Xintel's voice was coldly defiant. "So be it, then. Over your dead body, if you insist." With a movement of feline grace and speed she snatched a tube-weapon from her belt. She was bluffing. Barry had seen the savages who had captured her test the weapons and find them unloaded. But Komso had not. His face grew pale but his slitted eyes glared murder. "You bring your own death. I tried only to save you from the consequences of your folly." He turned and swam into the opening. Xintel did not allow herself the vestige of a smile. Instead she grabbed Barry's wrist and pulled him after her into the black hole. In the darkness she passed him his knife. The passage was several hundred yards long but the girl guided him unerringly around its turns. The Earthman's nerves were jangling. IV They rounded a sharp bend and Barry gasped at the vista before him. The passage opened into a tremendous cavern. Far below on the bowl-shaped floor sprawled a town composed of cylindrical houses higher than they were wide, scattered in an irregular pattern. He looked upward for the source of the cold yellow light flooding everything, and a few yards above his head lay a flat silvery plane. Just below it the water glowed, like the phosphorescence that microscopic life forms cause in the tropic seas of Earth--but a thousand times brighter. The men from Xintel's group had taken no part in her altercation with Komso save to watch in uneasy silence. Now they were scattering downward toward the houses. Nearly all had been joined by waiting women, but Barry saw two women swimming pitifully and dejectedly alone. The battle into which he had been precipitated had not been without its casualties. He stared about as Xintel led him in a long dive. On the bottom were trees--he had no other name for them--with stiff trunks and snake-like branches supported by air-filled knobs. Their pale leaves were covered with minute bubbles that gave them a frosty appearance despite the warmth of the water. There were no streets or paths between the cylindrical houses, but in small areas around the entrances the bright varicolored seaweed-moss had been worn away by Venusian feet. A few Venusians eyed them in curiosity as they swam downward, but none approached. They touched bottom beside one of the houses. Xintel pushed aside a curtain covering the circular doorway. Barry saw the house was constructed by training and grafting a number of the large trees until they intertwined. Its foundations were the roots that clung to irregularities in the rocks. There were no windows, and for a moment after the girl let the curtain fall into place it was pitch black. Then suddenly the circular room was brilliantly lighted. From the ceiling hung a globe a foot in diameter, the translucent floatation chamber of some subaqueous plant. It was spinning at the end of a twisted cord, the luminous milky fluid it contained stirred by the motion.