36xxxx 030 Message To Johnson

Over ninety feet below the surface of the ocean, Jerry and Joan are shoving off the magic island in the Euclidean submarine. This immense cigar-shaped boat, a hundred feet long, capable of a speed of forty miles an hour underwater, has a crew of only one man, and is commanded by a beautiful Euclidean woman.

All this is almost too much for Jerry, and when the boat is spun rapidly, over and over to clear it from the lock in the island wall, Jerry has a feeling that perhaps he wasn't cut out for a sailor's life after all.

The submarine is just pulling away from the island. Are you all right now, Jerry? Oh, I don't think I'll ever be. Oh, Joan, when I saw the sides of this boat going past me like a moving picture.

Oh, boy. Have you ever been in the submarine before? No, never again. It's not so bad now, though. But what's making us go through the water? Why doesn't that she-skipper up there turn on the engines?

The engines, as you call them, are on. The motorspower is active now, although very little of it is being used. I don't hear anything or see anything running. Can't even hear the water going past the outside.

But I can see it all right. The motorspower is a gas. A very powerful explosive gas generated in those tanks and blown out through exhaust pipes. But they couldn't carry much gas in those tanks.

How far can this boat cruise on the gas they've got aboard now? I do not know how many cubes of the solidified gas the commander is carrying, but I have known one of these boats to run from Euclidea to your California and return.