Again in single file, they swam. As they passed the buildings Frannie chanced to glance up. On the porch-like platform up there she caught a glimpse of a green-white shape--a thing stretched out somnolent--a thing, headless! It was only a glimpse. Frannie's swimming dhrane carried her beyond sight of it. . . . She was shuddering. The water now was unpleasantly hot. The current was strong. It was beginning to ripple the water. Ugly, white ripples . . . sinister. The dhranes swam with the moving water. But they tossed their heads, uneasy. . . . Rokk was continually shouting, forcing his mount forward. There were no houses here. The cliff-face was moving swiftly past. And then a black mouth swept into view. A hundred feet high and twice as broad. A mouth, with steam like the fetid breath of a monster. . . . The water was sweeping that way. Surging in a torrent. White water, leaping over jagged rock-points that split it into foam. . . . And from the mouth came a sullen roaring. . . . Frannie's dhrane lifted its head with a sharp bleat of fear. Its body was swung sidewise by the tumbling water, but it recovered and swam desperately. The roaring rose to a deafening torrent of sound. White water was leaping everywhere. Frannie half closed her eyes; she could see a whirling blob which was Leela ahead of her. Then the black mouth opened to encompass the world as Frannie was swept into it. An inferno of roaring blackness. . . . _CHAPTER 5_ CLIMBING INTO LARGENESS UNFATHOMABLE In the fog and darkness at the foot of the incline, Martt stood tense, with upraised knife. The green-white thing was poised for its leap. It was not babbling now; its eye on the stalk glared balefully. A shudder swept Martt, as Frannie had shuddered an hour before when she and Leela passed this way, and she had caught a glimpse of this thing lying somnolent on the platform above. Martt muttered, "Stay back, Zee." And then the headless thing leaped. Martt caught it on his outflung hand and knife, but did not stop it. He felt his hand sinking within it--a soft, sticky warmth. Its body came on, and struck his chest--a blow as though a soft, yielding pillow had struck him. There was a moment, there in the darkness, of unutterable horror as Martt felt and saw his body mingled with the body of this gleaming thing clawing at him. He struck wildly, fighting, kicking in a panic of futility. Wet, warm and sticky! He seemed to tear its body apart. But the glowing, lurid outlines, wavering, came back always into shape. The thing itself was in a panic. Lunging, twisting. Its claws scraped Martt's face, too imponderable to scratch. The slit of its mouth opened to grip his throat; its teeth sank impotently within his flesh. Pressing against him . . . the slime of it was warm, with a stench, noisome. . . .