udders,
but nothing more. "Why?" he cried. And, as Bowman moved his hands in a
hopeless gesture, he saw in the teleview the reason.

It was a jagged pinnacle of rock, which, just before Brown had fired,
had been straight ahead. The towing monster had seen it and veered
sharply to avoid crashing. The barest change of course, yet sufficient
to avoid the torpedoes....

* * * * *

Wells and Bowman were cursing savagely when the sound of Brown, racing
desperately aft, jerked the commander to the ladder. He saw the petty
officer at its foot. "Hurry!" Wells shouted. "The ray!"

Brown grasped the steel rungs and scrambled upward, but he was too
late. The fatal charge tingled. A peculiar, surprised expression
washed over his face; his hands loosened their grip. For a second his
eyes looked questioningly at his commander; a faint sigh escaped him;
and then his arms flung out, his body relaxed, and he slumped like a
slab of meat to the deck below....

Keith Wells saw red. Blind to everything, he was just about to charge
down the ladder to himself re-load the forward tubes when the grip of
Hemmy Bowman's hand stayed him. The thing Hemmy was staring at in the
teleview screen sobered him completely.

The wall of rock to which the enemy submarine had first been charging
had become visible, soaring vastly from the gloom of the sea-floor.
And the monster was towing them straight into a dark, jagged cleft at
its base.

"It's a cavern!" Keith breathed. "A split in the rock--the lair of
that devil. And we're being dragged into it!"

CHAPTER III

_Sacrifice_

At that moment Keith Wells knew fear. Each second they were being
hauled closer to the monster's dim lair. It lay there, dark,
mysterious, fingered by gently swaying, clammy kelp. A hushed solitude
seemed to reign over it, aweing all undersea life from the
vicinity.... Wells turned his head to meet Bowman's eyes, and read in
them a silent question.

What now?

He groaned in the agony of his mind. In a few minutes, all would be
over. Once the _NX-1_ was dragged into that dark cavern there'd be no
chance of escaping to warn the world above, of saving the submarine.
What now? The question brought beads of sweat to his tormented brow.
He, Keith Wells, standing impotently by while his ship, the pride of
the service, was hauled inch by inch to some strange doom!

Racked by these thoughts, he murmured tortured, jerky phrases,
unconscious he