reached out and
hovered over their heads, moving uncertainly back and forth. Then,
like a monstrous water snake, the tentacle poised, flicked out and
plucked a man from his comrades.

His shriek of terror rasped in their earphones. "Steady, men!" Keith
cried. "It's hopeless to try and fight them! The monster just wants to
look him over!"

* * * * *

The man--Williams, a petty officer--was dangled by the armpit in
mid-water and made to slowly revolve. The tip of another huge arm
snaked out and for some seconds stroked his body, probing curiously.
He panted with fright, and in their earphones his friends could hear
his every tortured exhalation. Anxiously, Keith watched. Then,
without warning, another tentacle darted up, fastened its tip on the
breast of the captive's sea-suit, and deliberately ripped it open.

The doomed man's last scream rang in their helmets as the water poured
into his suit. They saw him writhe and struggle desperately in the
remorseless grip which held him. The two huge eyes of the cuttlefish
surveyed his death throes minutely; watched his agonized struggles
gradually weaken; watched his legs and arms relax, his head sink
lower.... And then the tentacle let a lifeless body float to the
floor.

Jennerby, a huge engineer, went completely mad. "I'll get him, the
devil!" he yelled, and before Keith could command him to stay back,
had flung himself onto the giant king.

Death came as a mere matter of course. Without apparent effort, the
monarch ripped off Jennerby's helmet and sent him spinning back. The
man's body writhed and shuddered, and in a moment another stark white
face showed where death had struck....

Trembling, sick at heart, the commander yet had to think of his men.
"For God's sake," he cautioned them, "keep back. Don't try to fight
now; we've got to wait our chance! Steady. Steady...."

The king's deliberate tentacle again began its slow weaving. It was
choosing another victim. And this time it darted straight out at Keith
Wells and gripped him with a mighty clutch about the waist.

The commander did not cry out. As he was brought close to the staring
eyes, and felt their sinister gaze run over him, it flashed through
him for some obscure reason that the monster knew him for what he was,
the leader, from the tiny bars on each shoulder of his sea-suit.... He
waited for the tentacles to rip it open.

But they did not. Instead, the creature turned an