“Look,” said Grant, “the Evening Rocket sent me out here to find out why so many domes were failing—why there were so many catastrophes on The Bottom. You tell me robbers are responsible—desperadoes of the deep. Would they go to the length of smashing a man’s dome to get what little treasure he might have inside?”
Old Gus snorted. “Why not?” he asked. “Up on the surface your thugs kill a man, shoot him down in cold blood, to get the little money he might have in his pocket. Down here there are fortunes in some of the domes. Radium and pearls and priceless treasure salvaged from old wrecks.”
Grant nodded. “I suppose so. But it’s not only here it’s happening. Domes are failing all over. On all parts of The Bottom.”
“I don’t know about them other places,” said Old Gun brusquely, “but I know out here most of the failures ain’t the fault of the glass. It’s the fault of a bunch of thieving cutthroats and it it keeps on we’ll sure make them hard to catch.”
The old man sloshed the last of the coffee down his throat and rattled the cup down on the table. “I got a bed of clams posted not very far from here and if them fellows get into that bed I’ll just naturally go on the warpath all by myself.”
He stopped and looked at Grant. “Say,” he asked, “have you ever seen a real clam bed?”
Grant shook his head.
“If you can stay,” said Old Gus, “I’ll show you one tomorrow that’ll make your eyes pop. Some of them five feet across, and if one old girl is open I’ll show you a pearl as big as your hat. It isn’t quite as perfect as it should be yet, but given a little more time it will be. The old girl is working on it and I’m watching it. But I haven’t been over there for a month or so.”
He shook his head. “I sure hope them Robber’s Deep fellows ain’t found her,” he said. “If they ever touch that pearl I’m going to declare me a war right then and there.”
Butch lolloped happily along ahead of them, soaring awkwardly over occasional boulders and making furtive side trips into the deep-blue darkness on either side.
“Just like a dog,” said Old Gus. “He gets cantankerous at times and I have to give him a good whaling to cool him down, but he seems to like me anyhow. But to anyone but me he’s meaner than poison. That’s his nature and he can’t help it.”
They plodded on. Grant was having less difficulty working his suit.
“The clam bed,” said Old Gus, “is just up this way a piece. Robber’s Deep is down in that direction.” He swung his arm toward the down slope, half turning his suit. He did not turn back again. “Nagle”—his voice was a husky whisper—“I don’t remember ever seeing that before.”
Grant turned and through the haze of the water he saw a queer formation, a shady thing rising out of the ocean bed.
“What is it?” he asked. “It looks—Damned if it don’t look almost like a piece of machinery.”
“I don’t know,” said Gus softly, “but, by the good Lord Harry, we’re going to find out.”
They moved forward slowly, cautiously. Grant felt an unaccountable prickling at the back of his neck—an eerie sense of danger.
Butch gamboled ahead of them. Suddenly he stopped, stood stiff-legged, almost bristling. He pranced forward a few steps and waved his tentacles. Then he became a bundle of unseemly rage, rushing about, his eyes red, his body color changing from black to pink, to violet and finally to a dull brick-red.
“Butch sure has got his dander up,” said Old Gus, half fearfully.
The octopus ceased his demonstration of rage almost as suddenly as it had started and headed straight for the hazy mass before them. Old Gus broke into a sprint and Grant followed.
The towering mass was machinery, Grant saw. Two great cylinders standing close together, with a massive squat machine between them, connected to both of the cylinders by heavy pipes.
The muck and ooze had been scraped away for some distance around the cylinders and machine, probably to make way for secure anchorage, and a mighty hole had been blasted in the sea-bed rock.
There was no sign of life around the cylinders or the machine, but the machine was operating.
Butch reached the cylinders and whipped around them and the next instant something that looked like a merman shot out from behind the cylinders, with Butch in close pursuit.
The manlike thing flashed through the water with astonishing ease, but Butch was out for blood. With a tremendous burst of speed he drew nearer to the fleeing thing, launched his body in a great leap and closed in, tentacles flailing.
Old Gus was running now, yelling at the octopus. “Damn you, Butch; you stop that!”
But, by the time Grant reached them, it was all over. Old Gus, still furious, was prying an angry Butch from his prey, which the octopus still held in the death-grip of his tentacles.
“Someday,” Old Gus was saying, “I’m going to plumb lose patience with you, Butch.”
But Butch wasn’t worrying much about that. His one thought at the moment was to retain the choice morsel he had picked up. He clung stubbornly, but finally Gus hauled him loose. He tried to charge in again, but Gus booted him away and at that he withdrew, squatting at the base of one of the cylinders, fairly jigging with rage.
Grant was staring down at the thing on the bare rock. “Gus,” he said, “do you know what this is?”
“Danged if I do,” said Gus. “I’ve heard of mermen and mermaids, but I never did set no stock by them. I been roaming these ocean beds for nigh forty years and I never seen one yet.” He moved close, touched the body with the toe of his suit. “But,” he declared, “this is the spitting image of those old pictures of them.”
“That,” said Grant, “is a Venusian. A native of Venus. A fish man. The boss sent me to Venus a couple years ago to find out what I could about them. He had a screwy idea they were further advanced in science than they ever let the Earth people suspect. But I couldn’t do much about it, for it would be sheer suicide for a man to venture into a Venusian sea. The seas are unstable chemically. Always with more or less acid—lots of chlorine. They stink like hell, but these fellows seem to like it. The acid and pressure and chemical changes don’t seem to harm them and maybe the stink smells good to them.”
“If this is a Venusian, how did he get here?” asked Gus suspiciously.
“I don’t know,” said Grant, “but I aim to find out. To my knowledge a Venusian has never visited Earth. They can stand almost any pressure under the water, but they don’t like open air, even the Venusian air and that’s half water most of the time.”
“Maybe you’re mistaken,” suggested Gus. “Maybe this ain’t a Venusian but something almost like one.”
Grant shook his head behind the plate. “No, I’m not mistaken. There are too many identifying marks. Look at the gills—feathered. And the hide. Almost like steel. Really a shell—an outside skeleton.”
The newsman turned around and stared at the cylinders, then shifted his gaze to the machine squatting between them. It was operating smoothly and silently. Several large blocks of stone lay in front of it, and several similar blocks protruded from a hopperlike arrangement which surmounted the machine. The dangling jaws of a crane showed how the blocks had been lifted into the hopper. To one side of the machine were a number of small jugs.
“Gus,” Grant asked, “what kind of rock is this?”
The old man scooped up a couple of splinters and held them before his vision glass. The suit’s spotlight caught the splinters and they blazed with sudden moving light.
“Fluorite,” said Gus. “Crystals embedded all through this stuff.” He flung the splinters away. “The rock itself,” he said, “is old; older than hell. Probably Archean.”