in the
narrow estuary. Out here in the open sea there was far less likelihood
of that, but leaving his submarine concealed out here increased the
danger he exposed himself to every time he left his hidden nest.

Satisfied that the machine was just as he had left it, he entered it and
started its engines. He moved slowly and cautiously until he was well
out to sea, well away from the continental shelf and over the ocean
deeps. Then and only then did he accelerate to full cruising speed.

* * * * *

The full moon was in the west, hiding behind an array of low, scudding
clouds, revealing its radiance in fitful bursts of silvery splendor that
died again as another clotted cloud moved before the face of the white
disk. The shifting light, shining through the breeze-tossed leaves of
the palm trees on the beach below, made strange shadows on the sand,
ever-changing patterns of gray and black on a background of white,
moonlit sand.

But the strangest shadow of all was one that did not change as the
others did--a great centipede-like shape that seemed to wash slowly
ashore on the receding tide. For a short while, it remained at the
water's edge, apparently unmoving in the wash of the waves.

Then, keeping low and balancing himself on his third pair of limbs, the
Nipe moved in across the beach. The specially constructed sandals he
wore left behind them a set of very human-looking footprints--prints
that would remain unnoticed among the myriad of others that were already
on the beach, left there by daytime bathers.

It required more time yet to reach the city, and still more time to find
the place he was looking for. It was almost dawn before he managed to
find a storm sewer in which to hide for the day.

It was partly his difficulty in finding a given spot in a city--almost
any city--that had convinced the Nipe that the pseudo-intelligence of
the bipeds of this planet could not really be called true intelligence.
There was no standardized method of orienting oneself in a city. Not
only were no two cities alike in their orientation systems, but the same
city would often vary from section to section. Their co-ordinate systems
meant almost nothing. Part of a given co-ordinate might be a number, and
the rest of it a name, but the meanings of the numbers and names were
never the same. It was as though some really intelligent outside agency
had given them the basic idea of a co-ordinate system, an