Triplanetary
if we stay here? We will certainly strike trouble sooner or later, and
we don't know any too much about these ultra-weapons. We are
land-dwellers, and there is mighty little land on this planet. Then,
too, we don't know where to look for what little land there is, and,
even if we could find it, we know that it is all over-run with
amphibians already. There's a lot of things that might be better, but
they might be a lot worse, too. How about it? Do we try it or do we stay
here?"
"We try it!" exclaimed Clio and Bradley as one.
"All right. I'd better not waste any more time talking--let's go!"
Stepping up to the locked and shielded door, he took out a peculiarly
built torch and pointed it briefly at the Nevian lock. There was no
light, no noise, but the massive portal swung smoothly open. They
stepped out and Costigan relocked and reshielded the entrance.
"How ... what ...?" Clio demanded, almost stuttering in her surprise.
"I've been going to school for the last few weeks," Costigan grinned,
"and I've picked up quite a few things here and there--literally as well
as figuratively speaking. Snap it up, guys! Our armor is stored away
with the pieces of the pirates' lifeboat, and I'll feel a lot better
when we've got it on and have hold of a few fresh Lewistons."
They hurried down corridors, up ramps, and along hallways, with
Costigan's spy-ray investigating the course ahead for chance Nevians.
Bradley and Clio were unarmed, but the secret agent had found a piece of
flat metal and had ground it to a razor edge.
"I think I can throw this thing straight enough and fast enough to chop
off a Nevian's head before he can put a paralyzing ray on us," he
explained grimly, but he was not called upon to show his skill with the
improvised cleaver.
As he had concluded from his careful survey, every Nevian was at some
control or weapon, doing his part in that frightful combat with the
denizens of the greater deeps. Their part was open, they were neither
molested nor detected as they ran toward the compartment within which
was sealed all their Terrestrial belongings. The door of that room
opened, as had the other, to Costigan's knowing beam; and all three set
hastily to work. They made up packs of food, filled their capacious
pockets with emergency rations, recharged and buckled on Lewistons and
automatics, donned their armor, and clamped into their external holsters
a full complement of additional weapons.
"Now comes the ticklish part of the business," Costigan informed them.
His helmet was slowly turning this way and that, and the others knew
that through his spy-ray goggles he was studying their route. "There's
only one boat we stand a chance of reaching, and somebody's mighty apt
to see us. There's a lot of detectors up there, and we'll have to cross
a corridor full of communicator beams. There, that line's off ...
scoot!"
At his word they dashed out into the hall and hurried along for minutes,
dodging to right or left as the leader snapped out orders. Finally he
stopped.
"Here's those beams I told you about. We'll have to roll under 'em.
They're less than waist high--right there's the lowest one. Watch me do
it, and when I give you the word, one at a time, you do the same. _Keep
low_--don't let an arm or a leg get up into the path of a ray or they
may see us."
He threw himself flat, rolled upon the floor a yard or so, and scrambled
to his feet. He gazed intently at the blank wall for a space, then:
"Bradley--now!" he snapped, and the Interplanetary captain duplicated
his performance.
But Clio, unused to the heavy and cumbersome space-armor she was
wearing, could not roll in it with any degree of success. When Costigan
barked his order she tried, but stopped, floundering, almost directly
below the invisible network of communicator beams. As she struggled one
mailed arm went up, and Costigan saw in his ultra-goggles the faint
flash as the beam encountered the interfering field. But already he had
acted. Crouching low, he struck down the arm, seized it, and dragged the
girl out of the zone of visibility. Then in furious haste he opened a
nearby door and all three sprang into a tiny compartment.
"Shut off all the fields of your suits, so that they can't interfere!"
he hissed into the utter darkness. "Not that I'd mind killing a few of
them, but if they start an organized search we're sunk. But even if they
did get a warning by touching your glove, Clio, they probably won't
suspect us. Our rooms are still shielded, and the chances are that
they're too busy to bother much about us, anyway."
He was right. A few beams darted here and there, but the Nevians saw
nothing amiss and ascribed the interference to the falling into the beam
of some chance bit of charged metal. With no further misadventures the
Terrestrials gained entrance to the Nevian lifeboat, where Costigan's
first act was to disconnect one steel boot from his armor of space. With
a sigh of relief he pulled his foot out of it, and from it carefully
poured into the small power-tank of the craft fully thirty pounds of
allotropic iron!
"I pinched it off them," he explained, in answer to amazed and inquiring
looks, "and maybe you don't think it's a relief to get it out of that
boot! I couldn't steal a flask to carry it in, so this was the only
place I could put it in. These lifeboats are equipped with only a couple
of grams of iron apiece, you know, and we couldn't get half-way back to
Tellus on that, even with smooth going; and we may have to fight. With
this much to go on, though, we could go to Andromeda, fighting all the
way. Well, we'd better break away."
Costigan watched his plate closely, and, when the maneuvering of the
great vessel brought his exit port as far away as possible from the
Third City and the warring citadels of the deep, he shot the little
cruiser out and away. Straight out into the ocean it sped, through the
murky red veil, and darted upward toward the surface. The three
wanderers sat tense, hardly daring to breathe, staring into the
plates--Clio and Bradley pushing at metal levers and stepping down hard
upon metal brakes in unconscious efforts to help Costigan dodge the
beams and rods of death flashing so appallingly close upon all sides.
Out of the water and into the air the darting, dodging lifeboat flashed
in safety; but in the air, supposedly free from menace, came disaster.
There was a crunching, grating shock and the vessel was thrown into a
dizzy spiral, from which Costigan finally leveled it into headlong
flight away from the scene of battle. Watching the pyrometers which
recorded the temperature of the outer shell, he drove the lifeboat ahead
at the highest safe atmospheric speed while Bradley went to inspect the
damage.
"Pretty bad, but better than I thought," the captain reported. "Outer
and inner plates broken away on a seam. Inter-wall vacuum all lost, and
we wouldn't hold carpet-rags, let alone air. Any tools aboard?"
"Some--and what we haven't got we'll make," Costigan declared. "We'll
put a lot of distance behind us, then we'll fix her up and get away from
here."
"What are those fish, anyway, Conway?" Clio asked, as the lifeboat tore
along. "The Nevians are bad enough, Heaven knows, but the very idea of
intelligent and _educated_ FISH is enough to drive one mad!"
"You know Nerado mentioned several times the 'semi-civilized fishes of
the greater deeps'?" he reminded her. "I gather that there are at least
three intelligent races here. We know two--the Nevians, who are
amphibians, and the fishes of the greater deeps. The fishes of the
lesser deeps are also intelligent. As I get it, the Nevian cities were
originally built in very shallow water, or perhaps were upon islands.
The development of machinery and tools gave them a big edge on the fish;
and those living in the shallow seas, nearest the islands, gradually
became tributary nations, if not actually slaves. Those fish not only
serve as food, but work in the mines, hatcheries, and plantations, and
do all kinds of work for the Nevians. Those so-called 'lesser deeps'
were conquered first, of course, and all their races of fish are docile
enough now. But the deep-sea breeds, who live in water so deep that the
Nevians can hardly stand the pressure down there, were more intelligent
to start with, and more stubborn besides. But the most valuable metals
here are deep down--this planet is very light for its size, you know--so
the Nevians kept at it until they conquered some of the deep-sea fish,
too, and put 'em to work. But those high-pressure boys were nobody's
fools. They realized that as time went on the amphibians would get
further and further ahead of them in development, so they let themselves
be conquered, learned how to use the Nevians' tools and everything else
they could get hold of, developed a lot of new stuff of their own, and
now they're out to wipe the amphibians off the slate completely, before
they get too far ahead of them to handle."
"And the Nevians are afraid of them, and want to kill them all, as fast
as they possibly can," guessed Clio.
"That would be the logical thing, of course," commented Bradley. "Got
pretty nearly enough distance now, Costigan?"
"There isn't enough distance on the planet to suit me," Costigan
replied. "We'll need all we can get. A full diameter away from that crew
of amphibians is too close for comfort--their detectors are keen."
"Then they can detect us?" Clio asked. "Oh, I wish they hadn't hit
us--we'd have been away from here long ago."
"So do I," Costigan assented, feelingly. "But they did--no use
squawking. We can rivet and weld those seams and pump out the shell, and
we'd have to fill our air-tanks to capacity for the trip, anyway. And
things could be a lot worse--we are still breathing air!"
In silence the lifeboat flashed onward, and half of Nevia's mighty globe
was traversed before it was brought to a halt, in the emptiest reaches
of the planet's desolate and watery waste. Then in furious haste the two
officers set to work, again to make their small craft sound and
spaceworthy.
CHAPTER VI
Worm, Submarine, and Freedom
Since both Costigan and Bradley had often watched their captors at work
during the long voyage from the Solar System to Nevia, they were quite
familiar with the machine tools of the amphibians. Their stolen
lifeboat, being an emergency craft, of course carried full repair
equipment; and to such good purpose did the two officers labor that even
before their air-tanks were fully charged, all the damage had been
repaired.
The lifeboat lay motionless upon the mirror-smooth surface of the ocean.
Captain Bradley had opened the upper port and the three stood in the
opening, gazing in silence toward the incredibly distant horizon, while
powerful pumps were forcing the last possible ounces of air into the
practically unbreakable storage cylinders. Mile upon strangely flat mile
stretched that waveless, unbroken expanse of water, merging finally into
the violent redness of the Nevian sky. The sun was setting; a vast ball
of purple flame dropping rapidly toward the horizon. Darkness came
suddenly as that seething ball disappeared, and the air became bitterly
cold, in sharp contrast to the pleasant warmth of a moment before. And
as suddenly clouds appeared in blackly banked masses and a cold, driving
rain began to beat down in torrents.
"Br-r-r, it's cold! Let's go in--Oh! _Shut the door!_" Clio shrieked,
and leaped wildly down into the compartment below, out of Costigan's
way, for he and Bradley also had seen slithering toward them the
frightful arm of the Thing.
Almost before the girl had spoken Costigan had leaped to the levers, and
not an instant too soon; for the tip of that horrible tentacle flashed