Men they were; or, rather, blubber-men!

Previously he had marveled at something suggestively human-like in their appearance; now he recognized human intelligence in his observer's peering brown eyes and questing movements of the flipper over his head casque and suit. Warm red blood flowed in its blubber-sheathed body; an intelligent brain lay in the fat round head. And why not?

Whales, ages ago, were land mammals, animals that walked on the soil of the dim, early world. They had taken to the seas in quest of food, had stayed there and never returned; and Nature had guarded their bodies against the cold and great depths by giving them layer upon layer of oily blubber. The ancestors of these creatures before him might well have lived on the soil, walked and run as he did; then, when the ice came, taken to the sea and made a new home for themselves.

They had enticed the splendent light-fish into their caverns to give illumination. Intelligence almost human. A brain not as highly developed as man's, but a human brain!

Ken Torrance had been almost apathetic toward his eventual fate, but suddenly, now, a great hope came to him--and twin with it, on its heels, came fear. If, or since, this creature inspecting him had an intelligent, human brain, in some way he might be able to correspond with it. He might be able to show that his real body was inside the sea-suit; that he had to have air; that he would die if he were kept underwater, that he could not survive as a prisoner. These creatures appeared to be friendly; seemed to wish him no harm. If he could show them that he was a man of the upper world, they might let him go.

If he could do it! He had to make known to the herd leader that he breathed air, and that he'd die if they didn't release him at once. On that depended life and death.

Ken trembled as he cast about for some way of putting over his idea, and then the plan came. Smiling through his face-shield at the brown eyes so close, he drew back slowly and took out a short steel crowbar from the belt at his waist. He bent over and made a line on the soft floor.

All eyes watched him; every creature held motionless, apparently interested, eager to understand. Under his suit-clad figure the crowbar traced a rude outline of a man in a sea-suit. The torpooner pointed to the drawing and then fingered his suit, repeating the gesture several times. Then he drew another figure in the soil, this one intended to represent him without the sea-suit. It was not as bulky; the features were sharper and thinner. Ken pointed to the twin dots standing for eyes, then tapped his face-shield; he did this again and again.

For a moment the leader did not move; but then he slid forward and stared through the shield. Rapidly Ken opened and closed his eyes, and pointed again to the dots on the drawing's face.

"Eyes! Eyes!" he said excitedly, voicing the thought his brain was making. "Eyes--inside the suit! The suit's not me; I'm inside! Eyes!" He waited for a reaction, tense and strained. The blubber-man reached out one flipper-arm and took the steel bar from his hand.

A thrill ran through him as the creature dipped its body down and began to draw in the soil. Laboriously, crudely, he outlined another sea-suit, and on the circle representing the face-shield marked two dots--eyes.

"He's getting it!" Ken cried.

The blubber-man went on drawing. He sketched a second suit, similar in all respects, and looked up at the torpooner, inquiringly, it seemed.

Ken nodded rapidly. He tapped the drawings, then his suit; nodded again.

"The idea's over!" he told himself. "Now I'll make a move towards that corridor to show them that I want to go, and if--"

But before he could stir, the leader of the blubber-men, with one quick gesture, summoned two creatures from the innermost circle. Swiftly they placed themselves alongside Kenneth Torrance, lifted him and bore him forward, right across the cavern to another of the pa.s.sageway-entrances.

It was so sudden that for a moment Ken could not think clearly. What had happened? Were they releasing him? Or was he still to be kept a prisoner? No doubt the latter. And he had been so sure that he was communicating with the blubber-man's brain!

His lips pressed tight in a hard white line. It was a tough blow to take.

"Well, that's that," he said. "It was all imagination."

He did not know that his drawings _had_ signified something to the leader of the herd--that each had mistaken the meaning of the other. Nor did he have any inkling of the greatest surprise of all that now lay just before him.

The surprise lay in another cavern.

A quick turn through a cleft-like entrance brought them into it. The room was only a fraction of the size of the central meeting place, and its light, from but several of the light-fish, was dim and vague, barely enabling Ken to see what looked like a pile of rocks in the chamber, heaping upwards. The ceiling was flat and strangely blurred, a rippling veil. As he wondered what caused this, his guards lifted him rapidly towards it, up alongside the rocks.

Not only towards it, but through it! His head-casque pierced through; rivulets of water gurgled off it--and he realized that the blurred veil he had seen was the top plane of the water, which only filled three-quarters of the cavern.

Surprise left him breathless. At first he could see nothing, could only feel that his shoulders were above water. Then he was pushed slowly upward until he rested almost completely above the surface. How did the cavern come to be but part-filled with water? he wondered. And was this dim emptiness around him air? Could he breathe it?

Then he was vaguely aware of a presence on the top of the rock heap. He sensed rather than heard a stir of movement. Then suddenly a ray of light stabbed through the darkness and impinged on his head-casque--white, electric, man-made light!

And there came to his ears, m.u.f.fled by the suit and distorted by echoes, a call that sounded like his own name!

"Ken! Is it you, Ken?"

Bewildered, he motioned the blinding light to one side. It turned upward and backward, and in its glare a face suddenly appeared out of the darkness.

"Good G.o.d!" Kenneth Torrance cried.

It was a pale, drawn face, stubbled with beard, and its eyes were wild.

It was the face of Chanley Beddoes, the lost second torpooner of the _Narwhal_.

Ken stared, his body rigid. Chan Beddoes! The dead brought back! So it at first seemed. And here, in a cavern of the blubber-men!

He pulled himself further up on the rock pile, unfastened the clasps on his helmet and took it off--for Beddoes wore none, and that meant the s.p.a.ce was filled with breathable air.

"Chan!" he said. "And we were sure you were dead!"

A high-pitched, hysterical voice cried in answer!

"It's you, Ken! They got you too! Oh, but it's good to see you! It's been so lonely, so dark.... You are there, Ken? I'm not just dreaming again?"

Ken realized that the other's nerves were shot, and he replied gently:

"You're not dreaming, Chan. I'm here with you now. Steady. Take it easy.

Lord, this air--it's pretty foul, but it smells good to me, and it'll save our units. How ever do they get it down here?" He asked the question in hope of steadying Beddoes; giving his mind something definite to occupy it.

A soft ripple sounded just then; looking round, Ken saw that his two guards had slipped back beneath the water, leaving them alone.

Chan Beddoes' helmet was off, but the rest of his body was still clad in a sea-suit. He half squatted on the rocks, his face raised and peering at the first torpooner fearfully, as if afraid he would disappear as suddenly as he had come. The beam of light came from a hand-flash held in his hand. Scattered around were pieces of whitish meat--fish--and the air was sickening with its smell. Ten feet above was the chamber's domed ceiling, from which water kept dripping to the slimy rocks below.

"Air?" repeated Beddoes, stupidly. His mind was obviously affected.

"They fetch it from the surface with seal-hide bags, and release it.

They change it often. All over the caverns. They have to breathe, too. I think they sleep in rooms like this." His voice rose with hysteria.

"Ken, they're seals and yet they're human! Human, down here! They have arms and legs and they breathe air, like whales--and they've kept me here for weeks, years--I don't know! They're devils! It's been so dark and cold and--and--" He began to cough painfully.

"I know," Ken told him sympathetically. "Steady, man. How did you get here? How did they catch you?"

Beddoes' eyes wandered. He sucked his lips.

"I can't remember," he said. "No. Yes! We left the _Narwhal_, both of us, chasing those killers. They broke up and we went after different ones, and I lost sight of you.

"I chased mine for a long time, and when I fired I only wounded him. He went like h.e.l.l, and I after him. After half an hour I was ready to give up; I couldn't get close enough. G.o.d! Ready to return! To the submarine!