A shot came from the catwalk, a spitting electronic stab that sent a shower of sparks on the kiosk ceiling. From the rail Allen and Leh dove. Then they were swimming; Leh guiding him as shots stabbed down at them. Allen was aware that Leh was dragging him underwater through a small subterranean passage to emerge in a watery cave. A water-cylinder was here, a twenty foot little submarine, as one might describe it on Earth. Two small seats were amidships in it, with its operating mechanisms around them. A moment later, they were off.
It was a weird underwater journey; some two hours, Allen guessed, while they sat in the dimness of the humming little cylindrical interior. Through the visor pane of the turret into which their heads projected, Allen had a dim vista of the turgid green-black depths, illumined by the small search-ray which preceded them. The vessel was propelled by a rocket-stream of disintegrating water as the electrolysis of backward gas-thrust shoved them forward.
Sub-sea world of Venus. Allen saw little of it then, but still enough to suggest its ramified weirdness. They sped out through the watery tunnel, down the inlet at a depth of perhaps fifty feet, and then into the open sea. Empty, black-green depths. Running at fifty feet submersion, Allen could see beneath them the vague vista of a slimy undulating bottom. Then it dropped away, with only occasional jagged spires of peaks. Tumbled, submarine world. Fishes flipped away, frightened by the light. Occasionally, there was a glimpse of monstrous things that quivered; shapes that hung suspended, watching with dull-green round eyes.
A submarine forest for a time was to one side, an intricate tracery of vegetation, with air-pods holding it upright as it slowly weaved and undulated like a thing quivering with life. A gigantic thing like a great squid with weaving tentacles came wobbling from a forest glade. It lunged to attack, but the little cylinder avoided it and sped past.
Leh hardly spoke. He was tense, guiding their frail craft; and tense too with this emergency of haste to get to Peters. Leh had learned as much or more of Tollgamo's plans than had Allen.
Then at last they were nearing their destination. Allen had learned now that Peters and his men of science were not located in the city of Arron. They had laboratories, workshops and arsenal on a rocky island fortress. It was some twenty miles by water from Arron; within a mile or so of a partly submerged section of the forest, where a village known as the Water City was built.
Allen saw the watery foundations of the Water City as the cylinder sped past. Then Leh was slackening, to land at a sub-sea dock beneath the arsenal. The dock's weird dark outlines presently were beside them. With air-renewer mechanisms like a pack on their shoulders, and a round transparent glassite helmet, which had an elastic gasket tightly fitting their throats, they emerged through the cylinder's little pressure lock into the water. Heavy shoes made them able to walk, with a pushing swaying shove.
Leh, with a metal-tipped finger, touched a tiny metal plate on Allen's helmet. And Leh's voice, dim, muffled, sounded in Allen's ears.
"You follow me. There will be a guard where we emerge."