our glass sphere. One eye
appeared. It was at least three feet across and of a shimmering amethyst
color.

One of the deadly saucers wrapped itself around the great head. The
entire mass of attackers and attacked settled slowly to the bottom.

But before it completely succumbed the beaten monster gave one last,
convulsive flick of its tail....

"Good God!" cried Stanley, shrinking away from the pump and staring
upward.

I followed his gaze with my own eyes.

In the faint reflected glow of the searchlight I could see row on row of
large cups flattened against the top of the ball. As I watched these
flattened still more and the big sphere quivered perceptibly.

In its death struggle the mighty serpent had flicked one of the huge
leeches against us. It now clung there with blind tenacity, covering
nearly two-thirds of our shell with the underside of its body.

I reached for the control key to send us to the surface.

"Don't!" snapped the Professor. "The weight--"

He needed to say no more. My hand recoiled as though the key had been
red hot.

The three-quarter-inch cable above us was now sustaining, in addition to
its own huge weight, our massive glass ball and the appalling tonnage
of this grim blanket of flesh that encircled us. Could it further hold
against the strain of lifting that combined tonnage through the press of
the water? Almost certainly it could not!

There was nothing we could do but hang there and discover at first hand
exactly what happened to things that were clamped in those mighty,
living vises!

* * * * *

The Professor turned on the interior bulb. The result was ghastly. It
showed every detail of the belly of the thing that gripped us.

Crowded over its entire under surface were gristly, flattened suckers.
Now and then a convulsive ripple ran through its surface tissue and
great ridges of flesh stood out. With each squeeze the glass shell
quivered ominously as though the extreme limit of its pressure resisting
power were being reached--and passed.

"A nice fix," remarked the Professor, his calm, dry voice acting like a
tonic in that moment of fear. "If we try to go up, the cable would
probably break. If we try to outlast the patience of this thing we might
run out of air, or actually be staved in."

He paused thoughtfully.

"I suggest, though, that we follow the latter course for awhile at
least. It would be just too bad if that cable broke, gentle