The radio was off. He could not have heard anything in that city, in that stygian lake, and particularly through the reinforced shell of the hardsuit. But he was hearing something. Echoes that bounced around him, through him.

And music.

It wasn’t possible, but he was hearing it…tinny, distant music like the shrilling of a carnival calliope carried by an August night breeze. It grew louder and louder until he wanted to press his hands to his ears to shut it out. But that would do no good and he knew it. Because it was in his head: a reedy piping that was scratching and dissonant, yet musical and rhythmic. The obscene trilling of a million strident grasshoppers that were the voices of those who had built the city. And not two or three, but dozens and dozens, all piping away madly with that melodious, symphonic fluting that was ear-piercing and manic.

And from the luminous weeds below, they rose up.

The Old Ones.

Thirty or forty or fifty or sixty, they soared up and encircled him like a great swarm of late-season crane flies, spreading their wings, tentacular walking legs coiling and limbs twitching and those brilliant red eyes looking at him and into him, owning him and filling him and ultimately crushing him. Their carapaces were gray and black and metallic blue. More and more emerged, fanning out like waves until there was a solid wall of them closing in around him. And those eyes. All those eyes eating into him like acid.

And in his helmet, there was a buzzing/piping noise that grew louder and louder and louder, a chanting, insectile imitation of human voices all shrieking in his head: Bell, Bell Bell, Bell, BELL, BELL, BELL, BELL, BEEEELLLLLLLLLL-

On and on until it was a white sibilant noise that became the whining screech of buzzsaws and his skull cracked open like a soft egg.

And Bell was gone.

His head came apart in a Technicolor blur of meat and tissue, blood and gray matter spraying in wormy loops against the inside of the clear bubble of his view plate.

The lights on his suit winked out one by one.

And he sank like a brick into the oily blackness far below.

34
EPIC FAIL

Javonivic hadn’t heard from the LSB in over forty-eight hours now.

Bell and Murphy were surely dead.

She was alone.

Isolated.

Helpless.

Part of her thought that Hubbs was behind it, but he had been gone for days and there was no way he could have docked his suit out of the moon pool without triggering alarms. The more she thought about it the less she was convinced that Hubbs had anything to do with it whatsoever. He was probably dead. His hardsuit had eight hours of life support with forty-eight hours emergency backup…but that would have been cutting it pretty close.