Read Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 Page 12

  Marooned Under the Sea

  _By Paul Ernst_

  (Editor's note: This document, written on a curious kind of parchment and tied to a piece of driftwood, was reported to have been picked out of the sea near the Fiji Islands. The first and last pages were so water soaked as to be indecipherable.)

  Yacht _Rosa_ was due to leave the San Francisco harbor in two hours.

  We were going on some mysterious cruise to the South Seas, the detailsof which I did not know.

  [Sidenote: Three men stick out a strange and desperate adventure amongthe incredible monsters of the dark sea floor.]

  "Professor George Berry, the famous zoologist, and myself are going todo some exploring that is hazardous in the extreme," Stanley had said."For purely mechanical reasons we need a third. You are young and haveno family ties, so I thought I'd ask you to go with us.I'd rather not tell you what it's all about until we are on our way."

  _"Look at the cable!" called Stanley._]

  That was all the explanation he had given. It was sufficient. I wasfed-up with life just then: I had enough money to avoid work and wastired of playing.

  "I must warn you that you'll risk your life in this," he had continued,in answer to my acceptance of his invitation.

  And I had replied that the hazard, whatever it might be, only made thetrip appear more desirable.

  So here I was, on board the yacht, about to sail for far places on somescientific mission which had so far been kept veiled in secrecy andwhich was represented as "hazardous in the extreme." It soundedattractive!

  * * * * *

  Stanley came aboard accompanied by a lean, wiry man with iron gray hairand cool, alert black eyes.

  "Hello, Martin," Stanley greeted me. "I want you to meet ProfessorBerry, the real leader of this expedition. Professor, this youngred-head is Martin Grey, a sort of nephew by adoption who knows moreabout night life than most cabaret proprietors--and not much of anythingelse. He has shaken the dangers of the gold-diggers to face with us thedangers of the tropic seas."

  The professor gripped my hand, and his cool black eyes gazed into minewith a kind of friendly frostiness.

  "Don't pay any attention to him," he advised me. "Twenty years ago, whenI first met him, he was on his way to Africa to shoot elephants becausesome revue beauty had just thrown him over and he felt he ought to dosomething big and heroic about it. It was shortly afterward that hedecided to stay a bachelor all his life, and became such a confirmedwoman hater."

  He smiled thinly at Stanley's prod in the ribs, and the two went below,talking and laughing with the intimacy of old friendship.

  I stayed on deck and soon found myself watching, with no little wonder,an enormous truck and trailer arrangement that drew up on the dockheavily loaded with a single immense crate. It was for us. I speculatedas to what it could possibly contain.

  It was a twenty or twenty-five-foot cube solidly braced with strap-ironand steel brackets. It evidently contained something fragile. Theyacht's donkey engine lowered a hook for it, and swung it over the sideand into the hold as daintily as though it had been packed withexplosives.

  The last of the ship's stores followed it over the side: the group ofnewspaper reporters who had been trying to pump the captain and firstmate for a story were warned to leave, and we were ready to go.Precisely where and for what purpose?

  I was to find out almost immediately.

  Even as the yacht nosed superciliously away from the dock, the stewardapproached me with the information that lunch was ready. I went to thesmall, compactly furnished dining salon, where I was joined by Stanleyand the professor.

  * * * * *

  There were only the three of us at the table. Stanley Browne, noted biggame hunter and semi-retired owner of the great Browne Glassworks atAltoona, a man fifteen years my senior but tanned and fit looking;Professor Berry, well known in scientific circles; and myself, known inno branch of activity save the one Stanley had jested about--the nightlife of my home city, Chicago.

  "It's time you knew just what you're up against," said Stanley to meafter the consomme had been served. "Now that we've actually sailed,there's no longer any need for secrecy. Indeed there never has beenurgent need of it: the Professor and myself merely thought we mightprovoke incredulity and comment if we stated the purpose of our trippublicly."

  He buttered a roll.

  "We--the Professor and you and I--are going in for some deep sea diving.And when I say deep, I mean deep. We are going to investigate conditionsas they exist one mile down from the surface of the ocean."

  "A mile!" I exclaimed. "Why--"

  There I stopped. I had only a layman's knowledge of such matters. But Iknew that the limit of man's submersion, till then at any rate, was amatter of a few hundred feet.

  "Sounds incredible, doesn't it," said Stanley with a smile. "But that'swhat we're going to do--if the Professor's gadget works as he seems tothink it will."

  "I don't think it, I know it," retorted the Professor. "And man, man,the things we may see down there! New and unknown species--a world nohuman has ever seen before--perhaps the secret of all of life--"

  "Dragons, sea-serpents, and what not!" Stanley finished with a grin.

  "Or, possibly--nothing at all." The Professor shrugged. "I mustn't letmy scientific curiosity run away with me. Perhaps we'll find no newthing down down. Our deep sea dredging and classification may alreadyembrace most of the forms of life in the greater depths."

  "If it does I want my money back," said Stanley. "When you asked me tofinance this expedition for you, I agreed on condition that you wouldshow me a thrill--some _real_ big game, even if I would not be able toshoot it. If we draw blank--"

  "The mere descent should satisfy you, my adventuring friend," repliedthe Professor brusquely. "I think you'll find that thrilling enough."

  "But--a mile under the surface!" I marveled, feeling not entirelycomfortable. "The pressure! Enormous! It can't be done! That is, I mean,can it be done?"

  "It had better be," said Stanley with a humor that I did not entirelyappreciate. "If it isn't, the three of us are going to be pressed outlike three sheets of tissue paper! For we are assuredly going down thatfar in the Professor's gadget."

  "Was that the thing I saw hoisted aboard just before we left?"

  "That was it. We'll stroll around after lunch and look it over."

  If I had taken this cruise in search of distraction--I was surely goingto be successful! That was plain!

  "Just where are we going?" I asked. "You said something about the SouthSeas, but you've named no special part of them."

  "We're bound for Penguin Deep. That's a delightful little dimple in theKermadec Trough, which," Stanley explained, "is north-northeast of NewZealand almost halfway up to the Fiji Islands. Penguin Deep is ticketedat five thousand one hundred and fifty feet, but it probably runs deeperin spots."

  The rest of the meal was consumed in silence. I hardly tasted what Iate; I remember that. Over five thousand feet down--where no man hadever ventured before! Could we make it?

  I tried to recall my neglected physics lessons and compute the pressurethat far down. I couldn't. But I knew it must be an appalling total oftons to the square inch. What possible arrangement could they havebrought in which to make that awful descent?

  And, if the descent were accomplished, what in the world would we seewhen we got down there? Gigantic, hitherto unknown fishes? Marinegrowths, half animal and half vegetable?

  Decidedly, hot rolls and salad, cutlets and baked potatoes, good as theywere, could not distract attention from the crowding questions thatassailed me. And I could see that Stanley and the Professor were alsofar away in their thoughts--probably already exploring Penguin Deep.

  * * * * *

  After lunch we went forward to look at the Professor's gadget, asStanley insisted on calling it.

  It had been carefully unpacked by the crew
while we ate, and itshimmered in the electric lighted hold like a great bubble.

  It was a giant glass sphere, polished and flawless. Inside it could bemade out various objects--a circular bench arrangement on a woodenflooring, batteries that filled the cup between the floor and the bottomarc of the sphere, tall metal cylinders, a small searchlight set next toa mechanism that was indeterminate. At three equidistant points on thesides there were glass handles, as thick as a man's thigh, cast integralwith the walls. On the top there was a smaller handle.

  At first glance the sphere seemed all in one piece, with the centralobjects cast inside like a toy ship in a sealed bottle. Then amathematically precise ring of prismatic reflections showed me that thetop third of the ball was a separate piece, fitting conically down likethe tapered glass stopper of a monstrous perfume bottle. The handle onthe top was for the purpose of lifting this giant's teapot lid, andallowing entrance into the sphere.

  "Isn't it a beauty?" murmured Stanley. "It ought to be," he added. "Itcost me eighty-six thousand to make it in my own glass factory. Elevencastings before this one came along that was reasonably free of flaws.Twenty-two feet six inches over all, walls five feet thick, new formulaunbreakable glass, four men working a month to grind the lid into place,tolerance limits plus or minus zero."

  He slapped the Professor's shoulders. "Let's go in and look over theapparatus."

  * * * * *

  To accommodate the huge ball a well had been constructed in the Rosa'shold. This brought the deck we were standing on up to within six feet ofthe top ring, above which was rigged a chain hoist for lifting theponderous lid.

  The hoist was revolved, the conical top was swung free, and we clamberedinto our unique diving shell.

  The tall cylinders were revealed as great flasks of compressed air. Theindeterminate thing beside the searchlight turned out to be a hand pump,geared to work against heavy pressure. From the suction chamber of thisthree tubes extended.

  "We inhale the air of the chamber," the Professor explained to me, "andexhale through the tubes into the pump cylinder. Breathe in through thenose and out through the mouth. The pump piston is forced down by thisgeared handle, sending the used air out of the shell through thissixteenth-inch hole. A ball check valve keeps the water from squirtingin when the exhaust pressure is released."

  He pointed to a telegraphic key which completed a circuit from thebatteries in the bottom of the ball to a thread of copper cast throughthe lid.

  "That's your plaything, Martin. You are to raise or lower us by pressingthat key. It controls the donkey engine electrically, so that we guideour own destinies though we are a mile beneath our power plant. Stanleyworks the pump. I direct the searchlight, write down notes, and, Isincerely hope, take snapshots of deep sea life."

  For a moment my part of the labor seemed so easy as to be unfair. Merelyto sit there and punch a little key at raising and lowering time! But asI thought it over it began to appear more difficult.

  The _Rosa_ could not anchor, of course, in a mile of water. We woulddrift helplessly. If we approached an undersea cliff I must raise us atonce to prevent us being smashed against it. And if the cliff were toolofty to be cleared in time....

  I mentioned this to the Professor.

  "That would be unfortunate," he said, with his frosty smile. "Stanleyassures us this glass is unbreakable. He means commercially unbreakable.What would happen to it if it were submitted to the strain of beingflung against a rock pile--in addition to the enormous stress of thewater pressure--I don't know. It's your job to see that we don't have tofind out!"

  * * * * *

  It had been planned to test the sphere empty first to see how it stoodthe strain.

  We drifted to a full stop over the center of Penguin Deep where we wereto gamble our lives in a game with Neptune. Sea anchors were rigged tolessen our drift and the donkey engine was geared to the first cabledrum.

  There was an impressive row of these drums, each holding an interminablelength of three-quarter-inch cable. The bulk of a mile of steel cablehas to be seen to be believed!

  The glass sphere was lifted from the hold, delicately for all itsenormous weight, and swung over the rail preparatory to being loweredinto the depths.

  Not until that moment did I notice two things: that there was nofastening of any kind to keep the thick lid in place: and that thethree-quarter-inch cable looked like a pack thread in comparison to theponderous bulk it strained to support.

  "We couldn't use a heavier cable," said the Professor, "because of thestrain. We're overloading the hoist as it is. As for the lid beingfastened down--I think you'll find it will be pressed into placesecurely enough!"

  There was unanimous silence as the great globe slipped into thesea--down and down until the last reflection of the morning sun ceasedto shimmer from its surface. Drum after drum was played out, till thefirst mate held his hand up to check the engineer.

  "Five thousand feet, sir," he called to Stanley.

  "Haul it back up. And let us hope," Stanley added fervently, "that we'llfind the gadget in one piece."

  * * * * *

  The engine began to snort rhythmically. Dripping, vibrating, the coilsof cable began to crawl back in place on the drums. There was a glintunder the surface again as the sunlight reflected on the nearing sphere.

  The great ball flashed out of the water, and a cheer burst from thethroats of all of us. It was absolutely unharmed. Only--there was abeading of fine moisture inside the thick globe. What that could mean,none of us could figure out.

  "Difference in temperature?" worried the Professor. "No, it's as coldinside as out. Molecules of water driven by sheer pressure through fivefeet of glass to unite in drops on the inside? Possibly. Well, there'sone way to find out. Stanley, Martin--are you ready?"

  We nodded, and prepared to visit the bottom a mile below the _Rosa's_keel. The preparation consisted merely in donning heavy, fleece-linedjumpers to protect us from the cold of the sunless depths.

  Soberly we entered the ball to undergo whatever ordeal awaited us onthe distant ocean floor. How comparative distance is! A mile walk in thecountry--it is nothing. A mile ascent in an airplane--a trifle. But amile descent into pitch black, bone chilling depths of water--that is animmense distance!

  Copper wire, on a separate drum, was connected from the engine switch tothe copper thread that curled through the glass wall to my telegraphickey. We strapped the mouthpieces of the breathing tubes over our heads,and Browne started the slow turning of the compression pump.

  The Professor snapped the searchlight on and off several times to seethat it was in working shape. He raised his hand, I pressed the key, andthe long descent began.

  * * * * *

  That plunge into the bottomless depths remains in my memory almost asclearly as the far more fantastic adventures that came to us later.

  Smoothly, rapidly, the yellow-green of the surface water dimmed toolive. This in turn grew blacker and blacker. Then we were slipping downinto pitch darkness--a big bubble lit by a meagre lamp and containingthree fragile human beings that dared to trust the soft pulp of theirbodies to the crushing weight of the deepest ocean.

  The most impressive thing was the utter soundlessness of our descent. Atfirst there had been a pulsing throb of the donkey engine transmitted tous by the sustaining cable. This died as we slid farther from the Rosa.At length it was hushed entirely, cushioned by the springy length ofsteel. There was no stir, no sound of any kind. As far as our sensescould tell us, we were hanging motionless in the pressing, awesomeblackness.

  The Professor switched off our light and turned on the searchlight whichhe trained downward through the wall at as steep an angle as theflooring would permit. Even then the illusion of motionlessness waspreserved. There was nothing in the water to mark our progress. Wemight have been floating in a back void of space.

  Down and down we went, for
an interminable length of time--till atlength we reached the abysmal level where the sun never shone and theeyes of man had never gazed till now.

  * * * * *

  Words were made to describe familiar articles. I find now when I amfaced with the necessity of portraying events and objects beyond therange of normal human experience that I cannot conjure up words to fit.I despair of trying to make you see what we saw, and feel what we felt.

  But try to picture yourself in the glass ball with us:

  All is profound blackness save for a streak of white, dying about fiftyfeet away, which is the beam of our searchlight. Twenty feet below is abare floor of flinty lava and broken shell. This is unrelieved bysea-weed of any kind, appearing like an imagined fragment of Martian orlunar landscape.

  The ball sways idly to the push of some explicable submarine current. Itis like being in a captive balloon, except that the connecting cableextends stiffly upward instead of downward.

  There is a realization, an instinctive _feel_ of awful pressure aroundyou. Logic tells you how you are clamped about, but deeper than logic isthe intuition that the glass walls are pressing in on themselves--at thepoint of collapse. Your ears, tingle with the feel of it: your headrings with it.

  You are breathing in through your nose--thin, unsatisfying gulps of airthat cause your lungs to labor at their task; and you are exhalingthrough, your mouth, with difficulty, into the barrel of the powerfulpump. No bubbles arise from the tiny hole where the used air is forcedinto the water. The pressure is too enormous for that. Only a thin,milky line marks its escape from the sphere.

  In a ghostly way you see Stanley turning the pump handle. With a handfulof waste which he has borrowed from the _Rosa's_ engine room, theProfessor wipes from the section of wall through which the searchlightplays the moisture that constantly collects there. I sit with my handnear the key, peering downward and ahead like an engineer in alocomotive cab, ready to raise the shell or lower it as occasionwarrants.

  And always the suffocating awareness of pressure....

  * * * * *

  Strange and mystic journey as the tortured glass sphere floated over thebottom, following the slow drift of the _Rosa_ far above!

  The finger of light played along the tilted side of a wrecked trampsteamer. There was a crumpled gash in the bow. From this ragged holesuddenly appeared a great, serpentine form....

  The Professor clutched at his camera, pointed it, and clenched his handsin a frenzy of disappointment. The serpent shape had disappeared backinto the hull. A little later and we had drifted slowly past the wreck.

  "Damn it!" the Professor snatched away his mouthpiece to exclaim: "If wecould only _stop_."

  The bottom changed character shortly after we had passed the hulk. Webegan to creep over low, gently rounded mounds.

  These were so regular in form that they were puzzling. About fifty feetacross and ten in altitude, they looked artificial in theirsymmetry--like great saucers set on the ocean floor bottom side up. Theytook on a dirty black hue as our light struck them, and glowed with afaint phosphorescence as they stretched away into the darkness.

  A twelve-foot monstrosity, all toad-like head and eyes, swam into thelight beam and bumped blindly against the glass ball. For an instant itgoggled crazily at us. The Professor took its picture. It blunderedaway. As it reached the darkness beyond the beam it, too, showedphosphorescent. A belt of blue-white spots like the portholes of aliner extended down its ugly sides.

  Along the bottom, between the curious mounds, writhed a wormlike thing.But it was too huge to be described as truly wormlike--it was eighteenor twenty feet long and a foot thick. It was blood red, almost bluntended and patently without eyes.

  I took my gaze off it for an instant. When I looked again it haddisappeared. I blinked at this seeming miracle and then discovered afoot or so of its tail protruding from under the edge of one of themounds. It was threshing furiously about.

  * * * * *

  It was at this instant that I suddenly found increased difficulty, andglanced at Stanley.

  He had stopped pumping and was clutching at the Professor's arm with onehand while he pointed down with the other. The Professor motioned himtoward the pump, and began to click pictures furiously with the camerapointed at the nearest mound.

  Wondering at the urgency of Stanley's gesture and the frantic clickingof the camera shutter, I looked more closely at the curious, saucerlikehump.

  Under closer inspection something remarkably like a huge, mud-coloredeye was revealed! And as we drifted along, twenty feet away on thefarther slope, another appeared!

  Paralyzed, I stared at the edges of the thing. They were waving almostimperceptibly up and down, _creeping_!

  The mounds were living creatures! Acres and acres of them lyinglethargically on the bottom waiting for something to crawl within rangeof their monstrous edges!

  Involuntarily I pressed the key to raise us. But we had gone only a fewfeet when the Professor called to me.

  "Down again, Martin. I don't think these things will bother us unless wescrape against them. Anyway they can't hurt the shell."

  I lowered the ball to our former twenty-foot level, and there we swungjust over the monsters' backs.

  * * * * *

  The Professor had said that the giant inverted saucers would probablynot bother us if we did not come in contact with them. It soon becameapparent that, in a measure, he was right. The creatures either couldnot or would not lift their enormous bulks from the sea floor.

  A gigantic wriggling thing, all grotesque fringe and tentacles, drifteddown into the range of our light. Lower it floated until it hovered justabove one of the larger mounds. The Professor got its portrait. At thesame instant, as though it had heard the click of the shutter and beenfrightened by it, the thing dropped another foot--and touched thesloping back.

  With the speed of light the inverted saucer became a cup. Like aclenching fist, the cup closed over one of the straggling tentacles.

  There followed a tug of war that was all the more ghastly for itssoundlessness. The hunted jerked spasmodically to get away from thehunter. So wild were its efforts that several times it raised themonster clear of the bottom for a foot or so. But the grim clutch couldnot be broken.

  Closer and closer it was dragged. Then, after a supreme paroxysm, thetentacle parted and the prey escaped. The tentacle disappeared into themass of the baffled hunter. It made no attempt to follow the fleeingcreature. It slowly relaxed along the bottom and waited for its nextmeal.

  The unearthly incident gave us fresh confidence, convincing us that themonsters did not move unless they were directly touched. Of course wecould not foresee the fatal accident that was going to put us withinreach of one of the giant saucers.

  * * * * *

  We thought for awhile that these great blobs of cold life were thelargest creatures of the depths. It was soon made clear to us howmistaken that notion was!

  For a time we gazed spellbound at the nightmare assortment ofgrotesqueries that gradually assembled around us, attracted no doubt byour light. The things were mainly sightless and of indescribable shape.Most of them were phosphorescent, and they avoided collisions in a waythat suggested that they had some buried sense of light perception.

  As time passed the Professor emptied his camera, refilled it severaltimes and groaned that he had no more film. Twice as we drifted along Iraised us to keep us clear of a gradual upward slope of the smoothfloor.

  Stanley removed his mouthpiece long enough to suggest that we go back tothe surface: we had been submerged for nearly four hours now. But beforewe could reply a violent movement was felt.

  The ball rocked and twirled so that we were forced to cling to thecircular bench to avoid being thrown to the floor. It was as though ahurricane of wind had suddenly penetrated the unruffled depths.

  "Earthquake?" called St
anley.

  "Don't know," answered the Professor. He swung the searchlight in an arcand focussed it at length on something that appeared only as a field ofblurred movement. He wiped the moisture from the wall before the lens,and there was revealed to us a sight that makes my heart pound even nowwhen I recall it to memory.

  Something vast and serpentine had ventured too near the bottom--and hadbeen caught by the death traps there!

  The creature was a writhing mass of gigantic coils. It was impossibleeven to guess at its length, but its girth was such that themound-shaped monsters that had fastened to it could not entirelyencircle it.

  There it twined and knotted: a mighty serpent of the deepest ocean,snapping its awful length and threshing its powerful tail in an effortto dislodge the giant leeches that were flattened against it. And everytime it touched the bottom in its blind frenzy, more of the teemingdeathtraps attached themselves to it, crawling over their fellows in aneffort to find unoccupied areas.

  * * * * *

  Soon the sea-serpent was a distorted, creeping mass. For one appallinginstant its head came into our view....

  It resembled the head of a crocodile, only it was ten times larger andcovered with scale like the armor plate of a destroyer. The jaws, wideopen and slashing with enormous, needle-shaped teeth at the hugeparasites, were large enough to have held our glass sphere. One eyeappeared. It was at least three feet across and of a shimmering amethystcolor.

  One of the deadly saucers wrapped itself around the great head. Theentire mass of attackers and attacked settled slowly to the bottom.

  But before it completely succumbed the beaten monster gave one last,convulsive flick of its tail....

  "Good God!" cried Stanley, shrinking away from the pump and staringupward.

  I followed his gaze with my own eyes.

  In the faint reflected glow of the searchlight I could see row on row oflarge cups flattened against the top of the ball. As I watched theseflattened still more and the big sphere quivered perceptibly.

  In its death struggle the mighty serpent had flicked one of the hugeleeches against us. It now clung there with blind tenacity, coveringnearly two-thirds of our shell with the underside of its body.

  I reached for the control key to send us to the surface.

  "Don't!" snapped the Professor. "The weight--"

  He needed to say no more. My hand recoiled as though the key had beenred hot.

  The three-quarter-inch cable above us was now sustaining, in addition toits own huge weight, our massive glass ball and the appalling tonnageof this grim blanket of flesh that encircled us. Could it further holdagainst the strain of lifting that combined tonnage through the press ofthe water? Almost certainly it could not!

  There was nothing we could do but hang there and discover at first handexactly what happened to things that were clamped in those mighty,living vises!

  * * * * *

  The Professor turned on the interior bulb. The result was ghastly. Itshowed every detail of the belly of the thing that gripped us.

  Crowded over its entire under surface were gristly, flattened suckers.Now and then a convulsive ripple ran through its surface tissue andgreat ridges of flesh stood out. With each squeeze the glass shellquivered ominously as though the extreme limit of its pressure resistingpower were being reached--and passed.

  "A nice fix," remarked the Professor, his calm, dry voice acting like atonic in that moment of fear. "If we try to go up, the cable wouldprobably break. If we try to outlast the patience of this thing we mightrun out of air, or actually be staved in."

  He paused thoughtfully.

  "I suggest, though, that we follow the latter course for awhile atleast. It would be just too bad if that cable broke, gentlemen!"

  Stanley shuddered, and looked at the dirty white belly that pressedagainst the glass walls on all sides.

  "I vote we stay here for a time."

  "And I," was my addition.

  I relieved Stanley at the pump. He and the Professor sat down on thebench. Casting frequent glances at the constricted blanket of flesh thatcovered us, we prepared to wait as composedly as we might for the thingto give up its effort to smash our shell.

  * * * * *

  The hour that followed was longer than any full day I have ever livedthrough. Had I not confirmed the passage of time by looking at mywatch, I would have sworn that at least twenty hours had passed.

  Every half-minute I gazed at that weaving pattern of cup-shaped suckersonly five feet away, trying to see if they were relaxing in theirpressure. I attempted to persuade myself that they were. But I knew Iwas only imagining it. Actually they were pressed as flat as ever, andthe sphere still quivered at regular intervals as the heavy bodysqueezed in on itself. There was no sign that its blind, mindlesspatience was becoming exhausted.

  There was little conversation during that interminable hour.

  Stanley grinned wryly once and commented on the creature'sdisappointment if it actually succeeded in getting at us.

  "We'd be scattered all over the surrounding half mile by the pressure ofthe water," he said. "There'd be nothing left for our pet to feed on butfive-foot chunks of broken glass. Not a very satisfying meal."

  "We might try to reason with the thing--point out how foolish it is towaste its time on us," I suggested, trying to appear as nonchalant as hewas.

  The Professor said nothing. He was coolly writing in his notebook,describing minutely the appearance of our abysmal captor.

  Finally I chanced to look down through a section of wall not covered byour stubborn enemy. I wiped the moisture from the glass before thesearchlight so that I could see more clearly.

  * * * * *

  The bottom seemed to be heaving up and down. I blinked my eyes andlooked again. It was not an illusion. With a regular dip and rise wewere approaching to within a few feet of the rocky floor and moving backup again. Also we were floating faster than at anytime previous. Thebottom was bare again; we had left the crowding, ominous mounds.

  I waved to the Professor. He snapped his notebook shut and stared at theuneasy ocean bottom.

  "I've been hoping I was wrong," he said simply. "I thought I felt a wavymotion fifteen minutes ago, and it seemed to me to increase steadily."

  The three of us stared at each other.

  "You mean ..." began Stanley with a shudder.

  "I mean that the _Rosa_, one mile above us, is having difficulties. Astorm. Judging from our movement it must be a hurricane: the length ofcable would cushion us from any average wave, and we are rising andfalling at least fifteen feet."

  "My God!" groaned Stanley. "The _Rosa_ is already heeled with the weightof us. She could never weather a hurricane!"

  The plight of the crew above our heads was as clear to us as though wehad been aboard with them.

  Should they cut the cable, figuring that the lives of the three of uswere certainly not to be set against the thirty on the yacht?

  Should they disconnect the electric control and try to haul us upregardless?

  Or should they try to ride out the storm in spite of being crippled bythe drag of us?

  "I think if I were up there I'd cut us adrift," said Stanley grimly.Both the Professor and myself nodded. "Though," he added hopefully, "mycaptain is a good gambler...."

  * * * * *

  The cable quivered like a live thing under the terrific strain. At eachdownward swoop, before the upswing began, there was a sickening sag.

  "We no longer have a decision to make," said the Professor. "Press thekey, Martin, and God grant we can rise with all this dead weight."

  And at that instant the crew of the _Rosa_ were also relieved of thenecessity for making a decision.

  At the bottom of one of those long, sickening falls there was ajerk--and we continued on down to the ocean floor!

  The sphere rolled over, jumbling the equ
ipment in a tangled mess withthe three of us in the center, bruised and cut. The light snapped off asthe battery connections were torn loose.

  There we lay at the bottom of Penguin Deep, in an inert sphere that wasdead and dark in the surrounding blackness--a coffin of glass to hold usthrough the centuries....

  * * * * *

  "Martin," I heard the Professor's voice after a time. "Stanley--caneither of you move? I'm caught."

  "I'm caught, too," came Stanley's gasping answer. "Something on myleg--feels like it's broken."

  A heavy object was pressing across my body. With an effort I freedmyself and fumbled in the pitch darkness for the other two.

  "Lights first," commanded the Professor. "The pump, you know."

  I did know! Frantically I scrambled in the dark till I located thebatteries. They were right side up and still wired together.

  The air grew rapidly foul with no one at the pump. Panting for breath Iblundered at the task of connecting the light. After what seemed aneternity I accomplished it.

  The light revealed Stanley with an air tank lying across his leg. Themouthpiece of his breathing tube had been forced back over his head,gashing his face in its journey. His face was white with pain.

  The Professor was caught under the heavy bench. I freed him and togetherwe attended to Stanley, finding that his leg wasn't broken but onlybadly bruised.

  The mound-shaped monster, dislodged possibly by the fall, was nowhere tobe seen.

  I resumed work at the pump, the connections of which were so stronglycontrived that they had withstood the shock of the upset.

  For a moment we were content to rest while the air grew purer. Then wewere forced squarely to face our fate.

  * * * * *

  The Professor summed up the facts in a few concise words.

  "We're certainly doomed! Here at the bottom of Penguin Deep we're as outof reach of help as though we were stranded on the moon. We're as goodas dead right now."

  "If we have nothing left to hope for," whispered Stanley after a time,"we might as well close the air valves and get it over with at once. Nouse torturing ourselves...."

  The Professor moistened his lips.

  "It might be wise." He turned to me. "What's your opinion, Martin?"

  But I--I confess I had not the stark courage of these two.

  "No! No!" I cried out. "Let's keep on living as long as the air holdsout. Something might happen--"

  I avoided their eyes as I said it, utterly ashamed of my cowardlyquibbling with death. What in the name of God could possibly happen tohelp us?

  The Professor shrugged dully, and nodded.

  "I feel with Stanley that we ought to get it over in one short stab. Butwe have no right to force you...." His voice trailed off.

  We readjusted our mouthpieces. I turned automatically at the pump; andwe silently awaited the last suffocating moment of our final doom.

  * * * * *

  As before, attracted by the light, a strange assortment of deep-sea lifewriggled and darted about us, swimming lazily among the looped coils andtwists of our cable which had settled down around us.

  Among these were certain fish that resembled great porcupines. Spines afoot and a half long, like living knife blades, protected them from theattacks of other species.

  They were the only things we saw that were not constantly writhing awayfrom the jaws of some hostile monster--the only things that seemed ableto swim about their own affairs without even deigning to watch fordanger.

  Fascinated, I watched the six-foot creatures. Here were we, reasoninghumans, supposed lords of creation, slowly but surely perishing--whileonly a few feet away one of the lowest forms of life could exist inperfect safety and tranquility!

  Then, as I watched them, I seemed to see a difference in some of them.

  The majority of them had two fins just behind the gill slits, typicalfish tails and blunt, sloping heads. But now and then I saw a spinedmonster that was queerly unlike its fellows.

  Instead of two front fins, these unique ones had two vacant round holes.The head looked as though it had forgotten to grow; its place was takenby an eyeless, projecting, shield shaped cap. And there was no tail.

  Glad to find something to distract my half crazed thoughts, I studiedthe nearest of these.

  They moved slower than their tailed and finned brothers, I noticed. Iwondered how they could move at all, lacking in any kind of motive poweras they seemed to be.

  Next instant the secret of their movement was made clear!

  * * * * *

  Out of the empty fin holes of the creature I was studying crept twolong, powerful looking tentacles. But these were not true tentacles.There were no vacuum discs on them, and they moved as though supportedby jointed bones--like arms.

  The arms ended in flat paddles that resembled hands. These threshed thewater in a sort of breast-stroke, propelling the body forward.

  Shortly after the arms had appeared, the spiny head cap was cautiouslyextended a few inches forward from the main shell. Further it wasextended as the head of a turtle might slowly appear from the protectionof its bony case. And under it--

  "Professor!" I screamed wildly. "My God! Look!"

  Both the Professor and Stanley merely stared dully at me. I babbled ofwhat I had seen.

  "A man! A human looking thing, anyway! Arms and a head! A man inside afish's spined hide--like armor!"

  They looked pityingly at me. The Professor laid his hand on my shoulder.

  "Now, now," he soothed, "don't go to pieces--"

  "I tell you I saw it!" I shouted. Then, shrinking from the hystericalloudness of my own voice, I lowered my tone. "Something that looks humanhas occupied some of those prickly, six-foot shells. I saw arms--and aman's head! I swear it!"

  "Nonsense! How could a human being stand the cold, the pressure--"

  Here I happened to glance at the wall of the shell through which thesearchlight shone.

  "Look! See for yourself!"

  * * * * *

  Squarely in the rays of the light showed a head, projecting from one ofthe shells and capped with a wide flat helmet of horned bone.

  There were eyes and nose and mouth placed on one side of that head--aface! There were even tabs of flesh or bony protuberances that resembledears.

  "Curious," muttered the Professor, staring. "It certainly looks humanenough to talk. But it's only a fish, nevertheless. See--in the throatare gill slits."

  "But the eyes! Look at them! They're not the eyes of a fish!"

  And they were not. There was in them a light of reason, of intelligence.Those eyes were roaming brightly over us, observing the light, theequipment, seeming to note our amazement as we crowded to look at it.

  The sphere rocked slightly. Behind the staring, manlike visitor therewas a glimpse of enormous, crocodile jaws and huge, amethyst eyes.Instantly the head and arms receded, leaving an empty-seeming, lifelessshell. An impregnable fortress of spines, the thing drifted slowly awaythrough the twisted loops of cable.

  "It certainly looked like--" began Stanley shakily.

  "The creature was just a fish," said the Professor shaking his head atthe light in Stanley's eyes. "Some sort of giant parasite that inhabitsthe shells of other fish."

  He opened the valve of the last air cylinder and seated himselfresignedly on the bench.

  "We have another half hour or so--"

  All of us suddenly put out our hands to brace ourselves. The sphere hadmoved.

  "Look at the cable!" called Stanley.

  We did so. It was moving, writhing away from us over the bottom asthough abruptly given life of its own. Coil after coil disappeared intothe further gloom.

  At length the cable was straight. The ball moved again--was dragged afew feet along the rocky floor.

  Something--possessed of incredibly vast power--had seized the end of thesteel cabl
e and was reeling us in as a fisherman reels in a trout!

  * * * * *

  Slowly, unsteadily, we slid along the ocean floor. Ahead of us appeareda jagged black wall--a cliff. There was a gloomy hole at its base.Toward this we were being dragged by whatever it was that had caught theend of the cable.

  Helpless, we watched ourselves engulfed by the murky den. In the beam ofthe searchlight we saw that the submarine cavern extended on and on foran unguessable depth. The cable, taut with the strain, stretched aheadout of sight.

  Time had been lost track of during that mysterious, ominous journey. Itwas recalled to us by the state of the air we were breathing.

  The Professor removed his mouthpiece and cast the tube aside.

  "You might as well stop pumping, Martin," he said quietly. "We're done.There's no more air in the flask."

  We stared at each other. Then we shook hands, solemnly, tremulously,taking leave of each other before we departed on that longest of alljourneys....

  The air in that small space was rapidly exhausted. We lay on the floor,laboring for breath, and closed our eyes....

  The Professor, the oldest of the three of us, succumbed first. I heardhis breath whistle stertorously and, glancing at him, saw that he was ina coma. In a moment Stanley had joined him in blessed unconsciousness.

  I could feel myself drifting off.... Hammers beat at my ears.... Daggerspierced my heaving lungs....

  Hazily I could see scores of the bristly, manlike fish when I opened myeyes and glanced through the walls. It was not one monster then, butmany that had brought us to their lair. Abruptly, as though a signal hadbeen given, they all streamed back toward the mouth of the cavern....

  My eyesight dimmed.... The hammers pulsed louder.... A veil descendedover my senses and I knew no more....

  * * * * *

  A soft, sustained roar came to my ears. Through my closed eyelids Icould sense light. A dank, fishy smell came to my nostrils.

  I groaned and moved feebly, finding that I was resting on something softand pleasant.

  Dazedly I opened my eyes and sat up. An exclamation burst from me as Isuddenly remembered what had gone before, and realized that somehow,incredibly, I was still living.

  Feeling like a man who has waked from a nightmarish sleep to findhimself in his tomb, I gazed about.

  I was in a long, lofty rock chamber, the uneven floor of which wascovered with shallow pools of water. The further end was ofsmooth-grained stone that resembled cement. The near end was rough likethe walls; but in it there was a small, symmetrical arch, the mouth of apassage leading away to some other point in the bowels of the earth.

  The place was flooded with clear light that had a rosy tinge. From myposition on the floor I could not see what made the light. It streamedfrom a crevice that extended clear around the cave parallel with thefloor and about twelve feet above it. From this groove, along with thelight, came the soft roaring hiss.

  Beside me was the glass ball, the cover off and lying a few feet awayfrom the opening in the top. There was no trace of Stanley or theProfessor.

  I rose from my couch, a thick, mattresslike affair of soft, pliant hide,and walked feebly toward the small arch in the near end of the cave.

  Even as I approached it I heard footsteps, and voices resounded in someslurring, musical language. Half a dozen figures suddenly came intoview.

  They were men, as human as myself! Indeed, as I gazed at them, I feltinclined to think they were even more human!

  * * * * *

  They were magnificent specimens. The smallest could not have been lessthan six feet three, and all of them were muscular and finelyproportioned. Their faces were arresting in their expression of calmstrength and kindliness. They looked like gods, arrayed in soft, thick,beautifully tanned hides in this rosy tinted hole a mile below theocean's top.

  They stared at me for an instant, then advanced toward me. My face musthave reflected alarm, for the tallest of them held up his hand, palmoutward, in a peaceful gesture.

  The leader spoke to me. Of course the slurred, melodious syllable meantnothing to me. He smiled and indicated that I was to follow him. I didso, hardly aware of what I was doing, my brain reeling in an attempt tograsp the situation.

  How marvelous, how utterly incredible, to find human beings here! Howmany were there? Where had they come from? How had they salvaged us fromPenguin Deep? I gave it up, striding along with my towering guards likea man walking in his sleep.

  At length the low passageway ended, and I exclaimed aloud at what I saw.

  I was looking down a long avenue of buildings, all three stories inheight. There were large door and window apertures, but no doors norwindow panes. In front of each house was a small square with--wonder ofwonders!--a lawn of whitish yellow vegetation that resembled grass. Insome of the lawns were set artistic fountains of carved rock.

  I might have been looking down any prosperous earthly subdivision, savefor the fact that the roofs of the houses were the earth itself, whichthe building walls, in addition to functioning as partitions, served tosupport. Also earthly subdivisions aren't usually illuminated with rosylight that comes softly roaring from jets set in the walls.

  * * * * *

  We were walking toward a more brightly lighted area that showed ahead ofus. On the way we passed intersections where other, similar streetsbranched geometrically away to right and left. These were smaller thanthe one we were on, indicating that ours was Main Street in this bizarresubmarine city.

  Faces appeared at door and window openings to peer at me as we passed.And even in that jumbled moment I had time to realize that these folkcould restrain curiosity better than we can atop the earth. There was nohub-bub, no running out to tag after the queerly dressed foreigner andshout humorous remarks at him.

  We approached the bright spot I had noticed from afar. It was an opensquare, about a city block in area, in the center of which was a royallooking building covered with blazing fragments of crystal and sobrilliantly resplendent with light that it seemed to glow at the heartof a pink fire.

  I was led toward this and in through a wide doorway. As courteously asthough I were a visiting king, I was conducted up a great staircase,down a corridor set with more of the sparkling crystals and into a huge,low room. There my escort bowed and left me.

  * * * * *

  Still feeling that I could not possibly be awake and seeing actualthings, I glanced around.

  In a corner was another of the mattresslike couches made of the thick,soft hide that seemed to be the principal fabric of the place. A fewfeet away was a table set with dishes of food in barbaric profusion.None of the viands looked familiar but all appealed to the appetite. Thefloor was strewn with soft skins, and comfortable, carved benches werescattered about.

  I walked to the window and looked out. Underneath was a plot of thecream colored grass through which ran a tiny stream. This widened atintervals into clear pools beside which were set stone benches. Ahundred yards away was the edge of the square, where the regular, threestoried houses began.

  While I was staring at this unearthly vista, still unable to think withany coherence. I heard my name called. I turned to face Stanley and theProfessor.

  * * * * *

  Both were pale in the rose light, and Stanley limped with the pain ofhis bruised leg: but both had recovered from their partial suffocationas completely as had I.

  "We thought perhaps you'd decided to swim back up to the _Rosa_ andleave us to our fates," said Stanley after we had stopped pumping eachother's arms and had seated ourselves.

  "And I thought--well, I didn't think much of anything," I replied. "Iwas too busy straining my eyesight over the wonders of this city. Didyou ever see anything like it?"

  "We haven't seen it at all, save for a view from the windows," saidStanley. "All we know of the place is that a
while ago we woke up in aroom like this, only much smaller and less lavish. I wonder why you ratethis distinction?"

  I described the streets as I had seen them. (It is impossible for me tothink of them as anything but streets; it would seem as though the rockroof over all would give the appearance of a series of tunnels; but Ihad always the impression of airiness and openness.)

  "Light and heat are furnished by natural gas," said the Professor when Iremarked on the perfection of these two necessities. "That's what makesthe low roaring noise--the thousands of burning jets. But the presenceof gas here isn't as unusual as the presence of air. Where does thatcome from? Through wandering underground mazes, from some cave mouth inthe Fiji Islands to the north? That would indicate that all the eartharound here is honeycombed like a gigantic section of sponge. Iwonder--"

  "Have you any idea how we were rescued?" I interrupted, a littleimpatient of his abstract scientific ponderings.

  "We have," said Stanley. "A woman told us. We woke up to find hernursing us--gorgeous looking thing--finest woman I've ever seen, andI've seen a good many--"

  "She didn't exactly 'tell' us," remarked the Professor with his thinsmile. Women were only interesting to him as biological studies. "Shedrew a diagram that explained it.

  "That tunnel, Martin, was like the outer diving chamber of a submarine.We were hauled in on a big windlass--driven by gas turbines, I think.Once we were inside, a twenty-yard, counterbalanced wall of rock waslowered across the entrance. Then the water was drained out through awell, and into a subterranean body of water that extends under theentire city. And here we are."

  We fell silent. Here we were. But what was going to happen to us amongthese friendly-seeming people; and how--if ever--we were going to getback to the earth's surface, were questions we could not even try toanswer.

  * * * * *

  We ate of the appetizing food laid out on the long table. Shortlyafterward we heard steps in the corridor outside the room.

  A woman entered. She was ravishingly beautiful, tall, slender butsymmetrically rounded. A soft leather robe slanted upward across herbreast to a single shoulder fastening and ended just above her knees ina skirt arrangement. Around her head was a regal circlet of silvery graymetal with a flashing bit of crystal set in the center above her broad,low forehead.

  She smiled at Stanley who looked dazzled and smiled eagerly back.

  She pointed toward the door, signifying that we were to go with her. Wedid so; and were led down the great staircase and to a huge room thattook up half the ground floor of the building. And here we met thenobility of the little kingdom--the upper class that governed theimmaculate little city.

  They were standing along the walls, leaving a lane down the center ofthe room--tall, finely modelled men and women dressed in the singlegarments of soft leather. There were people there with gray hair andwisdom wrinkled faces; but all were alike in being erect of body, firmof bearing and in splendid health.

  They stopped talking as we entered the big room. Our gaze strayed aheaddown the lane toward the further wall.

  Here was a raised dais. On it was a gleaming crystal encrusted throne.And occupying it was the most queenly, exquisitely beautiful woman Ihad ever dreamed about.

  * * * * *

  Woman? She was just a girl in years in spite of her grave and royal air.Her eyes were deep violet. Her hair was black as ebony and gleaming withsudden glints of light. Her skin--

  But she cannot be described. Only a great painter could give a hint ofher glory. Too, I might truthfully be described as prejudiced about herperfections.

  The Queen, for patently she was that, bowed graciously at us. It seemedto me--though I told myself that I was an imaginative fool--that hereyes rested longest on me, and had in them an expression not granted tothe Professor or Stanley.

  She spoke to us a melodious sentence or two, and waved her beautifulhand in which was a short ivory wand, evidently a scepter.

  "She's probably giving us the keys to the city," whispered Stanley. Heedged nearer the fair one who had conducted us. "I sincerely hopethere's room here for us."

  The open lane closed in on us. Men and women crowded about us speakingto us and smiling ruefully as they realized we could not understand. Inoticed that, for some curious reason, they seemed fascinated by thecolor of my hair. Red-haired men were evidently scarce there.

  At length the beauty who had so captured Stanley's fancy, and who seemedto have been appointed a sort of mentor for us, suggested in signlanguage that we might want to return to our quarters.

  It was a welcome suggestion. We were done in by the experiences andemotions that had gripped us since leaving the _Rosa_ such an incrediblyfew hours ago.

  We went back to the second floor. I to my luxurious big apartment andStanley and the Professor to their smaller but equally comfortablerooms.

  * * * * *

  A pleasant period slid by, every waking hour of which was filled withnew experiences.

  The city's name, we found, was Zyobor. It was a perfect littlecommunity. There were artisans and thinkers, artists and laborers--allalike in being physically perfect beyond belief and cultured as no raceon top the ground is cultured.

  As we began to learn the language, more exact details of the practicalmethods of existence were revealed to us.

  The surrounding earth furnished them with building materials, metals andunlimited gas. The sea, so near us and yet so securely walled away, gavethem food. Which warrants a more detailed description.

  We were informed that the manlike, two-armed fishes were the servants ofthese people--domesticated animals, in a sense, only of an extremelyhigh order of intelligence. They were directed by mental telepathy(Every man, woman and child in Zyobor was skilled at thought projection.They conversed constantly, from end to end of the city, by mentaltelepathy.)

  Protected in their spined shells, which they captured from the schoolsof porcupine fish that swarmed in Penguin Deep, they gathered seavegetation from the higher levels and trapped sea creatures. These werebrought into the subterranean chamber where our glass ball now reposed.Then the chamber was emptied of water and the food was borne to thecity.

  The vast army of mound-fish provided the bulk of the population's food,and also furnished the thick, pliant skin they used for clothing anddrapes. They were cultivated as we cultivate cattle--an ominous herd, tobe handled with care and approached by the fish-servants with duecaution.

  Thus, with all reasonable wants satisfied, with talent and brains todesign beautiful surroundings, lighted and warmed by inexhaustiblenatural gas, these fortunate beings lived their sheltered lives intheir rosy underground world.

  At least I thought their lives were sheltered then. It was only later,when talking to the beautiful young Queen, that I learned of the dreadmenace that had begun to draw near to them just a short time before wewere rescued....

  * * * * *

  My first impression, when we had entered the throne room that first day,that the Queen had regarded me more intently than she had Stanley or theProfessor, had been right. It pleased her to treat me as an equal, andto give me more of her time than was granted to any other person in thecity.

  Every day, for a growing number of hours, we were together in herapartment. She personally instructed me in the language, and such was mydesire to talk to this radiant being that I made an apt pupil.

  Soon I had progressed enough to converse with her--in a stilted,incorrect way--on all but the most abstract of subjects. It was a finelanguage. I liked it, as I liked everything else about Zyobor. The upperearth seemed far away and well forgotten.

  Her name, I found, was Aga. A beautiful name....

  "How did your kingdom begin?" I asked her one day, while we were sittingbeside one of the small pools in the gardens. We were close together.Now and then my shoulder touched hers, and she did not draw away.

  "I know not," sh
e replied. "It is older than any of our ancient recordscan say. I am the three hundred and eleventh of the present reigningline."

  "And we are the first to enter thy realm from the upper world?"

  "Thou art the first."

  "There is no other entrance but the sea-way into which we were drawn?"

  "There is no other entrance."

  * * * * *

  I was silent, trying to realize the finality of my residence here.

  At the moment I didn't care much if I never got home!

  "In the monarchies we know above," I said finally, avoiding her violeteyes, "it is not the custom for the queen--or king--to reign alone. Aconsort is chosen. Is it not so here? Has thou not, among thy nobles,some one thou hast destined--"

  I stopped, feeling that if she dismissed me in anger and never spoke tome again the punishment would be just.

  But she wasn't angry. A lovely tide of color stained her cheeks. Herlips parted, and she turned her head. For a long time she said nothing.Then she faced me, with a light in her eyes that sent the blood racingin my veins.

  "I have not yet chosen," she murmured. "Mayhap soon I shall tell theewhy."

  She rose and hurried back toward the palace. But at the door shepaused--and smiled at me in a way that had nothing whatever to do withqueenship.

  * * * * *

  As the time sped by the three of us settled into the routine of the cityas though we had never known of anything else.

  The Professor spent most of his time down by the sea chamber where thefood was dragged in by the intelligent servant-fish.

  He was in a zoologist's paradise. Not a creature that came in there hadever been catalogued before. He wrote reams of notes on the parchmentpaper used by the citizens in recording their transactions. Particularlywas he interested in the vast, lowly mound-fish.

  One time, when I happened to be with him, the receding waters of thechamber disclosed the body of one of the odd herdsmen of these deep seaflocks. Then the Professor's elation knew no bounds. We hurried forwardto look at it.

  "It is a typical fish," puzzled the Professor when we had cut the bodyout of its usurped armor. "Cold blooded, adapted to the chill andpressure of the deeps. There are the gills I observed before ... yet itlooks very human."

  It surely did. There were the jointed arms, and the rudimentary hands.Its forehead was domed; and the brain, when dissected, proved muchlarger than the brain of a true fish. Also its bones were not those of amammal, but the cartilagenous bones of a fish. It was not quite six feetlong; just fitted the horny shell.

  "But its intelligence!" fretted the Professor, glorying in his inabilityto classify this marvelous specimen. "No fish could ever attain suchmental development. Evolution working backward from human to reptile andthen fish--or a new freak of evolution whereby a fish on a short cuttoward becoming human?" He sighed and gave it up. But more reams ofnotes were written.

  "Why do you take them?" I asked. "No one but yourself will ever seethem."

  * * * * *

  He looked at me with professorial absent-mindedness.

  "I take them for the fun of it, principally. But perhaps, sometime, wemay figure out a way of getting them up. My God! Wouldn't my learnedbrother scientists be set in an uproar!"

  He bent to his observations and dissections again, cursing now and thenat the distortion suffered by the specimens when they were released fromthe deep sea pressure and swelled and burst in the atmospheric pressurein the cave.

  Stanley was engrossed in a different way. Since the moment he laid eyeson her, he had belonged to the stately woman who had first nursed himback to consciousness. Mayis was her name.

  From shepherding the three of us around Zyobor and explaining itsmarvels to us, she had taken to exclusive tutorship of Stanley. AndStanley fairly ate it up.

  "You, the notorious woman hater," I taunted him one time, "the warybachelor--to fall at last. And for a woman of another world--almost ofanother planet! I'm amazed!"

  "I don't know why you should be amazed," said he stiffly.

  "You've been telling me ever since I was a kid that women were alluseless, all alike--"

  "I find I was mistaken," he interrupted. "They aren't all alike. There'sonly one Mayis. She is--different."

  "What do you talk about all the time? You're with her constantly."

  "I'm not with her any more than you're with the Queen," he shot back atme. "What do you find to talk about?"

  That shut me up. He went to look for Mayis; and I wandered to the royalapartments in search of Aga.

  * * * * *

  In the first days of our friendship I had several times surprised inAga's eyes a curious expression, one that seemed compounded of despair,horror and resignation.

  I had seen that same expression in the eyes of the nobles of late, andin the faces of all the people I encountered in the streets--who, Imustn't forget to add here, never failed to treat me with a deferencethat was as intoxicating as it was inexplicable.

  It was as though some terrible fate hovered over the populace, somedreadful doom about which nothing could be done. No one put into wordsany fears that might confirm that impression; but continually I got theidea that everybody there went about in a state of attempting to livenormally and happily while life was still left--before some awful,wholesale death descended on them.

  At last, from Aga, I learned the fateful reason.

  But first--a confession that was hastened by the knowledge of the fateof the city--I learned from her something that changed all of life forme.

  * * * * *

  We were surrounded by the luxury of her private apartment. We sat on alow divan, side by side. I wanted, more than anything I had ever wantedbefore, to put my arms around her. But I dared not. One does not makelove easily to a queen, the three hundred and eleventh of a proud line.

  And then, as maids have done often in all countries, and, perhaps, onall planets, she took the initiative herself.

  "We have a curious custom in Zyobor of which I have not yet told thee,"she murmured. "It concerns the kings of Zyobor. The color of theirhair."

  She glanced up at my own carrot-top, and then averted her gaze.

  "For all of our history our kings have had--red hair. On the fewoccasions when the line has been reduced to a lone queen, as in my case,the red-haired men of the kingdom have striven together in public combatto determine which was most powerful and brave. The winner became theQueen's consort."

  "And in this case?" I asked, my heart beginning to pound madly.

  "In my case, my lord, there is to be no--no striving. When I was a childour only two red-haired males died, one by accident, one by sickness.Now there are none others but infants, none of eligible age. But--by amiracle--thou--"

  She stopped; then gazed up at me from under long, gold flecked lashes.

  "I was afraid ... I was doomed to die ... alone...."

  * * * * *

  It was after I had replied impetuously to this, that she told me of theterror that was about to engulf all life in the beautiful undersea city.

  "Thou hast wonder, perhaps, why I should be forward enough to tell theethis instead of waiting for thine own confession first," she faltered."Know, then--the reason is the shortness of the time we are fated tospend together. We shall belong each to the other only a little while.Then shall we belong to death! And I--when I knew the time was to be sobrief--"

  And I listened with growing horror to her account of the enemy that wasadvancing toward us with every passing moment.

  * * * * *

  About twenty miles away, in the lowest depression of Penguin Deep, liveda race of monsters which the people of Aga's city called Quabos.

  The Quabos were grim beings that were more intelligent than Aga'sfish-servants--even, she thought, more intelligent than humansthemse
lves. They had existed in their dark hole, as far as the Zyobitesknew, from the beginning of time.

  Through the countless centuries they had constructed for themselves avast series of dens in the rock. There they had hidden away from thedeep-sea dangers. They, too, preyed on the mound-fish; but as there wasplenty of food for all, the Zyobites had never paid much attention tothem.

  But--just before we had appeared, there had come about a subterraneanquake that changed the entire complexion of matters in Penguin Deep.

  The earthquake wiped out the elaborately burrowed sea tunnels of theQuabos, killing half of them at a blow and driving the rest out into theunfriendly openness of the deep.

  Now this was fatal to them. They were not used to physical self defense.During the thousands of years of residence in their sheltered burrowsthey had become utterly unable to exist when exposed to the primevaldangers of the sea. It was as though the civilization-softened citizensof New York should suddenly be set down in a howling wilderness withnothing but their bare hands with which to contrive all the necessitiesof a living.

  * * * * *

  Such was the situation at the time Stanley, the Professor and myselfarrived in Zyobor.

  The Quabos must find an immediate haven or perish. On the ocean bottomthey were threatened by the mound-fish. In the higher levels they werein danger from almost everything that swam: few things were sodefenceless as themselves after their long inertia.

  Their answer was Zyobor. There, in perfect security, only to be reachedby the diving chamber that could be sealed at will by the twenty-yard,counterbalanced lock, the Quabos would be even more protected than intheir former runways.

  So--they were working day and night to invade Aga's city!

  "But Aga," I interrupted impulsively at this point. "If these monstersare fishes, how could they live here in air--"

  I stopped as my objection answered itself before she could reply.

  They would not have to live in air to inhabit Zyobor. They wouldinundate the city--flood that peaceful, beautiful place with the awfulpressure of the lowest depths!

  That thought, in turn, suggested to me that every building in Zyoborwould be swept flat if subjected suddenly to the rush of the sea. Thegreat low cavern, without the support of the myriad walls, wouldprobably collapse--trapping the invading Quabos and leaving the restwithout a home once more.

  But Aga answered this before I could voice it.

  The Quabos had foreseen that point. They were tunneling slowly butsurely toward the city from a point about half a mile from the divingchamber. And as they advanced, they blocked up the passageway behindthem at intervals, drilled down to the great underground sea that laybeneath all this section, and drained a little of the water away.

  * * * * *

  In this manner they lightened, bit by bit, the enormous weight of theocean depths. When the city was finally reached, not only would it beensured against sudden destruction but the Quabos themselves would havebecome accustomed to the difference in pressure. Had they goneimmediately from the accustomed press of Penguin Deep into theatmosphere of Zyobor, they would have burst into bits. As it was theywould be able to flood the city slowly, without injury to themselves.

  "Now thou knowest our fate," concluded Aga with a shudder. "Zyobor willbe a part of the great waters. We ourselves shall be food for thesemonsters...." She faltered and stopped.

  "But this cannot be!" I exclaimed, clenching my fists impotently. "There_must_ be something we can do; some way--"

  "There is nothing to be done. Our wisest men have set themselvessleeplessly to the task of defence. There is no defence possible."

  "We can't simply sit here and wait! Your people are wonderful, but thisis no time for resignation. Send for my two friends, Aga. We will have acouncil of war, we four, and see if we can find a way!"

  She shrugged despairfully, started to speak, then sent in quest ofStanley and the Professor.

  * * * * *

  They as well as myself, had had no idea of the menace that crept nearerus with each passing hour. They were dumbfounded, horrified to learn ofthe peril. We sat awhile in silence, realizing our situation to thefull.

  Then the Professor spoke:

  "If only we could see what these things look like! It might help inplanning to defeat them."

  "That can be done with ease," said Aga. "Come."

  We went with her to the gardens and approached the nearest pool.

  "My fish-men are watching the Quabos constantly. They report to me bytelepathy whenever I send my thoughts their way. I will let you see, onthe pool, the things they are now seeing."

  She stared intently at the sheet of water. And gradually, as we watched,a picture appeared--a picture that will never fade from my memory in anysmallest detail.

  The Quabos had huddled for protection into a large cave at the foot ofthe cliff outside Zyobor. There were a great many Quabos, and the cavewas relatively confining. Now we saw, through the eyes of the spineprotected outpost of the Queen, these monstrous refugees crowdedtogether like sheep.

  The watery cavern was a creeping mass of viscous tentacles, enormousstaring eyes and globular heads. The cave was paved three deep with thehorrible things, and they were attached to the it walls and roof insolid blocks.

  "My God!" whispered Stanley. "There are thousands of them!"

  * * * * *

  There were. And that they were in distress was evident.

  The layers on the floor were weaving and shifting constantly as thebottom creatures struggled feebly to rise to the top of the mass and berelieved of the weight of their brothers. Also they were famished....

  One of the blood red, gigantic worms floated near the cave entrance.Like lightning the nearest Quabos darted after it. In a moment the preywas torn to bits by the ravenous monsters.

  The other side of the story was immediately portrayed to us.

  With the emerging of the reckless Quabos, a sea-serpent appeared fromabove and snapped up three of their number. Evidently the huge serpentconsidered them succulent tidbits, and made it its business to wait nearthe cave and avail itself of just such rash chance-taking as this.

  While we watched the nightmare scene, a Quabo disengaged itself from theparent mass and floated upward into the clear, giving us a chance to seemore distinctly what the creatures looked like.

  There was a black, shiny head as large as a sugar barrel. In this wereeyes the size of dinner plates, and gleaming with a cold, hellishintelligence. Four long, twining tentacles were attached directly tothe head. Dotted along these were rudimentary sucker discs, that hadevidently become atrophied by the soft living of thousands of thecreature's ancestors.

  As though emerging from the pool into which we were gazing, the monsterdarted viciously at us. At once it disappeared: the fish-servant throughwhose eyes we were seeing all this had evidently retreated from theapproach; although, protected by its spines, it could not have been inactual danger.

  "How dost thou know of the tunneling?" I asked Aga. "Thy fish-men cannotbe present there, in the rear of the tunnel, to report."

  "My artisans have knowledge of each forward move," she answered. "I willshow thee."

  * * * * *

  We walked back to the palace and descended to a smooth-lined vault.There we saw a great stone shaft sunk down into the rock of the floor.On this was a delicate vibration recording instrument of some sort, witha needle that quivered rhythmically over several degrees of an arc.

  "This tells of each move of the Quabos," said Aga. "It also tells uswhere they will break through the city wall. How near to us are they,Kilor?" she asked an attendant who was studying the dial, and who hadbowed respectfully to Aga and myself as we approached.

  "They will break into the city in four rixas at the present rate ofadvance, Your Majesty."

  Four rixas! In a little over sixteen days, as we count ti
me, the city ofZyobor would be delivered into the hands--or, rather, tentacles--of theslimy, starving demons that huddled in the cavern outside!

  Somberly we followed Aga back to her apartment.

  * * * * *

  "As thou seest," she murmured, "there is nothing to be done. We can onlyresign ourselves to the fate that nears us, and enjoy as much as may bethe few remaining rixas...."

  She glanced at me.

  The Professor's dry, cool voice cut across our wordless, engrossedcommunion.

  "I don't think we'll give up quite as easily as all that. We can atleast try to outwit our enemies. If it does nothing else for us, theeffort can serve to distract our minds."

  He drew from his pocket a sheet of parchment and the stub of his lastremaining pencil. His fingers busied themselves apparently idly in thetracing of geometric lines.

  "Looking ahead to the exact details of our destruction," he musedcoolly, "we see that our most direct and ominous enemy is the seaitself. When the city is flooded, we drown--and later the Quabos canenter at will."

  He drew a few more lines, and marked a cross at a point in the outer rimof the diagram.

  "What will happen? The Quabos force through the last shell of the citywall. The water from their tunnel floods into Zyobor. But--and mark mewell--_only_ the water from the tunnel! The outer end, remember, isblocked off in their pressure-reducing process. The vast body of the seaitself cannot immediately be let in here because the Quabos must take aslong a time to re-accustom themselves to its pressure as they did towork out of it."

  He spread the parchment sheet before us.

  "Is this a roughly accurate plan of the city?" he asked Aga.

  She inclined her lovely head.

  "And this," indicating the cross, "is the spot where the Quabos willbreak in?"

  Again she nodded, shuddering.

  "Then tell me what you think of this," said the Professor.

  * * * * *

  And he proceeded to sketch out a plan so simple, and yet so seeminglyefficient, that the rest of us gazed at him with wordless admiration.

  "My friend, my friend," whispered Aga at last, "thou hast saved us.Thou art the guardian hero of Zyobor--"

  "Not too fast, Your Highness," interrupted the Professor with his frostysmile. "I shall be much surprised if this little scheme actually savesthe city. We may find the rock so thick there that our task ishopeless--though I imagine the Quabos picked a thin section for help intheir own plans."

  A vague look came into his eyes.

  "I must certainly get my hands on one of these monsters ... superhumanlyintelligent fish ... marvelous--akin to the octopus, perhaps?"

  He wandered off, changed from the resourceful schemer to the dreamy manof scientific abstractions.

  The Queen gazed after him with wonder in her eyes.

  "A great man," she murmured, "but is he--a little mad?"

  "No, only a little absent-minded," I replied. Then, "Come on, Stanley.We'll round up every able bodied citizen in Zyobor and get to work. Isuppose they have some kind of rock drilling machinery here?"

  They had. And they strangely resembled our own rock drills: revolvingmetal shafts, driven by gas turbines, tipped with fragments of the samecrystal that glittered so profusely in the palace walls. Another proofthat practically every basic, badly needed tool had been invented againand again, in all lands and times, as the necessity for it arose.

  With hundreds of the powerful men of Zyobor working as closely togetheras they could without cramping each others movements, and with the wholecity resounding to the roar of the machinery, we labored at the defencethat might possibly check the advance of the hideous Quabos.

  And with every breath we drew, waking or sleeping, we realized that thecold blooded, inhuman invaders had crept a fraction of an inch closer intheir tunneling.

  The Quabos against the Zyobites! Fish against man! Two diametricallyopposed species of life in a struggle to the death! Which of us wouldsurvive?

  * * * * *

  The hour of the struggle approached. Every soul in Zyobor moved in adaze, with strained face and fear haunted eyes. Their proficiency inmental telepathy was a curse to them now: every one carried constantly,transmitted from the brains of the servant-fish outposts, a thoughtpicture of that outer cavern in the murky depths of which writhed thethousands of crowding Quabos. Each mind in Zyobor was in continualtorment.

  Spared that trouble, at least, Stanley and the Professor and I walkeddown to the fortification we had so hastily contrived. It was finished.And none too soon: the vibration indicator in the palace vault told usthat only two feet of rock separated us from the burrowing monsters!

  The Professor's scheme had been to cut a long slot down through the rockfloor of the city to the roof of the vast, mysterious body of waterbelow.

  This slot was placed directly in front of the spot in the city wallwhere the Quabos were about to emerge. As they forced through the lastshell of rock, the deluge of water, instead of drowning the city, wassupposed to drain down the oblong vent. Any Quabos that were too nearthe tunnel entrance would be swept down too.

  * * * * *

  In silence we approached the edge of the great trough and stared down.

  There was a stratum of black granite, fortunately only about thirty feetthick at this point, and then--the depths! A low roar reached our earsfrom far, far beneath us. A steady blast of ice cold air fanned upagainst us.

  The Professor threw down a large fragment of rock. Seconds elapsed andwe heard no splash. The unseen surface was too far below for the noiseof the rock's fall to carry on up to us.

  "The mystery of this ball of earth on which we live!" murmured theProfessor. "Here is this enormous underground body of water. We are farbelow sea level. Where, then, is it flowing? What does it empty into?Can it be that our planet is honeycombed with such hollows as this weare in? And is each inhabited by some form of life?"

  He sighed and shook his head.

  "The thought is too big! For, if that were true, wouldn't the seas bedrained from the surface of the earth should an accidental passage beformed from the ocean bed down to such a giant river as this beneath us?How little we know!"

  * * * * *

  The wild clamor of an alarm bell interrupted his musing. From all thecity houses poured masses of people, to form in solid lines behind thelarge well.

  In addition to men, there were many women in those lines, tall andstrong, ready to stand by their mates as long as life was left them.There were children, too, scarcely in their teens, prepared to fight forthe existence of the race. Every able-bodied Zyobite was musteredagainst the cold-blooded Things that pressed so near.

  The arms of these desperate fighters were pitiful compared to our ownwar weapons. With no need in the city for fighting engines, none hadever been developed. Now the best that could be had was a sort of ax,used for dissecting the mound-fish, and various knives fashioned forpeaceful purposes.

  Again the bell clamored forth a warning, this time twice repeated. Everyhand grasped its weapon. Every eye went hopefully to the hole in thefloor on which our immediate fate depended, then valiantly to thesection of wall above it.

  This quivered perceptibly. A heavy, pointed instrument broke through;was withdrawn; and a hissing stream of water spurted out.

  The Quabos were about to break in upon us!

  * * * * *

  With a crash that made the solid rock tremble, a section of the wallcollapsed. It was the top half of the end of the Quabos' tunnel. Theyhad so wrought that the lower half stayed in place--a thing we did nothave time to recognize as significant until later.

  A solid wall of water, in which writhed dozens of tentacled monsters,was upon us, and we had time for nothing but action.

  The ditch had of necessity been placed directly under the Quabos'entrance. The first rush
of water carried half over it. With it wereborne scores of the cold-blooded invaders.

  In an instant we were standing knee deep in a torrent that tore at ourfooting, while we hacked frantically with knives and axes at the slimytentacles that reached up to drag us under.

  A soft, horrible mass swept against my legs. I was overthrown. Atentacle slithered around my neck and constricted viciously like alength of rotten cable. I sawed at it with the long, notched blade Icarried. Choking for air, I felt the pressure relax and scrambled to myknees.

  Two more tentacles went around me, one winding about my legs and theother crushing my waist. Two huge eyes glared fiendishly at me.

  I plunged the knife again and again into the barrel-shaped head. It didnot bleed: a few drops of thin, yellowish liquid oozed from the woundsbut aside from this my slashing seemed to make no impression.

  In a frenzy I defended myself against the nightmare head that waswinding surely toward me. Meanwhile I devoted every energy to keeping onmy feet. If I ever went under again--

  It seemed to me that the creature was weakening. With redoubled fury Ihacked at the spidery shape. And gradually, when it seemed as though Icould not withstand its weight and crushing tentacles another second,it slipped away and floated off on the shallow, roaring rapids.

  * * * * *

  For a moment I stood there, catching my breath and regaining mystrength. Shifting, terrible scenes flashed before my eyes.

  A tall Zyobite and an almost equally stalwart woman were both caught byone gigantic Quabo which had a tentacle around the throat of each. Theman and woman were chopping at the viscous, gruesome head. One of theThing's eyes was gashed across, giving it a fearsome, blind appearance.It heaved convulsively, and the three struggling figures toppled intothe water and were swirled away.

  The Professor was almost buried by a Quabo that had all four of itstentacles wound about him. As methodically as though he were in alaboratory dissecting room, he was cutting the slippery lengths away,one by one, till the fourth parted and left him free.

  A giant Zyobite was struggling with two of the monsters. He had an ax ineach hand, and was whirling them with such strength and rapidity thatthey formed flashing circles of light over his head. But he was torndown at last and borne off by the almost undiminished flood that gushedfrom the tunnel.

  And now, without warning, a heavy soft body flung against my back, andthe accident most to be dreaded in that melee occurred.

  I was knocked off my feet! My head was pressed under the water. On mychest was a mass that was yielding but immovable, soft but terriblystrong. Animated, firm jelly! I had no chance to use my knife. My armswere held powerless against my sides.

  Water filled my nose and mouth. I strangled for breath, heaving at theimplacable weight that pinned me helpless. Bright spots swirled beforemy eyes. There was a roaring in my ears. My lungs felt as though filledwith molten lead. I was drowning....

  * * * * *

  Vaguely I felt the pressure loosen at last. An arm--with good, solidflesh and bone in it--slipped under my shoulders and dragged me up intothe air.

  "Don't you know--can't drown a fish--holding it under water?" panted avoice.

  I opened my eyes and saw Stanley, his face pale with the thrill ofbattle, his chin jutting forward in a berserk line, his eyes snappingwith eager, wary fires.

  I grinned up at him and he slapped me on the back--almost completing thechoking process started by the salt water I'd inhaled.

  "That's better. Now--at it again!"

  I don't remember the rest of the tumult. The air seemed filled withloathsome tentacles and bright metal blades. It was a confused eternityuntil the decreased volume of water in the tunnel gave us a respite....

  As the tunnel slowly emptied the pressure dropped, and the incomingflood poured squarely into the trough instead of half over it. From thatmoment there was very little more for us to do.

  Our little army--with about a fourth of its number gone--had only toguard the ditch and see that none of the Quabos caught the edges as theyhurtled out of their passage.

  For perhaps ten minutes longer the water poured from the break in thewall, with now and then a doomed Quabo that goggled horribly at us as itwas dashed down the hole in the floor to whatever awesome depths werebeneath.

  Then the flow ceased. The last oleaginous corpse was pushed over theedge. And the city, save for an ankle-deep sheet of water that wasrapidly draining out the vents in the streets, presented its formerappearance.

  The Zyobites leaned wearily against convenient walls and began tellingthemselves how fortunate they were to have been spared what seemedcertain destruction.

  * * * * *

  The Professor didn't share in the general feeling of triumph.

  "Don't be so childishly optimistic!" he snapped as I began tocongratulate him on the victory his ditch had given us. "Our troublesaren't over yet!"

  "But we've proved that we can stand up to them in a hand-to-tentaclefight--"

  His thin, frosty smile appeared.

  "One of those devils, normally, is stronger than any three men. The onlyreason all of us weren't destroyed at once is that they were slowlysuffocating as they fought. The foot and a half of water we were inwasn't enough to let their gills function properly. Now if they wereable to stand right up to us and not be handicapped by lack of water tobreathe ... I wonder.... Is that part of their plan? Is there any waythey could manage ...?"

  "But, Professor," I argued, "it's all over, isn't it? The tunnel isemptied, and all the Quabos are--"

  "The tunnel isn't emptied. It's only _half_ emptied! I'll show you."

  He called Stanley; and the three of us went to the break.

  "See," the Professor pointed out to us as we approached the jagged hole,"the Quabos only drilled through the top half of their tunnel ending.That means that the tunnel still has about four feet of water init--enough to accommodate a great many of the monsters. There may befour or five hundred of them left in there; possibly more. We can expectrenewed hostilities at any time!"

  "But won't it be just a repetition of the first battle?" remonstratedStanley. "In the end they'll be killed or will drown for lack of wateras these first ones did."

  * * * * *

  The Professor shook his head.

  "They're too clever to do that twice. The very fact that they kept halftheir number in reserve shows that they have some new trick to try.Otherwise they'd all have come at once in one supreme effort."

  He paced back and forth.

  "They're ingenious, intelligent. They're fighting for their veryexistence. They must have figured out some way of breathing in air, someway of attacking us on a more even basis in case that first rush wentwrong. What can it be?"

  "I think you're borrowing trouble before it is necessary--" I began,smiling at his elaborate, scientific pessimism. But I was interrupted bya startled shout from Stanley.

  "Professor Martin," he cried, pointing to the tunnel mouth. "Look!"

  Like twin snakes crawling up to sun themselves, two tentacles hadappeared over the rock rim. They hooked over the edge; and leisurely,with grim surety of invulnerability, the barrel-like head of a Quabobalanced itself on the ledge and glared at us.

  * * * * *

  For a moment we stared, paralyzed, at the Thing. And, during that momentit squatted there, as undistressed as though the air were its naturalelement, its gills flapping slowly up and down supplying it with oxygen.

  The thing that held us rooted to the spot with fearful amazement was thefantastic device that permitted it to be almost as much at home in airas in water.

  Over the great, globular head was set an oval glass shell. This wasfilled with water. A flexible metal tube hung down from the rear.Evidently it carried a constant stream of fresh water. As we gazed wesaw intermittent trickles emerging from the bottom of the crystallinecase.
r />   Point for point the creature's equipment was the same as divingequipment used by men, only it was exactly opposite in function. Ahelmet that enabled a fish to breathe in air, instead of a helmet toallow a man to breathe in water!

  Stanley was the first of us to recover from the shock of this spectacle.He faced about and raised his voice in shouts of warning to the restingZyobites. For other glass encased monsters had appeared beside thefirst, now.

  One by one, in single file like a line of enormous marching insects,they crawled down the wall and humped along on their tentacles--aroundthe ditch and toward us!

  * * * * *

  The deadly infallibility of that second attack!

  The Quabos advanced on us like armored tanks bearing down on defencelesssavages. Their glass helmets, in addition to containing water for theirbreathing, protected them from our knives and axes. We were utterlyhelpless against them.

  They marched in ranks about twenty yards apart, each rank helping theone in front to carry the cumbersome water-hoses which trailed back tothe central water supply in the tunnel.

  Their movements were slow, weighted down as they were by the great glasshelmets, but they were appallingly sure.

  We could not even retard their advance, let alone stop it. Here were nosuffocating, faltering creatures. Here were beings possessed of theirfull vigor, each one equal to three of us even as the Professor hadconjectured. Their only weak points were their tentacles which trailedoutside the glass cases. But these they kept coiled close, so that toreach them and hack at them we had to step within range of theirterrific clutches.

  The Zyobites fought with the valor of despair added to their inherentnoble bravery. Man after man closed with the monstrous, armoredThings--only to be seized and crushed by the weaving tentacles.

  Occasionally a terrific blow with an ax would crack one of the glasshelmets. Then the denuded Quabo would flounder convulsively in the airtill it drowned. But there were all too few of these individualvictories. The main body of the Quabos, rank on rank, dragging theirwater-hose behind them, came on with the steadiness of a machine.

  * * * * *

  Slowly we were driven back down the broad street and toward the palace.As we retreated, old people and children came from the houses and wentwith us, leaving their dwellings to the mercy of the monsters.

  A block from the palace we bunched together and, by sheer mass andferocity, actually stopped the machinelike advance for a few moments.Miscellaneous weapons had been brought from the houses--sledges, stonebenches, anything that might break the Quabos' helmets--and handed to usin silence by the noncombatants.

  Somebody tugged at my sleeve. Looking down I saw a little girl. She haddragged a heavy metal bar out to the fray and was trying to get somefighter's attention and give it to him.

  I seized the formidable weapon and jumped at the nearest Quabo, aten-foot giant whose eyes were glinting gigantically at me through thedistorting curve of the glass.

  Disregarding the clutching tentacles entirely, I swung the bar againstthe helmet. It cracked. I swung again and it fell in fragments, spillingthe gallons of water it had contained.

  The tentacles wound vengefully around me, but in a few seconds theyrelaxed as the thing gasped out its life in the air.

  * * * * *

  I turned to repeat the process on another if I could, and found myselffacing the Queen. Her head was held bravely high, though the violet ofher eyes had gone almost black with fear and repulsion of the terriblethings we fought.

  "Aga!" I cried. "Why art thou here! Go back to the palace at once!"

  "I came to fight beside thee," she answered composedly, though herdelicate lips quivered. "All is lost, it seems. So shall I die besidethee."

  I started to reply, to urge her again to seek the safety of the palace.But by now the deadly advance of the tentacled demons had begun oncemore.

  Fighting vainly, the population of Zyobor was swept into the palacegrounds, then into the building itself.

  Men, women and children huddled shoulder to shoulder in the crampingquarters. An ironic picture came to me of the crowding masses of Quabosstuffed into the protection of the outer cave, waiting the outcome ofthe fight being waged by their warriors. Here were we in a similarcircumstance, waiting for the battle to be decided. Though there waslittle doubt in the minds of any of us as to what the outcome would be.

  Guards, the strongest men of the city, were stationed with sledges atthe doors and windows. The Quabos, able only to enter one at a time,halted a moment and there was a badly needed breathing spell.

  * * * * *

  "We've got to find some drastic means of defence," said the Professor,"or we won't last another three hours."

  "If you asked me, I'd say we couldn't last another three hours anyway,"replied Stanley with a shrug. "These fish have out-thought us!"

  "Nonsense! There may still be a way--"

  "A brace of machine-guns...." I murmured hopefully.

  "You might as well wish for a dozen light cannon!" snapped theProfessor. "Please try to concentrate, and see if any effective weaponsuggests itself to you--something more available at the moment thanmachine-guns."

  In silence the three of us racked our brains for a means of defence.Aga, leaving for a time the task of soothing her more hystericalsubjects, came quietly over to us and sat on the bench beside me.

  Frankly I could think of nothing. To my mind we were surely doomed. Whatarms could possibly be contrived at such short notice? What weaponcould be called forth to be effective against the thick glass helmets?

  But as I glanced at Stanley I saw his face set in a new expression ashis thoughts took a turn that suggested possible salvation.

  "Glass," he muttered. "Glass. What destroys it? Sharp blows ... certainacids ... variation in temperature ... heat and cold.... That's it!_That's it!_"

  He turned excitedly to the Queen.

  "I think we have it! At least it's worth trying. If there is any tubingaround...." He stopped as he realized he was talking in English, andresumed stiltedly in Aga's own language.

  "Hast thou, in the palace, any lengths of pipe like to that which theQuabos drag behind them?"

  "No ..." Aga began, her eyes round and wondering. Then she interruptedherself. "Ah, yes! There is! In a vault near that of Kilor's there is agreat spool of it. He had it fashioned to carry air for one of hisexperiments--"

  "Come along!" cried Stanley. "I'll explain what I have in mind while wedig up this coil of hose."

  * * * * *

  A score of Zyobite workmen were gathered at once. The length ofhose--made of some linen-like fabric of tough, shredded sea-weed andcovered with a flexible metal sheath--was cut into three pieces eachabout fifty yards long. These were connected to three of the largest gasvents of the palace.

  Stanley, the Professor and I each took an end. And we prepared to fight,with fire, the creatures of water.

  "It ought to work," Stanley, repeated several times as though trying toreassure himself as well as us. "It's simple enough: the water in thosehelmets is ice cold: if fire is suddenly squirted against them they'llcrack with the uneven expansion."

  "Unless," retorted the Professor, "their glass has some special heat andcold resisting quality."

  Stanley shrugged.

  "It may well have some such properties. How such creatures can makeglass at all is beyond me!"

  Dragging our hose to the big front entrance of the palace, and warningthe crowded people to keep their feet clear of it, we prepared to testout the efficiency of this, our last resource against the enemy.

  * * * * *

  For an instant we paused just inside the doorway, looking out at theugly, glassed-in Things that were massing to attack us again.

  The ranks of Quabos had closed in now, till they extended down thestreet for several hundred yards in clos
e formation--a forest of greatpulpy heads with huge eyes that glared unblinkingly at the glittering,pink building that was their objective.

  "Light up!" ordered Stanley, setting an example by touching his hosenozzle to the nearest wall jet. A spurt of fire belched from his hose,streaming out for four or five feet in a solid red cone. The Professorand I touched off our torches; and we moved slowly out the door towardthe ranks of Quabos.

  "Don't try to save yourselves from their tentacles," advised Stanley."Walk right up to them, direct the fire against their helmets, and damnthe consequences. If they grip too hard you can always play the torch ontheir tentacles till they think better of it."

  The Quabos' front line humped grimly toward us, unblinking eyes glaring,tentacles writhing warily, little spurts of used water trickling fromtheir helmets.

  "Keep together," warned Stanley, "so that if any one of us loses hislight he can get it from the hose of one of the other two. And--_Herethey come!_"

  There was no more time for commands. The Quabos in front, supplied withslack in their hoses by those behind, leaped at us with incredibleagility. We fell back a step so that none should get at our backs.

  The last stand was begun.

  * * * * *

  It was not a battle so much as a series of fierce duels. The Quabosrealized their new danger instantly, and devoted all their efforts toextinguishing our torches. We parried and thrust with the flaming hosesin an equally desperate effort to prevent it.

  One of them scuttled toward me like a great crab. A tentacle dartedtoward my right arm. Another was pressed against the nozzle. There was asickening smell--and the tentacle was jerked spasmodically away.

  I caught the hose in my left hand and turned the fiery jet against thewater-filled helmet.

  A shout of savage exultation broke from my lips. Hardly, had the flametouched the glass before it cracked! There was a report like a pistolshot--and a miniature Niagara of water and splintered glass poured at myfeet!

  The tentacle around my arm tightened, then relaxed. The monstershuddered in a convulsive heap on the ground.

  I went toward the next one, swinging the flaring hose in a slow arc as Iadvanced. The creature lunged at me and threshed at the burning jet withall four of its feelers. But it had been exposed to the air for a longtime now. The ghastly tentacles were dry; withered and soft. A touch ofthe fire seared them unmercifully.

  Nevertheless with a swift move it slapped a tentacle squarely down overthe hose nozzle. The flame was extinguished as the flame of a candle ispinched out between thumb and forefinger. I retreated.

  "Catch!" came a voice behind me.

  * * * * *

  The Professor swung his four-foot jet my way. I held my hose to it, andthe flame burst out again. A touch at my grisly antagonist's helmet--asharp crack--the welcome rush of water over the cream-colored grass--andanother monster was writhing in the death throes!

  Keeping close together, the three of us faced the massed Quabos in thepalace grounds. Again and again the fiery weapon of one or the other ofus was dashed out--to be re-lighted from the nearest hose. Again andagain loud detonations heralded the collapse of more of the invaders.

  But it seemed as though their flailing tentacles were as myriad as thestars they had never seen. It seemed as though their numbers would neverappreciably diminish. We thrust and parried till our arms grew numb. Andstill there appeared to be hundreds of the Quabos left.

  By order of the Queen three stout Zyobites stepped up to us and relievedus of our exhausting labor. Gladly we handed the hoses to them and wentto the palace for a much needed rest.

  * * * * *

  Two more shifts of fighters took the flaming jets before the monstersbegan the retreat slowly back toward their tunnel. And here theProfessor took command again.

  "We mustn't let them get away to try some new scheme!" he snapped."Martin, take fifty men and beat them back to the break in the wall. Goaround a side street. They move so slowly that you can easily cut offtheir retreat."

  "There isn't any more hose--" began Stanley.

  "There's plenty of it. The Quabos brought it with them." The Professorturned to me again. "Take metal-saws with you. Cut sections of theQuabos water-hose and connect them to the nearest wall jets. Run!"

  I ran, with fifty of the men of Zyobor close behind me. We dodged outthe side of the palace grounds least guarded by the Quabos, duckingbetween their ranks like infantry men threading through an opposition ofpowerful but slow-moving tanks. Four of our number were caught, but therest got through unscathed.

  Down a side street we raced, and along a parallel avenue toward thetunnel. As we went I prayed that all the Quabos had centered theirattention on the palace and left their vulnerable water-hoses unguarded.

  They had! When we stole up the last block toward the break we found thenearest Quabo was a hundred yards down the street--and working furtheraway with every move.

  At once we set to work on the scores of hoses that quivered over thefloor with each move of the distant monsters.

  * * * * *

  A Zyobite with the muscles of a Hercules swung his ax mightily down on ahose. The metal was soft enough to be sheered through by the stroke. Thecut ends were smashed so that they could not be crammed down over thetapering jets; but we could use our metal-saws for cleaner severances atthe other ends.

  The giant with the ax stepped from hose to hose. Lengths were completedwith the saws. A man was placed at each jet to hold the connections inposition. Before the Quabos had reached us we had rigged six fire-hosesand had cut through forty or fifty more water-lines.

  The end was certain and not long in coming.

  We sprayed the monsters with fire as workmen spray fruit trees withinsect poison. Stanley, the Professor and a Zyobite came up in the rearwith their three hoses.

  Caught between the two forces, the beaten fish milled in hopelessconfusion and indecision.

  In half an hour they were all reduced to huddles of slimy wet flesh thatdotted the pavement from the break back to the palace grounds. Theinvaders were completely annihilated--and the city of Zyobor was saved!

  "Now," said the Professor triumphantly, "we have only to knock out thebottom half of the tunnel wall, empty the tunnel and make sure there areno more Quabos lurking there. After that we can fill it in with solidcement. The Queen can order her fish-servants to guard the outer caveand see that no food gets in to the starving monsters there. The war isover, gentlemen. The Quabos are as good as exterminated at this moment.And I can get back to my zoological work...."

  Stanley and I looked at each other. We knew each others thoughts wellenough.

  He could resume his companionship with the beautiful Mayis. And I--I hadAga....

  * * * * *

  With the menace of the Quabos banished forever, the city of Zyoborresumed its normal way.

  The citizens lowered their dead into the great well we had cut, withappropriate rites performed by the Queen. The daily tasks and pleasureswere picked up where they had been dropped. The haunting fear died fromthe eyes of the people.

  Shortly afterward, with great ceremony and celebration, I was made Kingof Zyobor, to rule by Aga's side. Stanley took Mayis for his wife. He issecond to me in power. The Professor is the official wise man of thecity.

  Life flows smoothly for us in this pink lighted community. We are morethan content with our lot here. Our only concern has been the grief thatmust have been occasioned our relatives and friends when the _Rosa_sailed home without us.

  Now we have thought of a way in which, with luck, we may communicatewith the upper world. By relays of my Queen's fish-servants we believewe can send up the Professor's invaluable notes[A] and this informalaccount of what has happened since we left San Francisco that....

  (Editor's note: There was no trace of any "notes." The yacht, _Rosa_, was reported lost with al
l hands in a hurricane off New Zealand. Aboard her were a Professor George Berry and the owner, Stanley Browne. There is no record, however, of any passenger by the name of Martin Grey. To date no one has taken this document seriously enough to consider financing an expedition of investigation to Penguin Deep.)