unseen hold, over the city, and Stevens raised his head, stunned and
bleeding, to see Clinton standing at the wheel, to hear his wild shout
as he sent the submarine racing above the city toward the great pit
and the uprushing current at its center, toward the towering spire
at that pit's rim, and the round, green-lit little control room at
its top. Straight toward that ball-like room at the great spire's
tip flashed the racing submarine, and Stevens glimpsed the mighty
striding-machines, far across the city, abandoning the battle with the
remaining few submarines, which shot sharply upward, to whirl after
their own; saw rushing toward them from around the spire others of
the giant machines, their vast arms upraised to grasp and crush the
hurtling craft. But before they could grasp it, before their great
arms could do ought more than graze along its sides, Clinton had sent
the submarine flashing past them with a hoarse cry and had crashed it
straight into the little room at the mighty tower's tip.
Through the metal walls of that room the hurtling submarine crashed
as though through walls of paper, speeding still straight up and
outward with the force of its tremendous impetus. To the half-conscious
Stevens, crouched there. It seemed that for a single moment the whole
world held its breath, and then he saw a fountain of brilliant green
fire burst out and upward from the little control room at the great
spire's top, felt a mighty, thundering detonation shake the waters
about him, and then half glimpsed below him the sea's bottom and the
great city upon it heaving, rumpling, breaking and crashing, as that
city broke up and was annihilated by a tremendous uprush of dazzling
fires from beneath it--broke up and was annihilated, as he knew, by the
explosion of the mighty generator beneath it, whose titanic, pent-up
energies the wrecking of the little control room had released--broke
up and was annihilated, Stevens knew, as _all_ the cities of the
slug-people had been in that moment, when the mighty generators beneath
each of those cities exploded likewise, the prisoned energies of all
of them released by the wrecking of the little room from which all had
been controlled. In all the far-flung deeps of earth's seas the cities
of the slug-people and all their hideous hordes had met annihilation
in that tremendous moment, he knew. The earth shuddered and swayed
beneath those simultaneous, titanic cataclysms; the sea's whole floor
rolled and shook; and then, as the submarine was flung wildly upward
by the terrific convulsions of the waters, the vast fiery uprush of
destruction beneath faded from his eyes.
Then Stevens felt his senses failing him, sank backward and was but
dimly conscious of the waters outside the submarine roaring wildly as
it shot upward with terrific speed. For a time that seemed endless
to his darkened mind that roaring continued, and then abruptly came
silence, and a great shock and splash. Then he felt hands upon him,
and hoarse voices shouting in his ears, heard the doors above clanging
open, admitting a flood of sunlight and clean fresh air upon him, and
then he knew no more.
6
Sunset was flaming red in the west once more when Clinton and Stevens
stood together again on the submarine's narrow deck, watching the
preparations for its homeward voyage. Behind it floated a bare dozen of
other long steel craft, as scarred and battered as itself, flung up and
saved like itself by that last great convulsion of the waters--a dozen
only, the last remnant of the mighty fleet of hundreds that had dived
to the attack a scant few hours before. Even as they watched, three of
those craft were moving away on their own homeward journey, toward the
west, toward the sunset, over the waters that were now miraculously
calmed and smoothened. Their last rejoicing farewells came faintly
over those waters as they went, and then they were passing from sight,
dark blots against the brilliance of the western sky, dwindling and
vanishing.
There came into the minds of both men, as they gazed across the
peaceful waters, a wonder as to what frantic outbursts of joy were
shaking the peoples of earth to see those waters calmed thus, to see
their terrible rise thus halted. There came into their minds a vision
of what might have been, of the seas that might have whelmed a planet,
with a strange and terrible race triumphant and supreme upon it, and
then one of what would be, when the hordes of fugitives, half hoping,
half doubting, would creep back from their hills and mountains of
refuge toward their deserted lands and cities, when the places that
were silent now and dead would be ringing again with life, when all the
terror that had riven earth would be but a thing of the remembered past.
Then these things slipped from the minds of both and they turned
toward the east as their craft, and those behind it, moved away in
that direction. Onward through the waters they moved, their propellers
turning faster and faster, little waves breaking from either side of
their prows as they clove the sea. The brilliance faded from the sky
behind the two men, as the little fleet moved on, and the gathering
night closed down upon the world, star-embroidered. But the two
standing there alone on the little vessel's deck were silent still, and
unmoving, gazing out into the darkness across the calm waters with the
silence of men whose minds held things too great for speech.