colorless slipper of jelly, spirally grooved, almost as long as
he was tall. Its surface was furred with gently vibrating fine
hairs, thickened at the base.
The light went out. The Proto said nothing; it waited while
Lavon choked and coughed, expelling the last remnants of the
spore fluid from his book-lungs and sucking in the pure, ice-
cold water.
“Para?” Lavon said at last. “Already?”
“Already,” the invisible cilia vibrated in even, emotionless
tones. Each separate hair-like process buzzed at an independ-
ent, changing rate; the resulting sound waves spread through
the water, intermodulating, reinforcing or cancelling each
other. The aggregate wave-front, by the time it reached human
ears, was rather eerie, but nevertheless recognizable human
speech. “This is the time, Lavon.”
‘Time and more than time,” another voice said from the
returned darkness. “If we are to. drive Flosc from his castles.”
“Who’s that?” Lavon said, turning futilely toward ‘the new
voice.
“I am Para also, Lavon. We are sixteen since the awaten-
ing. If you could reproduce as rapidly as we”
“Brains are better than numbers,” Lavon said. “As the Eat-
ers will find out soon enough.”
“What shall we do, Lavon?”
The man drew up his knees and sank to the cold mud of
the .Bottom to think. Something wriggled tinder his buttocks
and a tiny spirillum corkscrewed away, identifiable only by
feel. He let it go; he was not hungry yet, and he had the Eat-
ersthe rotifersto think about. Before long they would be
swarming in the upper reaches of the sky, devouring every-