We entered the opening, swimming in a group with Atar leading. It was
already new territory for us. Our hunting expeditions had never taken us
even as far as this; we were always content to remain in Marinoid
waters. As we advanced, the rocky ceiling overhead was closing down on
us, until soon there was no more than twice the length of our bodies
between it and the floor.
On both sides the dark water stretched out as far as we could see into
blackness also. We were descending now at an angle of perhaps forty-five
degrees.
We had gone what you would call a mile possibly, when we came suddenly
to a tangle of coral—a barrier that reached from floor to ceiling. I
call it coral. It might have been a petrified vegetation. An all but
impenetrable thicket—white like the frosted underbrush of your Northern
winter forests—it seemed to bar our further progress.
We stopped; consulted, and swam to the left and right. But the tangle
extended in both directions to the edges of the mile-wide passageway.
“It is this,” said Atar, “which keeps our own region free of monsters.
They cannot easily pass a barrier like this.” He was smiling at Caan and
me. “To this, perhaps we owe our safety.”
Caan was poking at the thicket, and we found after a moment that we
could with difficulty force our way through it.
The realization that Atar’s words brought us was at once reassuring and
alarming. If no creatures of the wild could pass this barrier, what then
might lie on its other side?
Caan, older and more poised than either Atar or me, was wasting no time
on such thoughts.
“Come,” he said. “Here we can get through.”
The white underbrush must have extended for several hundred feet back
and downward. We forced our bodies through it, seeking small orifices,
bending aside the twigs, or breaking them off for they were very
brittle.
We were an hour or more getting through. A few small bottle-shaped fish
with protruding, ball-like eyes on the sides of the head, lurked here
and there. They watched us curiously—unafraid, almost resentful it
seemed, with their sidelong glances and their hasteless movements to
avoid us. But we paid them little heed, for such as they often wandered
into Marinoid waters and were easily killed with our spears.
The tangle of white underbrush gave way at last into open water. Again
we saw the ceiling and floor close together—the same narrow slit
sloping sharply downward.
With the white underbrush gone, the water seemed darker—so dark that we
could hardly see each other a few lengths away. It was warmer
too—unpleasantly warm; and to our nostrils came the taint of that
stench now unmistakable.
We had been swimming downward for what seemed an interminable time when
abruptly the floor beneath us dropped away into a perpendicular cliff.
Simultaneously the ceiling had heightened—disappeared into the watery
shadows. We found ourselves poised with a vast void of ink before us. It
might have been illimitable for all we could see of its boundaries. And
empty! There was nothing but blackness—but it was that pregnant
blackness that seems, not empty but merely to conceal.
“We must go down,” said Atar. I could hear that he was trying to keep
his voice steady. “They would live—down on the sea-bottom.”
We descended along the side of the perpendicular cliff. A thousand feet?
Three thousand? I cannot say. The water grew steadily warmer until its
heat began seriously to oppress us. The thought came to me suddenly that
we were well into the bowels of my meteor; its internal fires, now very
close perhaps, were heating the water. My meteor! How remote the outside
world—the outer surface—the Heavens—Saturn—the stars and the vast,
unfathomable distances of the Stellar Universe—seemed to me now! I had
been born out there somewhere. It was the first time in ages that such a
memory had crossed my mind.
“Look!” cried Caan softly.
We huddled together against that black cliff-face. Below us in the void,
a glowing point of light was moving. It seemed miles away; but it was no
more than twenty or thirty feet, for as it approached we saw it was a
long, sinuous thing with an illuminated head—a head that glowed
phosphorescent—luridly green.
We held our breaths. The thing went past us—quietly, without seeming to
notice us. It was a ribbon-like thing thirty feet long, two feet high,
and no more than a few inches thick. A pallid white ribbon of puffy
slime, frayed and tattered at its edges, it undulated gruesomely from
end to end. In a moment it was gone, into that void of ink from whence
it had come.
Again we descended. Other creatures passed us—headless things of black
with illuminated parasites clinging to them; great fishes, star-shaped,
with a brilliant green head in the center and each point of the star as
long as our bodies; fishes, or were they animals? that were all head, it
seemed.
We took heart, for none seemed to notice us. But there was a balloon of
white jelly. It floated past us quite close. It was larger than any one
of us. It seemed harmless and Atar swam beside it. Then suddenly the
thing expanded, lost all its form and like a cloud of white mist,
enveloped him. He screamed and we rushed to his rescue.
In an instant we were all three plunged into a confused, frantic horror
for which I can find no words. Like thick white glue that was sticky,
yet slimy, this almost imponderable stuff fought with us! Fought, I
say—for it was using an intelligence against us! We floundered,
flailing the water with frantic arms and legs. A noisome stench from the
gluey stuff sickened us; the feel of it made our flesh crawl and the
gorge rise in our throats. It was uncannily flimsy stuff. We could tear
it into shreds, fling it away; but always it came back, to weld itself
together. There was an intelligence in it! Not a centralized power of
thought, like a brain, but an instinct for battle that must have been
inherent in every smallest fibre of it.
We escaped at last. How, I do not know. Perhaps the thing wearied of us.
And as we struggled away exhausted, with its horrible gluey particles
which we had breathed in choking our lungs—we saw it floating off,
ragged but still balloon-like, its original shape almost unimpaired.
* * * * *
We reached at last the bottom of the void. It was not level, but tumbled
as though some cataclysm of nature had tossed it about. Banks of black
ooze, a hundred feet high, were honeycombed with holes; valleys were
beside them—valleys bristling with stalactites of black and white coral
which stood up like pointed spears to impale the unwary trespasser. And
there were miniature volcanic-looking peaks—cone-shaped. From one of
them a stream of water almost hot, was issuing.
Frequently now, we saw lights; and all of them were the naturally
lighted heads and bodies of swimming creatures. They moved about lazily,
confidently, ignoring us; and we knew that when they were hungry they
would feed, either upon others smaller of their kind—or upon us.
Over this tumbled, broken sea-bottom—where occasionally a giant crab or
something of the kind would scuttle from a shadow into one of the deeper
shadowed holes—we swam at an altitude of about fifty feet. We carried
no light; and our bodies were shrouded in green-black cloaks. We still
held our spears—poor, useless, futile things! Yet, as Atar said, they
might not be useless against humans. And it was the humans, with their
greater intelligence, that we now feared most. Conditions of life here
in the Water of Wild Things, now became plain to us. These wild
creatures were for the most part inoffensive up to the point of
satisfying their own need for food. They fed upon each other and thus
reduced their number. The humans, in open battle with them, were
doubtless helpless. But the humans had the intelligence to hide—to
escape. And the creatures of the wild did not bother unduly to pursue
them.
Does this seem illogical to you? I assure you, it is not. The conditions
we found, here in the Water of Wild Things, in the bowels of that meteor
flying amid the Rings of Saturn, were almost identical with those which
prevailed in the early periods of your own Earth’s history. There is
not, and never has been, a wild creature as predatory, as ferocious as
Man himself. Your lion and tiger are cowards unless spurred by fright or
hunger. The wild animals of your Earth would have been glad to live at
peace with Mankind. It has been Man himself who consistently has been
the aggressor.
“See there!” cried Caan softly. “Is that perhaps a place where humans
live?”
Below us, in the distance ahead, were a number of tiny pin-points of
light. And even as Caan spoke, a human figure passed near us—a figure
swimming swiftly downward with a fugitive, frightened speed. It seemed
to hold a sort of lantern in one of its hands outstretched—a small,
shrouded light to guide it through the darkness. It did not see us, and
in a moment it had passed downward into the shadows. But the moving
point of its light remained visible.
“Come!” urged Caan softly. “That will show us the way. Hurry!”
We swam downward, following the point of light.