native to the land, developed from the lower forms of sea-creatures in
the remote past just as man developed from the lower land ones. Life
began in the sea, as you know, and these slug-beings had developed
into intelligence and power while man was still a half-ape roaming
the barren plains. They had built their great globe-cities at the
sea's bottom, and for their greater convenience had lit them with the
light-producing mechanisms on the globes, which set up a permanent
excitation or vibration of the ether, of a frequency that formed
perpetual light-vibrations. In their hidden depths they reigned, lords
of the sea.
"But their domains were steadily diminishing. You know that since the
dawn of time earth's seas have dwindled steadily, following the laws of
molecular motion, that slowly those seas have retreated and dwindled,
as on every planet they do, as on Mars they did eons ago. And since
the slug-people could live only in the terrific pressures of the great
depths their own realms were swiftly shrinking. They must either form
some plan to halt the dwindling of the seas, or face certain extinction.
"They finally, after long discussion, adopted a stupendous plan, which
was none other than to produce artificially such vast quantities of
water as would replenish the dwindled seas, would cover all earth
miles deep with them and give all earth as the slug-people's domain.
They knew, in their science, how to form atoms of any element out of
the primal ether itself by raising it to the desired frequency of
vibration. Just as they had produced light from the ether they could
produce matter, which is but a vibration of the universal ether.
Suppose, then, that they set up vast generators to form immense
quantities of hydrogen and oxygen atoms, and suppose those tremendous
quantities of hydrogen and oxygen were mixed together, with a small
proportion of certain chemicals added. The result would be that from
the generators immense quantities of sea water would be shot forth
to add to the sea's bulk, to cause it to rise until it covered the
highest peaks. They needed only to make generators of sufficient size
and number, and at this they set to work.
"They set to work, and for the sake of convenience they built their
vast generators under their own cities, which were located in all the
great deeps of the sea over earth, in the Atlantic and Pacific and
Indian oceans, vast cities with countless hordes of the slug-creatures.
Under each of their cities lay one of the titanic generators, with a
vast pit-opening at the city's center for the waters that would be
formed to issue forth from beneath. It was a work of centuries, of
ages, this building of the great generators, one beside which the
building of the pyramids was but the task of an hour. Man rose to power
on earth above them, never suspecting their presence, even, and still
in the depths the slug-creatures worked on at their great task, that
was to give them all the world.
"At last the great generators, under the cities of the slug-people in
all the deeps of the sea, approached completion. It was necessary to
provide a single control for all of them, so that all could be turned
on at the same moment, since otherwise the inequality of currents might
produce too great disturbances of the sea. This control, therefore, was
placed in a small room at the top of a great spire at the center of
one of their cities in the deeps of the mid-Atlantic, the city which
we had discovered and where we were prisoned. And now, as we learned,
the great work was almost finished, and soon the generators which had
taken ages to build would be put into action. Around the spire which
held the control of all the generators there watched always their giant
striding-machines, since this little room at the spire's tip held all
the energies of all their generators on earth centered inside it, and
should it be damaged or wrecked the generators themselves would run
wild, resulting in titanic etheric explosions which would inevitably
destroy not only all the generators themselves but also the great
cities built upon them, and the numberless slug-people of those cities.
* * * * *
"In sick despair we watched the days passing, cooped in our little
prison, while the plans of the slug-people came to their climax. Far
above us, we knew, were sunlight, and fresh breezes, and ships going
to and fro upon the waters, but around us were only the oppressing
waters and the white radiance and the city of globes and its unhuman
people. And at last the age-old plans of those people were finished,
and the great generators were turned on. We saw them flocking through
the streets toward the great spire and the vast pit, saw a gleam of
sudden green radiance from the control room at the spire's top, in the
distance; and then there was a great quivering of the ground and the
waters about us, and up from the pit there shot with immense force and
speed a vast current of waters, a tremendous solid stream two miles
wide and of terrific speed, formed we knew by the combining elements in
the vast generator beneath the city, turning each moment millions of
tons of water into the seas above us. And we knew, too, that at that
moment in all the other cities of the slug-people across all the deeps
of the sea, other and similar currents were being shot forth by the
titanic generators, adding each moment incalculable amounts to the bulk
of the seas.
"Through all that day we watched the great current shooting ceaselessly
up through the calmer waters about it, and through the next, and knew
that on earth the waters must already be rising inch by inch, and that
they would creep up, inch by inch and foot by foot, until they had
covered all earth's fields and forests and cities and highest peaks,
until earth itself was covered miles deep with this sea of hell, and at
its bottom the slug-people reigned triumphant. Then, at last, the agony
of our despair broke forth, and we seized at once upon a chance for
escape which presented itself.
"It was in a suggestion made by Evans, the submarine's commander,
that we saw our chance. His plan seemed suicidal, almost, but it was
still a chance, so we ignored the risks. Waiting for some hours until
the street outside our prison had emptied somewhat of the passing
slug-people, we took from the submarine's equipment a long, slender
drill of steel, and with this, held and guided by two seamen, set to
work on the metal wall of our prison. At first the metal seemed too
hard for the drill to affect, but gradually it bit into it, deeper and
deeper. Inch by inch it crept on into the thick metal wall, while we
watched anxiously. The hours were passing swiftly, and in the distance
we could see the mighty current from the pit still roaring upward, but
at last, when it seemed that the wall was too thick for us, the drill
broke through.
"Before we could withdraw it, it had been knocked inward toward us
with terrific force by the pressure of the waters outside, and through
the two-inch hole it left came shooting inward a solid stream of water
of terrific force. In a moment that jet had filled the great room
to a depth of a foot, and hastily we splashed toward our submarine,
clambering up and inside it and shutting tightly the heavy doors. From
the port-holes we could see the waters in the room swiftly rising,
until within a few more minutes they had risen sufficiently to float
the submarine, which had been lying on the bare metal floor of the
great room.
"Instantly Evans gave an order, and at once the craft's motors began
to hum and its reversed propellers to thrash the waters, backing us
against the wall opposite the great doors. There we paused a moment,
and then another order sent the boat leaping across the great room
through the waters like a living thing, toward the inner of the two
great doors, which could be opened only from the outside. With a great
ramming shock the craft's prow struck the door; for this was our plan,
to batter down the two doors if possible and make our escape. The door,
we saw, had been shaken by the blow, its thick, transparent metal
deeply dented, but it still hung fast; so again the submarine retreated
to the opposite wall and again leapt forward to crash against the
barrier.
"At the second blow there was a clash of metal against the sides of
our craft and we saw that the great door had crumpled beneath the two
blows. Only the outer door barred our escape, now, and excitedly we
watched as the submarine reversed once more and leapt forward against
that last barrier. We struck it with a great jar that again knocked us
all from our feet but did not dislodge the door, and now there came
a sudden exclamation from Evans as he saw, through the port-hole, a
group of the slug-creatures who had stopped outside and were peering
in toward us. As our craft leaped forward in another dash against the
thick metal we saw them hastening down the street, and a moment later
saw striding over the city from the distant spire three of the great
machines that guarded that spire, hastening across the city in gigantic
strides toward us!
"In spite of our second blow the outer door still hung fast, and
swiftly the hastening machines were nearing us. By now the submarine's
motors were humming at their highest power, and as Evans hoarsely
shouted the order, the craft backed against the wall, hesitated for a
moment, and then leapt forward through the waters toward the outer door
for a third time, with all the force of its whirling propellers. As we
shot forward I saw, not a thousand feet away, the great machines that
were bending down toward our prison, and then there came a great crash
and jar, the great metal door was crumpled aside like one of cardboard,
and our submarine shot out into the open waters. Swiftly toward us
reached the great arm of the foremost giant machine, and for a moment,
as we slanted sharply upward, we felt the end of that arm graze against
the side of our craft. Then we had torn past it and were shooting up
through the waters toward the surface at a steep angle, up until the
city of globes and the white radiance that bathed it were lost from
view beneath us.
"Up, up, up--until at last our craft shot bodily out of the waters
into the sunlight and clean air. Panting and half senseless we ripped
the doors open, breathed deep of the salt breezes. The waters on
which the submarine floated were running in great seas, and from a
hasty consultation of our instruments we saw that already the sea's
level had risen several feet, and knew, too, as no others did, what
was causing that rise and bringing doom upon the earth. So we set our
course back toward England and raced homeward through the rising waters
to bring our warning to the world, for in the general panic our radio
calls received no answer. East and southeast we held, and at last were
sweeping into the harbor of London, where, after a frantic hour, Evans,
Lewis and I were able to convince the naval authorities of the truth of
our story, were able to convince them that the only remaining chance to
prevent the destruction of all our world is to descend into the depths
in force and destroy or attempt to destroy the great generator which
we saw in action there in the deeps of the Atlantic, and after it the
others.
"This was but a few hours ago, Stevens, and in those hours and while
I have talked here with you the submarines of all the British fleet,
the new-type submersibles which alone can descend into those terrific
depths, have been gathered in the flooded Thames and soon will sail,
with the submarines of all other countries that can be gathered, to
make one last attempt to save our world. I had an hour or more, I knew,
so while Lewis hastened away in search of his family. I, who have none,
came here in the hope of finding you, Stevens, knowing that you would
be with us if you could. And so now you know what terror it is that is
flooding our world, that is rising toward the death of all humanity,
and toward which, at the bottom of the Atlantic, we sail within the
hour, for one final desperate attempt to halt this rising doom."
Clinton rose to his feet with these words, gazed silently out over the
red-lit city, over the rising floods that rushed through its streets
and sent the fear-crazed fugitives outside shouting down those streets
in blind horror. Stevens, too, arose, gazed with him, and then with a
common impulse and with no spoken word they had turned toward the door,
toward the street. Half an hour later they had won their way across the
dark, flooded wilderness that was London toward the rank on rank of
long, grim steel hulls that swung by the shores of the swollen Thames,
and a few minutes later they stood in the narrow control room of one of
those hulls as they swung in formation out to the open sea, more than a
hundred strong.
Out, out, they moved, into the darkness of the surging channel, and
then southward around the foreland, where there fell in at the side
of their formation a similar formation of an equal number of craft,
the combined Atlantic and Mediterranean submarine fleets of France,
Germany and Italy. Still the combined fleets moved on, toward the west,
through the surging, tremendous waves, in steady, unchanging formation.
Onward through the hours of the night they moved, and on into the day,
still westward, and through the night again until at last, at dawn,
there could be seen on the waters far ahead a multitude of long black
spots, long steel hulls like their own, the great American submarine
fleet racing eastward in answer to the call for help. The two fleets
met, coalesced, and then, in one great triangular formation, more than
three hundred strong, turned and headed north. The morning waned, and
the afternoon, and sunset came, but still those gathered scores of long
grim craft forged north and north, toward the Nelsen Deeps and what lay
at their bottom, toward the last great battle of humanity to save its
drowning world.
5
Standing in the submarine's narrow control room, Clinton gazed intently
at the dials before him, then out of the port-holes in the wall. "We're
there, Stevens," he said, quietly, gesturing toward the little windows
through which the great fleet behind could be seen, each of its scores
of craft resting motionless on the surface. And now the submarine's
commander, Evans, who had been lost and prisoned with Clinton, came
toward them.
"Our craft will descend first," he told them, "the others following
in close formation. Our plan is to descend to an elevation of a few
thousand feet above the city and attempt to cripple or destroy the
generator beneath it with our torpedoes and bomb-charges."
While he spoke he had twisted around the signal-lever on the dial
before him, and a moment later, in answer to his signal, the boat's
electric motors again took up their powerful hum. At the same time it
began to move forward through the waters, slanting downward. Stevens
had a last glimpse through the port-holes of the sea and sky outside,
warmly lit by the sun that blazed above, and then the long green waves
were washing up over the glass and over the submarine's conning-tower
as it slanted downward, in a great spiral. And soon the green waters
outside, alive with shoals of silvery fish, were darkening, changing,
as the needle on the bathometer dial crept slowly around.
He looked up suddenly as he glimpsed through the port-holes a dark
shape passing above, and then saw that it was but one of the submarines
of the fleet above, descending after them and following them, score
upon score of long, dark, fishlike hulls, that circled and dipped and
sank after them, down toward the fate of a world. Surely in all the
record of battles had men never gone toward battle like this, with no
shouts or cheers or flying flags or defiant shots, but only the dark,
grim shapes that sank gently down and down into the peaceful, darkening
depths of the sea.
Down, down, down--a thousand feet the dial registered, and the waters
about the submarine had become dark blue, all but lightless, and
darkening still more as they steadily dropped lower. There were no
lights turned on, nothing to betray their presence, and into a still
deeper darkness the great fleet sank, while Clinton and Evans and the
seamen in the little room stared from the dials to the dark port-holes
with strange, set faces. Great currents had begin to rock and sway the
submarine as it dropped on, currents from the mighty generator below,
Stevens knew, but still they held to their downward progress until
the bathometric dial showed a depth of a mile--a mile and a half--two
miles----
Abruptly Clinton, at the port-holes, made a sudden gesture, and pointed
downward. Stevens gazed intently down into the blackness that seemed
to press against the glass, and then he uttered a low exclamation. For
he could make out, far below, a ghostly white radiance that filtered
faintly up toward them through the filmy depths. Stronger and stronger
it was growing as they sank down toward it, and he saw Evans turn,
give swift orders through the speaking-tube by his side, and heard
the clang and clash of metal somewhere in the submarine as its great
torpedo and bomb tubes were made ready. In an instant, it seemed,
while they dropped downward still, the stillness of the submarine had
been replaced by swift activity. And then, cutting abruptly across the
sounds of that activity, came a sharp cry from Clinton.
"Those globes!" he cried. "They are coming up! Look!"
But Stevens, too, had seen. Outlined dark against the growing white
light beneath them he had glimpsed a dark, round object that was
moving steadily and swiftly up toward them from beneath, that moved up
with ever-increasing speed like the reversal of some object falling
downward. Swiftly it came, and now he could see that it was a black
metal globe perhaps a yard in diameter. He felt the submarine swerve
sharply as Evans abruptly spun its wheel, glimpsed the uprushing globe
grazing past its side, and then the thing had passed above them, and
had struck full on the bottom of a submarine just above. There was
a flash of intense purple light, flaring out through the waters in
blinding intensity, and then the submarine rocked and spun like a leaf
in a gale, while the great flash and the craft above which it had
enveloped vanished together.
"Bombs!" shouted Clinton. "Bombs of some kind that they release from
beneath, to rise and strike us--and look, more----"
Even as he spoke there was rushing up toward them from beneath an
immense mass of the round black globes, seeming in that moment to fill
the waters about them.
Stevens remembered the next few moments only as a timeless period of
flashing action. He felt the submarine dive steeply downward under
the hand of its commander, saw through the glass scores of the deadly
globes flashing up past them, and then the submarine again was rocked
by titanic convulsions of the waters about it as craft after craft of
the fleet above them vanished in blinding flashes of the purple light.
In those few minutes, he knew, scores of the submarines that followed
them had fallen victim to the deadly spheres.
But now the great fleet, diving sharply amid that deadly uprush
of globes, was within a few thousand feet of the sea's floor, was
slanting down through the white radiance toward the city below, which
Stevens saw for the first time. A moment, as the fleet seemed to
pause above the city, he saw it all plain--the multitudes of ranked
great globular structures, stretching away as far as the eye could
see, the dark, slug-like beings that hastened through their streets
and squares, the vast pit at the city's center from which arose the
mighty, half-glimpsed current of waters, and the towering spire near
that pit's edge, the tiny bulbular room at its top a point of green
radiance, around which were grouped scores of the vast, thousand-foot
striding-machines. Then that one moment of pause was over and the whole
great fleet was swooping down upon the city below, releasing a shower
of great torpedoes and bombs as it did so.
The next moment there came a hundred flashes of fire beneath them as
the torpedoes and depth-charges struck, and then it seemed as though in
a score of places beneath them the city was crumbling, disintegrating,
beneath the force of the great explosions. The submarine was rocking
and swaying perilously from the effect of those explosions, only the
super-resistant hulls of the new-type craft enabling them to endure the
shock, but even while Stevens heard the men near him shouting hoarsely
he was aware that the massed boats were diving again, and again the
thunderous detonations below came dully to their ears through the
waters about them.
But now he heard a sudden cry of alarm, taken up and repeated by all
in the control room. From far away, all around the great city, there
were hastening toward the attacking submarines scores of the giant
striding-machines, their vast steps whirling them across the city with
inconceivable swiftness, the great arm of each outstretched toward
the submarines. An order was barked, and the craft's propellers spun
swiftly as it headed upward to avoid those reaching, menacing arms,
while the whole great fleet headed up also with the same purpose. The
next moment, however, a spark of more brilliant white light broke
into being in the city below them--a great, erect cylinder, they saw,
that was suddenly shining with a dazzling radiance that darkened the
white luminosity of the waters about it. And as it broke into being
the submarine below seemed suddenly to waver, to halt, and then to be
pulled slowly, steadily downward by great unseen hands, toward that
shining cylinder.
Stevens heard the motors throbbing in his own craft, its spinning
propellers only serving to hold it in the same position, and heard a
shout from Evans.
"That cylinder!" he cried. "It's a great magnet of some kind--it's
pulling our ships downward!"
For now by dozens, by scores, by hundreds, the fleet's massed ships
were being pulled downward, their screws thrashing the waters in vain,
pulled down toward that mighty, dazzling beacon of light. The next
moment the great striding-machines had reached them, were grasping
them, crushing them, whirling them about like toys and hurling them
far away to break and smash upon the globes below, spilling forth men
and air-bubbles and great clouds of oil. Ever downward, downward, the
mighty magnet of light pulled the helpless craft, while Stevens' own
craft, highest of them all, could only resist that terrific pull by all
the power of its humming motors. And among the helpless craft below
he could see the great machines of the slug-people stalking about in
terrific destruction, crushing and smashing the defenseless boats as
they sought vainly to escape while Stevens' own craft sought frenziedly
to win out of the remorseless grip that held it.
But now, below, the doomed submarines seemed suddenly to cease their
efforts to escape from the great magnet's grip, and abruptly turned,
paused, and then hurtled down with all their own force and that of the
attracting magnet toward the giant machines below them whose great arms
were destroying them. Stevens cried out hoarsely as he saw torpedo and
bomb flash down and send a half-dozen of the great machines reeling
and crashing down upon the city in flashes of bursting fire. At the
same moment he was aware that their own craft was winning slowly out
of the giant grip of the magnet, inch by inch, foot by foot, creeping
upward and outward from that grip, while below the last scores of the
attacking submarines were meeting their doom, crushed by the arms of
the giant machines and annihilated by the purple-flaring bombs that
rushed up toward them from the city below.
And now the great machines were striding toward his own craft, the last
remaining one except for a few far across the city that were battling
their way upward against others of the machines. Slowly, slowly, the
submarine crept upward, while the mighty shapes whirled across the
streets and globes of the city toward it. They were below it, now, were
reaching up with gigantic arms, and Stevens stared down upon those
upward-reaching arms in a strange apathy of despair. The battle was
over, he knew, humanity's battle, lost now forever, its last chance
flickered out. Up came the whirling arms, up, while still the submarine
crept higher, and then one of them had struck it a great, glancing
blow, in reaching for it, had knocked all in it to the floor, stunning
Evans and his seaman and Stevens himself against the metal walls, and
knocking, too, the submarine out of the last limits of the magnet's
giant grip.