Ah! My Space Goddess!

by ceroxon

The time of Keiichi and the Goddess is long forgotten. Humanity has reached the stars and meet aliens peoples. But what happened to the Goddess and Demons? What is the link between Keiichi of the 2Oth century and the "Captain Keiichi" and his sisters of this future? A story that links the present and the future, and those who have forgotten the past are condemned to repeat it.

8. Infiltration

First of all, I want to clarify that this is a fanfic adaptation work mixing with the pulp comics series "Captain Future", from1940 Edmond Hamilton and the Japanese anime version from 1979. The main characters have been replaced by their equivalent from oh my goddess and the two universes have been mixed even if the shading remains about 85% of that of the original novels by Hamilton. This is a work of adaptation, modernization (at 1940, it starts to date a little) and a merge with the ah my goddess universe. Some chapters have been adapted and their fate and the role of some characters have been changed. I think I did a pretty good job overall and hope you will enjoy reading it. Besides Edmond Hamilton, I particularly thank Kosuke Fujishima for his work "ah my goddess." For this fanfic I want to explain that nothing would have been possible without the beta reading of Vanagandr therefore thank him with all my heart. I also thank all those who worked on the series "Captain Flam", which is the French adaptation of the anime series "Captain Future" inspired by the work of Hamilton.

08) Infiltration.

A series of accident happened to the gravium mine of the planet Bama. During his investigation, Captain Keiichi narrowly avoided being crushed by the collapse of a mine shaft and Belldandy escaped her captors with Urd and Skuld. Unfortunately, Wrecker, their enemy, managed to escape. In addition the situation of Ki Iri, one of Wrecker's men that got captured by Urd and Skuld, remained unchanged, with him being delirious and talking an unknown language. Megumi and Keiichi decided to submit him to various analyzes to understand this mystery.

Two hours later the Brain and the Captain was examining the unconscious Human prisoner with heir instruments, inspecting every detail of the man. The man was a typical specimen, white-skinned, with unusually handsome features and dark hair and a body of medium height.

"Seems average enough," rasped the Brain. "Yet there was something queer about all Wrecker's men".

"Look, he's starting to come out of it!" Urd said.

The stunned Human was moving upon the table. He had not yet opened his eyes, but he was stirring his arms and legs. He stirred them in odd, graceful, sweeping movements, completely unlike the ordinary use of human limbs.

"That's queer," muttered the Brain. "He doesn't show the normal reflex responses."

"It's incomprehensible. I can't find any traces of a recent surgery," Keiichi said.

"Brain pressure and density are normal," Megumi confirmed.

"So there was no physical exchange of the brain. Which is normal, since this operation has never succeeded."

Indeed, even in those future times where medicine had made gigantic progress, exchanging brains between two bodies remained an impossible task, because no drugs could cure the incompatibility problems between the brain and the external body. This was also the main reason why professor Megumi had transferred her brain to a small mechanical vehicles. While the teacher could engage in cloning experiments to develop a new body, she grew accustomed to her new form of existence, and the loss of physical pleasure was not troublesome in comparison. Besides, she could always change her mind if she so much decided to do so.

"So the only possible conclusion is that someone has altered his mind. Perhaps a very advanced form of brainwashing, but why this unknown language?" Skuld asked.

The communicator vessel then sounded, Chihiro's face appeared.

"Captain, I have the information you asked for Ki Iri. By studying his file, it appears that this is a fisherman who lives on Bama for 5 years. He disappeared there's about a month ago while he was out fishing. Many other fishermen were missing at the same time. Rumor has it that it is the devil of the oceans that carried them."

"Thank you, Colonel. Another story about the demon of the oceans, "Keiichi muttered.

"I will search for all the missing. While some have returned home, their houses will be searched and they will be questioned. If they have something to hide, it will be discovered. I doubt that we'll be very successful, but you never know. Either way, we'll act with discretion to avoid giving an early warning to the suspects, and let them disappear. Meanwhile, we'll continue to investigate the identity of Wrecker."

"It couldn't be Ootaki," muttered Chihiro, "for he's only an employee of Tamiya. And, anyway, if he were Wrecker he wouldn't have been out in Mine One with you when it was scheduled to be completely destroyed."

Belldandy nodded agreement. "And I don't see how it could be Toraichi Tamiya, Captain Keiichi. If Tamiya wanted a monopoly on gravium, he'd have destroyed all the other planetary mines. But he wouldn't have gone on and destroyed his own, too."

"Orr Libro's Wrecker, I'll bet a planet, Captain!" exclaimed Urd. "That sneaky, elegant Oranean had his own mine on Mars destroyed because it wasn't profitable any more, as Tamiya said. He was able to get a concession out here on Bama, and he's going to rub out all competition and develop new mines here that'll give him a gravium monopoly!"

Skuld shook her metal head ponderously.

"You're away off the orbit, Urd," declared the robot. "It's that Romacean, Quarus Tull. He's had as much reason and opportunity as Orr Libro. "He is Romacean. It is not sufficient evidence but they are much more inclined to crime than Oraneans or even humans. He is a lot of better suspect than Libro.

"Your brain must need oil, Skuld!" cried the android; "You think the same as I do, don't you, Megumi?"

"No, I do not," replied the Brain witheringly. "It could be any one of the four, as Keiichi is says. But it seems to me that Wrecker is something very different from what we imagine. This unknown language, these stories of oceanic demons, they're surely hiding something huge." Said the Brain.

Belldandy appealed to Keiichi Morisato.

"What do you think, Captain Keiichi? Haven't you any idea which who it maybe?"

"I think everything starts to fall into place. Wrecker is somebody who resolved to destroy the System's gravium sources and bring on a paralysis of interplanetary travel, perhaps even a war or a general massacre. What his motive is, we don't know. His organization is formed of kidnaped fishermen here, to which he subjected to brainwashing or something similar for men who are devoted to him. About the demon of the oceans, he uses this legend to scare the natives of Bama and achieve its goal. As the Space Emperor, Halval, did the same with the elders of Deneph".

"In any case, everything seems to indicate that things are happening at the bottom of the sea" concludes Belldandy.

Keiichi thought about it for a moment and then made his decision. "Well, Urd, Megumi and Skuld. I want you to stay here and try to get as much information of Ki Iri."

"Okay, but what will you do?" Megumi asked.

"I'm going to go make a private visit to each of the surviving directors. I want to know their schedule in recent days and do some checking if possible. I do not think either one of them is Wrecker, but you never know. Bell, are you coming with me?"

"With pleasure, Captain," replied the Galactic Patrol agend.

Half an hour later, Keiichi was at the dock. Ootaki told him where he could find Orr Libro, the Oranean mine owner of Oranean moon. The superintendent, who wasToraichi Tamiya's right hand decided accompanied them.

"What are you doing out in these waters? What were you using those sea-suits for?" Keiichi Morisato demanded crisply, designating a combination next to Libro.

The Captain Keiichi stared suspiciously at the Oranean magnate. Orr Libro met his gaze with a bewildered expression on his hairy red face.

"I don't understand," said the Oranean quickly, still looking puzzled. "You're surely not implying that I am Wrecker?"

"What are you doing out in these waters? What were you using those sea-suits for?" Keiichi Morisato demanded crisply, designating a combination next to Libro.

"It's easy to see what he was using them for!" Ootaki accused violently. "He had his men down in the sea, wrecking our Mine One from outside!"

"Mine One wrecked?" Orr Libro looked astonished. "But that is deplorable. Yet I assure you I had nothing to do with it."

"Answer my question. What's your errand out here?" Captain Keiichi snapped.

The Oranean replied hastily.

"I have a concession to mine gravium on Bama now, remember. I came out with this crew I hired in Amphitrite, to prospect for gravium deposits which I could develop. As you know, such prospecting must be done by divers in sea-suits. I had a half-dozen of these men down on the sea-bottom."

Orr Libro added contemptuously, "But they got scared of their own shadows and insisted on coming back up to the surface. Claimed they had seen some of the mythical sea-devils of this ocean!"

One of the sullen Bamean divers standing nearby broke into loud assertion.

"We did see the sea-devils in the distance!" the gray-faced, peak-headed planetary native declared vehemently, "Down there in the waters, a whole party of them swimming along, half-men and half-fish, just as the old terrible legends tell!"

"That's why we wouldn't stay down there," another Bamean added corroboration. "It's dangerous enough to meet the "Squalodons" or "Uruzaru" or other monsters of the deep. But we can face those dangers. The sea-devils are different!"

"Bah!" said Orr Libro scornfully. "You people of this watery world are a credulous lot to believe such stories."

Captain Keiichi, listening, had been struck by the two Bamean divers' stories.

But, Keiichi realized, all this talk of the Bamean divers might be just an alibi planned by Orr Libro. The dandified Oranean's craftiness was not to be underestimated.

"How does it come," Belldandy sternly demanded of the Oranean, "that you choose this particular region of the sea near Mine One to do your gravium prospecting?"

Orr Libro looked doubtfully at Ootaki, and then answered with apparent frankness.

"To tell the truth, miss, I picked this region because it is near the Bamean Company's Mine One. I hoped I could locate the vein of gravium ore they were working. That's why I tried to get away without being discovered. I was afraid Ootaki and Tamiya would be angry if they learned what I was doing,"

"You dirty red-faced sneak!" spat Ootaki.

The Oranean shrugged. "Sorry you don't like me, my dear Ootaki," he said silkily, "but I'm not breaking any law by trying to pick up the same gravium vein."

Captain Keiichi had stepped away from them, and was bending over the heavy metal sea-suits that lay on deck, still wet from use. Keiichi bent over them, inspecting them carefully, especially the feet.

"Have you any heavy atomic torches aboard?" Keiichi asked the Oranean.

"I think there's two in the equipment," Orr Libro answered wonderingly. Keiichi found them, inspected the tools whose purpose was to create a powerful atomic flame for cutting purposes.

The two boats were tossing more violently on the pitch-black Bamean sea, by now. Wind was rising, soughing through the night and sending stinging blasts of spray across their faces.

"I'd like to get back to Amphitrite before that storm breaks," Orr Libro said anxiously, "You can see one's coming."

Thin sheets of violet lightning had begun to flare far in the southern night, and the wind was still rising. It was apparent that one of the terrific storms of Bama was approaching. And Orr Libro, like all natives of desert Oranea, was a poor sailor.

"All right, you can go ahead to Amphitrite," Keiichi Morisato said shortly. "But we're following you, and I want to go into this matter further there. There's a lot that needs explaining!"

He, Bell and Ootaki returned to their own craft. Presently they were running along the nighted, heaving sea after the Oranean magnate's craft.

"Orr Libro's Wrecker!" Ootaki exclaimed emphatically to Captain Keiichi.

"His divers wrecked Mine One from outside."

"Their atomic torches hadn't been used; they showed a full charge," Keiichi replied, peering thoughtfully ahead into the night.

"They could have been quickly recharged!" Ootaki insisted. "I tell you, that Oranean is behind all that's happened."

Keiichi looked at him.

"But you've had mysterious accidents and trouble here in your mines for weeks, Ootaki," he reminded. "And Orr Libro has only been here on Bama recently."

"He could have had an organization here working for him, even though he wasn't here himself," Belldandy declared.

"Orr Libro was here on Bama a few months ago, all the gravium magnates were, to consult together about raising the price of gravium." Added Ootaki.

Captain Keiichi frowned. It seemed that the deeper he probed into the mystery, the more enigmatic it became. Keiichi felt that the destruction of Mine One had given him one definite clue to Wrecker's identity. Yet that clue seemed nonsensical in the face of the other evidence at hand.

The storm was upon them, now. The sky was lit incessantly by sheets and flares of violet lightning, each of which revealed the vast waves of the Bamean sea towering skyward like moving mountains of water.

"Go ahead, but keep right after Orr Libro's boat," Ootaki directed.

The Oranean's craft was also submerging, ahead. Ootaki shifted the control of the deflecting rudders and their own boat slid down and throbbed along twenty feet under the surface.

Captain Keiichi, deep in thought, looked out through the transparent wall of their craft at the lightning-lit waters they were traveling through. Each violet glares howed the teeming life of the sea about them.

Shoals of brilliant, sparkling "diamond-fish" flashed away, like living gems.

"Air-fish," those weird winged creatures that could live with equal ease in the air or in the sea, flew away in startled undersea flight.

"Coming into Amphitrite harbor!" sang out Ootaki after a time, bringing the long boat back to the surface.

Captain Keiichi slid back one of the over-deck panels and peered keenly ahead.

Orr Libro's boat was just ahead of them, also breaking surface as they entered the sheltered waters of the harbor.

They slid toward the dark docks that fringed the lighted Bamean city.

"I want to see Toraichi Tamiya, your president," Keiichi told. Ootaki. "Will he be at your company offices this late?"

Ootaki nodded, his face haggard.

"Yes. It must surely be about the reports of what happened to the two mine shafts. He's clearly unhappy about it and that's why he needs my help. This is going to be a rather long and painful evening," replied Ootaki.

Their craft bumped the dark dock of the Bamean Gravium Company. Orr Libro's boat was tying up at a dock nearby. Captain Keiichi was waiting for the Oranean when he landed.

"You come along with us," Keiichi told the Oranean crisply.

"Look, there's Quarus Tull's outfit coming in!" Ootaki exclaimed, pointing out into the harbor.

A long craft was entering the harbor from the wild, storm-whipped ocean outside. A flare of the lightning showed it heading for a dock farther along from the one on which they stood.

Quarus Tull, the thin, blue-skinned Romacean gravium magnate, was giving orders to his crew as he came ashore. Keiichi's eyes fastened on the sea-suits in the Romacean's boat.

"The devil, has everyone been out in the sea tonight?" Keiichi wondered ruefully.

He strode forward to Quarus Tull. The Romacean's bony blue face stiffened, and his pale, squinting eyes narrowed as he saw Captain Keiichi.

"I suppose that you too have been merely out prospecting with divers for new gravium deposits?" Keiichi asked ironically.

"Yes, that's what I've been doing," Quarus Tull answered. "Why? It is a problem for you?" answered the Romacean.

"What part of the sea were you prospecting?" Captain Keiichi demanded, ignoring the questions.

Quarus Tull gave the longitude and latitude. The position was between Mines One and Two of the Bamean company.

Keiichi laughed shortly.

"Just like Orr Libro, you wanted to poach on the deposits Tamiya's company located, eh?"

The blue Romacean's thin mouth tightened.

"I don't do anything that isn't legal."

"Come along with us," Keiichi snapped. "Some cursed queer things been happening that need clearing up."

Silently, the oddly assorted little group moved toward the offices of the Bamean Gravium Company. As Captain Keiichi and his four companions entered the brightly-lit offices, a man who had been sitting at a desk talking hoarsely into a televisor jumped erect and came toward them.

It was Toraichi Tamiya, president of the Bamean company. The gravium magnate's aggressive, square face was pallid with emotion, his voice raw and high.

"Ootaki, Captain Keiichi, a terrible disaster!" he cried. "One of our three mines has been utterly destroyed!"

"You've heard about Mine One destruction, then?" Ootaki cried to his employer. "I didn't think you'd know already…."

"Mine One?" Tamiya repeated, bewildered. "What are you talking about? It's Mine Two that has just been wrecked! I got the televisor call from its mine-boss at the floating-depot, a quarter hour ago. The whole mine-dome was destroyed. All miners were drowned."

Ootaki paled. The superintendent turned to Keiichi.

"Good God, Captain Keiichi, that makes two of our mines destroyed!"

"Two?" echoed Toraichi Tamiya. "You mean Mine One too?"

"Was destroyed utterly," Ootaki answered hoarsely. "We got the men out in time, though Captain Keiichi was nearly trapped and barely escaped."

Ootaki swung fiercely on Orr Libro.

"Your divers did this wrecked both of those mines tonight!" he accused the Oranean.

"The two mines aren't far apart. Your men were ordered to destroy them both."

Orr Libro answered with unruffled calm.

"I fear you are over-excited, Mr. Ootaki," he purred. "I've already said I had nothing to do with it. But let me point out that Quarus Tull was out in the vicinity of Mines One and Two tonight, with his crew."

"Trying to incriminate me, eh?" cried the blue-Romacean harshly to Orr Libro.

"You lying sneak…."

"I think you're both mixed up in this?" Toraichi Tamiya accused furiously. "You've come out here to Bama to cut in on my industry here, ruin my company and build up your own"

"Well gentlemen, this argument leads nowhere!" Belldandy amiably remarked.

Keiichi was eyeing them frostily, his tanned, handsome face hard with dislike. One of these four quarreling men, was maybe Wrecker. But the captain was not absolutely sure of this, especially since the story of "Ocean's demon" came to complicate the situation.

"The situation is too desperate now for idle bickering," Keiichi crackled. "There is now only one gravium source left in the whole System: Mine Three. And Mine Three must not be destroyed! It's all-important that last source of gravium be preserved, until new mines can be opened up here. For if Mine Three should be wrecked now, the panic that is rising in the System would explode into a crazy chaos! If people learn that the last source of gravium is gone, interplanetary traffic and civilization will collapse almost overnight!"

"But what can we do to guard Mine Three?" faltered Toraichi Tamiya.

"Televise your mine-boss there to set guards around the outside of that mine, men in sea-suits, armed with atom-guns!" Captain Keiichi ordered. "They're to maintain constant watch against anyone who tries to destroy the dome of Mine Three from outside."

"I'll call him, Captain Keiichi!" cried Ootaki, a ray of hope on his haggard face.

As Ootaki was making the call on the televisor beside them, Keiichi Morisato shot a terse question at Toraichi Tamiya.

"I've been told that four gravium space ships disappeared in the last months," he said. "Know anything about that?"

Tamiya nodded his powerful head. "Yes. They were ships on the gravium run, that picked up gravium here at Bama, at Mercury, Kalem, Sigoon I and Oranean moon, and took it to the interstellar market place."

"Where were those ships when they disappeared?" Captain Keiichi demanded.

Keiichi had a purpose in the question. He knew, from what Verrel had told him on Oberon, that Wrecker's organization had stolen those four space ships and used them for its forays of destruction. If he knew where the ships had been stolen, it might point another arrow toward the identity of Wrecker.

Tamiya answered.

"As I remember it, two of the ships disappeared strangely while stopping at Kalem. One of them vanished between Kalem and Mercury, and another while at Sigoon I."

Keiichi felt baffled on this point. If the gravium ships had habitually stopped at every one of the five worlds, Bama, Kalem, Sigoon 1, Oranean moon and Mercury, then it would be hard to discover which of the men before him had been concerned with their theft.

Ootaki, who had been giving rapid orders over the televisor to the mineboss on distant Mine Three, now turned.

"They're going to put our guards in sea-suits around Mine Three as you directed, Captain Keiichi!" the haggard young superintendent reported.

"Well gentlemen, this argument leads nowhere!" Belldandy amiably remarked.

But the captain was not absolutely sure of this, especially since the story of "Ocean's demon" came to complicate the situation.

"Well, for my part, I'll return to the "Space Goddess". Maybe Ki Iri is finally awake and ready to talk." the Captain said without much hope.

His fears were justified. The so-called Ki Iri was still delirious, uttering words in an unknown language.

And as if that wasn't enough, Colonel Chihiro brought him some news, that were nothing short of catastrophic.

"The president Sayoko managed to convince Oraneans and Sigooneans and even Romaceans of our good faith. But it was not enough. Under pressure from other aliens races who depended on the mines, they decided an emergency military alliance and prepare to seize the last mine on Bama. They felt that they couldn't leave such a vital resource at the hands of Humans, especially after we have lost the Mercury Mine and the two other mines of Bama as well. And they decided to seize it by force, too. We're expecting a massive attack in the next 72 hours. If Wrecker doesn't destroy the well soon, he won't have another opportunity. The "iron curtain" erected by the others will be far more impenetrable than anything we've managed to establish so far. The thing is, that we're not sure that they'll be wilng to sharing the mine with us Humans, afterwards. It is not at all sure that they will share with us Humans. They're far too needy for that".

"Still, that's kind of good news. Now, Wrecker will have to act quickly if he wants for his plan to succeed." Keiichi concluded.

"Our strategists think so too, but we are worried. Skuld's firewall have protected us since we put them in place. However, Wrecker has seen how a hack affects other fleets,so, we'll never be completely safe. "

"Colonel, Wrecker's organization must have a secret base on some island here, one used by their space ships and surface boats. Where could it be?"

Chihiro shook her head. "Our experts are working on this issue. All the islands that could harbor vessels were investigated. We could not find anything, Captain Keiichi," she drawled.

Keiichi considered quickly. Time was precious, he knew. Thus they must strike at the heart of Wrecker's plot before he destroyes the last remaining gravium mine or the alien fleet arrives.

His keen mind saw two possibilities. Either one might lead to the mysterious plotter.

Keiichi decided to try both.

"Urd, can you make yourself up as a fisherman from some other planet and play the part well?" he demanded of the android.

"Sure, chief!" exclaimed Urd, scenting adventure. "You ought to know I can pass myself off as anybody in the System,"

Captain Keiichi gave his orders.

"Urd, get dressed as a fisherman and check all the bars of the village for any bit of information about this demon oceans. If possible, try to learn about any boat that passes near the mine."

"And with a bit of "luck", Wrecker will attack me." Urd deducted.

"Wrecker's secret base must be in the approximate region where all those fishermen vanished, eh?"

"Before you go," Keiichi continued to the android, "you can check my disguise. I'm going to try a little imposture myself. I'm going to pass myself off as this man, Ki Iri."

Belldandy Landore looked wonderingly from Captain Keiichi to the unconscious, delirious man prisoner.

"You're going to impersonate this man, one of Wrecker's men?" the girl exclaimed.

"Then you're planning to…."

"To see if I can't in that way penetrate Wrecker's organization," Keiichi finished for her. His tanned, handsome face was eager as he explained.

"Impersonating Ki Iri, I'll go and confront Quarus Tull and Orr Libro and our other two suspects, one by one. Whichever of them is Wrecker will recognize me as one of his own followers, and will give himself away to me. With his identity known, we can seize Wrecker at once and if Urd's mission helps locate the secret base, we can get all the plotter's followers, too!"

"But, lad," warned the Brain worriedly, "it won't be easy for you to impersonate this man Ki Iri. He's not just an ordinary man, but a man with an alien mind in his body!"

"I know, it'll be tough going to pass myself off as him," Keiichi admitted. "But I'll have to chance it."

Urd had been working speedily, and had finished her own transformation. The android, whose synthetic flesh could be softened and molded into any desired shape, was the greatest master of make-up in the System. He had now changed into a typical swaggering, bronzed Earthman fisherman, dark-haired, hard-faced, pugnacious. She had put on a soiled, stained zipper-suit.

Keiichi, under Urd's critical eyes, began making up as the unconscious man. Except for Urd, supreme in the field, few people in the humanity could match Keiichi in the art of disguise because Urd was his teacher.

Keiichi's black hair was darkened and straightened by a quick wash of stain. Waxite pads inside his nostrils and cheeks made his features a replica of the Ki Iri.. Finally, he donned Ki Iri's clothing, putting his emblem-ring in his belt and concealing the belt and proton-pistol under his zipper-jacket.

"All right?" Keiichi asked the android. He spoke in a thick, slurred, hesitant voice like that Wrecker's man had used.

"Good, chief," approved Urd. "But be sure you move a little stiffly and jerkily, as all Wrecker's men do."

"You can get going for the fishermen's quarter now," her brother told her. "We mustn't be seen together."

Urd slipped out of the "Space-Goddess". Captain Keiichi gave rapid last orders.

"Megumi, while I'm gone I want you to bring this Ki Iri back to consciousness if you can, and try again to make him tell what he knows. Skuld will be here to help you."

Keiichi called Chihiro again.

"Colonel, will you go back to the city soon and check something for me about those four gravium space ships that disappeared from their run weeks ago? Find out if those ships had any trouble of any kind when they were here on Bama. Understand?"

"Don't understand but I'll do it," drawled Chihiro.

"Belldandy, better stay here with Skuld and Megumi," Captain Keiichi said to the woman. "I may need you when I return."

Then Keiichi strode out of the "Space-Goddess", and hurried through the night back toward the city Amphitrite. He took care to walk with a stiff jerkiness such as was characteristic of all Wrecker's men. Keiichi played his part with utter care. He well knew the hazards involved in this dangerous impersonation, but it might lead to Wrecker.

People were coming back into Amphitrite's drenched streets now that the storm was diminishing. Nobody noticed the fisherman striding along toward the docks. And when Captain Keiichi reached the docks used by the gravium companies, he peered keenly along them.

Toraichi Tamiya and Ootaki would be together in their offices, he knew. He must wait for a chance to approach them separately. In the meantime there were his other two suspects, Orr Libro and Quarus Tull.

Light shone from the window of the small office-building on Quarus Tull's rented dock. Keiichi went to the structure and pushed boldly inside. If Quarus Tull were Wrecker, he'd surely betray himself when he saw one of his own followers entering.

Captain Keiichi stopped short inside the door. Le magnat était assis, l'air endormi avec le teint étrangement pâle. Le plus surprenant était l'absence de ses gardes du corps.

Keiichi approached cautiously, and then suddenly recoiled in horror when he saw the man fall to the ground, and especially just what had killed him.

Between his legs were green vines that slowly began to stir.

The Captain immediately recognized creepers for what they were. Everyone knew about Bama's "Algae vampires." These marine plants -as their name suggests- sucked the blood of their prey. They were already sufficiently dangerous at the bottom of the ocean, but as long as one didn't walk in the middle of them, they had nothing to fear.

However, when exposed to air, they relax and hit like whips.

In just a couple of seconds they can completely drain a man, or, in this case, a Romacean, of his blood.

"Why, it's Ki Iri!" said a thick voice behind Keiichi.

Quarus Tull has just been murdered by Wrecker's men who posed as bodyguards in order to get close to their target. So, despite all the precautions taken to protect the Romacean, in the end it was all too late.

"What are you doing here, Ki Iri?" the Denephean demanded of Keiichi in his slurred voice. "It was reported that you had been captured earlier by Captain Keiichi's sisters!"

Captain Keiichi's mind raced. He recognized the Denepehan as the one who came to see him when he was captured on the ship before escaping in a rescue bubble. Wrecker had ordered these men to murder Quarus Tull, and they had just done it. His disguise had deceived these men into thinking he was their comrade, Ki Iri.

But they had been made suspicious by his appearance here. If their suspicions deepened, he was lost!

Urd the shapeshifter, perfectly disguised as a hard-bitten Earthman, swaggered through the dark, noisy streets of the far-famed Fishermen's Quarter. The mission Captain Keiichi had given her, to find out just where had disappeared the scores of fishermen who had become the alien-minded followers of Wrecker, was in the back of Urd's mind. She meant to carry out that mission, but he fervently hoped there'd be some excitement while doing it. For she was bored!

"Where do most of the fishermen here hang out?" Urd asked a passing Bamean.

The gray-faced, peaked-headed planetary native pointed toward the waterfront.

"You'll find most of the fishing-captains at Zin Ziro's drinking-shop. There's always some of them there."

Urd strode on, in the lordly manner always assumed by Earthmen, proudest of the planetary races, when on another world. She soon reached the dingy street that bordered the waterfront. Loud voices and raucous music spilled from tawdry establishments. In front of the noisiest place, Urd glimpsed a swinging metalloy sign that bore in several planetary languages the legend, "Fishermen's Haven, Zin Ziro, Prop".

The disguised woman pushed into a dim cave of a place, hazy with smoke of rial and tobacco, and crowded with tables at which set the motley throngs of fishermen drawn from five other planets to Bama by the watery world's great sea of teeming life.

Urd saw that the captains sat at a long central table apart, as befitted their dignity. She walked boldly up to that table and met the dour, unfriendly gaze of the men at it.

"So you do not want to go fishing?" Said a Romacean man with a gruff voice and a beard.

"But what's the point if we're all stuck here? Although the gravity of Bama is similar to that of Earth, no one can leave. Orders of the Galactic Patrol, it seems. Apparently they seek to capture a bandit who's responsible for all this mess," said another man.

"You can consider yourself lucky. For us Oraneans it's much more serious. The grarity of Bama is 30% higher than that of our home planet. We can survive without gravium, but unlike Boomeans, we can expect some very serious health problems. No more fish for us. Already we are very uncomfortable at the sea, since we're unable to swim, but with the gravity on top of it, that's going to be a suicidal activity. Production of gravium is almost stopped and its distribution is strictly rationed. The gravity stabilizer of my ship is already beginning to show signs of weakness. A few more days and it will be useless." Adds a young Oranean with black fur.

"And yet, there is this problem about the ocean demon," added another.

"It's just a legend." Retorted the first man.

"You seem to forget all our friends who have disappeared. Thanks to that, more and more people here are starting to believe that it's more than a myth," countered a third human.

"You should be ashamed to call yourselves sailors. I see that everything is clear: you are afraid of an old fable, while real sailors brave everything the sea throws at them," insisted the first individual.

"Well said. Then all you have to do is hire me for your next party and forget about these landlubbers." Urd said as he walked toward the group.

"And who might you be?" Asked the younger of the four sailors.

"I'm Jan Ullman of Earth," Urd announce brashly, coolly taking a seat at the table. "Don't mind if I join you, do you?"

Another Oranean across the table stared at her.

"You're a stranger to us," he said angrily. "You Earthmen seem to think you own every planet, just because you opened up interplanetary travel."

Urd sneered.

"At least we Earthmen don't ask leave of any saffron-skinned Oraneans to do anything."

The Oranean jumped up, his hand going to his belt.

"You dare to mock us?" he hissed.

"I only speak the truth, and you know it. You are paralyzed with fear at the thought of meeting a creature that simply does not exist. Oh, and if you draw that weapon," said Urd levelly without rising, "I'll blast you down before it's half out of your belt."

Urd was playing the part of a swaggering, domineering Earthman to the hilt. And the woman was thoroughly enjoying herself, she itched for a fight. But the Romacean captain pulled the enraged Oranean back into his seat.

"Cool down, Akk," he said.

Akk appealed to the man who sat at the head of the fishing-captains' table, a huge, ponderous blue Romacean.

"Is this Earthman to come in here and insult me, Groro?" he demanded angrily of the Romacean.

Groro, the big Romacean, regarded the two parties of the dispute with a gravity befitting an interplanetary judge.

"You'll both sit down," he rumbled, "and stop bickering. By the Singer of the Maelström, there'll be no blood shed at any table I sit at."

Grinning, Urd sank back into his chair, and the angry Oranean subsided. A hurrying gray Bamean waiter was at Urd's side. "Some real Earth whisky, sir?" he suggested.

Urd nodded.

"Drinks for everybody here," he added grandiloquently. Urd smiled. "It's on me, gentlemen."

A mutter of approval sounded. Urd took the opportunity to glance at his new acquaintances. Around the table, in addition to Groro, the big Romacean, and the Oranean and the three human, were two Bamean captains, and a hairy, solemn-eyed Kark'essel (a galactic minor race).

Groro quaffed down a big bumper of marsh-apple Brandy from his native world, wiped his mouth with his flipperlike hand, and then looked at Urd with more friendliness.

"Just get in from Earth, Jan Ullman?" he asked.

"From Titan," Urd corrected. "I was out there fishing in the Sea of "Kraken mare" but I was tired to this place. I came here to Bama to see if I could get started again. I've heard a long time of the great fisheries here."

"It's the best fishing in the Galaxy," rumbled Groro.

"Ah, but the great days are over now," mournfully said the Oranean captain.

Urd addressed a quick question to the third human. "Because hey say fishing here on Bama's pretty perilous lately, isn't it? I've heard that a lot of fishermen disappeared a few weeks ago."

Groro nodded his bulbous green head.

"That's the truth. Some of my best friends were among 'em, and nobody knows what happened to 'em."

One of the Bameans contradicted him.

"We know what happened to those men," the gray planetary native declared.

"The sea-devils got them."

"It's not crazy," replied the Bamean earnestly. His eyes flashed. "You strangers who come here from other planets think that we Bameans are babbling superstitious nonsense when we tell of the sea-devils. Just because you've never seen them, you say they don't exist. But we know they do exist, in the remoter depths of the sea, cunningly keeping out of sight always. They are manlike but they are not men," the Bamean continued solemnly,"for they breathe the water, not the air. They have powers and weapons beyond anything we have. Legends of our fathers say, indeed, that the sea-devils have great cities far down in the dim green depths, and ways of life we cannot guess. And they hate all intruders into their ocean, which is why they seized all those fishermen who vanished so strangely."

Groro winked at Urd.

"Ever hear such crazy talk? And these Bameans actually believe it, all of 'em."

"This should've been easy to check if you ask me. Haven't this planet been explored thoroughly? If there were any oceanic demons, then someone should've have discovered them by now."

"Not necessarily." Admitted Groro.

"Sorry ?" Wondered Urd.

"The seabed is still largely unexplored. It's only been a couple of decades that Bama was integrated into the galactic community. The planet was considered primitive and uninteresting until Toraichi Tamiya discovered a huge gravium deposit. Hence the trade has developed as well as contact with the natives. Anyway, no one has explored the rest of the planet. Especially since the current submarines aren't strong strong enough and the flora and fauna can be dangerous. Particularly because of algae Vampires and Squalodons. Although Tamiya knew that there was more exploration to be done, the operation of iis mine monopolized his time, leaving little to anything else. So for all these reasons, the entire planet is uncharted below 50 meters depth. Even the maps provided in the Galactic Patrol are not more accurate." Explained the Romacean.

"And apart from Tamiya nobody else wants to explore the ocean? It must sontain some other deposits gravium, right?" Urd asked.

"Of course some people wished to try, but Tamiya used all his influence to prevent anyone from doing this kind of research. He did not want to see competitors land on "his" world. For the government, as long as the gravium keeps coming out of the mine, Tamiya can do whatever he wants." Groro said.

"Where did all those fishermen disappear, in what part of the ocean?" Urd asked him keenly.

Groro waved a flipper hand northwestward.

"Up there beyond the Great Maelstrom and the Spider Islands, some where near the Black Isles. Leastways, that's the way they were heading. I'm sailing back there at dawn for some fishing, and no sea-devils will bother me!"

Urd's brain worked rapidly. The audacious shapeshifter rapidly made a decision. If the fishermen had disappeared near the Black Isles, Wrecker's secret base might be somewhere there. So she, Urd, would go there and find out!

Urd knew very well that by doing so she would be exceeding the orders Captain Keiichi had given her. But the woman could never resist the temptation to find adventure.

"How about taking me into your crew, Groro?" she asked. "I'm at a loose end, and I've got to do something."

"If you can handle nets and dories, I'll sign you on," Groro replied promptly. "I've had trouble getting men."

"No wonder, no fisherman in his right mind would go up there beyond the Great Maelstrom," muttered the Bamean.

Groro guffawed, and called for more liquor.

"Here's luck to our cruise, Earthman," the Romacean toasted.

An hour later, a little the worse for drink, Groro rose ponderously to his feet.

"Nearly dawn," he told Urd. "And it'll take me a little time to round up my crew."

Urd had drunk as much as the Denephean, but liquor never affected the woman. She steadied Groro as they left the place. They started along the row of tawdry taverns on the waterfront. Groro peered into each one, and whenever he spied any of his crew, he strode in and pulled the men out bodily. Soon these rough methods had assembled his full crew of twenty mixed Bameans, Denepheans, Romaceans and others.

The Spray, Groro's craft, was a ninety-foot aluminoy hull, with steelite masts, an auxiliary rocket motor, and a mess of piled nets and metal dories crowding its decks.

"Cast loose those lines! Up foresail!" Groro bellowed at his men. "Step, you scum of space!"

The black sail rose quickly. A Romacean steersman had taken the tiller, and now the fishing-boat began sliding out into the darkness of the harbor, away from the lights of Amphitrite. Urd saw that the eastern sky was paling as dawn approached.

By the time they were clear of the harbor, and sliding over the great tidal waves of the open ocean toward the northwest, the morning mists were already lifting as the small, bright sun rose.

Urd saw the small brown dots of the Rock Isles, on one of which was Amphitrite City, receding on their right. The islands, mere slender peaks of land projecting up from the deep sea-bottom, were soon out of sight behind them.

"Better test our motor," Groro grunted, bending to the controls. "We always need it, to run past the Maelstrom."

The roar of its under-water rocket-tubes satisfied the big Denephean captain and he shut it off. Then, straightening, he clapped Urd on the back in a blow that nearly knocked him down.

"Well, how do you like Bama, Jan Ullman?" he rumbled heartily. "No oceans like this on little Earth, eh?"

"Nor on Titan," Urd retorted.

Groro laughed. "You've been on Titan, eh? Do you know South Equatoria? I was born and raised on that jungle coast."

Through her travels, Urd really got to know Titan. She used stop there from time to time. In addition, as part of her espionage missions, it was necessary to experience the culture of different societies, as well as the geography of the various planets they inhabited. She was therefore perfectly able to discuss with Groro.

The big Denephean suddenly growled and reached for an atom-gun standing handy in a rack.

"Damned "Squalodon" over there," he warned.

Urd glimpsed one of the monstrous, disclike, white creatures gliding along under the waves nearby. The Denephean fired, but the streak of atom-flame missed the monster, and it disappeared swiftly into the depths.

They saw other grotesque forms of the teeming Bamean sea-life as they sped on. A great sea-snake coiled in battle around one of the giant, dinosaur like Uruzaru, a group of "breathers," sluggish black turtle like creatures that spent half their time on the sea-bottom and half on the surface, gulping the air they needed; and a big school of the so-called "solar-fish" that stay always on the sunlit side of Bama, swimming round and round the rotating planet.

From far ahead a dull sound like distant thunder came to Urd's ears above the surging roar of the waves.

"Maelstrom ahead, twelve points to port!" called a Bamean lookout in the bows.

"Put over five more points to starboard," Groro ordered the Romacean helmsman, and to the crew he shouted, "Break out more sail! Jan Ullman, start the rocket-motor."

Urd started the auxiliary motor, whose underwater rocket-tubes began churning the green water astern to foam. The dull thunder from ahead had become ever louder and the racing Spray fought northward against strong westing currents.

"There she is, Jan Ullman," growled Groro, pointing off to port. "You'll never see anything like that on Earth."

Urd stared. She had been on Bama more than once but she had never been this close to the Great Maelstrom, the terrific whirlpool in the planetary sea that was known all over the galaxy.

It was an appalling spectacle. Far out there on the sea, tremendous currents swept in spirals toward a vast hole in the ocean. With deafening reverberation as of a thousand roaring cataracts, the currents swept into that titanic whirlpool.

"Nobody knows where all that water falls to!" the Denephean captain was shouting to Urd over the thunderous roar. "They think maybe it's sucked right through the planet. It's dragged many a good boat into its maw, has that thing."

Then Groro yelled to the helmsman, "Bear more to starboard, you hairy idiot! Can't you see we're losing distance?"

The currents, even at this distance, were insidiously sweeping the Spray closer to the ranging maelstrom. With sails strained by the wind, with rocket-motor throbbing, the fishing-boat fought away from the perilous currents. The thunderous roar dimmed, the Great Maelstrom receded, and the currents gradually lost their strength.

Groro grunted in relief.

"Always glad to get past that spot safely," he sighed.

"Are those islands ahead the Black Isles you were telling me about?" Urd asked eagerly.

"No, those are the Spider Islands," the Denephean told him. "The Black Isles are beyond."

The fishing-boat sailed close past the small archipelago of rock islands, and Urd saw how they had gained their name. Over the islets swarmed hordes of giant black spiders of a size incredible. Fully eight feet in diameter were the horrific arachnids, and they raced to the shore on great horny limbs and gazed with glowing, avid eyes at the passing boat.

"Frightening, is not it? But not too bad. These creatures seem to be driven by curiosity. They are approaching but never attack."

A moment later he added, "There's the Black Isles yonder. Our fishing-banks aren't far to the north of them."

Urd gazed intently ahead. The small group of islands now coming into sight were of a distinctive jet-black rock that made them stand out sharply on the green ocean. Largest of them was one towering mass with steep, precipitous walls and a flat top.

"That biggest and highest one is Black Peak," Groro volunteered. "Funny thing about that island, a couple of fishing-boats have claimed they saw space ships landing there at night lately. They must have been dreaming! There's nothing there to bring space ships."

Urd's eyes narrowed.

"And it's near here that all those fishermen disappeared, eh?" he muttered.

Groro nodded his head. "Yes, it's somewhere around here. The Galactic patrol came to investigate but they found no trace of anything. Neither ship nor boat ... Or survivors. Storms wrecked 'em, I suppose, and the 'Squalodons' got the crews, I guess".

Urd's heart was pumpling with excitement. She was certain that on that high, remote black island was the elusive base of Wrecker's organization. And she just had to get on that island somehow, although at the same time, why hadn't the Patrol found anything?

Groro had gone forward to scold his crew for not reefing sail after passing the Great Maelstrom. And the Romacean helmsman was looking the other way.

Urd acted without a moment's hesitation. She slid over the rail into the rushing waves, and struck out for the island a half mile to the west. She swam underwater, adapting her morphology to swim much better than a human. She saw the Spray circling around, a mile northward, and beating back and forth.

"Looking for me, they think I fell overboard," chuckled Urd to herself.

"Well, it's nice of Groro to take the trouble."

She dived again and next time she came up, the distant fishing-boat was sailing on, apparently giving up Urd for lost.

With powerful strokes, the lithe shapeshifter clove the green waters toward the high black mass of Black Peak, now only a quarter-mile away.

As Captain Keiichi faced the three of Wrecker's men who had just murdered Quarus Tull, here in the Romacean magnate's office in the city Amphitrite, the Galactic heroes was thinking at high speed.

These three men thought he was one of their comrades, one of Wrecker's men. His disguise as Ki Iri, the captured human, had deceived them so far. But Keiichi Morisato realized that they were suspicious of him because of his sudden appearance here.

"What are you doing here, Ki Iri?" demanded again the hollow-eyed Denephean who held the Proton-pistol. "Weren't you captured by Captain Keiichi's sisters?"

Keiichi answered, taking care to make his voice jerky and hesitant in accent like these other men of Wrecker.

"I was captured by the Keiichi crew yes!" he said. "But I got away from them, and hurried to rejoin you."

"But how could you know we'd be here?" the other demanded. "We just came here from the Base, it was only an hour ago that Wrecker ordered us by televisor to come and kill this Romacean."

"I didn't know you'd be here," Keiichi explained quickly. "I was hanging around the docks trying to find some way to get back to the Base, when I glimpsed you coming here and followed."

Captain Keiichi was gambling on the supposition that the Base of Wrecker's organization was in some other island than Amphitrite. The correctness of his assumption was soon proven, for the other Wrecker-men seemed to lose their suspicion at once.

One of Denepheani then struck Keiichi with his Proton riffle.

"You lie. You betrayed our secrets. We can not escape like that so easily."

"Oh, it was easy. Instead of putting me in a cell, they laid me on a bed thinking I was unconscious for me to undergo tests. They have not even closed the overseer of their ship. I had no trouble flee."

"You, look if there is a spy device on him"

The second Denephean took an oval device with two antennas on either end, out of his pocket, and passed it on the disguised Captain.

"None of that side. It's clean."

"I repeat that I escaped" insisted Keiichi.

"I do not believe you but all so it does not change, you are already condemned. Wrecker gave us very specific orders about you. We have to eliminate you as soon as we find you. CATCH HIM!"

The two men grabbed the captain by the arm and froze.

Keiichi could escape without too much difficulty, not so much due to his own skills, but simply because these men seemed to have some difficulty to even move normally. However, he offered no resistance, wanting to try again to keep up his act. He considered for a moment to give up and try to capture the three men but it would be a risky bet and there was no time. If Wrecker was not apprehended before the arrival of the alien fleets, capturing these bandits would be pointless.

"It's a good thing these Vampires Algae are there. You will suffer the punishment reserved for traitors." Declared the Denephean who hit Keiichi.

"Wait a moment. You do not want to know what I've learned of the plans of Captain Keiichi about Wrecker? They talked about while I was pretending to be unconscious."

"No I do not wanna know. It would surely be a lie. You tell anything to try to escape your fate."

"Obviously I do not want to die, but what I say is true. If ever the plan fails because I was not able to transmit the information, then it will be your responsibility. There are even two witness here". Keiichi stammered in a faked display of fear, while the the guard had seized some algae vampires with his rifle and approached Keiichii.

"Very good. Explains his plan." Says the Bamean guard.

"Before being executed? No way. I want to speak directly to Wrecker." Retorted the captain.

The Denephean hesitated. He did not believe Keiichi but he would not take the risk.

"Wait a moment. I'll call".

The guard pulled out a communicator and talked with his boss for a while.

"Wrecker wants to see you. I'll lead you to him, but he ordered me to kill you without warning if you try to escape. Keep an eye on, you guys."

Keiichi risked a question. "Is Wrecker at Base now?"

"No, but he is to be there at dawn to meet and confer with the Toomarch of our people," answered the other, "so that they can prepare the last great stroke of the plan."

«The king and their people?» thought Keiichi.

The man went on in his jerky voice, "Out of here quickly, now! That devil Captain Keiichi must not find us here."

Keiichi Morisato grinned inwardly as he hurried out of the murdered Romacean magnate's small office. He followed the two Denepheans and the Bamean along the dark docks to an unused, unlighted quay. Here was moored a small, tubular submersible speed-boat of the type much used on Bama's stormy sea.

They piled into the craft. The Denephean took the controls. He ran the craft down under the surface at once, and, keeping beneath the nighted waters, headed out of the harbor northwestward.

Captain Keiichi's pulse was racing with grim anticipation. The whole situation had changed. Quarus Tull, one of four suspects, had been definitely removed from the list. And a highly promising chance to get to Wrecker had now presented itself. At dawn, in his Base, Wrecker was to meet the rulers of his mysterious allies, and plan the last stroke against the gravium industry. That last stroke, Captain Keiichi knew, must be the destruction of Mine Three!

Keiichi vowed inwardly that that destruction would never be carried out. So far, Wrecker had taken most of the tricks in this deadly interplanetary game. But now he was going to learn that Captain Keiichi could play that game. Disguised and accepted as one of the master-plotter's own strange followers, Keiichi was on his way to the heart of the gigantic conspiracy!

"We can run on the surface now," the Bamean was saying thickly to the Denephean steersman beside Keiichi. "The Maelstrom isn't far ahead."

"If Wrecker's plan succeeds, we can reintergrate our bodies, and regain sovereignty of our ocean. It's been a while since I wanted that, as I really do not feel comfortable in this body" dropped the Bamean.

"Yes me too. I do not know about you but eating and sleeping that way, it's disgusting," added one of Denepheans.

"Reintegrate his body? But then that would mean that there is no brainwashing, but a transfer of the mind" Keiichi thought, finding it hard to hide his surpise from the three men with him.

Captain had never believed in "immateriality" of the mind. It is true that we could interpret thought as an electrical phenomenon, however, memories, and the personality of each individual, was stored as individual "liquid crystals" in the brain. This aspect of the chemical identity of individuals could not, in any way, be "transferred" as an electric current from one body to another. That's why Keiichi did not believe in psychic powers like telepathy, for example, although he admitted that some species had strange and elaborate means of communication that could give the "illusion" of telepathy.

At best they could 'read' the individual personality by "decoding" those liquid crystals, and "duplicate" it in another body. Almost like duplicating a computer program. But to "transfer" those crystals without removing the brain itself, was simply impossible.

He started to say that he had perhaps been wrong to believe that. A scientific mystery to unravel later maybe.

In any case, a new question arose: who owned the spirits in the bodies of these men?

"And what about you? Don't you have anything to say? You agree, right?" Asked the Captain Bamean.

"Me ? No, I do not feel at ease in this body either. I feel a very strong sense of anxiety, and I hope the news I bring will be worthy of Wrecker's...time." Keiichi said.

"That is true. You have a good reason not to feel comfortable. Especially now," joked cruelly the "Bamean".

The Denephean's handling of the speeding boat was awkward and clumsy, Keiichi noticed. Like their speech, every movement of these men betrayed something deeply alien and ill-at-ease about them.

"There's the Great Maelstrom," declared the alien-minded Denephean beside him, at that moment. "It's not far now to the Black Isles."

Keiichi heard the dim, far-off roar of the mighty whirlpool. It lay miles to the west, a hanging cloud of seething mist and spray marking the boiling center. Captain Keiichi had seen it from a distance on previous visits to Bama. Yet he looked at it as intently as Urd was to look at it when he passed it hours later.

The night was still dark, but the flying storm-clouds had disappeared and Keiichi estimated that it was not long before dawn. Their throbbing craft passed a series of small dots of land he recognized as the Spider Islands. Then the Black Isles loomed ahead.

That's when the boat went underwater, folding a protective dome to allow its occupants to breathe. The submersible then dived deep underwater until it reached a submerged cave.

The Denephean snicked on a searchlight at the prow. Captain Keiichi glimpsed black rock walls towering up awesomely into the gloom. The throbbing of the rocket-motor woke muffled, echoing reverberations. The waterway wound to the right, and debouched abruptly into a buried water-cavern of considerable size.

"Back at the rendezvous point, finally" muttered the Denephean thickly. "And you are lucky to see it again, Ki Iri."

The place was almost empty, as it was only halfway built. Then again, this wasn't the location that housed Wrecker's submarine but a mere meeting point.

Fluoric lamps suspended from the rock walls cast an eerie crimson glow over everything. By that illumination, Captain Keiichi perceived that at one side of the buried water-cavern was a broad rock ledge, toward which their craft was gliding. Moored to rings in this ledge were three other submersible speed-boats of familiar type. Upon the very edge of the ledge, half in the water, stood a small square metal structure. And beyond it were some scores of men lounging. They got jerkily to their feet and came down to meet the arriving boat.

Captain Keiichi's eyes swept the queerly silent throng. There were almost a hundred of them, Boomean, Bameans, Oraneans, Earthmen, Romacean and others. But all had the same strangely hollow eyes and stiff, expressionless faces. All, he knew, had alien minds in them.

"Has Wrecker come yet?" asked the Denephean beside Keiichi Morisato, as they stepped ashore.

A hairy Romacean in the throng answered.

"Not yet, and neither have our Toomarch come."

"They will be here soon," Keiichi's companion assured. He pointed toward Captain Keiichi. "Here is Ki Iri, who escaped and whom we brought back with us."

The Romacean showed some excitement at sight of Keiichi.

"You escaped, Ki Iri?" he exclaimed. "We did not like to leave you behind, but the Keiichimen were too much for us."

Keiichi gathered that this Plutonian was one of the party of Wrecker's men to which the real Ki Iri had belonged.

"It was not your fault they captured me," Captain Keiichi said hollowly. "I was lucky enough to get away from them later."

"Our Toomarch and Wrecker will be here very soon," the Denephean declared. "Until then, we can rest. In fact, if Wrecker is happy with the information you bring him, do not forget to slip him a note in my favor."

"I would of course. Another could have decided to kill me directly without contact. I will not forget."

Keiichi Morisato, under pretense of sauntering idly, inspected the strange place. The rock ledge ran back along the side of the water-cavern for a hundred yards, and ended in a steep path winding upward through a crevice in the solid rock of the island.

"I'll bet that path leads up to some place where Wrecker's space ships are kept," Keiichi muttered to himself.

He turned and sauntered back along the red-lit ledge, toward the small, square metal structure by the water's edge. Keiichi peered into it. In there he saw a big, complicated, mysterious-looking apparatus. The machine consisted mainly of two coffin like metal chambers. Each chamber had a bulky, big helmet connected by heavy cables to a mass of electrical apparatus and switchboard.

Captain Keiichi's scientifically trained eye immediately fathomed the design and purpose of the weird mechanism.

"Wrecker is an extraordinary being. No one else could have invented a device capable of exchanging thought," said the Denephean.

Keiichi then noticed something strange. In this mechanism, one of the two coffinlike chambers was under the surface of the water on whose edge the machine had been erected. That chamber was completely under water, while the other chamber was on the dry floor of the inward side of the structure.

He turned sharply as a loud cry came from one of the alien-minded throng on the ledge.

"They come! The Toomarch of our people come!"

All the strange throng were crowding now toward the water's edge, gazing eagerly with hollow eyes at the black water. Keiichi Morisato joined them, his heart pounding as he too stared. Yet he knew now what he was about to see, the secret race who were the allies of Wrecker in his tremendous plot.

Into the water-cavern from the ocean outside, a half dozen creatures were swimming. They swam below the surface, dimly visible underwater in the red glow of the fluoric lamps. Those underwater swimmers looked vaguely human. But the two legs of their white bodies seemed to have grown together into a powerful, tail-like limb that ended in fins instead of feet. And their short, powerful arms were finned at wrists and elbows.

Their heads were hairless, their faces quite human-featured. But at the base of their throats were open gills, pulsing rhythmically as they breathed the water. All of these sea-men wore short tunics of woven metal, and two of them carried metal rods.

An underwater race of near-human sea-folk, coming from the hidden recesses of the vast planetary ocean! The legendary super-civilized and super-cunning sea-devils about whom there were so many shadowy tales! They were the secret allies of Wrecker!

The Captain went from one surprise to another. At first he thought that one of the extraterrestrial races that was close to Bama helped Wrecker in his plot, yet he did not know which. He also thought that the "demon of the Oceans" was just an old legend that his enemy was using skillfully, but he never expected that they really existed. And yet he now found these aquatic creatures. All the pieces of the puzzle started to fall into place almost, although some questions still remained. Like how Wrecker managed to hack into galactic fleets so easily? And besides, if Wrecker was an aquatic being, a race which had virtually no contact with the people of other planets, how could he be so well informed about the outer planets? The captured fishermen could not be possibly provide much information on their own. Obviously, this individual had spent much time in space, yet the Bama gravium mine was discovered merely 20 years ago. All this merely thickened the mystery around this character."

From all the hollow-eyed men around Captain Keiichi, an excited shout arose.

"Our Toomarch is coming!"

Keiichi Morisato saw the sea-men down there in the water swim to the edge of the rock ledge.

"Kings of the hidden sea-folk!" Keiichi muttered to himself. "And it's the minds of sea-men like those that have been put into the bodies of the kidnaped fishermen."

So, Captain Keiichi reasoned, the mind-exchange process which the superscientific Wrecker must have discovered had been brought into play. The minds of sea-men had been transferred into the bodies of scores of kidnaped fishermen, here in this cavern. The thing was wholly practicable, the sea-men were basically human, and their minds would approximate the human. And that was where the alien minds of Wrecker's possessed followers had come from!

"A hell-born, cunning plot!" Captain Keiichi thought grimly. "But why should these sea-folk want strike at the gravium industry?"

One of the men beside him was calling-

"Bring the universal translator so that our Toomarch can speak to us."

A small instrument was hastily brought. It consisted of a boxlike electrospeaker, with a small microphone attached to it by a long cord. The microphone was put down into the water.

The sea-men down there swam toward it, with smooth, graceful strokes of finned arms and tail. Then, with their intelligent eyes looking up through the water, the sea-men moved their lips in speech. The speech came loudly out of the electrospeaker. It was an almost unrecognizably distorted, thick Earthspeech that the seamen were using.

"Where is Wrecker? He was to meet us here at this hour," demanded the seaman speaking.

This conclusion was formulated and further strengthened by the information he received during his so called interrogation. Apparently the king of aquatic men was not Wrecker himself, and from the respect and fear that these men displayed, it was possible that Wrecker is not an aquatic creature after all, just as Keiichi concluded moments ago.

There was no compelling evidence, but it seemed to be a strong possibility.

"Wrecker comes now!" sounded a cry from one of the men beside Keiichi.

Captain Keiichi stiffened, gazing with the others toward the water-tunnel that was entrance to this cavern. The faint light of dawn was seeping from outside along that tunnel now. And Keiichi saw the ripple of a small submersible speedboat that was throbbing into the strange and sinister cavern.

The craft rose, breaking surface and heading toward the ledge. Its cover was slid back, and out of it rose a figure.

Wrecker! The mysterious plotter whose unearthly conspiracy against gravium supply was fast paralyzing interplanetary civilization!

"So he's keeping his disguise on, even here?" Keiichi Morisato muttered to himself.

"Nevertheless, I'm pretty sure I know who's inside that suit"

Captain Keiichi yearned for a chance to call the his sisters on his communicator, and bring them with the full force of the Galactic Patrol to crush this hell-nest of plotters. But he dared not risk it. Not since he had left Amphitrite had he been out of sight of Wrecker's men for a moment.

Wrecker was speaking, his voice coming muffledly from the resonator in the front of his black helmet.

"The sea-Kings are here?" said the master-plotter. "Good!"

Keiichi saw Wrecker approach the water-edge. The black conspirator and the weird sea-men down in the water faced each other, speaking through the boxlike electric "talker."

"Your people have done well!" Wrecker told the sea-Kings. "Mines One and Two were wrecked exactly at the scheduled time."

"And shall we go ahead at once with the destruction of Mine Three?" came the sea-king's thick-voiced question.

Captain Keiichi felt an inner tension as he heard that exchange. Keiichi had been sure, since he first deduced that a hidden sea-dwelling race were Wrecker's allies, that it was the seamen who had wrecked the submarines domes of Mines One and Two. For he had seen, when he was almost trapped in Mine One, that the thing had been done from outside. But this revelation that the mine-domes were destroyed at an "exactly scheduled moment" gave final corroboration to the clue Keiichi had gained to Wrecker's identity. He was sure now that Wrecker wasn't an aquatic man!

"Yes, you will proceed now to destroy Mine Three, the last gravium mine on Bama!" Wrecker was saying to the sea-rulers. "But the Earthmen have posted guards in sea-suits around the outside of Mine Three."

"We can easily overpower those guards, and then weaken the dome wall with atomic flame-torches as we did the others," the sea-king replied.

"You will strike at exactly noon tomorrow. Then we will proceed, as we planned, to destroy Amphitrite island completely and rid Bama forever of the intruders here."

"Good!" exclaimed the sea-man ruler. "All my people are eager for the hour when the Earthman city shall be destroyed."

Captain Keiichi felt an incredulous amazement. Wrecker, renegade to his own human race was planning to help the sea-folk utterly destroy Amphitrite? That would wipe out all interplanetary industry on Bama, for that city was the center that contained almost all the interplanetary colonists who had come here.

Cold, furious anger gripped Keiichi. Anger not so much at the hostile sea-folk as at Wrecker. What could be the motive of the mysterious plotter in thus seeking to destroy all interplanetary industry and colonization on Bama? What would he be likely to gain by it?

Keiichi suspected for some time that Wrecker did not seek conquest but massacre, although why? Simply for the pleasure of destryction? Personal bloodthirst? This all seemed too simple.

The Captain looked around him and was filled with a feeling of disgust. First Wrecker himself proved to be a monster worse even than "Space Emperor". Then these aquatic beings who allied with him, and finally this insane invention that allowed the exchange of minds. He wondered what could have become of the real sailors that were kidnapped. The only thing in this cave that seemed innocent, was one kind of Bamean turtle that sat on a rock, watching then. Apparently this is where she lived most of the time and she was concerned about the presence of these foreigners in her "home."

"We shall have to be careful," Wrecker was saying. "The Earthman of whom I told you? the Captain Keiichi, is still alive and working against us. He must be eliminated somehow before we make the final great stroke tomorrow."

Wrecker turned and spoke sharply to the hairy Bamean who stood beside Captain Keiichi.

Wrecker swung toward Captain Keiichi, and the disguised boy stiffened slightly as the eyeholes in that black helmet stared at him.

"You escaped, Ki Iri?" exclaimed Wrecker. "How did you do that?"

"It was easy," said Keiichi Morisato, taking care to keep his voice hollow and slurred. "They thought me unconscious and didn't secure me, I shammed until their backs were turned, then dodged out."

Wrecker was not very convinced. The explanation could be perfectly credible. Anyone can make a stupid mistake, even himself. On the other hand, when it is too good and too easy is that it's usually wrong.

At least he was sure Ki Iri wasn't wearing a micro-spy or something. But otherwise? Had he been betrayed? Was he followed? There was always that possibility, and Wrecker did not wish to risk it. But the execution of Ki Iri could wait for a while. He claimed to have useful information for himself, and Wrecker decided that he would first listen to him. After all, even if Ki Iri was a betradyor wanting to kill him, it was simply impossible to do so, as he was naturally immune to human made weapons.

oOo

The televisor buzzer again. "Maybe Chihiro has some news this time!" Skuld boomed eagerly, as she turned the mechanism on.

But to their amazement, it was Urd's face that appeared on the screen. The shapeshifter still wore her disguise of an Earthman fisherman, but was panting, dripping wet, her face scratched.

The brown skinned girl continued with her explorations. She was beginning to regret coming here in the ocean to play the role of a siren, in little hope of finding something. In addition it would take hours to swim to the other side, even taking into account her capability to adapt her morphology and swim like a fish.

Then she noticed the little submarine that had entered in the cave. With her exceptional view, the shapeshifter had seen Keiichi disguised on board despite the distance. He was with several men. That's when Urd realized that they must surely be Wrecker;s henchmen. Urd tried to follow the boat but it was going too fast. However, she managed to see it enter a sliding wall underwater.

"Megumi! Skuld! Listen!" snapped the android. "I've found Wrecker's base! I'm there now, it's on Black Peak, biggest of the Black Isles."

In swift, tumbling sentences, Urd told them how she had accompanied the fishing-boat northwestward, and had swam from it toward Black Peak.

"Couple of Squalodons nearly got me in the water," Urd hissed. "After I safely got to the island, I saw a boat go underwater and entered through a secret passage in the rocks.

Urd continued breathlessly.

"Wrecker's base is somewhere on this island, therefore. It shouldn't be hard to find it. Get the Captain and come here full speed."

But we don't know where Keiichi is!" crackled the Brain. "He's gone off after Wrecker and does not give us any updates since."

"Devils of space!" swore Urd. "Maybe the Captain is in danger…."

"I know, I know," rasped the Brain. "Listen, Urd, if Wrecker's base is on that island, Keiichi is may be there, he went after Wrecker, remember. Skuld going to come to you at once."

"Good!" hissed Urd. "Land silently atop the island. I'll be waiting. And hurry!"

"I'll stay too and inform the Colonel about the situation and stay informed about the alien attack. I trust you to help Keiichi if necessary." Said Belldandy despite that she would have preferred to go with Skuld, but felt more helpful if she stayed with Chihiro.

"For my part, I will continue my analysis of this man. I'm sure I will learn interesting things." Said Megumi.

oOo

"You say you have information about how the Captain prepared a trap for us in case we launched one last attack? I'm listening," said Wrecker to "Ki Iri".

Keiichi had to lie very carefully. If Wrecker was really one of the three men he suspected, then he may already knew the security measures taken to protect the last well. If his lies were too obvious then Wrecker would easily see through his deception, and would surely kill "Ki Iri" there, as he had originally intended. So, it was better to first tell the truth, and only then mislead Wrecker with a plausible lie.

"I heard the captain tell Colonel Chihiro to put men into submarines. But this will be only an illusion. Instead, insider there will be proton mines who are going to explode if someone approaches".

"Wrecker, is that enough to stop us? "Asked Toomarch, who was apparently the leader ot these aquatic beings.

"We'd all get knocked out in seconds if we're crazy enough to approach. We have to find another plan, and fast. If we do not act by tomorrow, the alien fleets will soon arrive." Wrecker replied before adding, "Your information is valuable, I forgive you for getting captured earlier."

The mysterious being thought for a moment.

"Captain Keiichi and his sisters are probably looking for you now," muttered Wrecker. His dark form became rigid. "I've an idea! A way to get rid of that cursed boy!"

He moved quickly, bringing the box in front of Keiichi.

Keiichi was afraid for a moment and stepped back.

"As you can see, this box contains a tube with Vampire Algae. You will keep this tube under your clothes and go outside, where you will be "captured" again by Keiichi and his sisters. He will probably approach you, and the moment he does, you will break the tube and let him die".

"But, if I do this, I will die too!" answered "Ki Iri".

"Normally you should to be already dead. You should be happy to die for your people."

"Yes, it is your duty to do this," one of the sea-men in the water admonished Keiichi through the "talker."

"Very well, I will do it. After all, as long as I'm quick and careful, I've got a slight chance to survive," Keiichi Morisato reluctantly agreed.

Inwardly, Keiichi couldn't help but sense the grim humor of it all. He was being sent to kill Captain Keiichi! Of course, he quickly decided to agree to such a course of action. He couldn't hope to do much here; not against a hundred sea-men. However, holding the Algae vampire tube in his hand felt really disturbing.

So, Keiichi Morisato had decided to return to Amphitrite, ostensibly to "kill" himself. Once back in the city, he would explain the existence of aquatic creatures to Romaceans, Oraneans, Sigooneans and others. Thousands of submarines would surely be deployed, along with aquatic creatures taken out of harm's way. Perhaps it was even possible to negotiate a peace treaty with them without having to resort to violence.

"I had hoped at first to capture Captain Keiichi, for that would have vastly aided our plans," Wrecker was saying. "But that's impossible now, and it's safest to kill him."

"I will see that he does not live long," promised Keiichi.

That's when the Toomarch advanced.

"What is your name ?" He asked.

"Ki Iri" Keiichi said simply.

"I mean your real name." Insisted the Toomarch.

At this point, cold swear run down Keiichi's face, as he never thought of that possibility. What was the ture name of the aquatic creature who took Ki Iri's body?

"Forgive me Toomarch, but I'm just a servant. You certainly do not know me." Keiichi said hoping that his answer would be accepted.

"This exactly is about to change though. You has avoided us a serious defeat tomorrow and cheated death on several occasions. And now you're embarking on an important mission. If you succeed, I'll ensure that you are honored like the heroes of our legends, and even take your rightful place among them. I refuse to let you remain anonymous. So, what is your name?" Asked again the leader of the aquatic beings.

Keiichi thought quickly and well.

"Thank you for this honor, Toomarch, but I really do not deserve it. I'm sure that everyone here is willing to do the same. If I am allowed to ask a favor, I ask mercy for the man who currently holds my real body. Not that I care for him, but it's still my real body. Although I'll never come to use it again, I still want it to stay alive."

"I swear that we'll grant you that favor. No one will ever harm the human and he will be well treated. However, I still want to know your name so that it is not forgotten."

Keiichi did not know what to say, but thankfully for him, at that very moment they were interrupted. It was one of the sea-men that rushed inside, carrying an urgent message.

"The sentries have sent us a message! There's a vehicle approaching our location. It'll be there in fifteen minutes. And it's not a fishing boat, or a device from the Galactic Patrol. It's round with reactors on either side."

"The Beemerlem" thought the Captain, both reassured and worried by this development.

"But it can't be one of us coming!" exclaimed one Oranean. "All of us are here now! It must be an enemy, maybe Keiichi himself!"

Proton-guns flashed out in the hands of the possessed men who crowded the ledge. And down in the water, the sea-men waited with their curious metal rods raised and ready.

Keiichi was tense. His first thought was that Skuld or Urd had found the location of this secret Base and was blindly barging in.

For his part, Wrecker found it really curious that this base, which had remained secret up until this moment, was suddenly approached by an unknown vehicle, right after Ki Iri's return. Moreover, he had taken notice of Ki Iri's strange refusal to give his real name to Toomarch. 'Maybe…. he's not a traitor…. but... A SPY !'

"GUARDS! SEIZE THIS IMPOSTER!" Wrecker shouted at his men.

Keiichi Morisato instantly realized that was when his bluff was finally over, yet he tried to escape anyway. If he could reach the boat / submarine, and join Urd and Skuld, then there was still hope. He broke the tube containing the vampire algae, letting them fall on the ground and ran. His hope was that Wrecker's men would be too busy with these algae to worry about him.

At first, his desperate escape attempt seemed to work, as Wrecker's men were not at all comfortable in their human bodies and had some trouble to catch up to him. After all, untilke the men whose bodies they stole, Keiichi was rather a properly trained athlete.

Unfortunately, while the aquatic creatures in human bodies were at a disadvantage, the same couldn't be said about the rest of them, who fared much better in their element, easily outrunning Keiichi under such conditions. They were quick to board the boat before Keiichi.

Meanwhile, Wrecker's men had blasted through the Algae vampire and were now after Keiichi. The fight was short: they managed to push him into the water, where three of the aquatic creatures easily captured him, and then brought him before Wrecker.

"Bring something to remove his disguise, I want to see his face." Ordered the masked individual.

Helplessly, Keiichi felt them wiping away the white pigment on his face, the dye that stained his hair. His own tanned face and black hair re-appeared.

"It's Keiichi, all right," gloated Wrecker. "Cunning devil! And here I was going to send him to kill himself!"

"You captured me, but this changes nothing. You don't have the time to destroy well # 3. The alien fleet will be here, long before you get a chance to do that. Or do you still think that you can get away with this plan of yours? Just give up already, that's impossible. I've seen schemes just as clever as yours thwarted."

"A real problem I admit, but I think I have already a solution. As for thee, thou art thyself thrown into the lion's den. You're gonna work for me. It will sure do me a great favor in the future." Wrecker laughs.

"What? Work for you? I would never accept that. Besides, how will you force me? By threatening my family perhaps?" Keiichi said in a half-defying tone, feeling mildly amused.

"Whether you agree or not that will be the same. I just want your body".

Naturally, Keiichi was left troubled by that remark. 'He wants my body? What kind of bad joke is this?' He thought, until his eyebrows shot up when he realized what Wrecker really meant by that. "Oh no".

"Ah, I see you finally got it. Your body will also receive the spirit of a water man. After all this time it will be an appropriate revenge."

"Revenge ? We know each other ?" Keiichi wondered, as he had no recollection of ever seing Libro, Oootaki or Tamiya, the three mainsuspects.

"I know you very well "Captain" Keiichi. However, I doubt that you remember me, as you probably do not remember all the people whose plans you ruined over the years. And that was a long, a VERY long time ago, too," answered Wrecker with a sinister yet at the same time, happy tone in his voice. "That's why I wanted my men to capture you at the very first, so I would have you as an ally. With Captain Keiichi, the great, revered champion of law on my side, how could I lose? Of course," added Wrecker ironically, "it won't be really you who helps me, only your body, with another mind in it! Now, enough talk. We have visitors and I want "you" be ready to welcome them."

Keiichi Morisato felt freezing horror. It was not of his own fate that he was thinking, not of the terrible idea of having his mind transferred into the body of a waterdwelling seaman.

The thing that left Keiichi aghast was the prospect of having his physical body, his reputation, made a tool of this arch-criminal and used. His last hope was that Skuld and Urd saw the difference and act quickly.

"Take him into the exchange-chamber!" rang Wrecker's voice. "One of the Toomarch's guards will undergo the exchange with him."

Struggling futilely, Keiichi Morisato felt himself carried into the small, square metal structure at the water's edge. He was forced down into one of the two metal coffin like chambers. Straps across his body buckled him down. Then the big, bulky electrical helmet was fastened on his head, its wires connecting directly to his nerve system by a tiny incision made in his neck by Wrecker.

The second coffin-chamber of the machine, the one filled with water, was directly connected with the water outside. Into that chamber swam one of the finned white seamen. The other helmet was put upon the sea-man's head by Wrecker, and its wiring connected to his nerves. Captain Keiichi could see the sea-man's large, intelligent dark eyes staring at him out of his water-filled coffin.

Wrecker had gone to the panel switchboard of the mind-exchange machine, and was setting its controls with feverish eagerness in his concealed figure's posture.

"A few more moments, and Captain Keiichi will be my loyal henchman!" he mocked, over his shoulder.

Keiichi strained his muscles to cracking point to burst the metal straps that held him down. Impossible! He must do something, think of something, or in a moment he'd be prisoned in an alien body! But what….

Click! Wrecker had turned a switch. Generators whined on a crescendo scale of sound. Wrecker touched another switch. And Keiichi Morisato felt a strange, rushing force sweeping through his brain, a tingling flood of energy that seemed tearing him away into darkness.

The electric web of his mind, his personality, was being torn away from his own body! Keiichi Morisato's consciousness was hurled into complete oblivion.

Skuld was already striding clankingly to the controls. The "Beemerlem" zoomed up suddenly through the gathering darkness and rocketed low across Amphitrite Island and the city lights, and then over the black sea beyond. The speed with which they tore through the night above the vast ocean was indication of Skuld's anxiety.

"There's the Maelstrom down there to the left, the Spider Islands and Black Isles are not far beyond." Thinked Skuld.

The Black Isles showed as dark little masses standing out upon the silver planetary sea. Highest among them towered one flat-topped island plateau of rock.

Skuld brought the tear-drop craft down like a ghost-ship upon the rock nearby.

Then the robot girl opened the door and waited for her sister to come back.

She stood in silvery moonlight. Suddenly, a flying shape came through the night toward her. Skuld grabbed out her proton-pistol, but the newcomer was Urd.

"I thought you were never coming."

"I drove the "Beemerlem" full speed!" Skuld protested angrily. "I'd like to have seen you make as good time."

"Seems like the Captain can't trust anybody but myself to do things right."

"None of that bickering now!" said the metallic girl. "Urd, have you any idea where Wrecker's base is on this island?"

"Absolutely. I'll take command and lead us directly."

With that being said, Urd moved to the driver's seat and the Beemerlem plunged underwater.

"Good, I will follow that path with you," Skuld boomed. "We will find bro and smash those who would try to harm him in tiny pieces."

"You big iron lummox, I don't want your help!" hissed the Brown girl.

Stricktly speaking, Skuld was not a proponent of violence. However, she was strongly protective of her family, and especially Keiichi. But she knew from past experiences, that blows "where it hurts" were generally the best way to calm down the most vindictive of opponents.

The robot girl had become an expert in the field. Personally she preferred to use her brains rather than her robotic "muscles", but she knew she was physically stronger than most, and often won some arguments.

Skuld, however, preferred not to get into anything too violent. A broken arm or leg wasn't always the best solution to get what she wanted. Generally speaking, just enough pressure on the right muscle or nerve was more adequate. And she had perfect knowledge of human anatomy, including all known alien races, and even some dangerous animals, such as the Morsolion for example.

"Listen, you two!" the Brain commanded by communicator. "You will follow that path and see if it actually leads to Wrecker's base. If it does, ascertain first whether Keiichi is there, then act if he seems in danger. Otherwise, don't show yourselves."

"All right, come along then, Skuld," growled Urd, starting off. "But try to keep those big metal feet of yours quiet."

The robot and the shapeshifter hastened across the moonlit plateau. Urd led to a crevice in the rock near the parked spaceships. A worn path led down into this crack. The woman with brown skin started down the path and the great robot hastily followed.

They found themselves in an almost absolute darkness. Only a faint ray of light from above seeped into the place. But that was enough light for the cat-pupiled eyes of Urd and Skuld's photoelectric vision. Gloomy chasms and labyrinthine connecting caverns in the heart of the rock island opened before them. Their path led past yawning abysses whose black depths were impenetrable even to their eyes, even with the Beemerlem light. Ever the way wound downward.

"I don't like this place much," Skuld grunted. "Reminds me of the great caves of Vespus where us…."

"Listen!" Urd hissed suddenly. "I hear voices and the sea!"

They moved more cautiously, their proton-guns ready in their grasp. Then they glimpsed light ahead. The path debouched into a great hollow space dimly lit by suspended red fluoric lamps.

"Wrecker's secret base!" Urd hissed. "See!"

They looked into the buried water-cavern in which, hours before, Captain Keiichi had faced Wrecker. Now the only persons in the cavern were some scores of Wrecker's hollow-eyed planetary followers, who were lounging about the broad rock ledge at the side of the water.

"By the space devils! There's the Captain, and has his hands and feet tied." Urd exclaimed in fear.

"What do we do? Shoud you disguise yourself as one of them and approach them, so that you can take them by surprise?" Suggested Skuld.

"Good idea, except that I do not have clothes like them. Not that it bothers me to go naked, but I doubt they won't realize that something off. Unfortunately, that won't be any useful." Urd replied sarcastically.

"And foolishly rushing ahead to fight them is your idea of useful?" Adds the metal girl.

"You have a better offer?"

"Operation 5.4. called "massive attack, leave no quarters" How does that sounds to you?" Skuld asked.

"Do actually have enough bombs in your pack for this?" Asked her little sister.

"Always. I even upraged them recently, so they're smaller and lighter, yet without losing their effectiveness."

Simply put, the " 5.4 maneuver" was simply a massive bombardment, with Skuld launching all her bombs, along with other dazzling missiles, anesthetics, sonic attacks, smoke bombs, and last but not least the "Special Skuld" electromagnetic pulse. And while this is not a fatal maneuver, the brutality of the attack is usually enough to knock out, or at least stun anyone who is caught in it ... Including Keiichi or any hostages. After the explosions, Skuld and Urd jumped into the fray to neutralize the enemy, just in case the bombs weren't enough, and put an end to the maneuver.

"Okay. I hope the captain won't be mad at us," sighed Urd.

All happened very quickly. The guards and their "prisoner" were completely taken by surprise while the whole cave shook from the multitude of explosions that went off all of a sudden.

In theory, there was no way for the plan to fail. Even with Keiichi having his mind swapped, the two sisters wouldn't be able to discover the deception too soon, as they'd probably be too busy running away to tell the differece.

Skuld took her "brother" on her shoulders while Urd watched their surroundings as they got ready to leave.

And that was when it all failed. They had forgotten one detail: on their way in, they had come through an underwater pipe by "swimming". They had no vehicles, and thus Keiichi would drown long before they reached the surface (even if the spirit inhabiting his body for the time being was that of an aquatic creature).

"They must have some means of transport! I thought I saw some submarines nearby."

"So, you intend to steal one? You think you can drive something like that with only two people?" Asked Wrecker, as he emerged from the shadows, along with a dozen gunmen.

Skuld and Urd got ready to fire, but Wrecker spoke up before they had the chance to do so.

"Do not be stupid. You MIGHT be able to gun down a few of us, but you're simply outnumbered. Oh, as for the underwater passage ... Why don't you take a look outside?"

By then, the water was filled with armed aquatic creatures who aimed back at Urd and Skuld.

"You see? It's over. So, how about you listen to my proposal?"

" A proposal ?" Skuld asked.

"You can save your lives if you surrender right now. Of course, you you'll be put into a cell, but I do plan to keep my word, and you won't be given this offer again. So, what do you say?"

As much as they hated to admit it, there was only one answer to that.

"We accept." Urd replied laconically.

The sisters hadn't really given up just yet. They simply thought that they might be able to find the opportunity to escape later on, but for now they just had to stay alive. The "we will fight to the end and we shall never surrender" strategy was absolutely out of question for now.

Actually, Wrecker too had similar thoughts. In fact, he originally intended to "introduce" the fake Captain Keiichi to her sisters and the government and "pull the strings" behind the scenes, but now that Urd and Skuld were already here, he wasn't going to lose this opportunity. First step: put the false Keiichi in the same cell with the sisters. On the one hand, this would let him to monitor them, and on the other to squeeze out all the information he could get from them. Of course, it was going to be very difficult to trick them for a prolonged period of time, so he has to invent a pretext, like a story of using a memory alteration drug on him, for example. After all, exchanging their bodies was not an option. This wouldn't provide him with information, and besides, it was unlikely that his machine could work on Urd. It might be possible to reprogram Skuld on the other hand. Perhaps….

Keiichi, when he was hurled into unconsciousness in the mind exchange chamber, seemed floating in unrelieved blackness. Then gradually his consciousness returned. He opened his eyes. At first he thought he was still in the same chamber, that nothing had happened. Then he noticed that the coffin like receptacle in which he lay was filled with green water.

He was living under that water, breathing it! And everything about his own body seemed strange and new to him. Bewilderedly, he looked down at himself. Keiichi felt his reason stagger as he regarded his body. For it was not his body that he now possessed.

It was a white, semi-human body whose upper legs were grown together in a powerful tail that ended in fins instead of feet. His arms, too, were finned, his fingers webbed. Wildly, Keiichi felt his head and face and neck. His head was hairless, bulbous in shape. Instead of a nose there was only a small nasal opening. And at the sides of his throat were gills, closing and unclosing rhythmically, extracting oxygen from the water.

"A sea-man!" Keiichi thought wildly. "They've transferred my mind into a seaman's body!"

He threshed around in the water of his chamber, raising his head above surface to try to see out. There was another chamber beside him — an air-filled one. In it lay an Earthman with tanned face, red hair and a long, rangy figure. That, Keiichi knew, was his own body, out of which his mind had been lifted by hell-born magic of unearthly science!

Keiichi Morisato saw this much, and then he became aware that he was choking and strangling. He could not live with his head out of water like this. His gills were closing, starved for the water that now meant life. Dazedly, Captain Keiichi drew his head back down under the water of his tank. As the life-giving water rushed again through his body, Keiichi tried to orient himself to this amazing situation.

Wrecker came over and looked down into the chamber at him. The dark, space-suited figure uttered a muffled laugh.

"How do you like your new body, Captain Keiichi?" mocked the arch-plotter.

Captain Keiichi had been in terrible situations before. But never had he faced such an appalling thing as this. Always before, no matter how terrible the menace, at least he had been himself, free to act and fight. But now he was prisoned in an alien body, a body that could not live more three minute out of the water.

Hands reached into the chamber from the outside waters and seized him — webbed hands of the sea-men out there. Keiichi was dragged out, and metal chains clasped swiftly upon his wrists as he struggled clumsily and futilely. Each of the chains was held by a sea-man.

Wrecker was now speaking to the sea-men through the "talker" apparatus that converted sonic vibrations in the water to air vibrations, and vice versa.

"Better take him back to your city and prison him with the others," Wrecker was telling the sea-men.

The leader of the sea-men agreed.

"We will do that. And at exactly noon tomorrow a party of us will strike to destroy Mine Three."

"And while Mine Three is being destroyed," reminded Wrecker, "you must gather all your forces to annihilate Amphitrite island."

"It shall be done," was the seaman's answer. "By tomorrow night, the intruders from other worlds will be swept from Bama forever."

Was Wrecker aware of the impending extraterrestrial attack on Bama? Or did he know, but hid this information from the king of those aquatic creatures? Because during this time, Chihiro felt completely overwhelmed.

Like all members of the Galactic Patrol, she couldn't involve her forces in a military affair. Especially since the patrol was a multiracial galactic police force, not an army in the service of the Earthlings.

On the other hand, as the highest ranking human officer, she could not stay idle during such a time. The patrol may had been authorized by the general to do everything in their power to protect the last mine, but the preparations for war was is solely within the jurisdiction of the army.

Given the unprecedented aspect of the situation, any non human members of the patrol stationed on Bama started to leave, while the rest had been offered the possibility of a temporary reassignment to the army, and stay in Bama, or choose to remain neutral and leave ... Which… roughtly 67% of them chose "neutrality" and as such, had left Bama. Not that Chihiro could blame them. The Terran fleet had no chance against a coalition of Oraneans, Romaceans, Sigooneans, and some other minor races. And even if these men had stayed, it still would have made no difference. More men didn't also mean more ships ready for battle. The only thing she could do now was to prepared the space defenses, as well as the underwater surveillance to the best of her ability and wait.

The good news however, was that Orr Libro used all his political influence to delay the attack. The Oranean had contacts among the different politicians affiliated to the other gravium mines, like any businessman occupying an important position. The (fake) results that he provided to his government on the importance of new gravium veins and the need to protect them from attack, had borne fruit. The Oraneans had decided, for their part, to limit themselves by engaging the defenders in space combat only, and thus avoid deploying ground troops. The Romaceans had refused this proposal though, and the Sigooneans had not yet decided. As such, the situation regarding the attack on the ground was at a standstill, for now at least.

Her only serious hope to avoid this confrontation was by catching Wrecker in the next 24 hours, yet that seemed highly unlikely.

A conversation she had had with general Lind did nothing to improve her morale either. Earth could not afford a total war with the other galactic races, so the human army, although alert, wasn't going to intervene.

The Colonel had delegated Belldandy as a permanent liaison with Captain Keiichi with full powers for the duration of this crisis. So, the girl could now command the army along with Chihiro. It served no particular purpose but the Colonel had confidence in the abilities of her agent, and did not want a mere problem of lacking authority to stop her from acting decisively if the situation required such emergency measures.

Belldandy, for her part, in addition to her liaison function with Captain Keiichi consulted reports on the protection (and monitoring) of Tamiya and Ootaki. One of those two were suspected of being a traitor or even Wrecker himself. As a matter of fact, even Libro was not excluded as a suspect, but ot of all three of them, this one seemed the least likely.

The reports did not indicate anything in particular though. The two men simply did their jobs and never went anywhere suspicious. The only notable observation was that Ootaki was often exhausted and tended to rested a lot, which is why he regularly took a large quantity of sleeping pills. This was understandable though. The recent days had proven to be especially trying for him, particularly when the mine shaft collapsed.

Megumi had informed Bell of recent events which she was unaware: that Urd and Skuld went to the sea, in the region where many fishermen had gone missing. On the other hand, Megumi had currently no interesting news about Ki Iri. The man was still unconscious, and kept muttering incomprehensible gibberish.

Having nothing better to do at the moment, Belldandy decided to consult the reports of the disappearances in the area.

After the end of his conversation with Wrecker, the sea-folk king turned his attention to Captain Keiichi. "You will come with us and not try to escape," the sea-man stated. "If you do try to break away, we'll instantly stun you with our force-rods."

Keiichi Morisato understood. The metal rods carried by the sea-men contained charges of proton force. Chained as he was there was no hope of his being able to evade the weapons. So Keiichi swam with the sea-men as they started to glide out of the water-cavern toward the open sea. The light chains attached to Keiichi's wrists were allowed to hang loosely so that he could use his arms for swimming. Swimming just under the surface of the water with the sea-men, Keiichi felt clumsy and awkward. He could not glide forward with the same smooth, powerful strokes of arms and tail as the others.

But this new body he occupied had the long physical habit of swimming to aid it. Its muscles fell into accustomed routines. With surprising rapidity, Keiichi found the way to swim like the others, his arms back against his body and beating in a narrow radius, his tail like limb pushing him forward in great strokes. Like a human projectile he felt himself shooting forward through the green waters, companioned by the other sea-men.

Keiichi felt miserably depressed. Not alone because he was prisoned in an alien body. It was the thought that now in his own body was an alien, enemy mind — a mind that would use Captain Keiichi's prestige to help Wrecker in his dark, sweeping schemes. As they took him to his own cell, Keiichi's wishful thoughts were that somehow Urd and Skuld would unmask that faker.

He forced that agonizing thought from his mind. No use torturing himself with it now! His job was somehow to escape from this horrible situation and undo the ghastly thing done to him.

Now Keiichi and his guards were emerging from the water-cavern into the open ocean. The sunlight illumined the green waters in which they swam with warm radiance. The sea-men conducting him headed southwestward, swimming with tireless energy and speed at a depth some dozen feet beneath the surface.

Keiichi found that he could see for great distances through the water. His eyes were now a sea-man's eyes, evolved and adapted to the sea. And as he and his captors arrowed southeastward under the waters, Keiichi Morisato was seeing a world no man had ever seen before from such a viewpoint.

Looking down through the waters as he swam, Keiichi could see in the dusky depths great forests of submarine vegetation. Big groves of polyp-trees, pink and white and green, interlaced fantastic branches. Giant sea-weeds like great green underwater prairies rippled and waved in the currents.

On and on southwestward they swam. Presently Keiichi Morisato perceived that his captors were beginning to slant down to a lower level. The waters changed from a brilliant green to a more brilliant light. And far ahead beyond the fairy glades of submarine trees, Keiichi Morisato glimpsed dark stone spires and towers.

"The city of the sea-folk!" he realized, awed. "Cities, people, civilization — hidden all this time under Bama's waters!"

His thoughts were wrenched sharply from the distant spires to a thing close ahead — a huge, dinosaur like creature with enormous scaled body and small head, swimming toward them.

It was an Uruzaru, one of biggest and most feared of all monsters of the Bamean ocean. Few people had ever glimpsed one, but all who lived on Bama dreaded the creatures. Keiichi's guards were swimming straight toward the monster as though careless of its approach.

"What's the matter with them?" Keiichi wondered. "Don't they see it?"

Then in a moment he saw the reason for their unconcern. The Uruzaru was a tame one — tamed by the sea-folk! On the back of the scaled monster crouched a sea-man who urged it forward with a short, spearlike goad. And the Uruzaru was pulling a great metal scow loaded with metallic ores.

It gave Keiichi Morisato a new insight into the amazing life of these undersea people. He had known that they were necessarily high in scientific progress to have attained such a secret as that of the mind-exchange process. But to have succeeded in taming the fierce Uruzaru!

The black submarine city ahead grew larger as Keiichi and his guards approached. Amazedly, Keiichi looked upon this weird metropolis at the bottom of the sea. It was built of black stone quarried from the sea-bottom. The buildings were cubical, with barred windows and roofs to keep out wandering beasts of prey. Many of the structures were of considerable size, and near the heart of the city was a massive pyramidal building that seemed the center of its strange life.

As Keiichi Morisato was taken across the roofs of the black metropolis, he looked in wonder at the thronging population that swam in flocks and swarms above the roofs. Men, women and children — all were supple and finned of body, all wore metal-mesh tunics, and all seemed to have their own occupations or professions just as in any city of the land.

Keiichi glimpsed buildings that might have contained factories, metal-working shops where unquenchable atomic-flames were used for underwater foundry work, other structures that seemed scientific laboratories. He marveled at the astounding webwork of an alien civilization beneath the waters!

"And nobody in the Galaxy ever guessed it," he thought, staggered. "Nobody but the Bameans with their age-old legend of the sea-devils —"

He was being conducted, he now saw, toward the massive central pyramidal structure. Behind that building was a big open court in which were large, barred metal cages. A moment later, and he was yanked right down toward those metal cages by his guards. He saw now that some of the cages contained Uruzaru. That apparently was the reason for these enclosures' existence.

One barred cage of the series held within it scores of sea-men, who were swimming idly around their prison or lounging dully on the bottom. Keiichi Morisato was taken to the door of that prison. It was unlocked by one of his guards. His wrist chains were unloosed, and he was pushed into the cage.

"These Uruzaru have been trained to monitor the prison. Even if you manage to cross these bars, you won't go too far" Explained one of aquatic creatures.

On instant later, the guards swam away. And from behind the bars of his weird prison, Keiichi Morisato looked after them.

Urd and Skuld had been locked in a cage. Initially, Urd thought of using her flexibility to squeeze between the bars, but they were too close together for that. Skuld tried twist or melt them, but in vain. The false Keiichi was awake and pretended of having memory problems, saying that all he remembered was coming here wearing a disguise but he could not remember anything before that, nor even who was these girls were.

The real Captain Keiichi was stuck in the body of an aquatic creature, his sisters were held captive, and an attack of the "demon of the oceans" was imminent, on top of another, massive alien attack. Who is really Wrecker? And what's its real goal?