The Kraken, by J Wyndam

PHASE ONE 

I’m a reliable witness, you’re a reliable witness, practically all God’s children are 

reliable witnesses in their own estimation - which makes it funny how such different 

ideas of the same affair get about. Almost the only people I know who agree word for 

word on what they saw on the night of July15th are Phyllis and I. And as Phyllis 

happens to be my wife, people said, in their kindly way behind our backs, that I 

“overpersuaded” her, a thought that could only proceed from someone who did know 

Phyllis.

The time was 11:15 P.M.; the place, latitude 35, some 24 degrees west of Greenwich; 

the ship, the Guinevere; the occasion, our honeymoon. About these facts there is no 

dispute. The cruise had taken us to Madeira, the Canaries, Cape Verde Islands, and 

had then turned north to show us the Azores on our way home. We, Phyllis and I, 

were leaning on the rail, taking a breather. From the saloon came the sound of the 

dance continuing, and the crooner yearning for somebody. The sea stretched in front 

of us like a silken plain in the moonlight. The ship sailed as smoothly as if she were 

on a river. We gazed out silently at the infinity of sea and sky. Behind us the crooner 

went on baying.

“I’m so glad I don’t feel like him; it must be devastating,” Phyllis said. “Why, do you 

suppose, do people keep on mass-producing these dreary moanings?”

I had no answer ready for that one, but I was saved the trouble of trying to find one 

when her attention was suddenly caught elsewhere.

“Mars is looking pretty angry tonight, isn’t he? I hope it isn’t an omen,” she said.

I looked where she pointed at a red spot among myriads of white ones, and with some 

surprise. Mars does look red, of course, though I had never seen him look quite as red 

as that - but then, neither were the stars, as seen at home, quite as bright as they were 

here. Being practically in the tropics might account for it.

“Certainly a little inflamed,” I agreed.

We regarded the red point for some moments. Then Phyllis said, “That’s funny. It’s 

seems to be getting bigger.”

I explained that that was obviously an hallucination formed by staring at it. We went 

on staring, and it became quite indisputably bigger. Moreover:

“There’s another one. There can’t be two Marses,” said Phyllis.

And sure enough there was. A smaller red point, a little up from, and to the right of, 

the first. She added, “And another. To the left. See?”

She was right about that, too, and by this time the first one was glowing as the most 

noticeable thing in the sky. 

“It must be a flight of jets of some kind, and that’s a cloud of luminous exhaust we’re 

seeing,” I suggested.

We watched all three of them slowly getting brighter and also sinking lower in the 

sky until they were little above the horizon line, and reflecting in a pinkish pathway 

across the water toward us.

“Five now,” said Phyllis.

We’ve both been asked many times since to describe them, but perhaps we are not 

gifted with such a precise eye for detail as some others. What we said at the time, and 

what we still say, is that on this occasion there was no real shape visible. The center 

was solidly red, and a kind of fuzz round it was less so. The best suggestion I can 

make is that you imagine a brilliantly red light as seen in a fairly thick fog so that 

there is a strong halation, and you will have something of the effect.

Others besides ourselves were leaning over the rail, and in fairness I should perhaps 

mention that between them they appear to have seen cigar-shapes, cylinders, discs, 

ovoids, and, inevitably, saucers. We did not. What is more, we did not see eight, nine, 

or a dozen. We saw five.

The halation may or may not have been due to some kind of jet drive, but it did not 

indicate any great speed. The things grew in size quite slowly as they approached. 

There was time for people to go back into the saloon and fetch their friends out to see, 

so that presently a line of us leaned all along the rail, looking at them and guessing.

With no idea of scale we could have no judgment of their size or distance; all we 

could be sure of was that they were descending in a long glide which looked as if it 

would take them across our wake.

When the first one hit the water a great burst of steam shot up in a pink plume. Then, 

swiftly, there was a lower, wider spread of steam which had lost the pink tinge, and 

was simply a white cloud in the moonlight. It was beginning to thin out when the 

sound of it reached us in a searing hiss. The water round the spot bubbled and seethed 

and frothed. When the steam drew off, there was nothing to be seen there but a patch 

of turbulence, gradually subsiding.

Then the second of them came in, in just the same way, on almost the same spot. One 

after another all five of them touched down on the water with great whooshes and 

hissings of steam. Then the vapor cleared, showing only a few contiguous patches of 

troubled water.

Aboard the Guinevere, bells clanged, the beat of the engines changed, we started to 

change course, crews turned out to man the boats, men stood by to throw lifebelts.

Four times we steamed slowly back and forth across the area, searching. There was no 

trace whatever to be found. But for our own wake, the sea lay all about us in the 

moonlight, placid, empty, unperturbed . . . .

The next morning I sent my card in to the captain.