Through the metal walls of that room the hurtling submarine crashed as though through walls of paper, speeding still straight up and outward with the force of its tremendous impetus. To the half-conscious Stevens, crouched there. It seemed that for a single moment the whole world held its breath, and then he saw a fountain of brilliant green fire burst out and upward from the little control room at the great spire's top, felt a mighty, thundering detonation shake the waters about him, and then half glimpsed below him the sea's bottom and the great city upon it heaving, rumpling, breaking and crashing, as that city broke up and was annihilated by a tremendous uprush of dazzling fires from beneath it--broke up and was annihilated, as he knew, by the explosion of the mighty generator beneath it, whose titanic, pent-up energies the wrecking of the little control room had released--broke up and was annihilated, Stevens knew, as _all_ the cities of the slug-people had been in that moment, when the mighty generators beneath each of those cities exploded likewise, the prisoned energies of all of them released by the wrecking of the little room from which all had been controlled. In all the far-flung deeps of earth's seas the cities of the slug-people and all their hideous hordes had met annihilation in that tremendous moment, he knew. The earth shuddered and swayed beneath those simultaneous, titanic cataclysms; the sea's whole floor rolled and shook; and then, as the submarine was flung wildly upward by the terrific convulsions of the waters, the vast fiery uprush of destruction beneath faded from his eyes. Then Stevens felt his senses failing him, sank backward and was but dimly conscious of the waters outside the submarine roaring wildly as it shot upward with terrific speed. For a time that seemed endless to his darkened mind that roaring continued, and then abruptly came silence, and a great shock and splash. Then he felt hands upon him, and hoarse voices shouting in his ears, heard the doors above clanging open, admitting a flood of sunlight and clean fresh air upon him, and then he knew no more. 6