_Cook, the Navigator_
Through all these hours, one man had remained on the _NX-1_, and that
man was, to put it mildly, scared to death.
Cook Angus McKegnie had been nearest the connecting ladder when Keith
Wells roared out the command to retreat above, and his desire to
regain a place of safety was so earnest that he made the control room
in record time. At once he had felt the tingle of the paralyzing ray.
Struck by a horrible thought, he ventured to peer down the ladder--and
groaned to see the figures of his comrades, all lying limply on the
deck. His portly frame quivered like jelly as realization came to him
that he was the only one who had escaped the ray.
Heroic ideas of saving the submarine, of rescuing the men below,
flashed wildly through his head. But only for a moment. On second
thought, he felt he ought to hide. So, in the tomblike silence that
had fallen, the two-hundred-and-twenty-pound McKegnie wormed a way
behind an instrument panel, effecting the journey by vigorous shoves
of his stomach. It was minutes later that he first noticed that some
sharp jutting object was jutting deep into his ample paunch, but he
could do nothing to remedy it. He was hidden, anyway, and he was going
to stay hidden!
The cook felt the _NX-1_ being towed forward. Then, after a dreadful
wait, he heard queer noises down below, and was positive the exit
ports had opened. The snakelike slithering and shuffling which
followed would mean that the enemy was inside the _NX-1._ The thought
brought St. Vitus' dance to his limbs, and, try as he might, he
couldn't still them. Then again the ports opened, the gloomy silence
returned, and Angus McKegnie was alone with his reflections.
* * * * *
After the first hour he gave voice to them in one simple, bitter
sentence. "Just why the hell," he muttered, "did I ever join the
Navy?" The silence offered no reply, and McKegnie, desperate from his
cramped position, ventured to poke his head around the instrument
panel. The faint emergency lights showed the control room to be empty.
He decided to come out, and did so, worming his way back with great
difficulty.
Once out, the first thing his eyes fell on was the teleview screen.
Now the cook had never seen one of the octopi, and the screen showed
hundreds of monsters clustering around the _NX-1._ So with unusual
promptness he acted, jamming himself once again into his hiding place.
Maybe, he thought, they had some way in which they could see into the
control room and discover him!
Hours passed. The cook was sopping with sweat. Finally his thoughts
emerged into words.
"I got to get out of here!" he said intensely. "I _got_ to! And I got
to run this submarine!"
The sound of his voice somehow emboldened him. Once more he backed out
of his cranny, and with cautious, trembling steps explored the control
room. He kept his eyes from the teleview, though it had a terrible
fascination for him, and surveyed the _NX-1's_ array of control
instruments. The prospective navigator groaned at the sight.
There were dozens of mysterious wheels, jutting from every possible
angle, squads of black and red-handled levers, whole armies of queer
little stud-buttons and dials. His knowledge of cooking helped him not
at all in the presence of that maze of devices. Timidly he touched one
of the levers, but immediately snatched his hand away as if afraid it
would bite. His boldly announced purpose of running the craft went
glimmering.
* * * * *
An accidental glimpse of the monsters in the teleview suddenly decided
him that he needed a weapon. He hunted frantically through the lockers
and found three service revolvers, which he fastened at his waist,
adding his own carving knife to the arsenal. But he didn't feel much
better. Then, remembering for the first time his sea-suit radio, he
yelled: "Mr. Wells! Mr. Wells! Oh, Mr. Wells, where are you? Can you
hear me?" There was, of course, no answer.
He tried to bring his muddled thoughts and fears to order. "I got to
run this thing," he said doggedly. "_Got_ to! Now, let's see: what the
hell's this thing for?... What the--"
He broke off short, and his eyes went wide. He had heard a noise!
Yes--there it was again! The same peculiar scraping at one of the exit
ports! He glanced fearfully at the teleview. "Oh, Lord!" he yelped.
"They're comin' in to get me!"
He started to dive back behind the instrument panel, but stopped, drew
two guns, and in an agonized muddle trotted back and forth for a
moment, waving them. Another look at the screen showed that an exit
port was open, admitting two metal-scaled octopi. McKegnie couldn't
stand it any longer: he wedged himself behind his panel again. Soon
sounds of the metal tentacles on the deck below told him that one of
the creatures was coming up the ramp--then slithering into the control
room itself. The cook was a lather of cold perspiration.
For a few minutes there was silence. The octopus was apparently
surveying this new part of the submarine. Then, without warning, the
tip of a metal-scaled tentacle felt around the panel and crept,
exploring, up Angus McKegnie's leg--which leg was again suddenly
afflicted with St. Vitus' dance. The tentacles coiled, pulled
hard--and the cook with a yowl was yanked out into the room.
* * * * *
Dangling upside down, high in the air, he submitted to the fishy stare
of the great eyes under the sheathing of glass. But soon he started to
squirm, and his violent contortions brought a rush of blood to his
head, making him quite dizzy. It was while he was in that state that
things started to happen.
First, a great roar rolled through the _NX-1_, and McKegnie found
himself flat on the floor with his breath knocked out. Then, while
this was registering on his mind, he discovered himself the center of
a madly milling set of tentacles, and instinctively scrambled out of
the way. From a distance he saw that the tentacles belonged to the
octopus that had held him, and that their coilings and threshings were
gradually dying down, until only a quiver ran through them from time
to time. While McKegnie was trying to figure this all out he noticed
that the monster's glass sheeting was shattered, that it lay in a pool
of water, and that the odor of burnt powder was in the air. Looking
down he found that he had a gun in his hand. A thin wisp of smoke was
curling from the barrel.
"Gee whiz!" he ejaculated. "Gee _whiz_!"
As he stood there recovering from his surprise, he heard the other
octopus crawling up the connecting ramp, coming to see what had
befallen its fellow. Preceded by two trembling guns, McKegnie tiptoed
to the ramp and peered down.
From the darkness he saw another complicated mass of metal tentacles
and glass advancing up towards him. Fear smote the cook, and almost
without volition be pointed his guns and pulled the triggers. As
before, a bullet crashed into the great dome of glass, and he watched
a short but terrible death struggle. He had, by himself, slain two
octopi!
A tremendous elation filled McKegnie--until it occurred to him that
his shots might have been heard outside. At once he ran and looked at
the teleview view screen, and what he saw on its silver surface took
all the triumph abruptly out of him. The octopi outside were darting
about with alarming activity; a whole cluster of them was centered at
the exit port, and, even as the cook stared, the preliminary sounds of
opening it came to his ears.
"Now I _got_ to run this ship!" he groaned.
* * * * *
He peered at the mass of levers and wheels, put out a hand, closed his
eyes, hesitated, and pulled one of them back. Nothing happened.
He tried another. The noise below grew, but still the _NX-1_ remained
motionless. Desperate, the cook jerked several other levers. The whine
of electric motors surged through the silence; the submarine shuddered
and slewed off to the right, as if trying to dig into the sea-floor.
"I got it started!" he cried. He did something else. The _NX-1_ stuck
her bow dizzily up and sped into the misty-blue realm above in a
grand, sweeping circle. The sea-floor with its mound-buildings and
swarming octopi fell away behind with a rush.
"There!" muttered the triumphant cook. "But--how did I do it?"
The submarine was rising like a sky-rocket. McKegnie remembered
suddenly that Wells had said the cavern was only a few miles high; he
must now be very near the top. He held his breath while he pushed a
likely looking lever the other way.
He was lucky. The _NX-1_ capered like a two-year-old, kicked up her
stern and bolted eagerly for the depths once more. Again the floor of
the cavern rushed up at him, again he pulled the potent lever back,
and again the submarine meteored upward.
This procedure went on for some time. McKegnie was only running an
elevator. Was he doomed to dash up and down between floor and ceiling
forever? He gave forth pints of sweat, now and then groaning as the
submarine grazed horribly close to top or bottom. The dead octopus at
his feet slithered limply around on the crazy-angling deck.
"I can't keep this up forever!" the cook said peevishly. "Now, what
the hell's this thing for?"
* * * * *
He turned it, and the _NX-1_ tilted in one of her dives and raced
forward, midway between ceiling and floor. Her navigator relaxed
slightly. He had found the major controls; at least he had been able
to stop his dizzy game of plunging up and down. Then, just as he was
beginning to wonder where he could go, a large red spot glowed at the
edge of the location chart.
"Oh, Lord!" he cried. "That's the other submarine--an' it's comin'
after me!"
Evidently it was, for the red spot rapidly approached the green one.
The paralyzing ray tingled, and a moment later the enemy's huge bulk
loomed on the teleview screen, a band of violet light spearing from
one of her jutting knobs.
Frantically McKegnie juggled his levers, and then it was that the
_NX-1_ really showed what was in her. She emulated, on a grand scale,
a bucking bronco: she stood almost on her nose, and threatened to
describe somersaults; she tried it the other way, on her stern; she
rolled dizzily; she all but looped the loop, and went staggering
around the cavern in great erratic bounds that must have made the
octopi think she was in the hands of a mad-man--which she practically
was. Her designer would have had heart failure.
In the teleview screen the frantic McKegnie would see the octopi
submarine rush erratically by with a flash of its violet heat ray; the
location chart showed the red spot zigzagging drunkenly around the
green one. Each boat made occasional short, crazy darts at the other;
sometimes they would stand approximately still. It was a riotous game
of tag, and McKegnie knew too well that he was "it."
During one brief pause the anguished cook found himself groaning
aloud: "Oh, Mr. Wells, where are you? I can't keep this up! I can't! I
can't!"
* * * * *
There were still several important-looking controls that were
mysteries to him. But what if he should pull one and open all the exit
ports? He shuddered at the thought.
Things had become nightmarish. The ship was pitted scores of places by
the heat ray. The control room had grown stifling. McKegnie was losing
pounds of flesh, and literally stood in a pool of his own
perspiration. The octopi craft kept doggedly after the _NX-1_, no
matter how often and effectually the sweating cook's reckless hands
prevented her getting the heat ray home.
For a long time the two ships continued to race up and down. The
_NX-1_ would plunge, pirouette around the other, and scamper away
towards the ceiling as if enjoying it all hugely, abruptly to forsake
her course and come zooming down once more. She would weave in romping
circles and seem to go utterly crazy as her jumbled navigator pulled
his levers and turned his wheels in a frantic effort to get somewhere.
To get somewhere! Yes--but where?
"Oh, Mr. Wells, where are you?" the harried cook would bleat at
intervals.
Or, plaintively: "Now, what the hell's _this_ thing for?"