"Did you drop him? Have your muscles quit again?" she asked anxiously.

"No. The rope seems to have broken or come un-tied. If I'd lost my hold we'd still have him; I had it snubbed on a cleat."

"Take the paddle, and hold us here!" the girl snapped. He turned to see that she was already strip-ping down to her bathing suit.

"No! Wait!" he said. "Make sure we know what the position is, first!" He snatched the sextant, made quick readings on the reference tanks, and wrote them down. Then he started to remove his own shirt, remarking as he did so, "We ought to have had some sort of emergency buoy that we could throw over to mark the spot when something like this happens."

"What are you doing? You can't go down!" snapped Jenny. "You're not even as good a swimmer as I am when you're in good health, let alone now."

"And I'm not as good a paddler, and if you do go down and find the other end of the rope somewhere on the bottom, what are the chances of my keeping the upper end in your reach?"

"Do your best. Give me the free end, pay out all the slack you have, and take the paddle." Bob followed instructions, not because he was convinced she was right, but because it seemed a poor time to argue, and Jenny disappeared overboard.

The Hunter could see the canoe, and saw the girl enter the water. Neither view was very encouraging. The kayak had already drifted at least twenty yards from his position, and Jenny, while apparently going as nearly straight down as she could, seemed unlikely to get anywhere near him. Indeed, she did not even reach the bottom; with a fathom still to go, her descent slowed and stopped. She drifted for a moment, evidently trying to see, but her natural buoyancy took over, and after a few seconds she began assisting it.

Her head broke the surface a dozen feet from the kayak. Bob, forgetting for the moment the importance of trying to hold position, paddled over to her while she was getting her breath.

"Any luck?" he asked. She climbed back aboard before answering.

"No. I couldn't quite get to the bottom. We should have goggles; I couldn't see clearly enough to spot the -box and pipe, to say nothing of the rope. The sun will be down soon, too. There isn't a chance of finding himtonight. We'll go in, and you get in touch with people and arrange enough time-swapping at the refinery so you can spend all day tomorrow out here."

"I don't like to leave-"

"I don't either, but it's a case of what we can do, not what we want to do."

"But the Hunter could leave the pipe and swim to the boat, if we wait long enough."

"Fighting off all the small fish and animals he's been telling about? He's too smart to try, I'd think. Could he find us in the dark?"

"I don't suppose so. His eyes aren't too good." "Well, we'll compromise. We'll stay as close to the spot as we can until sunset. If he hasn't shown up by that time-and I still don't think he's dumb enough to try because he'll know we can find the instrument more easily than anything else-we'll go in, and you'll do what I told you."

"All right. What will you do?"

"Go home and report to Dad, make a couple of marker buoys as you were suggesting, and think."

She did not mention that she had already been thinking, and fully intended to do something else.

The Hunter watched the boat hopefully until the light failed, rather wondering why no one dived again and what was going on up above. Jenny was quite right on one point; he did not consider for a moment leaving the shelter of the pipe and trying to swim to the kayak. He waited. When the light faded and he could no longer see the surface, the boat, or anything else but a few luminous life forms, he continued to wait. There seemed nothing else to do but think, and he had to do that anyway.

Jenny and Bob left the kayak at North Beach, the point at the end of Ell's longer arm, where the Hunter had come ashore and found Bob nearly eight years before. Their bicycles were there, since they had been using this as a staging area from the beginning in order to save time, but there was no moon and no easy way of keeping the machines on the road, so they were some time getting even as far as Bob's house. He stayed there very briefly, telling his mother that they were off the water but that he had to get to a telephone, and went on to fulfill the assignment which Jenny had given him.

The girl herself had not stopped. She went on to the Teroa home and asked to see Maeta. The latter turned out to be at the library. Jenny went there, found the other girl downstairs working on new books-Bob's were not the only cratefuls to reach Ell each June-asked her to come outside where they would not be overheard, and told her the whole story.

Maeta had of course been wondering about the things Bob had said in his unguarded moment, but this did not make Jenny's tale any easier to believe.

Jenny was both insistent and persuasive, however, and the older girl eventually agreed to go to the Seever house.

There, the report of the Hunter's loss produced such obviously genuine concern on the part of the doctor, and his wife that Maeta's skepticism weakened. Seever added verbal assurance of the truth of the whole story, with details from the old detective adventure which Jenny had not known. Finally, still with some reservations, Maeta agreed to offer her aquatic skill to help in the recovery of the equipment and, if he existed, of the Hunter. She also agreed to furnish her own outrigger a more stable and capacious craft than the kayak. Since she was not on duty at the library the next day, there would not be the problem of sending a substitute.

When Maeta had left, Seever looked quizzically at his daughter, and asked, "What excuse are you going to make to Bob for this piece of recruiting?"

"If he thinks excuses are needed, his brain really is getting soft. If he doesn't like it, he can just stew. Are you suggesting that you don't like it, either?"

"On the contrary," her father assured her. "It was the smartest thing you could have done. I'm not sure I'd have had the-er-force of personality needed to do it, that's all. Bob is not entirely out of order, feeling the way he does."

Jenny refused to pursue the subject.

"Do we have any good, strong twine here, or will I have to go to the store in the morning?" she asked. "I've got to make some marker buoys."

The Hunter spent a night which would have been fascinating to a marine biologist specializing in Crustacea. He did not come dangerously close to being eaten, as the pipe provided more than enough physical protection, but he himself had to do a certain amount of eating, largely in self-defense. He observed interesting details of structure and physiology in the creatures he digested. It was the relatively coarse features, down to about optical microscope limits, which proved most deserving of attention; at the molecular level the things were essentially the same as Bob and his father and, presumably, the rest of Earth's metazoan life.

A marine biologist might have been annoyed to see a boat coming, but the Hunter was vastly relieved. Even when it was close enough for him to see that it was not the same boat, he had no doubt that it was coming for him. He was very concerned about his host's condition. They now had been apart for nearly fifteen hours. This would have been unimportant a few years ago, but it might very well be crucial by now. He watched anxiously.

He could see the outrigger, and could see that the craft was driven by three paddles. These slowed their motion as it approached; one was withdrawn, and the; canoe came to a near halt ten or twelve yards from -directly overhead. It held position very well for a minute or so. Then something splashed into the water. For a moment the Hunter thought it was a diver; then he realized that it was a rock or a lump of coral. Presumably it was serving as an anchor, though his improvised eye was not good enough to see any line attached to it.