Something clutched at his legs.
Burke bellowed aloud from sheer shock. Desperately, he tried to scramble out of the pool.
The thing holding him let go. Shaking, Burke dragged himself onto the footwalk, flicked on his lighter, and stared down into the water.
An octopus with a head nearly double the size of his own met his gaze coldly.
Shivering, Burke closed the lighter and felt his way, an uneasy step at a time, along the edge of the tank.
Then at last he met a blank wall ... found another flight of stairs ... groped his way down them.
Close at hand, Pasiphae screamed shrilly and ran on again.
Abruptly, then, light, as a distant door opened. Burke sprinted towards it.
Beyond, when he reached the entry, lay the strangest room he'd ever seen.
For this was no half-barbaric Bronze Age chamber. Instead, it shimmered with the cold fire of a blue-white metal the like of which Burke had never seen before. Light pulsed from it—all of it, till he felt as if he were walking in some sort of tremendous lamp.