THIS ENEMY INFERNAL!
In the pink and gold tropic dawn of the morning of August 15, we took
them aboard the Dolphin. Arturo did not mention, then, the globe of
metal lying there in the rocks at the ocean’s edge. We did not chance
to notice it. We left Arturo’s plane--he said, with a quiet force which
had come to him, that even if we could have taken it, we had no use for
it.
They came out from the rocky slope, swimming to us as we lay near by.
I saw the girl, like a nymph, swimming. She was nearly always under
water. Each time as she came up, and waited for Arturo to overtake her,
he seemed directing her.
We drew them aboard. I saw her then as a girl much smaller, more slim
of figure than Arturo, standing drooping, with her face hidden in the
tangle of her hair and her crooked arm. She was blinded by the light of
the dawn. Frightened, perhaps, by our voices, by our clutching hands as
we drew her up the Dolphin’s side.
Arturo carried her to one of the Dolphin’s tiny rooms. There in the
dark, barring us, he left her.
A quiet force had come to Arturo. He met his father’s questions and
turned them aside. It was this time not sullenness, not brooding, nor
anything neurotic. A quiet force, rather, a purpose. There were things
that he would tell us, and things that he would not. No fire from his
father could shake him. No irony touched him. No pleading from Polly
could soften him. Yet, with it all, he was tender, affectionate; and
underneath, I think, sometimes a little wistful.
This was a new Arturo. It struck Dr. Plantet sharply. There was one
brief passage in which Dr. Plantet was so obviously the loser, for
he said much, and Arturo said almost nothing. And when it was ended,
Arturo kissed his father.
“I want you to believe in me. You will have to trust me, father, there
isn’t any other way; you’ll have to go it blind. I’m sorry--and I love
you, all of you, very much--”
It was in these latter words that I caught the wistful note, a gentle
sorrow, mingled with his purpose.
It was Arturo now who gave us orders. That Dr. Plantet obeyed them,
with the knowledge that Arturo knew more than he, I think is a tribute
to the man’s inherent bigness. Nor, after those first hours, were there
any clashes or recriminations. We did what Arturo so gently but firmly
suggested we should do. But he would give us very little explanation.
Even without any compact he may have had with Nereid to enforce his
reticence, he was right; had he told us his full purpose, we would have
restrained him.
We ran northeast, close under the surface. The course would take
us south and east of Wake Island, and then we were to head for the
northwestern end of the Hawaiian archipelago. Beyond that--the mere
laying down of our course and our depth--we knew very little.
In thirty-six hours we were near Ocean and Midway Islands. It was late
afternoon of August 16.
For myself that day and a half, I scarcely saw Nereid. But to the
picture of her through Arturo’s eyes which I have given, I can add the
woman-impressions as Polly saw her; and glimpse her with Dr. Plantet’s
prosaic, classifying viewpoint of the scientist.
She would not talk to Polly. But she seemed to understand Polly’s words
quite well. A very gentle little girl, shy, but seeming readily to
respond to human affection. She evidently took a great liking to Polly,
and the feeling was mutual.
They sat once, in the gloom of the tiny room with their arms around
each other; Nereid’s body was soft and warm and yielding; but there
was a firmness to it, and apparently a considerable strength for all
its frail aspect. Nereid seemed quickly affectionate toward this other
girl; but it was the mistrustful affection of a creature of the wilds.
She drew away sharply at one of Polly’s questions.
She was a creature of swift-springing moods. Polly admits she tried to
win the girl, to gain her trust, to make her answer questions. Once,
in that dim light of the tiny cabin, Polly caught the expression on
Nereid’s face. A whimsical smile; an amusement that this girl of the
great, bright, atmospheric world should think her so simple. It struck
Polly with chagrin and humiliation. This Nereid was no fool.
* * * * *
Dr. Plantet, with Arturo standing watchfully in the doorway, had
several opportunities of studying Nereid. Oh, the passionate obsession
of science for classification! As though one could capture the moods of
the sea and set them down in logical, descriptive sequence!
Dr. Plantet found that Nereid was really not her name. He made her say
her name, but he could think of no sounds in our earthly languages to
represent it fairly. He found her, in height four feet eleven inches.
In weight, ninety-one pounds. Coarse, thick, unruly hair, apparently of
human structure; in length nearly to her knees; in color, tawny.
Her skin was soft, smooth, and white, with coral pink and red flush to
it. He found her eyes light green; but apparently changing in their
shade. A trifle tinted very pale green over the white eyeball. The tiny
capillaries on the eyeball were pale coral pink rather than red. The
pupils, with a deep green light in them, were overlarge, but shrank
suddenly at the slightest light, and suffused readily with moisture.
Her eyelids were thin as a delicate coral veil, with curving lashes,
long and thick and tawny.
He found her apparently intelligent, shy and gentle. Of human stock;
but different from ourselves in a score of details which he set down. A
slightly rounder skull-shape; broader hips and higher breasts. Fingers
and toes slimmer and longer. The skin connecting the fingers and toes
crossed nearly at the middle joint, suggesting a closer heritage to a
time when a membrane might have been there, making the members webbed.
He found her chest high and deep, with a proportionately greater
lung-capacity than ours. Her breath, he surmised, could without undue
discomfort, be held for at least five minutes while under water.
A human specimen of wholly different stock from any of our known
earthly races. A civilization advanced as far perhaps, as our own; but
obviously in a different direction. It was, he wrote down, as though on
the great family tree of mankind, this were a blossom on a different
branch and a wholly different limb.
He felt, when the case were closely studied, that evidence would be
found to show that this was the parent stock of earth-humanity. Itself
risen directly from the creatures of the sea. That from this stock, it
was we who branched off, to leave the depths, ascend to the air and the
land and sunlight and rise through the primates into what now we were
pleased to call Man.
Dr. Plantet was very enthusiastic over Nereid. With scientific zeal he
looked eagerly forward to the moment when he would present her to the
study of our world-scientists. I remarked Arturo’s strange expression
as his father said that.
On the late afternoon of August 16, we were just south of Ocean and
Midway Islands, those extreme northwestern outposts of the Hawaiians.
It was then Arturo told us what little we were to know of those things
he had learned from Nereid.
We gathered in the stern chart-room; the Dolphin lay awash on the
surface of a placid sea. With sudden decision Arturo brought Nereid in
to join us. He shaded the light carefully for her and in the gloom of a
corner of the floor, she sat watching us.
It was one of the few times I had seen her. I noticed with what a
quiet dignity she came in, following Arturo’s guiding hand; and with
what intent, alert intelligence she sat watching and listening. She
did not speak; but once or twice I saw her nod with confirmation of
Arturo’s words.
* * * * *
“There is not much I can tell you, father. But enough. Please do not
question me--for if you do, I will tell nothing.” He threatened it,
quietly, but with a very firm, very convincing finality.
“Many of your theories, father, are correct. There is a race of people
under the ocean beds--I think largely here under the Pacific. Nereid,
as you see her here before you, is, I am sure, a representative
of the higher portion of this other civilization. It menaces
us--you were right about that, father! The conquest of our world is
contemplated--and has already begun. Soon I--we, Nereid and I, will
show you.”
Dr. Plantet sat very still. I knew that a score of questions were
storming within him. He sat, regarding Arturo with keen, scientifically
appraising glance. He saw Arturo striving now to talk with a precise,
scientific exactness, but failing, for the lad was evidently laboring
under a tense excitement. Dr. Plantet was enough of the physician to
understand his son’s condition; he knew that very easily Arturo could
fall into a stubborn silence which nothing could break through. And Dr.
Plantet did not dare question.
But I was not so self-controlled. I burst out, “Arturo, look here--the
water is leaving our oceans. Why? And why can’t you tell us everything
you know? Why pick and choose? With the fate of our world at stake--”
He turned on me. “You’re childish, Jeff. I’m telling you as clearly as
I can. I don’t know very much myself--do you think that Nereid has been
able to give me a complete scientific report on all these questions
which you would like answered? Our world is doubtless at stake, as you
say. This enemy is ruthless--inhuman by all our standards of humanity.
Oh, do not judge the enemy you will have to confront by what you see
of gentle Nereid! Yes, the oceans will probably empty of water. The
‘Gians’ have contrived it. How long it will take, I do not know. Where
the main rift is--or how many rifts there are--I do not know. I think
there is one in sub-marine Micronesia--I don’t know just where--”
Polly stammered, “The people--‘Gians’?”
“Yes, Polly, you can call them that--this enemy. The word Nereid gives
me sounds about like that. I don’t know what weapons they have. Nereid
doesn’t know; she is neither a warrior nor a scientist--just a girl.
If I knew the weapons with which they will attack, I’d describe them
quickly enough!”
He spoke with a rising vehemence. “Our world will have to defend
itself, father! You were right in your fears! The main attacks may
not come until after the ocean beds are dry. It will be a land-fight
then--in these new strange lands that we have never seen! Or there
may be an attack very shortly. The Gians, an army of them, are coming
up. Moving up an equipment of weapons. It may be merely an experiment
preparatory to the main warfare. Nereid has heard it may be; I
certainly hope so.” He paused, then suddenly added: “They are moving
upon the Hawaiian group, not far from here--down near Maui. We’re going
to show you!”
* * * * *
The Hawaiian group of mountain-tops were built long ages ago along a
crack on the ocean floor by a string of volcanos; some are peaks, seven
miles straight up from the surrounding depths. An island-bearing rise
some seventeen hundred miles long, quite narrow, extends from Hawaii in
the southeast, to Ocean Island at the northwest tip.
We circled Ocean Island, and running a hundred miles from the crest,
near the bottom of the slope, we followed it southeast. Past the peak
of Midway; past Gambia Shoal; Pearl and Hermes Reef; Lisiansky; Brooks
and Bird; and came at last near Kauai.
We ran often near the surface, but sometimes deep. Everywhere, we saw
the same sharp upward rise to this hog-back, razor ridge. A jagged,
tumbled sub-marine region. Here, in some remote geological era of the
past, nature had obviously been convulsed. Domes and peaks and crags;
steep, sharp ridges; caldrons like black pits; tumbled, broken land,
submerged now, but lying like some wild, naked mountain fastness. There
were slopes of truly precipitous character; cliffs, eroded with great
side holes; black ravines and gullies; bowlders of giant size, pitted
and scarred, strewn where some volcano had flung them. A wild, naked
region; rising in great serrated tiers from the ocean floor up this
hundred-mile slope to the island peaks at its summit.
We came to the surface off the island of Kauai. More than a hundred
feet of naked slope, had been exposed by the fallen ocean. But the
green island stood serene up there on its peak. The comparatively
shallow two-thousand-fathom depth extended out here in a great circular
plateau to the north. Our charts showed it almost level for several
hundred miles. We dived and followed over its shoreward, necklike
width, and came again into deeper water.
North of Maui, the tumbled rise went up a regular, ascending slope,
terminating at the peak which was the island. We lay, at twenty-one
degrees, thirty-three minutes, ten seconds N., one hundred and
fifty-six degrees, eight minutes W., in two thousand fathoms. The slope
was another thousand beneath us; but we could see its higher crags
down there, and as we moved slowly south, toward Maui, holding the
two thousand depth, the crags came up to meet us. We went cautiously,
with only one light preceding us. Winding now, down in the ravines and
furrows of the steady upward grade.
Silent, mysterious passages! Sometimes they seemed about to close over
us; or opened into valleys, with cliff-walls and jagged rims. Darkly,
sinister depths! Our half-dimmed light showed us very little. Like
a silent, cautious monster, surprising this other marine life which
sometimes we saw fleeing before us, we slowly felt our way along.
We came to a sharp, winding gully, barely a hundred feet wide, with
sides twice as high. Its jagged, uneven floor wound upward. Once,
perhaps, lava had come down here. But now its side-walls were eroded
with many cavelike openings larger than the Dolphin. Still more slowly,
with our little light struggling ahead of us, we followed the gully.
We were all in the forward instrument room. I was at the controls, with
the others around me. Nereid and Arturo stood together at my elbow with
the port forward bull’s-eye before us. Occasionally he would whisper to
her. With the tenseness of it, we all spoke instinctively in undertones.
We were in no more than three hundred and thirty fathoms now; the
Dolphin handled steadily. Some two thousand feet over us was the
surface of the sea. The gully was narrowing; rising steeply ahead to
what seemed a crest.
Nereid whispered something. Arturo said suddenly: “Turn off the light,
Jeff.”
I cut off the Franklin. Through the bull’s-eye a grim, sullen darkness
leaped to enfold us. But in a moment, what Nereid had seen, we began
to see. A dim, pale-green effulgence far ahead, a glow, a radiance. It
seemed very distant, as though the source of it might be down behind
this gully-crest--a radiance in the upper water which was our sky.
I heard Dr. Plantet’s sharp intake of breath; and Arturo’s murmur:
“Keep our light off, Jeff. Can you see to get us up there? Stop at the
crest.”
We crept on up, holding close to the gully floor. The green radiance
faintly painted the gully walls. At the crest we paused.
* * * * *
There lay before us a sharp declivity--a drop of perhaps five hundred
feet to a broad oval caldron. It must have been ten miles or more in
width. Beyond it, in a great steep rise the main slope ascended toward
Maui.
The whole scene was painted dimly green with a diffused effulgence
of light. We stared, all of us for a moment unbreathing. Mysterious,
awesome, uncanny! A crest to the left with a dangling forest of marine
vegetation, gently swaying. Occasional dark blobs of prowling marine
life. All dark and dimly turgid. A scene with a quality almost infernal.
I could not grasp much of it at first. But it grew upon me--I think we
may have been there an hour, staring. It grew upon me, like formless
shadows slowly taking form in a pregnant darkness.
The green light suffused everything. But down in the caldron it was
concentrated into many small points. Moving dots; blobs of light--and
near the center a large luminous area which presently seemed almost
bright.
Moving dots of light. Things moving, carrying with them the lights.
Things that presently seemed cubes and oblongs of metal. I fancied they
may have been, some of them, a hundred or two hundred feet in length;
moving metal containers. With human occupants? My reason told me so.
They showed no details, only as distant blobs. But my fancy supplied
details; I could imagine them being dragged very slowly up the
slope toward Maui with giant chains. Or perhaps they went as our
old-fashioned tractors used to move, with caterpillar tread. One moved,
and stopped; and I did not see it move again. Then another; another--a
little distance gained for each.
And the movement was always upward, toward Maui’s green
mountaintop--toward that bright ethereal other world of land and sky!
It grew upon me, this scene so darkly, silently infernal. The slow
patience of it!
But there was other, swifter movement. Smaller, individual, metallic
vehicles moved more swiftly about as though commanding. Some darted
like tiny sub-sea vessels, carrying lights. Others moved on the bottom.
There were unlighted shapes that seemed not much larger than a human
figure, moving among the rocks on the caldron floor.
The broad, circular, nearly-bright area seemed to have a great
transparent dome over it, like an amphitheater suffused with
illumination. I think the water was excluded from under it.
The encampment of this attacking army! It was distant from us, with
image tiny to our sight. Human figures in there, moving about. Tiny
dots of green light strung above them. Shapes of things that might have
been houses; tiers of them, terraced like sections of a pyramid. An
encampment, crowded with apparatus perhaps. I even fancied I could see
some of it, which the figures were assembling.
Dr. Plantet was fumbling with our telescope. He turned on its tiny
penetrating ray of light, but Arturo leaped at him. “Don’t, father!”
I reached and snapped off the light. But it had betrayed us. We did not
know it then; for another interval we gazed down from this height where
it seemed that in darkness the Dolphin lay secure on the crest of the
gully-mouth.
But our light had betrayed us. I was first aware that though, with the
Parodyne cut off, we had been poised motionless, we were _not_
motionless! The gully had passed behind us! Slowly, silently, as though
drifting, we were moving out over the caldron! The declivity with its
sudden drop was now behind us; we were in open water, five hundred feet
above the caldron floor.
* * * * *
I clutched at the Parodyne control, to start it. I think I must have
stammered some startled, horrified words. There was no time to say or
do anything. A light--it may have been a form of light, or something
more tangible perhaps--shot suddenly upward at us. A narrow green beam
with red fire woven through it, a darting thing like a dim narrow beam
of light. It caught us. More tangible than light, for I could feel it
strike us, grip us! As though caught in the magnetic grapples of a
crane, I could feel the solid grip of it; holding the Dolphin, partly
turning us over. And drawing us, sucking us--there are no words to
describe it--pulling us downward!
There was an instant of horrified confusion. The shock had thrown all
of us against the instrument room wall. I heard Dr. Plantet shout
something. I must have been able to start the Parodyne; it was burring;
the pressure pumps fortunately continued to work; I could hear their
whine. The Dolphin was shuddering; shaken; stricken. And being pulled
down--a great fish held struggling but helpless in the luminous
tentacle of a monster.
Polly was clutching me. I caught a vision of Arturo, holding Nereid,
his encircling arms trying to protect her. I did not see Dr. Plantet.
I flung the Parodyne to all its power. I could feel it futilely surge
against this thing holding us.
I was thrown again. Through the bull’s-eye a slanted scene of movement
was coming up at us as we went down.
And then there was a flash down there--a flash of blinding white,
brief and silent. I know now that Dr. Plantet had been able to get
to the torpedo tube--had taken swiftly what came to hand and launched
it. A mere light-bomb, of the sort recently developed for sub-sea
photography.
It may have been harmless or not, to this strange enemy. Perhaps it
blinded whatever eyes were guiding this grappling thing. And for an
instant, the clutching hold upon us loosened. The Dolphin righted, and
as I turned on the ejecting pumps, we started upward, gathering speed.
The Parodyne took hold and added its power. I turned our bow straight
up.
The grappling light sprang upward, past us. It missed us, came back and
missed again. Its source was very mobile--it seemed rising after us;
it swept off to one side and the beam leaped again, and again did not
strike.
We shot up the two thousand feet to the surface with the speed almost
of a diving plane. I leveled us off and we raced at a fathom’s depth.
The attacking light had vanished. The depths beneath us were dark. We
sped away, shoreward. Presently we lay awash on a starlit glassy sea,
with Maui’s green-brown heights staring down at us. And the blessed
stars in a canopy above.