I stood clinging. This dizzying whirl! From the audiphone grid Coniston's voice sounded.

"I say, Haljan, something's wrong! Hahn doesn't signal."

The look-out in the forward tower was clinging to his window. On the deck below our turret a member of the crew appeared, stood lurching for a moment, then shouted, and turned and ran, swaying, aimless. From the lower hull-corridors our grids sounded with the tramping of running steps. Panic among the crew was spreading over the ship. A chaos below decks.


I pulled at the emergency switch again. Dead....

But down below there was the manual controls.

"Snap, we must get down. The signals."

"Yes."

Coniston's voice came like a scream from the grid. "Hahn is dead—the controls are broken! Hahn is dead!"

We barely heard him. I shouted, "Miko—hold Anita! Come on, Snap!"