The water in the seventh lock was thin and limpid clear. I could see the attendant in the dome-shaped cubby. He met Arturo’s gaze; he smiled and gestured a greeting. Arturo tried to call him. “Don’t be a loon!” said Tad sharply. “He can’t hear you. If he did, he couldn’t understand your language. You know that. Wait till we get to the tenth. Then we can get the car and hurry.” I put my hand on Arturo’s arm. “This is something more than we thought it was before? Our oceans draining. A war--” He swung on me. “It’s all that, yes. And more--Nereid’s world is to be annihilated, Jeff! A million people, her people, drowned like rats in a trap unless they can escape upward in time! That’s what we’ve been fearing--and it’s come!” CHAPTER XI. WHAT THE WHITE GLARE SHOWED. The ninth lock was filled with a white, swirling mist, air now; water no longer, yet I had not remarked when the change came. I stood with Arturo at the window; the room outside was gray with dank, wet fog. As we rested in the lock, the pumps outside were hissing with the changing air. The fog dissolved; the air seemed clear, with only a dim haze. The door to the lock under us swung slowly open. We were lowered, our weight handled now by mechanical device. We came to rest in the tenth lock. The air became wholly clear, the moisture gone from it. “Very good,” said Tad. They were preparing to leave. “Shall I open the door, Entt?” “When we get, what you say--the signal.” The tenth lock was a room like the others, a square, solid, metallic room, with girders of metal reënforcing its rock walls. It was dully illumined by an indirect light, whose source I could not see. The keeper sat with his instruments in a cubby; there was no dome over him. Figures moved on the lock floor about our globe--figures of men, down under the bulge of our walls; I could not see them clearly. They were clamping some mechanism upon us; the globe was swung aside, into an alcove evidently to store it. A metallic, railed balcony ran midway of the room. Arturo gestured. I saw standing up there the figure of a woman. A brawny, powerful figure, gray-white of limb, with hair dead black. She stood on the balcony, gesturing down at the workmen, evidently commanding. A tall, gray figure, five feet ten, at the least. I could see her only dimly; a white shield like thin, flexible metal bound her torso; black coils of her long hair crossed her breast. Our globe was drawn aside; the woman gestured vehemently at us. Entt called. “She said, ready now.” Tad was moving about the globe. “Come on. We want a fast car, Entt.” We swung open the globe’s heavy door. There was a gentle inrush of air; it seemed purer, fresher; but it brought an intensified smell of earthly dankness. Our voices in it were heavy, muffled.