Should they disconnect the electric control and try to haul us up

regardless?

Or should they try to ride out the storm in spite of being crippled by

the drag of us?

"I think if I were up there I'd cut us adrift," said Stanley grimly.

Both the Professor and myself nodded. "Though," he added hopefully, "my

captain is a good gambler...."

* * * * *

The cable quivered like a live thing under the terrific strain. At each

downward swoop, before the upswing began, there was a sickening sag.

"We no longer have a decision to make," said the Professor. "Press the

key, Martin, and God grant we can rise with all this dead weight."

And at that instant the crew of the _Rosa_ were also relieved of the

necessity for making a decision.

At the bottom of one of those long, sickening falls there was a

jerk--and we continued on down to the ocean floor!

The sphere rolled over, jumbling the equipment in a tangled mess with

the three of us in the center, bruised and cut. The light snapped off as

the battery connections were torn loose.

There we lay at the bottom of Penguin Deep, in an inert sphere that was

dead and dark in the surrounding blackness--a coffin of glass to hold us

through the centuries....

* * * * *

"Martin," I heard the Professor's voice after a time. "Stanley--can

either of you move? I'm caught."

"I'm caught, too," came Stanley's gasping answer. "Something on my

leg--feels like it's broken."

A heavy object was pressing across my body. With an effort I freed

myself and fumbled in the pitch darkness for the other two.

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

I did know! Frantically I scrambled in the dark till I located the

batteries. They were right side up and still wired together.

The air grew rapidly foul with no one at the pump. Panting for breath I

blundered at the task of connecting the light. After what seemed an

eternity I accomplished it.

The light revealed Stanley with an air tank lying across his leg. The

mouthpiece of his breathing tube had been forced back over his head,

gashing his face in its journey. His face was white with pain.

The Professor was caught under the heavy bench. I freed him and together

we attended to Stanley, finding that his leg wasn't broken but only

badly bruised.

The mound-shaped monster, dislodged possibly by the fall, was nowhere to

be seen.

I resumed work at the pump, the connections of which were so strongly

contrived that they had withstood the shock of the upset.

For a moment we were content to rest while the air grew purer. Then we

were forced squarely to face our fate.

* * * * *

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

"We're certainly doomed! Here at the bottom of Penguin Deep we're as out

of reach of help as though we were stranded on the moon. We're as good

as dead right now."

"If we have nothing left to hope for," whispered Stanley after a time,

"we might as well close the air valves and get it over with at once. No

use torturing ourselves...."

The Professor moistened his lips.

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

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

"No! No!" I cried out. "Let's keep on living as long as the air holds

out. Something might happen--"

I avoided their eyes as I said it, utterly ashamed of my cowardly

quibbling with death. What in the name of God could possibly happen to

help us?

The Professor shrugged dully, and nodded.

"I feel with Stanley that we ought to get it over in one short stab. But

we have no right to force you...." His voice trailed off.

We readjusted our mouthpieces. I turned automatically at the pump; and

we silently awaited the last suffocating moment of our final doom.

* * * * *

As before, attracted by the light, a strange assortment of deep-sea life

wriggled and darted about us, swimming lazily among the looped coils and

twists of our cable which had settled down around us.

Among these were certain fish that resembled great porcupines. Spines a

foot and a half long, like living knife blades, protected them from the

attacks of other species.

They were the only things we saw that were not constantly writhing away

from the jaws of some hostile monster--the only things that seemed able

to swim about their own affairs without even deigning to watch for

danger.

Fascinated, I watched the six-foot creatures. Here were we, reasoning

humans, supposed lords of creation, slowly but surely perishing--while

only a few feet away one of the lowest forms of life could exist in

perfect safety and tranquility!

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

The majority of them had two fins just behind the gill slits, typical

fish tails and blunt, sloping heads. But now and then I saw a spined

monster that was queerly unlike its fellows.

Instead of two front fins, these unique ones had two vacant round holes.

The head looked as though it had forgotten to grow; its place was taken

by an eyeless, projecting, shield shaped cap. And there was no tail.

Glad to find something to distract my half crazed thoughts, I studied

the nearest of these.

They moved slower than their tailed and finned brothers, I noticed. I

wondered how they could move at all, lacking in any kind of motive power

as they seemed to be.

Next instant the secret of their movement was made clear!

* * * * *

Out of the empty fin holes of the creature I was studying crept two

long, powerful looking tentacles. But these were not true tentacles.

There were no vacuum discs on them, and they moved as though supported

by jointed bones--like arms.

The arms ended in flat paddles that resembled hands. These threshed the

water in a sort of breast-stroke, propelling the body forward.

Shortly after the arms had appeared, the spiny head cap was cautiously

extended a few inches forward from the main shell. Further it was

extended as the head of a turtle might slowly appear from the protection

of its bony case. And under it--

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

Both the Professor and Stanley merely stared dully at me. I babbled of

what I had seen.

"A man! A human looking thing, anyway! Arms and a head! A man inside a

fish's spined hide--like armor!"

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

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

"I tell you I saw it!" I shouted. Then, shrinking from the hysterical

loudness of my own voice, I lowered my tone. "Something that looks human

has occupied some of those prickly, six-foot shells. I saw arms--and a

man's head! I swear it!"

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

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

searchlight shone.

"Look! See for yourself!"

* * * * *

Squarely in the rays of the light showed a head, projecting from one of

the shells and capped with a wide flat helmet of horned bone.

There were eyes and nose and mouth placed on one side of that head--a

face! There were even tabs of flesh or bony protuberances that resembled

ears.

"Curious," muttered the Professor, staring. "It certainly looks human

enough to talk. But it's only a fish, nevertheless. See--in the throat

are gill slits."

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

And they were not. There was in them a light of reason, of intelligence.

Those eyes were roaming brightly over us, observing the light, the

equipment, seeming to note our amazement as we crowded to look at it.

The sphere rocked slightly. Behind the staring, manlike visitor there

was a glimpse of enormous, crocodile jaws and huge, amethyst eyes.

Instantly the head and arms receded, leaving an empty-seeming, lifeless

shell. An impregnable fortress of spines, the thing drifted slowly away

through the twisted loops of cable.

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

"The creature was just a fish," said the Professor shaking his head at

the light in Stanley's eyes. "Some sort of giant parasite that inhabits

the shells of other fish."

He opened the valve of the last air cylinder and seated himself

resignedly on the bench.

"We have another half hour or so--"

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

moved.

"Look at the cable!" called Stanley.

We did so. It was moving, writhing away from us over the bottom as

though abruptly given life of its own. Coil after coil disappeared into

the further gloom.

At length the cable was straight. The ball moved again--was dragged a

few feet along the rocky floor.

Something--possessed of incredibly vast power--had seized the end of the

steel cable and was reeling us in as a fisherman reels in a trout!

* * * * *

Slowly, unsteadily, we slid along the ocean floor. Ahead of us appeared

a jagged black wall--a cliff. There was a gloomy hole at its base.

Toward this we were being dragged by whatever it was that had caught the

end of the cable.

Helpless, we watched ourselves engulfed by the murky den. In the beam of

the searchlight we saw that the submarine cavern extended on and on for

an unguessable depth. The cable, taut with the strain, stretched ahead

out of sight.

Time had been lost track of during that mysterious, ominous journey. It

was recalled to us by the state of the air we were breathing.

The Professor removed his mouthpiece and cast the tube aside.

"You might as well stop pumping, Martin," he said quietly. "We're done.

There's no more air in the flask."

We stared at each other. Then we shook hands, solemnly, tremulously,

taking leave of each other before we departed on that longest of all

journeys....

The air in that small space was rapidly exhausted. We lay on the floor,

laboring for breath, and closed our eyes....

The Professor, the oldest of the three of us, succumbed first. I heard

his breath whistle stertorously and, glancing at him, saw that he was in

a coma. In a moment Stanley had joined him in blessed unconsciousness.

I could feel myself drifting off.... Hammers beat at my ears.... Daggers

pierced my heaving lungs....

Hazily I could see scores of the bristly, manlike fish when I opened my

eyes and glanced through the walls. It was not one monster then, but

many that had brought us to their lair. Abruptly, as though a signal had

been given, they all streamed back toward the mouth of the cavern....

My eyesight dimmed.... The hammers pulsed louder.... A veil descended

over my senses and I knew no more....

* * * * *

A soft, sustained roar came to my ears. Through my closed eyelids I

could sense light. A dank, fishy smell came to my nostrils.

I groaned and moved feebly, finding that I was resting on something soft

and pleasant.

Dazedly I opened my eyes and sat up. An exclamation burst from me as I

suddenly remembered what had gone before, and realized that somehow,

incredibly, I was still living.

Feeling like a man who has waked from a nightmarish sleep to find

himself in his tomb, I gazed about.

I was in a long, lofty rock chamber, the uneven floor of which was

covered with shallow pools of water. The further end was of

smooth-grained stone that resembled cement. The near end was rough like

the walls; but in it there was a small, symmetrical arch, the mouth of a

passage leading away to some other point in the bowels of the earth.

The place was flooded with clear light that had a rosy tinge. From my

position on the floor I could not see what made the light. It streamed

from a crevice that extended clear around the cave parallel with the

floor and about twelve feet above it. From this groove, along with the

light, came the soft roaring hiss.

Beside me was the glass ball, the cover off and lying a few feet away

from the opening in the top. There was no trace of Stanley or the

Professor.

I rose from my couch, a thick, mattresslike affair of soft, pliant hide,

and walked feebly toward the small arch in the near end of the cave.

Even as I approached it I heard footsteps, and voices resounded in some

slurring, musical language. Half a dozen figures suddenly came into

view.

They were men, as human as myself! Indeed, as I gazed at them, I felt

inclined to think they were even more human!

* * * * *

They were magnificent specimens. The smallest could not have been less

than six feet three, and all of them were muscular and finely

proportioned. Their faces were arresting in their expression of calm

strength and kindliness. They looked like gods, arrayed in soft, thick,

beautifully tanned hides in this rosy tinted hole a mile below the

ocean's top.

They stared at me for an instant, then advanced toward me. My face must

have reflected alarm, for the tallest of them held up his hand, palm

outward, in a peaceful gesture.

The leader spoke to me. Of course the slurred, melodious syllable meant

nothing to me. He smiled and indicated that I was to follow him. I did

so, hardly aware of what I was doing, my brain reeling in an attempt to

grasp the situation.

How marvelous, how utterly incredible, to find human beings here! How

many were there? Where had they come from? How had they salvaged us from

Penguin Deep? I gave it up, striding along with my towering guards like

a man walking in his sleep.

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

I was looking down a long avenue of buildings, all three stories in

height. There were large door and window apertures, but no doors nor

window panes. In front of each house was a small square with--wonder of

wonders!--a lawn of whitish yellow vegetation that resembled grass. In

some of the lawns were set artistic fountains of carved rock.

I might have been looking down any prosperous earthly subdivision, save

for the fact that the roofs of the houses were the earth itself, which

the building walls, in addition to functioning as partitions, served to

support. Also earthly subdivisions aren't usually illuminated with rosy

light that comes softly roaring from jets set in the walls.

* * * * *

We were walking toward a more brightly lighted area that showed ahead of

us. On the way we passed intersections where other, similar streets

branched geometrically away to right and left. These were smaller than

the one we were on, indicating that ours was Main Street in this bizarre

submarine city.

Faces appeared at door and window openings to peer at me as we passed.

And even in that jumbled moment I had time to realize that these folk

could restrain curiosity better than we can atop the earth. There was no

hub-bub, no running out to tag after the queerly dressed foreigner and

shout humorous remarks at him.

We approached the bright spot I had noticed from afar. It was an open

square, about a city block in area, in the center of which was a royal

looking building covered with blazing fragments of crystal and so

brilliantly resplendent with light that it seemed to glow at the heart

of a pink fire.

I was led toward this and in through a wide doorway. As courteously as

though I were a visiting king, I was conducted up a great staircase,

down a corridor set with more of the sparkling crystals and into a huge,

low room. There my escort bowed and left me.

* * * * *

Still feeling that I could not possibly be awake and seeing actual

things, I glanced around.

In a corner was another of the mattresslike couches made of the thick,

soft hide that seemed to be the principal fabric of the place. A few

feet away was a table set with dishes of food in barbaric profusion.

None of the viands looked familiar but all appealed to the appetite. The

floor was strewn with soft skins, and comfortable, carved benches were

scattered about.

I walked to the window and looked out. Underneath was a plot of the

cream colored grass through which ran a tiny stream. This widened at

intervals into clear pools beside which were set stone benches. A

hundred yards away was the edge of the square, where the regular, three

storied houses began.

While I was staring at this unearthly vista, still unable to think with

any coherence. I heard my name called. I turned to face Stanley and the

Professor.

* * * * *

Both were pale in the rose light, and Stanley limped with the pain of

his bruised leg: but both had recovered from their partial suffocation

as completely as had I.

"We thought perhaps you'd decided to swim back up to the _Rosa_ and

leave us to our fates," said Stanley after we had stopped pumping each

other's arms and had seated ourselves.

"And I thought--well, I didn't think much of anything," I replied. "I

was too busy straining my eyesight over the wonders of this city. Did

you ever see anything like it?"

"We haven't seen it at all, save for a view from the windows," said

Stanley. "All we know of the place is that a while ago we woke up in a

room like this, only much smaller and less lavish. I wonder why you rate

this distinction?"

I described the streets as I had seen them. (It is impossible for me to

think of them as anything but streets; it would seem as though the rock

roof over all would give the appearance of a series of tunnels; but I

had always the impression of airiness and openness.)

"Light and heat are furnished by natural gas," said the Professor when I

remarked on the perfection of these two necessities. "That's what makes

the low roaring noise--the thousands of burning jets. But the presence

of gas here isn't as unusual as the presence of air. Where does that

come from? Through wandering underground mazes, from some cave mouth in

the Fiji Islands to the north? That would indicate that all the earth

around here is honeycombed like a gigantic section of sponge. I

wonder--"

"Have you any idea how we were rescued?" I interrupted, a little

impatient of his abstract scientific ponderings.

"We have," said Stanley. "A woman told us. We woke up to find her

nursing us--gorgeous looking thing--finest woman I've ever seen, and

I've seen a good many--"

"She didn't exactly 'tell' us," remarked the Professor with his thin

smile. Women were only interesting to him as biological studies. "She

drew a diagram that explained it.

"That tunnel, Martin, was like the outer diving chamber of a submarine.

We were hauled in on a big windlass--driven by gas turbines, I think.

Once we were inside, a twenty-yard, counterbalanced wall of rock was

lowered across the entrance. Then the water was drained out through a

well, and into a subterranean body of water that extends under the

entire city. And here we are."

We fell silent. Here we were. But what was going to happen to us among

these friendly-seeming people; and how--if ever--we were going to get

back to the earth's surface, were questions we could not even try to

answer.

* * * * *

We ate of the appetizing food laid out on the long table. Shortly

afterward we heard steps in the corridor outside the room.

A woman entered. She was ravishingly beautiful, tall, slender but

symmetrically rounded. A soft leather robe slanted upward across her

breast to a single shoulder fastening and ended just above her knees in

a skirt arrangement. Around her head was a regal circlet of silvery gray

metal with a flashing bit of crystal set in the center above her broad,

low forehead.

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

She pointed toward the door, signifying that we were to go with her. We

did so; and were led down the great staircase and to a huge room that

took up half the ground floor of the building. And here we met the

nobility of the little kingdom--the upper class that governed the

immaculate little city.

They were standing along the walls, leaving a lane down the center of

the room--tall, finely modelled men and women dressed in the single

garments of soft leather. There were people there with gray hair and

wisdom wrinkled faces; but all were alike in being erect of body, firm

of bearing and in splendid health.

They stopped talking as we entered the big room. Our gaze strayed ahead

down the lane toward the further wall.

Here was a raised dais. On it was a gleaming crystal encrusted throne.

And occupying it was the most queenly, exquisitely beautiful woman I

had ever dreamed about.

* * * * *

Woman? She was just a girl in years in spite of her grave and royal air.

Her eyes were deep violet. Her hair was black as ebony and gleaming with

sudden glints of light. Her skin--

But she cannot be described. Only a great painter could give a hint of

her glory. Too, I might truthfully be described as prejudiced about her

perfections.

The Queen, for patently she was that, bowed graciously at us. It seemed

to me--though I told myself that I was an imaginative fool--that her

eyes rested longest on me, and had in them an expression not granted to

the Professor or Stanley.

She spoke to us a melodious sentence or two, and waved her beautiful

hand in which was a short ivory wand, evidently a scepter.

"She's probably giving us the keys to the city," whispered Stanley. He

edged nearer the fair one who had conducted us. "I sincerely hope

there's room here for us."

The open lane closed in on us. Men and women crowded about us speaking

to us and smiling ruefully as they realized we could not understand. I

noticed that, for some curious reason, they seemed fascinated by the

color of my hair. Red-haired men were evidently scarce there.

At length the beauty who had so captured Stanley's fancy, and who seemed

to have been appointed a sort of mentor for us, suggested in sign

language that we might want to return to our quarters.

It was a welcome suggestion. We were done in by the experiences and

emotions that had gripped us since leaving the _Rosa_ such an incredibly

few hours ago.

We went back to the second floor. I to my luxurious big apartment and

Stanley and the Professor to their smaller but equally comfortable

rooms.

* * * * *

A pleasant period slid by, every waking hour of which was filled with

new experiences.

The city's name, we found, was Zyobor. It was a perfect little

community. There were artisans and thinkers, artists and laborers--all

alike in being physically perfect beyond belief and cultured as no race

on top the ground is cultured.

As we began to learn the language, more exact details of the practical

methods of existence were revealed to us.

The surrounding earth furnished them with building materials, metals and

unlimited gas. The sea, so near us and yet so securely walled away, gave

them food. Which warrants a more detailed description.

We were informed that the manlike, two-armed fishes were the servants of

these people--domesticated animals, in a sense, only of an extremely

high order of intelligence. They were directed by mental telepathy

(Every man, woman and child in Zyobor was skilled at thought projection.

They conversed constantly, from end to end of the city, by mental

telepathy.)

Protected in their spined shells, which they captured from the schools

of porcupine fish that swarmed in Penguin Deep, they gathered sea

vegetation from the higher levels and trapped sea creatures. These were

brought into the subterranean chamber where our glass ball now reposed.

Then the chamber was emptied of water and the food was borne to the

city.

The vast army of mound-fish provided the bulk of the population's food,

and also furnished the thick, pliant skin they used for clothing and

drapes. They were cultivated as we cultivate cattle--an ominous herd, to

be handled with care and approached by the fish-servants with due

caution.

Thus, with all reasonable wants satisfied, with talent and brains to

design beautiful surroundings, lighted and warmed by inexhaustible

natural gas, these fortunate beings lived their sheltered lives in

their rosy underground world.

At least I thought their lives were sheltered then. It was only later,

when talking to the beautiful young Queen, that I learned of the dread

menace that had begun to draw near to them just a short time before we

were rescued....

* * * * *

My first impression, when we had entered the throne room that first day,

that the Queen had regarded me more intently than she had Stanley or the

Professor, had been right. It pleased her to treat me as an equal, and

to give me more of her time than was granted to any other person in the

city.

Every day, for a growing number of hours, we were together in her

apartment. She personally instructed me in the language, and such was my

desire to talk to this radiant being that I made an apt pupil.

Soon I had progressed enough to converse with her--in a stilted,

incorrect way--on all but the most abstract of subjects. It was a fine

language. I liked it, as I liked everything else about Zyobor. The upper

earth seemed far away and well forgotten.

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

"How did your kingdom begin?" I asked her one day, while we were sitting

beside one of the small pools in the gardens. We were close together.

Now and then my shoulder touched hers, and she did not draw away.

"I know not," she replied. "It is older than any of our ancient records

can say. I am the three hundred and eleventh of the present reigning

line."

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

"Thou art the first."

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

"There is no other entrance."

* * * * *

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

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

"In the monarchies we know above," I said finally, avoiding her violet

eyes, "it is not the custom for the queen--or king--to reign alone. A

consort is chosen. Is it not so here? Has thou not, among thy nobles,

some one thou hast destined--"

I stopped, feeling that if she dismissed me in anger and never spoke to

me again the punishment would be just.

But she wasn't angry. A lovely tide of color stained her cheeks. Her

lips parted, and she turned her head. For a long time she said nothing.

Then she faced me, with a light in her eyes that sent the blood racing

in my veins.

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

why."

She rose and hurried back toward the palace. But at the door she

paused--and smiled at me in a way that had nothing whatever to do with

queenship.

* * * * *

As the time sped by the three of us settled into the routine of the city

as though we had never known of anything else.

The Professor spent most of his time down by the sea chamber where the

food was dragged in by the intelligent servant-fish.

He was in a zoologist's paradise. Not a creature that came in there had

ever been catalogued before. He wrote reams of notes on the parchment

paper used by the citizens in recording their transactions. Particularly

was he interested in the vast, lowly mound-fish.

One time, when I happened to be with him, the receding waters of the

chamber disclosed the body of one of the odd herdsmen of these deep sea

flocks. Then the Professor's elation knew no bounds. We hurried forward

to look at it.

"It is a typical fish," puzzled the Professor when we had cut the body

out of its usurped armor. "Cold blooded, adapted to the chill and

pressure of the deeps. There are the gills I observed before ... yet it

looks very human."

It surely did. There were the jointed arms, and the rudimentary hands.

Its forehead was domed; and the brain, when dissected, proved much

larger than the brain of a true fish. Also its bones were not those of a

mammal, but the cartilagenous bones of a fish. It was not quite six feet

long; just fitted the horny shell.

"But its intelligence!" fretted the Professor, glorying in his inability

to classify this marvelous specimen. "No fish could ever attain such

mental development. Evolution working backward from human to reptile and

then fish--or a new freak of evolution whereby a fish on a short cut

toward becoming human?" He sighed and gave it up. But more reams of

notes were written.

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

them."

* * * * *

He looked at me with professorial absent-mindedness.

"I take them for the fun of it, principally. But perhaps, sometime, we

may figure out a way of getting them up. My God! Wouldn't my learned

brother scientists be set in an uproar!"

He bent to his observations and dissections again, cursing now and then

at the distortion suffered by the specimens when they were released from

the deep sea pressure and swelled and burst in the atmospheric pressure

in the cave.

Stanley was engrossed in a different way. Since the moment he laid eyes

on her, he had belonged to the stately woman who had first nursed him

back to consciousness. Mayis was her name.

From shepherding the three of us around Zyobor and explaining its

marvels to us, she had taken to exclusive tutorship of Stanley. And

Stanley fairly ate it up.

"You, the notorious woman hater," I taunted him one time, "the wary

bachelor--to fall at last. And for a woman of another world--almost of

another planet! I'm amazed!"

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

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

useless, all alike--"

"I find I was mistaken," he interrupted. "They aren't all alike. There's

only one Mayis. She is--different."

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

"I'm not with her any more than you're with the Queen," he shot back at

me. "What do you find to talk about?"

That shut me up. He went to look for Mayis; and I wandered to the royal

apartments in search of Aga.

* * * * *

In the first days of our friendship I had several times surprised in

Aga's eyes a curious expression, one that seemed compounded of despair,

horror and resignation.

I had seen that same expression in the eyes of the nobles of late, and

in the faces of all the people I encountered in the streets--who, I

mustn't forget to add here, never failed to treat me with a deference

that was as intoxicating as it was inexplicable.

It was as though some terrible fate hovered over the populace, some

dreadful doom about which nothing could be done. No one put into words

any fears that might confirm that impression; but continually I got the

idea that everybody there went about in a state of attempting to live

normally and happily while life was still left--before some awful,

wholesale death descended on them.

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

But first--a confession that was hastened by the knowledge of the fate

of the city--I learned from her something that changed all of life for

me.

* * * * *

We were surrounded by the luxury of her private apartment. We sat on a

low divan, side by side. I wanted, more than anything I had ever wanted

before, to put my arms around her. But I dared not. One does not make

love easily to a queen, the three hundred and eleventh of a proud line.

And then, as maids have done often in all countries, and, perhaps, on

all planets, she took the initiative herself.

"We have a curious custom in Zyobor of which I have not yet told thee,"

she murmured. "It concerns the kings of Zyobor. The color of their

hair."

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

"For all of our history our kings have had--red hair. On the few

occasions when the line has been reduced to a lone queen, as in my case,

the red-haired men of the kingdom have striven together in public combat

to determine which was most powerful and brave. The winner became the

Queen's consort."

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

"In my case, my lord, there is to be no--no striving. When I was a child

our only two red-haired males died, one by accident, one by sickness.

Now there are none others but infants, none of eligible age. But--by a

miracle--thou--"

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

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

* * * * *

It was after I had replied impetuously to this, that she told me of the

terror that was about to engulf all life in the beautiful undersea city.

"Thou hast wonder, perhaps, why I should be forward enough to tell thee

this instead of waiting for thine own confession first," she faltered.

"Know, then--the reason is the shortness of the time we are fated to

spend together. We shall belong each to the other only a little while.

Then shall we belong to death! And I--when I knew the time was to be so

brief--"

And I listened with growing horror to her account of the enemy that was

advancing toward us with every passing moment.

* * * * *

About twenty miles away, in the lowest depression of Penguin Deep, lived

a race of monsters which the people of Aga's city called Quabos.

The Quabos were grim beings that were more intelligent than Aga's

fish-servants--even, she thought, more intelligent than humans

themselves. They had existed in their dark hole, as far as the Zyobites

knew, from the beginning of time.

Through the countless centuries they had constructed for themselves a

vast series of dens in the rock. There they had hidden away from the

deep-sea dangers. They, too, preyed on the mound-fish; but as there was

plenty of food for all, the Zyobites had never paid much attention to

them.

But--just before we had appeared, there had come about a subterranean

quake that changed the entire complexion of matters in Penguin Deep.

The earthquake wiped out the elaborately burrowed sea tunnels of the

Quabos, killing half of them at a blow and driving the rest out into the

unfriendly openness of the deep.

Now this was fatal to them. They were not used to physical self defense.

During the thousands of years of residence in their sheltered burrows

they had become utterly unable to exist when exposed to the primeval

dangers of the sea. It was as though the civilization-softened citizens

of New York should suddenly be set down in a howling wilderness with

nothing but their bare hands with which to contrive all the necessities

of a living.

* * * * *

Such was the situation at the time Stanley, the Professor and myself

arrived in Zyobor.

The Quabos must find an immediate haven or perish. On the ocean bottom

they were threatened by the mound-fish. In the higher levels they were

in danger from almost everything that swam: few things were so

defenceless as themselves after their long inertia.

Their answer was Zyobor. There, in perfect security, only to be reached

by the diving chamber that could be sealed at will by the twenty-yard,

counterbalanced lock, the Quabos would be even more protected than in

their former runways.

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

"But Aga," I interrupted impulsively at this point. "If these monsters

are fishes, how could they live here in air--"

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

They would not have to live in air to inhabit Zyobor. They would

inundate the city--flood that peaceful, beautiful place with the awful

pressure of the lowest depths!

That thought, in turn, suggested to me that every building in Zyobor

would be swept flat if subjected suddenly to the rush of the sea. The

great low cavern, without the support of the myriad walls, would

probably collapse--trapping the invading Quabos and leaving the rest

without a home once more.

But Aga answered this before I could voice it.

The Quabos had foreseen that point. They were tunneling slowly but

surely toward the city from a point about half a mile from the diving

chamber. And as they advanced, they blocked up the passageway behind

them at intervals, drilled down to the great underground sea that lay

beneath all this section, and drained a little of the water away.

* * * * *

In this manner they lightened, bit by bit, the enormous weight of the

ocean depths. When the city was finally reached, not only would it be

ensured against sudden destruction but the Quabos themselves would have

become accustomed to the difference in pressure. Had they gone

immediately from the accustomed press of Penguin Deep into the

atmosphere of Zyobor, they would have burst into bits. As it was they

would be able to flood the city slowly, without injury to themselves.

"Now thou knowest our fate," concluded Aga with a shudder. "Zyobor will

be a part of the great waters. We ourselves shall be food for these

monsters...." She faltered and stopped.

"But this cannot be!" I exclaimed, clenching my fists impotently. "There

_must_ be something we can do; some way--"

"There is nothing to be done. Our wisest men have set themselves

sleeplessly to the task of defence. There is no defence possible."

"We can't simply sit here and wait! Your people are wonderful, but this

is no time for resignation. Send for my two friends, Aga. We will have a

council of war, we four, and see if we can find a way!"

She shrugged despairfully, started to speak, then sent in quest of

Stanley and the Professor.

* * * * *

They as well as myself, had had no idea of the menace that crept nearer

us with each passing hour. They were dumbfounded, horrified to learn of

the peril. We sat awhile in silence, realizing our situation to the

full.

Then the Professor spoke:

"If only we could see what these things look like! It might help in

planning to defeat them."

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

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

"My fish-men are watching the Quabos constantly. They report to me by

telepathy whenever I send my thoughts their way. I will let you see, on

the pool, the things they are now seeing."

She stared intently at the sheet of water. And gradually, as we watched,

a picture appeared--a picture that will never fade from my memory in any

smallest detail.

The Quabos had huddled for protection into a large cave at the foot of

the cliff outside Zyobor. There were a great many Quabos, and the cave

was relatively confining. Now we saw, through the eyes of the spine

protected outpost of the Queen, these monstrous refugees crowded

together like sheep.

The watery cavern was a creeping mass of viscous tentacles, enormous

staring eyes and globular heads. The cave was paved three deep with the

horrible things, and they were attached to the it walls and roof in

solid blocks.

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

* * * * *

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

The layers on the floor were weaving and shifting constantly as the

bottom creatures struggled feebly to rise to the top of the mass and be

relieved of the weight of their brothers. Also they were famished....

One of the blood red, gigantic worms floated near the cave entrance.

Like lightning the nearest Quabos darted after it. In a moment the prey

was torn to bits by the ravenous monsters.

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

With the emerging of the reckless Quabos, a sea-serpent appeared from

above and snapped up three of their number. Evidently the huge serpent

considered them succulent tidbits, and made it its business to wait near

the cave and avail itself of just such rash chance-taking as this.

While we watched the nightmare scene, a Quabo disengaged itself from the

parent mass and floated upward into the clear, giving us a chance to see

more distinctly what the creatures looked like.

There was a black, shiny head as large as a sugar barrel. In this were

eyes the size of dinner plates, and gleaming with a cold, hellish

intelligence. Four long, twining tentacles were attached directly to

the head. Dotted along these were rudimentary sucker discs, that had

evidently become atrophied by the soft living of thousands of the

creature's ancestors.

As though emerging from the pool into which we were gazing, the monster

darted viciously at us. At once it disappeared: the fish-servant through

whose eyes we were seeing all this had evidently retreated from the

approach; although, protected by its spines, it could not have been in

actual danger.

"How dost thou know of the tunneling?" I asked Aga. "Thy fish-men cannot

be present there, in the rear of the tunnel, to report."

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

show thee."

* * * * *

We walked back to the palace and descended to a smooth-lined vault.

There we saw a great stone shaft sunk down into the rock of the floor.

On this was a delicate vibration recording instrument of some sort, with

a needle that quivered rhythmically over several degrees of an arc.

"This tells of each move of the Quabos," said Aga. "It also tells us

where they will break through the city wall. How near to us are they,

Kilor?" she asked an attendant who was studying the dial, and who had

bowed respectfully to Aga and myself as we approached.

"They will break into the city in four rixas at the present rate of

advance, Your Majesty."

Four rixas! In a little over sixteen days, as we count time, the city of

Zyobor would be delivered into the hands--or, rather, tentacles--of the

slimy, starving demons that huddled in the cavern outside!

Somberly we followed Aga back to her apartment.

* * * * *

"As thou seest," she murmured, "there is nothing to be done. We can only

resign ourselves to the fate that nears us, and enjoy as much as may be

the few remaining rixas...."

She glanced at me.

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

communion.

"I don't think we'll give up quite as easily as all that. We can at

least try to outwit our enemies. If it does nothing else for us, the

effort can serve to distract our minds."

He drew from his pocket a sheet of parchment and the stub of his last

remaining pencil. His fingers busied themselves apparently idly in the

tracing of geometric lines.

"Looking ahead to the exact details of our destruction," he mused

coolly, "we see that our most direct and ominous enemy is the sea

itself. When the city is flooded, we drown--and later the Quabos can

enter at will."

He drew a few more lines, and marked a cross at a point in the outer rim

of the diagram.

"What will happen? The Quabos force through the last shell of the city

wall. The water from their tunnel floods into Zyobor. But--and mark me

well--_only_ the water from the tunnel! The outer end, remember, is

blocked off in their pressure-reducing process. The vast body of the sea

itself cannot immediately be let in here because the Quabos must take as

long a time to re-accustom themselves to its pressure as they did to

work out of it."

He spread the parchment sheet before us.

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

She inclined her lovely head.

"And this," indicating the cross, "is the spot where the Quabos will

break in?"

Again she nodded, shuddering.

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

* * * * *

And he proceeded to sketch out a plan so simple, and yet so seemingly

efficient, that the rest of us gazed at him with wordless admiration.

"My friend, my friend," whispered Aga at last, "thou hast saved us.

Thou art the guardian hero of Zyobor--"

"Not too fast, Your Highness," interrupted the Professor with his frosty

smile. "I shall be much surprised if this little scheme actually saves

the city. We may find the rock so thick there that our task is

hopeless--though I imagine the Quabos picked a thin section for help in

their own plans."

A vague look came into his eyes.

"I must certainly get my hands on one of these monsters ... superhumanly

intelligent fish ... marvelous--akin to the octopus, perhaps?"

He wandered off, changed from the resourceful schemer to the dreamy man

of scientific abstractions.

The Queen gazed after him with wonder in her eyes.

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

"No, only a little absent-minded," I replied. Then, "Come on, Stanley.

We'll round up every able bodied citizen in Zyobor and get to work. I

suppose they have some kind of rock drilling machinery here?"

They had. And they strangely resembled our own rock drills: revolving

metal shafts, driven by gas turbines, tipped with fragments of the same

crystal that glittered so profusely in the palace walls. Another proof

that practically every basic, badly needed tool had been invented again

and again, in all lands and times, as the necessity for it arose.

With hundreds of the powerful men of Zyobor working as closely together

as they could without cramping each others movements, and with the whole

city resounding to the roar of the machinery, we labored at the defence

that might possibly check the advance of the hideous Quabos.

And with every breath we drew, waking or sleeping, we realized that the

cold blooded, inhuman invaders had crept a fraction of an inch closer in

their tunneling.

The Quabos against the Zyobites! Fish against man! Two diametrically

opposed species of life in a struggle to the death! Which of us would

survive?

* * * * *

The hour of the struggle approached. Every soul in Zyobor moved in a

daze, with strained face and fear haunted eyes. Their proficiency in

mental telepathy was a curse to them now: every one carried constantly,

transmitted from the brains of the servant-fish outposts, a thought

picture of that outer cavern in the murky depths of which writhed the

thousands of crowding Quabos. Each mind in Zyobor was in continual

torment.

Spared that trouble, at least, Stanley and the Professor and I walked

down to the fortification we had so hastily contrived. It was finished.

And none too soon: the vibration indicator in the palace vault told us

that only two feet of rock separated us from the burrowing monsters!

The Professor's scheme had been to cut a long slot down through the rock

floor of the city to the roof of the vast, mysterious body of water

below.

This slot was placed directly in front of the spot in the city wall

where the Quabos were about to emerge. As they forced through the last

shell of rock, the deluge of water, instead of drowning the city, was

supposed to drain down the oblong vent. Any Quabos that were too near

the tunnel entrance would be swept down too.

* * * * *

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

There was a stratum of black granite, fortunately only about thirty feet

thick at this point, and then--the depths! A low roar reached our ears

from far, far beneath us. A steady blast of ice cold air fanned up

against us.

The Professor threw down a large fragment of rock. Seconds elapsed and

we heard no splash. The unseen surface was too far below for the noise

of the rock's fall to carry on up to us.

"The mystery of this ball of earth on which we live!" murmured the

Professor. "Here is this enormous underground body of water. We are far

below sea level. Where, then, is it flowing? What does it empty into?

Can it be that our planet is honeycombed with such hollows as this we

are in? And is each inhabited by some form of life?"

He sighed and shook his head.

"The thought is too big! For, if that were true, wouldn't the seas be

drained from the surface of the earth should an accidental passage be

formed from the ocean bed down to such a giant river as this beneath us?

How little we know!"

* * * * *

The wild clamor of an alarm bell interrupted his musing. From all the

city houses poured masses of people, to form in solid lines behind the

large well.

In addition to men, there were many women in those lines, tall and

strong, ready to stand by their mates as long as life was left them.

There were children, too, scarcely in their teens, prepared to fight for

the existence of the race. Every able-bodied Zyobite was mustered

against the cold-blooded Things that pressed so near.

The arms of these desperate fighters were pitiful compared to our own

war weapons. With no need in the city for fighting engines, none had

ever been developed. Now the best that could be had was a sort of ax,

used for dissecting the mound-fish, and various knives fashioned for

peaceful purposes.

Again the bell clamored forth a warning, this time twice repeated. Every

hand grasped its weapon. Every eye went hopefully to the hole in the

floor on which our immediate fate depended, then valiantly to the

section of wall above it.

This quivered perceptibly. A heavy, pointed instrument broke through;

was withdrawn; and a hissing stream of water spurted out.

The Quabos were about to break in upon us!

* * * * *

With a crash that made the solid rock tremble, a section of the wall

collapsed. It was the top half of the end of the Quabos' tunnel. They

had so wrought that the lower half stayed in place--a thing we did not

have time to recognize as significant until later.

A solid wall of water, in which writhed dozens of tentacled monsters,

was upon us, and we had time for nothing but action.

The ditch had of necessity been placed directly under the Quabos'

entrance. The first rush of water carried half over it. With it were

borne scores of the cold-blooded invaders.

In an instant we were standing knee deep in a torrent that tore at our

footing, while we hacked frantically with knives and axes at the slimy

tentacles that reached up to drag us under.

A soft, horrible mass swept against my legs. I was overthrown. A

tentacle slithered around my neck and constricted viciously like a

length of rotten cable. I sawed at it with the long, notched blade I

carried. Choking for air, I felt the pressure relax and scrambled to my

knees.

Two more tentacles went around me, one winding about my legs and the

other crushing my waist. Two huge eyes glared fiendishly at me.

I plunged the knife again and again into the barrel-shaped head. It did

not bleed: a few drops of thin, yellowish liquid oozed from the wounds

but aside from this my slashing seemed to make no impression.

In a frenzy I defended myself against the nightmare head that was

winding surely toward me. Meanwhile I devoted every energy to keeping on

my feet. If I ever went under again--

It seemed to me that the creature was weakening. With redoubled fury I

hacked at the spidery shape. And gradually, when it seemed as though I

could not withstand its weight and crushing tentacles another second,

it slipped away and floated off on the shallow, roaring rapids.

* * * * *

For a moment I stood there, catching my breath and regaining my

strength. Shifting, terrible scenes flashed before my eyes.

A tall Zyobite and an almost equally stalwart woman were both caught by

one gigantic Quabo which had a tentacle around the throat of each. The

man and woman were chopping at the viscous, gruesome head. One of the

Thing's eyes was gashed across, giving it a fearsome, blind appearance.

It heaved convulsively, and the three struggling figures toppled into

the water and were swirled away.

The Professor was almost buried by a Quabo that had all four of its

tentacles wound about him. As methodically as though he were in a

laboratory dissecting room, he was cutting the slippery lengths away,

one by one, till the fourth parted and left him free.

A giant Zyobite was struggling with two of the monsters. He had an ax in

each hand, and was whirling them with such strength and rapidity that

they formed flashing circles of light over his head. But he was torn

down at last and borne off by the almost undiminished flood that gushed

from the tunnel.

And now, without warning, a heavy soft body flung against my back, and

the accident most to be dreaded in that melee occurred.

I was knocked off my feet! My head was pressed under the water. On my

chest was a mass that was yielding but immovable, soft but terribly

strong. Animated, firm jelly! I had no chance to use my knife. My arms

were held powerless against my sides.

Water filled my nose and mouth. I strangled for breath, heaving at the

implacable weight that pinned me helpless. Bright spots swirled before

my eyes. There was a roaring in my ears. My lungs felt as though filled

with molten lead. I was drowning....

* * * * *

Vaguely I felt the pressure loosen at last. An arm--with good, solid

flesh and bone in it--slipped under my shoulders and dragged me up into

the air.

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

voice.

I opened my eyes and saw Stanley, his face pale with the thrill of

battle, his chin jutting forward in a berserk line, his eyes snapping

with eager, wary fires.

I grinned up at him and he slapped me on the back--almost completing the

choking process started by the salt water I'd inhaled.

"That's better. Now--at it again!"

I don't remember the rest of the tumult. The air seemed filled with

loathsome tentacles and bright metal blades. It was a confused eternity

until the decreased volume of water in the tunnel gave us a respite....

As the tunnel slowly emptied the pressure dropped, and the incoming

flood poured squarely into the trough instead of half over it. From that

moment there was very little more for us to do.

Our little army--with about a fourth of its number gone--had only to

guard the ditch and see that none of the Quabos caught the edges as they

hurtled out of their passage.

For perhaps ten minutes longer the water poured from the break in the

wall, with now and then a doomed Quabo that goggled horribly at us as it

was dashed down the hole in the floor to whatever awesome depths were

beneath.

Then the flow ceased. The last oleaginous corpse was pushed over the

edge. And the city, save for an ankle-deep sheet of water that was

rapidly draining out the vents in the streets, presented its former

appearance.

The Zyobites leaned wearily against convenient walls and began telling

themselves how fortunate they were to have been spared what seemed

certain destruction.

* * * * *

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

"Don't be so childishly optimistic!" he snapped as I began to

congratulate him on the victory his ditch had given us. "Our troubles

aren't over yet!"

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

fight--"

His thin, frosty smile appeared.

"One of those devils, normally, is stronger than any three men. The only

reason all of us weren't destroyed at once is that they were slowly

suffocating as they fought. The foot and a half of water we were in

wasn't enough to let their gills function properly. Now if they were

able to stand right up to us and not be handicapped by lack of water to

breathe ... I wonder.... Is that part of their plan? Is there any way

they could manage ...?"

"But, Professor," I argued, "it's all over, isn't it? The tunnel is

emptied, and all the Quabos are--"

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

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

"See," the Professor pointed out to us as we approached the jagged hole,

"the Quabos only drilled through the top half of their tunnel ending.

That means that the tunnel still has about four feet of water in

it--enough to accommodate a great many of the monsters. There may be

four or five hundred of them left in there; possibly more. We can expect

renewed hostilities at any time!"

"But won't it be just a repetition of the first battle?" remonstrated

Stanley. "In the end they'll be killed or will drown for lack of water

as these first ones did."

* * * * *

The Professor shook his head.

"They're too clever to do that twice. The very fact that they kept half

their number in reserve shows that they have some new trick to try.

Otherwise they'd all have come at once in one supreme effort."

He paced back and forth.

"They're ingenious, intelligent. They're fighting for their very

existence. They must have figured out some way of breathing in air, some

way of attacking us on a more even basis in case that first rush went

wrong. What can it be?"

"I think you're borrowing trouble before it is necessary--" I began,

smiling at his elaborate, scientific pessimism. But I was interrupted by

a startled shout from Stanley.

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

Like twin snakes crawling up to sun themselves, two tentacles had

appeared over the rock rim. They hooked over the edge; and leisurely,

with grim surety of invulnerability, the barrel-like head of a Quabo

balanced itself on the ledge and glared at us.

* * * * *

For a moment we stared, paralyzed, at the Thing. And, during that moment

it squatted there, as undistressed as though the air were its natural

element, its gills flapping slowly up and down supplying it with oxygen.

The thing that held us rooted to the spot with fearful amazement was the

fantastic device that permitted it to be almost as much at home in air

as in water.

Over the great, globular head was set an oval glass shell. This was

filled with water. A flexible metal tube hung down from the rear.

Evidently it carried a constant stream of fresh water. As we gazed we

saw intermittent trickles emerging from the bottom of the crystalline

case.

Point for point the creature's equipment was the same as diving

equipment used by men, only it was exactly opposite in function. A

helmet that enabled a fish to breathe in air, instead of a helmet to

allow a man to breathe in water!

Stanley was the first of us to recover from the shock of this spectacle.

He faced about and raised his voice in shouts of warning to the resting

Zyobites. For other glass encased monsters had appeared beside the

first, now.

One by one, in single file like a line of enormous marching insects,

they crawled down the wall and humped along on their tentacles--around

the ditch and toward us!

* * * * *

The deadly infallibility of that second attack!

The Quabos advanced on us like armored tanks bearing down on defenceless

savages. Their glass helmets, in addition to containing water for their

breathing, protected them from our knives and axes. We were utterly

helpless against them.

They marched in ranks about twenty yards apart, each rank helping the

one in front to carry the cumbersome water-hoses which trailed back to

the central water supply in the tunnel.

Their movements were slow, weighted down as they were by the great glass

helmets, but they were appallingly sure.

We could not even retard their advance, let alone stop it. Here were no

suffocating, faltering creatures. Here were beings possessed of their

full vigor, each one equal to three of us even as the Professor had

conjectured. Their only weak points were their tentacles which trailed

outside the glass cases. But these they kept coiled close, so that to

reach them and hack at them we had to step within range of their

terrific clutches.

The Zyobites fought with the valor of despair added to their inherent

noble bravery. Man after man closed with the monstrous, armored

Things--only to be seized and crushed by the weaving tentacles.

Occasionally a terrific blow with an ax would crack one of the glass

helmets. Then the denuded Quabo would flounder convulsively in the air

till it drowned. But there were all too few of these individual

victories. The main body of the Quabos, rank on rank, dragging their

water-hose behind them, came on with the steadiness of a machine.

* * * * *

Slowly we were driven back down the broad street and toward the palace.

As we retreated, old people and children came from the houses and went

with us, leaving their dwellings to the mercy of the monsters.

A block from the palace we bunched together and, by sheer mass and

ferocity, actually stopped the machinelike advance for a few moments.

Miscellaneous weapons had been brought from the houses--sledges, stone

benches, anything that might break the Quabos' helmets--and handed to us

in silence by the noncombatants.

Somebody tugged at my sleeve. Looking down I saw a little girl. She had

dragged a heavy metal bar out to the fray and was trying to get some

fighter's attention and give it to him.

I seized the formidable weapon and jumped at the nearest Quabo, a

ten-foot giant whose eyes were glinting gigantically at me through the

distorting curve of the glass.

Disregarding the clutching tentacles entirely, I swung the bar against

the helmet. It cracked. I swung again and it fell in fragments, spilling

the gallons of water it had contained.

The tentacles wound vengefully around me, but in a few seconds they

relaxed as the thing gasped out its life in the air.

* * * * *

I turned to repeat the process on another if I could, and found myself

facing the Queen. Her head was held bravely high, though the violet of

her eyes had gone almost black with fear and repulsion of the terrible

things we fought.

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

"I came to fight beside thee," she answered composedly, though her

delicate lips quivered. "All is lost, it seems. So shall I die beside

thee."

I started to reply, to urge her again to seek the safety of the palace.

But by now the deadly advance of the tentacled demons had begun once

more.

Fighting vainly, the population of Zyobor was swept into the palace

grounds, then into the building itself.

Men, women and children huddled shoulder to shoulder in the cramping

quarters. An ironic picture came to me of the crowding masses of Quabos

stuffed into the protection of the outer cave, waiting the outcome of

the fight being waged by their warriors. Here were we in a similar

circumstance, waiting for the battle to be decided. Though there was

little doubt in the minds of any of us as to what the outcome would be.

Guards, the strongest men of the city, were stationed with sledges at

the doors and windows. The Quabos, able only to enter one at a time,

halted a moment and there was a badly needed breathing spell.

* * * * *

"We've got to find some drastic means of defence," said the Professor,

"or we won't last another three hours."

"If you asked me, I'd say we couldn't last another three hours anyway,"

replied Stanley with a shrug. "These fish have out-thought us!"

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

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

"You might as well wish for a dozen light cannon!" snapped the

Professor. "Please try to concentrate, and see if any effective weapon

suggests itself to you--something more available at the moment than

machine-guns."

In silence the three of us racked our brains for a means of defence.

Aga, leaving for a time the task of soothing her more hysterical

subjects, came quietly over to us and sat on the bench beside me.

Frankly I could think of nothing. To my mind we were surely doomed. What

arms could possibly be contrived at such short notice? What weapon

could be called forth to be effective against the thick glass helmets?

But as I glanced at Stanley I saw his face set in a new expression as

his thoughts took a turn that suggested possible salvation.

"Glass," he muttered. "Glass. What destroys it? Sharp blows ... certain

acids ... variation in temperature ... heat and cold.... That's it!

_That's it!_"

He turned excitedly to the Queen.

"I think we have it! At least it's worth trying. If there is any tubing

around...." He stopped as he realized he was talking in English, and

resumed stiltedly in Aga's own language.

"Hast thou, in the palace, any lengths of pipe like to that which the

Quabos drag behind them?"

"No ..." Aga began, her eyes round and wondering. Then she interrupted

herself. "Ah, yes! There is! In a vault near that of Kilor's there is a

great spool of it. He had it fashioned to carry air for one of his

experiments--"

"Come along!" cried Stanley. "I'll explain what I have in mind while we

dig up this coil of hose."

* * * * *

A score of Zyobite workmen were gathered at once. The length of

hose--made of some linen-like fabric of tough, shredded sea-weed and

covered with a flexible metal sheath--was cut into three pieces each

about fifty yards long. These were connected to three of the largest gas

vents of the palace.

Stanley, the Professor and I each took an end. And we prepared to fight,

with fire, the creatures of water.

"It ought to work," Stanley, repeated several times as though trying to

reassure himself as well as us. "It's simple enough: the water in those

helmets is ice cold: if fire is suddenly squirted against them they'll

crack with the uneven expansion."

"Unless," retorted the Professor, "their glass has some special heat and

cold resisting quality."

Stanley shrugged.

"It may well have some such properties. How such creatures can make

glass at all is beyond me!"

Dragging our hose to the big front entrance of the palace, and warning

the crowded people to keep their feet clear of it, we prepared to test

out the efficiency of this, our last resource against the enemy.

* * * * *

For an instant we paused just inside the doorway, looking out at the

ugly, glassed-in Things that were massing to attack us again.

The ranks of Quabos had closed in now, till they extended down the

street for several hundred yards in close formation--a forest of great

pulpy heads with huge eyes that glared unblinkingly at the glittering,

pink building that was their objective.

"Light up!" ordered Stanley, setting an example by touching his hose

nozzle to the nearest wall jet. A spurt of fire belched from his hose,

streaming out for four or five feet in a solid red cone. The Professor

and I touched off our torches; and we moved slowly out the door toward

the ranks of Quabos.

"Don't try to save yourselves from their tentacles," advised Stanley.

"Walk right up to them, direct the fire against their helmets, and damn

the consequences. If they grip too hard you can always play the torch on

their tentacles till they think better of it."

The Quabos' front line humped grimly toward us, unblinking eyes glaring,

tentacles writhing warily, little spurts of used water trickling from

their helmets.

"Keep together," warned Stanley, "so that if any one of us loses his

light he can get it from the hose of one of the other two. And--_Here

they come!_"

There was no more time for commands. The Quabos in front, supplied with

slack in their hoses by those behind, leaped at us with incredible

agility. We fell back a step so that none should get at our backs.

The last stand was begun.

* * * * *

It was not a battle so much as a series of fierce duels. The Quabos

realized their new danger instantly, and devoted all their efforts to

extinguishing our torches. We parried and thrust with the flaming hoses

in an equally desperate effort to prevent it.

One of them scuttled toward me like a great crab. A tentacle darted

toward my right arm. Another was pressed against the nozzle. There was a

sickening smell--and the tentacle was jerked spasmodically away.

I caught the hose in my left hand and turned the fiery jet against the

water-filled helmet.

A shout of savage exultation broke from my lips. Hardly, had the flame

touched the glass before it cracked! There was a report like a pistol

shot--and a miniature Niagara of water and splintered glass poured at my

feet!

The tentacle around my arm tightened, then relaxed. The monster

shuddered in a convulsive heap on the ground.

I went toward the next one, swinging the flaring hose in a slow arc as I

advanced. The creature lunged at me and threshed at the burning jet with

all four of its feelers. But it had been exposed to the air for a long

time now. The ghastly tentacles were dry; withered and soft. A touch of

the fire seared them unmercifully.

Nevertheless with a swift move it slapped a tentacle squarely down over

the hose nozzle. The flame was extinguished as the flame of a candle is

pinched out between thumb and forefinger. I retreated.

"Catch!" came a voice behind me.

* * * * *

The Professor swung his four-foot jet my way. I held my hose to it, and

the flame burst out again. A touch at my grisly antagonist's helmet--a

sharp crack--the welcome rush of water over the cream-colored grass--and

another monster was writhing in the death throes!

Keeping close together, the three of us faced the massed Quabos in the

palace grounds. Again and again the fiery weapon of one or the other of

us was dashed out--to be re-lighted from the nearest hose. Again and

again loud detonations heralded the collapse of more of the invaders.

But it seemed as though their flailing tentacles were as myriad as the

stars they had never seen. It seemed as though their numbers would never

appreciably diminish. We thrust and parried till our arms grew numb. And

still there appeared to be hundreds of the Quabos left.

By order of the Queen three stout Zyobites stepped up to us and relieved

us of our exhausting labor. Gladly we handed the hoses to them and went

to the palace for a much needed rest.

* * * * *

Two more shifts of fighters took the flaming jets before the monsters

began the retreat slowly back toward their tunnel. And here the

Professor took command again.

"We mustn't let them get away to try some new scheme!" he snapped.

"Martin, take fifty men and beat them back to the break in the wall. Go

around a side street. They move so slowly that you can easily cut off

their retreat."

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

"There's plenty of it. The Quabos brought it with them." The Professor

turned to me again. "Take metal-saws with you. Cut sections of the

Quabos water-hose and connect them to the nearest wall jets. Run!"

I ran, with fifty of the men of Zyobor close behind me. We dodged out

the side of the palace grounds least guarded by the Quabos, ducking

between their ranks like infantry men threading through an opposition of

powerful but slow-moving tanks. Four of our number were caught, but the

rest got through unscathed.

Down a side street we raced, and along a parallel avenue toward the

tunnel. As we went I prayed that all the Quabos had centered their

attention on the palace and left their vulnerable water-hoses unguarded.

They had! When we stole up the last block toward the break we found the

nearest Quabo was a hundred yards down the street--and working further

away with every move.

At once we set to work on the scores of hoses that quivered over the

floor with each move of the distant monsters.

* * * * *

A Zyobite with the muscles of a Hercules swung his ax mightily down on a

hose. The metal was soft enough to be sheered through by the stroke. The

cut ends were smashed so that they could not be crammed down over the

tapering jets; but we could use our metal-saws for cleaner severances at

the other ends.

The giant with the ax stepped from hose to hose. Lengths were completed

with the saws. A man was placed at each jet to hold the connections in

position. Before the Quabos had reached us we had rigged six fire-hoses

and had cut through forty or fifty more water-lines.

The end was certain and not long in coming.

We sprayed the monsters with fire as workmen spray fruit trees with

insect poison. Stanley, the Professor and a Zyobite came up in the rear

with their three hoses.

Caught between the two forces, the beaten fish milled in hopeless

confusion and indecision.

In half an hour they were all reduced to huddles of slimy wet flesh that

dotted the pavement from the break back to the palace grounds. The

invaders were completely annihilated--and the city of Zyobor was saved!

"Now," said the Professor triumphantly, "we have only to knock out the

bottom half of the tunnel wall, empty the tunnel and make sure there are

no more Quabos lurking there. After that we can fill it in with solid

cement. The Queen can order her fish-servants to guard the outer cave

and see that no food gets in to the starving monsters there. The war is

over, gentlemen. The Quabos are as good as exterminated at this moment.

And I can get back to my zoological work...."

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

enough.

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

Aga....

* * * * *

With the menace of the Quabos banished forever, the city of Zyobor

resumed its normal way.

The citizens lowered their dead into the great well we had cut, with

appropriate rites performed by the Queen. The daily tasks and pleasures

were picked up where they had been dropped. The haunting fear died from

the eyes of the people.

Shortly afterward, with great ceremony and celebration, I was made King

of Zyobor, to rule by Aga's side. Stanley took Mayis for his wife. He is

second to me in power. The Professor is the official wise man of the

city.

Life flows smoothly for us in this pink lighted community. We are more

than content with our lot here. Our only concern has been the grief that

must have been occasioned our relatives and friends when the _Rosa_

sailed home without us.

Now we have thought of a way in which, with luck, we may communicate

with the upper world. By relays of my Queen's fish-servants we believe

we can send up the Professor's invaluable notes[A] and this informal

account of what has happened since we left San Francisco that....

(Editor's note: There was no trace of any "notes." The yacht,

_Rosa_, was reported lost with all hands in a hurricane off New

Zealand. Aboard her were a Professor George Berry and the owner,

Stanley Browne. There is no record, however, of any passenger by

the name of Martin Grey. To date no one has taken this document

seriously enough to consider financing an expedition of

investigation to Penguin Deep.)

[Illustration: _"When I am finished, Dale, I shall probably kill you."_]

The Murder Machine

_By Hugh B. Cave_

[Sidenote: Four lives lay helpless before the murder machine, the

uncanny device by which hypnotic thought-waves are filtered through

men's minds to mold them into murdering tools!]

It was dusk, on the evening of December 7, 1906, when I first

encountered Sir John Harmon. At the moment of his entrance I was

standing over the table in my study, a lighted match in my cupped hands

and a pipe between my teeth. The pipe was never lit.

I heard the lower door slam shut with a violent clatter. The stairs

resounded to a series of unsteady footbeats, and the door of my study

was flung back. In the opening, staring at me with quiet dignity, stood

a young, careless fellow, about five feet ten in height and decidedly

dark of complexion. The swagger of his entrance branded him as an

adventurer. The ghastly pallor of his face, which was almost colorless,

branded him as a man who has found something more than mere adventure.

"Doctor Dale?" he demanded.

"I am Doctor Dale."

He closed the door of the room deliberately, advancing toward me with

slow steps.

"My name is John Harmon--Sir John Harmon. It is unusual, I suppose," he

said quietly, with a slight shrug, "coming at this late hour. I won't

keep you long."

He faced me silently. A single glance at those strained features

convinced me of the reason for his coming. Only one thing can bring such

a furtive, restless stare to a man's eyes. Only one thing--fear.

"I've come to you. Dale, because--" Sir John's fingers closed heavily

over the edge of the table--"because I am on the verge of going mad."

"From fear?"

"From fear, yes. I suppose it is easy to discover. A single look at

me...."

"A single look at you," I said simply, "would convince any man that you

are deadly afraid of something. Do you mind telling me just what it is?"

* * * * *

He shook his head slowly. The swagger of the poise was gone; he stood

upright now with a positive effort, as if the realization of his

position had suddenly surged over him.

"I do not know," he said quietly. "It is a childish fear--fear of the

dark, you may call it. The cause does not matter; but if something does

not take this unholy terror away, the effect will be madness."

I watched him in silence for a moment, studying the shrunken outline of

his face and the unsteady gleam of his narrowed eyes. I had seen this

man before. All London had seen him. His face was constantly appearing

in the sporting pages, a swaggering member of the upper set--a man who

had been engaged to nearly every beautiful woman in the country--who

sought adventure in sport and in night life, merely for the sake of

living at top speed. And here he stood before me, whitened by fear, the

very thing he had so deliberately laughed at!

"Dale," he said slowly, "for the past week I have been thinking things

that I do not want to think and doing things completely against my will.

Some outside power--God knows what it is--is controlling my very

existence."

He stared at me, and leaned closer across the table.

"Last night, some time before midnight," he told me, "I was sitting

alone in my den. Alone, mind you--not a soul was in the house with me.

I was reading a novel; and suddenly, as if a living presence had stood

in the room and commanded me, I was forced to put the book down. I

fought against it, fought to remain in that room and go on reading. And

I failed."

"Failed?" My reply was a single word of wonder.

* * * * *

"I left my home: because I could not help myself. Have you ever been

under hypnotism, Dale? Yes? Well, the thing that gripped me was

something similar--except that no living person came near me in order to

work his hypnotic spell. I went alone, the whole way. Through back

streets, alleys, filthy dooryards--never once striking a main

thoroughfare--until I had crossed the entire city and reached the west

side of the square. And there, before a big gray town-house, I was

allowed to stop my mad wandering. The power, whatever it was, broke.

I--well, I went home."

Sir John got to his feet with an effort, and stood over me.

"Dale," he whispered hoarsely, "what was it?"

"You were conscious of every detail?" I asked. "Conscious of the time,

of the locality you went to? You are sure it was not some fantastic

dream?"

"Dream! Is it a dream to have some damnable force move me about like a

mechanical robot?"

"But.... You can think of no explanation?" I was a bit skeptical of his

story.

He turned on me savagely.

"I have no explanation. Doctor," he said curtly. "I came to you for the

explanation. And while you are thinking over my case during the next few

hours, perhaps you can explain this: when I stood before that gray

mansion on After Street, alone in the dark, there was murder in my

heart. I should have killed the man who lived in that house, had I not

been suddenly released from the force that was driving me forward!"

Sir John turned from me in bitterness. Without offering any word of

departure, he pulled open the door and stepped across the sill. The door

closed, and I was alone.

* * * * *

That was my introduction to Sir John Harmon. I offer it in detail

because it was the first of a startling series of events that led to the

most terrible case of my career. In my records I have labeled the entire

case "The Affair of the Death Machine."

Twelve hours after Sir John's departure--which will bring the time, to

the morning of December 8--the headlines of the Daily Mail stared up at

me from the table. They were black and heavy: those headlines, and

horribly significant. They were:

FRANKLIN WHITE Jr. FOUND

MURDERED

Midnight Marauder Strangles

Young Society Man in West-End

Mansion

I turned the paper hurriedly, and read:

Between the hours of one and two o'clock this morning, an unknown

murderer entered the home of Franklin White, Jr., well known

West-End sportsman, and escaped, leaving behind his strangled

victim.

Young White, who is a favorite in London upper circles, was

discovered in his bed this morning, where he had evidently lain

dead for many hours. Police are seeking a motive for the crime,

which may have its origin in the fact that White only recently

announced his engagement to Margot Vernee, young and exceedingly

pretty French debutante.

Police say that the murderer was evidently an amateur, and that he

made no attempt to cover his crime. Inspector Thomas Drake of

Scotland Yard has the case.

There was more, much more. Young White had evidently been a decided

favorite, and the murder had been so unexpected, so deliberate, that the

Mail reporter had made the most of his opportunity for a story. But

aside from what I have reprinted, there was only a single short

paragraph which claimed my attention. It was this:

The White home is not a difficult one to enter. It is a huge gray

town-house, situated just off the square, in After Street. The

murderer entered by a low French window, leaving it open.

I have copied the words exactly as they were printed. The item does not

call for any comment.

* * * * *

But I had hardly dropped the paper before she stood before me. I say

"she"--it was Margot Vernee, of course--because for some peculiar reason

I had expected her. She stood quietly before me, her cameo face, set in

the black of mourning, staring straight into mine.

"You know why I have come?" she said quickly.

I glanced at the paper on the table before me, and nodded. Her eyes

followed my glance.

"That is only part of it, Doctor," she said. "I was in love with

Franklin--very much--but I have come to you for something more. Because

you are a famous psychologist, and can help me."

She sat down quietly, leaning forward so that her arms rested on the

table. Her face was white, almost as white as the face of that young

adventurer who had come to me on the previous evening. And when she

spoke, her voice was hardly more than a whisper.

"Doctor, for many days now I have been under some strange power.

Something frightful, that compels me to think and act against my will."

She glanced at me suddenly, as if to note the effect of her words. Then:

"I was engaged to Franklin for more than a month, Doctor: yet for a

week now I have been commanded--commanded--by some awful force, to

return to--to a man who knew me more than two years ago. I can't explain

it. I did not love this man; I hated him bitterly. Now comes this mad

desire, this hungering, to go to him. And last night--"

* * * * *

Margot Vernee hesitated suddenly. She stared at me searchingly. Then,

with renewed courage, she continued.

"Last night, Doctor, I was alone. I had retired for the night, and it

was late, nearly three o'clock. And then I was strangely commanded, by

this awful power that has suddenly taken possession, of my soul, to go

out. I tried to restrain myself, and in the end I found myself walking

through the square. I went straight to Franklin White's home. When I

reached there, it was half past three--I could hear Big Ben. I went

in--through the wide French window at the side of the house. I went

straight to Franklin's room--_because I could not prevent myself from

going_."

A sob came from Margot's lips. She had half risen from her chair, and

was holding herself together with a brave effort. I went to her side and

stood over her. And she, with a half crazed laugh, stared up at me.

"He was dead when I saw him!" she cried. "Dead! Murdered! That infernal

force, what ever it was, had made me go straight to my lover's side, to

see him lying there, with those cruel finger marks on his throat--dead,

I tell you, I--oh, it is horrible!"

She turned suddenly.

"When I saw him," she said bitterly, "the sight of him--and the sight of

those marks--broke the spell that held me. I crept from the house as if

I had killed him. They--they will probably find out that I was there,

and they will accuse me of the murder. It does not matter. But this

power--this awful thing that has been controlling me--is there no way

to fight it?"

I nodded heavily. The memory, of that unfortunate fellow who had come to

me with the same complaint was still holding me. I was prepared to wash

my hands of the whole horrible affair. It was clearly not a medical

case, clearly out of my realm.

"There is a way to fight it," I said quietly. "I am a doctor, not a

master of hypnotism, or a man who can discover the reasons behind that

hypnotism. But London has its Scotland Yard, and Scotland Yard has a man

who is one of my greatest comrades...."

She nodded her surrender. As I stepped to the telephone, I heard her

murmur, in a weary, troubled voice:

"Hypnotism? It is not that. God knows what it is. But it has always

happened when I have been alone. One cannot hypnotise through

distance...."

* * * * *

And so, with Margot Vernee's consent, I sought the aid of Inspector

Thomas Drake, of Scotland Yard. In half an hour Drake stood beside me,

in the quiet of my study. When he had heard Margot's story, he asked a

single significant question. It was this:

"You say you have a desire to go back to a man who was once intimate

with you. Who is he?"

Margot looked at him dully.

"It is Michael Strange," she said slowly. "Michael Strange, of Paris. A

student of science."

Drake nodded. Without further questioning he dismissed my patient; and

when she had gone, he turned to me.

"She did not murder her sweetheart, Dale" he said. "That is evident.

Have you any idea who did?"

And so I told him of that other young man. Sir John Harmon, who had come

to me the night before. When I had finished. Drake stared at me--stared

through me--and suddenly turned on his heel.

"I shall be back, Dale," he said curtly. "Wait for me!"

* * * * *

Wait for him! Well, that was Drake's peculiar way of going about things.

Impetuous, sudden--until he faced some crisis. Then, in the face of

danger, he became a cold, indifferent officer of Scotland Yard.