The region of the Marinoids was a stretch of water bounded by great
rocky cliffs on all sides. It was subterranean water—by which I mean
that by ascending in it one came at last to a rocky ceiling. We were, at
Rax, near the center of this subterranean sea. What was its extent, I
cannot say. All measurements, all standards of comparison, were lost to
me. In depth—at Rax—it might have been two thousand feet or more from
the sea-floor to the ceiling above, which is to say some two or three
times the depth of the city itself.
How many entrances there were from the outside world, I do not know.
Through one of them Nona and I had come when Caan and his party first
encountered us. To the Marinoids, who were not explorers, the idea of a
surface to water was inexplicable. They could not conceive of such a
thing; they could not understand it when I tried to explain it to them.
There were several Marinoid cities besides Rax, but none nearly so
large. And there was—shall I say a rural?—population. In the great
forests, Marinoid dwellings were occasionally to be found—isolated huts
of sea-weed, clinging like bird-nests to the wavering branches of the
trees. And in the open water other scattered families of a more
adventurous turn, lived in huge shells from which they had excavated the
living tissue—or lived in holes hollowed out of the banks of black
ooze.
The boundaries of the Marinoid domain presented themselves as almost
perpendicular cliffs—dark, jagged rock, with slabs and banks of black
clay, mounds of coral, red, black and white, or a tangle of slimy
vegetation. Openings which were caves—a cliff-face honeycombed with
them. And the ceiling was of similar character.
One of the boundaries—the one nearly opposite to where Nona and I had
entered this world—was somewhat different. Here the cliff-face rose to
over three thousand feet. But here also, the ceiling was even higher, so
that between them there was left an opening a hundred feet or more in
height, and a mile, at least, in horizontal width. It was a fearsome
opening. Its floor seemed to extend backward and downward. The water in
there was black; a thick slimy ooze was under it. And there seemed to be
in it the suggestion of a noisome stench that lay beyond.
This was the entrance to another region, of unknown extent—the Water of
Wild Things as the Marinoids called it. What might lie in there, none
could say. A few had penetrated into it a short distance, and returned
with lurid tales which none believed. And others had gone and never come
back.
But that there were half-savage humans living there, everyone believed.
Og was bred of them, some said; and now that he had voluntarily gone
there to live, as rumor had it, so much seemed a certainty.
Strange animals occasionally came from the Water of Wild Things. A
sea-monster had come once. But that was in the dim past, remembered only
by legend. The monster had all but overcome the cloud of Marinoids who
had desperately set upon it.
Such were the conditions under which we, at Rax, were living.
And now I am ready to tell you of that series of incidents which
awakened us to our danger. They did not at first concern me personally,
and so I paid them little heed. That is a commentary upon your own life,
is it not? Soon the thing struck home to me with its tragedy. Ah, then
how different it seemed! We can bear the grief of our friend so much
more philosophically than our own!
* * * * *
The first of these incidents in Rax came when Boy was about two months
old. A young virgin, the daughter of one of Caan’s worker, disappeared.
She was a girl somewhat younger than Nona. She was beautiful, in
Marinoid fashion. To you, all these Marinoids must seem
grotesque—unhuman perhaps. But beauty is not universally
standardized—only locally. We admire our own kind. Your natives of
Zanzibar think their own black-skinned, thick-lipped belles the most
beautiful on Earth. And as I have said once before, in the Marinoid
world the Marinoid women were the standard of beauty. Nona, so
different, was the exception, the abnormality.
This girl who disappeared had been with one of Caan’s scattered parties
working on the sea-bottom, gathering shell-food. She had wandered away
from the others, and when the time came to return to Rax, she was
missing. We thought she might have become ill and gone home.
But she was not at home—nor could she be found anywhere in the city.
Even this did not arouse much interest, except to her own immediate
family. It was thought that some young Marinoid man had taken her for
mate. According to custom the couple might readily have disappeared for
a time—gone out together to live in the forest to escape work until
their first period of love was past.
But there seemed no young man unaccounted for—and the girl did not
return. Even so, the incident would have been forgotten, but soon
another young girl disappeared.
There were perhaps thirty who vanished during that year. They were not
all from the workers outside the city. We had long since ceased to take
women with us; and those who lived in the forests and the mudbanks came
crowding into Rax—and to the other cities nearby.
We knew very soon, of course, that our Marinoid women were being stolen.
And there was one crowning incident that at last made us understand.
It was at what you would call midnight, when the city was asleep. Caan
and I, on a belated errand, were swimming down one of the vertical
streets. The place was deserted; the street was empty; the lights at
intervals on the side walls of the houses illumined the water with a
green, diffused glow—like lights in a thick fog at night on your Earth.
The windows along the street for the most part stood open. Everywhere
was heavy silence, with only the swish of the water as Caan and I swam
through it.
A green figure in the horizontal street below us attracted our
attention. It seemed to be a man swathed in a green cloak of seaweed. He
saw us coming, and darting up to the street light which hung nearby, he
flung something over it.
The light was obliterated; shadows fell over everything.
Caan and I were startled; we hung poised, just above the cross-street so
that we could see along it in both directions. There were lights at
distant corners. We heard a low but penetrating cry from near at hand. A
signal! Other figures in the distance darted up through the water and
put out the lights. The entire street was in darkness.
Caan and I whirled downward, shouting. Through the window of a house, we
saw the stiffened body of a woman come floating. There was light enough
for us to see her white face and arms—a woman unconscious, shocked into
insensibility as we later learned, by a bolt of animal electricity from
her abductor.
Her body floated from the window as though pushed from behind. In the
darkness, green swathed forms seized it—forms which were barely
discernible as blurs in the dark water—seized it and began rapidly
towing it away.
Caan and I were after them. Our cries were arousing the city.
Voices—confused questions—came from within the houses. Figures
appeared; the street behind us was in a turmoil.
The woman’s body with its almost invisible assailants was moving forward
rapidly. Lines of white as the highly aerated water was stirred,
radiated out V-shaped from its rapid progress.
But Caan and I, unburdened, could swim the faster. We overtook the
invaders. There was a struggle in the darkness. A bolt of electricity
went through me, but I recovered from it. Caan was shouting in hot anger
as he struck at the green shapes that were attacking him.
The water all about us was lashed into white. It caught and reflected
the light from a suddenly illumined window near at hand. I found myself
gripping Og!
“You!”
But my voice seemed to inspire him to frenzied effort. He jerked away
from me—was gone into the shadows.
Caan was now shouting triumphantly. He had dispersed his adversaries.
The woman’s white body—neglected—had sunk to the floor of the street.
We swam down to her, chafed her arms and neck until at last she
recovered consciousness.
The street was relighted. The houses were emptying themselves of their
frightened inmates. A crowd gathered around us with confused startled
questioning.
But Og and all his cohorts had escaped.
An hour later, when I returned home, Boy was lying in the hollow white
shell which was his cradle, crying lustily. And Nona—my Nona—was gone!