I was swimming with my face in the water watching the scene below. There was considerable activity, fish of all sizes scuttling around. The visibility was excellent.

All of a sudden there was nothing down there. A few fish, yes. But no bottom, only a gaping black gulf. The edge was as sharp as the rim of the Grand Canyon, and I had a feeling the bottom was almost as far down.

There aren’t too many things in the water that scare me, but that did. I went flapping back from the edge like a kitten on a glass-topped table. When I could see bottom under me I floated for a minute or two, getting my breath back.

Then I went back to the chasm and dived.

Not down into it, of course, but near the rim. I had to do it to compensate for that attack of nerves. I’m not ashamed of being afraid; caution is a sign of good sense. But this wasn’t a rational fear. It was fear of the lightless depths, fear of the dark; peering down into the abyss I half expected to see some monstrous bulk heave itself out of the water, trailing tentacles and staring with big evil eyes full of a cruel intelligence… It was ridiculous. I could drown just as fast in five feet of water as in five hundred; and the Kraken is an imaginary monster.

There was no way I was ever going to get down into those depths. This was part of the outer caldera, and if it was anything like the central bay, it was hundreds of feet deep. Nothing less than a specially designed submarine would ever penetrate the abyss.

I’d had enough. I wasn’t nervous anymore, but I’d had enough for one day. I went back to the place where Frederick was waiting, and rose up out of the water at his feet, spitting out my mouthpiece and pushing my mask up.

“Well?” he demanded. “What did you find?”

Nothing.” I pulled myself up onto the rocks and reached for a towel. “If you mean ruins or wrecks. But there sure is a hell of a big hole out there.”

“Ah, yes, the outer caldera. Nothing would have survived down there. The pressure must be enormous.”

I stood up.

“Let’s go. I’m cold and hungry.”

As we crossed the plateau back toward the house, I was surprised to find my eyes pricking, almost as if I wanted to cry. I decided it must be fatigue. I had come to terms with my father a long time before, there was no excuse for feeling hurt because he thought of his antiquities first and me second. No, that was a misstatement. He didn’t think of me at all.

II

I started the search next morning. It took two hours to make the first crossing of the bay and I was bushed when I finished. The nervous strain was what wore me out; I was so painfully conscious of my ignorance and so afraid I would miss something. The following day I started the second crossing, ten feet beyond the first. Since the bay got wider and the water got deeper, I wasn’t able to finish in two hours.

The job would have been much easier with proper scuba gear. Even though the water wasn’t deep, only about thirty feet, I had to spend a lot of time on the bottom. I could see why Frederick was unwilling to ask about a compressor, but one thing we had to have, and soon, was a boat, or even an inflatable raft-something I could anchor out in the middle of the bay, in case I needed to get out of the water in a hurry. If I did get into trouble, Frederick wasn’t going to be much help perched on a rock fifty yards away.

So, when he tried to haul me out of the sack on Sunday morning I refused to budge. I had to meet Jim at ten anyhow. Frederick was annoyed when I told him of the appointment, which I had seen no reason to mention earlier. I told him Jim might come looking for me if I didn’t show up, and finally Frederick gave in. He promised to see what he could do about a boat.

I put on my best flowered shift over my bathing suit, got my mask and flippers, and started for town. I hadn’t gone ten yards before I was dripping with sweat. It was unseasonably hot, even for the Mediterranean. The air was close and breathless, and the sky had a queer hazy look. I was looking forward to getting into the water, and that wasn’t all I was looking forward to. When I saw Jim at one of the tables on the hotel terrace my heart gave a jump.

He was fully dressed, in old jeans and a blue shirt, and as soon as I was within hailing distance I called out, “I thought we were going swimming.”

“Have some coffee and we’ll talk about it.”

“Hot,” I said, mopping my brow.

“Earthquake weather,” said Jim.

I gave him a startled look. He grinned.

“That’s what the men are saying. It’s possible. This area is seismically unstable.”

“I know all about the history of Thera,” I said. “But I didn’t think-”

“No problem,” Jim said smugly. “We have quakes all the time in California. Only I’ve never been in the water when the earth shook, and I’m not sure I want to try it.”

Angelos, the owner of the hotel, waited on us personally. Jim introduced us. I greeted him in my best Greek, which made him smile broadly, but I thought I had never seen anyone who looked less like an angel. He was a big, hulking man, one of the few Greeks I had met who really did look greasy-the result of his trade, perhaps, for Jim explained that he and his wife ran the small hotel together. I assumed he had shaved, since it was Sunday, but his jowls were heavily shadowed. He and Jim talked for a while, and then Jim interpreted.

“He says it’s okay to swim. There may be some minor tremors but they won’t amount to much.”

I studied Angelos skeptically. He smiled at me, his white teeth gleaming against the dark stubble.

“How does he know?” I asked.

“He says he feels it. It’s possible, you know. Some of the island people claim to be sensitive to it. They get nauseated, headachy-”

“You sound like a TV commercial for cold remedies,” I interrupted. “I’ve read about that. One of Mary Renault’s books, wasn’t it? The hero could feel earthquakes before they happened. It would be a useful skill in those days. People would think you had divine connections. But that was fiction.”

Angelos seemed to know what we were talking about. He nodded vigorously, and spoke. Then he slapped Jim on the back, with a roll of his eyes at me and a remark that made Jim look self-conscious.

“Let’s go,” he said.

As we walked down the street toward the beach, I asked, “What did Angelos say about me?”

“You can probably guess.”

“Hmmm.”

Jim seemed anxious to change the subject.

“I hope you don’t mind, but I made a lunch date for you. My boss wants to meet you.”

“Why?”

“What are you so prickly about? Why shouldn’t he want to meet you?”

“Okay, okay,” I said. “It will be jolly lunching with Sir Christopher.”

When we reached the pier, there were a lot of men hanging around. Greek men hang around a lot-on street corners, in cafés, around piers. They greeted Jim with enthusiasm.

“The fishing boats are out,” he said, glancing around. “I guess that means it’s okay. Let’s go down the beach a way.”

The sea was as flat as a pond on a windless day. We found a nice smooth spot, with a few rocks between us and the pier. It was pleasant and private. I peeled off my dress and shoes and adjusted my flippers. Then I looked up.

For a second I knew how the ancient Greek hero felt when the earthquake was imminent. The ground seemed to dip, and my stomach went down with it.

Jim was standing a few feet away, watching me. His build was on the lean side, but his shoulders were good and the bands of muscle across his chest were hard and smooth. He was nicely tanned. But for that one eerie second he looked like the man in my dream. The breathless stillness of the air, the oily smooth surface of the sea against which he stood added to the strangeness of the atmosphere.

The impression came and was gone. I jumped up, forgetting I had the flippers on. I tripped, and Jim reached out an arm and caught me.