The Man on the Meteor by Ray Cummings

The light ahead of us winked like a will-o'-the-wisp as intervening branches of coral, the edge of a mud-bank, or perhaps the body of some living creature, momentarily blotted it out. We were close to the bottom now. Along here it was a rolling, but fairly even bank of ooze, with grotesque squat plants growing in it.

The light could not have been more than a few hundred feet in advance of us; in its glow we could sometimes see the outlines of the human figure carrying it. We did not dare speak aloud now; we swam with that speed and silence which only one who lives in the water can attain.

Presently the light dipped downward and vanished. We saw that this figure we were following had entered a black cave-mouth-an opening which ran diagonally down into a slimy bank of mud. And we saw, too, that the points of steady light which had first attracted our attention were the reflected glow of illumination from somewhere beneath the sea floor.

Silently we slipped into the cave-mouth. The moving light was down there: then abruptly it disappeared.

"Wait! " whispered Caan. "Go slower!"

We advanced cautiously-and came again to a hedge of coral which impeded our passage. But this barrier we saw at once was artificial. It was the crude doorway-created by human intelligence and industry-which barred the creatures of the wild from entering. We threaded our way through it. Any one of those sea-monsters could have battered it down had he known his strength. But such a knowledge is given only to Man.

Beyond the barrier the dim glow of a diffused green light became visible. We edged cautiously forward, turned a corner, came suddenly to a ledge, and stopped-breathless, with wildly beating hearts.

We were looking down from near the ceiling of a cave. The water filling it was lighted with a pale green radiance, that lent a ghastly, wavering unreality to the scene. The cave might have been several hundred feet in width-nearly circular-and shallow, a hundred feet perhaps from floor to ceiling. The opposite wall to us was plainly visible. It was gouged out with niches in ranks and tiers-shallow ledges like the houses of your ancient, most primitive "Cliff-dwellers. " We could see little family groups squatting on many of them-humans, not unlike the Marinoids in form-men, and women, and children.

But it was none of this that caused our hearts to leap so wildly. The floor of this community house was at the moment crowded with human figures. The figure we had followed in was swimming downward to join them. On a raised platform-a shelf of ooze at the side and bottom of the cave-several old men were sitting. They were not Marinoids-but they seemed to differ principally in the eyes, which were much larger and more vacant, and in the pallid, ghastly whiteness of the puffy flesh of their bodies.

On the same platform stood Og! He was gazing down at the throng of people before him-haranguing them. His voice reached us-not Marinoid words, but enough like them-a corruption-to make them intelligible to us.

All this we saw at a brief glance. And the crowning thing: On the platform also, between Og and the white old men, my Nona was sitting with her arms bound at her sides! My Nona, beautiful as always, pink skin, blue eyes and golden hair-so vivid amid that pallid, ghastly throng! And she was unharmed-with spirit unbroken-I could see that by the flash of her eyes, her scornful, unwavering gaze as she leveled it at the puffy white faces staring up at her.

My Nona!

We crouched there on that upper ledge, staring down through the green water of the cave, and listened to Og as he harangued that pallid, puffy-faced throng. His words came up to us clear-words which, as I have said, were not Marinoid but a corruption of them sufficiently close to the original to be intelligible to us. We listened, breathless. What we heard made the past plain to us; and made our own future-the danger hanging over all the Marinoids-equally plain.

For a moment we forgot our own position there on the ledge-forgot even Nona whom we had come to rescue and who was sitting behind Og on the platform, arms bound at her sides, with scorn on her beautiful face and her eyes flashing fire at her captors.

For Og, with vehement, enthusiastic words, was explaining to these, his own people, how he would soon lead them into battle against the Marinoids! Rax and its sister cities would be captured; the Marinoid men killed or reduced to slavery; and all the beautiful, peaceful Marinoid domain turned over to the rule and the enjoyment of Og and his people!

It made us shudder; but we held ourselves quiet. Caan, older than Prince Atar and I, pulled us back when in our eagerness to hear Og's every word we would have pressed thoughtlessly forward and risked discovery from below.

These people called themselves Maagogs-two long, very harsh syllables. Down here under the Water of Wild Things, hidden away in caves, mud-holes and subterranean tunnels, there were doubtless thousands of them-dragging out a furtive existence, menaced on every hand by monsters of the deep. To them, Nature herself must have seemed an inexorable enemy, as though their very being were against her laws, her wishes.

For centuries they had apathetically struggled on. And then, as though to blot them out entirely, Nature had turned on them still further. Of recent years the pallid, dull-eyed Maagog women had borne but one female to three males. The Maagog women were dying out; soon the race would become extinct.

With this dearth of women of their kind, Maagog men of the more prepossessing appearance (a generation before) had smuggled themselves into the Marinoid race. Their children-half-breeds-were living there now, with their Maagog heritage unsuspected by the trusting, simple-minded Marinoids.

All this and more, Og explained to the throng of Maagogs he had assembled before him, as he outlined his plans of what he now proposed to do.