Eruption

Swimming with Sharks

   The great shark moved silently through the night water, propelled by short sweeps of its crescent tail. It had no conscious thought for what it was doing so close to shore, it just waited. The beach shone brilliant under the Milky Way, white sugar sand glowing. Myriads of stars reflected on the face of the gentle ocean swells.
   Then, a small figure emerged from a dark beach house and trotted toward the water. When dry sand turned wet from the surf, Jake Rose paused to toss aside a shirt and flip-flops. After a moment's hesitation, he shed his swim trunks, too. Naked, he tapped a foot in the cold May waters of the Gulf and grinned. It was a good night for skinny-dipping, he thought defiantly.  He splashed chest-deep, and scooped water to splash over his shoulders, his face and his hair. Without stopping to think, he dove into the next glittering wave.
   A hundred yards off shore, the great shark felt the splash and stirred, moving toward the disturbance as if an arrow shooting toward a bull’s-eye. The shark closed in and hurtled past the boy, a dozen feet to the side. The boy's eyes were accustomed to the water and the dark now, and his water breathing through the Risonian gills under his arms was regular. The villi on his legs were interwoven, with what his father jokingly called a Velcro system, so that his legs acted like a tail.
   Jake fell into line beside the great shark, swimming twenty-five feet to the left and parallel. "Cousin," he called in a bubbly voice, "take me out to the deep for a long swim."
   The shark didn't understand the words, of course, but Jake flapped his hands and sent vibrations through the water that he hoped said the same thing. In any case, the shark suddenly turned toward the open sea, as he had the last three nights, and Jake followed. They were just two creatures off to explore the mysteries of the Gulf of Mexico.