It was wingless and covered smoothly with pastel-blue feathers. It stood
solidly on carefully manicured yellow feet and stared at him out of
square violet eyes.

Involuntarily he took a backward step, caught his heel on a sun-warped
board and sat down heavily.

"Well, what the devil!" he said inanely.

The owl winced and disappeared without a sound.

* * * * *

Jeff got up shakily and stumbled to the dock's edge. A chill conviction
of insanity gripped him when he looked down on water lapping smooth and
undisturbed below.

"I've gone mad," he said aloud.

Out on the bay, another catastrophe just as improbable was in progress.

Old Charlie Mack's _Island Queen_ had veered sharply off course, left
the darker-green stripe of safe channel and plunged into water too
shallow for her draft. The boat heeled on shoal sand, listed and hung
aground with wind-filled sails holding her fast.

The Scoop that had surfaced just behind her was so close that Jeff
wondered if its species' legendary good nature had been misrepresented.
It floated like a glistening plum-colored island, flat dorsal flippers
undulating gently on the water and its great filmy eyes all but closed
against the slanting glare of morning sun.

It was more than vast. The thing must weigh, Jeff thought dizzily,
thousands or maybe millions of tons.

He thought he understood the _Queen's_ grounding when he saw the
swimmer stroking urgently toward his dock. Old Charlie had abandoned his
boat and was swimming in to escape the Scoop.

But it wasn't Charlie. It was Jennifer, Charlie's niece.

Jeff took the brown hand she put up and drew her to the dock beside her,
steadying her while she shook out her dripping red hair and regained her
breath. Sea water had plastered Jennifer's white blouse and knee-length
dungarees to her body like a second skin, and the effect bordered on the
spectacular.

"Did you see it?" she demanded.

Jeff wrestled his eyes away to the Scoop that floated like a purple
island in the bay.

"A proper monster," he said. "You got out just in time."

She looked at once startled and impatient. "Not the Scoop, you idiot.
The owl."

It was Jeff's turn to stare. "Owl? There was one on the dock, but I
thought--"

"So did I." She sounded relieved. "But if you saw one, too.... All of a
sudden, it was standing there on deck beside me, right out of nowhere. I
lost my head and grounded the _Queen_, and it vanis