🚀 go-pugleaf

      ``Well, enough of that,'' said Nurse Ianis, her tongue poking past
her upper teeth to caress her lip.  ``Lead on, you lovely young man.''
    
      Down we went, down into the bowels of the submarine, past
inexplicable machinery, through seventeen different kinds of doors,
places where the continual throbbing and thrumming of the engines was
mingled with almost human shrieks of pain as the tortured metal labored
to perform its incomprehensible function, until finally we reached the
engine deck.  We were in a vast room filled with every manifestation of
metal.  The floor was textured stainless steel plate or aluminum mesh,
the mesh covering sumps which stank with filthy scummy bilgewater.  The
room was filled with the gargantuan engine machinery, some of it shiny,
chrome and copper, but most of it tarnished with verdigris and rust,
reddish orange, green, leaf-brown and bootblack black.  The engines
steamed and smoked, and the clouds of steam and oily yellow smoke
wandered the engine room before settling down on the walls or the
machinery.  The noise, a constant rhythmic clanking, grinding,
squealing, hissing, crunching, was headspliiting.

      ``Romantic,'' smiled Nurse Ianis, stroking the place on her breast
where I knew her nipple had been before it had been completely burnt
away.  ``You certainly do know 'ow to show a lady a good time, Mister
Swift!  And you're brave.  I do admire bravery in a man.''

      ``Brave?  Me?  How so?''

      ``You mean you don't know about the chief engineer?''

      ``The chief engineer?''

      ``Oh, we used to be quite an item, you know.  Of course we broke
it off years ago, but I think 'e never got the point.  'E's a little
dim.  If 'e catches us 'ere together it'll be lights out for you, but
you're not scared, are you?''

      ``I'm sure he'll be reasonable.''

      ``Bert?  I very much doubt it.  'Ere 'e comes now.''

      In spite of the noise of the engine room I heard a roar of fury
and a clanking of chains, and I turned to see a seven-foot ogre in a
sweat-stained, filthy uniform lumbering towards me.  Bert, the chief
engineer, was bareheaded, his hat having apparently been lost, and a
thick, somewhat frayed chain welded to a fetter around his left ankle
snaked off into the steam and the smoke as far as I could see.  He had a
little, snarling, wrinkled baby's face, and his head was noticeably
narrower at the top than at the bottom.  `` `Anis!'' he roared.

      ``Crap,'' I said, and backed away, wondering if I could find the
exit through the smog.  Bert clenched and unclenched his fists and
lumbered towards me.  

      Ten minutes later I was tiring from the stress and Bert was simply
enraged with the effort of chasing me.  I had not found the exit,
although if I had it seemed unlikely that I would have been able to
escape Nurse Ianis in any event, since she was following at a safe
distance, pausing only to unbutton her starched white nurse's blouse to
better rub at her body.  Bert roared again and I retreated around
another one of the innumerable clanking, oily machines.  Bert followed,
his chain scraping on the mesh floor.  We were all panting, for
different reasons.

      I kept on around the machine, hoping to get Bert's chain wound
around it a few times, to afford me a chance to escape or to find a
weapon while he unwound himself.  Bert followed me eagerly, and I soon
found out why: just back of the machine I'd chosen was a trench, twelve
feet across and apparently bottomless.  I was hemmed in, a huge machine
on each side, Bert behind and the trench in front of me.  There was only
one thing to do.  I backed up as much as I dared, almost into Bert's
sweating, stinking arms, and I ran and I leapt.

      I heard a roar of fury behind me, but I banged my shin on the edge
of the trench and rolled on the floor in agony for a few moments before
I could look to see what was going on.  Ianis had mounted to the top of
the left-hand machine, and was now sitting astride a steaming piston
hammer which, at the lowest point in its thundering path, kept her just
out of Bert's reach.  He was grasping for her, but she dangled her shoe
carelessly and shook her finger.  ``Naughty, naughty Bert!'' she
laughed.  ``No threesomes for me.  You know I don't go for that kinky
stuff.  No, no, it'll have to be one at a time.''

      Bert let out a howl of frustration and leapt for her ankle.  She
snatched away her leg just in time, kicking her shoe off into his face.
Bert ground his teeth and turned back to me.  By this time I'd recovered
and was trying to wrench loose a length of cold copper pipe from the
machinery on my side.  

      Bert began warily to inspect the trench.  One end of the pipe
ripped from its socket and I began to bend it back and forth to get the
other end loose.  Bert backed up and started his run-up.  I heaved
hopelessly on the pipe, but it wouldn't come loose.

      ``Mind the chain, Bertie!'' called Ianis, her face slick with
sweat.  Bert stopped so suddenly that he stumbled, windmilled his arms,
and tottered on the edge.  I bent the pipe back and forth frantically.
Bert finally regained his balance and was measuring the slack in his
chain with his arms.  His span looked something more than eight feet.
He coiled the chain neatly and backed off for another run up just as the
fixed end of the pipe fatigued enough for me to tear it off.

      I had enough time to set my feet before Bert arrived.  I caught
him in the middle of his sweating belly, which poked out from below his
once-white turtleneck, while he was still two feet over the trench.  His
momentum drained away as the pipe went through his meat, and I felt a
sickening grating sensation as the end scraped along his backbone.  I
gave a thrust with the pipe, and Bert tumbled into the pit, blood
squirting from his belly as he slid down off the pipe and vanished from
sight.  The chain sang merrily as it uncoiled, and then finally grew
taut.

      ``Good show!'' screamed Ianis, the piston dripping with her sweat
by this time.  ``Time to come and claim your reward.''

      But it was premature.  The chain rattled, and clanked rhythmically
against the side of the trench.  Bert was climbing back out.

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