I agreed, as the doors closed above us. We dropped the subject andheaded in our different directions after the Slider came to a halt in itsberth. She did not say "good day," though, which I thought showed breedingas well as determination, in reply to my chuckle.

Later that night Mike and I stoked our pipes in Malvern's cabin. Thewinds were shuffling waves, and a steady pattering of rain and hail overheadturned the deck into a tin roof.

"Nasty," suggested Malvern.

I nodded. After two bourbons the room had become a familiar woodcut,with its mahogany furnishings (which I had transported from Earth long agoon a whim) and the dark walls, the seasoned face of Malvern, and theperpetually puzzled expression of Dabis set between the big pools of shadowthat lay behind chairs and splashed in cornets, all cast by the tiny tablelight and seen through a glass, brownly.

"Glad I'm in here."

"What's it like underneath on a night like this?"

I puffed, thinking of my light cutting through the insides of a blackdiamond, shaken slightly. The meteor-dart of a suddenly illuminated fish,the swaying of grotesque ferns, like nebulae-shadow, then green, thengone--swam in a moment through my mind. I guess it's like a spaceship wouldfeel, if a spaceship could feel, crossing between worlds--and quiet,uncannily, preternaturally quiet; and peaceful as sleep.

"Dark," I said, "and not real choppy below a few fathoms."

"Another eight hours and we shove off," commented Mike.

"Ten, twelve days, we should be there," noted Malvern.

"What do you think Ikky's doing?"

"Sleeping on the bottom with Mrs. Ikky if he has any brains."

"He hasn't. I've seen ANR's skeletal extrapolation from the bones thathave washed up--"

"Hasn't everyone?"

"...Fully fleshed, he'd be over a hundred meters long. That right,