the banks and
grew down into the water.

He heard now the distant bellow of a swamp-ox, the buzzing of aquatic
bees. Slowly he turned the stone on its edge and revolved it
carefully. When the picture was clearest in his mind he picked out an
orientation point in the distant mountains. Then, well pleased, he put
the stone in his pocket, got into his diving-suit, screwed on the
helmet, adjusted the oxygen, and stepped off into the brown water of
the swamp.

The bottom here was steep but it was good. It was hard and not more
than knee-deep in mud. He traveled carefully, freezing on occasion
when huge shadows moved above him. He was in fifty feet of water and
he liked that better because it was easier to go unnoticed. He avoided
a patch of electric cactus, for the spines would have electrocuted him
even through the suit, and he went far around an area of white
bull-root, shaped like women's legs, because he knew the bull-root was
always infested with swamp-razors that would cut through the seams of
his diving-suit.

When he came out of the water he found his orientation point and kept
going. He came to a wide stretch of water, and with the wind at his
back, made fast time by climbing on an island of floating grass and
going straight across. This was important. He needed to find the
constrictor by the time Relegar started after him.

The spider could travel much faster than Grant for it walked on water
where Grant was forced to wade on the bottom. But Relegar would wait a
while. He wouldn't want to be on the surface of Venus any longer than
necessary, even for half a million dollars, so he would give Grant
plenty of time, since there was no danger of his getting away.

Grant was encouraged by the fact that the constrictor did not appear
to be far away. Everything here depended on his reaching the saurian
two days ahead of Relegar. Not that he expected to run. That was
hopeless. But he did have a partial plan. He thought he knew how to
recover the stones and to face the Uranian without being immediately
killed. And he hoped for some now unforeseen development that
subsequently would help him to get through The Pass.

That last item was a weak point, a very weak point, but there was
nothing he could do about it now. He could not wait for a plan. He had
to go ahead and trust his own ingenuity to devise a means of getting
to Aphrodite later. If he could keep Relegar from going back to The
Pass until he himself could get