Part 29 (1/2)

”No.” He was grinning. ”Slip on your mask and smell just a little. Inhale as much water as you can without choking.”

”You're crazy.” She was giggling.

124 .

”Just once,” he begged. ”Quick, before it dissi- pates.”

”Well . . .” She raised the mask, breathed in a tiny amount of water. It set her coughing as she hurriedly replaced the mask and cleared it.

But she hardly noticed the cough. Her head was swimming. She drifted dazedly, feeling as if someone had just increased her olfactory sensitivity a thousand- fold. She was no longer swimming in salt water but in perfume. Her body was smothering under the concen- trated scent of a million wildflowers.

Unperturbed, the pseudoworm fluttered gracefully away, disappearing into a crevice in a turret of emer- alds.

”Lord!” she gasped when she could finally breathe easuy again. ”That's the most incredible fragrance I've

ever smelled in my life.”

”That's a Ninamu Pheromonite. They aren't com- mon, but they never have any trouble locating each other.” He started downward. ”Incidentally, that could have been the reason for the town's anchoring here.”

She followed him, still stunned by the overpowering

aroma.

”As I said, there aren't too many of them, but even

one like the individual we just encountered would re- lease enough essence to make it worthwhile for an en- tire town to spend a few weeks hunting for him. I believe that a centiliter of the essence costs about half a million credits on the open market. You just

got dosed by five times that.”

”Surely,” she murmured, her thoughts dreamy, ”it's not sold that way. No one could enjoy it.”

”I wouldn't know,” Sam said. ”I expect it's diluted.

But aromatics aren't my business.”

They had descended some thirty meters. Sam lev- eled off, swam down a narrow natural canyon. The light at this depth was barely evident. The normal

125.

spectrum-spanning colors of the hexalates were ho- mogenized to a uniform dark blue.

”I guess there are some rich enough to afford to use it straight,” Sam was saying. ”Though they don't swim in half liters like we just did. No one smells that bad.”

He chuckled. ”A very tiny amount would be sum- cent.”

”You couldn't measure it small enough to use it straight,” she argued. ”It has to be diluted. There can be such a thing as being too overpowering.”

She looked below them. A bottom fish was crawling across the crystal sands. It walked on its lower fins and sported a trunk like a tiny elephant, which it used to probe at the sand for the small creatures dwelling therein.

”What's that one called, Sam?” There was no re- ply. She looked around. ”Sam?”

He had vanished. Seconds ago he had been swim- ming parallel to her and just behind. She turned, kicked hard. Perhaps he had made a turn behind some hexalate protrusion. But the canyon was steep and relatively smooth-sided.

She stood treading water, hands on hips in a most unhydrodynamic pose. ”You're not being funny, Sam.”