Part 2

"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."