by Don Wilcox
“Uh-huh,” said Muff shrugging. “I didn’t reckon he was interested.”
Bill Pierce was momentarily distracted by walls full of pictures. They reminded him of the physiology charts in a doctor’s office; diagrams of circulatory systems, exposed muscles, skeletons. But the subjects were animals rather than men. Odd, nameless animals, as far as Bill could guess. Obviously this Frenchman was a zoologist and a man of learning.
“Mr. Muff has told me,” Maribeau volunteered, touching the points of his black mustache, “that he saw some strange fish capture Miss Riley in a sort of glass tub.”
“I’ve got no time to listen,” said Bill. “I’m on my way back. Muff, do you want to come?”
Windy Muff turned to Maribeau.
“How about it, Doc?”
“I would give ten years of my life,” said the scientist, “to possess one single specimen of those unique sea creatures. Could I go too, Mr. Pierce?”
CHAPTER IV
A few minutes later the three men got into the twin-motored launch and were lowered into the open sea.
While the liner plowed on toward Hawaii, they roared away on the endless back-track course into the southwestern sun.
Windy Muff held the craft on a dead line.
“Now, Maribeau,” said Bill, “what were you saying about Windy’s fish story?”
The scientist opened his packet of books and papers.
“Would you like to see a sketch of their footprints, Mr. Pierce?”
“I beg your pardon?” said Bill.
“Would you like to see the footprints of the fish that got her?” Maribeau repeated. “I’ve made a drawing from the marks that Mr. Muff and I discovered on the side of the ship.”
“Footprints of a fish?” Bill stammered.
“Fish isn’t the proper term, of course,” said Maribeau. “Amphibian would be more appropriate—or anuran—though I must confess this creature is difficult to classify, especially upon the meager evidence of a few footprints.”
Bill bent over the pencil sketch.
“Maribeau and I spotted it right beneath the rail where she went over,” said Windy. “My gollies, if this ain’t one for Ripley.”
Bill gaped at the bold outline of a webbed foot.
“Name it and you can have it, Pierce,” said Windy Muff.
“I’d call it a mud splatter,” Bill grunted, “though it might be taken for the footprint of an oversized duck—or better, a frog—”
“Now you’re getting warm,” said Maribeau, cocking his head. “As near as I can place it, it’s a huge Surinam toad, a species of water and mud creatures found only in Dutch Guiana. They’re quite rare, and strange to say they have no tongues. But this fellow is no regular. He’s too large. And too far from Guiana. And too much at home in deep water.”
The sketch of the foot, Bill noted, fairly filled the sheet of typing paper.
“He climbed the side of the ship,” said Windy Muff with the air of having witnessed it.
“With a rope, apparently,” the scientist amended. “We found the mark of a wet seaweed rope and a small hook that he had used to pull himself up to the deck where Miss Riley stood.”
“It don’t make sense, but Maribeau claims he musta crawled up and lassoed her, the slimy devil,” said Windy Muff.
“That’s our strange verdict,” said Maribeau confidently. “And that argues we’re on the trail of some monstrosity with intelligence. I never saw anything like it.”
Bill Pierce was frowning, trying to digest these bizarre evidences.
“Maribeau,” he said sharply. “What do you make of all this? Do you think such creatures could actually imprison a person with ropes and—and tubs?”
“I’ve no right to theorize on the basis of these footprints,” said Maribeau, “but I’ll go as far as anyone to find out . . .
Dawn found Bill and his two companions nearing the area of the volcanic islands. A clear night and a glass-smooth ocean had facilitated their backtracking excursion.
Now Windy Muff stood in the prow sighting the low mountaintops. He passed his field glasses to his companions.
“When those two peaks line up with us,” he said, “we’ll be right on a dead shot for the spot where she went over. Then it’ll be a matter of farther or closer, the devil knows which.”
“We’ll have to pull closer,” said Bill. “I remember seeing a bit of cliff along the water-line.”
“And a heavy black line on the water—at low tide,” Windy Muff added. “Ain’t I right, Maribeau?”
The French scientist was lost in his books. With the first gray of the morning he had resumed his ardent studies. “Don’t bother him,” said Bill.
“It beats me,” said Windy Muff, “how a scientist can take an animal’s footprint and tell you what the darned thing looks like.”
“Did his description agree with what you saw?”
“The truth is,” said Windy Muff, “about all I saw was some green blurs. There wasn’t time—Ahoy! Look what’s comin’.”
Bill turned to see the speck of ship on the northeastern horizon.
“That’s George Vinson, or I’m a frog’s uncle!” Bill leaped up, stripped off his shirt, began waving it. “Right to us over the blue. He’s made speed believe me.”
Maribeau was aroused by Bill’s excited talk, and in a moment he and Windy Muff were following Bill’s example, waving banners to the distant yacht.
In less than an hour the trim white craft nosed up within hailing distance of the launch.
Bill looked up at the yacht’s prow where the familiar figure of George Vinson stood like a statue against the sky. It was a curious fact, thought Bill, that a man of George Vinson’s diminutive stature somehow always gave the impression of being a large powerful person.
Part of it was Vinson’s masterful manner. His superior air at this moment, for example, as he unfolded his arms and raised both of them in a sign of greeting, would have nettled Beatrice Riley if she bad been here.
As usual, Vinson was bareheaded, and his long black hair blew like a horse’s mane in the breeze. As usual, he wore immaculate white from head to foot, including white shoes and white gloves.
“How does it go, my friend?” came the hale greeting of George Vinson.
“Vin, are we ever glad to see you!” Bill shouted.
“Come on up!”
Bill caught the rope that one of Vinson’s crew tossed out and tied the launch up against the yacht’s gleaming side. He climbed up, scrambling to his feet. George Vinson’s hearty handshake was waiting for him.
“It’s been many months,” said Vinson, smiling majestically. For minutes the two men chatted warmly. Then the smile went out of Vinson’s dark gleaming eyes. “Tell me about this—this unaccountable happening. Your message was hard to believe. At first I thought—well, never mind—”
“What?”
“No offense, Bill,” said Vinson gazing across the waters reflectively, “but my first thought was, Bill and Beatrice are playing a practical joke on me, Just to bring me out to meet them. They’re anxious to see me, so they’ve hatched up this hoax—”
“I only wish that were it, Vin,” said Bill. “But nothing could be farther from the truth.”
“Are you sure she didn’t just strike out and swim to yonder island?” George Vinson suggested.
“Hell, no, Vin! You’re all wet,” Bill snapped. This confident calmness of Vin’s could be annoying. It was a trait that tended to give the older man a mastery of any situation. It made Bill feel like a hot-headed youth. “Let me explain. She didn’t swim away.”
“No?” Vinson passed a white glove over his fine flowing black hair.
“She was pulled overboard—there was a rope—and some sort of green sea creature—”
George Vinson’s gloved hand froze on the back of his neck. He stared at Bill, then his mystical eyes peered into the sea. The white slits of scars on either side of his neck reddened. He turned sharply to his sailors.
“Bring out the
diving suits.”
While Bill and one of Vin’s sailors changed into the diving outfits, there was a general recounting of all details of Bea’s strange departure. Windy Muff and Maribeau climbed aboard the yacht to add their share of the account. Maribeau sketched a webbed foot. Windy stuck to his story that the creatures were green blurs kicking through the water.
And all the while George Vinson stood with hands on hips and head high, like something carved of granite.
“We’re a full ten miles from the islands,” he said finally. “We’ll scout along a trifle closer. Everyone keep a sharp watch on the waters close about.”
Bill climbed back into the launch, and Windy and the scientist followed. They swung the launch around to follow in the wake of the yacht. They could see the Napoleon-like figure of Vinson measuring his steps along the deck, and Bill pulled up within voice range. But the only interchange of conversation was a warning from Vinson to keep the diving helmet ready and keep a sharp lookout. Then—
“Look out!”
“Watch it, there!” George Vinson and a sailor both shouted at once.
Bill whirled in time to see it happen. A loop of lithe seaweed rope spun out of the water’s surface within ten feet of the launch. The loop fell over the head and shoulders of the scientist. The rope tightened with a jerk.
For a split second Maribeau was almost overboard and gone. The rope went taut like an irresistible steel cable and started off with him.
But the scientist’s hands and knees hooked the side of the launch, and in the same instant Bill dived to catch his feet. The rope snapped off an arms length beyond the edge of the boat.
Maribeau shrank back, muttering profanity in a foreign tongue. He jerked the tightly corded seaweed off his shoulders, flung it to the bottom of the boat, wiped his slime-covered hands on a handkerchief.
“I saw the critters,” Bill gasped. “Just as you caught yourself and the rope went tight.”
Maribeau’s white face nodded. He had evidently seen them too, but just now he was too scared to say so.
“I seen three,” said Windy Muff. “But there musta been more, the way they was pullin’. And if that rope hadn’t broke—” Windy stopped to scratch his head. “What the devil were those things? They had arms like monkeys, and prickly spines like big lizards—”
“I’d give ten years of my life,” Maribeau uttered in a scared whisper, “for just one specimen.”
“Wonder what they’d pay for one of us,” Windy grunted.
Bill closed the diving helmet down over his shoulders and all talk dimmed and melted together like tunnel sounds. The air-tight suit was a flimsy affair, unsuitable for extreme depths, and the oxygen supply was meager. But Bill was eager for a look under the surface.
Bill waved a signal to Vinson that he was ready to go over. But again Vinson was shouting something.
Then the sound of a heavy splash seeped into the bell-jar head-piece, Bill turned, saw the agonized fright in Maribeau’s face. Windy Muff was gone!
Or rather, he was going. A seaweed rope was dragging him down. Bill hastily checked the fastenings of his air-tight suit and dived.
The force of gravity was with him on his first plunge for depth. He cut down through the water with a powerful stroke. The retreating figure of Windy Muff was a shadowy blur straight ahead of him. Those two fleeting spots of light were Windy’s bare feet.
And Bill was almost on them. If the fellow would just stop his senseless kicking—
For an instant Bill had the sailor by the toe. But the green creatures must have felt the tug. They suddenly jerked Windy Muff away with frantic speed. Bill couldn’t match it—not in a bulky diving suit. The shadowy forms pulled out of his reach and were gone.
That would be the last of Windy Muff, thought Bill. By this time the poor fellow must have taken in a lungfull of water. Bill started to climb.
But at that moment he caught sight of a dim yellow circle of light somewhere farther beyond—and below. He plowed toward it. It had all the look of an artificial light. This was incredible.
He was down deep now. In spite of the inflated suit, the water crushed hard against his sides. Gravity was against him, too, and he had to fight water to keep from being buoyed up.
The circle of yellow was expanding into half a globe that streaked the waters with zig-zagging spangles. There was activity somewhere in that vicinity. Now the shreds of light were half clouded with a shower of white sand. So this was near the bottom. They must be imprisoning Windy in one of those transparent tubs. But it was all too black for Bill to see. He crept closer.
By this time the dome of light was on a level higher than his eyes. Suddenly he saw the sharp-toothed outlines of a green sea creature, then a second, and a third. They were passing like sentinels around the top of what appeared to be a cylindrical tank. Its vertical walls were solid black, but the light that fountained out of the transparent top gave it form.
A quick movement from one of the green sea creatures warned Bill. They were on the alert. One of them crossed over the light and he caught a perfect picture of it. Its beady little magenta-ringed eyes were darting about, on sharp watch for trouble. The spines over its back were bristling.
What effect, he wondered, would those spines have on a flimsy diving suit like his? Those were fighting spines. A row of them armored the back of each leg, too. They were like elongated fins, or they might have been rows of thin knife-blades connected by webs.
It was hard to tell, under the distorting water, how large these creatures were. But Bill’s best guess was that they were three or four feet long. He was certainly not prepared for an encounter with one of them, much less a band that knew how to work together.
He shrank back. His oxygen would soon be gone. If he could retreat undiscovered, enough would be accomplished for the moment. For by this time, he knew, Windy Muff was either drowned or else imprisoned in an upright tank of compressed air. That left Bill free to follow either of two lines of action.
He could swim back to the yacht for a rope to attach to this undersea cylinder. All hands on deck might be able to lift it, and Windy Muff with it.
Or Bill could come back with a fresh supply of oxygen and wait to see what the creatures might do with their prisoner. That would be his cue as to what had happened to Bea.
One of the other of these plans—but he had better have, a quick talk with George Vinson first. He started up.
Then as his eyes came on a level with the dome of light he caught sight of the prisoner. It was not Windy Muff. It was Beatrice Riley.
CHAPTER V
The instant all of Bill’s neatly built plans toppled into confusion. The waters about him became a chaos of flashing prisms as he automatically fought to stop his upward climb.
The light must have flooded over his helmeted face, for now Bea was looking up at him. There was a flick of smile with her recognition, cut short by an expression of shock.
Under less perilous circumstances Bill would have interpreted that shocked look as embarrassment. Bea could have been no less scantily clothed if she had been in her diving costume. Obviously her fight against being captured had cost her her outer garments.
But her shock was plainly one of fear. Her lips were uttering anguished warnings.
“Bill! Be careful!”
In a glance Bill saw five or six of the green sea creatures were drawing back into a group. Their beady little eyes were staring at him. The bright red lines around their mouths seemed to draw tight, as if in cynical smiles. They were hovering in readiness to attack.
Bill’s glance flashed back at Bea. She was trying to shake her head at him. But her actions were obstructed by instruments which Bill had hardly noticed at first. They appeared to be two large electrodes, one fastened to each side of her head.
There was no time to wonder what all of this strange paraphernalia might mean. Already the sea creatures were coming toward him.
They bounced over the light in V formation—five of them.
Their necks bowed like the necks of chariot horses. In fact, there was a strange resemblance between their heads and the heads of horses. Their monkey-like arms pawed the water, they reared their spiny backs and plowed straight for Bill’s midsection.
Bill flung himself in a quick somersault. The heavy transparent headgear was the least vulnerable part of his costume. He was barely quick enough to take the blow of their attack on his head. Their spines clicked past like a course-toothed saw scraping his diving helmet.
His instincts told him to descend. There was darkness below. The light from overhead would play an advantage to whoever was nearest the bottom.
The green water-horses were right after him. He kicked a spray of white sand at them, then made a hard curved plunge around the base of the upright cylinder.
But they were in their element, swishing through these dark waters. At once they were coming at him from both directions. With savage fury they shot over his arms shearing the sleeves of his diving suit. The waters beat in upon his arms like sledge-hammers.
Back the green devils came from all directions. Their spines were steel sharp. He felt one long sweep of sawtooth points rip the full length of his spine.
That was the last of his diving suit. Its protection was gone. Only the shreds of it clung to his wrists and feet. He kicked out of it.
The pressure flung water up into his face like a blast from a fire hose, and then his helmet bounded off. He was at the mercy of the deep. His eardrums were near to bursting.
He was holding half a breath. But it would never last him till he climbed to the surface. He was too nearly done in with exhaustion. The pain from the gashes and scrapings of spines was like fire. He was losing blood. A faintness was sweeping in on him.
Bill tensed his muscles into steel armor to fight the crushing weight of water. Could he chance the climb to the surface?
The five savage horse-faced creatures were obviously waiting for him to come up into the light again. To rip his body wide open? He could make out their distorted silhouettes at the upper edge of the lighted dome. Their lithe arms were paddling restlessly. They seemed about to plunge again—four of them. But the fifth . . .
