Part 1

The Sea Horror

By Edmond Hamilton

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Weird Tales May, March 1929. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

It is only now, when we know all the story, that we see at last how narrow was our escape, that we understand at last the power and the dread of that dark horror that rose to whelm an unsuspecting world. From the first sailing of the Clinton expedition to that last flaming hour of tremendous combat when the destiny of a planet was settled forever, we can follow the thing now, and can recognize what vast and unseen forces they were that wove around our world the net of a terrible doom. For it is only now, when the horror has passed over us, that we can understand that horror from its beginning.

It is with Clinton himself that the beginning lies, and with the expedition which bore his name. Dr. Herbert Clinton, holder of the chair of marine zoology at the University of London, was generally conceded to be the foremost expert on deep-sea life in all the British Isles. For a score of years, indeed, his fame had risen steadily as a result of his additions to scientific knowledge. He had been the one to prove first the connection between the absence of ultra-violet rays and the strange phosphorescence of certain forms of bathic life. He had, in his famous Indian Ocean trawlings, established the significance of the quantities of foraminiferal ooze found on the scarps of that sea's bottom. And he it was who had annihilated for all time the long-disputed Kempner-Stoll theory by his brilliant new classification of ascidian forms.

Even to the general public the slender, gray-haired scientist with the keen gray eyes was a well-known figure, for it was his famous investigations into the forms of deep-sea creatures which had made possible the building of the new K-type submarines. These submarines, which had now been adopted by practically all nations, were built upon a new pressure-resistance principle evolved by Dr. Clinton from his investigations, and could venture to depths and pressures impossible to the under-sea boats of war and post-war types. Some of them, indeed, had descended to depths of a mile and more without experiencing injury, and it was Clinton's contention that they were in reality capable of depths of three miles and more. To many, at first, that contention seemed only a somewhat boastful exaggeration on his part, but when the announcement of the Clinton expedition made it known that one of these submarines was to be used by that enterprise, the scientist's sincerity was conceded.

It was early in December that the expedition was first announced, by Clinton himself, from the University of London offices. He had long desired, he stated, to investigate the peculiar forms of deep-sea life to be found in the great Nelsen Deeps. These deeps, lying in the Atlantic almost half-way between Ireland and Newfoundland, had been but little explored by oceanographers, due to their great extent and depth, the latter averaging somewhat more than three miles. Trawls used over these great deeps could accomplish but little, but they had brought up some curious variations of common bathic forms, and in one case had brought up an extraordinary portion of a skeleton, or reticulation of bones, that was quite unlike that of any deep-sea form known to zoologists. It was Clinton's hope, therefore, that a more thorough exploration of these great deeps might reveal forms as yet unknown to science, and for such an exploration he planned to use, he announced, one of the new K-type submarines which he himself had helped to design, and one of which had been specially equipped and placed at his disposal by a grateful Admiralty Board.

The submarine provided, the _K-16_, had a cruising radius which made a mother-ship unnecessary, and was large enough to contain all of the necessary trawling apparatus, storage-tanks and laboratories, as well as the expedition's personnel. The members of the latter, it was announced, would be drawn almost entirely from the university's own scientific faculty, including besides Dr. Clinton, Dr. Randall Lewis, an expert on ichthyological and conchological forms; Professor Ernest Stevens, a young instructor of biology and friend of Clinton's; two laboratory technicians from the university's laboratories; and a half-dozen assistants, such as photographers, experienced trawlers, and the like.

It was Clinton's plan to proceed from London directly toward the northern boundary of the Nelsen Deeps, at an approximate latitude of 57° north, and from there work his way down to their lower boundary six hundred miles to the south, making free use of the submarine's trawls, and descending for detailed investigations at any promising spot; since, as he stated, his calculations showed the submarine to be easily capable of reaching the three-mile depth. Besides its regulation torpedo tubes and deck-guns, the _K-16_ had been equipped with powerful under-sea searchlights capable of dispelling the darkness of the lower depths, while small port-holes of immensely thick reinforced glass had been set in the sides of its control room, as in all the new-type submarines, making a survey of the surrounding waters possible. Communication with the expedition's headquarters at London was assured by its powerful radio apparatus. It was Clinton's hope, therefore, that by making use of all this equipment an extensive and yet thorough exploration of the great deeps could be carried out in a comparatively short time.

Late in April, therefore, the long, glistening steel submarine swept down the Thames and out to the open sea, with the members of the expedition and two or three of its naval crew grouped on its low-railed deck. At the last moment the expedition's limited personnel had been limited still further by the loss of Ernest Stevens, the young biology instructor who was to have been of it. Young Stevens, on the day before that of sailing, had had the misfortune to twist his ankle badly as he ran down the steps of one of the university buildings, and as the crowded submarine was obviously no place for a disabled man, he was forced to watch it sail without him, contenting himself, during the following days, by following the expedition's progress through the radio reports received from it by the university station.

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For the first few days, while the _K-16_ crept out of the English Channel and into the broad Atlantic, the messages from it were for the main part but routine reports of progress. The submarine was following a northwestern course toward the upper boundary of the Nelsen Deeps, and would, Clinton reported, begin its surveys at once upon reaching that objective. For several days thereafter the _K-16's_ messages to the university station at London gave only its position and progress, and it was not until May 5th that a brief report from the submarine stated that it had reached the desired latitude and was now forging slowly southward on the surface, the expedition's members already busy with their trawls and deck-winches.

For the next three days the messages from the _K-16_ were reports of the work accomplished with the trawls. In those days, so Clinton reported, no less than a dozen new forms had already been brought up and classified. An entirely new species of the _Modiola vulgaris_ was, he stated, probably the most important of their finds so far, but besides this a half-dozen variations of common malacopterygii and acanthopterygii forms had been obtained and examined. The submarine, Clinton added, was still forging south, working all her trawls, and as yet no descents had been attempted.

On the next day, the 9th, there came a further message in which Clinton reported the bringing up of several other notable variations from classified forms, this time of the dibranchiate and tetrabranchiate cephalopods. He stressed, in this report, the difficulty experienced in using the trawls at the great depths over which the submarine was forging, and added that they had been further hampered by the loss, on the preceding day, of one of their trawls, which, as he said, "was lost in a rather puzzling manner which none of us is able to explain." With this rather ambiguous phrase the message of the 9th concluded, and on the next day no word whatever from the _K-16_ was received by the university station. Then, late on the morning of the 11th, there came that short and enigmatic message which was to make Clinton and his expedition the center of a sudden storm of speculation and discussion.

The message itself, received just before noon on the 11th, was a quite coherent one, yet seemed at the same time a quite crazy one. It read:

Either we are all mad, or we have made the greatest discovery ever made. One of our trawls has brought up a thing so incredible, so unbelievable, that our minds refuse to credit it though it lies before our eyes. I will not expose this expedition to the derision of the world by telling what we have found until we learn more, and for that reason we are making a descent within the next half-hour which will tell us all. When you hear from us again we shall either have made the greatest discovery ever made by men, or shall know ourselves the victims of some incomprehensible delusion.

CLINTON.

Considering that message, it is hardly surprizing that the world found it interesting, and that within the next few hours the newspaper-reading public developed a sudden interest in the scientific expedition of whose existence it had hardly been aware until then. Through the afternoon of the 11th, in a hundred radio stations on both sides of the Atlantic, press-writers and scientists alike crowded into the little receiving-rooms to wait for the first news from Clinton and his expedition. And in the university station at London, Stevens and Clinton's other friends and associates waited tensely for that news.

Through the long afternoon of that long spring day they waited, and the world waited, but still there came no word. Night fell, but a veil of silence had dropped upon the submarine, and when morning came it found Stevens and his friends still waiting in vain by the silent impersonal instruments. Through all that night the calls of a score of stations to the submarine had gone unheeded, and when the morning newspapers gave to the public the first news of the _K-16's_ long silence, they stated openly that some mishap or disaster must have overtaken the submarine. Only young Stevens and his friends remained steadfast in their optimism, and even they began to doubt as the 12th passed and still no message came. By night it was universally believed that the submarine had met disaster, and out on the Atlantic a half-dozen steamers were heading toward the spot where it had last reported its position.

By the morning of the 13th the public was informed through the early editions that the ships rushing to the submarine's aid had been unable to find any trace of it whatever, though they had circled repeatedly over the spot. By that time, too, it was pointed out that the submarine's air-supply would be getting very low, even if it still remained intact beneath the surface. The general opinion, though, by then, was that Clinton in over-confidence had ventured to too great a depth in the submarine, and that it had been crushed by the terrific pressure. Even at the university it was tacitly conceded that this must be the case.

Concerning the strange last message from the _K-16_ there was still discussion, but even that was capable of more than one explanation. It was pointed out that Clinton was an ardent zoologist, and that the discovery of some entirely new form might have caused the exaggerated language of his message. Stevens, who knew the calm and precise mentality of his superior rather better than that, would not believe in such an explanation, but was unable to devise a better one to fit that sensational last report. It was the general belief, therefore, that in his excitement over some new discovery Clinton had ordered his submarine to a depth too great, and had met disaster and death there beneath the terrific pressure of the waters. Certainly, whatever its defects, there was no other theory that fitted the known facts so well.

Thus, in a few days, the brief sensation of Clinton and his ill-starred expedition was disposed of. It was useless, of course, to attempt to locate or raise the missing submarine at that terrific depth, and no such suggestion was ever made. Even Stevens and his friends were forced to admit, as the days went by, that there seemed no further thing to be done, nothing by which more might be learned of the hapless expedition's fate. The British and American newspapers combined to advise caution in over-estimating the capacities of the new-type submarines, but except for that, save in scientific circles, the loss of one of the greatest living scientists excited no particular attention. The world deplored the loss, indeed, but turned the moment after to consideration of its own affairs. Certainly, as the days and weeks went by, it never dreamed of the true importance of the strange sensation that had flamed so briefly from the headlines, nor ever guessed the existence of the calm and gigantic plans and forces of which that sensation was but an incident, and which were rising even then to the destruction of man and all man's world.

2

It was on the fourth day of August, just three months after the passing of Clinton and his expedition, that the first news of the approaching terror was given to the world. That first news was in the form of a dispatch from the government oceanographic station at Portsmouth, in which it was stated that during the last three days the level of the sea had risen almost as many feet. Unnaturally high tides had been lashing the coasts of England and of the world during those days, the message stated, and a study of them had disclosed the astounding and unexplainable rise which had taken place. The dispatch added that the rise was a world-wide and not a local one, since corroborative reports of it had been received from associated oceanographic stations at New York, Yokohama, Sydney and Calcutta.

It is not wonderful that that brief first message aroused in the world of science, and even in the world of everyday, a very intense interest and curiosity. Published as it was in all the London journals on the evening of the fourth, and by them transmitted by wire and wireless to the world at large, it soon eclipsed even the latest atrocious murder as a theme of general discussion. For if there is one thing considered constant in this changing world of ours, it is the level of the sea. All our heights and depths are compared to and computed from it, so unchanging do we esteem it; since though great tides may come and go the level of the sea itself seems never to change, so delicately balanced are the combined processes of evaporation and condensation which deplete and replenish it. And for this hitherto unchanging level to rise suddenly for almost three feet, in as many days, was a phenomenon of intense interest and mystery.

Scientists, indeed, when confronted with accounts of what had taken place, could only shake their heads in somewhat helpless perplexity. No ordinary conditions, of course, could account for such a tremendous and unprecedented rise as this. They ventured the suggestion, though, that some great subterranean upheaval or earthquake might have forced up the bed of the ocean in some spot to such a distance as to heighten the level of the waters. If such an upheaval had taken place in some central spot, they pointed out, such as the Arctic or Antarctic regions, it might well have caused such a great rise as this in the level of all the sea. They were unable, however, to explain the fact that during the last few weeks no such upheaval or quake whatever had been recorded by the seismographs of the world.

Unchecked by any positive knowledge as to the thing's cause, therefore, it could be argued and discussed during the next day or two with zest, and many and fantastic were the explanations that were advanced. The great space devoted to it by the newspapers had aroused the public's fickle interest, and during the next two days the sea and the great tides which were rolling in from it against the coasts of all the world became the center of a world-wide interest. In Sussex and in Anglesey, in Maine and in California, in Korea as in Ceylon, there were everywhere large groups of interested spectators gathered along cliff and sea-wall and beach, to watch those great green tides shattering themselves against the shore, and to speculate idly on the subject of general interest. In England and the Continent, as well as in America, special excursion trains were run to many beaches, and the proprietors of resorts reaped a sudden and unexpected harvest.

It was true that here and there some damage had been done by the rising of the waters, and by the great, unnatural tides, but it was not of a magnitude large enough to arouse attention. A row of bathing-machines wrecked, a road or sea-wall washed away, a beached boat or two swept out to sea--such events as these could hardly seem important to the mass of people in comparison to the strange conditions which had caused them. It was also true that the lot of ships at sea had become suddenly very arduous, due to the great seas running, and that large numbers of the smaller boats had been forced to remain in port until the great tides abated, yet even this made no impression save on that small portion of the world's population which follows the sea. The larger part of the public chose, during those two days, to regard this strange manifestation as a spectacle rather designed for its own entertainment and interest. On the evening of the second day, though, the 6th, there came that which suddenly swept away this attitude.

This was the second calm report from the Portsmouth station, given to the waiting newspapers late on the afternoon of the 6th. Within an hour it had flashed along the telegraph keys and wires, and had fallen into type and was leaping from the presses in London, and in New York, too, and in cities around the whole earth's girdle. And with the publication of that message the whole matter suddenly lost its lighter aspects, and the world that had theorized and laughed and joked concerning it suddenly sobered, and looked up with startled eyes. For the Portsmouth station's second report stated that the rise already noted had not stopped but was apparently still continuing at the same steady and extraordinary rate, having risen some two feet further during the ensuing two days.

"While this extraordinary rise is purely a temporary one, of course," said the report, "it seems advisable that preparations be made for the evacuation of whatever regions or sections lie at a height of less than ten feet above the former standard sea-level." It was this calm advice that sent a sudden chill across the peoples of the earth, so that for the first time there rose the thought of peril in connection with the thing. All during the next day, while the day and night slid around the world in endless alternation, men spoke of the thing with knitted brows and troubled eyes, and in Edinburgh and Chicago and Honolulu and Bombay said to each other, as though with a strange new thought, "If this thing--this rise--keeps on, it's going to be a bad thing, d'ye know?" It was as though that thought had stridden across the world like some giant specter of fear, to still with lifted ghostly hand the laughter which the matter had aroused at first.

But in one spot of earth men neither laughed nor spoke concerning it, but labored madly to stem the peril which they saw rising swift to whelm them and theirs. An observer hanging high over Holland on that fateful 6th would have made out, all along the coasts of that sunken little land, a desperate and unceasing activity, as of the efforts of some swarming insects to repair a breach in their tiny fortifications. For the last few days, indeed, the rising sea had been lashing with all the power of its tremendous tides against the dikes which alone protected the sunken little land from the fury of the ocean. Inch by inch that land had been won from the ocean's power, and walled with the thick dikes which until now had resisted all the ocean's blows; but thick as they were their height was not great, and toward their tops the rising waters had been steadily clawing during the last few days.

As sunset of that day gleamed blood-red in the west the anxious watchers saw that even the parapets of hastily filled sandbags which they had placed upon their dikes were giving beneath the thunderous tides, and shifting and dissolving. Valiantly they labored, as men will do for their life and land, but before midnight of that night through a score of great breaches the long-repressed seas were rushing in upon the little land in ravening, titanic fury, and church bells were ringing wildly across the countryside and beacon fires blazing red, while roads and canals were choked with hordes of panic-driven fugitives fleeing blindly through the darkness from the terror that leaped upon them from behind. And when at last sunrise gleamed golden over the body-choked waters and over the flooded meadows and spires of cities, word had been flashed to the world that more than half of Holland was under water, its cities buried and populations drowned by the vast, inrushing floods.

With that word the strained anxiety of the world dissolved suddenly into stark fear. It was only the most emphatic messages of reassurance on the part of the newspapers and agencies of public information that prevented a great panic on that morning. They admitted that the disaster had occurred, but pointed out that it had been caused by the breaking of the dikes, as similar disasters had been caused before. No such thing could occur elsewhere, they stated, and assured the public that the rise in the sea's level was only temporary, caused by the subterranean upheaval which had been mentioned by the scientists. Not only would the rise not continue, they predicted, but it would be seen when the measurements were made public that evening that a positive lowering of the waters had taken place.

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