Xintel sighed wearily and hung up her crossbow. Then with a graceful leap she vanished through a hatchway in the ceiling. She returned, floating down with a pair of pronged darts and a small round box with bubbles dribbling upward in a steady stream through the perforated lid. She opened it and, with a fingertip, smeared a dab of vermilion paste on the base of each dart. Then she pushed the missiles base first into her tube-weapons, twisting them until a latch caught. Her weapons prepared, the girl turned back to the Earthman and made the universal gesture of eating. Barry had no idea how long it had been since he had eaten, and for the first time since the Sigma sickness began he was really hungry. He nodded. She leaped upward and he followed her to a second windowless room above the first, then up through another hatchway to a third. This was the top of the house, for through an opening in the flat roof he could look up into open water. Several baskets, woven of strips of undersea wood and equipped with close-fitting lids, stood along the wall. In a wooden cage a few dozen strange fish swam sluggishly. With her bare hands Xintel caught one and pulled it out. She picked up a dagger of the same material as the spears--an unfamiliar substance which Barry had had no chance to examine closely--and jumped to the open roof. She returned a few minutes later with the fish neatly cleaned and divided into halves. Barry was hungry but Earth habits were still strong. The girl saw his involuntary grimace. She looked hurt. He forced himself to take a bite of the raw fish and to his amazement found it pleasant. Evidently his taste organs had changed with the rest of his body. From the baskets Xintel took other foods of vegetable origin. Barry ate ravenously. The cumulative effects of fatigue overwhelmed him even as he finished. He felt a sense of dreamlike unreality and detachment, as though nothing mattered. The girl too appeared tired but he could see she was bursting with curiosity. He appreciated her restraint in not bombarding him with questions. At her gesture he stepped through the hatch and floated down to the middle room. The light there had gone dim but she gave the globe a deft spin that brightened it again. She motioned to a wide pallet woven of resilient fiber, and he lay down at once. There were no coverings, no need for them in the soothingly warm water. Despite his tiredness Barry's nerves were still tense and twitching, and he kept hearing soft sounds as the girl moved about the room. After several minutes he opened his eyes again.