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and looked as if she were going to vomit—”things chased him to the boulder. And I saw them drag him off the boulder and take him away.”
    “Then he wasn’t ended?” Wolff asked. He did not say killed or slain or dead , for these were taboo words.
    “No. Perhaps those things meant to do something even worse than... ending him?”
    “Why run from me?” Wolff said. “I am not one of those things.”
    “I... I can’t talk about it.”
    Wolff considered her reluctance to speak of unpleasantness. These people had so few repulsive or dangerous phenomena in their lives, yet they could not face even these. They were overly conditioned to the easy and the beautiful.
    “I don’t care whether or not you want to talk about it.” he said. “You must. It’s very important.”
    She turned her face away. “I won’t.”
    “Which way did they go?”
    “Who?”
    “Those monsters. And Kickaha.”
    “I heard him call them gworl ,” she said. “I never heard that word before. They... the gworl... must come from somewhere else.” She pointed seawards and up. “They must come from the mountain. Up there, somewhere.”
    Suddenly she turned to him and came close to him. Her huge eyes were raised to his, and even at this moment he could not help thinking how exquisite her features were and how smooth and creamy her skin was.
    “Let’s get away from here!” she cried. “Far away! Those things are still here. Some of them may have taken Kickaha away, but all of them didn’t leave! I saw a couple a few days ago. They were hiding in the hollow of a tree. Their eyes shone like those of animals, and they have a horrible odor, like rotten fungus-covered fruit!”
    She put her hand on the horn. “I think they want this!”
    Wolff said, “And I blew the horn. If they’re anywhere near, they must have heard it!”
    He looked around through the trees. Something glittered behind a bush about a hundred yards away.
    He kept his eyes on the bush, and presently he saw the bush tremble and the flash of sunlight again. He took the girl’s slender hand in his and said, “Let’s get going. But walk as if we’d seen nothing. Be nonchalant.”
    She pulled back on his hand and said, “What’s wrong?”
    “Don’t get hysterical. I think I saw something behind a bush. It might be nothing, then again it could be the gworl. Don’t look over there! You’ll give us away!”
    He spoke too late, for she had jerked her head around. She gasped and moved close to him. “They... they!”
    He looked in the direction of her pointing finger and saw two dark, squat figures shamble from behind the bush. Each carried a long, wide, curved blade of steel in its hand. They waved the knives and shouted something in hoarse rasping voices. They wore no clothes over their dark furry bodies, but broad belts around their waists supported by scabbards from which protruded knife-handles.
    Wolff said, “Don’t panic. I don’t think they can run very fast on those short bent legs. Where’s a good place to get away from them, someplace they can’t follow us?”
    “Across the sea,” she said in a shaking voice. “I don’t think they could find us if we got far enough ahead of them. We can go on a histoikhthys .”
    She was referring to one of the huge molluscs that abounded in the sea. These had bodies covered with paper-thin but tough shells shaped like a racing yacht’s hull. A slender but strong rod of cartilage projected vertically from the back of each, and a triangular sail of flesh, so thin it was transparent, grew from the cartilage mast. The angle of the sail was controlled by muscular movement, and the force of the wind on the sail, plus expulsion of a jet of water, enabled the creature to move slightly in a wind or a calm. The merpeople and the sentients who lived on the beach often hitched rides on these creatures, steering them by pressure on exposed nerve centers.
    “You think the gworl will have to use a boat?” he said. “If so,