"I don't know why that didn't occur to me sooner," groaned Parrish. "A hundred to one they have a nomadic set-up. It would be typical, with an environment like that. This is worse than we thought."

"You mean," muttered Smith after a few moments of silence, "how can we get a direction fix on a thought?"

"Something like that," said Parrish. "I suppose they have bases, where they keep permanent manufacturing facilities. Probably set up at points where they have access to minerals—unless they know how to extract what they need from the water itself."

"Nothing hard about that," agreed Smith. "I'll have to send out a few more questions. Of course, they'll take the attitude that I should be doing something instead of asking about irrelevant subjects...."

"We're used to that," smiled Parrish, showing his beautiful teeth.

Westervelt wondered how broadly he would smile if it were his own responsibility. He had an idea that Parrish might be rather less than half as charming if he were running the operation and not getting much help from the others in solving the problem. He had to admit, however, that the man had a knack for spotting alien culture patterns. When he had asked his question about the cities, it was merely because he had half-pictured some Terran-style dome underwater and knew that that image was unlikely.

"Anyway," Parrish was going on, "we should probably think of them as being free as birds to go where they like. Even before they developed machines, they probably migrated about their world by swimming. I gather that these other ... fish, I suppose we'll have to call them...."

"Thinking fish!" murmured Smith sadly. He ran his hand through his hair again.

"I suppose those things still do, besides other types we still haven't heard of, which would fill the place of Terran animals. So, then—we'll have to look for temporary locations and think in terms of a fast raid rather than a careful penetration."

"If we could find them, there must be some way we could armor a few spacesuits against pressure and drop down on them," said Lydman. "I think I can dig up a weapon or two that will work underwater in a way these clams never thought of."

"Maybe we could do better to have Swishy the thinking fish hypnotize them into bringing Harris back," said Westervelt.

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