Sparks, a bare foot from him, yelled out the word. Wells, alarmed, released his grip on the k.n.o.b. The radio operator was listening intently, a circle of taut faces around his crouched back. He swung excitedly around.

"For G.o.d's sake, don't fire!" he cried. "Hemingway Bowman's on that submarine! He's alive--and calling for you!"

CHAPTER V

_The Other Weapon_

Bowman--alive!

Keith Wells let go the torpedo lever. His whole orderly plan of action was crashed in a second.--For an instant he stood gaping at the radio man, forgetful of the peril outside, striving desperately to hit on some way of surmounting this unlooked-for obstacle. The idea of firing on his friend--killing Hemmy Bowman with his own hand--paralyzed his brain.

And in that unguarded instant the octopi struck.

From the bow of the enemy submarine, slanting from another of its peculiar k.n.o.bs, a narrow beam of violet light poured, cutting a vivid swathe across the teleview. The huddled men stared at it, not comprehending what it was. They felt no shock of electricity, nor could they discern any other harmful effect. The ray held steadily on their bow, not varying in the slightest, for a full thirty seconds.

And still none of them could feel or see any damage.

Wells, however, gradually became aware that he was bathed in perspiration, that great streams of sweat were coursing down his face. A quick glance told him that every member of the crew was the same way; and then, suddenly, he was conscious of a wave of intense heat--heat which quickly became terrific. The control room was stifling!

Before he could act, the _NX-1_ slipped sharply to one side. A sharp hissing sound grew at her bow, climbing steadily to a shriek. Long streamers of white steam crept along the lower deck and seeped up into the control room. And then rose the fatal sound of rushing water--water pouring into the submarine from outside!

For the violet beam was a heat ray--a weapon surface civilizations had not yet developed. While the _NX-1's_ crew had stared at it in the teleview, it had melted a hole in their bow.

Immediately the submarine lost trim, and the deck tilted ominously. In the face of material danger--danger from a source he understood--the commander became cool and methodical.

"Sea-suits on!" he snapped. "Then forward and break out steel collision-mat and weld it in place! Every man! You, too, Sparks and McKegnie!"

"But--but, sir!" stammered Graham. "Do you want them to get us with their paralyzing ray?"

"You'd rather drown?" Wells flung back. Silenced, the first officer donned his sea-suit, and in thirty seconds the rest of the crew had theirs on and were cluttering clumsily forward.

Alone in the control room, Keith battled with the unbalancing flow of water, maneuvering with all his skill in a futile attempt to keep the _NX-1_ on even keel. The men forward worked with great speed, spurred on by the realization that they were fighting death itself, but even as they labored the submarine swung in ever increasing rolls and dips; the great weight of water she had shipped slopped back and forth; her bow went steadily down. Keith swept her forward tanks clean of water, always conscious of the immobile, staring octopi submarine in the teleview, watching them, it seemed, curiously, and not driving home their advantage with additional bolts of the violet heat ray.

Despite her commander's frantic efforts, the _NX-1_ fluttered down remorselessly; the cavern floor rose, and, sinking with them, came the octopi craft, in slow mockery of a fighting plane pursuing its stricken foe to the very ground....

She struck bottom with a soft, thudding jar, and settled on even keel.

At once Wells released the helm, jumped into his own sea-suit and stumbled down to take command.

He found the steel collision-mat in place, and the welding of it nearly completed. A few feathery trickles of water still seeped through on each side, but under his terse directions the pumps were soon draining it out. The weird figures of the crew in their sea-suits looked like creatures from another planet as they rapidly finished the job.

"All right--up to the control room, everybody! Fast!" Wells roared.

The men stumbled aft as rapidly as they could in their c.u.mbersome suits. Several were already on the ladder. A few feet further--

But at that moment the paralyzing ray again stabbed into the ship--and Keith Wells slumped helplessly to the deck. And as he crumpled, he glimpsed the grotesque, falling figures of his men, and saw one come tumbling down the ladder from the control room, where he had almost reached safety....

Peculiar sensations, unendurable thoughts raced through the commander as he lay there limply. He knew his predicament. He wanted desperately to rise, to rush to the control room. Time and time again in those first few moments of impotence he strove mightily to pull his limbs back to life. But his greatest efforts were barren of result, save to leave him feeling still weaker. The fate that he had seen strike down Brown now enmeshed him. He was paralyzed. Helpless. In the midst of his crew.

After a moment all sensation left his body. His limbs might not have existed. Sensation, pain, lived only in his brain--and there it was terrible, because self-created.

He found himself sprawled flat on his back, his eyes directed stiffly upward. He could not move them, but out of the corners he vaguely sensed the other figures around him. Helpless, every one! And who knew if they would ever come out of the spell! Victory had gone to the octopi....

Minutes that seemed like hours pa.s.sed. And then a well-remembered voice sounded in the radio earphones in his helmet. It was Hemmy Bowman, speaking from the enemy ship.

"Keith! Keith Wells! Are you there?" the voice cried. "Keith! What have they done to you?"

And Keith, he could not answer! He could not answer that troubled voice of his friend--that voice from a friend he had thought dead.

Again Bowman spoke. "Keith! Can't you hear me? What are they doing to you? Oh--" For a moment it stopped, then came once more, thick with anguish. "Oh, G.o.d, what's happened?" Then lower: "If only there were light, so I could see what they're doing...." The voice tapered into silence. Keith could picture Hemmy, probably bound, giving him up for dead....

Then, quite distinctly, he heard a clank at the _NX-1's_ bow! The submarine jerked, her bow tilted up--and with increasing speed she moved forward, silently as a ghost.

Keith thought he knew what that meant. The octopi ship had grasped them with another of its hawser arms, and was pulling them away. But where to? One of those mound cities? His brain was a turmoil as he tried to imagine what was before them. But all he could do was lie there and wait.

The American craft was towed for perhaps ten minutes--ten ages to her commander--then coasted slowly to a pause, and with a sharp jar settled into rest. As she did so, every light in her hull went suddenly out.

It had been bad enough with the lights on, but the darkness was far worse. The submarine was a tomb--as silent as one, and full of men who lived and yet were dead. Hemmy Bowman's voice came no more to Wells.

He was alone with his moiling doubts and fears and unanswerable questions, and he knew that every other man there was alone with them, too....

As his eyes became partially accustomed to the darkness, he could distinguish vaguely the forms of the familiar mechanisms above him. A slight noise grew suddenly and resolved itself into a prolonged sc.r.a.ping along the outer hull of the submarine. At intervals it paused and gave way to a series of sharp, definite taps.

Keith realized what those sounds signified: the octopi were striving to find some entrance to the _NX-1_! This, he told himself, was the end. The creatures would break through; water would rush in, and every man would drown. For the face-shields of their sea-suits were open!

The dull sc.r.a.pings ran completely around the motionless submarine, punctuated with the same staccato tappings. By the movement of the sound, Wells realized the octopi were approaching the lower starboard exit port. And as they neared that port, the noise abruptly stopped.

Then for some minutes silence fell. Next, the commander heard what was unmistakably the exit port's water chamber being filled--and a moment later emptied again. The devilish creatures had solved the puzzle of the means of entrance!

In the awful darkness the inner door of the port swung open. A slow, slithering sound came to Wells' ears. He sensed, though he could not see, the presence of alien creature. An odor struck his nostrils--that of fish....

A deliberate something crawled directly across one outstretched arm, and another across his legs. And above him loomed a monstrous, complicated shadow, which, after a moment, slowly melted from his line of vision. Panicky, he strove again to bring his limbs back to life, but still could not....

Keith knew that in the darkness which their huge unblinking eyes could penetrate they were inspecting the _NX-1's_ interior, examining the men stretched on its deck, feeling them with their cold metal-scaled tentacles. Another complicated shadow crept back over the commander's line of sight, and from all around rose the slithering, shuffling tread of the octopi's many tentacles, rasping on the steel flooring.

Sweat from Wells' forehead trickled down and stung his eyes as he lay in that dark agony. There seemed to be countless investigating tentacles feeling through the entire submarine. One of them, iron-hard, suddenly coiled under his armpit and lifted him lightly as a feather from the deck. Another snaked up and clicked his face-shield securely shut. Keith heard other clicks, and knew that the shields of his men were likewise being closed.

The commander was held straight out from the octopus' revolting body, and as he swung, helpless, he could see that more men were grasped similarly in other mighty arms. Dangling in the shadow-filled darkness he was carried slowly to the exit port, and he heard the inner door swing open, then close again. Water streamed through the valves; it encompa.s.sed him with a feeling of lightness, a feeling of floating, as he swung at the end of the long metal-sheathed tentacles. A moment later a soft bluish glow burst on his vision, and he saw that he was outside. There was a long wait, and when the current next swung him around he was dismayed to see that every one of the monstrous creatures near him was dangling on high two or three men of his helpless crew. The whole outfit was in the power of the devil-fish!

And then their captors moved forward with them on a ghastly march of triumph....

But Keith Wells did not know that, crouched behind the instrument panel in the control room, shivering and sick with fear, was the plump form of Cook Angus McKegnie, who had just gained it just before the paralyzing ray had struck.