tigo suddenly built up in her again. This one was stronger
than most; for a moment she couldn't be sure whether she was going to be
sick or not. She stood up, stepped over to the door a few feet away,
pulled it open and went through, drawing it shut behind her.

There had been a shielding black-light screen in the doorway. On the
other side was bottled sunshine.

She found herself on a long balcony which overlooked a formal garden
enclosure thirty feet below. There was no one else in sight. She leaned
back against the wall beside the door, closed her eyes and breathed
slowly and deeply for some seconds. The sickish sensation began to
fade.

When she opened her eyes again, she saw the little yellow man.

He stood motionless at the far end of the garden, next to some flowering
shrubbery out of which he might have just stepped. He seemed to be
peering along the sand path which curved in toward the balcony and
vanished beneath it, below the point where Trigger stood.

It was sheer fright which immobilized her at first. Because there was
not anything really human about that small, squat, manshaped figure. A
dwarfish yellow demon he seemed, evil and menacing. The garden, she
realized suddenly, might be an illusion scene. Or else--

The thing moved in that instant. It became a blur of motion along the
curving path and disappeared under the balcony. After a second or so she
heard the sound of a door closing some distance away. The garden lay
still again.

Trigger stayed where she was, her knees shaking a little. The fright
appeared to have driven every trace of nausea out of her, and gradually
her heartbeat began to return to normal. She took three cautious steps
forward to the balcony railing, where the tip of a swaying green tree
branch was in reach.

She put her hand out hesitantly, felt the smooth vegetable texture of a
leaf, grasped it, pulled it away. She moved back to the door and
examined the leaf. It was a quite real leaf. Thin sap formed a bead of
amber moisture at the break in the stalk as she looked at it.

No illusion structure could be elaborated to that extent.

So she'd just had her first dive hallucination--and it had been a dilly!

Trigger dropped the leaf, pushed shakily at the balcony door, and
stepped back through the black-light screen into the reassuring murmur
of human voices in the gambling room.

An hour later, the ship's loudspeaker system went on. It announced that
the Dawn City would s