"I got away from him," Nereid was saying. "A man, even Tollgamo, is so clumsy in the water, so quick to smother. I could have followed him but he blocked the little passage with a rock."
"And maybe he's trapped down there?"
She shook her head. "There are so many passages, and all lead out to the sea. Of course he had a cylinder-boat under there."
Together we swam out into the open lagoon, diagonally across it to where, beyond the lights of the festival, Nereid had a little surface boat in which we could get now to the Water City.
"My boat is about a mile from here. Can you swim so far?"
"Yes. I guess so." I had always counted myself a strong swimmer; a mile was not too much for me. But I was like a puffing tugboat now, laboriously splashing along. Nereid was laughing at my efforts; trying to tow me; then giving it up, swimming around me, under me.
Occasionally, while we were still in the light-glare, other girls came dashing up, with questions of Tollgamo; and of me. Once a group of them dashed at me, with shouts of laughter trying to seize me, but Nereid drove them off. Then we were swimming alone in the luminous opalescent night; and at last we reached the little boat. Nereid was already in it; waiting impatiently to haul me aboard as I came panting.
It was a narrow, canoe-like surface craft; some twenty feet long, of dull white metal. Its hooded mechanisms were in bow and stern—water electrolysis. Soon we had attained a considerable speed, silent, vibrationless. And then we were on the open sea, with the lights of Arron fading behind us.
Venus night at sea. It was weirdly beautiful. The low-hanging curtain of heavy clouds was luminous with pale blue and silver sheen. The water, silver-rippled by a gentle night-breeze, was opalescent as our little craft hurled up a bow wave, with a gleaming phosphorescent wake behind us. Off to the right, for a time, the faint blurred outlines of metal mountains were visible on a promontory near the land of the Gorts. Then we passed it; and the forest to the left had faded away to be just a blur.