Luce flicked away from the sofa-shaped rock, careful to give a wide berth to the area the diver had tampered with. Maybe if she stayed pressed to the rock wall above that spot she could approach the camera without putting herself in range of its lens. She swept far out, then squeezed up to the rock face and began wriggling carefully along, dislodging a few tiny crabs from their hiding places. They skittered away from her in annoyance, clinging to the slanting wall. It was an uncomfortable way to swim and the sharp crags scraped at her scales as she bellied along. The gray wall with its twisted kelp and feathery, pale green weeds slid by, only a fraction of an inch from her cheek. The diver had been somewhere over here, but for a long time Luce couldn’t find anything unusual. She had a sudden awful sense that she might have dragged herself at full length across the camera without noticing it.

No. Something dark and very small poked between two broad brown leaves. Its lens reminded Luce of the wet darkness inside a snail shell. Luce paused a foot away from the camera and considered what to do. It was tiny and well-concealed enough that she never would have seen it there if she hadn’t been searching carefully.

She broke a rubbery leaf free and lined the palm of her hand with it. If a human hand suddenly appeared on screen it would certainly attract attention. Then she found a sharp rock, crept a bit closer, and slammed the rock down hard into that lifeless, staring eye. She heard the glass shatter, and brought the rock down again, grinding deeper. This time there was an electrical fizzling as something in the camera’s insides shorted out.

That was easy, Luce told herself as she began the long swim back to her own cave. She’d protected the mermaids from discovery. Everything was going to be fine.

Of course those people were scientists. Humans were so convinced they owned the planet, sea and all. Luce could slap them right in their faces with her tail and the existence of mermaids would still be more than they could comprehend.

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