I had to believe her. But I must admit, I gave little thought, there in the boat, to any menace to her world, or to the ironic fact that she had brought to Earth the treasured secret of spaceflight and already had lost it so that she was marooned here. Here was the amazing, beautiful little creature herself in the boat beside me, and what she was saying of Venus dwindled into insignificance with the stirring of my pulses as I stared at her. Slim little body, hardly matured, but fashioned with almost a normal earthly beauty. Yet there was a strangeness that made her different. The flush of pink coral to her flesh; her shimmering robe with moonbeams rippling on it like moonrays on green rippled water; her long tawny tresses, drying now in the wind. But most of all, I think, the strangeness was in her eyes. The sea was there in the green depths of her eyes. Eyes that mirrored the soul of a strange girlhood; eyes that had seen things strange to me, reflecting now the thoughts, emotions of another world. "You look at me so queerly," she said suddenly. "Why is that?" "Well you--you--" Suddenly it was hard to say anything of my conflicting thoughts. "You--well, why wouldn't I be startled? A little sea nymph. You should have been named Nereid." Again her laugh rippled. "Nereid? Why yes, my father calls me that, though my mother named me Midge. That was when she learned English. So I am not like Earth-girls? My father has said it many times. But you--" Her gaze at me was earnest, direct. "You do not look queer to me," she added. "You look much in the fashion of my father, grown younger." Surely I have given only a vague picture indeed of that half hour in the boat with Nereid as the puttering little outboard motor drove us to the island where Jack Allen would be waiting for me. Half an hour, so crowded with my first jumbled impressions of what Nereid's weird Venus-world must be like. "That is your island?" Nereid said suddenly. "Why--it looks very pretty." The storm still was rising in the south--occasional bursts of lightning and rolling, reverberating thunderclaps. But the starlight and moonlight was over us. It silvered the island palms; it lay like white metal on the sand of the island's shore. I headed us into the little cove. A small dilapidated dock was there. On a little rise behind the palmetto fringe, under the palm trees, a shaft of moonlight gleamed on the white of our tent. I thought that young Allen would have heard the putt-putt of my motor and be down at the dock now to greet me. But there was no sign of him. I shut off the motor. Silence leaped at us. "Queer," I said. "Jack promised he'd have supper ready." The glow of campfire beside the tent was visible. In the silence I could hear the murmur of music from our little portable radio. Allen must have been here only a few minutes ago. I called, "Oh Jack--Jack, where are you?" There was only the roll of my words, echoing into silence. Very queer.