by Harry Bates
neared,spread upwards and outwards. They angled up and up; the sea-floor washigher there. Ken, peering as best he could, made out that themountainous, looming bulk was the face of a giant underwater mound,whose uneven formation indicated that it was the result of somelong-past upheaval. It was the first of a rolling series of suchhillocks, six or seven in all, stretching back into the gloom. Theirrounded peaks reached to within a few feet of the water's ice-sheathedsurface. Surely the creatures' home was among these mounds.
He was skirted round the base of the first hillock and caught a glimpseof something in its face which was apparently of his captors'construction. It was a hole, dark, mysterious, perhaps fifteen feet indiameter, and barring it were three great gray stakes, reaching from topto bottom. Behind the stakes, Ken got a jumbled impression of a body,large and sleek, of black streaked with white, that moved restlesslyback and forth in the hole and occasionally seemed to lash out in anger.He wondered what it was. Before long, he knew.
The party of seal-creatures stopped before the second of the row ofhillocks. In its face, too, was a hole--a well of blackness--but with nostakes across it. He twisted his head back and saw the carcass of thekiller whale he had slain being guided up to the entrance and shovedthrough. Then, from the upper rim of the hole, three stakes similar tothe others he had seen slid down and barred it.
"Storehouses!" he muttered. "Storehouses, I'll bet anything. And killerwhales are their food. They keep 'em in the holes until they're needed.But I'll swear it was a live whale I saw in the first one--and how inthe dickens could they capture a mighty killer with their dinky spearsand ropes?"
There he had to leave the question, for its answer implied greaterintelligence in the creatures than he would admit.
Intelligence--in seals!
And now he was guided smoothly forward to the third hillock, where theleaders of the group glided through a V-shaped cleft in its face. Hisguards brought him along behind.
A wry smile twisted Kenneth Torrance's lips. To him, the cleft was morethan an entranceway. To him it signified the beginning of the hopeless,lonely end of his life....
* * * * *
The cleft led into a corridor, and the corridor was softly illuminatedwith a peculiar light whose source he could not discover. It served toshow him a passageway that was wide rather than tall, and gouged fromthe firm, clayey soil by blunt tools that had left uneven marks.Straight ahead it led, and, as they continued, the mysteriousillumination brightened, until suddenly, rounding a turn, its sourceappeared.
Like will-o'-the-wisps, a score of arrows of light flashed softly intoview down the corridor. They were of delicate green and orange andyellow, glowing and luminous, and hovering like humming birds betweenfloor and ceiling. Ken looked at them in some alarm until his nearerapproach showed him what they were, and then he exclaimed in amazement:
"Why--they're fish! Living electric bulbs!"
A school of slender, ten-inch fish they were, each one a radiant,shimmering, lacey-finned gem of orange or green or yellow. In concertthey shot to the ceiling over the party of seal-creatures, who stillswam impassively ahead, paying no attention to them, and from therescattered in quick darts in all directions, showering the cortege withwashes of spectral luminosity. Then the corridor crooked again, and withone simultaneous movement they were gone. And the scene that layrevealed before Kenneth Torrance took his breath from him.
In the passageway he had seen a score of the living jewels; now hebeheld hundreds. He peered up at a shimmering sheet of brilliance,composed of hundreds of the slender refulgent fish, all swimming in slowrotation. Below them was a large cavern, which he guessed had beencreated by hollowing out one of the underwater hillocks. The sides wererounded, and pitted with holes that represented other passageways,showing dark against the luminosity from above. And streaming out fromthese dark holes of corridors came dozens of the seal-creatures,gathering in response to some unheard, unseen signal that had calledthem to witness the strange captive their fellows had brought in....
* * * * *
Ken's guards gripped him more firmly and he was guided forward anddownward to the smooth black floor of soil.
Scores of large, placid eyes stared at him from the slowly undulating,brown-skinned bodies packed close about him. The sight was so weird, sobeyond his imagination, that he laughed a little hysterically.
"Dreaming!" he said. "Dreaming! But what a dream!"
Silently, a space cleared in the center of the horde. His bonds weretaken away, the guards released his arms and he righted himself andstood there on braced legs, the object of a concerted gaze.
This, the torpooner felt, was the crucial period. Something was about tobe decided. If it looked bad he would make a wild--and of course,futile--break for freedom, and die quickly when they punctured his suit.But meanwhile he would stick things out. Anything might happen in thatfantastic convocation.
There came a stir in the tiers of brown bodies. An aisle cleared, anddown it a single seal-creature glided slowly towards KenTorrance--undoubtedly the leader of the herd, ruler of the underwaterlabyrinth.
Gracefully the creature glided up to the lone human, and when only afoot away extended one of its long upper flippers so that its webbededge rested on his sea-suit's casque. And its placid brown eyes hungclose to the face-shield and gazed through inquisitively, intelligently!Intelligently! No longer did Kenneth Torrance doubt that. As he heldabsolutely motionless under the close-searching scrutiny, his brain rangwith the conviction that this creature, this thing of blubbery body andlong, webbed flipper-arms and legs--this brown-skinned denizen of theArctic underseas was, with all its fellows, related to him, a man of theupper world.
Men they were; or, rather, blubber-men!
* * * * *
Previously he had marveled at something suggestively human-like in theirappearance; now he recognized human intelligence in his observer'speering brown eyes and questing movements of the flipper over his headcasque and suit. Warm red blood flowed in its blubber-sheathed body; anintelligent brain lay in the fat round head. And why not?
Whales, ages ago, were land mammals, animals that walked on the soil ofthe dim, early world. They had taken to the seas in quest of food, hadstayed there and never returned; and Nature had guarded their bodiesagainst the cold and great depths by giving them layer upon layer ofoily blubber. The ancestors of these creatures before him might wellhave lived on the soil, walked and run as he did; then, when the icecame, taken to the sea and made a new home for themselves.
They had enticed the splendent light-fish into their caverns to giveillumination. Intelligence almost human. A brain not as highly developedas man's, but a human brain!
Ken Torrance had been almost apathetic toward his eventual fate, butsuddenly, now, a great hope came to him--and twin with it, on its heels,came fear. If, or since, this creature inspecting him had anintelligent, human brain, in some way he might be able to correspondwith it. He might be able to show that his real body was inside thesea-suit; that he had to have air; that he would die if he were keptunderwater, that he could not survive as a prisoner. These creaturesappeared to be friendly; seemed to wish him no harm. If he could showthem that he was a man of the upper world, they might let him go.
If he could do it! He had to make known to the herd leader that hebreathed air, and that he'd die if they didn't release him at once. Onthat depended life and death.
Ken trembled as he cast about for some way of putting over his idea, andthen the plan came. Smiling through his face-shield at the brown eyes soclose, he drew back slowly and took out a short steel crowbar from thebelt at his waist. He bent over and made a line on the soft floor.
All eyes watched him; every creature held motionless, apparentlyinterested, eager to understand. Under his suit-clad figure the crowbartraced a rude outline of a man in a sea-suit. The torpooner pointed tothe drawing and then fingered his suit, repeating the gesture severaltimes. Then he drew another
figure in the soil, this one intended torepresent him without the sea-suit. It was not as bulky; the featureswere sharper and thinner. Ken pointed to the twin dots standing foreyes, then tapped his face-shield; he did this again and again.
For a moment the leader did not move; but then he slid forward andstared through the shield. Rapidly Ken opened and closed his eyes, andpointed again to the dots on the drawing's face.
"Eyes! Eyes!" he said excitedly, voicing the thought his brain wasmaking. "Eyes--inside the suit! The suit's not me; I'm inside! Eyes!" Hewaited for a reaction, tense and strained. The blubber-man reached outone flipper-arm and took the steel bar from his hand.
A thrill ran through him as the creature dipped its body down and beganto draw in the soil. Laboriously, crudely, he outlined another sea-suit,and on the circle representing the face-shield marked two dots--eyes.
"He's getting it!" Ken cried.
The
