Yet the hours passed, and if any others shared Aton’s doubts, they did not show it. Even Bossman camped with overall serenity, watching Garnet as she swam. Men dived deep into the water, searching for fish or other marine life, and coming up empty-handed. Some slept, propped against the wall; now and then a neighbor would playfully hoist a sleeper into the drink for a rude surprise.

This dome, it appeared, was as close as Chthon could come to natural paradise.

Aton did not believe in paradise. He plunged down, ten feet, twenty, as deep as he could go, but found no bottom. He cut to the side as he came up, and was taken and spun about by an eddy in the water. In a moment he was out of it, unharmed, but it bothered him. The sense of impending menace was stronger. Was there after all a drainage from below?

He swam to the opposite shore, keeping clear of the turbulence near the visible exit. Here the little current was repeated. There was an undertow around the entire circumference of the pool. This was sinister: why should there be such an effect in still water?

Unless something massive were rising from below, sucking water in around the sides.

Bossman was watching him. Aton pointed to the edge and the man nodded. He had noticed.

Nothing was said to the others. There was no point in giving alarm until the danger was known—if there really were danger. But immediate steps should be taken to investigate the exit. It might be needed in a hurry.

There was a cry from the guard at the gate. Something was attacking!

So it was not my imagination, Aton thought. My mind was not losing touch with reality.

A scuffle, a hoarse scream; then two bodies tumbled into the pool. One was the guard, unhurt, he swam to the edge and mounted the path again. The other was one of the scaled stone-eaters, wounded and dying.

These creatures were not carnivorous, as far as he could tell. Too slow to be the chimera, they had never advanced on man, and were easy prey to him. What had affected this one?

Another animal came, and a third. Soon the pool was littered with corpses, as the clumsy creatures charged upon the men’s stone knives. What was driving them? Bossman joined Aton near the entrance. “Listen,” he said.

There was a new noise in the distance, far up the tunnel—one unlike anything heard in the caverns before. It was the sound of marching—of many feet tramping in unison.