There were men in the second compartment, and they still fought to live. From the narrow seamen's berths that lined the walls came the sound of breathing even more torturous than that of the men in the rear. In the single bulb's dim light Ken could see their shapes stretched motionlessly out, panting and panting. Occasionally hands reached up to claw at straining necks, as if to try and rid throats of strangling grasps. Two figures had won free from the long struggle. They lay silent and still, the outline of their dead bodies showing through the sheets pulled over them.
Slowly Sallorsen led Ken through this compartment and into the next, which was bare of men. Here were the ship's main controls—her helm, her central multitude of dials, levers and wheels, her televisiscreen and old-fashioned emergency periscope. A metal labyrinth it was, all long silent and inactive. Again the weird contrast struck Ken, for outside he could still see the scene of vigorous, curious life that the sealmen constituted. Close they came to the submarine's sheer walls of quarsteel, peering in stolidly, then flashing away with an effortless thrust of flippers, sometimes for air from some break in the surface ice.
Like men, the sealmen needed air to live, and got it fresh and clean from the world above. Inside, real men were gasping, fighting, hopelessly, yielding slowly to the invisible death that lay in the poisonous stuff they had to breathe....
Ken felt Sallorsen nudge him. They had come to the forward end of the control compartment, and could go no farther. Before them was the watertight door, in which was set a large pane of quarsteel. The captain wanted him to look through.
Ken did so, knowing what to expect; but even so he was surprised by the strangeness of the scene. In among the manifold devices of the front compartment, its wheels and pipes and levers, glided slowly the sleek, blubbery shapes of half a dozen sealmen. Back and forth they swam, inspecting everything curiously, unhurried and unafraid; and as Ken stared one of them came right up to the other side of the closed watertight door, pressed close to the pane and regarded him with large placid eyes.
Other sealmen entered through a jagged rip in the plates on the starboard side of the bow. At this Sallorsen began to speak again in the short, clipped sentences, punctuated by quick gasps for air.
"Crashed, bow-on," he said. "Underwater ice. Outer and inner plates crumpled like paper. Lost trim and hit bottom. Got this door closed, but lost four men in bow compartment. Drowned. No chance. Sparks among 'em, at his radio. That's why we couldn't radio for help." He paused, gasping shallowly.
"Could've got away if we'd left immediately. One flooded compartment not enough to hold this ship down. But I didn't know. I sent two men out in sea-suits—inspect damage. Those devils got them.