It was not so simple. The child fingered the oval buckle of her belt, shaping a curious suggestion of pattern. "_Mitsik_ Clellingherif," she said. She caught Wesley's thumb again and as quickly as that they were no longer on the banks of Sampson's Creek. They were in a place that Wesley, for all his experience at contriving the unlikely, could not have dreamed up in a month of trying. It was essentially a room, not large yet seemed to extend indefinitely, that looked at first glance like a conservatory for exotic plants and at second like a library stocked with tables and files and endless shelves of books. There was a sprinkling of what might have been furniture, with here and there an erect oval that could have been either mirror or crystal screen. The whole was scaled to a diminution that made Wesley feel like Gulliver in Lilliput, and through it breathed a barely perceptible scent somewhere between honey-suckle and crushed mint. The man and woman who came out of that improbable background seemed to Wesley's dizzied senses hardly taller than the child who held his thumb, but their resemblance to her was as unmistakable as their serene air of having the situation completely in hand. The girl's mother took her away, making admonishing birdlike sounds. The father, as if aware of Wesley's wavering control, gripped his thumb in turn and led him to an open expanse of soft-rugged floor large enough to hold them both. "Sit down," he said in unexpected sleigh-bell English. Wesley sat, and realized finally that Adventure had come. * * * * * It had come to him, he discovered, because the child--Mitsik--had not visited a world with fish before. The fascination of a sunning trout in Sampson's Creek had proved too much for her small caution; maneuvering for a closer look had tumbled her into the pool, and her transporter unit did not work under water. His rescue had placed her parents--the father's name was Clelling and her mother's Herif, explaining her cryptic pipings--under an obligation that seemed to demand fulfillment. It was something like letting a genie out of his bottle and being granted a wish, except that Clelling and Herif were no sort of djinni and their capacity for granting wishes was strictly limited. "A travel advisor's work is more interesting than profitable," Clelling said. "But be assured that we shall offer as much as lies within our means." Embarrassed, Wesley made deprecating sounds. "I don't really want payment. I'm more interested in knowing how and why you're here." The information was readily given. Clelling, completely telepathic among his own kind and nearly so with humanity--as witness his instant grasp of English--anticipated Wesley's questions with answers that left him dizzier than before.