They Found Atlantis

'Any Mermaids today?' the McKay enquired.

'Yes, they seem to frequent that valley of shells, we didn't see one anywhere else. I think it was the shock of having a living thing like that come and stare in at the window which scared us all so yesterday. They are very horrible, of course, but I wasn't a bit frightened of them today. They became rather a nuisance though and so many of them came crowding round the ports at one time we couldn't see anything else so the Doctor had to drive them off.'

'And how the devil did he do that may it please your Majesty—make a rude face at them?'

'No, stupid. The bathysphere is a wonderful piece of work you know and there are electric rods on hinges in its outer surface that can be made to stick out like the spines on a sea urchin when the current is turned orij from inside.'

'I see, same principle as a diver's electric knife that they tackle sharks and conger eels with?'

'That's it. You can't stab fish with these but anything that touches them gets a nasty shock. They were fitted originally in case some giant squid tried to wrap its tentacles round the sphere and made it difficult to pull up.'

'How did the Mermen take this unusual treatment?'

'They simply hated it. If they had been above water and had voices I'm certain that they would have been absolutely screaming with rage. One was knocked right out and the others swam off with his body. That shows that they are not quite brute beasts or like other fish otherwise they would have eaten him I think.'

'They'll eat you all right if anything goes wrong with that sphere, but I wouldn't mind having a cut at that meself.'

'Nelson! —Andy! —McKay!'

'Did you see any more curiosities?'

'The biggest squid the Doctor's seen so far. An awful brute, its tentacles must have been at least forty feet long— but nothing really new. Oh, except that the Mermen have horses.'

'Now come on,' he smiled at her quizzically. 'You must save that for the marines!'

'Well, not horses exactly, but they ride on other fish. At least that's what we imagine. On three seperate occasions we saw one of them go by in the distance with its body lying along the top of a thing rather like a small shark and their claws dug into the back of its neck. They may have just been attacking it to kill and eat, of course, but it didn't look like that. They don't swim very fast themselves you see and those fish they perch on just stream through the water like a flash.'

'They say wonders will never cease—so I'll take your word for it. Now what about a swim before the cocktails come round?'

'Love to,' said Sally. 'I missed my dip this morning.'

'Right, skip to it m'dear, and I'll meet you at the pool in five minutes.'

At dinner that night it was Nicky who kept the conversation going. He had fallen utterly and completely for this new world which his trip in the bathysphere had opened up to him. Towards the end of the meal he had talked himself almost into a state of artistic inspiration and suddenly announced a marvellous idea which had just entered his mind. Here was ideal material for a new super-film. A spot of drama in the bathysphere perhaps, then all the underwater stuff with squids and scenes of the Mermen. One of the Mermaids would have to be lovely, of course, a swan among the ducks, actually she'd be a star with a first class voice so that she could come up to the surface and sing opposite him, just as they'd done in the old stories about their luring sailors to their deaths. It could all be filmed by back projection except the above water level scenes, and those of the interior of the bathysphere could be shot in the studio easily enough against the background of a half sphere made of wood.

Everybody thought it was a fine idea until the McKay remarked that Nicky would have plenty of time to practise crooning his theme song to the Mermaid—in the Falklands.

An angry silence ensued after this piece of acidity and, when coffee had been served they commenced their gloomy speculations once again.

The McKay was asked if he had seen any shipping during the day, and he replied, abruptly:

'You would have heard about it before this if I had—I didn't set eyes on a masthead and I'm beginning to doubt if anything will ever come near enough to us in these unfrequented waters to be any good.'

'Oh dear, oh dear,' Sally looked across at him despairingly. 'What are we going to do—we can't just sit still and let things take their course.'

' 'Fraid there's no alternative m'dear until these gunmen get fed up with their job and slacken off. There's no sign of that yet though. A better disciplined set of men I've never seen. I tried to speak to one this afternoon but he just quietly pointed his pistol at me and he would have used it too, I believe, if I hadn't stopped.'

'Oh, they're well disciplined I admit,' Camilla conceded. 'Quiet as mice although they're always close at hand. It's extraordinary how polite they are too in stepping aside and that sort of thing when we go aft to the bathysphere, despite the fact they never open their mouths. They're nothing like I've always pictured gangsters and hoodlums to be at all.'

'They are not like ordinary gangsters,' said Count Axel with conviction. 'But neither is their Chief like any ordinary boss racketeer.

Nicky nodded. 'If he cleans up on Camilla's packet he'll be the biggest shot since A1 Capone was put behind the bars."

'He won't—but he'll come back,' Sally insisted, 'and we've just got to think of some way to save ourselves before he turns up.'

The now sickening subject was miserably debated again but by the time Slinger arrived with his guards to see them to bed they had only become exceedingly irritable without having produced a single new idea.

On Wednesday all of them except the McKay went down again in the bathysphere at nine o'clock, taking with them a picnic luncheon. The ship covered about six miles in a new direction with continual stops to haul them up 200 feet before proceeding and then lowering them to the bottom again; it was nearly six o'clock when they returned to the surface, but, despite the usual excitement which always seemed to possess them for an hour or two after each dive, they had nothing startling to report.

Several new varieties of deep sea creatures had appeared in the beam and they had seen more Mermen apparently riding their swift fish horses to unknown destinations, but the bottom they had traversed was all bare volcanic rock with the exception of two new shell strewn valleys, and there was nothing to indicate the presence of the lost city for which they were searching.

'D'you know you've been cooped up in that thing for close on nine hours, the McKay asked Sally as they went in for their belated evening swim.

'Really,' she replied casually. 'It doesn't seem as though we had beenj down half that time to me. Every second of it is so vitally interesting, I even forgot to eat more than one of the sandwiches we took down so I'm just dying for dinner now.'

'But isn't there a most appalling fug—I wonder you haven't all got splitting headaches in spite of the oxygen that keeps you from passing out.'

'No, it's amazing really. The air in the sphere was as fresh when we came out of it just now, as when we climbed in at nine o'clock. The Doctor allows one litre of oxygen per person per minute to escape from the tanks and that seems to do the trick.

'How about the temperature—isn't it darn near freezing?'

'Not inside. It drops about six degrees in the first two-thousand feet, but after that you don't get the benefit of the sun anyhow and it doesn't alter so quickly, two degrees in the next thousand and only one degree for the last two-thousand to the bottom if I remember right. It was never lower than sixty-six degrees today, the Doctor said so as we were coming up, although outside it's ever so much colder and if you touch the walls of the sphere they feel like ice.