Chapter 4: No Chance Left

His entrance was an unpleasant experience. He had forgotten the condition of the air inside the submarine, and what its effect on him, coming straight from comparatively good and fresh air, would be, until he was seized by a sudden choking grip around his throat. He reeled and gasped, and was for a minute nauseated. Lights flashed around him, and teetering backward he leaned weakly, against some metal object until gradually his head cleared; but his lungs remained tortured, and his breathing a thing of quick, agonised gulps.

Then came sounds. Figures appeared before him.

“From where--” “Who are you?”

“What--what--what--” “How did you?”

The half-coherent questions were couched in whispers. The men around him were blear-eyed and haggard-faced, their skins dry and bluish, and not a one was clad in more than undershirt and trousers. Alive and breathing, they were--but breathing grotesquely, horribly. They made awful noises at it; they panted, in quick, shallow sucks. Some lay on the deck at his feet, outstretched without energy enough to attempt to rise.

Beautiful and slumber-like the submarine had appeared from outside, but inside that effect was lost. There were the usual appurtenances: a maze of pipes, wheels, machinery, all silent now, and cold; here were the two port-locks for torpoons; the emergency steering controls; the small staterooms of the Peary’s officers. Looking forward, still striving for complete clear-headedness and normality, Ken could see the two intact forward compartments, silent and apparently lifeless, with dim lamps burning. They ended with the watertight bulkhead which stood between them and the flooded bow compartment.

Ken at last found words, but even his short query cost a sickening effort.

“Where’s--the commander?” he asked.

A man turned from where he had been leaning against a nearby wheel control. He was stripped to the waist. His tall body was stooped, and the skin of his ruggedly cut face drawn and parchment-like. His face had once been dignified and authoritative, but now it was that of a man who nears death after a long, bitter fight for life. The smile which he gave to Ken was painful--a mockery.

“I am,” he said faintly. “Sallorsen. Just wait, please. A minute. I worked port-lock. Breath’s gone...”

He sucked shallowly for air and let his smile go. And standing there, beside him, gazing at the worn frame, Ken felt strength come back. He had just entered; this man and the others had been here for weeks!

“I’m Sallorsen,” the captain went on at last. All his words were clipped off, to cost minimum effort. “Glad you got through. Afraid you’re come to prison, though.”

“No!” Ken said emphatically. He spoke to the captain, but what he said was also for all the others grouped around him. “No, Captain! I’m Kenneth Torrance. Once torpooner with Alaska Whaling Company. They thought me crazy--crazy--’cause I told about sealmen. Put me in sanitarium. I knew they had you--when--heard you were missing.” He pointed at the brown-skinned creatures that clustered close around the submarine outside her transparent walls. “I got free and came. Just in time.”

“In time? For what?”

Another voice gasped out the question. Ken turned to a broad-shouldered man with a ragged growth of beard that had been a trim Van Dyke; and before the torpooner could answer, Sallorsen said:

“Dr. Lawson. One of our scientists. In time for what?”

“To get you and the submarine free,” said Ken.

“How?”

Ken paused before replying. He gazed around--out the side walls of glistening quarsteel into the sea gloom, into the thick of the smooth, lithe, brown-skinned shapes that now and again poised pressing against the submarine, peering in with their liquid seal’s eyes. Dimly he could see the taut seaweed ropes stretching down from the top of the Peary to the sea-bottom. It looked hopeless, and to these men inside it was hopeless. He knew he must speak in confident, assured tones to drive away the uncaring lethargy holding them all, and he framed definite, concise words with which to do it.

“These creatures have caught you,” he began, “and you think they want to kill you. But look at them. They seem to be seals. They’re not. They’re men! Not men like us--half-men--sealmen, rather--changed into present form by ages of living in the water. I know. I was captured by them once. They’re not senseless brutes; they have a streak of man’s intelligence. We must communicate with that intelligence. Must reason with them. I did once. I can do it again.

“They’re not really hostile. They’re naturally peaceful; friendly. But my friend--dead now--killed one of them. Naturally they now think all creatures like us enemies. That’s why they trapped your sub.

“They think you’re enemies; think you want to kill them. But I’ll tell them--through pictures, as I did once before--that you mean them no harm. I’ll tell them you’re dying and must have air--just as they must. I’ll tell them to release submarine and we’ll go away and not disturb them again. Above all I must get across that you wish them no harm. They’ll listen to what my pictures will say--and let us go--’cause at heart they’re friendly!”

He paused--and with a ghastly, twisted smile, Captain Sallorsen whispered:

“The hell you say!”

His sardonic comment brought a sudden chill to Kenneth Torrance. He feared one thing that would render his whole value useless. He asked quickly:

“What have you done?”

“Those seals,” Sallorsen’s labored voice continued “--they’ve killed eight of us. Now they’re killing all.”

“But have you killed any of them?” Breathless, Ken waited for the answer be feared.

“Yes. Two.”

The men were all staring at Ken, so he had to hide the awful dejection which clamped his heart. He only said:

“That’s what I feared. It changes everything. No use trying to reason with them now.” He fell silent. “Well,” he said at last, trying to appear more cheerful, “tell me what happened. Maybe there’s something you’ve overlooked.”

“Yes,” Sallorsen whispered. He started to come forward to the torpooner, but stumbled and would have fallen had not Ken caught him in time. He put one of the captain’s arms around his shoulder, and one of his own around the man’s waist.

“Thanks,” Sallorsen said wryly. “Walk forward. Show you what happened.”

There were men in the second compartment, and they still fought to live. From the narrow seamen’s berths that lined the walls came the sound of breathing even more torturous than that of the men in the rear. In the single bulb’s dim light Ken could see their shapes stretched motionlessly out, panting and panting. Occasionally hands reached up to claw at straining necks, as if to try and rid throats of strangling grasps. Two figures had won free from the long struggle. They lay silent and still, the outline of their dead bodies showing through the sheets pulled over them.

Slowly Sallorsen led Ken through this compartment and into the next, which was bare of men. Here were the ship’s main controls--her helm, her central multitude of dials, levers and wheels, her televisiscreen and old-fashioned emergency periscope. A metal labyrinth it was, all long silent and inactive. Again the weird contrast struck Ken, for outside he could still see the scene of vigorous, curious life that the sealmen constituted. Close they came to the submarine’s sheer walls of quarsteel, peering in stolidly, then flashing away with an effortless thrust of flippers, sometimes for air from some break in the surface ice.