And it had marked Dr. Plantet. I could see that at once, this night, far more clearly than the previous month, by his harassed, almost haggard look; the surprising and, in him, unnatural, warmth and tenderness of greeting as he put an arm about Arturo’s shoulders and welcomed him home; his solemn, almost grim manner as he listened to what we had seen, there under the water in Micronesia. He turned to me: “I’ve something to tell you, Jeff. Arturo and Polly understand a good deal of it, but not all. It is clear now, this thing we’ve got to face. I’ve persuaded the authorities to make it public. “The world must know--must face it. We cannot be ostriches with our heads buried in the sand. Polly, have Frantzen carry down the luggage and run in the plane; and then bring us out some lunch. We’ll sit out here. It’s too hot inside.” * * * * * We sat in a small stone bower on the shore front, with the stars over us, banks of flowers and ferns heaped around us; and, ahead, the open sea. The moon was just rising over the distant ocean horizon--a flattened, spoon-shaped crescent, hugely yellow. It flung a golden path toward us over the lazy, breathing sea. A strip of beach, golden in the moonlight, lay at our feet, with grim frowning rocks and headlands to the sides. Nature as it used to be! There were no aërials in sight here, no landing stages; nothing of our modernity to remind one of a world mechanical with trees and grass and the moon almost forgotten. Yet even so, at our feet the disturbed world of 1990 obtruded. The strip of beach was naked of water; it sloped out and down to a rocky, slimy shelf, plunged steeply another twenty feet down to where the fallen ocean lapped at it. And in the moonlight the outer rocks and headlands stood queerly high, misshaped of aspect. To me, with the oppression of spirit upon me, the sight was suddenly ugly--huge darkened teeth upstanding with gums receded to expose the spreading roots! Dr. Plantet had been talking quietly. Now, indeed, I understood in a measure what he had been through these past weeks. A man, still vigorously young in his forties, though to-night one would have said he was fully fifty or more. He was a vigorous, stocky figure of a man; rather short, exceedingly muscular, with wide shoulders and a deep chest. A solid face, smooth-shaved, with deep-set gray eyes, and sparse brown hair graying at the temples. It was a kindly face. There was much to like in Dr. Plantet if one did not oppose him. But it was a stern face; harsh when stirred to anger.