CHAPTER VII.

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.