v0.9 by the N.E.R.D's. This is a pre-proof release. Scanned, page numbers removed, paragraphs joined, formatted and common OCR errors have been largely removed. Full spell check and read-through still required.
Itself, king of the Phillipine Deep - that awesome canyon where the sea goes down six miles - woke from his recharge period and looked around suspiciously.
His Alter Ego said, 'Well, how is it with Itself today?'
The Alter Ego was a booster, a goader, a stimulant to action, and, in his limited way, a companion.
Itself did not answer. During the sleep period, he had drifted over a ravine, the walls of which dropped steeply another thousand feet. Suspiciously, Itself glared along the canyon rim.
… Not a visual observation. No light ever penetrated from above into the eternal night here at the deepest bottom of the ocean. Itself perceived the black world which surrounded him with high frequency sounds which he broadcast continuously in all directions. Like a bat in a pitch dark cave, he analyzed the structure of all things in his watery universe by interpreting the returning echoes. And the accompanying emotion of suspicion was a device which impelled Itself to record changing pressures, temperatures and current flows. Unknown to him, what he observed became part of the immense total of data by which faraway computers estimated the interrelationship of ocean and atmosphere, and thus predicted water and air conditions everywhere with uncanny exactness.
His was almost perfect perception. Clearly and unmistakably, Itself made out the intruder in the far distance of that twisting ravine. A ship! Anchored to rock at the very edge of the canyon.
The Alter Ego goaded, 'You're not going to let somebody invade your territory, are you?'
Instantly, Itself was furious. He activated the jet medians ism in the underslung belly of his almost solid metal body. A nuclear reactor immediately heated the plates of the explosion chamber. The seawater which flowed through the chamber burst into hissing clouds of steam, and he jetted forward like a missile.
Arriving at the ship, Itself attacked the nearest of four anchor lines with the nuclear-powered heat beam in his head. When he had severed it, he turned to the second cable, and burned through it. Then he moved for the third cable.
But the startled beings aboard the alien ship had spotted the twenty-foot monster in the black waters below.
'Analyze its echo pattern!' came the command. That was done, with total skill.
'Feed the pattern back through the infinite altering system till the recorders register a response.'
The significant response was: Itself forgot what he was doing. He was drifting blankly away, when his Alter Ego goaded, 'Wake up! You're not going to let them get away with that, are you?'
The defeat had galvanized Itself to a more intense level of rage. He became multiples more sensitive. Now, he simply turned out the alien echo copies.
The new greater anger triggered a second weapon.
Itself's echo system of perception, normally monitored to be safe for all living things in the sea, suddenly strengthened. It became a supersonic beam. Purposefully, Itself started toward the ship.
Watching his approach, the enemy decided to take no chances. 'Pull the remaining anchors in!*
Itself headed straight for the nearest part of the vessel. Instantly, those ultrasonic waves started a rhythmic vibration on the hard wall, weakening it.
The metal groaned under a weight of water that at these depths amounted to thousands of tons per square inch. The outer wall buckled with a metallic scream.
The inner wall trembled, but held.
At that point, the appalled defenders got a counter-vibration started, nullified the rhythm of Itself's projections, and were safe.
But it was a sprely wounded ship that now drifted helplessly in a slow current. The aliens had thus far used no energy that might be detected from the surface. But they, had come to Earth to establish a base for invasion. Their instructions were to accumulate enough data about underwater currents to enable them to leave the Deep, and eventually to be able to drift near land, launch atom bombs and drift away again. For this purpose they were mightily armed, and they refused to die in these black waters without a fight
'What can we do about that demon?'
'Blast it!' someone urged.
'That's dangerous.' The alien commander hesitated.
'We can't be in greater danger than we already are.'
'True,' said the commander, 'but frankly I don't know why he's armed at all, and I can't believe he has anything more. Set up a response system. If he does attack with anything new, it will automatically fire back. We'll take that much of a chance.'
The second setback had driven Itself completely berserk. He aimed his nuclear pellet gun, firing twice. In the next split-second a blast from the invader pierced his brain.
The Alter Ego yelled, 'You're not going to let them get away with that, are you?'
But the king of the Phillipine Deep was dead, and could no longer be goaded.
In due course, a report was given to weather headquarters: 'Computer Center shows no recent data from Itself. It therefore seems as if another of the wartime anti-submarine water-weather robots has worn out. You may recall that these electronic monsters were programmed to suspicion, anger, and the idea that they owned part of the ocean. After the war, we could never get these creatures to surface; they were too suspicious of us.'
The ocean of water, like the ocean of air far above, flowed and rolled and moved in a ceaseless, dynamic, driving motion many, many times more powerful, however, than any comparable air current. Yet, in essence, the quadrillions of water movements solely and only balanced each other out.
Through the Phillipine Deep there began presently to flow an enormous balancing river. It carried the aliens' invasion vessel in a long, slanting, upward direction. But several weeks passed before the drifting ship actually broke surface, and another day or two before it was seen.
A naval patrol boarded it, found the aliens dead more than a month from concussion, and - after examining the damage - correctly analyzed what had happened.
And so - a new king 'woke' to the first 'day' of his reign, and heard his Alter Ego say, 'Well, Itself, what's the program?' Itself glared with a royal suspicion.