him the document I had received the day before.
He shook his head.

"But it's impossible. Their ray network, and the undersea barrier,
are absolutely solid here. I don't think even a mouse could get
through. And even if you did get behind their lines, how on earth are
you going to get into the area underneath that devilish cloud. You saw
what happened to the _New York_, protected as she was."

"Yes. I know all that. Nevertheless it's got to be done." Just then I
got the glimmering of an idea. "Tell me, Jim, are they doing much
scouting here. Undersea, I mean."

"The usual one-man shell, radio-propelled. We get one once in a while.
Most of them, however, even if we do smash them, are pulled back on
the wave before we can grab them. It's a bit easier than most places,
though: our depth's only about six hundred feet."

"What! Why, I thought the bottom averaged three thousand all along
the line."

"It does. But what would be a mountain ridge, if this were dry land,
runs out from the mainland. We're over a big plateau here. It goes on
east another twenty-five miles, or so. See, here's the chart."

A warning bell seemed to ring somewhere within me. Had this peculiar
formation of the ocean bed anything to do with the problem at hand?
But I kept to the immediate step. My plan was rapidly taking shape in
my mind.

"What are the scouts--black, yellow, or--"

"Russians, mostly."

"Good. Now listen, Jim. Send down word that the next scout-sub that is
caught is not to be ripped, but simply held against the attraction of
the return wave. The television eye is to be smashed at once, and
radio communication jammed. Can you do it as if something had happened
to the shell?"

"Sure thing, but what's the big idea?"

"You'll see. I've worked the thing out now."

Just then a red light on Bradley's desk winked three times. "There's
one between the lines now!" he exclaimed.

"Quick, man, shoot my orders down."

He pressed a yellow button and spoke quietly but emphatically into a
mouth piece. "O.K. They understand."

"Now take me down."

He looked at me as if I had taken leave of my senses, but complied.

* * * * *

The door of the elevator that lowered us from the surface clanged
open. We stepped out on a balcony that ran around a large, steel-lined
room. The walls were dripping, and on the floor, twenty feet beneath,
a black pool sloshed about with the heaving of the raft, in whose
inte