Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Greg Weeks, and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from Astounding Stories January 1933.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the
U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
The Table of Contents is not part of the original magazine.
A Sequel to "Seed of the Arctic Ice"
Under Arctic Ice
_A Complete Novelette_
By H.G. Winter
* * * * *
Contents
I An Empty Room
II The Crash
III The Fate of the Peary
IV "No Chance Left"
V Last Assault
VI In a Biscuit Can
VII The Awakening
VIII The Duel
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Ken Torrance races Poleward to the aid of the submarine
_Peary_, trapped in an icy limbo of avenging sealmen.]
CHAPTER I
_An Empty Room_
The house where the long trail started was one of gray walls, gray
rooms and gray corridors, with carpets that muffled the feet which at
intervals passed along them. It was a house of silence, brooding
within the high fence that shut it and the grounds from a landscape
torpid under the hot sun of summer, and across which occasionally
drifted the lonely, mournful whistle of a train on a nearby railroad.
Inside the house there was always a hush, a heavy quiet--restful to
the brain.
But now a voice was raised, young, angry, impatient, in one of the
gray-walled rooms.
"Yes, I rang for you. I want my bags packed. I'm leaving this
minute!"
The face of the man who had entered showed surprise.
"Leaving, Mr. Torrance? Why?"
"Read this!"
[Illustration: _She was fastened in the mud of the gloomy sea-floor._]
As if, knowing and therefore dreading what he would see, the attendant
took the newspaper held outstretched to him and followed the pointing
finger to a featured column. He scanned it:
Deadline Passed for Missing Submarine
Point Barrow, Aug. 17 (AP): Planes sent out to search for
the missing polar submarine _Peary_ have returned without
clue to the mystery of is disappearance. The close search
that has been conducted through the last two weeks,
involving great risks to the pilots, has been fruitless, and
authorities now hold out small hope for Captain Sallorsen,
his crew and the several scientists who accompanied the
daring expedition.
If the _Peary_, as is generally thought, is trapped beneath
the ice floes or embedded in the deep silt of the polar
sea-floor, her margin of safety has passed the deadline, it
was pointed out to-day by her designers. Through special
rectifiers aboard, her store of air can be kept capable of
sustaining life for a theoretical period of thirty-one days.
And exactly thirty-one days have now elapsed since last the
_Peary's_ radio was heard from a position 72 deg. 47' N, 162 deg.
22' W, some twelve hundred miles from the North Pole itself.
In official circles, hope was practically abandoned for the
missing submarine, though attempts will continue to be made
to locate her....
"I'm sorry, Mr. Torrance," said the attendant nervously. "This paper
should--"
"Should never have reached me, eh? Through some slip of the people who
censor my reading matter here, I read what I wasn't supposed
to--that's what you mean?"
"It was thought better, Mr. Torrance, by the doctors, and--"
"Good God! Thought better! Through their sagacity, these doctors have
probably condemned the men on this submarine to death! I haven't heard
a word about the expedition; didn't even know the _Peary_ was up
there, much less missing!"
"Well, Mr. Torrance," the attendant stammered, more and more
unsettled, "the doctors thought that--that any news about it
would--well, upset you."
The young man laughed bitterly;
"Bring on my old 'trouble,' I suppose. The doctors have been
considerate, but I won't concern them any more. I'm through. I'm
leaving for the north--right now. There's a bare chance I might still
be in time."
"I'm sorry, Mr. Torrance, but you can't."
"Can't?"
The attendant had retreated to the door. His eyes were nervous, his
face pale.
"It's orders, Mr. Torrance. You've been under observation treatment,
and the doctors left strict orders that you must stay."
The young man throbbed with dangerous anger. His hands clenched and
unclenched. He burst out, in a last attempt at reason:
"But don't you see, I've _got_ to get to the _Peary_! It's the last
hope for those men! The position she was last heard from is right
where I--"
"You can't leave, Mr. Torrance! I'm sorry, but I'll have to call a
guard!"
For a minute their eyes held. With an effort, the young man said more
calmly:
"I see. I see. I'm a prisoner. All right, leave me."
The attendant was more than willing. The young man heard the door's
lock click. And then he lowered his head and pressed his hands hard
into his face.
But a second later he was looking up again, at the single wide window
which gave out on the lonely landscape over which sometimes came
drifting the distant cry of a train's whistle.
* * * * *
Two months before, Kenneth Torrance had returned to the whaling
submarine _Narwhal_, of which he was first torpooner, with a confused
story of men who were half-seals that lived in mounds under the Arctic
ice,[1] who had captured him and--he found--had also captured the
second torpooner, Chanley Beddoes. In breaking free from their
mound-prison, Beddoes had killed one of the sealmen and had been
himself slain minutes later by a killer whale, one of the fierce
scavengers of the sea which the sealmen trapped for food even as the
_Narwhal_ sought them for oil. Ken Torrance alone came back.
[Footnote 1: See the February, 1932, issue of Astounding Stories.]
Over their doubts, he had stuck to his story. Later, he had repeated
it to officials of the Alaska Whaling Company, who worked the
submarine and several surface ships. They in return had sent him to a
private sanitarium in the State of Washington for a rest which they
hoped would "iron out the kink" in his brain.
Here Ken had been for six weeks, while the exploring submarine _Peary_
nosed her way northward toward the Pole. Here he had been, all
unknowing, while the world hummed with reports of the _Peary's_
disappearance in that far-off ever-shrouded sea of mystery.
She might, Ken knew, have struck a shaft of underwater ice, sending
her to the bottom; some of her machinery might have cracked up,
paralyzing her; the ice-fields under which she cruised might have
shifted suddenly, crushing her ribs--of these perils the world knew as
well as he. But the submarine's crew was prepared for them; the
_Peary_ was equipped with a circular saw for cutting up through the
ice from beneath, and she carried sea-suits which would allow her men,
if she were wrecked on the bottom, to leave her and get up on the ice
and wait for the first searching plane.
Why, then, had not the planes which scoured the region found the
survivors?
That was the mystery--but not to Ken Torrance. There was another
peril, of which he alone knew. Not far from where the _Peary's_ last
radio report had come, a group of hollowed-out mounds lay on the
sea-floor, swarming with brown-skinned, quick-swimming creatures.
Sealmen, they were--men who, like the seals, had gone back to the sea.
Months ago, Second Torpooner Chanley Beddoes had killed one of them.
They were intelligent; they could remember; they were capable of hate
and fear; they would be desirous of leveling the debt!
There, Ken felt sure, lay the reason for the _Peary's_ baffling
silence, for the non-appearance of her men.
There might still be time. No one of course would listen to him and
believe, so he would have to go in search of the _Peary_ and her crew
himself.
Standing by the window, Kenneth Torrance quickly planned the several
steps which would take him to the Arctic and its silent ice-coated
sea.
And when, some two hours later, after a short warning rap on the door,
the individual who served as Mr. Torrance's attendant entered his
room, he was confronted, not by the gentleman whose dinner he carried,
but by an empty room, a stripped bed, an open window, and a rope of
sheets dangling from it toward the ground two stories beneath.
That was at seven o'clock in the evening.