the
answer be feared.

"Yes. Two."

The men were all staring at Ken, so he had to hide the awful dejection
which clamped his heart. He only said:

"That's what I feared. It changes everything. No use trying to reason
with them now." He fell silent. "Well," he said at last, trying to
appear more cheerful, "tell me what happened. Maybe there's something
you've overlooked."

"Yes," Sallorsen whispered. He started to come forward to the
torpooner, but stumbled and would have fallen had not Ken caught him
in time. He put one of the captain's arms around his shoulder, and one
of his own around the man's waist.

"Thanks," Sallorsen said wryly. "Walk forward. Show you what
happened."

* * * * *

There were men in the second compartment, and they still fought to
live. From the narrow seamen's berths that lined the walls came the
sound of breathing even more torturous than that of the men in the
rear. In the single bulb's dim light Ken could see their shapes
stretched motionlessly out, panting and panting. Occasionally hands
reached up to claw at straining necks, as if to try and rid throats of
strangling grasps. Two figures had won free from the long struggle.
They lay silent and still, the outline of their dead bodies showing
through the sheets pulled over them.

Slowly Sallorsen led Ken through this compartment and into the next,
which was bare of men. Here were the ship's main controls--her helm,
her central multitude of dials, levers and wheels, her televisiscreen
and old-fashioned emergency periscope. A metal labyrinth it was, all
long silent and inactive. Again the weird contrast struck Ken, for
outside he could still see the scene of vigorous, curious life that
the sealmen constituted. Close they came to the submarine's sheer
walls of quarsteel, peering in stolidly, then flashing away with an
effortless thrust of flippers, sometimes for air from some break in
the surface ice.

Like men, the sealmen needed air to live, and got it fresh and clean
from the world above. Inside, real men were gasping, fighting,
hopelessly, yielding slowly to the invisible death that lay in the
poisonous stuff they had to breathe....

Ken felt Sallorsen nudge him. They had come to the forward end of the
control compartment, and could go no farther. Before them was the
watertight door, in which was set a large pane of quarsteel. The
captain wanted him to look through.

Ken did so, knowing what to