The Sea Girl

The Sea Girl is by Ray Cummings, and its Chapter I is headed Human Girl, or Siren? A teaser line reads that sunken ships and strange ocean changes presage the mightiest and most unaccountable threat ever made against mankind's world. The text says the first of the mysterious sea disasters occurred in March, 1990, and that a small, old-fashioned freight vessel of some thirty thousand tons sank in mid-Pacific with the loss of all on board.

A narrator describes a globe twenty feet in diameter perhaps, a darkly shining globe with a great round white spot on it like an eye. A face is seen at a convex window; the narrator does not know whether it was human, but it showed the face of a young girl. The text describes streets at the foot of the Mound as deserted, narrow, rocky streets, hemmed in by the stone walls of the low houses. The text says that Arturo and Tad decided to leave the camp, and that if they could reach civilization, they would send help back.