you're licked now, lad! These Venusian women seemto be verra strong minded lassies!"
* * * * *
They started two days later. There was, of course, neither night nor dayin the sub-aqueous halls of Luralla but the outlaws ran their lives on anormal schedule. Sarnak supplied Gerry and the others with rubberuniforms and complete equipment including the thin bladed water-swordsin the long feathery scabbards.
"I will have you guided out to one of our exits that is a quarter mileoff shore from the place where the dakta hunt was held," Sarnak offered.
"I thought that water was a lake," Gerry said. Sarnak shook his head.
"No. It is an estuary, an arm of the Great Sea. The chemical tanks onyour water helmets will keep the air pure for several days travel, andthe sentries at the last outpost will give you trained saddle-dolphinsso that you will make better time toward the coastal regions ofSavissa."
Sarnak went with them to the guardroom at the edge of the water filledpassages, and personally checked over their equipment.
"These are our new type of helmet with the audiphones that let thewearers talk to each other under water," he said, touching the tinymicrophones set into the curved glass. "Well--you had better start. Maythe Dragon Gods be with you!"
They strapped on their helmets and adjusted the valves. A uniformedguide stepped into the water-lock with them. Sarnak shook hands,saluted, and then stepped back through the door which closed behind him.The guide lifted his hand in a signal, and a second later a torrent ofwater rushed out of the gratings to foam about their feet. They wereready to leave Luralla!
Again they went through the maze of water-filled passages, passingoccasional sentries. After a while the character of the corridorchanged. It was wider, and was arched instead of square, and there was acarpet of soft natural sand beneath their feet instead of a stone floor.
"We come to the last outpost of Luralla, _hiziren_!" the guide said.
They stepped out of the end of the passage and found themselves in theopen sea, many fathoms down. A broad and slightly sloping floor ofsmooth sand studded with lumps of coral and clusters of sea-weedstretched before them. Some were giant ferns stretching twelve andfifteen feet high, others were low and sponge-like growths. A school oftiny red fishes shot swiftly past them. Larger fish sailed majesticallyby overhead. The top of the water was a gleaming golden ceiling farabove them, the greenish yellow light lessening in intensity as it camedown to the depths.
The end of the passage was surrounded by a barrier of piled coral.Outlaw swordsmen stood on guard, also armed with a sort of compressedair cross-bow that shot a heavy metal needle with great force. From acorral at one side an orderly brought three saddle-dolphins.
The big fish were equipped with rubber saddles strapped around the body,and short stirrups. They were guided by a bridle similar to that used onEarthly horses. As Gerry swung up to the saddle his dolphin bucked onceor twice with quick flips of his tail, then steadied down as he felt thetight pressure of his master's knees. When the other two were mounted,the officer commanding the outpost lifted his arm in salute.
"The Dragon Gods be with you!" he said. At a distance of fifteen ortwenty feet the sound of his voice was slightly muted, but the wordswere perfectly clear in the ear-pieces of Gerry's helmet. He lifted hisown rubber gloved hand to his globular helmet and returned the salute.
* * * * *
They rode off at an easy pace, the dolphins rising above the tops of thetallest vegetation. Gerry found that it was easy to sit the saddle aslong as he bent a little forward to overcome the resistance of the wateragainst his chest. They were about thirty or forty feet down. On Earthsuch a depth would have been uncomfortable, but the lighter gravity ofVenus made it easily bearable.
Gerry glanced back. Closana was riding a few feet behind him, slenderand erect, controlling her restless dolphin as easily as though she hadbeen accustomed to such steeds all her life. Angus was grinning broadlythrough his globular glass helmet as he sat astride a particularly bigdolphin and swung his light bladed water-sword from side to side.
"If any of our friends back on Earth could see us now in some sort of anastral spectroscope," the big Scot cried, "they'd think themselvescrazy. Maybe this is only a nightmare at that! Do you think we'll wakeup soon and find ourselves safe back on board the _Viking_?"
"I'm afraid not," Gerry answered. He wondered in what part of this vastsea the twisted hulk of the _Viking_ was now lying.
All day they rode, roughly following the shoreline to the northward.Whenever it got so deep that nothing was visible below but a vast greenshadow Gerry headed inland until the tops of the sea gardens again cameinto view. Sarnak had told them that by the middle of the next day itshould be safe for them to come above water and check their maps and putfresh chemical cartridges in the cylinders of their helmets. The ScalyOnes patrolled their coast line in shallow open boats, but they did notgo beyond their own borders.
Once Gerry checked his dolphin and then headed downward as he caughtsight of something big and dark lying on the sand. The others followedhim. It was the broken and rusting hulk of a space-ship, a vessel of astrange type with a name in an unknown tongue still visible on theshattered stern. The wreck must have been there for a very long time,for the sand was heaped high about it and sea-weeds grew up through theopen hatches.
"Leaping ray-blasts!" McTavish said softly. "Yon craft never came fromeither Earth or Mars."
"Probably from some far distant planet in outer space that we've neverheard of," Gerry said. "Some adventurous wanderer of the interstellarregions who came to grief in this lonely spot."
* * * * *
It was desolate and forlorn, the sight of that wrecked vessel from solong ago. It made Gerry think of his own lost command. There were cleanpicked white bones of strange shape lying about on the sand. Gerrysaluted, a tribute to those strange and forgotten wanderers of space,and then urged his dolphin to a higher level again.
When the dimming light showed that it was dusk above the water they rodein to the four-fathom shallows and halted in a smooth patch of yellowsand. Gerry unsaddled the dolphins and tethered them to lumps of coralwhere they browsed contentedly on the short vegetation. Then the threeexiles sat down in a circle on the sand. McTavish stretched his longlegs, bouncing a few feet off the ground as he did so and then floatingslowly down again.
"I'll never forget this journey if I live to be older than the wholeSolar System itself!" he said. "Also--I'm hungry."
"There's nothing we can do about that until noon tomorrow," Gerrygrunted. "Maybe the fasting will make you lose some of that surplus bulkof yours. But I'll admit I could do with some of that special coffeePortok used to brew in the ward room on the _Viking_ in the evenings."
"I'd give a lot for a drink of plain water," Closana said wistfully."Acres of water around us and nothing to drink!"
When the last of the light was gone they lit a small lamp that Sarnakhad given them. It illumined a circle some twenty feet across, a littlepatch of light in the midst of the utter blackness of the depths of thesea. They sat there talking for a while, then Gerry stretched out on thesand with one arm hooked around a lump of coral to hold himself inplace. He was thankful that the waters of Venus were always warm. Itwould scarcely have been possible to sleep at the bottom of one ofEarth's oceans in this manner, even with the equipment with which Sarnakhad supplied them.
For a while Gerry drowsed. The audiphones of his helmet picked up allthe faint sounds of this watery world. A muffled splash as AngusMcTavish stirred restlessly ... the steady movement as their drowsingbut apparently sleepless dolphins fed on the fields of sea-weed ... anoccasional steady churning as some larger denizen of the deep swam pastabove them. Then he slept.
* * * * *
It was well past midnight by the illuminated dial of the waterproofchronometer that Sarnak had given Gerry when he awoke. Angus was shakinghis shoulde
r. The light had been put out hours before, and there was noillumination at all except for an occasional flash of greenphosphoresence where some fish sped by.
"Either I'm an over-grown sponge," the big engineer muttered, "orthere's a light shining through the water off to the west."
Gerry yawned and sat up, instinctively starting to rub his eyes beforehis hands bumped against the hard glass surface of his curving helmet.Some of the bits of coral around them glowed with an eerie greenradiance, and a tall frond of sea-weed had tiny specks of light on thetips of its constantly waving leaves. Then, far off to the left, Gerrycaught a faint glow.
It was hard to tell what kind of a light it was, so great was therefraction of the water, but there was something there. It was littlemore than a lessening of the deep gloom that otherwise surrounded themon all