Sweat gleamed on Gurney's brow. "It was ghastly, Langford. In the river—like pieces of dead timber. The current carried them downstream. I was helpless. I—I kept blasting, but I couldn't save them!"

"How did you save yourself?" Langford asked.

Gurney passed a dripping hand over his brow. "I was struggling with one of them when everything went blank. That's all I remember."

Langford stood up. "I don't understand it. Why did that creature go away and leave you with your face submerged? Why didn't it make sure you'd drift downstream too?"

"I'm sure I don't know, Langford!" Gurney jerked a tremulous hand toward the wall of foliage on the opposite bank. "Why don't you swim over to their ship and ask them? You'll find the ship in a clearing about three hundred yards from the bank. They've cleared a path to it."

"That's just what I intend to do!" Langford said.

Joan paled and moved swiftly to his side, her eyes wide with alarm. "Ralph! You're not going alone—"

Langford nodded. "I'm a pretty good swimmer," he said.

Joan stared at him. "But why?"

"It's a little hard to explain," Langford said. "You've got a picture in your mind of something pretty horrible happening to me. Somehow I feel that everything about that picture is wrong. I've got to cross that stream, darling; I'd be a pretty poor specimen of a man if I turned back now, when we're so close to the answer."

Joan said nothing. She would have argued and pleaded, but she knew that it would have been of no use.

Five minutes later Langford was stripping on the riverbank. He slipped into the water quietly, and struck out with powerful, even strokes. On the opposite bank he turned an instant to flick a wet strand from his forehead, and wave to his wife. Then he struck off into the forest.

He was a hundred feet from the bank, walking with his shoulders squared, when something bright and incredible swirled up from the forest floor directly in his path.

"For your forbearance, your kindliness, thank you, Langford!" a voice said.

It was not a spoken voice. It was still and small and remote, and it seemed to come from deep inside Langford's head. Langford stopped advancing; he 

 Prev. P 20/23 next