From where he was, he could see a great black carpet across part of the city, spreading out from somewhere beneath his position until it was cut by a sharp line of street lights many blocks away. Beyond that, the city looked normal. To the near side of the invisible boundary and, he supposed, for a like distance in the opposite direction behind his viewpoint, there were only sparse and faint glows of emergency lights. Some were doubtless powered by buildings with the equipment for the purpose, others were the lights of police and emergency vehicles on the ground or cruising low between the taller buildings. _I wonder what they actually do when something like this happens?_ he thought. _What if they think they have it fixed, turn on the juice again, and it blows a second time?_ His reverie was interrupted by the sound of Simonetta's phone. From where he was, he could see Joe Rosenkrantz's features as the operator asked for Smith. "Oh, there you are, Mr. Smith," said Joe. "Pauline has been trying all over. Trident is transmitting, and I thought you would want to be here. They say they have a relay set up right to Harris." Smith let out a whoop and made for the door. "He'll be right there," Simonetta told the grinning TV man. Parrish and Westervelt trailed along. When the latter looked back, he saw that Simonetta had replaced Beryl; and he could hardly blame the blonde for seizing the chance to sit down and collect her thoughts. He felt like crawling into a hole somewhere himself. Passing the library, Parrish cocked an eyebrow at him. Westervelt nodded. He went in and told Lydman about the call. The ex-spacer was interested enough to join the procession. When Westervelt followed him into the communications room, Joe Rosenkrantz was explaining the set-up to Smith. "Like before, we go through Pluto, Capella VII, and an automatic relay on an outer planet of the Trident system, but you won't see anything of that. It's after we get Johnson that the fun begins." He leaned back in his swivel chair before the screen and surveyed the group. "Johnson is gonna _think_ to a fish near his island. This fish thinks to one swimming near Harris. They claim Harris answers." Smith ran both hands through his hair. "We try anything," he said. "Let's go!" Joe got in contact with Johnson, the Terran D.I.R. man, among other things, on Trident. The latter was not quite successful in hiding an I-told-you-so attitude. "Harris himself confirms that he is being held on the ocean floor," he said. "He seems to be a sort of pet, or curiosity." "Can you make sense out of the messages?" asked Smith. "I mean, is there any difficulty because of a language barrier? We don't want to make some silly assumption and find out it was based on a misunderstanding." After the weird pause caused by the mind-numbing distance, Johnson replied.