hes of spectral luminosity. Then the corridor crooked again, and with
one simultaneous movement they were gone. And the scene that lay
revealed before Kenneth Torrance took his breath from him.

In the passageway he had seen a score of the living jewels; now he
beheld hundreds. He peered up at a shimmering sheet of brilliance,
composed of hundreds of the slender refulgent fish, all swimming in slow
rotation. Below them was a large cavern, which he guessed had been
created by hollowing out one of the underwater hillocks. The sides were
rounded, and pitted with holes that represented other passageways,
showing dark against the luminosity from above. And streaming out from
these dark holes of corridors came dozens of the seal-creatures,
gathering in response to some unheard, unseen signal that had called
them to witness the strange captive their fellows had brought in....

* * * * *

Ken's guards gripped him more firmly and he was guided forward and
downward to the smooth black floor of soil.

Scores of large, placid eyes stared at him from the slowly undulating,
brown-skinned bodies packed close about him. The sight was so weird, so
beyond his imagination, that he laughed a little hysterically.

"Dreaming!" he said. "Dreaming! But what a dream!"

Silently, a space cleared in the center of the horde. His bonds were
taken away, the guards released his arms and he righted himself and
stood there on braced legs, the object of a concerted gaze.

This, the torpooner felt, was the crucial period. Something was about to
be decided. If it looked bad he would make a wild--and of course,
futile--break for freedom, and die quickly when they punctured his suit.
But meanwhile he would stick things out. Anything might happen in that
fantastic convocation.

There came a stir in the tiers of brown bodies. An aisle cleared, and
down it a single seal-creature glided slowly towards Ken
Torrance--undoubtedly the leader of the herd, ruler of the underwater
labyrinth.

Gracefully the creature glided up to the lone human, and when only a
foot away extended one of its long upper flippers so that its webbed
edge rested on his sea-suit's casque. And its placid brown eyes hung
close to the face-shield and gazed through inquisitively, intelligently!
Intelligently! No longer did Kenneth Torrance doubt that. As he held
absolutely motionless under the close-searching scrutiny, his brain rang
with the conviction that t