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Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from Astounding Stories January 1933. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
The Table of Contents is not part of the original magazine.
A Sequel to "Seed of the Arctic Ice"
Under Arctic Ice
_A Complete Novelette_
By H.G. Winter
* * * * *
Contents
I An Empty Room II The Crash III The Fate of the Peary IV "No Chance Left" V Last Assault VI In a Biscuit Can VII The Awakening VIII The Duel
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Ken Torrance races Poleward to the aid of the submarine_Peary_, trapped in an icy limbo of avenging sealmen.]
CHAPTER I
_An Empty Room_
The house where the long trail started was one of gray walls, grayrooms and gray corridors, with carpets that muffled the feet which atintervals passed along them. It was a house of silence, broodingwithin the high fence that shut it and the grounds from a landscapetorpid under the hot sun of summer, and across which occasionallydrifted the lonely, mournful whistle of a train on a nearby railroad.Inside the house there was always a hush, a heavy quiet--restful tothe brain.
But now a voice was raised, young, angry, impatient, in one of thegray-walled rooms.
"Yes, I rang for you. I want my bags packed. I'm leaving thisminute!"
The face of the man who had entered showed surprise.
"Leaving, Mr. Torrance? Why?"
"Read this!"
_She was fastened in the mud of the gloomy sea-floor._]
As if, knowing and therefore dreading what he would see, the attendanttook the newspaper held outstretched to him and followed the pointingfinger to a featured column. He scanned it:
Deadline Passed for Missing Submarine
Point Barrow, Aug. 17 (AP): Planes sent out to search for the missing polar submarine _Peary_ have returned without clue to the mystery of is disappearance. The close search that has been conducted through the last two weeks, involving great risks to the pilots, has been fruitless, and authorities now hold out small hope for Captain Sallorsen, his crew and the several scientists who accompanied the daring expedition.
If the _Peary_, as is generally thought, is trapped beneath the ice floes or embedded in the deep silt of the polar sea-floor, her margin of safety has passed the deadline, it was pointed out to-day by her designers. Through special rectifiers aboard, her store of air can be kept capable of sustaining life for a theoretical period of thirty-one days. And exactly thirty-one days have now elapsed since last the _Peary's_ radio was heard from a position 72 deg. 47' N, 162 deg. 22' W, some twelve hundred miles from the North Pole itself.
In official circles, hope was practically abandoned for the missing submarine, though attempts will continue to be made to locate her....
"I'm sorry, Mr. Torrance," said the attendant nervously. "This papershould--"
"Should never have reached me, eh? Through some slip of the people whocensor my reading matter here, I read what I wasn't supposedto--that's what you mean?"
"It was thought better, Mr. Torrance, by the doctors, and--"
"Good God! Thought better! Through their sagacity, these doctors haveprobably condemned the men on this submarine to death! I haven't hearda word about the expedition; didn't even know the _Peary_ was upthere, much less missing!"
"Well, Mr. Torrance," the attendant stammered, more and moreunsettled, "the doctors thought that--that any news about itwould--well, upset you."
The young man laughed bitterly;
"Bring on my old 'trouble,' I suppose. The doctors have beenconsiderate, but I won't concern them any more. I'm through. I'mleaving for the north--right now. There's a bare chance I might stillbe in time."
"I'm sorry, Mr. Torrance, but you can't."
"Can't?"
The attendant had retreated to the door. His eyes were nervous, hisface pale.
"It's orders, Mr. Torrance. You've been under observation treatment,and the doctors left strict orders that you must stay."
The young man throbbed with dangerous anger. His hands clenched andunclenched. He burst out, in a last attempt at reason:
"But don't you see, I've _got_ to get to the _Peary_! It's the lasthope for those men! The position she was last heard from is rightwhere I--"
"You can't leave, Mr. Torrance! I'm sorry, but I'll have to call aguard!"
For a minute their eyes held. With an effort, the young man said morecalmly:
"I see. I see. I'm a prisoner. All right, leave me."
The attendant was more than willing. The young man heard the door'slock click. And then he lowered his head and pressed his hands hardinto his face.
But a second later he was looking up again, at the single wide windowwhich gave out on the lonely landscape over which sometimes camedrifting the distant cry of a train's whistle.
* * * * *
Two months before, Kenneth Torrance had returned to the whalingsubmarine _Narwhal_, of which he was first torpooner, with a confusedstory of men who were half-seals that lived in mounds under the Arcticice,[1] who had captured him and--he found--had also captured thesecond torpooner, Chanley Beddoes. In breaking free from theirmound-prison, Beddoes had killed one of the sealmen and had beenhimself slain minutes later by a killer whale, one of the fiercescavengers of the sea which the sealmen trapped for food even as the_Narwhal_ sought them for oil. Ken Torrance alone came back.
[Footnote 1: See the February, 1932, issue of Astounding Stories.]
Over their doubts, he had stuck to his story. Later, he had repeatedit to officials of the Alaska Whaling Company, who worked thesubmarine and several surface ships. They in return had sent him to aprivate sanitarium in the State of Washington for a rest which theyhoped would "iron out the kink" in his brain.
Here Ken had been for six weeks, while the exploring submarine _Peary_nosed her way northward toward the Pole. Here he had been, allunknowing, while the world hummed with reports of the _Peary's_disappearance in that far-off ever-shrouded sea of mystery.
She might, Ken knew, have struck a shaft of underwater ice, sendingher to the bottom; some of her machinery might have cracked up,paralyzing her; the ice-fields under which she cruised might haveshifted suddenly, crushing her ribs--of these perils the world knew aswell as he. But the submarine's crew was prepared for them; the_Peary_ was equipped with a circular saw for cutting up through theice from beneath, and she carried sea-suits which would allow her men,if she were wrecked on the bottom, to leave her and get up on the iceand wait for the first searching plane.
Why, then, had not the planes which scoured the region found thesurvivors?
That was the mystery--but not to Ken Torrance. There was anotherperil, of which he alone knew. Not far from where the _Peary's_ lastradio report had come, a group of hollowed-out mounds lay on thesea-floor, swarming with brown-skinned, quick-swimming creatures.Sealmen, they were--men who, like the seals, had gone back to the sea.Months ago, Second Torpooner Chanley Beddoes had killed one of them.They were intelligent; they could remember; they were capable of hateand fear; they would be desirous of leveling the debt!
There, Ken felt sure, lay the reason for the _Peary's_ bafflingsilence, for the non-appearance
of her men.
There might still be time. No one of course would listen to him andbelieve, so he would have to go in search of the _Peary_ and her crewhimself.
Standing by the window, Kenneth Torrance quickly planned the severalsteps which would take him to the Arctic and its silent ice-coatedsea.
And when, some two hours later, after a short warning rap on the door,the individual who served as Mr. Torrance's attendant entered hisroom, he was confronted, not by the gentleman whose dinner he carried,but by an empty room, a stripped bed, an open window, and a rope ofsheets dangling from it toward the ground two stories beneath.
That was at seven o'clock in the evening.