They floated into a room that was nebulous, quivering now into plainer sight, now withdrawing into indefiniteness. Then Venard saw a brilliant flame that grew, hardened, crystallized, shone brighter and more brilliantly strange. Mists of argent light, then floating shadowy shapes of incredible delicacy swam into view. He knew it now. The Undersea City of the Venusian Sea People. Small, round, quasi-human faces looked with deep concern into his. Not his face, but into his mind, his roving, battling mind. Opaque arms, delicate and slender as flower stems, motioned with desperate urgency. The reality of the apparent fantasy hit Venard like a projectile from space with a shockingly familiar voice, a mental voice from the dead: "Hey, Karl! It's me, Kewpie Doll Larson. We gotta move fast, see? It's me and the Venusian Sea people. It's us! We're helping you fight the Jovian." Venard thought frantically, "How? You're--you're supposed to be dead!" "No, Karl. That was just a gag. I burned loose the muscle hinges that holds them clams together, but I still couldn't get out. Then, when the tide came and backed up into that moat, the Venusians swam up and rescued me. They knew what had happened; they used their thought-crystals. Listen, it ain't fantastic at all. Them memory-spheres are mental power synthesizers, just like dynamos. The Sea People have been working on these things secretly to fight the Jovians with. Listen, Karl. You're the instrument, see? We all concentrate on our crystals and you can blast that infernal black box to Kingdom Come. I'll be in there with you in two shakes of a three-tailed _ghroat_. I'm just outside S.S.C. now! Give him hell, Karl!" "But--how?" his mind almost gasped. Then he heard Vale's laugh--and it was a joyous thing. "Too many people have told you too little," her message came through. "Come--we haven't much time now. You must trust these people. They will show you how...." Arm in arm, then, they soared up into green translucence. Curiously, as they rose, the green grew deeper, darker, and choking terror tore once again at Venard's throat--a terror cunningly without reason. He suddenly felt the dark box nestling against his ribs. Had he been carrying the Jovian even down among the Sea People? And where was Vale? The warming sense of her presence was withdrawn. Fear stabbed into him again. Fear--and those tendrils of white-hot anguish. He was back in the body bank ... alone ... with the Jovian. Black fury burst once more against his reeling mind, but through it rose the faintest of echoes: "Give him hell, Karl!"