To drop into that
would be a mistake. He hesitated--and now more than his own predicament
struck home to him.

Ashe! Ashe had been ahead of him at the time gate. If Ross had been
jerked through to this past, then somewhere in the water, on the shore,
Gordon was here too! But where to find him....

Setting his back to the cliff and holding to the rough stone, Ross got
to his feet, trying to see through the welter of foam and water. Not
only the sea poured here; now a torrential rain fell into the bargain,
streaming down about him, battering his head and shoulders. A chill rain
which made him shiver.

He wore gill-pack, weighted belt with its sheathed tool and knife,
flippers, and the pair of swimming trunks which had been suitable for
the Hawaika he knew; but this was a different world altogether. Dare he
use his torch to see the way out of here? Ross watched the lights to the
north, deciding they were not too unlike his own beam, and took the
chance.

Now he stood on a shelf of rock pitted with depressions, all pools. To
his left was a drop into a boiling, whirling caldron from which points
of stone fanged. Ross shuddered. At least he had escaped being pulled
into that!

To his right, northward, there was another space of sea, a narrow strip,
and then a second ledge. He measured the distance between that and the
one on which he perched. Staying where he was would not locate Ashe.

Ross stripped off his flippers, made them fast in his belt. Then he
leaped and landed painfully, as his feet slipped and he skidded face
down on the northern ledge.

As he sat up, rubbing a bruised and scraped knee, he saw lights
advancing in his direction. And between them a shadow crawling from
water to shore. Ross stumbled along the ledge hastening to reach that
figure, who lay still now just out of the waves. Ashe?

Ross's limping pace became a trot. But he was too late; the other
lights, two of them, had reached the shadow. A man--or at least a body
which was humanoid--sprawled face down. Other men, three of them,
gathered over the exhausted swimmer.

Those who held the torches were still partially in the dark, but the
third stooped to roll over their find. Ross caught the glint of light on
a metallic headcovering, the glisten of wet armor of some type on the
fellow's back and shoulders as he made quick examination of the sea's
victim.

Then.... Ross halted, his eyes wide. A hand rose and fell with expert
precision. There h