CHAPTER XV
The region of the Marinoids was a stretch of water bounded by great rocky cliffs on all sides. It was subterranean water—by which I mean that by ascending in it one came at last to a rocky ceiling. We were, at Rax, near the center of this subterranean sea. What was its extent, I cannot say. All measurements, all standards of comparison, were lost to me. In depth—at Rax—it might have been two thousand feet or more from the sea-floor to the ceiling above, which is to say some two or three times the depth of the city itself.
How many entrances there were from the outside world, I do not know. Through one of them Nona and I had come when Caan and his party first encountered us. To the Marinoids, who were not explorers, the idea of a surface to water was inexplicable. They could not conceive of such a thing; they could not understand it when I tried to explain it to them.
There were several Marinoid cities besides Rax, but none nearly so large. And there was—shall I say a rural?—population. In the great forests, Marinoid dwellings were occasionally to be found—isolated huts of sea-weed, clinging like bird-nests to the wavering branches of the trees. And in the open water other scattered families of a more adventurous turn, lived in huge shells from which they had excavated the living tissue—or lived in holes hollowed out of the banks of black ooze.
The boundaries of the Marinoid domain presented themselves as almost perpendicular cliffs—dark, jagged rock, with slabs and banks of black clay, mounds of coral, red, black and white, or a tangle of slimy vegetation. Openings which were caves—a cliff-face honeycombed with them. And the ceiling was of similar character.
One of the boundaries—the one nearly opposite to where Nona and I had entered this world—was somewhat different. Here the cliff-face rose to over three thousand feet. But here also, the ceiling was even higher, so that between them there was left an opening a hundred feet or more in height, and a mile, at least, in horizontal width. It was a fearsome opening. Its floor seemed to extend backward and downward. The water in there was black; a thick slimy ooze was under it. And there seemed to be in it the suggestion of a noisome stench that lay beyond.
This was the entrance to another region, of unknown extent—the Water of Wild Things as the Marinoids called it. What might lie in there, none could say. A few had penetrated into it a short distance, and returned with lurid tales which none believed. And others had gone and never come back.
But that there were half-savage humans living there, everyone believed. Og was bred of them, some said; and now that he had voluntarily gone there to live, as rumor had it, so much seemed a certainty.
Strange animals occasionally came from the Water of Wild Things. A sea-monster had come once. But that was in the dim past, remembered only by legend. The monster had all but overcome the cloud of Marinoids who had desperately set upon it.
Such were the conditions under which we, at Rax, were living.
And now I am ready to tell you of that series of incidents which awakened us to our danger. They did not at first concern me personally, and so I paid them little heed. That is a commentary upon your own life, is it not? Soon the thing struck home to me with its tragedy. Ah, then how different it seemed! We can bear the grief of our friend so much more philosophically than our own!
The first of these incidents in Rax came when Boy was about two months old. A young virgin, the daughter of one of Caan’s worker, disappeared. She was a girl somewhat younger than Nona. She was beautiful, in Marinoid fashion. To you, all these Marinoids must seem grotesque—unhuman perhaps. But beauty is not universally standardized—only locally. We admire our own kind. Your natives of Zanzibar think their own black-skinned, thick-lipped belles the most beautiful on Earth. And as I have said once before, in the Marinoid world the Marinoid women were the standard of beauty. Nona, so different, was the exception, the abnormality.
This girl who disappeared had been with one of Caan’s scattered parties working on the sea-bottom, gathering shell-food. She had wandered away from the others, and when the time came to return to Rax, she was missing. We thought she might have become ill and gone home.
But she was not at home—nor could she be found anywhere in the city. Even this did not arouse much interest, except to her own immediate family. It was thought that some young Marinoid man had taken her for mate. According to custom the couple might readily have disappeared for a time—gone out together to live in the forest to escape work until their first period of love was past.
But there seemed no young man unaccounted for—and the girl did not return. Even so, the incident would have been forgotten, but soon another young girl disappeared.
There were perhaps thirty who vanished during that year. They were not all from the workers outside the city. We had long since ceased to take women with us; and those who lived in the forests and the mudbanks came crowding into Rax—and to the other cities nearby.
We knew very soon, of course, that our Marinoid women were being stolen. And there was one crowning incident that at last made us understand.
It was at what you would call midnight, when the city was asleep. Caan and I, on a belated errand, were swimming down one of the vertical streets. The place was deserted; the street was empty; the lights at intervals on the side walls of the houses illumined the water with a green, diffused glow—like lights in a thick fog at night on your Earth. The windows along the street for the most part stood open. Everywhere was heavy silence, with only the swish of the water as Caan and I swam through it.
A green figure in the horizontal street below us attracted our attention. It seemed to be a man swathed in a green cloak of seaweed. He saw us coming, and darting up to the street light which hung nearby, he flung something over it.
The light was obliterated; shadows fell over everything.
Caan and I were startled; we hung poised, just above the cross-street so that we could see along it in both directions. There were lights at distant corners. We heard a low but penetrating cry from near at hand. A signal! Other figures in the distance darted up through the water and put out the lights. The entire street was in darkness.
Caan and I whirled downward, shouting. Through the window of a house, we saw the stiffened body of a woman come floating. There was light enough for us to see her white face and arms—a woman unconscious, shocked into insensibility as we later learned, by a bolt of animal electricity from her abductor.
Her body floated from the window as though pushed from behind. In the darkness, green swathed forms seized it—forms which were barely discernible as blurs in the dark water—seized it and began rapidly towing it away.
Caan and I were after them. Our cries were arousing the city. Voices—confused questions—came from within the houses. Figures appeared; the street behind us was in a turmoil.
The woman’s body with its almost invisible assailants was moving forward rapidly. Lines of white as the highly aerated water was stirred, radiated out V-shaped from its rapid progress.
But Caan and I, unburdened, could swim the faster. We overtook the invaders. There was a struggle in the darkness. A bolt of electricity went through me, but I recovered from it. Caan was shouting in hot anger as he struck at the green shapes that were attacking him.
The water all about us was lashed into white. It caught and reflected the light from a suddenly illumined window near at hand. I found myself gripping Og!
“You!”
But my voice seemed to inspire him to frenzied effort. He jerked away from me—was gone into the shadows.
Caan was now shouting triumphantly. He had dispersed his adversaries. The woman’s white body—neglected—had sunk to the floor of the street. We swam down to her, chafed her arms and neck until at last she recovered consciousness.
The street was relighted. The houses were emptying themselves of their frightened inmates. A crowd gathered around us with confused startled questioning.
But Og and all his cohorts had escaped.
An hour later, when I returned home, Boy was lying in the hollow white shell which was his cradle, crying lustily. And Nona—my Nona—was gone!
CHAPTER XVI
The hours that followed were a confused horror and despair to me. Yet there seemed no one but myself and Caan who considered this disaster more vital than those which had preceded it. At last we knew that the young women of Rax were being stolen—from under our very eyes—from the heart of the city, in the silence of the Time of Sleep. We knew now also, that they were being taken into the dread Water of Wild Things. Og’s presence proved that. Og had gone to live with the fabled humans, half-savage, that legend said lived with the monsters of that strange dark region. And now Og had come back—and had been caught in the very act of an abduction. It was all clear now. And all we had to do was to guard our women—to watch carefully the entrance to the Water of Wild Things, that nothing, human or savage, could come out of it to trespass on the Marinoid domain.
Thus ran the sentiment of the city; and the King, making a speech from the parapet of his palace roof-top, assured us in flowing phrases that the danger now was past. No marauders could come from the Water of Wild Things now that we were on the alert to stop them. He, our Monarch, assured us of that. Our women in future, were secure.
Had Nona been safe at my side, no doubt I should have applauded these sentiments as did most of the other onlookers. But Nona was not at my side. She was gone—into that horrible unknown region from whence none returned. The King said Marinoid women now were safe! What was that to me, with my Nona gone?
There was talk of an expedition into the Water of Wild Things. But none would volunteer, save those comparatively few who already had lost wives or daughters. Caan stood by me. He would go. And I—there would have been no sleep or food for me again had I tried to stay in Rax and yield up Nona to her fate.
There were no artificial weapons available in Rax save of one type—that slim hunting spear made of fish-bone—the spear with which the King’s attendant had struck me down when first I was being brought to Rax. These spears were all the Prince and I had had for our hunting expeditions.
Other weapons? The Marinoids had had them in times gone by. But once—a lifetime before—civil war had broken out between two of the Marinoid cities; and when it was over all weapons save the simple spear, were abolished. There seemed no need of weapons. There was practically no wild life in Marinoid waters. The monster that had once come to devour them was a fable out of the distant past. And so they lived on in a false security making themselves defenseless so that they would not be tempted to fight; and forgetting that their very defenselessness must prove an irresistible temptation for some enemy to attack them!
We organized our meager, pitiful little rescue party. Led by Caan and me—with Caan’s wife to care for Boy while we were gone—there were no more than fifty of us in total. Then, quite without warning, Prince Atar signified his intention of joining us—commanding us in person.
Can you guess the joy it brought to my heart? Our Prince, disregarding even the commands of his father, was coming with us!
Atar—for so I called him now in the intimacy which had come between us—was younger than myself. A slim, clear-featured youth, with a boyish smile, but eyes which had in them the look of one born to command. And Caan—a man past the zenith of his life, whose arms were no longer limber with youth but with a body strong and sturdy nevertheless. With these two to help me I felt that I could conquer whatever strange creatures we might encounter—and get my Nona back.
Our party was no more than together, when Atar announced we were making a mistake. There were fifty of us, practically unarmed. We were too large a party to go anywhere in secret; we would, by our very numbers, be but provoking an attack.
Atar’s plan, in brief, was that he, Caan and myself, should slip quietly into the Water of Wild Things and see what conditions were there. Then, perhaps without ever having been seen or forcing an encounter, we could return and plan an expedition in greater force—a force sufficiently great to insure success.
To me, whose one and only desire was to follow Nona and get her back, the Prince’s words seemed rational indeed. What did I care for the safety of those other Marinoid girls who had been stolen?
The Prince, nevertheless, was right from every angle, and so it was decided that we three should go alone.
I shall never forget the scene as the Prince parted from his mother on the roof-top of the Palace. We were going to what everyone considered almost certain death. We would go, and they would never see or hear from us again.
But with these Marinoids there were no heroics. No shouting and applause as the heroes went forth to battle. That is left for you really civilized humans who wage war after a more vainglorious fashion.
These Marinoids, crowding every corner of the cube of open water before the King’s palace, hovered in silence as we prepared to leave. And the silence deepened as the Queen stood before her son, and he knelt at her feet.
“Goodbye, Atar,” she said; and her glance included Caan and me. “We will wait and hope—for you to come back.”
Her arm brushed his sleek head as he rose and turned away. We departed; and her brave, inscrutable smile followed us, as between those silent, solemn ranks of spectators we slowly swam along the streets and out of the city.
And presently, with tumultuously beating hearts, we three with only our slender spears, were approaching that dread black opening which marked the entrance to the Water of Wild Things.
CHAPTER XVII
We entered the opening, swimming in a group with Atar leading. It was already new territory for us. Our hunting expeditions had never taken us even as far as this; we were always content to remain in Marinoid waters. As we advanced, the rocky ceiling overhead was closing down on us, until soon there was no more than twice the length of our bodies between it and the floor.
On both sides the dark water stretched out as far as we could see into blackness also. We were descending now at an angle of perhaps forty-five degrees.
We had gone what you would call a mile possibly, when we came suddenly to a tangle of coral—a barrier that reached from floor to ceiling. I call it coral. It might have been a petrified vegetation. An all but impenetrable thicket—white like the frosted underbrush of your Northern winter forests—it seemed to bar our further progress.
We stopped; consulted, and swam to the left and right. But the tangle extended in both directions to the edges of the mile-wide passageway.
“It is this,” said Atar, “which keeps our own region free of monsters. They cannot easily pass a barrier like this.” He was smiling at Caan and me. “To this, perhaps we owe our safety.”
Caan was poking at the thicket, and we found after a moment that we could with difficulty force our way through it.
The realization that Atar’s words brought us was at once reassuring and alarming. If no creatures of the wild could pass this barrier, what then might lie on its other side?
Caan, older and more poised than either Atar or me, was wasting no time on such thoughts.
“Come,” he said. “Here we can get through.”
The white underbrush must have extended for several hundred feet back and downward. We forced our bodies through it, seeking small orifices, bending aside the twigs, or breaking them off for they were very brittle.
We were an hour or more getting through. A few small bottle-shaped fish with protruding, ball-like eyes on the sides of the head, lurked here and there. They watched us curiously—unafraid, almost resentful it seemed, with their sidelong glances and their hasteless movements to avoid us. But we paid them little heed, for such as they often wandered into Marinoid waters and were easily killed with our spears.
The tangle of white underbrush gave way at last into open water. Again we saw the ceiling and floor close together—the same narrow slit sloping sharply downward.
With the white underbrush gone, the water seemed darker—so dark that we could hardly see each other a few lengths away. It was warmer too—unpleasantly warm; and to our nostrils came the taint of that stench now unmistakable.
We had been swimming downward for what seemed an interminable time when abruptly the floor beneath us dropped away into a perpendicular cliff. Simultaneously the ceiling had heightened—disappeared into the watery shadows. We found ourselves poised with a vast void of ink before us. It might have been illimitable for all we could see of its boundaries. And empty! There was nothing but blackness—but it was that pregnant blackness that seems, not empty but merely to conceal.
“We must go down,” said Atar. I could hear that he was trying to keep his voice steady. “They would live—down on the sea-bottom.”
We descended along the side of the perpendicular cliff. A thousand feet? Three thousand? I cannot say. The water grew steadily warmer until its heat began seriously to oppress us. The thought came to me suddenly that we were well into the bowels of my meteor; its internal fires, now very close perhaps, were heating the water. My meteor! How remote the outside world—the outer surface—the Heavens—Saturn—the stars and the vast, unfathomable distances of the Stellar Universe—seemed to me now! I had been born out there somewhere. It was the first time in ages that such a memory had crossed my mind.
“Look!” cried Caan softly.
We huddled together against that black cliff-face. Below us in the void, a glowing point of light was moving. It seemed miles away; but it was no more than twenty or thirty feet, for as it approached we saw it was a long, sinuous thing with an illuminated head—a head that glowed phosphorescent—luridly green.
We held our breaths. The thing went past us—quietly, without seeming to notice us. It was a ribbon-like thing thirty feet long, two feet high, and no more than a few inches thick. A pallid white ribbon of puffy slime, frayed and tattered at its edges, it undulated gruesomely from end to end. In a moment it was gone, into that void of ink from whence it had come.
Again we descended. Other creatures passed us—headless things of black with illuminated parasites clinging to them; great fishes, star-shaped, with a brilliant green head in the center and each point of the star as long as our bodies; fishes, or were they animals? that were all head, it seemed.
We took heart, for none seemed to notice us. But there was a balloon of white jelly. It floated past us quite close. It was larger than any one of us. It seemed harmless and Atar swam beside it. Then suddenly the thing expanded, lost all its form and like a cloud of white mist, enveloped him. He screamed and we rushed to his rescue.
In an instant we were all three plunged into a confused, frantic horror for which I can find no words. Like thick white glue that was sticky, yet slimy, this almost imponderable stuff fought with us! Fought, I say—for it was using an intelligence against us! We floundered, flailing the water with frantic arms and legs. A noisome stench from the gluey stuff sickened us; the feel of it made our flesh crawl and the gorge rise in our throats. It was uncannily flimsy stuff. We could tear it into shreds, fling it away; but always it came back, to weld itself together. There was an intelligence in it! Not a centralized power of thought, like a brain, but an instinct for battle that must have been inherent in every smallest fibre of it.
We escaped at last. How, I do not know. Perhaps the thing wearied of us. And as we struggled away exhausted, with its horrible gluey particles which we had breathed in choking our lungs—we saw it floating off, ragged but still balloon-like, its original shape almost unimpaired.
We reached at last the bottom of the void. It was not level, but tumbled as though some cataclysm of nature had tossed it about. Banks of black ooze, a hundred feet high, were honeycombed with holes; valleys were beside them—valleys bristling with stalactites of black and white coral which stood up like pointed spears to impale the unwary trespasser. And there were miniature volcanic-looking peaks—cone-shaped. From one of them a stream of water almost hot, was issuing.
Frequently now, we saw lights; and all of them were the naturally lighted heads and bodies of swimming creatures. They moved about lazily, confidently, ignoring us; and we knew that when they were hungry they would feed, either upon others smaller of their kind—or upon us.
Over this tumbled, broken sea-bottom—where occasionally a giant crab or something of the kind would scuttle from a shadow into one of the deeper shadowed holes—we swam at an altitude of about fifty feet. We carried no light; and our bodies were shrouded in green-black cloaks. We still held our spears—poor, useless, futile things! Yet, as Atar said, they might not be useless against humans. And it was the humans, with their greater intelligence, that we now feared most. Conditions of life here in the Water of Wild Things, now became plain to us. These wild creatures were for the most part inoffensive up to the point of satisfying their own need for food. They fed upon each other and thus reduced their number. The humans, in open battle with them, were doubtless helpless. But the humans had the intelligence to hide—to escape. And the creatures of the wild did not bother unduly to pursue them.
Does this seem illogical to you? I assure you, it is not. The conditions we found, here in the Water of Wild Things, in the bowels of that meteor flying amid the Rings of Saturn, were almost identical with those which prevailed in the early periods of your own Earth’s history. There is not, and never has been, a wild creature as predatory, as ferocious as Man himself. Your lion and tiger are cowards unless spurred by fright or hunger. The wild animals of your Earth would have been glad to live at peace with Mankind. It has been Man himself who consistently has been the aggressor.
“See there!” cried Caan softly. “Is that perhaps a place where humans live?”
Below us, in the distance ahead, were a number of tiny pin-points of light. And even as Caan spoke, a human figure passed near us—a figure swimming swiftly downward with a fugitive, frightened speed. It seemed to hold a sort of lantern in one of its hands outstretched—a small, shrouded light to guide it through the darkness. It did not see us, and in a moment it had passed downward into the shadows. But the moving point of its light remained visible.
“Come!” urged Caan softly. “That will show us the way. Hurry!”
We swam downward, following the point of light.
CHAPTER XVIII
The light ahead of us winked like a will-o’-the-wisp as intervening branches of coral, the edge of a mud-bank, or perhaps the body of some living creature, momentarily blotted it out. We were close to the bottom now. Along here it was a rolling, but fairly even bank of ooze, with grotesque squat plants growing in it.
The light could not have been more than a few hundred feet in advance of us; in its glow we could sometimes see the outlines of the human figure carrying it. We did not dare speak aloud now; we swam with that speed and silence which only one who lives in the water can attain.
Presently the light dipped downward and vanished. We saw that this figure we were following had entered a black cave-mouth—an opening which ran diagonally down into a slimy bank of mud. And we saw, too, that the points of steady light which had first attracted our attention were the reflected glow of illumination from somewhere beneath the sea floor.
Silently we slipped into the cave-mouth. The moving light was down there: then abruptly it disappeared.
“Wait!” whispered Caan. “Go slower!”
We advanced cautiously—and came again to a hedge of coral which impeded our passage. But this barrier we saw at once was artificial. It was the crude doorway—created by human intelligence and industry—which barred the creatures of the wild from entering. We threaded our way through it. Any one of those sea-monsters could have battered it down had he known his strength. But such a knowledge is given only to Man.
Beyond the barrier the dim glow of a diffused green light became visible. We edged cautiously forward, turned a corner, came suddenly to a ledge, and stopped—breathless, with wildly beating hearts.
We were looking down from near the ceiling of a cave. The water filling it was lighted with a pale green radiance, that lent a ghastly, wavering unreality to the scene. The cave might have been several hundred feet in width—nearly circular—and shallow, a hundred feet perhaps from floor to ceiling. The opposite wall to us was plainly visible. It was gouged out with niches in ranks and tiers—shallow ledges like the houses of your ancient, most primitive “Cliff-dwellers.” We could see little family groups squatting on many of them—humans, not unlike the Marinoids in form—men, and women, and children.
But it was none of this that caused our hearts to leap so wildly. The floor of this community house was at the moment crowded with human figures. The figure we had followed in was swimming downward to join them. On a raised platform—a shelf of ooze at the side and bottom of the cave—several old men were sitting. They were not Marinoids—but they seemed to differ principally in the eyes, which were much larger and more vacant, and in the pallid, ghastly whiteness of the puffy flesh of their bodies.
On the same platform stood Og! He was gazing down at the throng of people before him—haranguing them. His voice reached us—not Marinoid words, but enough like them—a corruption—to make them intelligible to us.
All this we saw at a brief glance. And the crowning thing: On the platform also, between Og and the white old men, my Nona was sitting with her arms bound at her sides! My Nona, beautiful as always, pink skin, blue eyes and golden hair—so vivid amid that pallid, ghastly throng! And she was unharmed—with spirit unbroken—I could see that by the flash of her eyes, her scornful, unwavering gaze as she leveled it at the puffy white faces staring up at her.
My Nona!
We crouched there on that upper ledge, staring down through the green water of the cave, and listened to Og as he harangued that pallid, puffy-faced throng. His words came up to us clear—words which, as I have said, were not Marinoid but a corruption of them sufficiently close to the original to be intelligible to us. We listened, breathless. What we heard made the past plain to us; and made our own future—the danger hanging over all the Marinoids—equally plain.
For a moment we forgot our own position there on the ledge—forgot even Nona whom we had come to rescue and who was sitting behind Og on the platform, arms bound at her sides, with scorn on her beautiful face and her eyes flashing fire at her captors.
For Og, with vehement, enthusiastic words, was explaining to these, his own people, how he would soon lead them into battle against the Marinoids! Rax and its sister cities would be captured; the Marinoid men killed or reduced to slavery; and all the beautiful, peaceful Marinoid domain turned over to the rule and the enjoyment of Og and his people!
It made us shudder; but we held ourselves quiet. Caan, older than Prince Atar and I, pulled us back when in our eagerness to hear Og’s every word we would have pressed thoughtlessly forward and risked discovery from below.
These people called themselves Maagogs—two long, very harsh syllables. Down here under the Water of Wild Things, hidden away in caves, mud-holes and subterranean tunnels, there were doubtless thousands of them—dragging out a furtive existence, menaced on every hand by monsters of the deep. To them, Nature herself must have seemed an inexorable enemy, as though their very being were against her laws, her wishes.
For centuries they had apathetically struggled on. And then, as though to blot them out entirely, Nature had turned on them still further. Of recent years the pallid, dull-eyed Maagog women had borne but one female to three males. The Maagog women were dying out; soon the race would become extinct.
With this dearth of women of their kind, Maagog men of the more prepossessing appearance (a generation before) had smuggled themselves into the Marinoid race. Their children—half-breeds—were living there now, with their Maagog heritage unsuspected by the trusting, simple-minded Marinoids.
All this and more, Og explained to the throng of Maagogs he had assembled before him, as he outlined his plans of what he now proposed to do.
“Quiet!” murmured Caan to Atar and me.
Og’s voice went on. He had left Rax and come back to the Water of Wild Things because he loved his own people. It had been his idea that they steal the Marinoid women. The Maagog race must go on—on to conquest, to victory!
A cheer rolled out as he said it. But we who listened knew it was Og’s own personal advancement—and not love of his people—which actuated him. And his very next words made that plain.
He—Og the Executioner—would lead his people to victory. And he would rule them as King. Og the Executioner! Thus he referred to himself. We did not know at the moment just what he meant. But, as you shall hear, we were soon to learn in very ghastly fashion.
War with the Marinoids was coming! Og had sent messengers down with his tidings. The messengers were coming back; and from everywhere came the news that the Maagogs were willing to fight. If their present rulers would urge them on (and here Og turned to the white old men behind him) the Maagog people would mass themselves at Og’s command—would follow him against the Marinoids. And when victory had crowned their efforts, he, Og, would rule them in Rax—the most beautiful spot in all the world—where they would all live in peace and security forever. And the beautiful Marinoid women would be their women, and the Marinoid men would be their servants and their slaves!
It was a vigorous, exhilarating speech, and the crowd on the cave-floor responded to it with prolonged cheering, while Og stood silent, smiling upon them triumphantly. Then abruptly he turned toward Nona—my beautiful Nona—who with spirit still unbroken flashed back at him her look of contempt.
And again Og spoke. This woman—this strangely fashioned woman he had found among the Marinoids—would be his Queen—to rule with him when they had conquered Rax. He approached Nona, laid his hand on her shoulder. I started forward; but Caan held me back.
“Quiet, Nemo! Wait! If they discover us, we are lost.”
But my Nona did not shrink away from Og. I knew that every fibre of her revolted at his touch—but she did not show it. Her gaze on his face was steady—and full of that same cold contempt.
“This woman,” said Og, as he smiled down at the listening throng, “will be your Queen. She is frightened now. She will soon see how great am I—how great is the honor I offer her.”
He was talking for Nona’s benefit, I knew.
“I respect her,” he said. “I shall conquer the Marinoids first—and she—her love, her admiration—shall be my reward.”
He turned away from Nona, and, advancing to the very edge of the platform, held out his arms to the people.
“I—Og the Executioner—will rule you. The waters we will conquer are fair and beautiful. Cool and open—room for us all—and free of monsters. Riches for every one of you!”
The cheering halted him again. The crowd was waving its thin arms.
“Look!” whispered Atar to me.
From across the cave, a niche halfway up the opposite side, a Maagog woman launched herself into the water, swimming downward toward the platform and Og. She seemed not much older than Nona—a girl not unlike a Marinoid girl, but dead white of flesh. And puffy, with huge staring eyes and a mouth that was a gash.
She swam downward slowly and landed upon the platform close beside Og. He confronted her. She spoke to him, pleadingly—but so softly that we on the ledge could not catch her words. Then she gestured toward Nona; and then she threw her arms about Og’s neck. He struggled to release himself, while the crowd, silent now, looked on.
A moment, and Og was free, standing erect. The Maagog girl was lying on the platform where he had thrown her. She rose to her feet painfully, flinging at Nona a glance of unutterable hatred. Then again she appealed to Og—a gesture of love, despairing, desperate. It seemed to madden him. He stepped forward and struck her across the face with the flat of his arm. She fell backward, righted herself in the water, and swam slowly, limpingly away. A moment more, and she was back in the wall niche from whence she had come.
Og, with a scowl, went on talking to the crowd—telling them of the coming Marinoid war. Never once did he look up to where the girl was crouched above, watching him silently.
But I—my gaze was no longer for Og. Across the cave from me—almost at the same level and almost as far from Og and Nona as I was—that Maagog girl crouched tense. There seemed something ominous in every line of her—something that filled me with a dread—a horror.
Og’s speech rolled on. The crowd applauded. Atar whispered something to me—something about us three going back to Rax at once, to get help to rescue Nona and to prepare for the coming war.
But I did not heed him. That girl on the rock across the cave was still crouching there. The baleful gaze of her huge eyes was downward to the platform—and my heart leaped into my throat when suddenly I realized that she was staring, not at Og, but at Nona.
And then I saw her hand go to her grotesque green robe. It came back; her pincer held a very short gleaming spear—like a dagger.
The crowd was silent, hanging now on Og’s words. Of all that throng, only I was watching that menacing figure on the ledge.
Abruptly the silence was split by a scream—the Maagog girl screaming as though at last her rage and jealousy had broken the bonds of her reason. I saw her dive, head downward—diving and swimming, with the blade extended—straight for Nona!
My own reason left me. I leaped forward, thrust back Caan and Atar who would have stopped me—and plunged from the ledge—plunged downward in a long, swimming dive toward the platform where my Nona sat bound and helpless!
CHAPTER XIX
Plunging head downward, it seemed as though the platform, with Og, Nona and the white old men upon it, was sliding swiftly upward at me. To one side, level with me, the Maagog girl was coming down also; we two formed the sides of a V, converging at Nona.
It all happened very quickly; no more than a few seconds went by as I made that downward plunge—yet during that time my head whirled with a thousand frightened thoughts. And one of them stood out predominant. The Maagog girl, in murderous frenzy, would reach Nona first; would stab her to death before I could intervene.
I was conscious that the crowd had fallen silent. Behind me, high overhead now, I heard Atar shouting. Soon the platform was close under me. The Maagog girl, too, was close—unswerving, seeming not to have seen me. A spear, thrown by someone in the crowd—a crude, heavy sort of spear—came up at me, but I avoided its ponderous flight.
Og in alarm, had slid away; the white old men were cowering. Nona’s face was upturned to mine. I twisted sidewise, flung myself at the Maagog girl. Our bodies met; the impact threw us both down upon Nona. The Maagog girl screamed again, but her screams were almost lost in the shouts that now came from everywhere.
I was hardly aware of intercepting the blow of that dagger. It struck my forearm—seared me like a fire-brand. But then I caught the girl’s wrist, twisted the weapon from her. She screamed again, screamed with baffled fury. The water around us was white with her struggles.
Atar was beside me! “Quick, Nemo! Nona is free! Nona, come!”
With his spear-edge, Atar had cut Nona’s bonds. The Maagog girl was swimming away, still screaming. A figure came at me—a Maagog man, with Og prudently behind him. I plunged the girl’s spear into the figure’s bulging chest, and waved my spear at Og as the Maagog sank at our feet.
Overhead, Caan was poised in mid-water, shouting defiance at the frightened crowd. I turned. Nona was free! She was mounting upward toward Caan, with Atar covering her retreat.
“Nemo! Nemo!”
It was Nona’s voice. Og was backing away, looking for a weapon with which to attack me, and shouting at the crowd to head me off. I mounted after Atar and Nona. Higher up, Caan was now fighting a Maagog who had risen to attack him. Then the Maagog’s body slowly sank, with Caan’s spear buried in it.
In another moment we were again on the ledge from whence we had come—and my Nona was safe with us! For a brief instant I held her in my arms.
But Caan was dragging us all back into the passageway. Below us the cave was in turmoil. Og had gathered around him a dozen or so who had weapons. They were coming after us! Frightened groups surrounded the bodies of the two we had killed. One of the white old men had recovered himself and was bawling orders. And over it all the Maagog girl was laughing and screaming with hysterical triumph because Nona had escaped Og and was gone.
“Nemo! Come!”
Ahead of us lay the dark passageway with its barrier of coral. Beyond that, another length of passageway upward to the open Water of Wild Things.
We swam hurriedly forward, but my arm was still around my Nona. Soon we were in the coral barrier. Behind us, down the passageway, we could hear Og and the others shouting as they followed us.
We threaded our way through the coral, slowly, laboriously, as one would force a way through the thick frozen underbrush of your winter forests on Earth. But it was a shallow barrier—two hundred feet through, no more.
Again we were in the open passageway; and Og and his party were approaching the barrier from the other side. We hastened onward and upward. It was a short distance only, and we were at the mouth of the tunnel. The open Water of Wild Things loomed before us. Somewhere up there through that inky void was the entrance which would lead us into Marinoid waters.
Atar gripped me, as with Nona beside me I would have launched myself out of the tunnel-mouth. And I heard Caan’s low exclamation of dismay. A light had leaped out of the blackness—a single huge light of green; and then, behind it, a myriad others. Like tiny green stars they dotted the void.
We had no time for conjecture. The darkness out there took shape—a sinuous, serpentine shape. The thing was coming toward us. Its huge head seemed to radiate green fire; the body and tail behind the head were black, but like barnacles, a thousand luminous parasites clung to it, and glowed.
We drew back, but not before the serpent had become aware of us. It turned over with a long, gliding undulation and came at the mouth of the passageway. But it came hastelessly, lazily, as though in its own good time to pick up this food that was offered. I caught a glimpse of opened jaws—fangs half the length of my body. And its breath, a fetid stench, seemed to precede it.
Trembling, we flung ourselves back down the dim tunnel. Ahead through the coral, the vague reflected radiance from the cave was visible. In the coral we could hear Og and his followers, calling to one another as they threaded their way through.
There was no choice. The narrow walls of the passageway hemmed us in; behind us, the serpent was gliding quietly forward. We swam back to the coral. A Maagog forced his way out, and instantly I drove my spear into him. He crumpled with a gasp, and sank in a heap with the spear impaling him from back to chest.
“Nemo!”
I turned, and Nona pushed me to one side. A small black opening was there—an opening at right angles to the main tunnel. It was barely three feet wide and twice as high. Caan and Atar were already in it. Nona glided in, pulling me after her. We swam back a dozen feet and paused. The green head of the serpent was out there in the tunnel we had left; it loomed there a vivid spot of light, at the entrance to this narrow slit which sheltered us—a head too large to enter. It stayed there a moment, and then, as though yielding to the inevitable, it quietly withdrew.
But how far, we did not know. We were terrified and confused. Nona was trembling violently.
“We must go on,” said Atar. “Not back there to that—thing.”
Ahead of us this narrow, slit-like tunnel seemed to broaden. It was almost black, but not quite, for the mud itself was faintly radiant.
We pressed forward, around a turn to the left, then another to the right. The water in this confined space was foul; it hurt our breathing. We hastened, to get out to the open water as soon as possible. We hoped we would strike it some distance from the mouth of the other passageway—enough to be away from the monster.
How far we went I do not know. Occasionally the tunnel branched, but we always took the larger. We turned several times—ascending, then descending again.
At last a glow showed ahead. The open water, but with a monster on guard there! Our hearts sank.
Abruptly, around a sharp curve, the glow brightened! We slid forward, came to the end of the tunnel. From a tiny, shelf-like ledge, we stared down into the self same cave we had left so precipitately half an hour before! Still up near the ceiling, but now on its opposite side!