Barry followed blindly as she dove toward the rocky, irregular bottom. Each time he risked a glance over his shoulder the monsters were nearer. And there were more of them. His muscles ached, but those trails of ominous light acted as a powerful stimulant. The girl led him along the bottom, paying no attention to landmarks but relying solely on an intuitive sense of direction which all Venusians possessed. Soon Tana was lost to sight. How long the nightmare chase lasted Barry was never to know. Seconds grew to ages and minutes to throbbing eternities. He concentrated on swimming, swimming, swimming for his very life, and hardly heard Xintel's words of encouragement. "Just--a--little--further!" Then stabbing, biting, burning pain seared his throat. Almost intolerable. But Xintel was guiding him straight down into a narrow fissure in the bottom. Her legs stopped their flutter-kick and she allowed momentum to carry her bottomward. Barry too ceased his exertions in a state of near collapse. "Perhaps--they--won't follow!" Xintel panted. Both looked upward. The monstrous shapes--they could see the gross, hideous bodies now--seemed unwilling to follow their prey into the crevice. They wheeled above in relentless circles. One creature, like a gigantic moray with finned pectoral legs, made an abortive lunge but turned upward again a few feet above them. Another torvak's neck shot out, its armored head striking the eel-creature a tremendous blow. Another monster swooped, fangs ripping, and for a few minutes the water grew murky with spilled blood and roiled ooze as the three huge beasts battled. The fight ended, and once more the saurians took up a restless, watchful patrol above the cowering pair. Barry's breathing eased but the burning in his throat remained. Something in the water was irritating the tender membranes of his lungs, nose and eyes. He glanced at Xintel and saw that she too was in pain. But it was this very irritant that was preserving their lives. The monsters did not like its smell or taste. "Maybe they'll go away," he said, not believing his own words but trying to reassure the girl. The cleft in the ocean floor was long and narrow, deeper than it was wide, and at the bottom it tapered to a hair-thin crevice in the bedrock. The steeply slanting walls were deeply covered with a yellow-blue greasy jelly mixed with mud and silt. Barry recognized it from Xintel's descriptions as the Cleft Of Hardening where soft wooden implements were made usable. The crack in the bottom must extend deep into the heart of the planet. "Xintel," he asked. "Are there any weapons buried here now?" "There always are," she answered, but her voice was filled with despair. "Where?" She did not know. When the inhabitants of Tana buried objects to be hardened they were extremely careful to smooth the jelly over them. Otherwise prowling norus would dig them up.