Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 Part 32

I grinned up at him and he slapped me on the back--almost completing the choking process started by the salt water I'd inhaled.

"That's better. Now--at it again!"

I don't remember the rest of the tumult. The air seemed filled with loathsome tentacles and bright metal blades. It was a confused eternity until the decreased volume of water in the tunnel gave us a respite....

As the tunnel slowly emptied the pressure dropped, and the incoming flood poured squarely into the trough instead of half over it. From that moment there was very little more for us to do.

Our little army--with about a fourth of its number gone--had only to guard the ditch and see that none of the Quabos caught the edges as they hurtled out of their pa.s.sage.

For perhaps ten minutes longer the water poured from the break in the wall, with now and then a doomed Quabo that goggled horribly at us as it was dashed down the hole in the floor to whatever awesome depths were beneath.

Then the flow ceased. The last oleaginous corpse was pushed over the edge. And the city, save for an ankle-deep sheet of water that was rapidly draining out the vents in the streets, presented its former appearance.

The Zyobites leaned wearily against convenient walls and began telling themselves how fortunate they were to have been spared what seemed certain destruction.

The Professor didn't share in the general feeling of triumph.

"Don't be so childishly optimistic!" he snapped as I began to congratulate him on the victory his ditch had given us. "Our troubles aren't over yet!"

"But we've proved that we can stand up to them in a hand-to-tentacle fight--"

His thin, frosty smile appeared.

"One of those devils, normally, is stronger than any three men. The only reason all of us weren't destroyed at once is that they were slowly suffocating as they fought. The foot and a half of water we were in wasn't enough to let their gills function properly. Now if they were able to stand right up to us and not be handicapped by lack of water to breathe ... I wonder.... Is that part of their plan? Is there any way they could manage ...?"

"But, Professor," I argued, "it's all over, isn't it? The tunnel is emptied, and all the Quabos are--"

"The tunnel isn't emptied. It's only _half_ emptied! I'll show you."

He called Stanley; and the three of us went to the break.

"See," the Professor pointed out to us as we approached the jagged hole, "the Quabos only drilled through the top half of their tunnel ending.

That means that the tunnel still has about four feet of water in it--enough to accommodate a great many of the monsters. There may be four or five hundred of them left in there; possibly more. We can expect renewed hostilities at any time!"

"But won't it be just a repet.i.tion of the first battle?" remonstrated Stanley. "In the end they'll be killed or will drown for lack of water as these first ones did."

The Professor shook his head.

"They're too clever to do that twice. The very fact that they kept half their number in reserve shows that they have some new trick to try.

Otherwise they'd all have come at once in one supreme effort."

He paced back and forth.

"They're ingenious, intelligent. They're fighting for their very existence. They must have figured out some way of breathing in air, some way of attacking us on a more even basis in case that first rush went wrong. What can it be?"

"I think you're borrowing trouble before it is necessary--" I began, smiling at his elaborate, scientific pessimism. But I was interrupted by a startled shout from Stanley.

"Professor Martin," he cried, pointing to the tunnel mouth. "Look!"

Like twin snakes crawling up to sun themselves, two tentacles had appeared over the rock rim. They hooked over the edge; and leisurely, with grim surety of invulnerability, the barrel-like head of a Quabo balanced itself on the ledge and glared at us.

For a moment we stared, paralyzed, at the Thing. And, during that moment it squatted there, as undistressed as though the air were its natural element, its gills flapping slowly up and down supplying it with oxygen.

The thing that held us rooted to the spot with fearful amazement was the fantastic device that permitted it to be almost as much at home in air as in water.

Over the great, globular head was set an oval gla.s.s sh.e.l.l. This was filled with water. A flexible metal tube hung down from the rear.

Evidently it carried a constant stream of fresh water. As we gazed we saw intermittent trickles emerging from the bottom of the crystalline case.

Point for point the creature's equipment was the same as diving equipment used by men, only it was exactly opposite in function. A helmet that enabled a fish to breathe in air, instead of a helmet to allow a man to breathe in water!

Stanley was the first of us to recover from the shock of this spectacle.

He faced about and raised his voice in shouts of warning to the resting Zyobites. For other gla.s.s encased monsters had appeared beside the first, now.

One by one, in single file like a line of enormous marching insects, they crawled down the wall and humped along on their tentacles--around the ditch and toward us!

The deadly infallibility of that second attack!

The Quabos advanced on us like armored tanks bearing down on defenceless savages. Their gla.s.s helmets, in addition to containing water for their breathing, protected them from our knives and axes. We were utterly helpless against them.

They marched in ranks about twenty yards apart, each rank helping the one in front to carry the c.u.mbersome water-hoses which trailed back to the central water supply in the tunnel.

Their movements were slow, weighted down as they were by the great gla.s.s helmets, but they were appallingly sure.

We could not even r.e.t.a.r.d their advance, let alone stop it. Here were no suffocating, faltering creatures. Here were beings possessed of their full vigor, each one equal to three of us even as the Professor had conjectured. Their only weak points were their tentacles which trailed outside the gla.s.s cases. But these they kept coiled close, so that to reach them and hack at them we had to step within range of their terrific clutches.

The Zyobites fought with the valor of despair added to their inherent n.o.ble bravery. Man after man closed with the monstrous, armored Things--only to be seized and crushed by the weaving tentacles.

Occasionally a terrific blow with an ax would crack one of the gla.s.s helmets. Then the denuded Quabo would flounder convulsively in the air till it drowned. But there were all too few of these individual victories. The main body of the Quabos, rank on rank, dragging their water-hose behind them, came on with the steadiness of a machine.

Slowly we were driven back down the broad street and toward the palace.

As we retreated, old people and children came from the houses and went with us, leaving their dwellings to the mercy of the monsters.

A block from the palace we bunched together and, by sheer ma.s.s and ferocity, actually stopped the machinelike advance for a few moments.

Miscellaneous weapons had been brought from the houses--sledges, stone benches, anything that might break the Quabos' helmets--and handed to us in silence by the noncombatants.

Somebody tugged at my sleeve. Looking down I saw a little girl. She had dragged a heavy metal bar out to the fray and was trying to get some fighter's attention and give it to him.

I seized the formidable weapon and jumped at the nearest Quabo, a ten-foot giant whose eyes were glinting gigantically at me through the distorting curve of the gla.s.s.