(5/15) The Golden Age of Science Fiction Volume V: An Anthology of 50 Short Stories

by Various

  He saw the sealmen first. Some were quite close, but in the murk he had missed them. Silent specters, they were apparently lifeless, strewn all around at different levels, and most of them floating slowly up toward the dim ice ceiling.

  But up under the ice was movement! Living figures were there! And at the sight Kenneth Torrance's lips spread in their first real grin for days. The plan had worked! The sealmen had been destroyed, and already some of the Peary's men were up there and fumbling clumsily across the hundred feet which separated them from the hole in the ice that was the last step to the world above.

  * * * * *

  A ghostly gray haze of light filtered downward through the water from the hole. Ken counted twelve figures making their way to it. As he wondered about the rest of the crew, he saw three bulging, swaying shapes suddenly emerge from the split in the top of the Peary, and begin an easy rise toward the ice ceiling ninety feet above. There was no apparent danger, and they went up quite slowly, with occasional brief pauses to avoid the risk of the bends. Clasped together, the group of three were, and when they were halfway to the glassy ceiling of the ice, three more left the rent in the submarine and followed likewise. Twelve men were at the top; six others were swimming up; three more were yet to leave the submarine--and after they had abandoned her, he, Ken, would follow with the torpoon and the food it contained.

  So he thought, watching from where he lay, down below, and there was in him a great weariness after the triumph so bitterly fought for had been achieved. He rested through minutes of quiet and relaxation, watching what he had brought about; but only minutes--for suddenly without warning all security was gone.

  From out the murky shadows to the left a sleek shape came flashing with great speed, to jerk Ken Torrance's eyes around and to widen them with quick alarm.

  A sealman! A sealman alive, and moving--and vengeful! A sealman which the explosion of nitromite had not reached!

  Doubtless the lone creature was surprised upon seeing all its fellows motionless, drifting like corpses upward, and the men of the Peary escaping. With graceful, beautiful speed, a liquid streak, it flashed into the scene, eeling up and around and down, trying to understand what extraordinary thing had happened. But finally it slowed down and hovered some thirty feet directly above the dark hull of the Peary.

  The men rising toward the ice had seen the sealman at the same time Ken Torrance had, and at once increased their efforts, fearing immediate attack. Quickly the two groups shot to the top where the other twelve were, and began a desperate fumbling progress over toward the hole that alone gave exit. But the sealman paid no attention to them. It was looking at something below.

  Ken saw what it was.

  The last three men were leaving the Peary. Awkward, swaying objects, they rose up directly in front of the hovering creature.

  * * * * *

  With an enraged thrust of flippers, it drove at them. The three humans--Sallorsen, Lawson and one other, Ken knew they must be--were clasped together, and the long, lithe, muscular body smote them squarely, sent them whirling and helpless in different directions in the sea-gloom. One of them was driven down by the force of the blow, and that one the sealman chose to finish first. It lashed at him, its strong teeth bared to rip the sea-suit, concentrating on him all the rage and all the thirst for vengeance it had.

  But by then, down below, the torpoon's motors were throbbing at full power; the thin directional rudders were slanting; the torpoon was turning and pointing its nose upward; and Ken Torrance, his face bleak as the Arctic ice, was grasping the trigger of the nitro-shell gun.

  He might perhaps have saved the doomed man had he swept straight up then and fired, but a quick mounting of the odds distracted him for a fatal second. Out of the deeper gloom at the left came a swiftly growing shadow, and Ken, with a sinking in his stomach, knew it for a second sealman.

  Then another similar shadow brought his eyes to the right.

  Two more sealmen! Three now--and how many more might come?

  At once Ken knew what he must do before ever he fired a shell at one of the brown-skinned shapes. The man just attacked had to be sacrificed in the interests of the rest. The torpoon swerved, thrust up toward the ice ceiling under the full force of her motors; and when halfway to it, and her gun-containing bow was pointed at a spot in the ice only twenty feet in front of the foremost of the men stroking desperately towards the distant exit-hole, Ken pressed the trigger; and again, and again and again....

  Twelve shells, quick, on the same path, bit into the ice. Almost immediately came the first explosion. It was swelled by the others. The ice shivered and crumbled in jagged splinters--and then there was a new column of light reaching down from the world of air and life into the darkness of the undersea. A roughly circular hole gaped in the ice sixty or seventy feet nearer the swimming men than the old one.

  "That'll give 'em a chance," muttered Kenneth Torrance. He plunged the torpoon around and down. "And now for a fight!"

  * * * * *

  Without pause, now, there was, straight ahead, a hard, desperate duel, a fitting last fight for any torpoon or any man riding one. Each of the seven shells left in the nitro-gun's magazine had to count; and the first of them gave a good example.

  Ken turned down in time to see the death of the man first attacked. His suit was ripped clean across, his air of life went up in bubbles, and the water came in. The seal-creature lunged at its falling victim a last time, and as it did so its smooth brown body crossed Ken's sights. The torpooner fired, and saw his shell strike home, for the body shuddered, convulsed, and the sealman, internally torn, went sinking in a dark cloud after the human it had slain.

  That sight gave pause to the other two creatures that had arrived, and gave Ken Torrance a good second chance. Motor throbbing, the torpoon turned like a thing alive. Its snout and gun-sights swerving straight toward the next target. But, when just on the point of pressing the trigger, Ken's torpoon was struck a terrific blow and tumbled over and over. The whole external scene blurred to him, and only after a moment was he able to bring the torpoon back to an even keel.

  He saw what had happened. While he had been sighting on the second seal-creature, the third had attacked the torpoon from the rear by striking it with all the strength of its heavy, muscular body. But it did not follow up its attack. For it had crashed in to the whirling propeller, and now it was hanging well back, its head horribly gashed by the steel blades.

  For a moment the three combatants hung still, both sealmen staring at the torpoon as if in wonder that it could strike both with its bow and stern, and Ken Torrance rapidly glancing over the situation. The remaining two of the last group of three men, he saw, had reached the top, and the foremost of the Peary's crew were within several feet of the new hole in the ice. In a very short time all would be out and safe. Until then he had to hold off the two sealmen.

  Two? There were no longer only two, but five--ten--a dozen--and more. The dead were coming to life!

  Here and there in the various levels of drifting, motionless brown bodies that he thought the explosion had killed, one was stirring, awakening! The explosion had but stunned many or most of them, and now they were returning to consciousness!

  CHAPTER VIII

  The Duel

  Upon seeing this, all hope for life left Ken. He had only six shells left, and at best he could kill only six sealmen. Already, there were more than twenty about him, completely encircling the torpoon. They seemed afraid of it, and yet desirous of finishing it--they hung back, watching warily the thing that could strike and hurt from either end; but Ken knew, of course, that he could not count on their inaction long. One concerted charge would mean his quick end, and the death of most of the men above.

  Well, there was only one thing to do--try to hold them off until those men above had climbed out, every one.

  With this plan in mind, he maneuvered for a commanding position. Quietly he slid his motor into gear, and slowly the torpoon rose. At this first
movement, the wall of hesitating brown bodies broke back a little. It quickly pressed in again, however, as the torpoon came to a halt where Ken wanted it--a position thirty feet beneath, and slightly to one side, of the escaping men above, with an angle of fire commanding the area the sealmen would have to cross to attack them.

  Almost at once came action. One of the surrounding creatures swerved suddenly up toward the men. Instinctively angling the torp, Ken sent a nitro-shell at it; and the chance aim was good. The projectile caught the sealman squarely, and, after the convulsion, it began to drift downward, its body torn apart.

  "That'll teach you, damn you!" Ken muttered savagely, and, to heighten the effect he had created, he brought his sights to bear on another sealman in the circle around him--and fired and killed.

  This sight of sudden death told on the others. They grew obviously more fearful and gave back, though still forming a solid circle around the torpoon. The circle was ever thickening and deepening downward as more of those that the explosion had rendered unconscious returned to life.

  And then, above, the first man reached the hole, clawed at its rough edges and levered himself through.

  That was a signal. From somewhere beneath, two brown bodies flashed upward in attack. Fearing a general rush at any second, Ken fired twice swiftly. One shell missed, but the other slid to its mark. Almost alongside its fellow, one of the creatures was shattered and torn, and that evidently altered the other's intentions, for it abandoned the attack and sought safety in the mass of its fellows on the farther side.

  Another respite. Another man through the hole. And but two nitro-shells left!

  * * * * *

  The deadly circle, like wolves around a lone trapper who crouches close to his dying fire, pressed in a little; and by their ominous quietness, by the sight of their eyes all turned in on him, their concerted inching closer, Ken sensed the nearness of the charge that would finish him. All this in deep silence, there in the gloomy quarter-light. He could not yell and brandish his fists at them as the trapper by the fire might have done to win a few extra minutes. The only cards he had to play were two shells--and one was needed now!

  He fired it with deliberate, sure aim, and grunted as he saw its victim convulse and die, with dark blood streaming. Again the swarm hesitated.

  Ken risked a glance above. Only three men left, he saw; and one was pulled through the hole as he watched. Below, in one place, several seal-creatures surged upward.

  "Get back, damn you!" he cursed harshly. "All right--take it! That's the last!"

  And the last shell hissed out from the gun even as the last man, above, was pulled through up into the air and safety.

  Ken felt that he had given half his life with that final shell. Completely surrounded by a hundred or more of the sealmen, he could not possibly hope to maneuver the torpoon up to the hole in the ice and leave it, without being overwhelmed. He had held off the swarm long enough for the others to escape, but for himself it was the end.

  So he thought, and wondered just when that end would come. Soon, he knew. It would not take them long to overcome their fear when they saw that he no longer reached out and struck them down in sudden bloody death. Now it was their turn.

  "Anyway," the torpooner murmured, "I got 'em out. I saved them."

  But had he? Suddenly his mind turned up a dreadful thought. He had saved them from the sealmen, but they were up on the ice without food. There had been no time to apportion rations in the submarine; all the supplies were stacked around him in the torpoon!

  Searching planes would eventually appear overhead, but if he could not get the food up to the men it meant their death as surely as if they had stayed locked in the Peary!

  But how could he do it without shells, and with that living wall edging inch by inch upon him, visibly on the brink of rushing him. Some carried ropes with which they would lash the torpoon down as they had the others. Must all he and those men had gone through, be in vain? Must he die--and the others? For certainly without food, those men above on the lonely ice fields, all of them weakened by the long siege in the submarine, would perish quickly....

  And then a faintly possible plan came to him. It involved an attempt to bluff the seal-creatures.

  * * * * *

  Thirty feet above the lone man in the torpoon was the hole he had blasted in the ice. He knew that from the cone of light which filtered down; he did not dare to take his eyes for a second from the creatures around him, for all now depended on his judging to a fraction just when the lithe, living wall would leap to overwhelm him.

  Now the torpoon was enclosed by what was more a sphere of brown bodies than a circle. But it was not a solid sphere. It stretched thinly to within a few feet of the ice ceiling where, in one place, was the hole Ken had blown in the ice.

  He began to play the game. He edged the gears into reverse, gently angled the diving-planes, and slowly the torpoon tilted in response and began to sink back to the dark sea-floor.

  Motion appeared in the curved facade of sleek brown heads and bodies in front and to the sides. The creatures behind and below, Ken could not see; he could only trust to the fear inspired by the damage his propeller had wreaked on one of them, to hold them back. However, he could judge the movements of those behind and below by the synchronized movements of those in front; for the sealmen, in this tense siege, seemed to move as one--just as they would move as one when a leader got the courage to charge across the gap to the torpoon.

  In reverse, slowly, the torpoon backed downward. Every minute seemed a separate eternity of time, for Ken dared not move fast at this juncture, and he needed to retreat not less than fifty feet.

  Fifty feet! Would they hold off long enough for him to make it?

  Foot by foot the torpoon edged down at her forty-five-degree angle, and with every foot the watching bodies became visibly bolder. There was no light inside the torpoon--inner light would decrease the visibility outside--but Ken knew her controls as does the musician his instrument. Slowly the propeller whirled over, the torpoon dropped, slowly the diffused light from the hole above diminished--and slowly the eager wall of sealmen followed and crept in.

  Twenty-five feet down; and then, after a long time, thirty-five feet, and forty. Seventy feet up, in all, to the hole in the ice....

  Ken wanted seventy-five feet, but he could not have it. For the wall of sleek bodies broke. One or two of the creatures surged forward; other followed; they were coming!

  The slim torpoon leaped under the unleashed power of her motors--forward.

  * * * * *

  For one awful moment Ken thought he was finished. The vision of the hole was obscured by a twisting, whirling maelstrom of bodies, and the torpoon quivered and shook like a living thing in agony under glancing blows.

  But then came a patch of light, a pathway of light, leading straight up at a forty-five-degree angle to the hole in the ice above.

  Sealmen and torpoon had leaped forward at the same moment. Doubtless the creatures had not expected the shell to move so suddenly and decisively ahead, so that when it did, those in the van swerved to escape head-on contact.

  The torpoon gained speed all too slowly for her pilot. It naturally took time to gain full forward speed from a standing start. But she moved, and she moved fast, and after her poured the full tide of sealmen, now that they saw their prey running in retreat.

  From somewhere ahead appeared a rope, noosed to catch the fleeing prey. It slipped off the side. Another touched the bow, but it too was thrown off. The torpoon's forward momentum was now great; she was sweeping up at the full speed Ken had gone back to be able to attain. He needed full speed! The plan would fail at the last moment without it!

  Another rope; but it was the seal-creature's last gesture. Through the side plates of quarsteel the light grew fast; the ice was only ten feet away; a slight directional correction brought the hole dead ahead--and at full speed, twenty-four miles an hour, the torpoon passed through and into the thin air of the world o
f light and life.

  Right out of the hole, a desperate fugitive from below, she leaped, her propeller suddenly screaming, and arched high through the air before she dove with a rending, splintering crash onto the upper side of the sheet ice.

  And the sun of a cloudless, perfect Arctic day beat down on her; and men were all around, eagerly reaching to open her entrance port. It was done.

  * * * * *

  Kenneth Torrance, dazed, battered, hurting in every joint but conscious, found the torpoon's port open, and felt hands reach in and clasp him. Wearily he helped them lift him out into the thin sunlight. Sitting down, slitting his eyes against the sudden glare, he peered around.

  Captain Sallorsen was beside him, supporting him with one hand and pounding him on the back with the other; and there in front was the bearded scientist, Lawson, and the rest of the men.

  Ken took a great gulp of the clean, cold air.

  "Gosh!" was all he could say. "Gosh, that tastes good!"

  "Man, you did it!" shouted Sallorsen. "How, in God's name, I don't know--but you did it!"

  "He did!" said Lawson. "And he did it all himself. Even to the food, which should keep us till a plane comes by. If they haven't stopped searching for us."

  His words reminded Ken of something.

  "Oh, there'll be a plane over," he said. "Forgot to tell you, but I stole this torpoon--see?--and told the fellows they could come and get it somewhere right around here."

  Kenneth Torrance grinned, and glanced down at the battered steel shell which had borne him out of the water below.

  "And here it is," he finished. "A little damaged--but then I didn't promise it would be as good as new!"

  * * *

  Contents

  LONESOME HEARTS

  By RUSS WINTERBOTHAM