the wearer. The fabric molded
into a perfect, tight face mask as it touched the skin.

Sssuri went to the pile of cylinders. Choosing one he tinkered with
its pointed cone, to be rewarded with a thin hiss.

"Ahhhh--" again his recognition of the rightness of things. "These
still contain air." He tested two more and then brought all three back
to where Dalgard stood, the canister strapped into place, the mask
ready in his hand. With infinite care the merman fitted two of the
cylinders into the canister and then was forced to set the other
aside.

"We could not change them while under water anyway," he explained. "So
it will do little good to take extra supplies with us."

Trying not to speculate on the amount of air he could carry in the
cylinders, Dalgard fastened on the mask, adjusted the air tube, and
sucked. Air flowed--he could breathe! Only--for how long?

Sssuri, seeing that his companion was fully provided for, worked at
the bar locking the sea hatch. But in the end it took their combined
strength to spring that barrier and win through to a small cubby which
was the actual sea lock.

Dalgard knew one moment of resistance as the merman closed the hatch
behind them. For an instant it seemed that the dubious safety of the
dressing chamber and a faint hope of the hunters' giving up their
vigil was better than what might lie before them now. But Sssuri
pushed shut the hatch, and Dalgard stood quietly, without offering any
visible protest.

He tried to draw even breaths--slowly--as the merman activated the
lock. When the water curled in from hidden openings, rising from ankle
to calf and then to knee, its chill striking through flesh to bone, he
kept to the same stolid waiting, though this seemed almost worse than
a sudden gush of water sweeping them out in its embrace.

The liquid swirled about Dalgard's waist now, tugging at his belt, his
arrow quiver, tapping on the bottom of the canister which held his
precious air supply. His brow, shielded from the wet by its casing,
was swallowed up inch by inch.

As the water lapped at his chin, the outer door opened with a slow
inward push which suggested that the machinery controlling it had
grown sluggish with the years. Sssuri, perfectly at home, darted out
as soon as the opening was large enough to afford him an exit. And his
thought came back to reassure the more clumsy landsman.

"We are in the shallows--land rises ahead. The roots of an island.
There is not