take in water through gills around their necks and let it flow through their transparent 
bodies. When it was excreted at the other end, it came out tinted yellow. Perhaps when 
I'd compared the water with piss, up at the Bodines' place, I hadn't been too far wrong.
    It was the shape of these organisms that disturbed me, though. If you forgot they 
were so goddamned small that you couldn't see them with the naked eye, they were 
monstrous. They had projections like twisted horns on the part of them which I took to be 
their heads, and scaley-looking bodies. And all the time I was watching them, they were 
jerking and swimming and writhing about. I suddenly remembered that I'd tasted some of 
the water on the end of my finger, and I began to feel distinctly nauseous. I stood 
straight again and looked from Dan to Rheta and back again.
    'Can you find out what they are?' I asked them, 'I mean-is there a way you can 
identify these things?'
    'We're not sure until we try,' said Rheta. 'There are thousands and thousands of 
different types of micro-organisms, and it's going to take quite a while to check through 
all the identifying data. But this is my speciality, you know, and I follow most of the 
latest discoveries, and I don't ever recall anyone reporting anything like this before.'
    I took a cigarillo out of my coat pocket and clenched the
    plastic tip between my teeth. 'Don't you have any ideas at all?'
    Dan bent over the microscope again for a fresh look. He focused and refocused, but 
then he sat up and shook his head. 'I don't have any useful suggestions right now. If it 
wasn't patently ridiculous, I'd say they most closely resemble some kind of marine life.'
    'That's what I thought,' I put in. 'They look like some kind of sea-horse.'
    'You mustn't be misled by superficial appearances,' said Rheta. 'They may look like 
sea-horses, but they came out of a dug well miles away from the ocean. They're probably 
nothing like sea-horses at all, biologically.'
    'Are they safe to drink?' I asked Dan. 'I mean, what shall I tell the Bodines?'
    Dan let out a long breath. 'To be on the safe side, I'd say they shouldn't drink the 
well water until we've investigated these organisms further. I've managed to isolate a 
certain amount of nitric acid, and there's some sulphurous substance in there, too, but 
it's very hard to say whether they're connected with these organisms or not. Whatever's 
floating in that water, it's very complex and most unusual.'
    I stood up. 'Okay. I'll give the Bodines a call and tell them to lay off. How long do 
you think it's going to take to track these things down? They'll want to know.'
    'It's impossible to say. Sometimes these analyses take months. Occasionally, years.'
    I took out a book of matches and lit my cigarillo. 'What if I tell them a week or 
two? I don't want to scare them.'
    Dan nodded. 'That's probably the best idea. I'm going to have to go up there and take 
some more samples for myself, though. Perhaps you could warn Jimmy to expect me sometime 
tomorrow.'
    'Okay. Now-are you going to join me for a beer?'
    Dan glanced up at the clock. 'All right. Maybe I'll have a sandwich, too. I don't 
think I've eaten since breakfast. But I'm going to have to come back here later and 
finish off my swine fever samples.'
    I buttoned up my coat. 'You can do what you like later. Right now, I need to feel a 
cold Schaefer on the back of my throat.'
    We all left the laboratory together, and Dan locked the door behind us. Mrs. Wardell 
was going home too, putting the grey plastic cover over her typewriter and tidying her 
desk. The lights were being switched off all through the building. Outside, we could hear 
cars starting up and people calling good night.
    'Good night, Gina,' said Dan to Mrs. Wardell.
    'Good night, Dr Kirk. Did you remember to set the mousetraps?'
    'I'll do it later. I'm coming back up to check on my swine fever samples on the way 
home.' He turned to me, and said: 'Never work in an old colonial building.-They're always 
alive with mice. Rheta caught a mouse eating her lunch last week. The damn thing had 
eaten its way right through the plastic bag.'
    We left the building and walked across the darkened grassy mall, our breath smoking 
in the cold evening air. The stars were bright and sharp, and that meant a hard frost in 
the morning. Still, frosts were always good for business. I knew that I'd be spending 
most of the morning thawing out faucets and repairing bursts.
    Dan said: 'What's hard to understand is what the organism is doing in that water. 
There doesn't seem to be any purpose behind its life style. It takes in water, it pours 
out yellow fluid. What's the point of it all?'
    'What's the point of anything?' I asked him. 'Human beings take in water and pour out 
yellow fluid, and nobody goes around saying that they're lacking in purpose.'
    Dan shook his head. 'You misunderstand me. If this fluid was simply excreted water, 
then that would account for a lot of things. But from what I've seen so far, it seems as 
if the discoloration is a substance that's being added to the water as it flows through 
the organism's body, perhaps by some internal gland, if that's not too grand a word for 
one of the parts of a microscopic creature's physiology. And the creature is quite 
obviously expending an enormous amount of time and energy exuding this substance-in fact, 
so much time and energy that it seems to be the main purpose of its whole existence.'
    We were walking along by the old railroad yard now. Rheta said good night, and went 
off to collect her Volkswagen from the parking lot across the street, and I blew her a 
cold and breathy kiss as she went off. Then Dan and I walked a little further along to 
Stanley's Hotel & Dining Rooms, a green-and-red painted flat-fronted building where you 
could usually get a decent steak and a passable whisky sour. We pushed our way in through 
the front door, and walked along a musty carpeted corridor to the dimly-lit back room. It 
was a small bar, smoky but almost empty, and a television flickered silently above the 
shelves.
    'Good evening, Henry,' I said to the dapper little man behind the black vinyl 
counter. 'The Professor and I want two big ones, quick as you can pour them.'
    'Pretty damned frosty out there tonight, huh?' said Henry, pumping up two draft 
Schaefers. 'Do you want a shot to go along with these?'
    'I'm working,' said Dan. 'I want to keep a clear head, thanks all the same.'
    'I'm relaxing,' I said. 'Give me a Jack Daniel's.'
    'Did you hear about the Denton kid?' asked Henry, pouring out bourbon.
    I shook my head. 'What's he done now?'
    'It's not what he's done, it's where he's gone. He's been missing since this morning. 
The police are looking all over.'
    'That's too bad,' I said. I knew the Demons. They were a quiet, poor family who lived 
not far away from the Bodines. Their son Sam was always walking around with patches in 
the knees of his jeans, but he was one of the nicest and politest kids you could meet. He 
was only nine, and I hoped that nothing had happened to him. It was too goddamned cold to 
go missing at this time of year.
    'He went out on his bicycle, and that was the last they saw of him,' said Henry. 
'They found his bike about a mile up the road, in the trees, but there was no sign of 
Sam. I guess his folks must be pretty distracted by now.'
    I drank my beer, subdued. Dan said quietly: 'Let's drink to them finding him, shall 
we?'
    We talked a while more with Henry, and then we got back to the subject of the