They went down along the dark tunnel and out onto the road, and the flowers yearned like hungry dogs after Lundy but didn't touch him. He started out across the narrow plain, with the plant-women drifting cloudlike around him. Seaweed. Little bits of kelp that could talk to you. It made Lundy feel queer. The city made him feel queer, too. It was dark when he first saw it from the plain, with only the moonlight glow of the sand to touch it. It was a big city, stretching away behind its barrier wall. Big and silent and very old, waiting there at the end of its road. It was curiously more real in the dim light. Lundy lost trace of the water for a moment. It was like walking toward a sleeping city in the moonlight, feeling the secretive, faintly hostile strength of it laired and leashed, until dawn.... Only there would never be a dawn for this city. Never, any more. Lundy wanted suddenly to run away. "Don't be afraid. We live there. It's safe." Lundy shook his head irritably. Quite suddenly the brilliant light flared out again, three regular flashes. It seemed to come from somewhere to the right, out of a range of undersea mountains. Lundy felt a faint trembling of the sand. A volcanic fissure, probably, opened when the land sank. The golden light changed the city again. Cloud-cuckoo land at sunset--a place where you could set your boots down on a dream. When he went in through the gates he was awed, but not afraid. And then, while he stood in the square looking up at the great dim buildings, the thought came drifting down to him out of the cloud of little woman-things. "It _was_ safe. It was happy--before _She_ came." * * * * * After a long moment Lundy said, "She?" "We haven't seen her. But our mates have. She came a little while ago and walked through the streets, and all our mates left us to follow her. They say she's beautiful beyond any of us, and...." "And her eyes are hidden, and they have to see them. They have to look into her eyes or go crazy, so they follow her." The sad little blue-grey cloud stirred in the dark water. Golden eyes looked down at him. "How did you know? Do you follow her, too?" Lundy took a deep, slow breath. The palms of his hands were wet. "Yes. Yes, I followed her, too." "We feel your thought...." They came down close around him. Their delicate membranes fluttered like fairy wings. Their golden eyes were huge and soft and pleading. "Can you help us? Can you bring our mates back safe? They've forgotten everything. If The Others should come...." "The Others?" Lundy's brain was drowned in stark and terrible fear. Pictures came through it. Vague gigantic dreams of nightmare.... "They come, riding the currents that go between the hot cracks in the mountains and the cold deeps. They eat. They destroy." The little woman-things were shaken suddenly like leaves in a gust of wind.