er of Cultural
Engineering--crowd behavior--so she prefers to turn in early and find
out what nightmares her subconscious will throw up _this_ time.

The reefs by moonlight are everything they are supposed to be, why did
I not do this often when I had the chance? I stay till my oxygen is
nearly gone, then come out and sadly press the button that collapses
the boat into a thirty-pound package of plastic hoops and oxygen cans.
I sling it on my back and head for the chalet B and I hired among the
coconut trees.

* * * * *

I am crossing an open space maybe fifty yards from it when a Thing
drops on me out of the air.

I do not see the Thing because part of it covers my face, and the rest
is grabbed round my arms and my waist and my hips and whatever, I
cannot see and I cannot scream and I cannot find anything to kick. The
Thing is strong and rubbery and many-armed and warmish, and less than
a second after I first feel it I am being hauled up into the air.

I do not care for this at all.

I am at least fifty feet up before it occurs to me to bite the hand
that gags me and then I discover it is plastic, not alive at all. Then
I feel self and encumberance scraping through some kind of aperture;
there is a sharp click as of a door closing and the Thing goes limp
all round me.

I spit out the bit I am biting and it drops away so that I can see.

Well!

I am in a kind of a cup-shaped space maybe ten feet across but not
higher than I am; there is a trap door in the ceiling; the Thing is
lying all around me in a mess of plastic arms, with an extensible
stalk connecting it to the wall. I kick free and it turns over
exposing the label FRAGILE CARGO right across the back.

The next thing I notice is two holdalls, B's and mine, clamped against
the wall, and the next after that is the opening of a trap door in the
ceiling and B's head silhouetted in it remarking Oh there you are Liz.

I confirm this statement and ask for explanations.

B says She doesn't understand all of it but it is all right.

It is not all right I reply, if she has joined some Society such as
for the Realization of Fictitious Improbabilities that is her
privilege but no reason to involve me.

B says Why do I not stop talking and come up and see for myself?

There is a slight hitch when I jam in the trap door, then B helps me
get the boat off my back and I drop it on the Fragile Cargo and emerge
into the cabin of a Ho