Pitt adjusted the height of the thick glass and scrutinized each picture. At first glance the fish looked similar in size and shape to the Bluefin Tuna, but on closer inspection, the bottom pelvic fins took on the appearance of small jointed webbed feet. There were two more identical limbs located just in front of the dorsal fin.

He whistled softly. "This is a weird specimen, Rudi. What do you call it?"

"I can't pronounce the Latin name, but the scientists aboard the First Attempt have affectionately nicknamed it the Teaser."

"Why is that?"

"Because, by every law of nature that fish should have become extinct over two hundred million years ago. But as you can see by the drawings men still claim they have seen it. Every fifty or sixty years there's a rash of sightings, but unfortunately for science, a Teaser has yet to be caught." Gunn glanced at Pitt and looked away again. "If there is such a fish, it must bear a charmed life. There are literally hundreds of accounts of fishermen and scientists who look you in the eye with a straight face and say they had a Teaser on a hook or in a net, but before the fish could be hauled on board it escaped. Every zoologist in the world would give his left testicle to obtain a live, or even dead Teaser."

Pitt mashed out his cigarette in an ashtray. "What makes this particular fish so important?"

Gunn held up the drawings. "Notice that the artists couldn't agree on the outer layer of skin. They illustrate tiny scales, smooth porpoise-like skin, and one even brushed in a kind of furry hide like a sea lion. Now, if you take the possibility of hairy skin, together with the limb extensions, it may be we have the dim beginnings of the first mammal."

"True, but if the skin were smooth you'd have nothing more than an early reptile. The earth was covered with them back in those days."

Gunn's eyes mirrored a confident look. "The next point to consider is that the Teasers lived in warm shallow water, and every recorded sighting took place no more than three miles from shore and they all occurred right here in the eastern Mediterranean where the average surface temperature seldom drops below sixty-two degrees Fahrenheit."

"So what does that prove?" asked Pitt.

"Nothing solid, but since primitive mammal life survives better in milder climates, it lends a little support to the possibility that they might have survived to the present."

Pitt stared at Gunn thoughtfully. "I'm sorry, Rudi. You still haven't sold me."