The Project Gutenberg EBook of Spawn of the Venus Sea, by Harry Walton
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Title: Spawn of the Venus Sea
Author: Harry Walton
Release Date: April 27, 2020 [EBook #61952]
Language: English
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SPAWN OF THE VENUS SEA
By HARRY WALTON
What was this ghastly inhabitant of Venus'
Dead Sea--this multiple-life monstrosity.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Fall 1941.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
With a tremendous snap, the taut steel cable humming in over the stern
sheaves suddenly leaped high. The winch screamed briefly as the cable
skipped its guides. Before power could be shut off it had snarled
badly, and the frayed end of it had thrashed a splintery dent into the
_Mermaid's_ deck.
By this time, Second Mate Stanley Kort reflected grimly, the net itself
had probably bottomed on the floor of Venus's largest ocean--the _Molo
Ivrum_, or Deadly Sea, thus named for the paradoxical reason that it
teemed with life, most of it decidedly unpleasant.
Hands clenched, Kort stared from the plaskon windows of the wheelhouse.
Through the thin haze blanketing the deck he could see net tenders and
seamen stolidly staring forward. The cable lay in a vicious tangle
between winch house and stern. Nobody looked at it.
They were waiting for orders, as they always waited when Kort held deck
command. Were Hodge up here, or even Pratt, the third mate, the net
tenders would have laid hold of the snarled steel by now. With Kort it
was different.
Or was it he who was different, he who hadn't been trained in the
hard school of this sort of seamanship? A man who'd won his papers in
passenger service wasn't wanted aboard a floating cannery. Kort wished
he had known a month ago how it would be. He should have left Venus
after being discharged from the _Corinthia_, instead of trying to start
anew in the cannery service.
His clenched fist opened.
"Break out a magnetic!" The deck speakers amplified his voice to
stentorian volume, galvanized the crew into sullen action. Men
untangled the steel, spliced a new length to it, and swung the magnetic
grapple over the side.
With the grapple magnets drawing two hundred amps, the ship swung in
a clumsy circle. Half an hour passed, marked only by the screech of
cannery boilers popping off every five minutes. From forward came the
stench of cleaning platforms, the "clop-plop" of trimming machinery.
Then the rain, pelting down in drops big as grapes. They splashed
roaringly upon the deck, drummed upon the wheelhouse windows like
furious fingers. The _Mermaid_ seemed to squat lower in the water under
the weight of the storm.
Abruptly a red lamp flashed. Kort was out of the pilot house almost
before the engine room, answering his signal, had reversed the
turbines. In helmet and plaskon overalls he fought his way aft.
At the stern rail Kort watched the cable come in, dripping steel curl
itself over the drums. Finally the grapple broke the frothy surface of
the sea. To it clung the lost net, and Kort felt a moment of amazed
gratitude for that bit of luck. For once the _Mermaid_ had been
fortunate. Ships sometimes spent hours in futile grappling.
Tenders seized the net, spread it as the winch hauled in. It was nine
tenths up when Kort, watching for anything that might jam the rollers,
signaled the winch-man to stop.
* * * * *
The thing might have been a giant slug. Thick as a man's arm, it was
so entangled in the net that any estimate of its length was sheer
guesswork. One end tapered to a featureless snout, the other flattened
to a broad, finned tail. Its color was a dingy, bloodless white. Kort
had never seen anything like it before.
"Get a trident, Simms!" he bawled over the fury of the storm, and
the man obediently lifted one of the implements from its rack.
Simultaneously a net tender climbed over the rail and, clinging to
the mesh, lowered himself hand over hand. The man with the trident
looked gravely on. Kort felt himself flush, yet hesitated to order
the other man back. Possibly the thing in the net was familiar to the
others, its disposal a simple matter which his interference might make
difficult.
The tender leaned down, chopped at the white monstrosity with a heavy
knife. There was a solid _thunk_ of metal as the edge bit chain mesh.
Kort would almost have sworn that the thing moved. It was incredible
that the man could have missed it otherwise.
Suddenly uneasy, Kort drew his electro-gun. With a grimace the tender
leaned farther over, raised his knife again.
Before it fell, before anyone could move or shout warning, the white
trunk flashed out, magically freed itself from the net, coiled about
the man, and in one convulsive movement vanished with him beneath the
sea. There was a single sharp splash, muted by the drumming rain.
Kort had not dared to fire. Incredulously he stared at the spot where
the thing had been enmeshed an instant before. The undamaged net, slimy
with the detritus of the sea, hung empty under the ship's stern.
* * * * *
It was still raining, but, as though some oceanic deity had accepted
a living sacrifice, the _Mermaid's_ luck had changed. Nets came up
laden with the _Molo Ivrum's_ rampant life. Sorters tossed the edible,
bulbous _gwai_ upon conveyor belts for the cannery machines to clean
and pack. The remainder of the catch was thrown back into the sea.
The finless, two-mouthed _gwai_ alone was wanted for its incredible
nutritive value, twice that of the finest synthetic foodstuffs, which
had made this tiny denizen of Venusian seas a staple article of diet
wherever supplies had to be taken in concentrated form.
Kort watched the work somberly, feeling himself responsible for the
tender's death. Even Pratt would have ordered the man back. The
men were right; he was a gold brick, not worth his salt aboard the
_Mermaid_. He'd have to get off. Not that there could be any going back
to the passenger runs for him, after the tragedy of the _Corinthia_.
They allowed a man only one mistake there. He had made his by failing
to report a brother officer unfit for duty.
A steward brought his lunch--fried _gwai_, native tapioca, and strong
synthetic coffee. While he was eating Hodge entered. The first mate
poured himself a cup of the brew and dismissed the idle helmsman with a
nod. The _Mermaid_ lay becalmed in the downpour.
Kort felt the mate's eyes upon him. Hodge was a grizzled giant of a
man, at least thirty years older than he.
"Taking it a bit hard, aren't you, son?"
"I should have ordered him back," said Kort tightly.
"Maybe," retorted Hodge, stuffing a biscuit between his teeth. "And
maybe he shouldn't have played the fool. Never give the sea bigger odds
than you can help. They do say the critter was all tangled up with the
net to the last second--and then it wasn't."
"That's true."
"Reminds me of them native magicians you can see in Dana T'resa. But
the sea's full of surprises. We'll never outguess her--well, D'loo?"
The pilot house door had been flung open as by a tempest. One of the
stokers, a squat green-skinned Venusian, stood breathless and wild eyed
before the two officers.
"Steady, boy," rumbled Hodge. "What's up?"
The native's broad ears twitched. "_Twahna ekeh-il!_ Twahna is dead!"
He lapsed into chattering dialect, his eyes almost idiotic with fright.
"He says Twahna was killed by the ghost-snake," muttered Hodge. "Sounds
like a lie to cover up some liquor stealing, but we'd better go see.
Have Pratt take over; it's almost his watch anyway."
The third officer, flushed of face and glaring resentfully, answered
Kort's telephoned summons by appearing on the bridge. He slouched on
the leather bench behind the wheel, pulled a bottle from his hip even
before the others left.
The chattering Venusian led them to the second forecastle reserved
for native seamen. Half a dozen other natives, all off duty for the
present, were huddled in the passageway outside. The low room was
deserted. A single fluorescent bulb glowed bluishly between the tiers
of bunks. Almost directly beneath sprawled Twahna.
His face was cupped in both hands as though to shut out the sight of
death. Kort rolled him over and got the shock of his life. The Venusian
was dead white, his flesh drained of color. His hands stayed up before
his face and Kort tried to put them down.
"He's frozen!" Kort marveled. "Frozen stiff. Feel him."
Hodge touched the man. "It wasn't liquor," he rumbled. "Alcohol will
kill a native quick enough, but it won't do that. D'loo says a snake
came through the bulkhead while they were getting dressed for their
watch, and wrapped itself around Twahna. It was between D'loo and the
door, so he had to stay until the thing went back through the bulkhead.
And he's too scared to be lying."
There was a clatter of footsteps on the ladder. Kort looked up into the
flushed face of Pratt, and knew there was more trouble. Nothing less
could have induced him to leave the comfort of the wheelhouse.
"Well, mister?" asked Hodge.
"A--a net tender's been killed," the third mate stuttered. "They
say--they say he's the second."
"The third, mister," said Hodge harshly. "Anything queer about the net
tender?"
"Yes--yes, he was frozen. Frozen blue. I thought I'd better call you."
* * * * *
They went up together, leaving behind them a sorely frightened group of
Venusians. The moment they reached the deck Kort knew that something
else had happened since Pratt had left. It had stopped raining,
although the last of the water was still sluicing from the scuppers.
But not a man was in sight. Winch house, stern deck, and sorting
platforms were deserted.
Yet not utterly, for just forward of the main net locker swayed the
creature from the depths, a sinuous tapering trunk, its snout uplifted
like a hound's nose scenting game.
"Two of them!" gasped Pratt, pointing to a second one atop the pilot
house.
"And one makes three!" muttered Hodge, for still another had appeared
magically beside the first. Pratt pulled his electro-gun from its
holster. Its heavy bullet splintered a hatch cover just behind the
thing, but the creature showed no harm. Kort drew his own weapon and
joined Pratt in pumping bullets. Wood splintered and metal clanged
where the projectiles struck, but the sea slugs remained unharmed.
It seemed to Kort that the things flickered, faded from view, at the
very instant he fired, only to reappear so quickly as to make him
doubt his senses. Pratt was reloading furiously. He went down on all
fours, crawled along one of the conveyor belts until he was no more
than twelve feet from one of the things. Prone on the deck, he fired at
point blank range. The soft nosed bullet smashed into planking directly
behind the swaying trunk. Kort saw splinters fly at the impact, but
again the sea slug had seemed to vanish for an instant, like a candle
flame almost blown out by a sudden draft.
In drunken anger, Pratt seized a trident from the rail, sprang to his
feet, leaped at the thing. Kort shouted a warning to which the man paid
no heed. Spear-like he hurled the trident; the prongs sank a full inch
into the wooden deck. The swaying trunk reared, became ominously still.
Kort cried out again as Pratt, howling drunken defiance, emptied his
gun at it.
Like the pounce of lightning the creature struck. One instant it was
upreared before Pratt, the next its fatal helix enclosed the man. He
staggered, screamed once, a howl of sheer animal pain that struck Kort
like a whip across the face. It was Hodge who restrained him from
tackling the thing with fists and knife.
"Too late!" the older man said grimly. "No use throwing yourself after
him."
There was no sound from Pratt now. In ghastly silence the sea creature
had settled down with him, his body rigid in its coiled grip,
protruding eyes mirroring agony, yet already glazed with approaching
death, his face slowly turning the purple of asphyxiation. Once more
the gun blasted before it fell from twitching fingers. To the watchers
it seemed an age before the tortured body at last went limp.
"Time the captain heard about this!" growled Hodge, "Although it
ain't likely to do any good." His iron grip aroused Kort from the
stupefaction of horror into which the sight of Pratt's death had
plunged him. Together they went forward, giving the monsters a wide
berth, past the cannery deck where most of the deck crew were gathered,
to the captain's cabin.
One glimpse of the master told Kort no help might be expected from
him. Spale's huge body overflowed the bunk; he was more stupefied than
asleep. The cabin reeked of liquor. Hodge slammed the door on it.
"Might've known it," he grumbled. "He won't be good for thirty hours,
like that. We're putting back to port, catch or no catch."
They reached the forward wheelhouse from below deck, leaving the
one aft in possession of the sea monsters. Hodge pushed over the
engine room telegraph. At the wheel, Kort awaited the first throb of
propellers to drive the ship ahead.
For a moment there was no movement but the slow roll of the _Mermaid_
in the trough of the waves. Then the interphone crackled.
"Wellson, engine room. We have no pressure on the boilers down here.
Chief Starr has gone aft to see about it. I can give you quarter speed
for a few minutes."
"Quarter speed!" barked Hodge. The vessel trembled to the surge of the
screws, forged slowly ahead. That moment too came the first of the
wind. Kort found his hands full keeping the ship on course in the face
of it.
Once he looked aft, just in time to see the last trunk vanish from atop
the aft pilot house. It did not plunge overboard, but faded from sight
as abruptly as a projected image when the light is snapped off.
Briefly grateful that the things had gone, he bent all efforts to
keeping the _Mermaid_ on course in the face of freshening wind. Through
the deck he could feel the whine of turbines inexorably slowing down.
"No steerageway, sir," he said finally, as the ship yawed.
Hodge rang the interphone savagely, without result.
"Better see what's wrong," he told Kort. "Wait--take this."
He thrust an electro-gun renewal clip into Kort's hand. With the weapon
in hand Kort descended ladder after ladder to the engine deck. Amid
disquieting silence something within him grew coldly alert.
The engine room was empty. Giant mercury turbines spun lazily under a
pressure head far too low to drive them at normal speed. A chill swept
him at the sight of the pressure gauges. In the dim glow of failing
fluorescents he headed for the stokehole.
A nameless sense of menace cautioned him. He passed the great bunkers
full of kwahna wood, the rich, oily fuel that drove the _Mermaid_ and
her kind across the planet's five oceans. In the last bulkhead the
stokehole door stood wide, somehow sounding a chill note of warning.
Without entering he called Wellson and Starr. The names echoed hollowly
from the dim reaches of the ship, but in response came only the faint
roar of a blower left at half speed.
The thought that Wellson and Starr must have gone through that same
door determined him against doing so. Instead he climbed to the deck
above, coming out on a catwalk above the boilers, from which he could
see into the stokehole.
Five men sprawled on the deck plates in the contorted postures of those
dead by violence, knees drawn high, arms outflung, fingers bent into
claws. By the light of his pocket flash Kort recognized the distorted
features of Starr. A reddish glow from an open firebox illumined those
of Wellson. The other men were native stokers. When Kort moved the
flash beam horror tightened its clutch upon him. The stokehole pit
seemed full of sea slugs.
By actual count he found there were five of them, alert, weaving,
posturing as though to sense new victims. Oddly enough the light
brought no response from them, even when flashed directly upon their
dingy white bodies.
Suddenly the electro-gun seemed to burn in Kort's hand. He lifted away
a section of the catwalk grid to fire through the opening thus left.
Bullets howled, ricocheting from deck plates and bulkheads below.
Occasionally one of the creatures seemed to flicker before a shot.
When the gun was empty Kort got to his feet. His fire had been without
effect. He felt a sick sense of futility as he climbed back to the
wheelhouse, where Hodge soberly listened to the tale of death he had to
tell.
"We've got to get them, son," said the first mate grimly. "It's them or
us. Look aport."
The sky was aflame over the horizon. Twisted ribbons of light swirled
between sea and heavens, shot through now and again with flashes of
crimson. Across the waters came, faintly, the rumble of thunder.
"_Kilwanni!_" grunted Hodge. "From the looks of that borealis, it's
headed this way. If we lie here much longer we'll be blown out of the
water."
"With the anti-grids?" Kort protested.
"Without them," Hodge answered dryly. "What're you going to use for
juice? The lightning generators have almost stopped, and you can't turn
the anti-grid generators on flat boilers, nor use battery juice either."
He jerked his head significantly at the wheelhouse lamps, hardly more
than aglow.
"Looks like we have to lick the things or else! No good wasting more
bullets, either. The things dodge 'em. See how they flicker when you
put a bullet close? No wonder D'loo calls them the ghost snakes."
Kort nodded, and yet it seemed to him that Hodge's appraisal was wrong,
in some vague way he couldn't himself put a finger on.
"If they dodge the bullets," the first mate went on, "then they must
see 'em coming. Maybe we need something faster than bullets--a bolt
blaster, maybe."
"And Spale's got one!" finished Kort.
"Only one aboard," finished Hodge. "He had a mutiny once, and a blaster
saved his fat neck for him. Since then he won't let anybody else keep
one aboard, curse him. I reckon we'll have to find his."
* * * * *
Five minutes later the two men trod softly away from Spale's cabin,
the precious blaster, clumsy with its huge capacitor drum, ridged
barrel, and pointed electrode, in Hodge's hands. Yet Kort was haunted
by an unreasonable premonition of failure. Perhaps, he told himself,
repeated failure had sold him on the belief that the sea slugs were
invulnerable. Certainly the blaster was no common weapon. It shot a
bolt of non-oscillating high amperage current, a single shattering
projectile of pure energy, with the speed of light itself. What living
thing could sense the approach of that flashing death?
They entered upon the catwalk after Kort's light had shown it clear of
the creatures. The stokehole fluorescents were mere luminous streaks
against encroaching darkness. Only dying embers glowed behind the open
fire door. But the flash beam revealed four white trunks grouped before
the boilers, as though attracted by the warmth. Purple faces of the
dead glared up in the pallid light of the torch.
Hodge swore feelingly, leveled the blaster. The weapon spat a lurid,
creamy-white bolt that pierced the nearest trunk. Kort held his breath.
The flash seared his sight, seeming of longer duration than it really
was, and limned the sea thing starkly against the blackness of the
stokehole. The light of his torch seemed feeble after it.
But in that light the creature swayed, unhurt, untouched. Hodge cursed
it furiously, fired again and again. The crash of bolts was thunderous
in that confined space. Fringes of electrical fire leaped from metal at
their touch. Ozone stung Kort's nostrils.
But when the blaster clicked emptily not four, but five trunks swayed
languidly before the boilers, curving their supple bodies in undulating
motion that at times gave them the shape of huge, animated question
marks.
"Drum's empty," said Hodge quietly. "Let's go topside."
Kort felt his calmness in strange contrast to the fury raging within
himself--fury that mindless things from the sea should set at
nought the intelligence and courage of some fifty men. What price
intelligence? An ameoba, incapable of sensing the approach of death,
was better off than they who could foresee, and fear, and do nothing
at all to escape, extinction. What was the _kilwanni_--the coming
storm--but a conglomeration of ions, dead and unintelligent, possessed
of no will either benevolent or malevolent, yet destined for all that
to shatter the _Mermaid_ and commit them to death in the freezing
sea--those who escaped a fiery but swifter death from the storm itself.
He followed Hodge silently back to the pilot house. Two seamen waited
there, grim faced.
"Three of them by the cannery boilers," one man said. "They got
Sanderson before he could clear out."
That was all. They stared at Hodge, waiting for him to speak. The
grizzled first mate shook his head.
"I know," said Kort suddenly, and all eyes turned to him. "The bullets
were too slow--but the blaster was too fast. A bolt lasts only a few
micro-seconds."
"How d'you mean?"
"You remember when D'loo first talked about a ghost snake? He hadn't
seen the one on the net, but only the one that killed Twahna, and
_nobody had fired a shot at it_."
"But he saw it come through the bulkhead," Hodge pointed out.
"That's what threw us off the track, but that wasn't the only reason
D'loo called it the 'ghost snake.' Nor was it because they flicker
before bullets. Have you ever known a native who cared to see ordinary
cinema films?"
"Nope," grunted Hodge, plainly mystified. "Nor one who'd let a newsreel
man photograph him. They call 'em the ghost pictures. Say--!"
"There you are. They fight shy of the films because they don't get
the illusion of motion, as we do. All they see is a quick-fading
succession of stills, because the natives don't have persistence of
vision, as we have. The films don't fool them as they do us. Nor do
those things out there. To us they look solid. To D'loo they flicker
constantly--ninety-nine percent of the time they literally aren't
there. They have a vibratory existence, like the image we seem to see
on the cinema screen. Back in the twentieth century it was shown that
the probability wave representing an electron extended, theoretically,
to infinity. In these things free will--the life force--enters to
control that mathematical probability. They can literally be two places
at once--on the bottom, three miles down, and on our deck--at the same
time.
"They're _here_ only at intervals, and persistence of vision bridges
the time gap between those intervals. The blaster bolts last only a few
micro-seconds, a far shorter time than their natural period. A bolt
comes and goes while the thing you fire at actually _isn't there_.
It would be sheer luck if the bolt should coincide to hit it at the
instant it's actually materialized--sheer luck, because our eyes can't
help us. Even a Venusian wouldn't be able to synchronize a bolt--there
isn't that quick co-ordination between brain and muscle. The odds would
always be against us."
* * * * *
The seamen looked blank. Hodge drummed the chart table with a huge
fist. "If you're right, we need a faster bullet or a slower bolt."
"Or _timing_!" finished Kort. "Have Sparks rig a stroboscope out of
spare parts. You know how moving parts can be made to look as if
they're standing still, in an intermittent light that flashes only when
they are at one point in their movement. With all other lights off, a
stroboscope wouldn't show us the things at all, except when we have it
exactly synchronized with their vibratory period. Rig the blaster in
series with the light circuit, and it would have to fire at exactly the
right time. That'll get them."
One of the seamen cleared his throat. "Maybe it would--or maybe not.
This is no time for theories. We're speaking for all the men now. We
don't mean to stay aboard to be blasted by the _Kilwanni_ or strangled
by these damned snakes. We want to take the launches."
"Supposin' you did," Hodge countered. "You'd last just till the
_Mermaid's_ hit. Then the potential would flatten out, with the
launches stickin' up in it like sore thumbs. There ain't no anti-grids
on them, and you couldn't get away quick enough."
"We'd rather take our chances than go down with this tub," snarled the
other man. "You ain't going to stop us!"
Hodge shrugged, then stared in amazement at Kort, who stood by the door
with a leveled electro-gun.
"I'm stopping you. Listen--you won't last five minutes out there in the
launches, without anti-grids. Give Sparks an hour to rig a stroboscope
and we can get back into the stokehole. With pressure on the boilers
we can charge the anti-grids and the storm won't touch us."
The men looked black rage at him, but made no move. Hodge's right hand
hovered over his own gun.
"Don't draw!" snapped Kort. "I don't want to hurt you, Hodge, but this
means the life of all of us, not just one or two."
"Forgettin' something, ain't you?" asked Hodge dryly. "I'd be all for
you, if we had an hour to spare. Take a look at the grids."
Kort risked a glance aloft, through the wheelhouse windows. Against a
dark, sultry sky the spiral network of the anti-grids already glowed
with faint pricklings of St. Elmo's light--harmless prologue to the
storm to come. Any weather-wise sailor could read the menace in those
flaming curtains to port, swirling in fiery splendor, very tapestries
of hell.
"Won't take them but forty minutes, maybe, to get here," continued
Hodge inexorably. "And after you've got your stroboscope, and killed
the critters, it'll take thirty minutes to get pressure on the boilers.
Not a chance your way. Better stow the gun and go along in the
launches."
It was like a pit opening before Kort's feet. Bitterly he realized his
mistake--he had forgotten those all-important thirty minutes needed
to get enough pressure for the anti-grid generators. Actually there
remained perhaps ten minutes to defeat the sea monsters and regain the
stokehole. He'd been making a fool of himself, delaying the men's last
forlorn dash for life.
Sheepishly he holstered his gun while the seamen stalked out. Seconds
later came the groan of pulleys as the first launch swung out from the
davits.
Hodge slouched over the chart table, stared out at the activity on
deck. The third launch splashed noisily into the sea. Men scrambled
down the davit lines. Far in the bow swayed, unheeded, one of the
blind, deadly creatures from the depths.
"Few hours ago," Hodge rumbled, "all we worried about was getting a
catch aboard. But the sea changes things before you know it. Take this
ship--ought to be fit to ride out any _kilwanni_. Now she ain't, all on
account of the sea. Kilwanni's part of the sea too--never get 'em over
the land. Bolts fat as the mainmast and red hot, lastin' ten seconds,
some of 'em. Melt the chocks right off the deck--"
"Damn!" exclaimed Kort. "Why didn't I--"
"Steady, son. Too late now. The last launch's gone."
"Why didn't I think of it before?" asked Kort wildly. "How many drums
has the captain got for that blaster?"
Hodge chuckled. "If I know Spale, he's got twenty or thirty. Spale!
Holy cheroot, we forgot all about _him_!"
* * * * *
Without a word they rushed together to the captain's cabin. Hodge flung
the door wide. Spale lay as they had left him, motionless in his bunk.
But at sight of his face Kort turned cold within. The normally flushed
features were a dull purple.
"Critters got him too," Hodge said calmly. "Probably never felt a
thing, the shape he was in." He stooped over the desk in the far
corner, tossed a jumble of bottles, pipes, pencils and other miscellany
out of one drawer after another, at last uttered a triumphant grunt.
"Here!" Kort snatched the squat black cylinder Hodge tossed to him. The
first mate delved further. "Plenty more in here--sure you want 'em,
son?"
"All of them," said Kort breathlessly, tearing the discharged drum from
the blaster and fitting the new one in its place. While the mate's
back was turned he ripped away a small black box affixed beneath the
weapon's chunky barrel, and twisted together the raw ends of the wires
thus exposed. Furtively he looked up to see whether Hodge had noticed,
but the latter was still bent over the desk.
Suddenly the blaster seemed to turn ice cold in Kort's hand. For a
moment, he doubted his ability to press the trigger. His nerves seemed
frozen, incapable of action in the dread need of the moment.
As though a hand other than his own had loosed it, he saw the bolt stab
white-hot across the cabin, its crash far louder than in the stokehole,
the tang of ozone sharp instantly after.
Hodge leaped wildly, spun around in open mouthed astonishment. Silently
Kort pointed to the bunk, behind which the painted bulkhead showed a
sear of flame.
Sprawled across Spale's body lay the dingy white carcass of a sea slug,
streaked and blackened by the bolt.
"It came through the bulkhead," said Kort tensely. "Maybe it was the
one that got Spale. There wasn't time to warn you."
"Thanks, son. Dying by the _kilwanni_ would be a pleasure compared to
making a meal for _that_. But how come?"
"I took a chance," Kort said slowly. "I took the choke condenser off.
That's what limits each bolt to a twentieth of the drum's capacity and
damps out all oscillation. Without it the whole drum fired at once, and
because the charge oscillated it lasted about a hundred times as long
as before--long enough to bridge the thing's vibratory period. The bolt
hit while it was there, and killed it."
Hodge snatched up the drums and stuffed them into his pockets. "Come
on! We'll roast out the rest of 'em--what's wrong, son?"
Kort laid the blaster wearily upon the desk. "Look at it. The full drum
charge burnt out the electrode tube." His voice was bitter. "I forgot
that, too. We'd need a new blaster for each one!"
Hodge's ruddy, wind-roughened face paled to grayness. He threw the
drums alongside the ruined weapon, cursing steadily.
Idly Kort prodded the dingy white carcass with the barrel of his
electro gun. It was quite solid, indubitably dead. He pushed it off
Spale, and it landed with a _thunk_ on the floor.
"Hodge!" he said suddenly. "Come with me."
He ran from the cabin. His flashlight, lighting the pitch dark passages
of the deserted ship, found the catwalk above the stokehole.
"Well, I'm blessed!" murmured Hodge a moment later.
Five bodies lay in the black pit below. There was still a faint glow of
embers in the firebox. But although Kort flashed the light everywhere,
there was no sign of the sea slugs.
"What are we waitin' for?" demanded Hodge fiercely.
It was he who led now. Seconds later, log after log of the furiously
inflammable _kwahna_ was disappearing into the fire-boxes. Blowers,
powered by auxiliary batteries, shrieked at full speed. Mercury surged
and simmered within the tubes. Behind the fire doors infernos raged.
Once Hodge vanished briefly to close the anti-grid switches and open
the throttles of the high potential shield generators. Kort steadily
kept on feeding the voracious boilers. There was as yet no pressure to
turn the lighting dynamos. He worked by the gleam of flames alone.
"Run topside, son," gasped the older man at last. "See if you can
signal the launches--we'll never make it by ourselves."
In two minutes Kort gained the deck. The first thing his eyes sought
was the mainmast grid. It had struck an aurora, no longer the pale
blue of ten minutes ago, by a hot, bright yellow signifying that the
arresters were bypassing current to the sea. How long before they would
break down under the rising potential?
He ran to the starboard rail at the sound of voices, the bump of a boat
touching the ship's side, and almost collided with a grinning, brawny
stoker. The launches were back!
Men slapped him jubilantly on the back, dignity, discipline and all
else forgotten. Smoke from the _Mermaid's_ funnel had announced to them
the conquest of the creatures from the sea.
Ten minutes later the thin blue thread was a belching cloud. Below
decks turbo-generators whined at speed, and aloft the anti-potential
grids gleamed with the soft green halos of the protective repulsion
fields.
* * * * *
Her sodium fog lights boring yellow tunnels through the night mist, the
_Mermaid_ scudded over the _Molo Ivrum_ at her maximum of twenty knots.
In the wheelhouse Hodge noisily sucked his pipe, staring the while at
Kort, who had the wheel.
"Wouldn't figure on staying on this tub with me, would you?" Hodge
asked suddenly. "I'm in line for the captain's berth, but damned if I
can think of anybody to recommend for my first mate. Exceptin' you."
"I--I hadn't said I was leaving," Kort replied.
"You hadn't said--but you were thinkin' plain out," murmured Hodge.
"Noticed in the last few hours how the men are acting?"
A grin touched his grizzled face as Kort made no answer. "Haven't
noticed how they jump when you give an order now, son? You're a
blinkin' hero, by Jerusalem. Weren't for you they'd be scrapin' ribs
with the sharks by now, and they know it."
Kort flushed in silence but said nothing.
"Only thing I couldn't tell 'em," complained Hodge, "was how you knew
the things would have left the ship after you killed just that one."
"That was a wild guess," admitted Kort, spinning the wheel briefly.
"That one was no more solid than the others--until it was dead. I
wondered where it was when it wasn't there. And suddenly the answer
came--all over the ship, of course. During that part of its period when
it wasn't in the cabin it was in the stokehole and on deck and maybe
on the bottom, three miles down, besides. Because it wasn't several,
but all one. Just one thing, with the power of being several places at
once." He paused, then continued.
"You thought it fed on heat energy and oxygen. Well, there's precious
little of both three miles down. It could absorb more of what there was
by splitting itself up--probably had to, to survive. By projecting ten
images of itself, all capable of feeding for the common benefit--it
had ten chances for food instead of one. When I killed it in the cabin
it materialized there and disappeared elsewhere, because its vibratory
form depended on life, that is, on will or instinct."
Hodge rapped the pipe on the palm of his hand. "Wouldn't surprise me if
you doped it right all the way through, son. And I can't say I don't
believe it. Sea's so full of surprises she never quite does surprise
me."
He moved to the door, paused. "You think over that first mate's berth.
I think this is one crew that would be proud to have a gold brick mate.
Because you don't want to forget, son, that a gold brick is a pretty
fine thing to have--if it's genuine clean through."
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