He thrust an electro-gun renewal clip into Kort's hand. With the weapon in hand Kort descended ladder after ladder to the engine deck. Amid disquieting silence something within him grew coldly alert. The engine room was empty. Giant mercury turbines spun lazily under a pressure head far too low to drive them at normal speed. A chill swept him at the sight of the pressure gauges. In the dim glow of failing fluorescents he headed for the stokehole. A nameless sense of menace cautioned him. He passed the great bunkers full of kwahna wood, the rich, oily fuel that drove the _Mermaid_ and her kind across the planet's five oceans. In the last bulkhead the stokehole door stood wide, somehow sounding a chill note of warning. Without entering he called Wellson and Starr. The names echoed hollowly from the dim reaches of the ship, but in response came only the faint roar of a blower left at half speed. The thought that Wellson and Starr must have gone through that same door determined him against doing so. Instead he climbed to the deck above, coming out on a catwalk above the boilers, from which he could see into the stokehole. Five men sprawled on the deck plates in the contorted postures of those dead by violence, knees drawn high, arms outflung, fingers bent into claws. By the light of his pocket flash Kort recognized the distorted features of Starr. A reddish glow from an open firebox illumined those of Wellson. The other men were native stokers. When Kort moved the flash beam horror tightened its clutch upon him. The stokehole pit seemed full of sea slugs. By actual count he found there were five of them, alert, weaving, posturing as though to sense new victims. Oddly enough the light brought no response from them, even when flashed directly upon their dingy white bodies. Suddenly the electro-gun seemed to burn in Kort's hand. He lifted away a section of the catwalk grid to fire through the opening thus left. Bullets howled, ricocheting from deck plates and bulkheads below. Occasionally one of the creatures seemed to flicker before a shot. When the gun was empty Kort got to his feet. His fire had been without effect. He felt a sick sense of futility as he climbed back to the wheelhouse, where Hodge soberly listened to the tale of death he had to tell. "We've got to get them, son," said the first mate grimly. "It's them or us. Look aport." The sky was aflame over the horizon. Twisted ribbons of light swirled between sea and heavens, shot through now and again with flashes of crimson. Across the waters came, faintly, the rumble of thunder. "_Kilwanni!_" grunted Hodge. "From the looks of that borealis, it's headed this way. If we lie here much longer we'll be blown out of the water." "With the anti-grids?" Kort protested. "Without them," Hodge answered dryly. "What're you going to use for juice? The lightning generators have almost stopped, and you can't turn the anti-grid generators on flat boilers, nor use battery juice either."