Кеннет Робсон - Death in Silver

"We'll try the other hatch," Doc decided.

They were in water well above their knees. When the inner door was open, this flooded into the Helldiver with them. But the automatic pumps would take care of it.

But they did not reach the other escape hatch or pass through it to engage in combat.

They were abreast of the conning tower when there was a moaning roar and water sheeted out of the control room. It came from the control room door as if that aperture were the mouth of a great faucet which had been turned on suddenly.

For all of his great strength, Doc Savage was tumbled about and smashed into bulkheads. The torrent jostled him down a passage and banged him into a steel support. The transparent helmet he was wearing would have broken had it not been of very strong construction.

Lacking Doc's physical hardihood, Monk and the others were handled with greater roughness. McCoy yelled in pain as he smashed over a motor. There was terror in his voice also. Pace swore calmly.

Monk and Ham resisted the water with grim silence.

Had they all not worn diving suits, death would have come within the ensuing few minutes. As it was, they were jostled about, helpless to resist the tremendous force of the water until the Helldiver's main compartment had filled.

Only the central section filled at the moment, however, for there were safety devices on the bulkhead doors — mechanical contrivances which closed and made the bulkheads watertight when water entered.

There were no air locks between the bulkheads so that it was impossible to move from one compartment to the other, now that the central one was full.

Silver men in diving suits began dropping down the conning tower hatch!

- — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

Due to the strong current, the sewater had cleared up again, the black cloud having been swept away. The first silver man to enter held one of the long dark lances. Close at his elbow came another man bearing a strong underwater searchlight. They advanced.

More sinister divers entered behind them. They floated down in an ominous procession, vague forms in the water like spectral bodies from some Stygian domain. There was only the one electric lance. The others held diver's knives.

Doc and his men retreated. There was nothing else to do. The lance was deadly. It was the thing which had defeated them, the one weapon with which they were helpless to cope having — as they did — no time to rig an insulated shield or other defense.

There was not even an insulated pole in the Helldiver which could be employed to fend off the electric lance.

Doc watched the lancer. The bronze man's remarkable features — plainly distinguishable inside his transparent helmet — showed no emotion.

Doc's attention — all of it — was on the lance. The clanking of lead shoes made a metallic mumble on the floor plates. That was why he did not hear the bulkhead door behind him open. It was a carefully made, well-greased door.

Doc had no way of knowing that the other compartments had been opened and flooded. But they had! The work had been done with wrenches and cutting torches. And silver men had come from behind to flank Doc's party!

A second diver appeared in the bulkhead opening. Then came a third … a fourth … and a fifth. They had no lance, but they all held knives. They lunged in to attack!

Doc was not taken entirely unawares. He heard the flanking divers, wheeled, noted the absence of a lance … and lunged in fiercely to the attack.

The silver divers did not retreat. They must have felt they had safety in numbers.

It was a weirdly fantastic battle which was fought in the water-gorged entrails of the submarine. The fellow with the electrified lance made a few jabs. Then the electric cord — leading to the power plant in his own underwater craft — became entangled and he had to abandon the unique weapon.

Surrounded completely now, Doc Savage and his men formed a tight ring, a circlet that bristled with the razor-sharp steel thorns of their knives. But they did not hold it for long.

Silver divers lunged in on the side defended by Pace and McCoy. They broke through. One man sagged back with bubbles pouring from a hole which Pace had knifed in his suit.

The fighting ring disintegrated. 4 men seized Doc Savage. One lost interest in the fray and stumbled off for his own submarine, his suit streaming bubbles.

A man leeched upon Doc's arm. Doc endeavored to shake him off. In the open air, it would have been a simple task. But underwater it was a Herculean job. The bronze man's second arm was trapped. A man tangled with his legs.

Doc was forced over sidewise. There was no purchase for footing because his weight above the displaced water was negligible. The diving suit hampered him.

He felt someone at his back. He endeavored to spin despite the men trying to hold him. But it was too late.

There was a roarof escaping air. His oxygen apparatus had been wrenched away!

- — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

As air pressure left the bronze man's helmet, water began to pour in. It sloshed cold upon his neck and his shoulders, spilled down in his suit which had been pressed tightly to his great frame when the air escaped.

Water came up around his neck and lips. Had he been erect, air pressure in the top of his helmet might have kept the water out for a few moments. But he was tilted over on the steel floor. The brine covered his nostrils, his eyes.

A few bubbles left his nostrils. Then the mad desperation of impending Death seemed to seize the metallic giant . His great arms corded, convulsed, and the 2 silver divers who held him were carried together head-first! They dropped off his arms, stunned.

Doc stamped the other man free of his legs.

The fellow who had torn off the oxygen tank retreated, still holding the tank in one hand and a knife in the other.

Doc made a move as if to follow him. But a great weakness seemed to have seized him. He swayed and was moved about by the water currents within the swamped Helldiver . He sagged.

The current carried him backward. He disappeared into the gloom of the compartment from which the silver divers had come to stage the flank attack.

Ull himself had wrenched the oxygen apparatus from Doc Savage's suit. He was elated! He yelled once in unholy delight as Doc vanished into the black tomb of the compartment. Then he lunged toward 2 men who held Rapid Pace, and jammed his helmet to one of theirs.

"Keep them alive!" he yelled.

Because their diving suits were not equipped with the ingenious radio inter-communicating sets, it was necessary to put helmets together when they wanted to talk. In that manner, vibration through the metal carried their voices.

"Hell's fire!" the man shouted back. "Why?"

"We'll pump them!" Ull bellowed. "We must know whether they told the police what they had learned about us!"

Ull moved rapidly to his other men and repeated the order. As a result, Monk and Ham were hauled to the conning tower hatch, not greatly damaged except in spirit. Monk's diving suit was leaking on one leg. But that would not be serious as long as he kept upright. A knife had made a gash in it.

Rapid Pace and McCoy were also unharmed. They were dragged along behind.