Chapter II: Part 2

"At last the great generators, under the cities of the slug-people in all the deeps of the sea, approached completion. It was necessary to provide a single control for all of them, so that all could be turned on at the same moment, since otherwise the inequality of currents might produce too great disturbances of the sea. This control, therefore, was placed in a small room at the top of a great spire at the center of one of their cities in the deeps of the mid-Atlantic, the city which we had discovered and where we were prisoned. And now, as we learned, the great work was almost finished, and soon the generators which had taken ages to build would be put into action. Around the spire which held the control of all the generators there watched always their giant striding-machines, since this little room at the spire's tip held all the energies of all their generators on earth centered inside it, and should it be damaged or wrecked the generators themselves would run wild, resulting in titanic etheric explosions which would inevitably destroy not only all the generators themselves but also the great cities built upon them, and the numberless slug-people of those cities.

* * * * *

"In sick despair we watched the days passing, cooped in our little prison, while the plans of the slug-people came to their climax. Far above us, we knew, were sunlight, and fresh breezes, and ships going to and fro upon the waters, but around us were only the oppressing waters and the white radiance and the city of globes and its unhuman people. And at last the age-old plans of those people were finished, and the great generators were turned on. We saw them flocking through the streets toward the great spire and the vast pit, saw a gleam of sudden green radiance from the control room at the spire's top, in the distance; and then there was a great quivering of the ground and the waters about us, and up from the pit there shot with immense force and speed a vast current of waters, a tremendous solid stream two miles wide and of terrific speed, formed we knew by the combining elements in the vast generator beneath the city, turning each moment millions of tons of water into the seas above us. And we knew, too, that at that moment in all the other cities of the slug-people across all the deeps of the sea, other and similar currents were being shot forth by the titanic generators, adding each moment incalculable amounts to the bulk of the seas.

"Through all that day we watched the great current shooting ceaselessly up through the calmer waters about it, and through the next, and knew that on earth the waters must already be rising inch by inch, and that they would creep up, inch by inch and foot by foot, until they had covered all earth's fields and forests and cities and highest peaks, until earth itself was covered miles deep with this sea of hell, and at its bottom the slug-people reigned triumphant. Then, at last, the agony of our despair broke forth, and we seized at once upon a chance for escape which presented itself.

"It was in a suggestion made by Evans, the submarine's commander, that we saw our chance. His plan seemed suicidal, almost, but it was still a chance, so we ignored the risks. Waiting for some hours until the street outside our prison had emptied somewhat of the passing slug-people, we took from the submarine's equipment a long, slender drill of steel, and with this, held and guided by two seamen, set to work on the metal wall of our prison. At first the metal seemed too hard for the drill to affect, but gradually it bit into it, deeper and deeper. Inch by inch it crept on into the thick metal wall, while we watched anxiously. The hours were passing swiftly, and in the distance we could see the mighty current from the pit still roaring upward, but at last, when it seemed that the wall was too thick for us, the drill broke through.

"Before we could withdraw it, it had been knocked inward toward us with terrific force by the pressure of the waters outside, and through the two-inch hole it left came shooting inward a solid stream of water of terrific force. In a moment that jet had filled the great room to a depth of a foot, and hastily we splashed toward our submarine, clambering up and inside it and shutting tightly the heavy doors. From the port-holes we could see the waters in the room swiftly rising, until within a few more minutes they had risen sufficiently to float the submarine, which had been lying on the bare metal floor of the great room.

"Instantly Evans gave an order, and at once the craft's motors began to hum and its reversed propellers to thrash the waters, backing us against the wall opposite the great doors. There we paused a moment, and then another order sent the boat leaping across the great room through the waters like a living thing, toward the inner of the two great doors, which could be opened only from the outside. With a great ramming shock the craft's prow struck the door; for this was our plan, to batter down the two doors if possible and make our escape. The door, we saw, had been shaken by the blow, its thick, transparent metal deeply dented, but it still hung fast; so again the submarine retreated to the opposite wall and again leapt forward to crash against the barrier.

"At the second blow there was a clash of metal against the sides of our craft and we saw that the great door had crumpled beneath the two blows. Only the outer door barred our escape, now, and excitedly we watched as the submarine reversed once more and leapt forward against that last barrier. We struck it with a great jar that again knocked us all from our feet but did not dislodge the door, and now there came a sudden exclamation from Evans as he saw, through the port-hole, a group of the slug-creatures who had stopped outside and were peering in toward us. As our craft leaped forward in another dash against the thick metal we saw them hastening down the street, and a moment later saw striding over the city from the distant spire three of the great machines that guarded that spire, hastening across the city in gigantic strides toward us!

"In spite of our second blow the outer door still hung fast, and swiftly the hastening machines were nearing us. By now the submarine's motors were humming at their highest power, and as Evans hoarsely shouted the order, the craft backed against the wall, hesitated for a moment, and then leapt forward through the waters toward the outer door for a third time, with all the force of its whirling propellers. As we shot forward I saw, not a thousand feet away, the great machines that were bending down toward our prison, and then there came a great crash and jar, the great metal door was crumpled aside like one of cardboard, and our submarine shot out into the open waters. Swiftly toward us reached the great arm of the foremost giant machine, and for a moment, as we slanted sharply upward, we felt the end of that arm graze against the side of our craft. Then we had torn past it and were shooting up through the waters toward the surface at a steep angle, up until the city of globes and the white radiance that bathed it were lost from view beneath us.

"Up, up, up--until at last our craft shot bodily out of the waters into the sunlight and clean air. Panting and half senseless we ripped the doors open, breathed deep of the salt breezes. The waters on which the submarine floated were running in great seas, and from a hasty consultation of our instruments we saw that already the sea's level had risen several feet, and knew, too, as no others did, what was causing that rise and bringing doom upon the earth. So we set our course back toward England and raced homeward through the rising waters to bring our warning to the world, for in the general panic our radio calls received no answer. East and southeast we held, and at last were sweeping into the harbor of London, where, after a frantic hour, Evans, Lewis and I were able to convince the naval authorities of the truth of our story, were able to convince them that the only remaining chance to prevent the destruction of all our world is to descend into the depths in force and destroy or attempt to destroy the great generator which we saw in action there in the deeps of the Atlantic, and after it the others.

"This was but a few hours ago, Stevens, and in those hours and while I have talked here with you the submarines of all the British fleet, the new-type submersibles which alone can descend into those terrific depths, have been gathered in the flooded Thames and soon will sail, with the submarines of all other countries that can be gathered, to make one last attempt to save our world. I had an hour or more, I knew, so while Lewis hastened away in search of his family. I, who have none, came here in the hope of finding you, Stevens, knowing that you would be with us if you could. And so now you know what terror it is that is flooding our world, that is rising toward the death of all humanity, and toward which, at the bottom of the Atlantic, we sail within the hour, for one final desperate attempt to halt this rising doom."

Clinton rose to his feet with these words, gazed silently out over the red-lit city, over the rising floods that rushed through its streets and sent the fear-crazed fugitives outside shouting down those streets in blind horror. Stevens, too, arose, gazed with him, and then with a common impulse and with no spoken word they had turned toward the door, toward the street. Half an hour later they had won their way across the dark, flooded wilderness that was London toward the rank on rank of long, grim steel hulls that swung by the shores of the swollen Thames, and a few minutes later they stood in the narrow control room of one of those hulls as they swung in formation out to the open sea, more than a hundred strong.

Out, out, they moved, into the darkness of the surging channel, and then southward around the foreland, where there fell in at the side of their formation a similar formation of an equal number of craft, the combined Atlantic and Mediterranean submarine fleets of France, Germany and Italy. Still the combined fleets moved on, toward the west, through the surging, tremendous waves, in steady, unchanging formation. Onward through the hours of the night they moved, and on into the day, still westward, and through the night again until at last, at dawn, there could be seen on the waters far ahead a multitude of long black spots, long steel hulls like their own, the great American submarine fleet racing eastward in answer to the call for help. The two fleets met, coalesced, and then, in one great triangular formation, more than three hundred strong, turned and headed north. The morning waned, and the afternoon, and sunset came, but still those gathered scores of long grim craft forged north and north, toward the Nelsen Deeps and what lay at their bottom, toward the last great battle of humanity to save its drowning world.

5

Standing in the submarine's narrow control room, Clinton gazed intently at the dials before him, then out of the port-holes in the wall. "We're there, Stevens," he said, quietly, gesturing toward the little windows through which the great fleet behind could be seen, each of its scores of craft resting motionless on the surface. And now the submarine's commander, Evans, who had been lost and prisoned with Clinton, came toward them.

"Our craft will descend first," he told them, "the others following in close formation. Our plan is to descend to an elevation of a few thousand feet above the city and attempt to cripple or destroy the generator beneath it with our torpedoes and bomb-charges."

While he spoke he had twisted around the signal-lever on the dial before him, and a moment later, in answer to his signal, the boat's electric motors again took up their powerful hum. At the same time it began to move forward through the waters, slanting downward. Stevens had a last glimpse through the port-holes of the sea and sky outside, warmly lit by the sun that blazed above, and then the long green waves were washing up over the glass and over the submarine's conning-tower as it slanted downward, in a great spiral. And soon the green waters outside, alive with shoals of silvery fish, were darkening, changing, as the needle on the bathometer dial crept slowly around.

He looked up suddenly as he glimpsed through the port-holes a dark shape passing above, and then saw that it was but one of the submarines of the fleet above, descending after them and following them, score upon score of long, dark, fishlike hulls, that circled and dipped and sank after them, down toward the fate of a world. Surely in all the record of battles had men never gone toward battle like this, with no shouts or cheers or flying flags or defiant shots, but only the dark, grim shapes that sank gently down and down into the peaceful, darkening depths of the sea.

Down, down, down--a thousand feet the dial registered, and the waters about the submarine had become dark blue, all but lightless, and darkening still more as they steadily dropped lower. There were no lights turned on, nothing to betray their presence, and into a still deeper darkness the great fleet sank, while Clinton and Evans and the seamen in the little room stared from the dials to the dark port-holes with strange, set faces. Great currents had begin to rock and sway the submarine as it dropped on, currents from the mighty generator below, Stevens knew, but still they held to their downward progress until the bathometric dial showed a depth of a mile--a mile and a half--two miles----

Abruptly Clinton, at the port-holes, made a sudden gesture, and pointed downward. Stevens gazed intently down into the blackness that seemed to press against the glass, and then he uttered a low exclamation. For he could make out, far below, a ghostly white radiance that filtered faintly up toward them through the filmy depths. Stronger and stronger it was growing as they sank down toward it, and he saw Evans turn, give swift orders through the speaking-tube by his side, and heard the clang and clash of metal somewhere in the submarine as its great torpedo and bomb tubes were made ready. In an instant, it seemed, while they dropped downward still, the stillness of the submarine had been replaced by swift activity. And then, cutting abruptly across the sounds of that activity, came a sharp cry from Clinton.

"Those globes!" he cried. "They are coming up! Look!"

But Stevens, too, had seen. Outlined dark against the growing white light beneath them he had glimpsed a dark, round object that was moving steadily and swiftly up toward them from beneath, that moved up with ever-increasing speed like the reversal of some object falling downward. Swiftly it came, and now he could see that it was a black metal globe perhaps a yard in diameter. He felt the submarine swerve sharply as Evans abruptly spun its wheel, glimpsed the uprushing globe grazing past its side, and then the thing had passed above them, and had struck full on the bottom of a submarine just above. There was a flash of intense purple light, flaring out through the waters in blinding intensity, and then the submarine rocked and spun like a leaf in a gale, while the great flash and the craft above which it had enveloped vanished together.

"Bombs!" shouted Clinton. "Bombs of some kind that they release from beneath, to rise and strike us--and look, more----"

Even as he spoke there was rushing up toward them from beneath an immense mass of the round black globes, seeming in that moment to fill the waters about them.

Stevens remembered the next few moments only as a timeless period of flashing action. He felt the submarine dive steeply downward under the hand of its commander, saw through the glass scores of the deadly globes flashing up past them, and then the submarine again was rocked by titanic convulsions of the waters about it as craft after craft of the fleet above them vanished in blinding flashes of the purple light. In those few minutes, he knew, scores of the submarines that followed them had fallen victim to the deadly spheres.

But now the great fleet, diving sharply amid that deadly uprush of globes, was within a few thousand feet of the sea's floor, was slanting down through the white radiance toward the city below, which Stevens saw for the first time. A moment, as the fleet seemed to pause above the city, he saw it all plain--the multitudes of ranked great globular structures, stretching away as far as the eye could see, the dark, slug-like beings that hastened through their streets and squares, the vast pit at the city's center from which arose the mighty, half-glimpsed current of waters, and the towering spire near that pit's edge, the tiny bulbular room at its top a point of green radiance, around which were grouped scores of the vast, thousand-foot striding-machines. Then that one moment of pause was over and the whole great fleet was swooping down upon the city below, releasing a shower of great torpedoes and bombs as it did so.

The next moment there came a hundred flashes of fire beneath them as the torpedoes and depth-charges struck, and then it seemed as though in a score of places beneath them the city was crumbling, disintegrating, beneath the force of the great explosions. The submarine was rocking and swaying perilously from the effect of those explosions, only the super-resistant hulls of the new-type craft enabling them to endure the shock, but even while Stevens heard the men near him shouting hoarsely he was aware that the massed boats were diving again, and again the thunderous detonations below came dully to their ears through the waters about them.

But now he heard a sudden cry of alarm, taken up and repeated by all in the control room. From far away, all around the great city, there were hastening toward the attacking submarines scores of the giant striding-machines, their vast steps whirling them across the city with inconceivable swiftness, the great arm of each outstretched toward the submarines. An order was barked, and the craft's propellers spun swiftly as it headed upward to avoid those reaching, menacing arms, while the whole great fleet headed up also with the same purpose. The next moment, however, a spark of more brilliant white light broke into being in the city below them--a great, erect cylinder, they saw, that was suddenly shining with a dazzling radiance that darkened the white luminosity of the waters about it. And as it broke into being the submarine below seemed suddenly to waver, to halt, and then to be pulled slowly, steadily downward by great unseen hands, toward that shining cylinder.

Stevens heard the motors throbbing in his own craft, its spinning propellers only serving to hold it in the same position, and heard a shout from Evans.

"That cylinder!" he cried. "It's a great magnet of some kind--it's pulling our ships downward!"

For now by dozens, by scores, by hundreds, the fleet's massed ships were being pulled downward, their screws thrashing the waters in vain, pulled down toward that mighty, dazzling beacon of light. The next moment the great striding-machines had reached them, were grasping them, crushing them, whirling them about like toys and hurling them far away to break and smash upon the globes below, spilling forth men and air-bubbles and great clouds of oil. Ever downward, downward, the mighty magnet of light pulled the helpless craft, while Stevens' own craft, highest of them all, could only resist that terrific pull by all the power of its humming motors. And among the helpless craft below he could see the great machines of the slug-people stalking about in terrific destruction, crushing and smashing the defenseless boats as they sought vainly to escape while Stevens' own craft sought frenziedly to win out of the remorseless grip that held it.

But now, below, the doomed submarines seemed suddenly to cease their efforts to escape from the great magnet's grip, and abruptly turned, paused, and then hurtled down with all their own force and that of the attracting magnet toward the giant machines below them whose great arms were destroying them. Stevens cried out hoarsely as he saw torpedo and bomb flash down and send a half-dozen of the great machines reeling and crashing down upon the city in flashes of bursting fire. At the same moment he was aware that their own craft was winning slowly out of the giant grip of the magnet, inch by inch, foot by foot, creeping upward and outward from that grip, while below the last scores of the attacking submarines were meeting their doom, crushed by the arms of the giant machines and annihilated by the purple-flaring bombs that rushed up toward them from the city below.

And now the great machines were striding toward his own craft, the last remaining one except for a few far across the city that were battling their way upward against others of the machines. Slowly, slowly, the submarine crept upward, while the mighty shapes whirled across the streets and globes of the city toward it. They were below it, now, were reaching up with gigantic arms, and Stevens stared down upon those upward-reaching arms in a strange apathy of despair. The battle was over, he knew, humanity's battle, lost now forever, its last chance flickered out. Up came the whirling arms, up, while still the submarine crept higher, and then one of them had struck it a great, glancing blow, in reaching for it, had knocked all in it to the floor, stunning Evans and his seaman and Stevens himself against the metal walls, and knocking, too, the submarine out of the last limits of the magnet's giant grip.

Its propellers whirling with sudden power, it shot out of that unseen hold, over the city, and Stevens raised his head, stunned and bleeding, to see Clinton standing at the wheel, to hear his wild shout as he sent the submarine racing above the city toward the great pit and the uprushing current at its center, toward the towering spire at that pit's rim, and the round, green-lit little control room at its top. Straight toward that ball-like room at the great spire's tip flashed the racing submarine, and Stevens glimpsed the mighty striding-machines, far across the city, abandoning the battle with the remaining few submarines, which shot sharply upward, to whirl after their own; saw rushing toward them from around the spire others of the giant machines, their vast arms upraised to grasp and crush the hurtling craft. But before they could grasp it, before their great arms could do ought more than graze along its sides, Clinton had sent the submarine flashing past them with a hoarse cry and had crashed it straight into the little room at the mighty tower's tip.

Through the metal walls of that room the hurtling submarine crashed as though through walls of paper, speeding still straight up and outward with the force of its tremendous impetus. To the half-conscious Stevens, crouched there. It seemed that for a single moment the whole world held its breath, and then he saw a fountain of brilliant green fire burst out and upward from the little control room at the great spire's top, felt a mighty, thundering detonation shake the waters about him, and then half glimpsed below him the sea's bottom and the great city upon it heaving, rumpling, breaking and crashing, as that city broke up and was annihilated by a tremendous uprush of dazzling fires from beneath it--broke up and was annihilated, as he knew, by the explosion of the mighty generator beneath it, whose titanic, pent-up energies the wrecking of the little control room had released--broke up and was annihilated, Stevens knew, as _all_ the cities of the slug-people had been in that moment, when the mighty generators beneath each of those cities exploded likewise, the prisoned energies of all of them released by the wrecking of the little room from which all had been controlled. In all the far-flung deeps of earth's seas the cities of the slug-people and all their hideous hordes had met annihilation in that tremendous moment, he knew. The earth shuddered and swayed beneath those simultaneous, titanic cataclysms; the sea's whole floor rolled and shook; and then, as the submarine was flung wildly upward by the terrific convulsions of the waters, the vast fiery uprush of destruction beneath faded from his eyes.

Then Stevens felt his senses failing him, sank backward and was but dimly conscious of the waters outside the submarine roaring wildly as it shot upward with terrific speed. For a time that seemed endless to his darkened mind that roaring continued, and then abruptly came silence, and a great shock and splash. Then he felt hands upon him, and hoarse voices shouting in his ears, heard the doors above clanging open, admitting a flood of sunlight and clean fresh air upon him, and then he knew no more.

6

Sunset was flaming red in the west once more when Clinton and Stevens stood together again on the submarine's narrow deck, watching the preparations for its homeward voyage. Behind it floated a bare dozen of other long steel craft, as scarred and battered as itself, flung up and saved like itself by that last great convulsion of the waters--a dozen only, the last remnant of the mighty fleet of hundreds that had dived to the attack a scant few hours before. Even as they watched, three of those craft were moving away on their own homeward journey, toward the west, toward the sunset, over the waters that were now miraculously calmed and smoothened. Their last rejoicing farewells came faintly over those waters as they went, and then they were passing from sight, dark blots against the brilliance of the western sky, dwindling and vanishing.

There came into the minds of both men, as they gazed across the peaceful waters, a wonder as to what frantic outbursts of joy were shaking the peoples of earth to see those waters calmed thus, to see their terrible rise thus halted. There came into their minds a vision of what might have been, of the seas that might have whelmed a planet, with a strange and terrible race triumphant and supreme upon it, and then one of what would be, when the hordes of fugitives, half hoping, half doubting, would creep back from their hills and mountains of refuge toward their deserted lands and cities, when the places that were silent now and dead would be ringing again with life, when all the terror that had riven earth would be but a thing of the remembered past.

Then these things slipped from the minds of both and they turned toward the east as their craft, and those behind it, moved away in that direction. Onward through the waters they moved, their propellers turning faster and faster, little waves breaking from either side of their prows as they clove the sea. The brilliance faded from the sky behind the two men, as the little fleet moved on, and the gathering night closed down upon the world, star-embroidered. But the two standing there alone on the little vessel's deck were silent still, and unmoving, gazing out into the darkness across the calm waters with the silence of men whose minds held things too great for speech.