Part 5

Slowly we approached, still out of Tollgamo's range. We had long since been seen, of course. The waving headlights of the ten huge black vessels turned our way. Monsters with searching, glaring eyes. And then a tentative shot came. In the blurred watery twilight it was a stab of thin violet light. Not instantaneous, but slow-moving as though for a second it was pushing its way at us. But it blurred to nothingness far short of us; and in a few seconds it died.

At Peters' signal we divided now, spreading fanshape between the leading Tollgamo ship and Arron; skimming close under the surface, still keeping three hundred feet or more away from the leading vessel. But we had to get within fifty feet for our rays to be effective! I could feel my heart pounding, and my blood seemed cold.

And then a puff of orange light from the bow of Peters' cylinder gave the signal for our first attack. Beside me I could hear Allen suck in his breath. My hands were on the small gun-firing mechanisms--my two small ray projectors on one side of the cylinder, Allen's on the other, with Leh's ranging in a quadrant of the bow and stern. In a slanting dive, we plunged forward and down.

* * * * *

It was a chaos of blurred confusion to me, that first slanting plunge that took us close past the looming black side of one of the Tollgamo vessels, half circling it until in a few seconds we had fired our six little stabbing bolts and were past, rising again. I was aware that all the area of water suddenly seemed churned into silver phosphorescence through which shapes were diving. A bolt stabbed at us and missed. Then as we were mounting, one caught us. For a second it clung, with a bubbling red viscosity of fusing metal, glaring against my small bullseye pane. Would it eat through? Undoubtedly, if it clung too long, or if another were to strike in the same place.

But we twisted away from it: and in another second its built-up electronic power had discharged and it died. I realized then the advantage of our mobility with our five hundred and fifty agile little units against the ten huge caterpiller vehicles of Tollgamo, at least we might have an equal chance. Their three hundred foot rays were thin as pencil-streaks. Not easy for them to hit a tiny, swift-moving target. And I saw too, that once we were close, there were many angles at which the rays could not reach us.

Leh, Allen and I each fired two charges in that first dive. I saw some of them strike against the looming black armoured hull of the Tollgamo vessel as we flipped past it, each hit marked by bubbling red pits of metal. Through the bullseye windows I caught a vague glimpse of crowded men and women Gorts inside.

Then we were back, almost at the surface, out of range again, wheeling, poising, with the enemy behind and beneath us. I stared down, and saw that the girls, like a school of plunging dolphins, were making their dive. And then I had my first sight of one as she was struck. She was a tiny descending silver streak; and the bolt darted up, caught her. For a horrible second or two it clung. I saw her waver; come loose from her sled. And then she was a twisted, blackened, almost shapeless blob, slowly drifting down, with crimson air-bubbles for a moment rising. Then on the black ridge bottom her inert form lay, with a little movement as the water made it weave, as though horribly she were still alive.

For five minutes we stared down at the swarm of attacking girls. They swarmed within the wide angles of the opposing rays. Some of them were at the hulls of the enemy ships, holding their rays close, trying to melt through.

Then at last they were rising; swooping back to the surface. Some of them! But others were wavering away. With broken mechanisms discarded, some were swimming free. And others were sinking. Broken, twisted little shapes, with the water tinted crimson as they sank.

Leh, Allen and I stared at each other, white-faced, as the girls came fluttering up, flipping on the surface to get air, organize into squads again; and to recharge their tiny projectors. The squads reformed. My heart sank at the pitiful gaps in the formations. We had lost more than a hundred and fifty girls in that first attacking dive. And two of our ten cylinder-boats were crippled. Air bubbles were oozing from them; then the exit escape porte of one of them opened as the little cylinder sank. The two men came out, with buoyant belts which all of us were wearing so that they floated away on the surface.

But we had done some damage. Two or three of the big Tollgamo vessels seemed to be in distress. The one leading the line had checked its advance. Those behind seemed trying to hasten forward, so that now the ships were bunching. One of them, seemingly out of control, had slued sidewise, close to the edge of the abyss where the green-black depths went down perhaps a thousand fathoms. Perilously close, so that now as we stared it sagged drunkenly on the brink and seemed out of commission. And at the window portes of another of them, a dull-red glare was apparent. An interior fire.

"Not too bad," Leh was muttering. "We'll do better, next time."

Where was Nereid? My heart seemed to stick in my throat with apprehension as I watched the girls coming up. And then I saw her; still unharmed. She came close past our turret on her power-sled, her white arm waved at us as she flipped past and broke the surface for air.

And then Allen suddenly gasped,

"What the devil is that? What now?"

Tollgamo wasn't waiting for our second dive! His leading ship suddenly was starting ahead of the others. And then suddenly, from three or four of the enemy vessels tiny black dots were rising. Water bullets.... Needle-like, foot-long projectiles. They came hurtling at us. And then they burst with muffled, blurred sounds of little explosions. Some were near the surface, tossing up spouts of iridescent water.

It startled us into sudden confusion. Several of our girls were caught in the exploding puffs; and one of our cylinders. I saw it break apart in sluggish tearing fragments of metal and what had been its living occupants. A girl, caught at the surface, was hurled into the air.

* * * * *

A chaos. And in the midst of it, Peters gave the signal for a general attack; sustained attack, this time. Again Leh plunged us into what now was a watery inferno. How long it lasted I cannot say. Ten minutes. Half an hour. An eternity of horror, with everyone for himself. There were times when I could see little of it. The shallow, fifty foot depth of ocean here was a glare of red and orange and opalescent light through which our cylinders dove and the girls plunged up and down like voracious little fishes.

There was an inferno of lights and muffled ghastly rumbles down below. And the surface now was strewn. Our broken cylinders sagging there; then sinking as the men tried to get out. Men and girls swimming, wounded, and then sinking. Chaos of human wreckage. The rippled daylight surface now was tossed by crazy waves; water stained with blood; or orange and blue with oil and gas-fumes.

Then I saw that Peters' cylinder was gone. Only ours and two others left. Leh, Allen and I, now in command. Empty authority. The girls, down in the weird lurid depths, were fighting with utter desperation, heedless of the possibility of command.

An eternity of horror. But now, two of the Tollgamo vessels had slid over the brink, sinking slowly into the abyss. I saw another of them burst with interior fire. Muffled explosions, that spewed out Gorts and broken equipment. Then there was a time when one of the distressed vessels emitted an inky fluid as though it were some giant squid--a pall of black water, to hide the disembarking men. We fought through it, until presently it drifted away.

"Getting them," I heard Allen mutter once. "By Heaven, only two of those boats in action now--Tollgamo's and this other one."

We were plunging at Tollgamo's ship. Its portes were red with glare. The enemy rays now were lessening. It seemed that only one or two were left. And the battle now had changed its aspect. From the broken Tollgamo ships, many of the Gorts had safely emerged, with helmets and weighted shoes so that now they were walking, swaying on the rocky bottom. Five hundred or more of them. And the girls swooped down at them. Myriad hand to hand combats between the unweildy Gorts and the Arron virgins that plunged at them like darting hungry sharks.

The bottom now was strewn with the dead as the girls plunged and fought and we darted our cylinder among them, struggling to find opportunity to strike with our rays.

Where was Nereid? Again cold apprehension struck at me; it was so long since I had seen her. And now a new ghastly horror was entering the turgid scene. Attracted by the lights, the muffled roars and the blood, monsters of the deep were coming. Eaters of carrion. Sea vultures. Some came in little swarms, a thousand tiny silvery shapes, darting at the bodies, picking at them until only white skeletons lay here on the slimy sea bottom. Other shapes, huge with glaring round eyes like torches, came slithering from the deeps, searching for the dead, seizing the wounded.

"That Tollgamo ship is all that's left," Leh was saying. He sped us toward it. Quite obviously now it was trying to escape. Forty or fifty girls were clinging to its hull; too close for its single remaining ray weapon to hit them; girls with close-held projectors eating with bubbling red electro-glare into the hull-plates. We had a glimpse into one of the bullseye portes--gas fumes and red glare in there; and the Gorts, trapped there, in a panic making ready to disembark. We lay close, firing our bolts.

Suddenly a wounded girl was drifting past our turret; she seemed struggling to get to our little pressure porte. Nereid?

Then I saw that it was Venta. She got into the porte; and I pumped out the water; threw myself in and bent over her. She was gasping, but still trying to smile at me.

"We--we have won, Earthman."

"Yes. Yes, Venta. You just lie quiet. Have you seen Nereid?"

"Yes. Here, just a little while ago. I don't know, now."

I stared out the porte bullseye. The Tollgamo ship was breaking; I could see its air coming out in bubbling puffs that caught our cylinder and shoved it away. That ship would be water-filled in a moment. And then I stiffened; tense with horror as I stared. A little side exit-porte of the wrecked vessel suddenly opened. A single huge figure lunged out. A dark-clad giant figure, with round air-helmet and weighted shoes.

Tollgamo! He was no more than fifty feet from me; a red sheen of light struck his helmet so that I could see his face with its quiet, grim smile. And then suddenly, in a leaping dive, he flung himself forward, and seized a girl who was clinging to the vessel's side, blasting with her ray-torch.

Nereid! In the glare, abruptly I saw her, as Tollgamo seized her, catching her by surprise so that she had no chance to escape him. And then her torch and her knife were gone, as he held her body against him and with swaying, shoving tread started away along the bottom.

* * * * *

There were weighted shoes here in our pressure porte. I was only a moment getting Venta out of the porte into the main part of the hull. I slid its door; adjusted my helmet; admitted the water. And then I was swaying out on the rocks, with a knife in my hand.

Vaguely I could see Tollgamo, with Nereid struggling in his grip as he advanced with swaying tread toward where, near at hand, the honeycombed cliff of that little crater-island loomed here. I struggled after him. Then I saw that he had plunged into what seemed a water-filled little passage leading back under the island. I was there in a moment; tense, alert, cautious now that he might be crouching somewhere here in ambush.

The ten foot high narrow passage wound up an ascent until unexpectedly my head broke the surface. I twitched off the helmet. I had thought that Tollgamo knew that he was being followed, but evidently he did not. Neck deep in water, I was near the rocky shore of a subterranean lagoon ... a huge jagged grotto here in the depths of the honeycombed little island.

And then I saw Tollgamo. His helmet was off now. Carrying Nereid in his arms, he had mounted a broken rocky wall of the grotto, so that he was some fifty feet back and ten feet above me. I had kicked off my weighted shoes. I tried to dive, but I was discovered. Nereid gave a little cry; and as Tollgamo saw me, he suddenly checked his climb, set Nereid on her feet and held her against him. I had floundered forward, on the shore now; and dropped my knife, plucking a little ray-projector from my belt. Its fifty foot stab was ample here. Was Tollgamo armed?

Brief thoughts; brief tableau. For that second he and Nereid stared down at me. A red glare painted them, a glare that came from what I saw now was a glowing pit almost beside them on this little volcanic island. In the heavy subterranean silence I could hear the low muttering, hissing rumble of the fires deep in the bowels of the earth, and the grotto was heavy with their sulphuric smell.

A slow ironic smile was on Tollgamo's gray face, painted now by the red and yellow glare.

"So, the Earthman!" he said. "And he finds Tollgamo unarmed."

My little projector was leveled; but as he held Nereid against him I could not dare fire. He saw it, and his ironic smile broadened. Was he really unarmed? It seemed so. I could see the empty weapon-clips at his belt, from which evidently he had torn his exhausted weapons and flung them away. And his hands were both in plain view, gripping Nereid's shoulders. There was just a second when I saw his gaze flick from my leveled gun as he desperately measured his chances for escape.

And then he seemed to reach his decision. The quiet smile still plucked at his thin gray lips. I must have made a move with my leveled muzzle; and suddenly it seemed to startle him.

"Don't fire, Earthman!" he said sharply. "You would kill her."

And then, with a twitch of his big powerful arms he swept Nereid, not further to shield himself, but behind him. And he added softly, to her:

"So you see Tollgamo has lost? That is too bad." His breath went out in a long hiss. "I had thought to conquer Arron, to share it with you." His soft voice was ironical; as though now at the last he was jibing at the futility of all human effort.

I stood numbed, withholding my shot as now he cast her away; and he stood alone on the red-yellow brink. His gaze turned to me.

"You see, Earthman, you need not kill me," he said gently. "I should not like anyone to do that--much less an Earthman."

Still his jibing irony. But there was tragedy in his smoldering dark eyes; the tragedy of failure, as now his dream at last was broken.

He was still quietly smiling, as he poised on the brink, staring down at the fiery abyss. Then slowly he leaned forward, toppled and fell. For a second his plummeting body was visible, and then the red-yellow glare swallowed it.

* * * * *

I think that there is little I need add. I have no wish to picture the return of our pitiful little army to Arron. Victorious army.... How trite, but how true it is--in warfare, even the victor is vanquished! But surely, there is a better time ahead for Venus now. Jenten-Shah, degenerate ruler of the Arones, was killed that night by an imbecile worker. Peters was killed; and Leh is ruling. Surely he will bring order out of chaos, and minimize license in the lives of the pleasure-loving Arones, so that now there need be no rebelling young Virgins with the opprobrium of Untouchables.

Certainly that is what we all hope.

Nereid and I are married now and are very happy. My strange little wife, daughter of two worlds. I know that I shall have to take her back to Venus presently. Loyally she insists she likes our Earth quite as well as Venus. But as I recall the lush tropic beauty of the glowing Arron nights, and the soft iridescence of the water--well, I doubt it very much.

I want Nereid to like Earth. Our little home is in the tropics, by the palm-lined edge of a lagoon. We are secluded here, which is what Nereid wants. When people see her she is dressed always in Earth fashion. But when we are, alone, at night--

I wanted to finish this narrative tonight. I thought I could finish by dawn. It is bright moonlight. I thought Nereid was asleep, but just a little while ago she came from our bedroom to the veranda where I am writing. Nereid, with her tawny hair flowing, her beautiful body again in the shining sea-green garment.

Then she went past me, flinging me her impish, whimsical little smile as she ran for the lagoon. She is swimming down there now. Occasionally she calls up to me, daring me to come down.

* * * * *

[Transcriber's Note: No heading for Section IV in original.]