CHAPTER VII

_Behind the Sealed Door_

There was a moment when I think I might have escaped unseen from that

archway. But I was too amazed at Spawn's appearance to think of my own

situation. I had believed that Perona was plotting against Spawn,

meeting these bandits in this secret place; I had just heard them

planning to attack Spawn's mine--to rob it of the treasure doubtless,

which I knew was stored there.

But I realized now it was not a plot against Spawn. He had come here

swiftly to join Perona and tell him that I, their intended victim, was

missing. He had greeted the bandit guard by name. He seemed, indeed, as

well known to these bandits as Perona himself.

They stood now in a group some thirty feet away from me. I could hear

their excited voices perfectly clearly. My instruments were off; but I

recall that as I listened to Spawn I was also aware of the tingle of the

electrode-band on my chest--Hanley, vigorously calling me back to find

out why I had so summarily disconnected.

"I took him to his room," Spawn was explaining excitedly. "De duvel, why

should I have sealed him in? How could I? He is no child!"

De Boer laughed caustically. "And so he has walked away from you? I

think I am a fool to mix myself with you two."

Perona retorted, "I have made you rich, De Boer. Think what you like;

to-night is the end of our partnership. Only, you do what I have told

you to-night."

"Hah! How can I? Your American has flown his trap."

This guard--this Gutierrez, as Spawn had called him--was listening with

interest. De Boer's several other men were gathered there. I felt

myself safe where I was, for the moment at least.

* * * * *

I cut Hanley in. "Chief, they're closer! Spawn has come! They've missed

me! I'll relay what they're saying, but you step it down; there's too

much volume."

"You're all right, Phil? Thank Heaven for that! Something blew my

vacuums."

"Chief, listen--here they are--"

Perona: "But he will be back. In the garden now, no doubt, with Jetta."

De Boer: "Ah--the little Jetta! So she is there, Spawn? Not in years

have you spoken of your daughter. A young lady now, I suppose. Is it

so?"

Spawn cursed. "We leave her out of this. You follow the Senor's plan."

"Come to your house? You think the bird will be there for me to seize?"

"Yes," Perona put in. "You go there; in an hour. Then to the mine."

Spawn undoubtedly was in this plot to attack his mine! He said, "At the

mine we have arranged everything. Damn this American! But for Perona I

would not bother with him."

"But you will bother," Perona interjected.

De Boer laughed again. "I would be witless could I not figure this! He

is a young man, and so handsome he has frightened you with the little

Jetta! Is that it, Perona? Jealous, eh?"

I had been holding the image finder so that Hanley might see them.

Hanley's voice rattled my ear-grid. "Phil! Get away from there! Look! De

Boer is searching!"

* * * * *

De Boer had, a moment before, spoken quietly aside to Gutierrez. And now

three or four of the men were spreading out, poking about with small

hand-flashes. Searching for me! The possibility that I might be here,

eavesdropping!

Hanley repeated vehemently, "Phil, they'll find you! Get out of there:

the way is still open!"

Gutierrez was approaching the archway. But I lingered a moment longer.

"Chief, you heard about that girl, Jetta, Spawn's daughter--"

I stopped. Perona was saying, "Spawn, was Jetta still in her room? You

did not untie her?"

"No."

"And gagged? Suppose the Americano was back there now? She might call to

him, and he would release her--"

De Boer: "How do you know he is not around here? Listening?"

With the assumption that I might be within hearing, De Boer tried to

trap me. Gutierrez, at a signal now, suddenly dashed through the archway

and planted himself on the path outside. The other searchers spread

their rays; the rocks all about me were lighted. But my niche was still

untouched.

De Boer: "If he is around here--"

Perona: "He could not have followed me; I was too careful."

I was murmuring: "Chief, they've got that girl."

"Phil, you get away! Go to Markes. Stay with him."

"But Chief, that Jetta, I--"

"Keep out of this! You're only one; you can't help any! I've sent for

the Porto Rican patrol ship to handle this."

"Chief, I'm going back to Spawn's."

"No--"

I cut off abruptly. In another moment I would have been discovered. The

searchers were headed directly for me.

* * * * *

I moved, crouching, back along the inner wall of the archway. The moon

was momentarily behind a cloud. It was black under the arch; and out

front it was so dim I could only see the faint blob of Gutierrez's

standing figure, and the spot of his flashlight.

Perona: "He is not around here, De Boer. That is foolish."

Spawn: "He could have gone anywhere. Maybe a walk around the village."

Perona: "Go back home, Spawn. De Boer will come--"

Their voices faded as I moved away. A searching bandit behind me poked

with his light into the crevice where a moment before I had been

crouching. I moved faster. Only Gutierrez now was in front of me. He was

at the far end of the arch. I could slip past, and still be fifty feet

from him--if I could avoid his swinging little light-beam.

I was running now, chancing that he would hear me. I was on the path; I

could see it vaguely.

From behind me came a sizzling flash, and the ting of the flying needle

as it missed me by a foot.

"The Americano! He goes there!"

Another shot. The shouts of the bandits in the archway. A turmoil back

there.

But it was all behind me. I leaped sidewise off the path as Gutierrez

small light-beam swept it. I ran stumbling through a stubble of

boulders, around an upstanding rock spire, back to the path again.

There were other shots. Then De Boer's voice, faint by distance: "Stop!

Fools! We will alarm the village! The landing field can see our shots

from here! Take it easy! You can't get him!"

The turmoil quieted. I went around a bend in the path, running swiftly.

Pursuit was behind me. I could hear them coming.

* * * * *

It was a run of no more than ten minutes to the junction where, down the

slope, I could see the lights of the landing field.

The glow of the village was ahead of me. Then I was in its outskirts.

Occasional dark houses. Deserted streets.

I slowed to a fast walk. I was breathless, panting in the heat.

I heard no pursuit now. But Spawn and the rest of them doubtless were

after me. Would they head back for Spawn's inn? I thought they would.

But I could beat them back there; I was sure there was no shorter route

than this I was taking.

Would they use their flyer? That would not gain them any time, what

with launching it and landing, for so short a flight. And a bandit flyer

could not very well land unseen or unnoticed, even in somnolent Nareda.

I reached the main section of the village. There were occasional lights

and pedestrians. My haste was noticeable, but I was not accosted. There

seemed no police about. I recalled Perona's remark that he had attended

to that.

My electrode was tingling. I had been running again. I slowed down.

"Chief?"

"Phil." His voice carried relief. "You got away?"

"Yes. I'm in the village."

"Go to President Markes."

"No, I'm headed for Spawn's! They're all behind me; I can get there a

few minutes ahead of them."

* * * * *

I panted an exclamation, incoherently, but frankly, about Jetta. "I'm

going to get her out of there."

"Phil, what in hell--"

I told him.

"So you've fallen in love with a girl? Entangled--"

"Chief!"

"Go after her, Phil! Got her bound and gagged, have they? Going to marry

her to this Perona? Like the Middle Ages?"

I had never seen this side of Hanley.

"Get her if you want her. Get her out of there. Take her to Markes--No,

I wouldn't trust anybody in Nareda! Take her into the uplands behind the

village. But keep away from that mine! Have you got flash-fuses?"

"Yes."

I was within sight of Spawn's house. The street was dim and deserted. I

was running again.

I panted. "I'm--almost at Spawn's!"

"Good! When it's over, whatever happens up there at the mine, then

signal the patrol."

"Yes."

I reached Spawn's front gate. The house and front garden were dark.

"Use your fuses, Phil. What colors?"

"I have red and blue."

"I'll talk to the patrol ship again. Tell them to watch for you. Red and

blue. Two short red flashes, a long blue."

"Right, Chief. I'm here at Spawn's, cutting off."

"Come back on when you can." His voice went anxious again. "I'll wait

here."

"All right."

I cut silent. I ran through the front doorway of Spawn's inn. The living

room was dim and empty. Which way was Jetta's room? I could only guess.

I had a few minutes, perhaps, before my pursuers would arrive.

* * * * *

I reached the inner, patio garden. The moon was well out from under the

clouds now. The patio shimmered, a silent, deserted fairyland.

"Jetta!" I called it softly. Then louder. "Jetta!"

Spawn's house was fairly large and rambling. There were so many rooms.

Jetta was gagged; how could she answer me? But I had no time to search

for her.

"Jetta?"

And then came her voice. "Philip?"

"Jetta! Which way? Where are you?"

"Here! This way: in my room."

A window and a door near the pergola. "Jetta!"

"Yes. I am in here. They tied me up. Not so loud, Phil: father will hear

you."

"He's gone out."

I reached her garden door. Turned its handle. Rattled the door. Shoved

frantically with my shoulder!

The metal door was firmly sealed!

_(To be continued)_

[Illustration: _One of the men rolled free and came lurching toward

us._]

The Terrible Tentacles of L-472

_By Sewell Peaslee Wright_

It was a big mistake. I should not have done it. By birth, by instinct,

by training, by habit, I am a man of action. Or I was. It is queer that

an old man cannot remember that he is no longer young.

[Sidenote: Commander John Hanson of the Special Patrol Service records

another of his thrilling interplanetary assignments.]

But it was a mistake for me to mention that I had recorded, for the

archives of the Council, the history of a certain activity of the

Special Patrol--a bit of secret history[1] which may not be mentioned

here. Now they insist--by "they" I refer to the Chiefs of the Special

Patrol Service--that I write of other achievements of the Service, other

adventures worthy of note.

[Footnote 1: Editors Note: "The Forgotten Planet" July 1930 issue of

Astounding Stories]

Perhaps that is the penalty of becoming old. From commander of the

_Budi_, one of the greatest of the Special Patrol ships, to the duties

of recording ancient history, for younger men to read and dream about.

That is a shrewd blow to one's pride.

But if I can, in some small way, add luster to the record of my service,

it will be a fitting task for a man grown old and gray in that service;

work for hands too weak and palsied for sterner duties.

But I shall tell my stories in my own way; after all, they are my

stories. And I shall tell the stories that appeal to me most. The

universe has had enough and too much of dry history; these shall be

adventurous tales to make the blood of a young man who reads them run a

trifle faster--and perhaps the blood of the old man who writes them.

This, the first, shall be the story of the star L-472. You know it

to-day as Ibit, port-o'-call for interplanetary ships, and source of

ocrite for the universe, but to me it will always be L-472, the world of

terrible tentacles.

* * * * *

My story begins nearly a hundred years ago--reckoned in terms of Earth

time, which is proper, since I am a native of Earth--when I was a young

man. I was sub-commander, at the time, of the _Kalid_, one of the early

ships of the Special Patrol.

We had been called to Zenia on special orders, and Commander Jamison,

after an absence of some two hours, returned to the _Kalid_ with his

face shining, one of his rare smiles telling me in advance that he had

news--and good news.

He hurried me up to the deserted navigating room and waved me to a seat.

"Hanson," he said. "I'm glad to be the first to congratulate you. You

are now Commander John Hanson, of the Special Patrol Ship _Kalid_!"

"Sir." I gasped, "do you mean--"

His smile broadened. From the breast pocket of the trim blue and silver

uniform of our Service he drew a long, crackling paper.

"Your commission," he said. "I'm taking over the _Borelis_."

It was my turn to extend congratulations then; the _Borelis_ was the

newest and greatest ship of the Service. We shook hands, that ancient

gesture of good-fellowship on Earth. But, as our hands unclasped,

Jamison's face grew suddenly grave.

"I have more than this news for you, however," he said slowly. "You are

to have a chance to earn your comet hardly."

* * * * *

I smiled broadly at the mention of the comet, the silver insignia, worn

over the heart, that would mark my future rank as commander, replacing

the four-rayed star of a sub-commander which I wore now on my tunic.

"Tell me more, sir," I said confidently.

"You have heard of the Special Patrol Ship _Filanus_?" asked my late

commander gravely.

"Reported lost in space," I replied promptly.

"And the _Dorlos_?"

"Why--yes; she was at Base here at our last call," I said, searching his

face anxiously. "Peter Wilson was Second Officer on her--one of my best

friends. Why do you ask about her, sir?"

"The _Dorlos_ is missing also," said Commander Jamison solemnly. "Both

of these ships were sent upon a particular mission. Neither of them has

returned. It is concluded that some common fate has overtaken them. The

_Kalid_, under your command, is commissioned to investigate these

disappearances.

"You are not charged with the mission of these other ships; your orders

are to investigate their disappearance. The course, together with the

official patrol orders, I shall hand you presently, but with them go

verbal orders.

"You are to lay and keep the course designated, which will take you well

out of the beaten path to a small world which has not been explored,

but which has been circumnavigated a number of times by various ships

remaining just outside the atmospheric envelope, and found to be without

evidence of intelligent habitation. In other words, without cities,

roads, canals, or other evidence of human handiwork or civilization.

* * * * *

"I believe your instructions give you some of this information, but not

all of it. This world, unnamed because of its uninhabited condition, is

charted only as L-472. Your larger charts will show it, I am sure. The

atmosphere is reported to be breatheable by inhabitants of Earth and

other beings having the same general requirements. Vegetation is

reported as dense, covering the five continents of the world to the

edges of the northern and southern polar caps, which are small.

Topographically, the country is rugged in the extreme, with many peaks,

apparently volcanic, but now inactive or extinct, on all of its five

large continents."

"And am I to land there, sir?" I asked eagerly.

"Your orders are very specific upon that point," said Commander Jamison.

"You are not to land until you have carefully and thoroughly

reconnoitered from above, at low altitude. You will exercise every

possible precaution. Your specific purpose is simply this: to determine,

if possible, the fate of the other two ships, and report your findings

at once. The Chiefs of the Service will then consider the matter, and

take whatever action may seem advisable to them." Jamison rose to his

feet and thrust out his hand in Earth's fine old salute of farewell.

"I must be going, Hanson," he said. "I wish this patrol were mine

instead of yours. You are a young man for such a responsibility."

"But," I replied, with the glowing confidence of youth, "I have the

advantage of having served under Commander Jamison!"

* * * * *

He smiled as we shook again, and shook his head.

"Discretion can be learned only by experience," he said. "But I wish you

success, Hanson; on this undertaking, and on many others. Supplies are

on their way now; the crew will return from leave within the hour. A

young Zenian, name of Dival, I believe, is detailed to accompany you as

scientific observer--purely unofficial capacity, of course. He has been

ordered to report to you at once. You are to depart as soon as feasible:

you know what that means. I believe that's all--Oh, yes! I had almost

forgotten.

"Here, in this envelope, are your orders and your course, as well as all

available data on L-472. In this little casket is--your comet, Hanson. I

know you will wear it with honor!"

"Thank you, sir!" I said, a bit huskily. I saluted, and Commander

Jamison acknowledged the gesture with stiff precision. Commander Jamison

always had the reputation of being something of a martinet.

When he had left, I picked up the thin blue envelope he had left. Across

the face of the envelope, in the--to my mind--jagged and unbeautiful

Universal script, was my name, followed by the proud title: "_Commander,

Special Patrol Ship Kalid._" My first orders!

There was a small oval box, of blue leather, with the silver crest of

the Service in bas-relief on the lid. I opened the case, and gazed with

shining eyes at the gleaming, silver comet that nestled there.

Then, slowly, I unfastened the four-rayed star on my left breast, and

placed in its stead the insignia of my commandership.

Worn smooth and shiny now, it is still my most precious possession.

* * * * *

Kincaide, my second officer, turned and smiled as I entered the

navigating room.

"L-472 now registers maximum attraction, sir," he reported. "Dead ahead,

and coming up nicely. My last figures, completed about five minutes

ago, indicate that we should reach the gaseous envelope in about ten

hours." Kincaide was a native of Earth, and we commonly used Earth

time-measurements in our conversation. As is still the case, ships of

the Special Patrol Service were commanded without exception by natives

of Earth, and the entire officer personnel hailed largely from the same

planet, although I have had several Zenian officers of rare ability and

courage.

I nodded and thanked him for the report. Maximum attraction, eh? That,

considering the small size of our objective, meant we were much closer

to L-472 than to any other regular body.

Mechanically, I studied the various dials about the room. The attraction

meter, as Kincaide had said, registered several degrees of attraction,

and the red slide on the rim of the dial was squarely at the top,

showing that the attraction was coming from the world at which our nose

was pointed. The surface-temperature gauge was at normal. Internal

pressure, normal. Internal moisture-content, a little high. Kincaide,

watching me, spoke up:

"I have already given orders to dry out, sir," he said.

"Very good, Mr. Kincaide. It's a long trip, and I want the crew in good

condition." I studied the two charts, one showing our surroundings

laterally, the other vertically, all bodies about us represented as

glowing spots of green light, of varying sizes; the ship itself as a

tiny scarlet spark. Everything shipshape: perhaps, a degree or two of

elevation when we were a little closer--

"May I come in sir?" broke in a gentle, high-pitched voice.

"Certainly, Mr. Dival," I replied, answering in the Universal language

in which the request had been made. "You are always very welcome." Dival

was a typical Zenian of the finest type: slim, very dark, and with the

amazingly intelligent eyes of his kind. His voice was very soft and

gentle, and like the voice of all his people, clear and high-pitched.

"Thank you," he said. "I guess I'm over-eager, but there's something

about this mission of ours that worries me. I seem to feel--" He broke

off abruptly and began pacing back and forth across the room.

I studied him, frowning. The Zenians have a strange way of being right

about such things; their high-strung, sensitive natures seem capable of

responding to those delicate, vagrant forces which even now are only

incompletely understood and classified.

"You're not used to work of this sort," I replied, as bluffly and

heartily as possible. "There's nothing to worry about."

"The commanders of the two ships that disappeared probably felt the same

way, sir," said Dival. "I should have thought the Chiefs of the Special

Patrol Service would have sent several ships on a mission such as this."

"Easy to say," I laughed bitterly. "If the Council would pass the

appropriations we need, we might have ships enough so that we could send

a fleet of ships when we wished. Instead of that, the Council, in its

infinite wisdom, builds greater laboratories and schools of higher

learning--and lets the Patrol get along as best it can."

"It was from the laboratories and the schools of higher learning that

all these things sprang," replied Dival quietly, glancing around at the

array of instruments which made navigation in space possible.

"True," I admitted rather shortly. "We must work together. And as for

what we shall find upon the little world ahead, we shall be there in

nine or ten hours. You may wish to make some preparations."

"Nine or ten hours? That's Earth time, isn't it? Let's see: about two

and a half enaros."

"Correct," I smiled. The Universal method of reckoning time had never

appealed to me. For those of my readers who may only be familiar with

Earth time measurements, an enar is about eighteen Earth days, an enaren

a little less than two Earth days, and an enaro nearly four and a half

hours. The Universal system has the advantage, I admit, of a decimal

division; but I have found it clumsy always. I may be stubborn and

old-fashioned, but a clock face with only ten numerals and one hand

still strikes me as being unbeautiful and inefficient.

"Two and a half enaros," repeated Dival thoughtfully. "I believe I shall

see if I can get a little sleep now; I should not have brought my books

with me, I'm afraid. I read when I should sleep. Will you call me should

there be any developments of interest?"

I assured him that he would be called as he requested, and he left.

"Decent sort of a chap, sir," observed Kincaide, glancing at the door

through which Dival had just departed.

"A student," I nodded, with the contempt of violent youth for the man of

gentler pursuits than mine, and turned my attentions to some

calculations for entry in the log.

* * * * *

Busied with the intricate details of my task, time passed rapidly. The

watch changed, and I joined my officers in the tiny, arched dining

salon. It was during the meal that I noticed for the first time a sort

of tenseness; every member of the mess was unusually quiet. And though I

would not, have admitted it then, I was not without a good deal of

nervous restraint myself.

"Gentlemen," I remarked when the meal was finished, "I believe you

understand our present mission. Primarily, our purpose is to ascertain,

if possible, the fate of two ships that were sent here and have not

returned. We are now close enough for reasonable observation by means of

the television disc, I believe, and I shall take over its operation

myself.

"There is no gainsaying the fact that whatever fate overtook the two

other Patrol ships, may lay in wait for us. My orders are to observe

every possible precaution, and to return with a report. I am going to

ask that each of you proceed immediately to his post, and make ready, in

so far as possible, for any eventuality. Warn the watch which has just

gone off to be ready for instant duty. The disintegrator ray generators

should be started and be available for instant emergency use, maximum

power. Have the bombing crews stand by for orders."

"What do you anticipate, sir?" asked Correy, my new sub-commander. The

other officers waited tensely for my reply.

"I don't know, Mr. Correy," I admitted reluctantly. "We have no

information upon which to base an assumption. We do know that two ships

have been sent here, and neither of them have returned. Something

prevented that return. We must endeavor to prevent that same fate from

overtaking the _Kalid_--and ourselves."

* * * * *

Hurrying back to the navigating room, I posted myself beside the

cumbersome, old-fashioned television instrument. L-472 was near enough

now to occupy the entire field, with the range hand at maximum. One

whole continent and parts of two others were visible. Not many details

could be made out.

I waited grimly while an hour, two hours, went by. My field narrowed

down to one continent, to a part of one continent. I glanced up at the

surface temperature gauge and noted that the hand was registering a few

degrees above normal. Correy, who had relieved Kincaide as navigating

officer, followed my gaze.

"Shall we reduce speed, sir?" he asked crisply.

"To twice atmospheric speed," I nodded. "When we enter the envelope

proper, reduce to normal atmospheric speed. Alter your course upon

entering the atmosphere proper, and work back and forth along the

emerging twilight zone, from the north polar cap to the southern cap,

and so on."

"Yes, sir!" he replied, and repeated the orders to the control room

forward.

I pressed the attention signal to Dival's cubicle, and informed him that

we were entering the outer atmospheric fringe.

"Thank you, sir!" he said eagerly. "I shall be with you immediately."

In rapid succession I called various officers and gave terse orders.

Double crews on duty in the generator compartment, the ray projectors,

the atomic bomb magazines, and release tubes. Observers at all

observation posts, operators at the two smaller television instruments

to comb the terrain and report instantly any object of interest. With

the three of us searching, it seemed incredible that anything could

escape us. At atmospheric altitudes even the two smaller television

instruments would be able to pick out a body the size of one of the

missing ships.

* * * * *

Dival entered the room as I finished giving my orders.

"A strange world, Dival," I commented, glancing towards the television

instrument. "Covered with trees, even the mountains, and what I presume

to be volcanic peaks. They crowd right down to the edge of the water."

He adjusted the focusing lever slightly, his face lighting up with the

interest of a scientist gazing at a strange specimen, whether it be a

microbe or a new world.

"Strange ... strange ..." he muttered. "A universal vegetation ... no

variation of type from equator to polar cap, apparently. And the

water--did you notice its color, sir?"

"Purple," I nodded. "It varies on the different worlds, you know. I've

seen pink, red, white and black seas, as well as the green and blue of

Earth."

"And no small islands," he went on, as though he had not ever heard me.

"Not in the visible portion, at any rate."

I was about to reply, when I felt the peculiar surge of the _Kalid_ as

she reduced speed. I glanced at the indicator, watching the hand drop

slowly to atmospheric speed.

"Keep a close watch, Dival," I ordered. "We shall change our course now,

to comb the country for traces of two ships we are seeking. If you see

the least suspicious sign, let me know immediately."

* * * * *

He nodded, and for a time there was only a tense silence in the room,

broken at intervals by Correy as he spoke briefly into his microphone,

giving orders to the operating room.

Perhaps an hour went by. I am not sure. It seemed like a longer time

than that. Then Dival called out in sudden excitement, his high, thin

voice stabbing the silence:

"Here, sir! Look! A little clearing--artificial, I judge--and the ships!

Both of them!"

"Stop the ship, Mr. Correy!" I snapped as I hurried to the instrument.

"Dival, take those reports." I gestured towards the two attention

signals that were glowing and softly humming and thrust my head into the

shelter of the television instrument's big hood.

Dival had made no mistake. Directly beneath me, as I looked, was a

clearing, a perfect square with rounded corners, obviously blasted out

of the solid forest by the delicate manipulation of sharply focused

disintegrator rays. And upon the naked, pitted surface thus exposed,

side by side in orderly array, were the missing ships!

* * * * *

I studied the strange scene with a heart that thumped excitedly against

my ribs.

What should I do? Return and report? Descend and investigate? There was

no sign of life around the ships, and no evidence of damage. If I

brought the _Kalid_ down, would she make a third to remain there, to be

marked "lost in space" on the records of the Service?

Reluctantly, I drew my head from beneath the shielding hood.

"What were the two reports, Dival?" I asked, and my voice was thick.

"The other two television observers?"

"Yes, sir. They report that they cannot positively identify the ships

with their instruments, but feel certain that they are the two we seek."

"Very good. Tell them, please, to remain on watch, searching space in

every direction, and to report instantly anything suspicious. Mr.

Correy, we will descend until this small clearing becomes visible,

through the ports, to the unaided eye. I will give you the corrections

to bring us directly over the clearing." And I read the finder scales of

the television instrument to him.

He rattled off the figures, calculated an instant, and gave his orders

to the control room, while I kept the television instrument bearing upon

the odd clearing and the two motionless, deserted ships.

* * * * *

As we settled, I could make out the insignia of the ships, could see the

pitted, stained earth of the clearing, brown with the dust of

disintegration. I could see the surrounding trees very distinctly now:

they seemed very similar to our weeping willows, on Earth, which, I

perhaps should explain, since it is impossible for the average

individual to have a comprehensive knowledge of the flora and fauna of

the entire known Universe, is a tree of considerable size, having long,

hanging branches arching from its crown and reaching nearly to the

ground. These leaves, like typical willow leaves, were long and slender,

of rusty green color. The trunks and branches seemed to be black or dark

brown: and the trees grew so thickly that nowhere between their branches

was the ground visible.

"Five thousand feet, sir," said Correy. "Directly above the clearing.

Shall we descend further?"

"A thousand feet at a time, Mr. Correy," I replied, after a moment's

hesitation. "My orders are to exercise the utmost caution. Mr. Dival,

please make a complete analysis of the atmosphere. I believe you are

familiar with the traps provided for the purpose?"

"Yes. You propose to land, sir?"

"I propose to determine the fate of those two ships and the men who

brought them here," I said with sudden determination. Dival made no

reply, but as he turned to obey orders, I saw that his presentiment of

trouble had not left him.

"Four thousand feet, sir," said Correy.

I nodded, studying the scene below us. The great hooded instrument

brought it within, apparently, fifty feet of my eyes, but the great

detail revealed nothing of interest.

The two ships lay motionless, huddled close together. The great circular

door of each was open, as though opened that same day--or a century

before.

"Three thousand feet, sir," said Correy.

"Proceed at the same speed," I replied. Whatever fate had overtaken the

men of the other ships had caused them to disappear entirely--and

without sign of a struggle. But what conceivable fate could that be?

"Two thousand feet, sir," said Correy.

"Good," I said grimly. "Continue with the descent, Mr. Correy."

Dival hurried into the room as I spoke. His face was still clouded with

foreboding.

"I have tested the atmosphere, sir," he reported. "It is suitable for

breathing by either men of Earth or Zenia. No trace of noxious gases of

any kind. It is probably rather rarified, such as one might find on

Earth or Zenia at high altitudes."

"One thousand feet, sir," said Correy.

I hesitated an instant. Undoubtedly the atmosphere had been tested by

the other ships before they landed. In the case of the second ship, at

any rate, those in command must have been on the alert against danger.

And yet both of those ships lay there motionless, vacant, deserted.

* * * * *

I could feel the eyes of the men on me. My decision must be delayed no

further.

"We will land, Mr. Correy," I said grimly. "Near the two ships, please."

"Very well, sir," nodded Correy, and spoke briefly into the microphone.

"I might warn you, sir," said Dival quietly, "to govern your activities,

once outside: free from the gravity pads of the ship, on a body of such

small size, an ordinary step will probably cause a leap of considerable

distance."

"Thank you, Mr. Dival. That is a consideration I had overlooked. I shall

warn the men. We must--"

At that instant I felt the slight jar of landing. I glanced up; met

Correy's grave glance squarely.

"Grounded, sir," he said quietly.

"Very good, Mr. Correy. Keep the ship ready for instant action, please,

and call the landing crew to the forward exit. You will accompany us,

Mr. Dival?"

"Certainly, sir!"

"Good. You understand your orders, Mr. Correy?"

"Yes, sir!"

I returned his salute, and led the way out of the room, Dival close on

my heels.

* * * * *

The landing crew was composed of all men not at regular stations; nearly

half of the _Kalid's_ entire crew. They were equipped with the small

atomic power pistols as side-arms, and there were two three-men

disintegrator ray squads. We all wore menores, which were unnecessary

in the ship, but decidedly useful outside. I might add that the menore

of those days was not the delicate, beautiful thing that it is to-day:

it was comparatively crude, and clumsy band of metal, in which were

imbedded the vital units and the tiny atomic energy generator, and was

worn upon the head like a crown. But for all its clumsiness, it conveyed

and received thought, and, after all, that was all we demanded of it.

I caught a confused jumble of questioning thoughts as I came up, and

took command of the situation promptly. It will be understood, of

course, that in those days men had not learned to blank their minds

against the menore, as they do to-day. It took generations of training

to perfect that ability.

"Open the exit," I ordered Kincaide, who was standing by the switch, key

in the lock.

"Yes, sir," he thought promptly, and unlocking the switch, released the

lever.

The great circular door revolved swiftly, backing slowly on its fine

threads, gripped by the massive gimbals which, as at last the ponderous

plug of metal freed itself from its threads, swung the circular door

aside, like the door of a vault.

* * * * *

Fresh clean air swept in, and we breathed, it gratefully. Science can

revitalize air, take out impurities and replace used-up constituents,

but if cannot give it the freshness of pure natural air. Even the

science of to-day.

"Mr. Kincaide, you will stand by with five men. Under no circumstances

are you to leave your post until ordered to do so. No rescue parties,

under any circumstances, are to be sent out unless you have those orders

directly from me. Should any untoward thing happen to this party, you

will instantly reseal this exit, reporting at the same time to Mr.

Correy, who has his orders. You will not attempt to rescue us, but will

return to the Base and report in full, with Mr. Correy in command. Is

that clear?"

"Perfectly," came back his response instantly; but I could sense the

rebellion in his mind. Kincaid and I were old friends, as well as fellow

officers.

I smiled at him reassuringly, and directed my orders to the waiting men.

"You are aware of the fate of the two ships of the Patrol that have

already landed here," I thought slowly, to be sure they understood

perfectly. "What fate overtook them, I do not know. That is what we are

here to determine."

"It is obvious that this is a dangerous mission. I'm ordering none of

you to go. Any man who wishes to be relieved from landing duty may

remain inside the ship, and may feel it no reproach. Those who do go

should be constantly on the alert, and keep in formation; the usual

column of twos. Be very careful, when stepping out of the ship, to

adjust your stride to the lessened gravity of this small world. Watch

this point!" I turned to Dival, motioned him to fall in at my side.

Without a backward glance, we marched out of the ship, treading very

carefully to keep from leaping into the air with each step.

Twenty feet away, I glanced back. There were fourteen men behind me--not

a man of the landing crew had remained in the ship!

"I am proud of you men!" I thought heartily: and no emanation from any

menore was ever more sincere.

* * * * *

Cautiously, eyes roving ceaselessly, we made our way towards the two

silent ships. It seemed a quiet, peaceful world: an unlikely place for

tragedy. The air was fresh and clean, although, as Dival had predicted,

rarefied like the air at an altitude. The willow-like trees that hemmed

us in rustled gently, their long, frond-like branches with their rusty

green leaves swaying.

"Do you notice, sir," came a gentle thought from Dival, an emanation

that could hardly have been perceptible to the men behind us, "that

there is no wind--and yet the trees, yonder, are swaying and rustling?"

I glanced around, startled. I had not noticed the absence of a breeze.

I tried to make my response reassuring:

"There is probably a breeze higher up, that doesn't dip down into this

little clearing," I ventured. "At any rate, it is not important. These

ships are what interest me. What will we find there?"

"We shall soon know," replied Dival. "Here is the _Dorlos_; the second

of the two, was it not?"

"Yes." I came to a halt beside the gaping door. There was no sound

within, no evidence of life there, no sign that men had ever crossed

that threshold, save that the whole fabric was the work of man's hands.

"Mr. Dival and I will investigate the ship, with two of you men," I

directed. "The rest of the detail will remain on guard, and give the

alarm at the least sign of any danger. You first two men, follow us."

The indicated men nodded and stepped forward. Their "Yes, sirs" came

surging through my menore like a single thought. Cautiously, Dival at my

side, the two men at our backs, we stepped over the high threshold into

the interior of the _Dorlos_.

The _ethon_ tubes overhead made everything as light as day, and since

the _Dorlos_ was a sister ship of my own _Kalid_, I had not the

slightest difficulty in finding my way about.

There was no sign of a disturbance anywhere. Everything was in perfect

order. From the evidence, it would seem that the officers and men of the

_Dorlos_ had deserted the ship of their own accord, and--failed to

return.

"Nothing of value here," I commented to Dival. "We may as well--"

There was a sudden commotion from outside the ship. Startled shouts

rang through the hollow hull, and a confused medley of excited thoughts

came pouring in.

With one accord the four of us dashed to the exit, Dival and I in the

lead. At the door we paused, following the stricken gaze of the men

grouped in a rigid knot just outside.

Some, forty feet away was the edge of the forest that hemmed us in. A

forest that now was lashing and writhing as though in the grip of some

terrible hurricane, trunks bending and whipping, long branches writhing,

curling, lashing out--

"Two of the men, sir!" shouted a non-commissioned officer of the landing

crew, as we appeared in the doorway. In his excitement he forgot his

menore, and resorted to the infinitely slower but more natural speech.

"Some sort of insect came buzzing down--like an Earth bee, but larger.

One of the men slapped it, and jumped aside, forgetting the low gravity

here. He shot into the air, and another of the men made a grab for him.

They both went sailing, and the trees--_look!_"

But I had already spotted the two men. The trees had them in their grip,

long tentacles curled around them, a dozen of the great willow-like

growths apparently fighting for possession of the prizes. And all

around, far out of reach, the trees of the forest were swaying

restlessly, their long, pendulous branches, like tentacles, lashing out

hungrily.

"The rays, sir!" snapped the thought from Dival, like a flash of

lightning. "Concentrate the beams--strike at the trunks--"

"Right!" My orders emanated on the heels of the thought more quickly

than one word could have been uttered. The six men who operated the

disintegrator rays were stung out of their startled immobility, and the

soft hum of the atomatic power generators deepened.

"Strike at the trunks of the trees! Beams narrowed to minimum! Action at

will!"

The invisible rays swept long gashes into the forest as the trainers

squatted behind their sights, directing the long, gleaming tubes.

Branches crashed to the ground, suddenly motionless. Thick brown dust

dropped heavily. A trunk, shortened by six inches or so, dropped into

its stub and fell with a prolonged sound of rending wood. The trees

against which it had fallen tugged angrily at their trapped tentacles.

One of the men rolled free, staggered to his feet, and came lurching

towards us. Trunk after trunk dropped onto its severed stub and fell

among the lashing branches of its fellows. The other man was caught for

a moment in a mass of dead and motionless wood, but a cunningly directed

ray dissolved the entangling branches around him and he lay there, free

but unable to arise.

* * * * *

The rays played on ruthlessly. The brown, heavy powder was falling like

greasy soot. Trunk after trunk crashed to the ground, slashed into

fragments.

"Cease action!" I ordered, and instantly the eager whine of the

generators softened to a barely discernible hum. Two of the men, under

orders, raced out to the injured man: the rest of us clustered around

the first of the two to be freed from the terrible tentacles of the

trees.

His menore was gone, his tight-fitting uniform was in shreds, and

blotched with blood. There was a huge crimson welt across his face, and

blood dripped slowly from the tips of his fingers.

"_God!_" he muttered unsteadily as kindly arms lifted him with eager

tenderness. "They're alive! Like snakes. They--they're _hungry_!"

"Take him to the ship," I ordered. "He is to receive treatment

immediately," I turned to the detail that was bringing in the other

victim. The man was unconscious, and moaning, but suffering more from

shock than anything else. A few minutes under the helio emanations and

he would be fit for light duty.

* * * * *

As the men hurried him to the ship, I turned to Dival. He was standing

beside me, rigid, his face very pale, his eyes fixed on space.

"What do you make of it, Mr. Dival?" I questioned him.

"Of the trees?" He seemed startled, as though I had aroused him from

deepest thought. "They are not difficult to comprehend, sir. There are

numerous growths that are primarily carnivorous. We have the fintal vine

on Zenia, which coils instantly when touched, and thus traps many small

animals which it wraps about with its folds and digests through

sucker-like growths.

"On your own Earth there are, we learn, hundreds of varieties of

insectivorous plants: the Venus fly-trap, known otherwise as the Dionaea

Muscipula, which has a leaf hinged in the median line, with teeth-like

bristles. The two portions of the leaf snap together with considerable

force when an insect alights upon the surface, and the soft portions of

the catch are digested by the plant before the leaf opens again. The

pitcher plant is another native of Earth, and several varieties of it

are found on Zenia and at least two other planets. It traps its game

without movement, but is nevertheless insectivorous. You have another

species on Earth that is, or was, very common: the Mimosa Pudica.

Perhaps you know it as the sensitive plant. It does not trap insects,

but it has a very distinct power of movement, and is extremely

irritable.

"It is not at all difficult to understand a carniverous tree, capable of

violent and powerful motion. This is undoubtedly what we have here--a

decidedly interesting phenomena, but not difficult of comprehension."

It seems like a long explanation, as I record it here, but emanated as

it was, it took but an instant to complete it. Mr. Dival went on

without a pause:

"I believe, however, that I have discovered something far more

important. How is your menore adjusted, sir?"

"At minimum."

"Turn it to maximum, sir."

I glanced at him curiously, but obeyed. New streams of thought poured in

upon me. Kincaide ... the guard at the exit ... _and something else_.

I blanked out Kincaide and the men, feeling Dival's eyes searching my

face. There was something else, something--

I focused on the dim, vague emanations that came to me from the circlet

of my menore, and gradually, like an object seen through heavy mist, I

perceived the message:

"Wait! Wait! We are coming! Through the ground. The trees ...

disintegrate them ... all of them ... all you can reach. But not the

ground ... not the ground...."

"Peter!" I shouted, turning to Dival. "That's Peter Wilson, second

officer of the _Dorlos_!"

Dival nodded, his dark face alight.

"Let us see if we can answer him," he suggested, and we concentrated all

our energy on a single thought: "We understand. We understand."

The answer came back instantly:

"Good! Thank God! Sweep them down, Hanson: every tree of them. Kill them

... kill them ... kill them!" The emanation fairly shook with hate. "We

are coming ... to the clearing ... wait--and while you wait, use your

rays upon these accursed hungry trees!"

Grimly and silently we hurried back to the ship. Dival, the savant,

snatching up specimens of earth and rock here and there as we went.

* * * * *

The disintegrator rays of the portable projectors were no more than toys

compared with the mighty beams the _Kalid_ was capable of projecting,

with her great generators to supply power. Even with the beams narrowed

to the minimum, they cut a swath a yard or more in diameter, and their

range was tremendous; although working rather less rapidly as the

distance and power decreased, they were effective over a range of many

miles.

Before their blasting beams the forest shriveled and sank into tumbled

chaos. A haze of brownish dust hung low over the scene, and I watched

with a sort of awe. It was the first time I had ever seen the rays at

work on such wholesale destruction.

A startling thing became evident soon after we began our work. This

world that we had thought to be void of animal life, proved to be

teeming with it. From out of the tangle of broken and harmless branches,

thousands of animals appeared. The majority of them were quite large,

perhaps the size of full-grown hogs, which Earth animal they seemed to

resemble, save that they were a dirty yellow color, and had strong,

heavily-clawed feet. These were the largest of the animals, but there

were myriads of smaller ones, all of them pale or neutral in color, and

apparently unused to such strong light, for they ran blindly, wildly

seeking shelter from the universal confusion.

Still the destructive beams kept about their work, until the scene

changed utterly. Instead of resting in a clearing, the _Kalid_ was in

the midst of a tangle of fallen, wilting branches that stretched like a

great, still sea, as far as the eye could see.

"Cease action!" I ordered suddenly. I had seen, or thought I had seen, a

human figure moving in the tangle, not far from the edge of the

clearing. Correy relayed the order, and instantly the rays were cut off.

My menore, free from the interference of the great atomic generators of

the _Kalid_, emanated the moment the generators ceased functioning.

"Enough. Hanson! Cut the rays; we're coming."

"We have ceased action; come on!"

I hurried to the still open exit. Kincaide and his guards were staring

at what had been the forest; they were so intent that they did not

notice I had joined them--and no wonder!

A file of men were scrambling over the debris; gaunt men with

dishevelled hair, practically naked, covered with dirt and the greasy

brown dust of the disintegrator ray. In the lead, hardly recognizable,

his menore awry upon his tangled locks, was Peter Wilson.

"Wilson!" I shouted; and in a single great leap I was at his side,

shaking his hand, one arm about his scarred shoulders, laughing and

talking excitedly, all in the same breath. "Wilson, tell me--in God's

name--what has happened?"

He looked up at me with shining, happy eyes, deep in black sockets of

hunger and suffering.

"The part that counts," he said hoarsely, "is that you're here, and we're

here with you. My men need rest and food--not too much food, at first,

for we're starving. I'll give you the story--or as much of it as I

know--while we eat."

I sent my orders ahead; for every man of that pitiful crew of survivors,

there were two eager men of the _Kalid's_ crew to minister to him. In

the little dining salon of the officers' mess, Wilson gave us the story,

while he ate slowly and carefully, keeping his ravenous hunger in check.

"It's a weird sort of story," he said. "I'll cut it as short as I can.

I'm too weary for details.

"The _Dorlos_, as I suppose you know, was ordered to L-472 to determine

the fate of the _Filanus_, which had been sent here to determine the

feasibility of establishing a supply base here for a new interplanetary

ship line.

"It took us nearly three days, Earth time, to locate this clearing and

the _Filanus_, and we grounded the _Dorlos_ immediately. Our

commander--you probably remember him, Hanson: David McClellan? Big,

red-faced chap?"

I nodded, and Wilson continued.

"Commander McClellan was a choleric person, as courageous a man as ever

wore the blue and silver of the Service, and very thoughtful of his men.

We had had a bad trip; two swarms of meteorites that had worn our nerves

thin, and a faulty part in the air-purifying apparatus had nearly done

us in. While the exit was being unsealed, he gave the interior crew

permission to go off duty, to get some fresh air, with orders, however,

to remain close to the ship, under my command. Then, with the usual

landing crew, he started for the _Filanus_.

"He had forgotten, under the stress of the moment, that the force of

gravity would be very small on a body no larger than this. The result

was that as soon as they hurried out of the ship, away from the

influence of our own gravity pads, they hurtled into the air in all

directions."

Wilson paused. Several seconds passed before he could go on.

"Well, the trees--I suppose you know something about them--reached out

and swept up three of them. McClellan and the rest of the landing crew

rushed to their rescue. They were caught up. _God!_ I can see them ...

hear them ... even now!

"I couldn't stand there and see that happen to them. With the rest of

the crew behind me, we rushed out, armed only with our atomic pistols.

We did not dare use the rays; there were a dozen men caught up

everywhere in those hellish tentacles.

"I don't know what I thought we could do. I knew only that I must do

something. Our leaps carried us over the tops of the trees that were

fighting for the ... the bodies of McClellan and the rest of the landing

crew. I saw then, when it was too late, that there was nothing we could

do. The trees ... had done their work. They ... they were _feeding_....

"Perhaps that is why we escaped. We came down in a tangle of whipping

branches. Several of my men were snatched up. The rest of us saw how

helpless our position was ... that there was nothing we could do. We

saw, too, that the ground was literally honeycombed, and we dived down

these burrows, out of the reach of the trees.

"There were nineteen of us that escaped. I can't tell you how we

lived--I would not if I could. The burrows had been dug by the pig-like

animals that the trees live upon, and they led, eventually, to the

shore, where there was water--horrible, bitter stuff, but not salty, and

apparently not poisonous."

We lived on these pig-like animals, and we learned something of their

way of life. The trees seem to sleep, or become inactive, at night. Not

unless they are touched do they lash about with their tentacles. At

night the animals feed, largely upon the large, soft fruit of these

trees. Of course, large numbers of them make a fatal step each night,

but they are prolific, and their ranks do not suffer.

"Of course, we tried to get back to the clearing, and the _Dorlos_;

first by tunneling. That was impossible, we found, because the rays used

by the _Filanus_ in clearing a landing place had acted somewhat upon the

earth beneath, and it was like powder. Our burrows fell in upon us

faster than we could dig them out! Two of my men lost their lives that

way.

"Then we tried creeping back by night; but we could not see as can the

other animals here, and we quickly found that it was suicide to attempt

such tactics. Two more of the men were lost in that fashion. That left

fourteen.

"We decided then to wait. We knew there would be another ship along,

sooner or later. Luckily, one of the men had somehow retained his

menore. We treasured that as we treasured our lives. To-day, when, deep

in our runways beneath the surface, we felt, or heard, the crashing of

the trees, we knew the Service had not forgotten us. I put on the

menore; I--but I think you know the rest, gentlemen. There were eleven

of us left. We are here--all that is left of the _Dorlos_ crew. We found

no trace of any survivor of the _Filanus_; unaware of the possibility of

danger, they were undoubtedly, all the victims of ... the trees."

Wilson's head dropped forward on his chest. He straightened up with a

start and an apologetic smile.

"I believe, Hanson," he said slowly, "I'd better get ... a little ...

rest," and he slumped forward on the table in the death-like sleep of

utter exhaustion.

* * * * *

There the interesting part of the story ends. The rest is history, and

there is too much dry history in the Universe already.

Dival wrote three great volumes on L-472--or Ibit, as it is called now.

One of them tells in detail how the presence of constantly increasing

quantities of volcanic ash robbed the soil of that little world of its

vitality, so that all forms of vegetation except the one became extinct,

and how, through a process of development and evolution, those trees

became carniverous.

The second volume is a learned discussion of the tree itself; it seems

that a few specimens were spared for study, isolated on a peninsula of

one of the continents, and turned over to Dival for observation and

dissection. All I can say for the book is that it is probably accurate.

Certainly it is neither interesting nor comprehensible.

And then, of course, there is his treatise on ocrite: how he happened

to find the ore, the probable amount available on L-472--or Ibit, if you

prefer--and an explanation of his new method of refining it. I saw him

frantically gathering specimens while we were getting ready to leave,

but it wasn't until after we had departed that he mentioned what he had

found.

* * * * *

I have a set of these volumes somewhere; Dival autographed them and

presented me with them. They established his position, I understand, in

his world of science, and of course, the discovery of this new source of

ocrite was a tremendous find for the whole Universe; interplanetary

transportation wouldn't be where it is to-day if it were not for this

inexhaustible source of power.

Yes, Dival became famous--and very rich.

I received the handshakes and the gratitude of the eleven men we

rescued, and exactly nine words of commendation from the Chief of my

squadron: _"You are a credit to the Service, Commander Hanson!"_

Perhaps, to some who read this, it will seem that Dival fared better

than I. But to men who have known the comradeship of the outer space,

the heart-felt gratitude of eleven friends is a precious thing. And to

any man who has ever worn the blue and silver uniform of the Special

Patrol Service, those nine words from the Chief of Squadron will sound

strong.

Chiefs of Squadrons in the Special Patrol Service--at least in those

days--were scanty with praise. It may be different in these days of soft

living and political pull.

[Illustration]

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 details

of which I did not know.

[Sidenote: Three men stick out a strange and desperate adventure among

the incredible monsters of the dark sea floor.]

"Professor George Berry, the famous zoologist, and myself are going to

do some exploring that is hazardous in the extreme," Stanley had said.

"For purely mechanical reasons we need a third. You are young and have

no 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."

[Illustration: _"Look at the cable!" called Stanley._]

That was all the explanation he had given. It was sufficient. I was

fed-up with life just then: I had enough money to avoid work and was

tired 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 the

trip appear more desirable.

So here I was, on board the yacht, about to sail for far places on some

scientific mission which had so far been kept veiled in secrecy and

which was represented as "hazardous in the extreme." It sounded

attractive!

* * * * *

Stanley came aboard accompanied by a lean, wiry man with iron gray hair

and cool, alert black eyes.

"Hello, Martin," Stanley greeted me. "I want you to meet Professor

Berry, the real leader of this expedition. Professor, this young

red-head is Martin Grey, a sort of nephew by adoption who knows more

about night life than most cabaret proprietors--and not much of anything

else. He has shaken the dangers of the gold-diggers to face with us the

dangers of the tropic seas."

The professor gripped my hand, and his cool black eyes gazed into mine

with a kind of friendly frostiness.

"Don't pay any attention to him," he advised me. "Twenty years ago, when

I first met him, he was on his way to Africa to shoot elephants because

some revue beauty had just thrown him over and he felt he ought to do

something big and heroic about it. It was shortly afterward that he

decided to stay a bachelor all his life, and became such a confirmed

woman 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 dock

heavily loaded with a single immense crate. It was for us. I speculated

as to what it could possibly contain.

It was a twenty or twenty-five-foot cube solidly braced with strap-iron

and steel brackets. It evidently contained something fragile. The

yacht's donkey engine lowered a hook for it, and swung it over the side

and into the hold as daintily as though it had been packed with

explosives.

The last of the ship's stores followed it over the side: the group of

newspaper reporters who had been trying to pump the captain and first

mate 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 steward

approached me with the information that lunch was ready. I went to the

small, compactly furnished dining salon, where I was joined by Stanley

and the professor.

* * * * *

There were only the three of us at the table. Stanley Browne, noted big

game hunter and semi-retired owner of the great Browne Glassworks at

Altoona, a man fifteen years my senior but tanned and fit looking;

Professor Berry, well known in scientific circles; and myself, known in

no branch of activity save the one Stanley had jested about--the night

life of my home city, Chicago.

"It's time you knew just what you're up against," said Stanley to me

after the consomme had been served. "Now that we've actually sailed,

there's no longer any need for secrecy. Indeed there never has been

urgent need of it: the Professor and myself merely thought we might

provoke incredulity and comment if we stated the purpose of our trip

publicly."

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 conditions

as 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 I

knew that the limit of man's submersion, till then at any rate, was a

matter of a few hundred feet.

"Sounds incredible, doesn't it," said Stanley with a smile. "But that's

what we're going to do--if the Professor's gadget works as he seems to

think 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 no

human 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 let

my scientific curiosity run away with me. Perhaps we'll find no new

thing down down. Our deep sea dredging and classification may already

embrace most of the forms of life in the greater depths."

"If it does I want my money back," said Stanley. "When you asked me to

finance this expedition for you, I agreed on condition that you would

show me a thrill--some _real_ big game, even if I would not be able to

shoot it. If we draw blank--"

"The mere descent should satisfy you, my adventuring friend," replied

the Professor brusquely. "I think you'll find that thrilling enough."

"But--a mile under the surface!" I marveled, feeling not entirely

comfortable. "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 entirely

appreciate. "If it isn't, the three of us are going to be pressed out

like three sheets of tissue paper! For we are assuredly going down that

far 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 going

to be successful! That was plain!

"Just where are we going?" I asked. "You said something about the South

Seas, but you've named no special part of them."

"We're bound for Penguin Deep. That's a delightful little dimple in the

Kermadec Trough, which," Stanley explained, "is north-northeast of New

Zealand almost halfway up to the Fiji Islands. Penguin Deep is ticketed

at five thousand one hundred and fifty feet, but it probably runs deeper

in spots."

The rest of the meal was consumed in silence. I hardly tasted what I

ate; I remember that. Over five thousand feet down--where no man had

ever ventured before! Could we make it?

I tried to recall my neglected physics lessons and compute the pressure

that far down. I couldn't. But I knew it must be an appalling total of

tons to the square inch. What possible arrangement could they have

brought in which to make that awful descent?

And, if the descent were accomplished, what in the world would we see

when we got down there? Gigantic, hitherto unknown fishes? Marine

growths, half animal and half vegetable?

Decidedly, hot rolls and salad, cutlets and baked potatoes, good as they

were, could not distract attention from the crowding questions that

assailed me. And I could see that Stanley and the Professor were also

far away in their thoughts--probably already exploring Penguin Deep.

* * * * *

After lunch we went forward to look at the Professor's gadget, as

Stanley insisted on calling it.

It had been carefully unpacked by the crew while we ate, and it

shimmered in the electric lighted hold like a great bubble.

It was a giant glass sphere, polished and flawless. Inside it could be

made out various objects--a circular bench arrangement on a wooden

flooring, batteries that filled the cup between the floor and the bottom

arc of the sphere, tall metal cylinders, a small searchlight set next to

a mechanism that was indeterminate. At three equidistant points on the

sides there were glass handles, as thick as a man's thigh, cast integral

with the walls. On the top there was a smaller handle.

At first glance the sphere seemed all in one piece, with the central

objects cast inside like a toy ship in a sealed bottle. Then a

mathematically precise ring of prismatic reflections showed me that the

top third of the ball was a separate piece, fitting conically down like

the tapered glass stopper of a monstrous perfume bottle. The handle on

the top was for the purpose of lifting this giant's teapot lid, and

allowing entrance into the sphere.

"Isn't it a beauty?" murmured Stanley. "It ought to be," he added. "It

cost me eighty-six thousand to make it in my own glass factory. Eleven

castings before this one came along that was reasonably free of flaws.

Twenty-two feet six inches over all, walls five feet thick, new formula

unbreakable 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 the

apparatus."

* * * * *

To accommodate the huge ball a well had been constructed in the Rosa's

hold. This brought the deck we were standing on up to within six feet of

the top ring, above which was rigged a chain hoist for lifting the

ponderous lid.

The hoist was revolved, the conical top was swung free, and we clambered

into our unique diving shell.

The tall cylinders were revealed as great flasks of compressed air. The

indeterminate thing beside the searchlight turned out to be a hand pump,

geared to work against heavy pressure. From the suction chamber of this

three tubes extended.

"We inhale the air of the chamber," the Professor explained to me, "and

exhale through the tubes into the pump cylinder. Breathe in through the

nose and out through the mouth. The pump piston is forced down by this

geared handle, sending the used air out of the shell through this

sixteenth-inch hole. A ball check valve keeps the water from squirting

in when the exhaust pressure is released."

He pointed to a telegraphic key which completed a circuit from the

batteries in the bottom of the ball to a thread of copper cast through

the lid.

"That's your plaything, Martin. You are to raise or lower us by pressing

that key. It controls the donkey engine electrically, so that we guide

our own destinies though we are a mile beneath our power plant. Stanley

works the pump. I direct the searchlight, write down notes, and, I

sincerely hope, take snapshots of deep sea life."

For a moment my part of the labor seemed so easy as to be unfair. Merely

to sit there and punch a little key at raising and lowering time! But as

I thought it over it began to appear more difficult.

The _Rosa_ could not anchor, of course, in a mile of water. We would

drift helplessly. If we approached an undersea cliff I must raise us at

once to prevent us being smashed against it. And if the cliff were too

lofty to be cleared in time....

I mentioned this to the Professor.

"That would be unfortunate," he said, with his frosty smile. "Stanley

assures us this glass is unbreakable. He means commercially unbreakable.

What would happen to it if it were submitted to the strain of being

flung against a rock pile--in addition to the enormous stress of the

water pressure--I don't know. It's your job to see that we don't have to

find out!"

* * * * *

It had been planned to test the sphere empty first to see how it stood

the strain.

We drifted to a full stop over the center of Penguin Deep where we were

to gamble our lives in a game with Neptune. Sea anchors were rigged to

lessen our drift and the donkey engine was geared to the first cable

drum.

There was an impressive row of these drums, each holding an interminable

length of three-quarter-inch cable. The bulk of a mile of steel cable

has to be seen to be believed!

The glass sphere was lifted from the hold, delicately for all its

enormous weight, and swung over the rail preparatory to being lowered

into the depths.

Not until that moment did I notice two things: that there was no

fastening of any kind to keep the thick lid in place: and that the

three-quarter-inch cable looked like a pack thread in comparison to the

ponderous bulk it strained to support.

"We couldn't use a heavier cable," said the Professor, "because of the

strain. We're overloading the hoist as it is. As for the lid being

fastened down--I think you'll find it will be pressed into place

securely enough!"

There was unanimous silence as the great globe slipped into the

sea--down and down until the last reflection of the morning sun ceased

to shimmer from its surface. Drum after drum was played out, till the

first 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'll

find the gadget in one piece."

* * * * *

The engine began to snort rhythmically. Dripping, vibrating, the coils

of cable began to crawl back in place on the drums. There was a glint

under the surface again as the sunlight reflected on the nearing sphere.

The great ball flashed out of the water, and a cheer burst from the

throats of all of us. It was absolutely unharmed. Only--there was a

beading 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 cold

inside as out. Molecules of water driven by sheer pressure through five

feet of glass to unite in drops on the inside? Possibly. Well, there's

one 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-lined

jumpers to protect us from the cold of the sunless depths.

Soberly we entered the ball to undergo whatever ordeal awaited us on

the distant ocean floor. How comparative distance is! A mile walk in the

country--it is nothing. A mile ascent in an airplane--a trifle. But a

mile descent into pitch black, bone chilling depths of water--that is an

immense distance!

Copper wire, on a separate drum, was connected from the engine switch to

the copper thread that curled through the glass wall to my telegraphic

key. 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 see

that it was in working shape. He raised his hand, I pressed the key, and

the long descent began.

* * * * *

That plunge into the bottomless depths remains in my memory almost as

clearly as the far more fantastic adventures that came to us later.

Smoothly, rapidly, the yellow-green of the surface water dimmed to

olive. This in turn grew blacker and blacker. Then we were slipping down

into pitch darkness--a big bubble lit by a meagre lamp and containing

three fragile human beings that dared to trust the soft pulp of their

bodies to the crushing weight of the deepest ocean.

The most impressive thing was the utter soundlessness of our descent. At

first there had been a pulsing throb of the donkey engine transmitted to

us by the sustaining cable. This died as we slid farther from the Rosa.

At length it was hushed entirely, cushioned by the springy length of

steel. There was no stir, no sound of any kind. As far as our senses

could tell us, we were hanging motionless in the pressing, awesome

blackness.

The Professor switched off our light and turned on the searchlight which

he trained downward through the wall at as steep an angle as the

flooring would permit. Even then the illusion of motionlessness was

preserved. There was nothing in the water to mark our progress. We

might have been floating in a back void of space.

Down and down we went, for an interminable length of time--till at

length we reached the abysmal level where the sun never shone and the

eyes of man had never gazed till now.

* * * * *

Words were made to describe familiar articles. I find now when I am

faced with the necessity of portraying events and objects beyond the

range 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 fifty

feet away, which is the beam of our searchlight. Twenty feet below is a

bare floor of flinty lava and broken shell. This is unrelieved by

sea-weed of any kind, appearing like an imagined fragment of Martian or

lunar landscape.

The ball sways idly to the push of some explicable submarine current. It

is like being in a captive balloon, except that the connecting cable

extends stiffly upward instead of downward.

There is a realization, an instinctive _feel_ of awful pressure around

you. Logic tells you how you are clamped about, but deeper than logic is

the intuition that the glass walls are pressing in on themselves--at the

point of collapse. Your ears, tingle with the feel of it: your head

rings with it.

You are breathing in through your nose--thin, unsatisfying gulps of air

that cause your lungs to labor at their task; and you are exhaling

through, your mouth, with difficulty, into the barrel of the powerful

pump. No bubbles arise from the tiny hole where the used air is forced

into 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 handful

of waste which he has borrowed from the _Rosa's_ engine room, the

Professor wipes from the section of wall through which the searchlight

plays the moisture that constantly collects there. I sit with my hand

near the key, peering downward and ahead like an engineer in a

locomotive cab, ready to raise the shell or lower it as occasion

warrants.

And always the suffocating awareness of pressure....

* * * * *

Strange and mystic journey as the tortured glass sphere floated over the

bottom, following the slow drift of the _Rosa_ far above!

The finger of light played along the tilted side of a wrecked tramp

steamer. There was a crumpled gash in the bow. From this ragged hole

suddenly appeared a great, serpentine form....

The Professor clutched at his camera, pointed it, and clenched his hands

in a frenzy of disappointment. The serpent shape had disappeared back

into the hull. A little later and we had drifted slowly past the wreck.

"Damn it!" the Professor snatched away his mouthpiece to exclaim: "If we

could only _stop_."

The bottom changed character shortly after we had passed the hulk. We

began to creep over low, gently rounded mounds.

These were so regular in form that they were puzzling. About fifty feet

across and ten in altitude, they looked artificial in their

symmetry--like great saucers set on the ocean floor bottom side up. They

took on a dirty black hue as our light struck them, and glowed with a

faint phosphorescence as they stretched away into the darkness.

A twelve-foot monstrosity, all toad-like head and eyes, swam into the

light beam and bumped blindly against the glass ball. For an instant it

goggled crazily at us. The Professor took its picture. It blundered

away. As it reached the darkness beyond the beam it, too, showed

phosphorescent. A belt of blue-white spots like the portholes of a

liner 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 eighteen

or twenty feet long and a foot thick. It was blood red, almost blunt

ended and patently without eyes.

I took my gaze off it for an instant. When I looked again it had

disappeared. I blinked at this seeming miracle and then discovered a

foot or so of its tail protruding from under the edge of one of the

mounds. It was threshing furiously about.

* * * * *

It was at this instant that I suddenly found increased difficulty, and

glanced at Stanley.

He had stopped pumping and was clutching at the Professor's arm with one

hand while he pointed down with the other. The Professor motioned him

toward the pump, and began to click pictures furiously with the camera

pointed at the nearest mound.

Wondering at the urgency of Stanley's gesture and the frantic clicking

of the camera shutter, I looked more closely at the curious, saucerlike

hump.

Under closer inspection something remarkably like a huge, mud-colored

eye was revealed! And as we drifted along, twenty feet away on the

farther slope, another appeared!

Paralyzed, I stared at the edges of the thing. They were waving almost

imperceptibly up and down, _creeping_!

The mounds were living creatures! Acres and acres of them lying

lethargically on the bottom waiting for something to crawl within range

of their monstrous edges!

Involuntarily I pressed the key to raise us. But we had gone only a few

feet when the Professor called to me.

"Down again, Martin. I don't think these things will bother us unless we

scrape against them. Anyway they can't hurt the shell."

I lowered the ball to our former twenty-foot level, and there we swung

just over the monsters' backs.

* * * * *

The Professor had said that the giant inverted saucers would probably

not bother us if we did not come in contact with them. It soon became

apparent that, in a measure, he was right. The creatures either could

not or would not lift their enormous bulks from the sea floor.

A gigantic wriggling thing, all grotesque fringe and tentacles, drifted

down into the range of our light. Lower it floated until it hovered just

above one of the larger mounds. The Professor got its portrait. At the

same instant, as though it had heard the click of the shutter and been

frightened by it, the thing dropped another foot--and touched the

sloping back.

With the speed of light the inverted saucer became a cup. Like a

clenching fist, the cup closed over one of the straggling tentacles.

There followed a tug of war that was all the more ghastly for its

soundlessness. The hunted jerked spasmodically to get away from the

hunter. So wild were its efforts that several times it raised the

monster clear of the bottom for a foot or so. But the grim clutch could

not be broken.

Closer and closer it was dragged. Then, after a supreme paroxysm, the

tentacle parted and the prey escaped. The tentacle disappeared into the

mass of the baffled hunter. It made no attempt to follow the fleeing

creature. It slowly relaxed along the bottom and waited for its next

meal.

The unearthly incident gave us fresh confidence, convincing us that the

monsters did not move unless they were directly touched. Of course we

could not foresee the fatal accident that was going to put us within

reach of one of the giant saucers.

* * * * *

We thought for awhile that these great blobs of cold life were the

largest creatures of the depths. It was soon made clear to us how

mistaken that notion was!

For a time we gazed spellbound at the nightmare assortment of

grotesqueries that gradually assembled around us, attracted no doubt by

our light. The things were mainly sightless and of indescribable shape.

Most of them were phosphorescent, and they avoided collisions in a way

that suggested that they had some buried sense of light perception.

As time passed the Professor emptied his camera, refilled it several

times and groaned that he had no more film. Twice as we drifted along I

raised us to keep us clear of a gradual upward slope of the smooth

floor.

Stanley removed his mouthpiece long enough to suggest that we go back to

the surface: we had been submerged for nearly four hours now. But before

we could reply a violent movement was felt.

The ball rocked and twirled so that we were forced to cling to the

circular bench to avoid being thrown to the floor. It was as though a

hurricane of wind had suddenly penetrated the unruffled depths.

"Earthquake?" called Stanley.

"Don't know," answered the Professor. He swung the searchlight in an arc

and focussed it at length on something that appeared only as a field of

blurred 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 now

when I recall it to memory.

Something vast and serpentine had ventured too near the bottom--and had

been caught by the death traps there!

The creature was a writhing mass of gigantic coils. It was impossible

even to guess at its length, but its girth was such that the

mound-shaped monsters that had fastened to it could not entirely

encircle it.

There it twined and knotted: a mighty serpent of the deepest ocean,

snapping its awful length and threshing its powerful tail in an effort

to dislodge the giant leeches that were flattened against it. And every

time it touched the bottom in its blind frenzy, more of the teeming

deathtraps attached themselves to it, crawling over their fellows in an

effort to find unoccupied areas.

* * * * *

Soon the sea-serpent was a distorted, creeping mass. For one appalling

instant its head came into our view....

It resembled the head of a crocodile, only it was ten times larger and

covered with scale like the armor plate of a destroyer. The jaws, wide

open and slashing with enormous, needle-shaped teeth at the huge

parasites, were large enough to have held our glass sphere. One eye

appeared. It was at least three feet across and of a shimmering amethyst

color.

One of the deadly saucers wrapped itself around the great head. The

entire 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 staring

upward.

I followed his gaze with my own eyes.

In the faint reflected glow of the searchlight I could see row on row of

large cups flattened against the top of the ball. As I watched these

flattened still more and the big sphere quivered perceptibly.

In its death struggle the mighty serpent had flicked one of the huge

leeches against us. It now clung there with blind tenacity, covering

nearly 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 been

red hot.

The three-quarter-inch cable above us was now sustaining, in addition to

its own huge weight, our massive glass ball and the appalling tonnage

of this grim blanket of flesh that encircled us. Could it further hold

against the strain of lifting that combined tonnage through the press of

the water? Almost certainly it could not!

There was nothing we could do but hang there and discover at first hand

exactly what happened to things that were clamped in those mighty,

living vises!

* * * * *

The Professor turned on the interior bulb. The result was ghastly. It

showed 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 and

great ridges of flesh stood out. With each squeeze the glass shell

quivered ominously as though the extreme limit of its pressure resisting

power were being reached--and passed.

"A nice fix," remarked the Professor, his calm, dry voice acting like a

tonic in that moment of fear. "If we try to go up, the cable would

probably break. If we try to outlast the patience of this thing we might

run out of air, or actually be staved in."

He paused thoughtfully.

"I suggest, though, that we follow the latter course for awhile at

least. It would be just too bad if that cable broke, gentlemen!"

Stanley shuddered, and looked at the dirty white belly that pressed

against 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 the

bench. Casting frequent glances at the constricted blanket of flesh that

covered us, we prepared to wait as composedly as we might for the thing

to give up its effort to smash our shell.

* * * * *

The hour that followed was longer than any full day I have ever lived

through. Had I not confirmed the passage of time by looking at my

watch, I would have sworn that at least twenty hours had passed.

Every half-minute I gazed at that weaving pattern of cup-shaped suckers

only five feet away, trying to see if they were relaxing in their

pressure. I attempted to persuade myself that they were. But I knew I

was only imagining it. Actually they were pressed as flat as ever, and

the sphere still quivered at regular intervals as the heavy body

squeezed in on itself. There was no sign that its blind, mindless

patience was becoming exhausted.

There was little conversation during that interminable hour.

Stanley grinned wryly once and commented on the creature's

disappointment if it actually succeeded in getting at us.

"We'd be scattered all over the surrounding half mile by the pressure of

the water," he said. "There'd be nothing left for our pet to feed on but

five-foot chunks of broken glass. Not a very satisfying meal."

"We might try to reason with the thing--point out how foolish it is to

waste its time on us," I suggested, trying to appear as nonchalant as he

was.

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 by

our stubborn enemy. I wiped the moisture from the glass before the

searchlight so that I could see more clearly.

* * * * *

The bottom seemed to be heaving up and down. I blinked my eyes and

looked again. It was not an illusion. With a regular dip and rise we

were approaching to within a few feet of the rocky floor and moving back

up again. Also we were floating faster than at anytime previous. The

bottom was bare again; we had left the crowding, ominous mounds.

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

uneasy ocean bottom.

"I've been hoping I was wrong," he said simply. "I thought I felt a wavy

motion 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. A

storm. Judging from our movement it must be a hurricane: the length of

cable would cushion us from any average wave, and we are rising and

falling at least fifteen feet."

"My God!" groaned Stanley. "The _Rosa_ is already heeled with the weight

of us. She could never weather a hurricane!"

The plight of the crew above our heads was as clear to us as though we

had been aboard with them.

Should they cut the cable, figuring that the lives of the three of us

were certainly not to be set against the thirty on the yacht?