Chapter 2: The Silent Ray

A strange shape had suddenly materialized on the screen--an immense, oval-shaped thing of dull metal, with great curving cuts of glass-like substance in its blunt bow, like staring eyes; a lifeless, staring thing, stretching far into the curtain of gloom behind. How long it was, Keith could not tell; at first his numb brain refused to grasp it and reduce it to definite, sane standards of size and length. The cold weeds of the sea-floor kelp beds swayed eerily over and around it. From its bow, he saw, peculiar knobs jutted, the function of which he guessed with dread.

Was it waiting with a purpose? Was it waiting--and inviting attack?

A frightened whisper from Hemmy Bowman broke the hush:

“Keith, the thing has ports, but shows no lights! What kind of creatures can they be?”

As he spoke, the three men in the control room felt the unmistakable, jarring tingle of an electric shock. And while their nerves still jumped, it came again; and again. They were conscious of a slight feeling of drowsiness.

Keith gaped at Bowman and Brown, and then a flash on the teleview screen drew his eyes. There, against the blackness of its otherwise inanimate hulk, one of the jutting knobs on the bow of the mysterious submarine was glowing and pulsing with orange life! With it came the tingling shock again. It flicked off as they watched, then returned and went once more.

“They’re attacking, but thank God the shock was harmless!” Wells said grimly. “All right; they’ve asked for it: I’m going to see how they like the taste of a torpedo!”

The two submarines were resting on the ocean floor with perhaps two hundred feet between them. The NX-1’s bow tubes were not exactly in line to score a direct hit; she would have to be maneuvered slightly to port. The range was short; the explosion from the torpedoes would be titanic.

Keith punched the control studs, ordering the men below to assume firing stations. Then, while waiting for the NX-1 to shift, he studied the teleview screen to sight the range exactly. The black dot which represented the enemy craft was not directly on the crossed hair-lines of the dial-like range-finder, but shifting the NX-1 a few feet would bring it to the perfect firing point.

But the NX-1 did not budge.

Surprised, her commander swung and looked at Bowman. “What the devil?” he cried. “Did that shock--?” He left the dread thought unfinished and leaped to the speaking tubes.

“Craig! Jones! Wetherby!” he yelled. “Men! Don’t you hear me? Aren’t you--”

He broke off, wordless, waiting for an answer that did not come, then sprang to the connecting ramp and ran to the deck below.

The scene he found halted him abruptly in his tracks. Every member of the crew was sprawled on the deck, in grotesque, limp postures. They had been standing rigidly at posts, he saw, when the thing, whatever it was, had struck. Without a sound, without a single cry of alarm, the NX-1’s crew had been laid low!

The commander slowly advanced to the deck and stared more closely at the upturned faces around him. He saw that every man’s eyes were open.

Bending over one still form, he pressed his hand on the heart. It was beating! The man was alive! Amazed, he moved to another and another: they were all breathing, slowly and regularly--were all alive! A curious look in their eyes staggered him for a moment. He could swear that they recognized him, knew he was staring at them--for every single pair was alight with intelligence, and Keith fancied he saw gleams of recognition.

“It must have been a paralyzing ray!” he gasped. “A thing our scientists’ve been trying to develop for years ... And that monster outside knows the secret...” He lifted an arm of the inert figure at his feet; when he released the grip, it flopped limply back to the deck again.

“Keith! Come back, quick!”

Startled, the commander turned to find Hemingway Bowman at the top of the connecting ramp, his face distorted with alarm.

“For God’s sake, come back quick!” he yelled again. “Down there the ray might get you!”

With the words, Wells leaped to the ramp and raced to the control room. He had no sooner made it than he felt again the queer tingle of the electric charge. He found himself trembling. Bowman’s face was white. His words came stuttering.

“One second later and they’d have got you ... They got Sparks in his cubby ... You see, the ray doesn’t affect us in the control room because--”

“Because the Gibson insulation that protects the instruments keeps it out!” Keith finished grimly. “I see!”

Just then a slight jar ran through the submarine. Coincident with it came a cry from Brown, the helmsman. His arm was pointed at the teleview.

There they saw the enemy’s mighty dirigible of metal was now within thirty feet of the NX-1. It had crept up silently, without warning. And, spanning the short gulf between them, an arm of webbed metal craned from the other’s huge bow, hooking tightly into the American submarine’s forward hawser holes!