Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 Part 5

With this mechanism, guarded at forfeit of the lives of a score of men, the men of the Secret Room could peer into even the most secret places of the world. The old men had peered, and had seen things which had blanched their pale cheeks anew. And when they had finished, and the terrible pictures had faded out, a voice had spoken suddenly, like an explosion, in the Secret Room.

"Well, gentlemen, are you satisfied that resistance is futile?"

Just the voice; but to one man in the Secret Room, and to the others when his numbing lips spoke the name, it was far more than enough. For not even the wisest of the great men could explain how, as they knew, having just seen him there, a man could be in Madagascar while his voice spoke aloud in the Secret Room, where even radio was barred!

The name on the lips of Prester Kleig!

"Moyen! Moyen!"

CHAPTER V

_Monsters of the Deep_

"Gentlemen," said Prester Kleig as he entered the Secret Room, where sat the scientists and inventive geniuses of the Americas, "we haven't much time, and I shall waste but little of it. Moyen is ready to strike, if he hasn't already done so, as I believe. We will see in a matter of seconds. Professor Maniel, we shall need, first of all, your apparatus for returning the vibratory images of events which have transpired within the last thirty-six hours.

"I wish to show those of you who failed to see it the sinking of the _Stellar_, on which I was a pa.s.senger and, I believe, the only survivor."

Professor Maniel strangely mouse-like save for the ponderous dome of his forehead, stepped away from the circular table without a word. He had invented the machine in question, and he was inordinately proud of it.

Through its use he could pick up the sounds, and the pictures, of events which had transpired down the past centuries, from the tinkling of the cymbals of Miriam to all the horror of the conflict men had called the Great War, simply by drawing back from the ether, as the sounds fled outward through s.p.a.ce, those sounds and vibrations which he needed.

His science was an exact one, more carefully exact even than the measurement of the speed of light, taking into consideration the dispersion of sound and movement, and the element of time.

The interior of the Secret Room became dark as Maniel labored with his minute machinery. Only behind the screen on the wall in rear of the table was there light.

The voice of Maniel began to drone as he thought aloud.

"There is a matter of but a few minutes difference in time between Washington and the last recorded location of the _Stellar_. The sinking occurred at ten-thirty last evening you say, Kleig? Ah, yes, I have it!

Watch carefully, gentlemen!"

So silent were the Secret Agents one could not even have heard the breathing of one of them, for on the screen, misty at first, but becoming moment by moment bolder of outline, was the face of a storm-tossed sea. The liner was slower in forming, and was slightly out of focus for a second or two.

"Ah," said Professor Maniel. "There it is!"

Through the sound apparatus came the roaring and moaning of a storm at sea. On the screen the _Stellar_ rose high on the waves, dropped into the trough, while spumes of black smoke spread rearward on the waters from her spouting funnels. Figures were visible on her decks, figures which seemed carved in bronze.

In the prow, every expression on his face plainly visible, stood Prester Kleig himself, and as his picture appeared he was in the act of turning.

"Now," said Kleig himself, there in the Secret Room, "look off to the left, gentlemen, a mile from the _Stellar_!"

A rustling sound as the scientists shifted in their places.

They all saw it, and a gasp burst from their lips as though at a signal.

For, as the _Stellar_ seemed about to plunge off the shadowed screen into the Secret Room, a flying thing had risen out of the sea--an airplane with a bulbous body and queerly slanting wings.

At the same time, out of the mouth of the pictured figure of Prester Kleig, clear and agonized as the tones of a bell struck in frenzy, the words:

"Great G.o.d! Lower the boats! Lower the boats! For G.o.d's sake lower the boats!"

In the Secret Room the real Prester Kleig spoke again.

"When the black streak leaves the nose of the plane, after it has submerged, Professor Maniel," said Kleig softly, "slow your mechanism so that we can see the whole thing in detail."

There came a grunted affirmative from Professor Maniel.

The nose of the pictured plane tilted over, diving down for the surface of the sea.

"Now!" snapped Kleig. "Don't wait!"

Instantly the moving pictures on the screen reduced their speed, and the plane appeared to stop its sudden seaward plunge and to drop down as lightly as a feather. The wings of the thing moved forward slowly, folding into the body of the dropping plane.

"They fold forward," said Kleig quietly, "so that the speed of the plane in the take-off will snap them _backward_ into position for flying!"

No one spoke, because the explanation was so obvious.

Slowly the airplane went down to the surface of the sea, with scarcely a plume of spindrift leaping back after she had struck. She dropped to ten feet below the surface of the water, a hundred yards off the starboard beam of the _Stellar_, her blunt nose pointing squarely at the side of the doomed liner.

"Now," said Kleig hoa.r.s.ely, "watch closely, for G.o.d's sake!"

The liner rose and fell slowly. Out of the nose of the plane, which had now become a tiny submarine, started a narrow tube of black, oddly like the sepia of a giant squid. Straight toward the side of the liner it went. Above the rail the Secret Agents could see the pictured form of Prester Kleig, hand upraised. The black streak reached the side of the _Stellar_.

It touched the metal plates, spreading upon impact, growing, enlarging, to right and left, upward and downward, and where it touched the _Stellar_ the black of it seemed to erase that portion of the ship. In the slow motion every detail was apparent. At regular speed the blotting out of the _Stellar_ would have been instantaneous.

Kleig saw himself rise slowly from the vanished rail, turning over and over, going down to the sea. He almost closed his eyes, bit his lips to keep back the cries of terror when he saw the others aboard the liner rise, turn over and over, and fly in all directions like jackstraws in a high wind.

The ship was erased from beneath pa.s.sengers and crew, and pa.s.sengers and crew fell into the sea. Out of the depths, from all directions, came the starving denizens of the sea--starving because liners now were so few.

"That's enough of that, Professor," snapped Kleig. "Now jump ahead approximately eight hours, and see if you can pick up that aero-sub after it dropped me on the Jersey Coast."

The picture faded out quickly, the screaming of doomed human beings, already hours dead, called back to apparent living by the genius of Maniel died away, and for a s.p.a.ce the screen was blank.

Then, the sea again, storm-tossed as before, shifting here and there as Maniel sought in the immensity of sea and sky for the thing he desired.

"Two hundred miles south by east of New York City," he droned. "There it is, gentlemen!"

They all saw it then, in full flight, eight thousand feet above the surface of the Atlantic, traveling south by east at a dizzy rate of speed.