d that it
will kick up enough disturbance to bring Nerado down on us like a hawk
after a chicken. However, if he takes us much deeper I'll have to go to
work on him. We're getting down pretty close to our limit, and the
bottom's a long way down yet."

Deeper and deeper the lifeboat was dragged by its dreadful opponent,
whose spiked teeth still tore savagely at the tough outer plating of the
craft until Costigan reluctantly threw in his power switches. Against
the full propellant thrust the monster could draw them no lower, but
neither could the lifeboat make any headway toward the surface. The
Terrestrial then turned on his rays, but found that they were
ineffective. So closely was the creature wrapped around the submarine
that his weapons could not be brought to bear upon it without melting
the vessel's own outer skin.

"What can it possibly be, anyway, and what can we do about it?" Clio
asked.

"I thought at first it was something like a devilfish, or possibly an
overgrown starfish, but it's too flat, and has no body that I can see,"
Costigan made answer. "It must be a kind of flat worm. That doesn't
sound reasonable--the thing must be all of a hundred meters long--but
there it is. The only thing left to do now, as I see it, is to try to
boil him alive."

He closed other circuits, diffusing a terrific beam of pure heat, and
the water all about them burst into furious clouds of steam. The boat
leaped upward as the metallic fins of the gigantic worm fanned vapor
instead of water, but the creature neither released its hold nor ceased
its relentlessly grinding attack. Minute after minute went by, but
finally the worm dropped limply away--cooked through and through;
vanquished only by death.

"Now we've put our foot in it, clear to the knee!" Costigan exclaimed,
as he shot the lifeboat upward at its maximum power. "Look at that! I
knew that Nerado could trace us, but I didn't have any idea that _they_
could. It's a good thing these ultra-vision plates don't need light to
see by or we'd be _'spurlos versenkt'_ in a hurry!"

Staring with Costigan into the plate, Bradley and the girl saw, not the
Nevian sky-rover they had expected, but a fast submarine cruiser, manned
by the frightful fishes of the greater deeps. It was coming directly
toward the lifeboat, and even as Costigan hurled the little vessel off
at an angle and then upward into the air one of the deadly offensive
rods, tipped with its glowing ball of pure de