* * * *

In a moment we stood upon the bottom of the ocean. I turned my head
inside the helmet, and there, beside me, was the sleek, smooth side
of the _Santa Maria_. On my other side was Mercer, a huge, dim figure
in his diving armor. He made an awkward gesture towards his head, and
I suddenly remembered something.

Before me, where I could operate it with a thrusting movement of my
chin, was a toggle switch. I snapped it over, and heard Mercer's
voice: "--n't forget everything I tell him."

"I know it," I said mentally to him. "I was rather rattled. O.K. now,
however. Anything I can do?"

"Yes. Help me with this box, and then get the girl to put on the
antenna you'll find there. Don't forget the knife and the light."

"Right!" I bent over the box with him, and we both came near falling.
We opened the lid, however, and I hooked the knife and the light into
their proper places outside my armor. Then, with the antenna for the
girl, so that we could establish connections with her, and through
her, with the villagers, I moved off.

This antenna was entirely different from the one used in previous
experiments. The four cross-members that clasped the head were finer,
and at their junction was a flat black circular box, from which rose a
black rod some six inches in height, and topped by a black sphere half
the size of my fist.

* * * * *

These perfected thought-telegraphs (I shall continue to use my own
designation for them, as clearer and more understandable than
Mercer's) did not need connecting wires; they conveyed their impulses
by Hertzian waves to a master receiver on the _Santa Maria_, which
amplified them and re-broadcast them so that each of us could both
send and receive at any time.

As I turned, I found the girl beside me, waiting anxiously. Behind her
were the five ancients. I slipped the antenna over her head, and
instantly she began telling me that danger was imminent.

To facilitate matters, I shall describe her messages as though she
spoke; indeed, her pictures were as clear, almost, as speech in my
native tongue. And at times she did use certain sound-words; it was in
this way that I learned, by inference, that her name was _Imee_, that
her people were called _Teemorn_ (this may have been the name of the
community, or perhaps it was interchangeable--I am not sure) and that
the shark-faced people were the _Rorn_.

"The Rorn come!" she said