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odds and ends crammed hastily aboard before their takeoff: now much of even that scanty material was out here, spoiled by a winter’s immersion. What they had removed from the ship had been dictated by immediate necessity. They had taken out conventional radio equipment, for instance, because they had foreseen the need to keep in touch with exploring parties even before the question of the other refugees arose.
    But what use was conventional radio when they wanted to broadcast their whereabouts across the interstellar gulf? For that, you needed the ship’s subradios. And those had not been taken out for two good reasons: first, the attenuation factor, and second, their appetite for power. Sub-radio was virtually instantaneous over parsec distances, but it was almost nullified by the blanket of a planetary atmosphere. When calling planet-to-planet it was necessary to relay your message with conventional radio to an orbiting satellite where the signal was automatically converted. And in any case you had to bleed power from the ship’s fusion drive in order to kick your beam between the stars.
    If only, before landing, they had been able to leave a subradio beacon in orbit…. They had broadcast constantly during the flight, of course, but they were almost outrunning their own signals, and by the time they arrived in this system they were half choking with CO 2 and anthropotoxins. The ship’s air-purifiers hadn’t been meant to cope with eight hundred people. They had to land at once.
    Maybe it didn’t matter anyhow. They were at least twenty parsecs beyond the limit of previous exploration.
    Maybe no one would have thought to watch for signals from so far out.
    Hence the subradios had been left in the ship. Hence they were at the bottom of the sea and more than likely corroded past repair. Diet-synthesizers, tools, accumulators, solar energy collectors, medical equipment, books, tapes, scientific instruments—what few there were—had been taken inland. But very little else.
    Lex sighed and made to continue his descent. It seemed, when he looked about him, that the water was darker. A cloud crossing the sun? It wasn’t likely; the sky had been clear a few minutes ago. He snapped on his handlight and found that didn’t help. His vision was blurred. But why?
    He spent a short while puzzling out what had happened. Then the glass lens of the handlight gave him the clue. It was coated with a thin greenish film, which easily rubbed off. So was his helmet. In fact the entire surface of his suit was sliming completely over with what he judged to be the local equivalent of plankton. That hadn’t happened on his dives last year—but of course summer had been nearly over, and no doubt spring brought an exuberance of new life.
    He didn’t imagine it would prove dangerous, just inconvenient. Playing the handlight on the ship’s hull, he saw that the bright metal was only misted, implying that the stuff did not build up layer by layer.
    Hooking the light to its helmet mount so that he would not have to release his grip on the cable, he detached a couple of the rocks which weighted his belt. Neutral buoyancy would be better under these conditions than any weight at all. He didn’t like the look of the massed vegetation around the lower edge of the open cargo lock, and wanted to see if he could drift or swim into the ship without touching the plants.
    Something brushed the hand with which he was grasping the cable.
    His head and light turned together. Revealed was a reddish creature with many claw-tipped feet and a baglike body from which fronds like those of the bottom-weed swirled gracefully. It was walking up the cable, holding tight with groups of four claws, and on coming to the obstacle, his hand, had paused to investigate. A leechlike neck with a ring of antennae fringing a dark sucking mouth was fumbling along his arm.
    The light seemed not to affect it at all. Eyes weredeveloping extraordinarily late among these