For a time we ran with short-range headlight beams preceding us, then,
as we neared the area where we knew Tollgamo's ships should now be, we
ran dark. But still there were the glowing, bubbling rocket-stream
tails of our fifty little cylinder boats; and the rocket-streams of the
girls' diving sleds. And our swift passage through the water left a
phosphorescent wake so that the area all around us glowed, opalescent
with a pallid, eerie light.
Leh and his father had arranged the tactics of battle which we hoped we
could employ. He explained them to us now. Peters' larger cylinder was
banded with white alumite stripes so as to be easily distinguishable.
Its light signals would give us orders.
"There is a ridge," Leh was saying. "It crosses from the promontory
head of the metal mountains across to the Arron forests. We think
Tollgamo will follow it as his best method of approach."
It was a transverse ridge, lying at an average of not much more than
fifty feet beneath the surface. A submarine plateau, in main extent
some ten miles long and a quarter of a mile wide, with deeps on both
sides of it where the bottom dropped sharply away, in places to
unfathomable depths. If we could catch the Tollgamo vehicles in that
area it was our best chance for a shallow attack. And that, we needed.
The girls especially, could not dive into the lower, higher pressures.
Then presently ahead of us, Peters signalled and we all slackened,
wheeling, gathering in a group.
"There they are!" Leh murmured tensely. "Just climbing to the ridge."
The shallower water here was bright with the upper light filtering
down. Astonishingly bright; and suddenly I realized that the Venus
night was over. Dawn had come to the world of air above us, penetrating
the cloud-masses of the Venus atmosphere. It came down here with a
faint ruddy glow, so that now we could see miles of the area before us.
At first it was blurred and unreal. But in a moment I was used to it,
my mind translating its distortion into the terms of its reality.
A dark abyss was under us here as we poised. Ahead, a thousand feet
away now, the ridge was visible. A cliff was at one side of it, a
honeycombed, submarine wall, a peak of which rose above the surface as
a volcanic little island, with a tiny crater mouth, yawning faintly
yellow from the fires of the earth which here must be close.
The slow-moving, struggling little line of submarine vehicles was just
mounting to the ridge. Only a few miles from here and they would be
under the city of Arron. We must turn them back here.
Slowly we approached, still out of Tollgamo's range. We had long since
been seen, of course. The waving headlights of the ten huge black
vessels turned our way. Monsters with searching, glaring eyes. And then
a tentative shot came. In the blurred watery twilight it was a stab of
thin violet light. Not instantaneous, but slow-moving as though for a
second it was pushing its way at us. But it blurred to nothingness far
short of us; and in a few seconds it died.
At Peters' signal we divided now, spreading fanshape between the
leading Tollgamo ship and Arron; skimming close under the surface,
still keeping three hundred feet or more away from the leading vessel.
But we had to get within fifty feet for our rays to be effective! I
could feel my heart pounding, and my blood seemed cold.
And then a puff of orange light from the bow of Peters' cylinder gave
the signal for our first attack. Beside me I could hear Allen suck in
his breath. My hands were on the small gun-firing mechanisms--my two
small ray projectors on one side of the cylinder, Allen's on the other,
with Leh's ranging in a quadrant of the bow and stern. In a slanting
dive, we plunged forward and down.
* * * * *
It was a chaos of blurred confusion to me, that first slanting plunge
that took us close past the looming black side of one of the Tollgamo
vessels, half circling it until in a few seconds we had fired our six
little stabbing bolts and were past, rising again. I was aware that all
the area of water suddenly seemed churned into silver phosphorescence
through which shapes were diving. A bolt stabbed at us and missed.
Then as we were mounting, one caught us. For a second it clung, with
a bubbling red viscosity of fusing metal, glaring against my small
bullseye pane. Would it eat through? Undoubtedly, if it clung too long,
or if another were to strike in the same place.
But we twisted away from it: and in another second its built-up
electronic power had discharged and it died. I realized then the
advantage of our mobility with our five hundred and fifty agile little
units against the ten huge caterpiller vehicles of Tollgamo, at least
we might have an equal chance. Their three hundred foot rays were
thin as pencil-streaks. Not easy for them to hit a tiny, swift-moving
target. And I saw too, that once we were close, there were many angles
at which the rays could not reach us.
Leh, Allen and I each fired two charges in that first dive. I saw some
of them strike against the looming black armoured hull of the Tollgamo
vessel as we flipped past it, each hit marked by bubbling red pits of
metal. Through the bullseye windows I caught a vague glimpse of crowded
men and women Gorts inside.
Then we were back, almost at the surface, out of range again, wheeling,
poising, with the enemy behind and beneath us. I stared down, and saw
that the girls, like a school of plunging dolphins, were making their
dive. And then I had my first sight of one as she was struck. She was
a tiny descending silver streak; and the bolt darted up, caught her.
For a horrible second or two it clung. I saw her waver; come loose from
her sled. And then she was a twisted, blackened, almost shapeless blob,
slowly drifting down, with crimson air-bubbles for a moment rising.
Then on the black ridge bottom her inert form lay, with a little
movement as the water made it weave, as though horribly she were still
alive.
For five minutes we stared down at the swarm of attacking girls. They
swarmed within the wide angles of the opposing rays. Some of them were
at the hulls of the enemy ships, holding their rays close, trying to
melt through.
Then at last they were rising; swooping back to the surface. Some of
them! But others were wavering away. With broken mechanisms discarded,
some were swimming free. And others were sinking. Broken, twisted
little shapes, with the water tinted crimson as they sank.
Leh, Allen and I stared at each other, white-faced, as the girls came
fluttering up, flipping on the surface to get air, organize into squads
again; and to recharge their tiny projectors. The squads reformed. My
heart sank at the pitiful gaps in the formations. We had lost more
than a hundred and fifty girls in that first attacking dive. And two
of our ten cylinder-boats were crippled. Air bubbles were oozing from
them; then the exit escape porte of one of them opened as the little
cylinder sank. The two men came out, with buoyant belts which all of us
were wearing so that they floated away on the surface.
But we had done some damage. Two or three of the big Tollgamo vessels
seemed to be in distress. The one leading the line had checked its
advance. Those behind seemed trying to hasten forward, so that now
the ships were bunching. One of them, seemingly out of control, had
slued sidewise, close to the edge of the abyss where the green-black
depths went down perhaps a thousand fathoms. Perilously close, so that
now as we stared it sagged drunkenly on the brink and seemed out of
commission. And at the window portes of another of them, a dull-red
glare was apparent. An interior fire.
"Not too bad," Leh was muttering. "We'll do better, next time."
Where was Nereid? My heart seemed to stick in my throat with
apprehension as I watched the girls coming up. And then I saw her;
still unharmed. She came close past our turret on her power-sled, her
white arm waved at us as she flipped past and broke the surface for air.
And then Allen suddenly gasped,
"What the devil is that? What now?"
Tollgamo wasn't waiting for our second dive! His leading ship suddenly
was starting ahead of the others. And then suddenly, from three or four
of the enemy vessels tiny black dots were rising. Water bullets....
Needle-like, foot-long projectiles. They came hurtling at us. And then
they burst with muffled, blurred sounds of little explosions. Some were
near the surface, tossing up spouts of iridescent water.
It startled us into sudden confusion. Several of our girls were caught
in the exploding puffs; and one of our cylinders. I saw it break apart
in sluggish tearing fragments of metal and what had been its living
occupants. A girl, caught at the surface, was hurled into the air.
* * * * *
A chaos. And in the midst of it, Peters gave the signal for a general
attack; sustained attack, this time. Again Leh plunged us into what now
was a watery inferno. How long it lasted I cannot say. Ten minutes.
Half an hour. An eternity of horror, with everyone for himself. There
were times when I could see little of it. The shallow, fifty foot
depth of ocean here was a glare of red and orange and opalescent light
through which our cylinders dove and the girls plunged up and down like
voracious little fishes.
There was an inferno of lights and muffled ghastly rumbles down below.
And the surface now was strewn. Our broken cylinders sagging there;
then sinking as the men tried to get out. Men and girls swimming,
wounded, and then sinking. Chaos of human wreckage. The rippled
daylight surface now was tossed by crazy waves; water stained with
blood; or orange and blue with oil and gas-fumes.
Then I saw that Peters' cylinder was gone. Only ours and two others
left. Leh, Allen and I, now in command. Empty authority. The girls,
down in the weird lurid depths, were fighting with utter desperation,
heedless of the possibility of command.
An eternity of horror. But now, two of the Tollgamo vessels had slid
over the brink, sinking slowly into the abyss. I saw another of them
burst with interior fire. Muffled explosions, that spewed out Gorts
and broken equipment. Then there was a time when one of the distressed
vessels emitted an inky fluid as though it were some giant squid--a
pall of black water, to hide the disembarking men. We fought through
it, until presently it drifted away.
"Getting them," I heard Allen mutter once. "By Heaven, only two of
those boats in action now--Tollgamo's and this other one."
We were plunging at Tollgamo's ship. Its portes were red with glare.
The enemy rays now were lessening. It seemed that only one or two
were left. And the battle now had changed its aspect. From the broken
Tollgamo ships, many of the Gorts had safely emerged, with helmets and
weighted shoes so that now they were walking, swaying on the rocky
bottom. Five hundred or more of them. And the girls swooped down at
them. Myriad hand to hand combats between the unweildy Gorts and the
Arron virgins that plunged at them like darting hungry sharks.
The bottom now was strewn with the dead as the girls plunged and
fought and we darted our cylinder among them, struggling to find
opportunity to strike with our rays.
Where was Nereid? Again cold apprehension struck at me; it was so long
since I had seen her. And now a new ghastly horror was entering the
turgid scene. Attracted by the lights, the muffled roars and the blood,
monsters of the deep were coming. Eaters of carrion. Sea vultures.
Some came in little swarms, a thousand tiny silvery shapes, darting
at the bodies, picking at them until only white skeletons lay here
on the slimy sea bottom. Other shapes, huge with glaring round eyes
like torches, came slithering from the deeps, searching for the dead,
seizing the wounded.
"That Tollgamo ship is all that's left," Leh was saying. He sped us
toward it. Quite obviously now it was trying to escape. Forty or fifty
girls were clinging to its hull; too close for its single remaining
ray weapon to hit them; girls with close-held projectors eating with
bubbling red electro-glare into the hull-plates. We had a glimpse into
one of the bullseye portes--gas fumes and red glare in there; and the
Gorts, trapped there, in a panic making ready to disembark. We lay
close, firing our bolts.
Suddenly a wounded girl was drifting past our turret; she seemed
struggling to get to our little pressure porte. Nereid?
Then I saw that it was Venta. She got into the porte; and I pumped out
the water; threw myself in and bent over her. She was gasping, but
still trying to smile at me.
"We--we have won, Earthman."
"Yes. Yes, Venta. You just lie quiet. Have you seen Nereid?"
"Yes. Here, just a little while ago. I don't know, now."
I stared out the porte bullseye. The Tollgamo ship was breaking;
I could see its air coming out in bubbling puffs that caught our
cylinder and shoved it away. That ship would be water-filled in a
moment. And then I stiffened; tense with horror as I stared. A little
side exit-porte of the wrecked vessel suddenly opened. A single huge
figure lunged out. A dark-clad giant figure, with round air-helmet and
weighted shoes.
Tollgamo! He was no more than fifty feet from me; a red sheen of light
struck his helmet so that I could see his face with its quiet, grim
smile. And then suddenly, in a leaping dive, he flung himself forward,
and seized a girl who was clinging to the vessel's side, blasting with
her ray-torch.
Nereid! In the glare, abruptly I saw her, as Tollgamo seized her,
catching her by surprise so that she had no chance to escape him. And
then her torch and her knife were gone, as he held her body against him
and with swaying, shoving tread started away along the bottom.
* * * * *
There were weighted shoes here in our pressure porte. I was only a
moment getting Venta out of the porte into the main part of the hull. I
slid its door; adjusted my helmet; admitted the water. And then I was
swaying out on the rocks, with a knife in my hand.
Vaguely I could see Tollgamo, with Nereid struggling in his grip as he
advanced with swaying tread toward where, near at hand, the honeycombed
cliff of that little crater-island loomed here. I struggled after him.
Then I saw that he had plunged into what seemed a water-filled little
passage leading back under the island. I was there in a moment; tense,
alert, cautious now that he might be crouching somewhere here in ambush.
The ten foot high narrow passage wound up an ascent until unexpectedly
my head broke the surface. I twitched off the helmet. I had thought
that Tollgamo knew that he was being followed, but evidently he did
not. Neck deep in water, I was near the rocky shore of a subterranean
lagoon ... a huge jagged grotto here in the depths of the honeycombed
little island.
And then I saw Tollgamo. His helmet was off now. Carrying Nereid in
his arms, he had mounted a broken rocky wall of the grotto, so that he
was some fifty feet back and ten feet above me. I had kicked off my
weighted shoes. I tried to dive, but I was discovered. Nereid gave a
little cry; and as Tollgamo saw me, he suddenly checked his climb, set
Nereid on her feet and held her against him. I had floundered forward,
on the shore now; and dropped my knife, plucking a little ray-projector
from my belt. Its fifty foot stab was ample here. Was Tollgamo armed?
Brief thoughts; brief tableau. For that second he and Nereid stared
down at me. A red glare painted them, a glare that came from what I
saw now was a glowing pit almost beside them on this little volcanic
island. In the heavy subterranean silence I could hear the low
muttering, hissing rumble of the fires deep in the bowels of the earth,
and the grotto was heavy with their sulphuric smell.
A slow ironic smile was on Tollgamo's gray face, painted now by the red
and yellow glare.
"So, the Earthman!" he said. "And he finds Tollgamo unarmed."
My little projector was leveled; but as he held Nereid against him I
could not dare fire. He saw it, and his ironic smile broadened. Was he
really unarmed? It seemed so. I could see the empty weapon-clips at his
belt, from which evidently he had torn his exhausted weapons and flung
them away. And his hands were both in plain view, gripping Nereid's
shoulders. There was just a second when I saw his gaze flick from my
leveled gun as he desperately measured his chances for escape.
And then he seemed to reach his decision. The quiet smile still plucked
at his thin gray lips. I must have made a move with my leveled muzzle;
and suddenly it seemed to startle him.
"Don't fire, Earthman!" he said sharply. "You would kill her."
And then, with a twitch of his big powerful arms he swept Nereid, not
further to shield himself, but behind him. And he added softly, to her:
"So you see Tollgamo has lost? That is too bad." His breath went out in
a long hiss. "I had thought to conquer Arron, to share it with you."
His soft voice was ironical; as though now at the last he was jibing at
the futility of all human effort.
I stood numbed, withholding my shot as now he cast her away; and he
stood alone on the red-yellow brink. His gaze turned to me.
"You see, Earthman, you need not kill me," he said gently. "I should
not like anyone to do that--much less an Earthman."
Still his jibing irony. But there was tragedy in his smoldering dark
eyes; the tragedy of failure, as now his dream at last was broken.
He was still quietly smiling, as he poised on the brink, staring down
at the fiery abyss. Then slowly he leaned forward, toppled and fell.
For a second his plummeting body was visible, and then the red-yellow
glare swallowed it.
* * * * *
I think that there is little I need add. I have no wish to picture
the return of our pitiful little army to Arron. Victorious army....
How trite, but how true it is--in warfare, even the victor is
vanquished! But surely, there is a better time ahead for Venus now.
Jenten-Shah, degenerate ruler of the Arones, was killed that night by
an imbecile worker. Peters was killed; and Leh is ruling. Surely he
will bring order out of chaos, and minimize license in the lives of the
pleasure-loving Arones, so that now there need be no rebelling young
Virgins with the opprobrium of Untouchables.
Certainly that is what we all hope.
Nereid and I are married now and are very happy. My strange little
wife, daughter of two worlds. I know that I shall have to take her back
to Venus presently. Loyally she insists she likes our Earth quite as
well as Venus. But as I recall the lush tropic beauty of the glowing
Arron nights, and the soft iridescence of the water--well, I doubt it
very much.
I want Nereid to like Earth. Our little home is in the tropics, by the
palm-lined edge of a lagoon. We are secluded here, which is what Nereid
wants. When people see her she is dressed always in Earth fashion. But
when we are, alone, at night--
I wanted to finish this narrative tonight. I thought I could finish by
dawn. It is bright moonlight. I thought Nereid was asleep, but just a
little while ago she came from our bedroom to the veranda where I am
writing. Nereid, with her tawny hair flowing, her beautiful body again
in the shining sea-green garment.
Then she went past me, flinging me her impish, whimsical little smile
as she ran for the lagoon. She is swimming down there now. Occasionally
she calls up to me, daring me to come down.
* * * * *
[Transcriber's Note: No heading for Section IV in original.]