His face grew pale but his slitted eyes glared murder. "You bring your own death. I tried only to save you from the consequences of your folly."
He turned and swam into the opening.
Xintel did not allow herself the vestige of a smile. Instead she grabbed Barry's wrist and pulled him after her into the black hole. In the darkness she passed him his knife.
The passage was several hundred yards long but the girl guided him unerringly around its turns. The Earthman's nerves were jangling.
IV
They rounded a sharp bend and Barry gasped at the vista before him. The passage opened into a tremendous cavern.
Far below on the bowl-shaped floor sprawled a town composed of cylindrical houses higher than they were wide, scattered in an irregular pattern.
He looked upward for the source of the cold yellow light flooding everything, and a few yards above his head lay a flat silvery plane. Just below it the water glowed, like the phosphorescence that microscopic life forms cause in the tropic seas of Earth—but a thousand times brighter.
The men from Xintel's group had taken no part in her altercation with Komso save to watch in uneasy silence. Now they were scattering downward toward the houses. Nearly all had been joined by waiting women, but Barry saw two women swimming pitifully and dejectedly alone. The battle into which he had been precipitated had not been without its casualties.