and empty lobsterpots to avenge. Again it was their livelihoods against town men's pleasure. (#10 = Pendane, #11 = Mickelson, #12 = Tregear, #13 = Polzean, #14 = Malling [see 281]) "What'll that lot do to my mates below?" the prisoner thought helplessly as he lay face down, "Like at Filey those two times, and other cases also, all fists and clubs and police-style warnings and all kit taken. We can do without sort of diver.". Below, Tregear's work-hardened mind and body soon overtook two scuba divers swimming down side by side. As he reached them from above unseen and unheard, his knife in his left hand cut the left scuba diver's left soft looping breathing tube, which was the intake side, while Tregear's pickaxe handle, weighted to neutral buoyancy, in his right hand, with a forward thrust past the other scuba diver's right ear knocked his regulator-mouthpiece away and broke its neck strap; then he turned his air off, ordering: "Surface, kit into our boat, and ^&* off home !", determined to prove whose the sea round his village was. The two had to surface. Two down, lots to go, if the diving clubs' big `dive-in' was to be cleaned up. Tregear looked for other enemies, and soon found one. This time he and the sport diver met facing each other, and the two grappled. The sport diver realized what Tregear's efficient-lookingtype of gear and the dredgersub images in his shoulder badges meant, but desperation drove him to try to resist anyway. His clutching hand, wielded by the nearly inevitable undersized soft muscles of town men rich enough to afford to scubadive and accustomed to having machines to do the heavy work, skidded in vain on Tregear's hard round slippery helmet and breathing mask, while Tregear, much the stronger, in one punch broke the sport diver's nose and knocked the eyes-and-nose sport diving mask off, and pulled the mouthpiece out as the arm pulled back. His hard mask-muffled local-accented voice said: "We don't explore your offices! Now we can go below after you! In future stick to Porthkerris, 's BSAC's sty round here! - if we don't some day put all our villages' men together and flush that place out. A shellfish a day takes our living away! Or use kit a lot more fight-worthy! Surface and get out!". "Leave them and move off!" said a voice in the ultrasound-receiver by Tregear's right ear. He and the other frogmen heard this and realized that Aphanistor the village dredgersub either had mistaken their sonar echoes for tripper divers, or had other more important urgent duties for them. They swore or sighed, and obeyed, not liking to leave a job incomplete. In the other boat, Trelane ordered: "Sonar guns at the ready! Hurlock's best gift to us! In parts of USA they're legal, I hear, and they're cleaning up good and proper with them! They had diver plague sooner than us and worse.". But as they approached their target inflatable, its divers surfaced in a great hurry and the unusual panic feat of climbing in with their aqualungs and weights on, started the outboard, and roared away at full throttle. Trelane's men swore, for it meant a chase and a fight and the risk of being faced with spearguns. Trelane's boat got close enough for some of the divers to get a close look at his men. "They've got `Hurlock sonars' like in that article!" said a diver, "Lucky whatever it was tell us to get onboard! We've got only two spearguns and three spare spears, they must all count, or we're statistics! Don't try hand-to-hand fighting with them. We can't just run away, or they'll attack some other lot. They believe every lie they hear off each other!". He loaded a speargun and aimed it backwards over the transom. Something pierced the inflatable, and a small hissing leak started. Something else hit the transom with a thud. He saw a large nail sticking out, and there had been no gun bang. "Nailguns! Like in the paper! Lie flat and make every spear count! We may take one or two of them with us!" he shouted. Then realization of no hope came on him, for he saw the attack squad's transparent riotsquad shields. "At least it's lucky Jim made an armoured casing for the outboard, in case anyone tries shooting it out." he thought. Trelane's men knew what to do when poachers resisted with spearguns. He lay flat in his boat's bows. Only his crash-helmeted head and visor-protected face, and his bulky power-tool-like `Emperor Ming' nailgun [= Electro Magnetic Powered Modified Industrial Nail Gun], showed above the gunwale. Another man to his right was armed and placed likewise. They ignored the discomfort of men kneeling and treading on their legs. His other men knelt along the gunwale ready to board, transparent shields facing forwards, helmets on, visors down, pickaxe handles at the ready. Trelane ordered: "They've got at least two spearguns. We two pick off the guns if we can, the rest of you stand by to board them. Be quick. This big `dive-in' of theirs, we've got a lot to deal with, this time. The cheek of those rubber- suited robbers, thinking that we're going to cringe off always just because they won once.". Trelane's boat steadily outpaced the inflatable. His men readied themselves for the practised assault drill, the collision to knock the divers off balance, the shields-first leap which reduced them to a wet rubbery slippery diving gear burdened tangle to be clubbed and punched until all can be stripped of kit and handcuffed, the vain impact of knife and speargun spear on polycarbonate shield - unless the nailguns did the job first. Once a shellfish poacher had thought that his explosive-headed spear would fell all opposition, but a white scar on Pendane's shield told of the end result of that idea. That culprit was dumped without his gear on a beach after dark; but he had heard a rumour from abroad of four shellfish poachers who were caught on a remote beach, lined up, and shot with their own spearguns. "Things get rougher. Government'll have to do something some time and control that lot." he thought. The divers in the inflatable awaited the end, whatever it would be, as Trelane's boat approached. Trelane's boat overturned bow-over-stern as it hit at speed something large awash. There were no rocks there. Luckily everybody and everything was on lines inboard. One man inflated his lifejacket and used a ultrasound gun to find Pendane's men and signal to them, to tell them what had happened. [350] Pendane's men surfaced and got in their boat. The attacked divers surfaced. Of the two that Tregear attacked first, the one with the cut tubes quickly turned the other's air back on, which they shared as they surfaced, wondering why such an efficient underwater thug-squad had suddenly broken off instead of finishing their job. "Didn't they like my aftershave?" he thought. As Pendane came near the surface, he heard Trelane's crew's message of distress and wondered: "Orders, counter-orders, now what? We better go back to this job - or go to help the other boat?". Somewhere near, an outboard motor started and sped away. "While all this %$^ contradicting, those scoobydoos are onboard and away." he realized, and ordered: "On board and to help boat 2!". The pursued inflatable left at top speed, thankful for unexpected deliverance, understandably unwilling to turn back to rescue. Trelane and his men, thankful for inflatable lifejackets, clung to their overturned boat's keel and tried in vain to right it. One of them wondered briefly if they had hit Aphanistor, who sometimes floated awash digesting dredgings. Pendane's men arrived and jumped on Trelane's men's backs; the extra weight pulled the boat back over. Trelane's men got back in and sorted themselves out. An electro-synthesized voice sounded in Pendane's ultrasound receiver: "Aphanistor here! Why did you break off attacking that lot? What use are you as my `second grab and intake for when I am busy elsewhere', if you won't keep hold of things?". Pendane reached into Trelane's boat for a ultrasound gun, found Aphanistor's echo, and aimed, in signalling mode: "You told us to. I thought you had other urgent work for us, or that you thought from our sonar echoes that we were trippers.". He still felt a little uneasy when in the water near a sentient-minded electromechanical body of that size and power, that could have tracelessly disposed of his whole squad in a few grabfuls, and was relieved that he was at the other end of a ultrasound link this time. "No, I didn't." said Aphanistor curtly. "Then who did?" said Pendane. "We didn't." said Trelane, who was listening in. "The men here say it wasn't them." said Pendane to Aphanistor. "I bet it was that grab-dredgersub `Trelawney' from Falmouth thought you were trippers and ordered you off. He isn't often this far east. We'll need him to help clean up this lot, I reckon." said Aphanistor. "You get a false message; two lots of poachers bolt off as our men come up to them; something's wrong!" said Trelane to Pendane. "It can't be Trelawney." said Pendane to Aphanistor, "He's in dock. He found some weekend types wreck-picking off Perranporth, not allowed since the local men learned to dive. One of their explosive charges went off in his grinder, bad damage. Plymouth Navy Base's three grab dredgersubs are all off as part of a naval exercise. All I know is that someone called us off and those scoobydoos got away, unless it was the one we don't mention unless we have to, or perhaps they just got Trelawney mended quick.". [351] "Hurry up restarting the motor, you lot, we've other lots to see to!" said Trelane. "It won't start!" said Pendane, "It sucked itself full of water when we went over. Needs stripping and washing the salt out and drying out and new oil in.". "Our boat better tow yours in." said Pendane in his frogman's kit as he hung onto the side of the boat, "That's both of us two boatfuls out of action, till we get you into port and set off again. Affy [= Aphanistor] 'll just have to get round as much as he can by himself - and that other sub, if we can contact it.". "That's got all our kit back." one of Trelane's men thought, "When Westminster's idea of inshore fishing law and order change to match ours? and either enforce it properly or let us enforce it as we know how.". Pendane's men got back into their boat and took Trelane's boat in tow back towards Crabhaven. "Thankyou Affy! He has a habit of that, floating comfortably awash half asleep while his onboard recycler digests down his latest dredgings-tank-ful of flotsam and driftwood and all sorts, just where any boat'll run into him." said one of Trelane's men. "I thought Affy was seeing to the Eurynome right now?" said another. "Well, whoever it was, then." said the first. "That new townified harbourmaster that they sent here instead of Captain Hurlock's to blame. It's him lets all sorts launch boats here." said one of Pendane's men. Pendane complained: "None of this aggro of having to enforce our own laws if only those fat lazy *%^&&*%'ers in Parliament'd simply like idle inland pleasure anglers have!". Aphanistor, Affy, CR79, Crabhaven's Smith & Malton type G3 destructor recycler equipped grab-dredgersub, approached the sunken wreck of the Eurynome. Of those who meet him underwater, few tell of it. Local men meet him routinely without risk but do not tell of it; outsiders do not get away to tell of it. He looked at his front sonar scan. The usual seabed and surface clutter. An anchor line going down from an inflatable to the Eurynome, near which were some divers, with the usual ascending bubbles. A shoal of fish. An echo like a sub of his size. On the surface two hard boats and an inflatable. His sonar saw what it could of these events, and he had a poor opinion of his people's coordination: "What was all that? Scoobydoos onboard and away as my men's boat gets up to them, and that other sub goes for them also. Too many after the same thing - bangcrash! Scoobydoos get away, like that other lot just now. Third time lucky, it is said. Those two boats are staying together - one's towing the other!, I bet. What next?". Aphanistor went for the divers, unwilling to stop them with a sonar power blast as the echo from the wreck would alert many other divers in the area. "^%^& mass dive-in. ^&* those cheap ultrasonic receivers called `Sub-Ears' that sport divers can buy nowadays." he thought, "Where's those divers? They've vanished. I should be close enough to see them by light sight - there they are, going into that hole into the wreck out of my reach. Are scuba divers getting extrasensory perception today? I'm not strong enough to pull the wreck open by myself, but here comes that other sub. By my men's idea of the law, the shellfish and the wrecks belong to us who live here, not to allsorts from inland pinching them.". As he neared the wreck's side, five of the divers got inside to safety, but one lagged behind, and as he reached the hole Aphanistor caught him by the legs and routinely swallowed him. A scared diving-masked face and a tangle of cords and breathing-tubes and the front ends of cylinders vanished behind the closing steel grab-jaws. A squirming bulge went up Aphanistor's intake conveyor's elastic cover as the unauthorized scuba diver was disposed of. The other sub now reached Aphanistor, who said to it: "Trelawney! Just the job for your long thin probe-arm! Time I had one fitted, to reach into .... What!!?!". Something gripped the inner segment of his grab arm hard. "Oh no!" he realized, "Of all the dredgersubs in British waters, why did one have to turn up right now?". [352] The other dredgersub, also a Smith & Malton's type G3, bore no fishing boat type code, but only the name "Delphinus, London". Its grab was clamped hard from the left on the inner section of Aphanistor's grab-arm, holding tight and squeezing the intake so that the bulge which was an unwelcome sport diver could not go further on that much-travelled feared "one-way road". Aphanistor said angrily: "Delphinus! The 'sub that the diving clubs clubbed together to buy! And your mind's got like your sport diving friends. Go do your work in your own port-area and let me do mine here! Let my arm go!". Delphinus's voice replied, like Aphanistor's from a silicon brain through a synthesizer, not from flesh neurons or larynx: "This one you casually pump from your tank into your onboard destructor like dredgings! I hold on till you let him go! My people `take a shellfish each per day/man/dive till they're all gone'! Your kind exaggerate like all who can't admit they're wrong! Time you were challenged by someone your own size!". "You'll damage my intake! Let go!" Aphanistor complained, for Delphinus was gripping hard. "Let that diver go and I'll let you go!" Delphinus replied, "2+8+5+etc here; 12+11 (at least) at sea near Conway and Red Wharf where `Big Jim' hangs out; many have your kind casually swallowed and digested as dredgings to enforce laws of your own making? Inland men made you at Smith & Malton's; inland men paid your men for fish, so your men could afford to buy you! And they come to the sea for relaxation. Most of them don't bother with shellfish anyway, and don't make a mess. Leave them alone!". Aphanistor replied: "They mostly behave themselves as long as we're watching because the wild ones among them learned the hard way not to poach! The sea isn't a playground, diving is work, diving gear is work kit, not for mucking about thieving and poaching and getting in the way.". "There you go again, like that Hurlock!, condemning all for a few." said Delphinus. "I can wait till those others run out of air, then we'll see." Aphanistor thought. This argument was in modulated ultrasound, and the divers heard nothing of it. The divers, hearing the commotion, looked fearfully through the hole at something they had never expected, a spectacular dredgersub fight, and wondered what the outcome would be, for the participants and for themselves. They now knew what had happened to Kenneth. Inshore fishing port dredgersubs usually have the rougher sort of lobster fisherman's mentality with a mixture of authoritarian naval officer, and are bad news for sport scuba divers. The divers had weapons, but not of use against that sort of enemy. Delphinus held tight onto Aphanistor's grab-arm as the two subs wrestled to and fro near the Eurynome, each trying to get his snorkel to the surface without letting the other do the same. The dive leader, seeing Delphinus's name on his bows, exclaimed: "What! It's Delphinus! I don't believe it! We're saved! - if he wins the fight.", seeing no way of helping in a fight between the two powerful 40-foot-long steel hulled well-armed craft. Behind Aphanistor's dirty scarred grab, whose outside and inside had been attacked in vain by many knives and spears and spearguns and explosive spearheads long ago digested along with those who wielded them in meetings in the deep unwitnessed except by his electronic memory (though the public media made many guesses, mostly wrong), the divers sometimes saw the bulge in his intake cover, and realized what was at stake. Delphinus, seizing a chance, went side-on close against the torpedo hole and opened his side hatch. "All get in there now quick!" the dive leader shouted in a muffled breathing-masky voice, and they obeyed. "Lucky I read about Delphinus in the BSAC magazine." he thought. "Hurry up, you lot." said Delphinus to them, and shut his side hatch as soon as they were all inside. "Here we are, stowed away in a destructor/recycler-equipped dredgersub's dirty dredgings tank, like likely many before in other 'subs that never let them out to tell of it. First chance, back go the rougher sorts to death for theft, calling us poachers." a diver thought as he was thrown about as Delphinus turned and twisted wrestling with Aphanistor. "That other 'sub, that Aphanistor, his name's Greek for `He who causes disappearance'. I fear all too true." said the dive leader, "I suppose this thing's oversized electronic brain can be trusted. Other divers have ridden on and in him before. Our sets can last 2 hours in shallow water if we're very careful, but we'll need air some time. If Delphinus manages to get us alive to land, what next? Will one exposure in the public media stop the trouble, and for how long?". "Let me go, you overgrown ..." Aphanistor swore as Delphinus, standing on end with propeller uppermost, holding him on his side on the seabed, stopped him from bumping the bulge in his intake hard against a rock. By now Delphinus was running short of oxygen in his tank of haemoglobin-like oxygen storage chemical, but he had to keep hold of Aphanistor's intake, or Kenneth would at once have gone the rest of the `one-way road'. "Only one of me and so many with his mentality." Delphinus thought, "I can save these few now, but what elsewhere and later? People multiply, so less room and freedom for each. The adventurous set forth, and to what? To the wilderness? There are no wild places now. To the countryside, and it ends up with local people sick of trespassers. They buy exciting- looking sports kit in shops, and use it: try sailing, and it ends up with lifeboatmen getting sick of rescuing incompetents, and every estuary jammed with moored cabin-cruisers. Try some sort of hunting: not much is ownerless any more, and its owner complains. First chance, back go the rougher-minded sort to death for theft. Constant watch needed to stop leisure space from being taken for someone's work space, and `keep out' goes up on it. Latest symbol of that is a fishing port dredgersub, or a fishing boat with a Hurlock lethal ultrasonic beam sonar, either the D2SD handheld type used overside, or the D4SD sonar blister on its hull, picking off submerged scuba divers and scaring off a lot more. Enough of that! Inland men need leisure space, and a few fishermen aren't going to stop them! The sea's for everybody!". [353] "The way up he is, I bet he's short of air and he can't let go to surface for air!" said the dive leader, and then loudly: "Ahoy! Del'! Can you hear inside yourself? Can you use the air from our cylinders?". "Too well I can!" came Delphinus's electro-synthesized voice, "I was made with a standard set of internal accessories - I soon realized that one was to take the air from ingested aqualung cylinders before disposing of them - they made me the same as that Affy [= Aphanistor] and many others.". "Right!" the dive leader ordered, "Right! With my fullface mask, I'm stuck with my set. John with the big twin set with the octopus [= regulator with two mouthpieces] keep it, two of you four share each of its mouthpieces. (If that's not enough for him, he'll have to have mine also anyway.) Take the other sets off and take the regs off them, for Del' to use the tanks. He won't digest them, only use the air out of them - I hope.". They obeyed. Cylinders clanged as unfolding handler arms pushed the aqualungs through a hatch which opened at one end of the tank. The hatch led into high-capacity heavy-duty equipment. "Aphanistor's dredgings tank has the same hatch ..." he thought with a shudder. "Traitor! Scoobydoo-lover!" Aphanistor accused, as his silicon mind connected recent events, his intake still painfully squeezed in Delphinus's grab, "I bet upset my men's boat, and I or `Trelawney' got blamed. warned two lots of divers that they were going to be dealt with, pinching my idea how to. [Modulated sonar powerbeam not quite enough to stun, and their skulls pulled the signal out of it.] gave my frogmen that false signal to leave those tripper divers, and I or Trelawney got blamed. Leisure rights? Rubbish! If one job's finished, there's always another to do, unless it's dark out. Diving's work, diving gear's work kit, not for monkeying about in. Let my arm go and let me swallow and digest this %^& poacher. Your oxygen won't last much longer!". "Bring him up again! Just do that!" Delphinus replied shortly. They continued to struggle. Delphinus showed no sign of wanting to let go to surface for air. Finally Aphanistor, now in normal keel-down attitude, said angrily: "You #$% seem to have a $%^ big oxygen store! OK! One grabful of dredgings for you, exactly as it was! Now let me go! You and your #%$ scuba divers everywhere! Let me and my people work!", and opened his grab and, running his intake rack conveyor in reverse, regurgitated Kenneth, who was battered but could swim away. "Oh, the old battle, those who try new things versus those who want things to stay as they were." Delphinus replied. "Modern age, comfy in an 8.30am to 5pm office job, leaving `Satan to make work for your idle hands' evenings and weekends! ^&* off!" said Aphanistor angrily in direct sound mode to Kenneth, who had been wondering what was happening, and now realized that he had narrowly escaped a `group diver disappearance', and that he knew what caused some of them. Delphinus released Aphanistor, who surfaced for badly-needed air. "Another of those things!" thought Kenneth, who had not heard of Delphinus, "Where's my mates? I should have realized that we wouldn't see those aggressive lobstermen off for good, and I end up as a unit of fuel charge for their dredgersub.". He sought any escape from two big hollow steel hydraulic operated clamshell grabs which could crush a trippers' boat trailer together with its boat and motor and load into a cylindrical bolus for swallowing, or bite a sunken cabin cruiser to pieces and consume it, as Aphanistor had twice after his village's men as frogmen had with a limpet mine stopped a bout of keepbox-raiding. (One of them had connections with a tin mine, to get the explosive.) "How long have I escaped for? Not long." Kenneth thought, as the other sub's grab reached up from below him, caught him by one arm, and closed around him, except for his fin-blades projecting between its grab teeth. "Two dredging ducks after the same frog. Here I go `down the hatch', somewhat delayed." he thought. Delphinus was just in time, for just then Aphanistor, as he turned away and left, fired a maximum power rear sonar blast at Kenneth. The enclosing steel grab deflected the beam. [354] Delphinus surfaced and reached out of the water and put Kenneth in his club's inflatable, which Aphanistor, in haste to try to stop the divers from reaching the shelter of the wreck, had untypically not disposed of first to prevent fast escape. Delphinus rolled on his side and opened his side-hatch, so the other five divers were protected against any more sonar blasts as they climbed out of him into their inflatable. He gave them all their aqualungs back and advised them to buy `Sub- Ears' and told them all that he knew of what had happened. He escorted their boat back to Crabhaven, where they loaded up and thankfully went home. Aphanistor looked on his front sonar for his men's two boats, found them, aimed in message mode, and told them what had happened. "After all that," said Crabhaven's frogmen's leader Pendane as they neared shore, towing Trelane's squad's boat, "I better drop you here and you can row into Smew Cove and wait till dark, and we can do the rest of an ordinary day's work diving - Oh no! Again! That Delphinus must've radioed the coastguard!". A voice came from a loudhailer in the armed naval helicopter as it swooped on them: "Proceed to Crabhaven. Suspicion of assaults on scuba divers, and illegal weapons. Police wish to question you.". The message repeated a few times. The local frogmen went into their room in Crabhaven harbour, and sat around thankfully, still in full kit, but with their helmets off and their fullface masks hanging down their chests. "Phewff!" said Pendane, "Those cops only grabbed the other boatful and let us go. They must've thought we were a bunch of tripper divers who'd `kindly' towed them in. For once I welcomed that mistake! Lucky they didn't know one sort of diving gear from another. From now on, aqualungs and no helmets, and cover our shoulder badges, when we dive, till the heat's off.". "OK! OK!" said another, "The game's up. From now on, we better let the scoobydoos do what they want to. Five men arrested. A 'copter after us again, and that Delphinus on the rampage. OK! It's over! Better pass the word round.". "There's some men from the BSAC to see us. We better call all the men and find what they want, I suppose." said Pendane. "OK. What do you legalized poachers want?" said Pendane roughly to the BSAC men as they came in. One of the BSAC men, still in diving gear, said: "Some of us diving here are in BSAC central committee, and we can speak for the whole of the BSAC. I understand that you've livings to earn, and getting your men arrested causes bad blood here and elsewhere for the future. But we insist on the old tradition of free fair access for all users.". "Five men arrested for defending their livelihood, and ..." said Pendane. "The firearms charges are out of our hands," said the BSAC diver, "but we'll press no more charges from today's events if you promise no more harassment of divers. Same goes at other places. We may take a shellfish; but nobody moans at all the sport sea anglers taking fish! I can't speak for all non-BSAC divers, but we try to keep the peace.". "OK! OK! You win!" said Pendane, "or we get charged for antipoacher operations, and the Navy is told to hunt down Aphanistor and depthcharge him. Again the outsiders mass and win. The balance swings and then swings back. You lot get a dredgersub - and some time later a second, I suppose. I agree.". "OK, I agree also," tiredly said another local fishermen, wearing sweater and bobblehat, "although with our own men that can dive, we don't need outside divers about to dive for stuck or lost pots and nets any more. I agree.". These events were discussed at BSAC headquarters. "Well!" said one, "It was expensive buying Delphinus, but it was worth it! If it wasn't for him, three more group diver disappearances (or more) at Crabhaven to be blamed on bad training and risk getting Government controls put on us. Now on top of the Hiddleston video, we've got Delphinus's brain's playback of events!". Another said: "Police found two lethal-beam Hurlock sonars and two `Emperor Ming' nailguns on that boat. Five fishermen held. Those rebreather divers seem to have got away with it, like at Filey. Police let them sail away too soon.". Another said: "And no more scoffing such as `what do we want a for!? To catch the subscription-non-payers?'. This'll scare off a lot of trouble.". The remaining village men thoroughly checked and repaired Aphanistor's intake. Normal life resumed. Divers were left alone there for a while.