allows vanished. Red and yellow as colors went, but
Ross was aware of blues and greens in shades and tints which were not
visible above. He switched on his diving torch, and color returned
within its beam. A swirl of weed, pink in the light, became darkly
emerald beyond as if it possessed the chameleon ability of the
burrowers.

He was distracted by that phenomenon, and so he transgressed the diver's
rule of never becoming so absorbed in surroundings as to forget caution.
Just when did Ross become aware of that shadow below? Was it when a
school of ghost-fish burst unexpectedly between weed growths, and he
turned to follow them with the torch? Then the outer edge of his beam
caught the movement of a shape, a flutter in the water of the gloomy
depths.

Ross swung around, his back to the wall of the saucer, as he aimed the
torch down at what was arising there. The light caught and held for a
long moment of horror something which might have come out of the
nightmares of his own world. Afterward Ross knew that the monster was
not as large as it seemed in that endless minute of fear, perhaps no
bigger than the dolphins.

He had had training in shark-infested seas on Terra, been carefully
briefed against the danger from such hunters of the deep and ocean
jungles. But this kind of thing had only existed before in the fairy
tales of his race as the dragon of old lore. A scaled head with wide
eyes gleaming in the light beam with cold and sullen hate, a gaping
mouth fang-filled, a horn-set muzzle, that long, undulating neck and,
below it, the half-seen bulk of a monstrous body.

His spear-gun, the knife at his waist belt, neither were protection
against this! Yet to turn his back on that rising head was more than
Ross could do. He pulled himself back against the wall of the saucer.
The thing before him did not rush to attack. Plainly it had seen him and
now it moved with the leisure of a hunter having no fears concerning the
eventual outcome of the hunt. But the light appeared to puzzle it and
Ross kept the beam shining straight into those evil eyes.

The shock of the encounter was wearing off; now Ross edged his flipper
into a crevice to hold him steady while his hand went to the sonic-com
at his waist. He tapped out a distress call which the dolphins could
relay to the swimmers. The swaying dragon head paused, held rigid on a
stiff, scaled column in the center of the saucer. That sonic vibration
either surprised or bother