February 1931 Read online

"Wells? Knapp speaking. Something damned funny's just happened near here. You know the fishing fleet that was near us yesterday morning?"

  "Yes?"

  "Well, the whole thing's gone down! Destroyed, absolutely! The sea's been like glass, the weather perfect--yet from the wreckage, what there is of it, you'd think a typhoon had struck! I can't begin to explain it. No survivors, either, so far, though we're hunting for them."

  "You say the boats are completely destroyed?"

  "Smashed like driftwood. I tell you it's preposterous--and yet it's the fact. I think you'd better return at once, old man; you're only half an hour off. And come on the surface; it's getting light now, and you might pick up something. God knows what this means, Keith, but it's up to us to find out. It's--it's got me...."

  His tones were oddly disturbed--almost scared--and this from a man who didn't know what fear was.

  "But Bob," Keith asked, "how did you--"

  "Stand by a minute! The lookout reports survivors!"

  * * * * *

  Wells turned to meet Bowman's inquisitive face. He quickly repeated the gist of Knapp's weird story. "We saw them at dusk, last evening--remember? And now they're gone, destroyed. What can have done it?"

  For some minutes the two surprised men speculated on the strange occurrence. Then Knapp's voice again rang in the headphones.

  "Wells? My God, man, this is getting downright fantastic! We've just taken two survivors on board; one's barely alive and the other crazy. I can't get an intelligible thing from him; he keeps shrieking about writhing arms and awful eyes--and monsters he calls 'machine-fish'!"

  "You're sure he's insane?"

  Robert Knapp's voice hesitated queerly.

  "Well, he's shrieking about 'machine-fish'--fish with machines over them!... I--I'm going to broadcast the whole story to the land stations. 'Machine-fish'! I don't know.... I don't know.... You'd better hurry back, Wells!"

  He rang off.

  * * * * *

  Keith slipped off the headphones and told Bowman what he had learned. Hardy, staunchly built craft, those fishing boats were; born in the teeth of gales. What horror could have ripped them--all of them--to driftwood, with the weather perfect? And a half-mad survivor, raving about "machine-fish"!

  "Such things are preposterous," Bowman commented scornfully.

  "But--the fleet's gone, Hemmy," Keith replied. "Anyway, we'll speed back, and see what it's all about."

  He punched swift commands on the control studs. "Empty Tanks, Zoom to Surface, Full Speed," the crimson words glared down below, and the NX-1 at once shoved her snout up, trembling as her great electric motors began their pulsing whine. The delicate fingers of the massed dials before Keith danced exultantly. The depth-levels tolled out:

  "Seven thousand ... six thousand ... five thousand--"

  "Keith! Look there!"

  Hemmy Bowman was pointing with amazement at the location chart, a black mesh screen that showed the position of other submarines within a radius of two miles. In one corner, a spot of vivid red was shining.

  "But it can't be a submarine!" Wells objected. "Our reports would have mentioned it!"

  The two officers stared at each other.

  "'Machine-fish!'" Bowman whispered softly. "If there were machines, the metal would register on the chart."

  "It must be them!" the commander roared, coming out of his daze. "And, by God, we're going after them!"

  * * * * *

  Rapidly he brought the NX-1 out of her zoom to the surface, and left her at four thousand feet, in perfect trim, while he read the instruments closely.

  A green spot in the center of the location chart denoted the NX-1's exact position. A distance of perhaps forty inches separated it from the red light on the meshed screen--which represented, roughly, a mile and a half. Below the chart was a thick dial, over which a black hand, indicating the mysterious submersible's approximate depth, was slowly moving.

  "He's sinking--whatever he is," Keith muttered to Hemmy. "Hey, Sparks! Get me Captain Knapp."

  A moment later the connection was put through.

  "Bob? This is Wells again. Bob, our location chart shows the presence of some strange undersea metallic body. It can't be a submarine, for my maritime reports would show its presence. We think it has some connection with the 'machine-fish' that survivor raved about. At any rate, I'm going after it. The world has a right to know what destroyed that fishing fleet, and since the NX-1 is right on the spot it's my duty to track it down. Re-broadcast this news to land stations, will you? I'll keep in touch with you."

  Knapp's voice came soberly back. "I guess you're right, Keith; it's up to you.... So long, old man. Good luck!"

  * * * * *

  In Wells' veins throbbed the lust for action. With control studs at hand, location chart and teleview screen before his eyes and fifteen men waiting below for his commands, he had no fear of any monster the underseas might spew up. He glanced swiftly at the location chart and depth indicator again.

  The mysterious red spot was slowly coming across the NX-1's bows at a distance of about one mile. Keith punched a stud, and, as his craft filled her tank and slipped down further into deep water, he spoke to Hemmy Bowman.

  "Take control for a minute. Keep on all speed, and follow 'em like a bloodhound. I'm going below."

  He strode down the connecting ramp to the lower deck, where he found fifteen men standing vigilantly at posts. At once Keith plunged into a full explanation of what he had learned up in the control room. He concluded:

  "A great moral burden rests on us--every one of us--as we will soon come face to face with a possible world menace. Anything may happen. A state of war exists on this submarine. You will be prepared for any wartime eventuality!"

  Sobered faces greeted this announcement, and perceptibly the men straightened and held themselves more alertly. Wells at once returned to the control room. A glance at the location chart and its two tiny lights told him that the intervening distance had been decreased to about half a mile.

  The depth dial showed them both to be two miles below, and steadily diving lower. Charts showed the sea-floor to be three miles deep in this position, and that meant--

  "Look there!" exclaimed the first officer suddenly. "It's changing course!"

  * * * * *

  The crimson stud had suddenly shifted its course, and now was fleeing directly before them. For a moment the distance between the green and red lights remained constant--and then Keith Wells stared unbelievingly at the chart, wiped a hand across his eyes and stared again.

  "Why--why, the devils are as fast as we!" he exclaimed in amazement. "I think they're even gaining on us!"

  "And there's no other submarine in the world that can do more than thirty under water!" Hemmy Bowman added. "We're hitting a full forty-one!"

  A call came through the communication tube from Sparks. "Report from Consolidated Radio News-Broadcasters, sir, aimed especially at us."

  "Well?" asked Keith, motioning Hemmy to listen in. Sparks read it.

  "'A week ago Atlantic City reported that seven men were snatched off fishing boat by unidentified tentacled monsters. Testimony of witnesses was discredited, but was later corroborated by the almost identical testimony of other witnesses at Brighton Beach, England, who saw man and woman taken by mysterious monsters whilst bathing.' Perhaps these same creatures destroyed the Newfoundland fishing fleet." His level voice ceased.

  "Tentacled monsters ... 'machine-fish,'" Wells murmured slowly. "'Machine-fish.'..."

  Their eyes met, the same wonder in each. "Well," Keith rapped at last, "we're seeing this through!"

  * * * * *

  He turned again to the location chart. The green spot as always was in the center, and at a constant distance was the red, showing that the NX-1 was hot on the other's trail. The depth dials indicated that both were diving deeper every moment.

  "Where in hell's it going?" the commander rasped. "We'll be on the floor in a few minutes!"

  Here
the teleview showed the world to be one of fantasy, one to which the sun did not exist. It was not an utter, pitchy blackness that pervaded the water, but rather a peculiar, dark blueness. No fish schools, Keith noted, scurried from them. They had already left these waters; aware, perhaps, of the passing Terror....

  They plunged lower yet. Wells was conscious of Hemmy Bowman's quick, uneven breathing. Conscious of the tautness of his own nerves, strung like quivering violin strings. Conscious of the terrific walls of water pressing in on them. And conscious of the men below, their lives bound implicitly in his will and brain....

  A thought came to him, and quickly he reached into a rack for the chart of the local sea-floor. His brow creased with puzzlement as he studied it.

  "Here's more mystery, Hemmy," he muttered. "Look--there's an underwater cliff about half a mile dead ahead. It rises to within four thousand feet of the surface. And that thing out there is charging straight into its base!"

  "They must be aware of it," jerked the other. "See?--they've stopped!"

  * * * * *

  It was true. The gulf between the two colored spots was rapidly being swallowed up. At a pulsing forty-one knots the NX-1 was closing in on the motionless mystery craft.

  "They're sinking to the floor itself," observed Wells. "Perhaps waiting to attack."

  The invisible beams from their ultra-violet light-beacons streamed through the silent gloom outside, yet still the teleview screen was empty. Keith punched a stud, and the NX-1's whining motors dulled to a scarcely audible purr.

  "What is the thing?" muttered Hemmy Bowman. "God, Keith, what is it?"

  For answer, the commander dropped them the last five hundred feet. The sea-floor rose like a gray ghost. More control studs were pushed; the order-board below read: "All Power Off, Rest in Trim." The location chart told a tale that wrung a gasp from Bowman's throat. The red and green lights were practically touching....

  The hands of Petty Officer Brown, the helmsman, were quivering on the helm. Wells' fists kept tensing and relaxing as he peered for a sight of the enemy in the teleview. Nothing showed but the moving fingers of spectral kelp. Then both he and Bowman cried out as one:

  "There!"

  CHAPTER II - The Silent Ray

  A strange shape had suddenly materialized on the screen--an immense, oval-shaped thing of dull metal, with great curving cuts of glass-like substance in its blunt bow, like staring eyes; a lifeless, staring thing, stretching far into the curtain of gloom behind. How long it was, Keith could not tell; at first his numb brain refused to grasp it and reduce it to definite, sane standards of size and length. The cold weeds of the sea-floor kelp beds swayed eerily over and around it. From its bow, he saw, peculiar knobs jutted, the function of which he guessed with dread.

  Was it waiting with a purpose? Was it waiting--and inviting attack?

  A frightened whisper from Hemmy Bowman broke the hush:

  "Keith, the thing has ports, but shows no lights! What kind of creatures can they be?"

  As he spoke, the three men in the control room felt the unmistakable, jarring tingle of an electric shock. And while their nerves still jumped, it came again; and again. They were conscious of a slight feeling of drowsiness.

  Keith gaped at Bowman and Brown, and then a flash on the teleview screen drew his eyes. There, against the blackness of its otherwise inanimate hulk, one of the jutting knobs on the bow of the mysterious submarine was glowing and pulsing with orange life! With it came the tingling shock again. It flicked off as they watched, then returned and went once more.

  "They're attacking, but thank God the shock was harmless!" Wells said grimly. "All right; they've asked for it: I'm going to see how they like the taste of a torpedo!"

  * * * * *

  The two submarines were resting on the ocean floor with perhaps two hundred feet between them. The NX-1's bow tubes were not exactly in line to score a direct hit; she would have to be maneuvered slightly to port. The range was short; the explosion from the torpedoes would be titanic.

  Keith punched the control studs, ordering the men below to assume firing stations. Then, while waiting for the NX-1 to shift, he studied the teleview screen to sight the range exactly. The black dot which represented the enemy craft was not directly on the crossed hair-lines of the dial-like range-finder, but shifting the NX-1 a few feet would bring it to the perfect firing point.

  But the NX-1 did not budge.

  Surprised, her commander swung and looked at Bowman. "What the devil?" he cried. "Did that shock--?" He left the dread thought unfinished and leaped to the speaking tubes.

  "Craig! Jones! Wetherby!" he yelled. "Men! Don't you hear me? Aren't you--"

  He broke off, wordless, waiting for an answer that did not come, then sprang to the connecting ramp and ran to the deck below.

  The scene he found halted him abruptly in his tracks. Every member of the crew was sprawled on the deck, in grotesque, limp postures. They had been standing rigidly at posts, he saw, when the thing, whatever it was, had struck. Without a sound, without a single cry of alarm, the NX-1's crew had been laid low!

  * * * * *

  The commander slowly advanced to the deck and stared more closely at the upturned faces around him. He saw that every man's eyes were open.

  Bending over one still form, he pressed his hand on the heart. It was beating! The man was alive! Amazed, he moved to another and another: they were all breathing, slowly and regularly--were all alive! A curious look in their eyes staggered him for a moment. He could swear that they recognized him, knew he was staring at them--for every single pair was alight with intelligence, and Keith fancied he saw gleams of recognition.

  "It must have been a paralyzing ray!" he gasped. "A thing our scientists've been trying to develop for years.... And that monster outside knows the secret...." He lifted an arm of the inert figure at his feet; when he released the grip, it flopped limply back to the deck again.

  "Keith! Come back, quick!"

  Startled, the commander turned to find Hemingway Bowman at the top of the connecting ramp, his face distorted with alarm.

  "For God's sake, come back quick!" he yelled again. "Down there the ray might get you!"

  With the words, Wells leaped to the ramp and raced to the control room. He had no sooner made it than he felt again the queer tingle of the electric charge. He found himself trembling. Bowman's face was white. His words came stuttering.

  "One second later and they'd have got you.... They got Sparks in his cubby.... You see, the ray doesn't affect us in the control room because--"

  "Because the Gibson insulation that protects the instruments keeps it out!" Keith finished grimly. "I see!"

  Just then a slight jar ran through the submarine. Coincident with it came a cry from Brown, the helmsman. His arm was pointed at the teleview.

  There they saw the enemy's mighty dirigible of metal was now within thirty feet of the NX-1. It had crept up silently, without warning. And, spanning the short gulf between them, an arm of webbed metal craned from the other's huge bow, hooking tightly into the American submarine's forward hawser holes!

  As they took this in, the enemy ship moved away and the arm of metal tightened. The NX-1 shuddered. And, at first slowly, but with ever increasing speed, she got under way and slid after her captor. They were being towed away. Kidnaped! Men, submarine and all!

  * * * * *

  Keith Wells mopped sweat from a hot brow and rapidly reviewed his weapons. He was sorely restricted. Through an emergency system the NX-1 could be propelled and maneuvered from her control room; but the torpedo tubes needed local attendance.

  "Hemmy, reverse engines," he jerked, himself spinning over a small wheel. "Let's see if we can out-pull the devil!"

  At once they felt the shock of the paralyzing ray, and then the surging whine of the Edsel electrics pulsed up and in the teleview screen they watched the grim struggle of ship against ship.

  Imperceptibly, almost, as her screws cut in and churned, the forward progr
ess of the NX-1 was slowing, the speed of the other being cut down, until finally they but barely forged ahead. Slowly, ever so slowly they were out-pulled; inch by inch they were dragged ahead. Their motors could not hold even.

  "She's more powerful than we!" Wells' bitter voice spoke. "Damn!" He thought desperately, while Bowman and Brown stared at the fantastic tale the teleview spelled out.

  Again the paralyzing shock tingled, an intangible jailer that bound them, more surely than steel bars, to the control room. To dare that streaming barrage meant instant impotence, and perhaps, later, death....

  "Our two bow torpedoes," Keith mused slowly. "We're a bit close, but it's our only chance. The ray comes at intervals of about a minute; the torps are ready for firing. If one of us could dash forward and discharge 'em.... Brown, that's you!"