_Monsters of the Deep_
"Gentlemen," said Prester Kleig as he entered the Secret Room, where sat
the scientists and inventive geniuses of the Americas, "we haven't much
time, and I shall waste but little of it. Moyen is ready to strike, if
he hasn't already done so, as I believe. We will see in a matter of
seconds. Professor Maniel, we shall need, first of all, your apparatus
for returning the vibratory images of events which have transpired
within the last thirty-six hours.
"I wish to show those of you who failed to see it the sinking of the
_Stellar_, on which I was a passenger and, I believe, the only
survivor."
Professor Maniel strangely mouse-like save for the ponderous dome of his
forehead, stepped away from the circular table without a word. He had
invented the machine in question, and he was inordinately proud of it.
Through its use he could pick up the sounds, and the pictures, of events
which had transpired down the past centuries, from the tinkling of the
cymbals of Miriam to all the horror of the conflict men had called the
Great War, simply by drawing back from the ether, as the sounds fled
outward through space, those sounds and vibrations which he needed.
His science was an exact one, more carefully exact even than the
measurement of the speed of light, taking into consideration the
dispersion of sound and movement, and the element of time.
The interior of the Secret Room became dark as Maniel labored with his
minute machinery. Only behind the screen on the wall in rear of the
table was there light.
* * * * *
The voice of Maniel began to drone as he thought aloud.
"There is a matter of but a few minutes difference in time between
Washington and the last recorded location of the _Stellar_. The sinking
occurred at ten-thirty last evening you say, Kleig? Ah, yes, I have it!
Watch carefully, gentlemen!"
So silent were the Secret Agents one could not even have heard the
breathing of one of them, for on the screen, misty at first, but
becoming moment by moment bolder of outline, was the face of a
storm-tossed sea. The liner was slower in forming, and was slightly out
of focus for a second or two.
"Ah," said Professor Maniel. "There it is!"
Through the sound apparatus came the roaring and moaning of a storm at
sea. On the screen the _Stellar_ rose high on the waves, dropped into
the trough, while spumes of black smoke spread rearward on the waters
from her spouting funnels. Figures were visible on her decks, figures
which seemed carved in bronze.
In the prow, every expression on his face plainly visible, stood Prester
Kleig himself, and as his picture appeared he was in the act of turning.
"Now," said Kleig himself, there in the Secret Room, "look off to the
left, gentlemen, a mile from the _Stellar_!"
A rustling sound as the scientists shifted in their places.
* * * * *
They all saw it, and a gasp burst from their lips as though at a signal.
For, as the _Stellar_ seemed about to plunge off the shadowed screen
into the Secret Room, a flying thing had risen out of the sea--an
airplane with a bulbous body and queerly slanting wings.
At the same time, out of the mouth of the pictured figure of Prester
Kleig, clear and agonized as the tones of a bell struck in frenzy, the
words:
"Great God! Lower the boats! Lower the boats! For God's sake lower the
boats!"
In the Secret Room the real Prester Kleig spoke again.
"When the black streak leaves the nose of the plane, after it has
submerged, Professor Maniel," said Kleig softly, "slow your mechanism so
that we can see the whole thing in detail."
There came a grunted affirmative from Professor Maniel.
The nose of the pictured plane tilted over, diving down for the surface
of the sea.
"Now!" snapped Kleig. "Don't wait!"
Instantly the moving pictures on the screen reduced their speed, and the
plane appeared to stop its sudden seaward plunge and to drop down as
lightly as a feather. The wings of the thing moved forward slowly,
folding into the body of the dropping plane.
"They fold forward," said Kleig quietly, "so that the speed of the plane
in the take-off will snap them _backward_ into position for flying!"
* * * * *
No one spoke, because the explanation was so obvious.
Slowly the airplane went down to the surface of the sea, with scarcely a
plume of spindrift leaping back after she had struck. She dropped to ten
feet below the surface of the water, a hundred yards off the starboard
beam of the _Stellar_, her blunt nose pointing squarely at the side of
the doomed liner.
"Now," said Kleig hoarsely, "watch closely, for God's sake!"
The liner rose and fell slowly. Out of the nose of the plane, which had
now become a tiny submarine, started a narrow tube of black, oddly like
the sepia of a giant squid. Straight toward the side of the liner it
went. Above the rail the Secret Agents could see the pictured form of
Prester Kleig, hand upraised. The black streak reached the side of the
_Stellar_.
It touched the metal plates, spreading upon impact, growing, enlarging,
to right and left, upward and downward, and where it touched the
_Stellar_ the black of it seemed to erase that portion of the ship. In
the slow motion every detail was apparent. At regular speed the blotting
out of the _Stellar_ would have been instantaneous.
Kleig saw himself rise slowly from the vanished rail, turning over and
over, going down to the sea. He almost closed his eyes, bit his lips to
keep back the cries of terror when he saw the others aboard the liner
rise, turn over and over, and fly in all directions like jackstraws in a
high wind.
* * * * *
The ship was erased from beneath passengers and crew, and passengers and
crew fell into the sea. Out of the depths, from all directions, came the
starving denizens of the sea--starving because liners now were so few.
"That's enough of that, Professor," snapped Kleig. "Now jump ahead
approximately eight hours, and see if you can pick up that aero-sub
after it dropped me on the Jersey Coast."
The picture faded out quickly, the screaming of doomed human beings,
already hours dead, called back to apparent living by the genius of
Maniel died away, and for a space the screen was blank.
Then, the sea again, storm-tossed as before, shifting here and there as
Maniel sought in the immensity of sea and sky for the thing he desired.
"Two hundred miles south by east of New York City," he droned. "There it
is, gentlemen!"
They all saw it then, in full flight, eight thousand feet above the
surface of the Atlantic, traveling south by east at a dizzy rate of
speed.
"Note," said Kleig, "that it keeps safely to the low altitudes, in order
to escape the notice of regular air traffic."
No one answered.
The eyes of the Secret Agents were on that flashing, bulbous-bodied
plane of the strange wings. It appeared to be heading directly for some
objective which must be reached at top speed.
* * * * *
For fifteen minutes the flight continued. Then the plane tilted over and
dived, and at an altitude still of three thousand feet, the wings
slashed forward, clicking into their notches in the sides of the bulbous
body, with a sound like the ratchets on subway turnstiles, and, holding
their breath, the Secret Agents watched it plummet down to the sea. It
was traveling with terrific speed when it struck, yet it entered the
water with scarcely a splash.
Then, for the first time, an audible gasp, as that of one person, came
from the lips of the Secret Agents. For now they could see the objective
of the aero-sub. A monster shadow in the water, at a depth of five
hundred feet. A shadow which, as Maniel manipulated his instruments,
became a floating underwater fortress, ten times the size of any
submarine known to the Americas.
Sporting like porpoises about this held-in-suspension fortress were
myriads of other aero-subs, maneuvering by squadrons and flights,
weaving in and out like schools of fish. The plane which had bourne
Prester Kleig churned in between two of the formations, and vanished
into the side of the motionless monster of the deep.
The striking of a deep sea bell, muted by tons and tons of water,
sounded in the Secret Room.
"Don't turn it off, Maniel," said Kleig. "There's more yet!"
And there was, for the sound of the bell was a signal. The aero-subs,
darting outward from the side of the floating fortress like fish darting
out of seaweed, were plunging up toward the surface of the Atlantic.
Breathlessly the Secret Agents watched them.
They broke water like flying fish, and their wings shot backward from
their notches in the myriad bulbous bodies to click into place in flying
position as the scores of aero-subs took the air above the invisible
hiding places of the mother submarine.
* * * * *
At eight thousand feet the aero-subs swung into battle formation and, as
though controlled by word of command, they maneuvered there like one
vast machine of a central control--beautiful as the flight of swallows,
deadly as anything that flew.
The Secret Agents swept the cold sweat from their brows, and sighs of
terror escaped them all.
At that moment came the voice, loud in the Secret Room, which Kleig at
least immediately recognized:
"Well, gentlemen, are you satisfied that resistance is futile?"
And Kleig whispered the name, over and over again.
"Moyen! Moyen!"
It was Prester Kleig, Master of the Secret Room, who was the first to
regain control after the nerve-numbing question which, asked in far
Madagascar, was heard by the Agents in the Secret Room.
"No!" he shouted. "No! No! Moyen, in the end we will beat you!"
Only silence answered, but deep in the heart of Prester Kleig sounded a
burst of sardonic laughter--the laughter of Moyen, half-god of Asia.
Then the voice again:
"The attack is beginning, gentlemen! Within an hour you will have
further evidence of the might of Moyen!"