"Is there nothing left?" Barry insisted, grasping at straws.
"The Place still remains amid the ruins of Last City," Xintel answered unexpectedly. "But it is wrecked and useless."
"How do you know?"
Xintel smiled sadly. "I have been there, twice. Soren once took me as a little girl, and once I went alone."
"But how?"
"Long since have the creatures of deadly smallness exterminated each other. Soren knew, and I know, and Komso knows. But Komso will not tell the people that one can go to the Above for a short time and not die."
Immediately Barry wanted to see for himself the remains of Last City and particularly the Place Of Change, but the Venusian girl demurred. The trip was perilous, she said, and if they were to leave Tana now, going into the Outside and toward the Above, it would only confirm in the minds of the people that Barry was a demon. Anything that would precipitate open action before they were able to take countermeasures against Komso's plots would be a fatal mistake.
Reluctantly Barry put the idea aside, but he did not abandon it. Instead he doubled his practice sessions in the oxygen at the top of the cavern, driving himself until his chest burned and throbbed. He was still a member of the Five Ship Plan whose duty was to the colony, and besides he had a frightening surety that without outside help Komso would eventually encompass his death.
One day when they were returning from the fields in the far reaches of the cavern they saw a man swimming away from their house. Barry put on an angry burst of speed, but the distance was great and the furtive figure vanished.