Time passed. The air became thin and rarefied. It was as difficult to draw sufficient into their lungs as if they had been locked up for hours in the dry heat of the hottest room in a Turkish bath. Camilla said nothing but she had an awful feeling that instead of being about to faint again she was really dying now. She tried desperately hard to keep herself upright but her body suddenly went limp and she fell forward in a crumpled heap. Vladimir saw her and motioned to Bozo to take his place then, as the gunman crawled painfully forward, he lifted Camilla tenderly in his arms, kissed her gently on the cheek, and propped her up against the side of the sphere next to the oxygen tanks where she would reap the benefit of more than her fair share of their precious supply.
After two hours and a half they had cleared the second lot of machinery and begun on the third floor, but the air had become positively stifling. Their breath came in quick short pants and an examination of the oxygen tanks showed that even with the reduced supply they had only three quarters of an hour to go. Another hour and they would certainly all be dead.
'We've got to get out—we've got to 1' wheezed the McKay, 'Come on Doctor—your turn now.'
The Doctor roused himself, wiped the sweat from his face and rolled over, then set to work again with a sudden spurt of energy. Nicky, whom he had just relieved, managed to reach the back of the sphere and then collapsed.
The McKay felt his fingers grow numb and clumsy. He hated the idea of giving up but knew that he must have another spell of rest, otherwise he would be delaying progress. He muttered to Bozo who took his place. The gunman's thick blunt hands were trembling and the sight of his slowness almost drove the McKay to a frenzy, but he worked doggedly at the job and his tools never slipped.
By the time they'd got the third floor up Count Axel knew from a quick glance at his watch that their limit of life was now reduced to a quarter of an hour. Without reference to the McKay he turned the oxygen valve a fraction lower—even another two minutes might mean the difference between safety and death, but if he could have seen the work still to be done from where he crouched behind the others, he would not have bothered.
A fresh barrier confronted them. Great reels of electric wires for exploding detonators from several hundred feet above the ocean bed—masses of springs and interlocking levers. The Doctor groaned but he and Bozo laboured on.
Their heads ached appallingly, their eyes seemed about to burst from their sockets, their tongues were swollen to almost double their normal size and filled their mouths so that they had to keep them wide open as they fought for the last breaths of oxygen.
Sally's torch slipped from her hand, smashed on the steel floor and went out. Then she slid to her knees and fell backwards. Bozo was the next to go. He had never fully recovered from the blow which Vladimir had given him eight hours before, soon after the cable had snapped, and now he just toppled over sideways like a shot rabbit.
Vladimir reached backwards and shook the Count out of his semi-torpor, then he pulled Bozo away from the mass of levers that still faced them and took his place. Axel crawled over the prostrate bodies and lit the workers with his torch.
The next to go was the Doctor. He had succeeded in freeing one of the big reels of wire so that they could actually see the last floor now, beyond which was the life-giving air. With a great effort he lifted the reel and, turning, placed it on Sally's chest, then without a murmur he fell forward senseless across her legs. The McKay picked up the spanner he had dropped.
It was now a nightmare scene. Enfeebled almost to fainting point from lack of air, the McKay and Vladimir still struggled with the many struts; Count Axel held the torch; while behind, five limp unconscious bodies lay huddled in grotesque and horrible disarray.
About eighteen inches square of the last floor was clear but the McKay knew now that he had failed. A dozen jutting rods had still to be removed before the smallest of them could force their way through the gap, and they were so weak that the floor itself would take another hour's work to get up. The oxygen was all but finished and death hovered waiting, in the shadows of the sphere to touch them on the shoulder.
He no longer had the strength for rapid action but he turned and whispered painfully:
'Count—dynamite—on your—knees.' He knew that what he was going to do was the most desperate hazard—they might all be blown to fragments, but what did that matter. Still there was a fraction less chance of the dynamite exploding through concussion if it were removed from contact with the surface of the sphere.
As Count Axel exerted all his remaining strength to lift 220
the box the McKay laid his hands on Vladimir's arm. 'Give me—your—gun.'
With slow fumbling fingers Vladimir pulled it from his pocket and passed it over.
The McKay took it and, as Count Axel focused the light again, he lifted it. The weapon seemed to weigh a ton, but he brought it up to a line where two of the bottom plates in the last floor were jointed—and fired.
In the confined space of the air-tight sphere the succession of explosions sounded as though a whole munition works was blowing up. For a second the McKay thought that, as he had feared, the shock of the vibration had set off the detonators. The automatic had dropped from his hand. The crash seemed to have burst his ear-drums. Vladimir was gasping out something but he could no longer hear.
He swayed feebly, peering through the little cloud of smoke that obscured the remaining machinery. Count Axel's arm was resting on his shoulder, still holding the torch. No hoped-for hole showed in the plates, only an irregular round dent on the joint that he had aimed at. It seemed now that their last hope had gone.
As the McKay crouched there, the echoes of the shots still reverberating in his ears, his head singing and whirling, his eyes suffused with blood, Vladimir picked up a heavy lever—the last that they had removed. Gripping it with both hands he lurched forward, his strength gone but his great weight behind the stabbing blow with which he jabbed the dented surface.
The bullets from the automatic had sprung the plates a trifle and Vladimir's last desperate effort completed the work. They only parted the sixteenth of an inch but an insistent hissing came like the sound of angels' music and they knew that the air was coming through.
For over an hour the McKay, Vladimir and Count Axel lay utterly exhausted and semi comatose, then they began to revive and one by one resuscitated the others. The air was still stifling hot, oppressive, and lifeless but it was just breathable, so they got to work again on the bottom of the sphere.
They took their time now; an hour and a quarter elapsed before they cleared the machinery and had removed sufficient plates in the last floor to crawl through.
The bottom of the sphere was tilted towards the harbour floor but, to their surprise, it was completely clear of fish. Hardly a trace remained of that mass of creatures which had flooded the whole space between the quayside and the sphere six hours before. The surface was just awash with a few inches of clear water.
Through the portholes they examined the quay. The great mob of greyish-white half-men were still there—all seated now on their haunches, peering blindly out of their almost colourless eyes in the direction of the bathysphere.
'I do not like the look of these people,' said the Doctor heavily.
The McKay shrugged. 'I'm afraid we've got to chance what they think of us. We can't stay here.'
'How long is it since we left the ship now?' asked Camilla.
After glancing at his watch Count Axel replied: 'We went down at 8.45, Madame. It is now 11.30 at night, so it is nearly fifteen hours and we survived nine of those hours on our remaining oxygen after we were cut off.' Before returning the watch to his pocket he methodically wound it up.