They were watching us from the edge of the water by the time we had come within hailing distance. One by one we saw them wade up from the blue depths and take their stand in the edge of the water, ankle deep, rivulets running from their hair and clothing—drowned men and women, watching us.
They weren’t drowned, of course. They looked perfectly healthy and there was more intelligence and animation in their faces than had looked at us from the vanished man of the ledge.
These were real people. The other had not been. I thought that much must be evident even to Fitzgerald, though it was a subterranean knowledge running through my mind that told me so.
“Wait, Jim,” Fitzgerald said suddenly, catching my elbow. “I—don’t like ’em. Stand back.” He was watching the silent people in the water.
I let him stop me. Now that I was here I wasn’t certain what came next. The terrible urgency still rang its alarm in the closed room of my brain but until I could gain entry into that room I wouldn’t know what was expected of me.
Fitzgerald waved to the people in the water, a beckoning gesture. They stared at us.
Then they turned and talked briefly together, glancing at us over their shoulders. Finally one of the women came up out of the lake and picked her way toward us over the lava-like rock.
She had long fair hair sleeked back from her face by the water and hanging like pale kelp across her shoulders. Her blue dress clung to her over a beautiful, supple body, water spattering from the dripping cloth and the dripping hair as she came.
Belatedly I remembered that crashed airliner and its vanished people. Were these the passengers and crew? I thought they were. But what had induced them against all reason to come this far into the deadly air of the Ring? The lake? Up to that point the thing was possible, but it was sheer madness from the moment I imagined them entering the water.
The lake, then? Was there something inexplicably strange and compelling about the lake itself that had drawn them in and sent them out again like this, alive, unharmed in the singing air that made our counters clatter?
I looked out over the waters for an answer, and—
And I got my answer—or part of it.
For out there on the rippling blue surface a shadow moved. A long, coiling shadow cast not from above but from below. Deep down in the lake something was stirring.
I strained my eyes and in the sealed deeps of my mind terror and exultation moved in answer to that coiling darkness. I knew it. I recognized it. I … The recognition passed.
The vast shadow moved lazily, monstrously, moved and coiled and drew itself in under the cliffs.
Slowly it disappeared, coil by coil, shadow by shadow.
I turned. The fair-haired woman was standing before us; gazing into our faces with a remote, impersonal curiosity. It was as if she had never seen another human creature before and found us interesting but—disassociated. No species that might share relationship with her.
“You’re from the liner?” I asked, my voice reverberating in my own ears inside the helmet. “We—we can take you back.” I let the words die. They meant nothing to her. They meant no more than the clatter of our belt-counters or the patter of drops around her on the rocks.
“Jim.” Fitzgerald’s voice buzzed in my earphones. “Jim, we’ve got to take her back with us. She’s out of her head. They all are—don’t you see? We’ve got to save them.”
“How?” I tried to sound practical. “We haven’t got room. There’s a full liner load here.”
“We can take this one.” He reached out and took her arm gently. She let him, her eyes turning that remote, impersonal gaze upon his face. “It’s probably too late,” he said, looking at her with compassion, “but we can’t leave her here, can we?”
I was watching his hand on her arm and a thought came to me out of nowhere, a fact that seemed to slip through the closed doors in my mind as they opened a tiny crack. This girl was flesh and blood. A hand closed on her arm met firm resistance. But I knew that if I had touched that first man my hand would have closed over the smooth instability of water.
I looked at the girl’s face where a passing breeze brushed it, and a shiver went down my back. For it was a warm breeze, drying her hair and cheek where it blew—and I saw dark, wrinkled desiccation wherever dryness touched her skin. The sleek fair hair lost its silkiness and turned brown and brittle, the satiny cheek darkened, furrowed. …
I knew if she left the lake she would die. But it didn’t matter. I knew there was no actual danger, either way. (Danger to what? From what? No use asking myself that yet—the door would be open in its own time.
)
I took her other arm. Between us she went docilely toward the waiting copters, saying nothing. I don’t think Fitzgerald noticed what that drying breeze was doing to her until we were nearly at the edge of the Ring.
By then it was too late to take her back even if he had understood what the trouble was.
I heard Fitzgerald catch his breath but he said nothing and neither did I.
We lifted her into his copter. I took off behind him and the visors were silent between our ships as we flew back toward Base. What could we have said to each other then?
III
Living Lake
Thirty minutes after we hit the Base the girl was in a jury-rigged hydrating tank, wrapped in wet sheets, with a slow trickle of fresh warm water soaking them. Even her face was loosely covered, and I was glad of that. It was an old woman’s face by now, drawn tight and furrowed over her
