Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 Part 4

Only these? He s.h.i.+vered slightly as he thought of that unseen watcher with the devil-eyes whose presence Captain Wilkins had felt--and his men, and the poor terrified ape! He deliberately put from his mind the thought of this; no use to start the day with morbid fears. He went below to examine the cabins. But he carried the heavy elephant gun with him wherever he went.

Below decks the signs of the marauder were everywhere, yet there was little to be learned. The slimy trails dried quickly and vanished, but not before Thorpe had traced them to the uttermost depths of the s.h.i.+p.

There was not a nook or corner that had gone unsearched in the horrible quest for human food. And one thing impressed itself forcibly upon the man's mind. He found a lantern, and he used it of necessity in his explorations, but this thing had gone through the dark and with unerring certainty had found its way to every victim.

"Can it see in the dark?" Thorpe questioned. "Or...." He visioned dimly some denizen of the vast depths, living beyond the limits of the sun's penetration, far in the abysmal darkness where its only light must be self-made. But his mind failed in the attempt to picture what manner of horror this thing might be.

Even in the hold its evil traces were found. There were tiers of metal drums that still shone wet in his lantern's light. Calcium carbide--for making acetylene, he supposed--marked "Made in U.S.A."

The _Nagasaki_ must have been westward bound.

He went, after an hour or so, to the wireless room, and only when he relaxed in the safety of his improvised fortress did he realize how tense had been every nerve and muscle through his long search. He tried the wireless and got an instant response from the destroyer.

"Don't shoot it too fast," he spelled out slowly to the distant operator: "I am only a dub. Just wanted to say h.e.l.lo and report all O.K."

"Fine," was the steady, careful response. "We have had a little trouble with our condensers--" There was a short pause, then the message continued, this portion dictated by the commander. "Delay not important. We will be back as agreed. Have picked up _S. S. Adelaide_ bound east in your lat.i.tude. Warned her to take northerly course account derelict. See you later. Signed, Brent, commanding _U. S. S.

Bennington_."

The man in the barred room tapped off his acknowledgement and closed the key. He suddenly realized he had had no breakfast, and the hours had been slipping past. He took his gun again and went down to the galley to prepare some coffee. It was not the time or place for an enjoyable meal, but he would have relished it more had he not pictured the _Adelaide_ and her lovely owner steaming across these threatening seas.

He knew the captain of the _Adelaide_. "Obstinate pigheaded old Scotchman!" "Hope he takes Brent's advice. Of course Brent couldn't tell him the truth. We can't blat this wild yarn all over the air or the pa.s.senger lines would have our scalps. But I wish the _Adelaide_ was safe in Manila."

His explorations in the afternoon were half-hearted and perfunctory.

There was nothing more to be learned. But he had seen in his mind some vague outline of what they must meet. He saw a something, mammoth, huge, that could grasp and hold an ocean freighter--against whose great body he had seen the waves dash in a line of white spray. Yet a something that could force its way down narrow pa.s.sages, could press with terrific strength on bolted doors and crush them inward, wrecked and splintered. Some serpentine thing that felt and saw its way and crawled so surely through the dark--found its prey--seized it--and carried off a man as easily as it might a mouse.

No octopus, no matter what proportions, filled the description. He gave up trying to see too clearly the awful thing. And he kept away from the s.h.i.+p's rail when once he had ventured near. For there had come to him a feeling of fear that had sent the waves of cold trickling and p.r.i.c.kling up his spine. Was there something really there?... A waiting lurking horror in the depths?

"The eyes," he thought, "the eyes!..." And he went more quickly than he knew to his barred retreat where again he might breathe quietly.

The position of the deserted s.h.i.+p was south of the regular steamer lanes on the Trans.p.a.cific run. Only a trace of smoke on the northern horizon marked through the afternoon the pa.s.sage of other craft. It was a long and lonely vigil for the waiting man. But the _Bennington_ would return, and he listened in at intervals hoping to hear her friendly signal.

The batteries operating the _Nagasaki's_ wireless were none too strong; Thorpe saved their strength, though he tried at times to raise the _Bennington_ somewhere beyond his reach.

The sun was touching the horizon when he got his first response. "Keep up the old nerve," admonished the slow, careful sending of the _Bennington's_ operator. "We have been delayed but we are on our way.

Signed, Brent."

The man in the wireless room placed the oak bars across the door, and tried to believe he was nonchalant and unafraid as he laid out extra clips of cartridges. But his eyes persisted in following the sinking sun, and he watched from within his cage the coming of the quick dark.

The protecting glare of day must be unbearable to this monster from the lightless depths, and daylight was vanis.h.i.+ng. Thorpe's mind was searching for additional means of defense. He found it in the cargo he had seen. The drums of carbide! He could scatter it on the deck--it reacted with water, and those slimy arms, if they came and touched it, could find the contact hot. He took his lantern and went hastily below to stagger back with a drum upon his shoulder.

In the half-light that was left him he forced the cover and then rolled the drum about the swaying deck. The gray, earthly lumps of carbide formed erratic lines. Useless perhaps, he admitted, but the threatening dark forced the man to use every means at his command.

He was scattering the contents of a second drum when he stiffened abruptly to rigid attention.

The s.h.i.+p, thrown broadside to the wide-s.p.a.ced swells, had rolled endlessly with a monotonous motion. But now the deck beneath him was steadying. It a.s.sumed an abnormal levelness. The boat rose and fell with the waves, but it no longer rolled. There was something beneath holding, drawing on it.

Thorpe knew in that frozen second what it meant. The drum clattered to the rail as he dashed for his room. Gun in hand, he watched with staring eyes where the deserted deck showed dim and vague in the light of the stars and the bow of the s.h.i.+p was lost in the uncertain dark of night.

Wide-eyed he watched into the blackness, and he listened with desperate attention for some slightest sound beyond the splas.h.i.+ng of waves and the creaking of spars.

Far in the west a light appeared, to glow and vanish and glow again in the tumbling waters. The _Bennington_! His heart leaped at the thought, then sank as he knew the destroyer's lights would not appear from that direction.

Through a slow hour that seemed an eternity the oncoming s.h.i.+p drew near, and he knew with a sudden, startling certainty that it was the _Adelaide_--and Ruth Allaire--coming on, through into the horror awaiting.

He leaned forward tensely as a sound reached his ears. A ghostly echo of a sound, like the softest of smooth, slipping fabric upon hard steel. And as he listened, before his staring eyes, a something came between him and the lighted yacht.

It wavered and swung in the darkness. It was formless, uncertain of outline, and it swung in the night out beyond the s.h.i.+p's rail till it suddenly neared, waved high overhead, and the cold light of the stars shone in pale reflection from an enormous, staring eye.

It surmounted a serpentine form that took shape in the dim radiance without and came lower in undulating folds to crash heavily upon the deck.

Thorpe's hand was upon the wireless key. He had wanted to warn off the yacht, but not till the thud of the creature on the bare deck proved its reality could he force his cold fingers to press the key.

Then, fast as his inexperience allowed, he called frantically for the _Adelaide_. He spelled her name, over and over.... Would the sleepy operator never answer?

The _Bennington_ broke in one. "Is that you, Thorpe? What is up?" they demanded.

But Thorpe kept up his slow spelling of the yacht's name. He must get a warning to them! Then he realized that the _Bennington_ could do it better.

"_Bennington_," he called, "_Adelaide_ approaching. I am attacked.

Warn them off. Warn them--" His frantic, hissing dots and dashes died immediately. Beneath his feet the _Nagasaki Maru_ was rolling again, swinging free to the lift and thrust of the swells beneath.

"Good G.o.d!" he shouted aloud in his lonely cabin. "It's gone for the yacht. _Adelaide_--turn north--full speed--" he clicked off on a slow, stuttering key. "Head north. You are being attacked!" He groaned again as he saw the _Adelaide's_ s.h.i.+ning ports swing away from the safety of the north; the s.h.i.+p broached broadside to the waves and came slowly to a stop.

"_Bennington_," he radioed. "Brent--it has got the _Adelaide_.

Help--hurry! I am going over."

He tore wildly at the barred door, and he made a dash across the deck to slip sprawling in a heap against the rail where the slimy traces of the recent visitor stretched glistening on the deck.

How he lowered the boat Thorpe never knew. But he knew there was one that the men from the _Bennington_ had swung over the side, and tore madly at the tackle to let the boat crash miraculously upright into the sea. He slung the rifle about his neck with a rope end--there were cartridges in his pocket--and he went down the dangling lines and cast off in a frenzy of haste.

What could he do? He hardly dared form the question. Only this stood clear and unanswerable in his mind: The yacht was in the monster's grip, and Ruth Allaire was there on board. Ruth Allaire, so smiling, so friendly, so lovable! Food for that horror from the depths.... He rowed with super-human strength to drive the heavy boat across the wave-swept distance that separated them.

Between gasping breaths he turned at times to glance over his shoulder and correct his course. And now, as he drew near, he saw though indistinct the unmistakable, snakelike weaving of horrible tenuous fingers, rolling and groping about the yacht.

They were plain as he drew alongside. The trim s.h.i.+p rose and fell with the water, while over her side where Thorpe approached swung a long, white monstrous rope of flesh. It retreated like the lash of a whip, and the horrified watcher saw as it went the struggling figure of a man in the grasp of flabby lips. And above them a single eye glared wickedly.