"I know you," she said. "You're Webb Fallon."

"I'm flattered."

"You needn't be. I know a girl named Madge, too."

"Oh." Fallon's grey-green eyes narrowed. His lean face looked suddenly ugly, like a mean dog. Or more like a wolf, perhaps, with his thin straight lips and slanting eyes.

"What did Madge tell you about me?" he asked softly.

"She said you were no good." The blue eyes studied his face. "And," added the girl deliberately, "I think she was right."

"Yeah?" said Fallon, very gently. He hadn't yet got over his cold rage at being jilted for a dull, prosperous prig. The girl's face was like a mask cut out of brown wood and set with hard sapphires. He made a tigerish, instinctive movement toward it.

A wave took them unawares, knocked them together and down in a struggling tangle. They broke water, gasping in the after-swirl.

Then, quite suddenly, the girl screamed.

It was a short scream, strangled with sea-water, but it set the hairs prickling on Fallon's neck. He looked past the girl, outward.

Something was rising out of the sea.

Webb Fallon, standing shoulder-deep in the cold water, stared in a temporary paralysis of shock. The thing simply couldn't be.

There was a snout armed with a wicked sword. That and the head behind it were recognizable as those of a swordfish. But the neck behind them was long and powerful, and set on sloping shoulders. Members like elongated fins just becoming legs churned the surface. A wholly piscine tail whipped up gouts of spray behind the malformed silver body.

Fallon moved suddenly. He grabbed the girl and started toward shore. The Thing emitted a whistling grunt and surged after them.

Waves struck them; the aftersuck pulled at their legs. They floundered, like dreamers caught in nightmare swamps. And Fallon, through the thrashing and the surf and the sea-water in his ears, began to hear other sounds.

There was a vast stirring whisper, a waking and surging of things driven up and out. There were overtones of cries 

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