Nine Rarities by Ray Bradbury, James Settles Read Free Book Online Page A

grappled.
     
    "God! Oh God! I can't stand it longer! Months of sleeping under the sea! Let me out of this god-damned nightmare! Let me out!"
     
    "Stop! Stop it, Schmidt! Stop!" The captain fell under a blow. The younger man wrested the gun from him, shot him three times. Then he jumped up the rungs to the conning tower, and twisted at mechanisms.
     
    Alita warned the others. "Be ready! One is coming out! He's coming out! He's opening the inner door!" Instantly, breathlessly, passionately, Helene's voice rang: "To hell with the inner door! It's the outer door we want open!"
     
    "God in heaven, let me out! I can't stay below!"
     
    "Stop him!"
     
    The crew scrambled. Ringing down, the inner door peeled open. Three Germanic faces betrayed the biting fear in their bellies. They grabbed instruments and threw them at Schmidt's vanishing legs jumping up the rungs!
     
    Conda's voice clashed like a thrust gong in the deep sunlit waters. "Ready, everyone? If he gets the outer door open, we must force in to stop the others from ever closing it!"
     
    Helene laughed her knifing laughter. "I'm ready!"
     
    The submarine stirred and rolled to a strange gurgling sound. Young Schmidt was babbling and crying. To Alita, he was now out of sight. The other men were pouring pistol shots up into the conning tower where he'd vanished, to no effect. They climbed after him, shouting.
     
    A gout of water hammered down, crushed them!
     
    "It's open!" Helene exulted. "It's open! The outer seal is free!"
     
    "Don't let them slam it again!" roared Conda. White bodies shot by, flashing green in the sunlight. Thoughts darkened, veiling like unsettled mud.
     
    Inside the machine-room, the crew staggered in a sloshing, belching nightmare of thrusting water. There was churning and thrashing and shaking like the interior of a gigantic washing machine. Two or three crew-men struggled up the rungs to the inner lock and beat at the closing mechanism.
     
    "I'm inside!" Helene's voice was high, excited. "I've got him—the German boy! Oh, this is a new kind of love, this is!"
     
    There was a terrific mental scream from the German, and then silence. A moment later his dangling legs appeared half in, half out the lock as the door started to seal! Now it couldn't seal. Yanking desperately, the crew beneath tried to free him of the lock, but Helene laughed dimly and said, "Oh, no, I've got him and I'm keeping him here where he'll do the most good! He's mine. Very much mine. You can't have him back!"
     
    Water thundered, spewed. The Germans floundered. Schmidt's limbs kicked wildly, with no life, in the steadily descending torrent. Something happened to release him. The lock rapped open and he fell face down into the rising waters.
     
    Something came with him. Something white and quick and naked. Helene.
     
     
     
    ALITA watched in a numbed sort of feeling that was too weary to be horror.
     
    She watched until there were three Germans left, swimming about, keeping their heads over water, yelling to God to save them. And Helene was in among them, invisible and stroking and moving quickly. Her white hands flickered up, grasped one officer by the shoulders and pulled him steadily under.
     
    "This is a different kind of love! Make love to me! Make love! Don't you like my cold lips?"
     
    Alita swam off, shuddering, away from the fury and yelling and corruption. The submarine was dying, shaking its prehistoric bulk with metal agony. In another moment it would be drowned and the job done. Silence would come down again and sunlight would strike on the dead, quiet U-boat and another attack would be successful.
     
    Sobbing, Alita swam up toward the sun in the green silence. It was late afternoon, and the water became warmer as she neared the surface. Late afternoon. Back in Forest Hills they'd be playing tennis now on the hot courts, drinking cool cocktails, talking about dancing tonight at the Indigo Club. Back in Forest Hills they'd be deciding what formal to