Oh, I was not the only one who had been perturbed at this descent into the abyss! Arturo was utterly relieved. * * * * * “We’ll be in the first lock very soon, Jeff,” he panted. “How far?” With my labored breathing I was sparing of words. He said: “Ten miles or so. I don’t know. They’ve got us safely.” He called: “Tad, they waited. Suppose--they had deserted us--” “Arturo, this rotation--this spinning--” “Don’t talk yet, Jeff.” I labored. “I mean the rotation screwed us downward--” “Yes.” “Then why doesn’t it--stop now?” “The exterior pressure. Our rotation absorbs it--like the Dolphin’s water-jacket--give father credit, he struck the principle--it’s well known down here.” “Arturo--you talk--tell me--I can’t talk to question you--” He laughed at that. “Do you think--I don’t feel the pressure change? I do. Take it easy, Jeff--you’ll understand in good time. Ah, there’s the lock.” Our globe stopped. In a dull glow outside I could see us wait an instant, then drift downward through a huge metallic door. It yawned open to receive us; it closed above us as we floated down through it. We were in a square, cavelike room. Water filled it. “The first lock,” said Arturo. “They’ll change the water pressure; then we’ll go down into the next one. Ten altogether. We’ll be ten or fifteen minutes in each.” A new realm beneath us. My thoughts struggled to encompass it all. A mile, ten miles over my head, the ocean floor. Already it seemed so remote. The abyss of our Pacific Ocean. Above its depths, our great atmospheric realm. Down here a new world, unknown; throughout all the uncounted centuries of the past, unknown save where our legends had glimpsed it. Another realm. A civilization, a science here; things mechanical; the rational thought of rational humans. These locks, gateways, changing pressures were all planned and built by skillful human effort. So strange a thing! The lock was dimly lighted. In the silence I could hear the throb of outside pumps, the gurgle of air bubbles, and the hiss of air and water. Against the side wall of the lock room, there was a small, transparent dome. A dull light was in it. The water was excluded. The figure of a man showed in there, bent over a table of instruments, it was the lockkeeper, attending the pumps for our downward passage. Tad came over. “I say, Arturo, no twenty-hour watchman ever got as hungry as I am. How you feeling, Jeff?” “Better,” I said, “but terrible.” “You’ll ease up. We’re rotating slower now. In the fifth lock, we stop.” I noticed that the globe seemed spinning not quite so fast. Tad insisted: “Can’t we eat, Arturo? Let’s have Nereid fix it up.” We passed down into the second lock. The spinning of the globe slowed another notch. The second lock was a room like the first. The overhead door swung closed. The pumps outside throbbed. I could see the water changing; a thinner quality, its turgidness leaving it, a limpid aspect coming to it.