Of course. The soap. When he’d started bailing upon arrival in this weird place, he had a cake of soap in his hand. He’d stuck it in his mouth. And up to now he hadn’t had a really peaceful moment in which to remove it.

  He extracted the somewhat soggy pink bar from his teeth with a distinct lack of relish and washed his mouth out carefully with sea water. As he did so, he noticed that he had drifted much closer to the island. There was evidence of life somewhere behind the beach, a few slowly moving human beings and a cluster of huts or houses—at this distance it was hard to tell which.

  What were his resources in dealing with this new world? He considered them ruefully. A slightly used cake of soap. An extremely wet bath towel. A round rubber plug, too badly worn to do its job properly. And a bathtub, if he could move it once he got to shore.

  Then, of course, there was himself. “Like if the natives go in for human steak,” he grimaced.

  A sea-serpent that talked! Whose dignity had been injured, who had even gone so far as to—Wait a minute! What had it called him?

  Son of Danae.

  But he wasn’t!

  “Go tell the sea-serpent,” he told himself fiercely. He remembered the verse on the bit of parchment abruptly: “The head with its writhing snake-locks—”

  “I’ve got to get out of here!” he commented restlessly and with tremendous conviction, glancing from the rocking tub to the placid rolling sea from which anything might be expected.

  For a moment, when the net flapped down upon his shoulders, Percy had the frantic idea that he’d been overheard by some deity who had hurried to cooperate. He straggled, threshing wildly against the coarse, knotted fibers that tore at his skin. Then, as he felt the entire tub caught in the huge skein and being drawn rapidly toward shore, he relaxed into now what? hopelessness and tried to see what had happened.

  He had drifted in front of a cliff-like promontory of the island. A group of men dressed in loincloths were dancing about on the edge of the cliff, cheering a richly-clad fellow who, from a precarious foothold halfway down the steep face, had flung the net and, with dexterous twists of wrist and forearm, was now hauling it in.

  “Attaboy, Dictys!” one of them yelled as the tub beached, turned over and, with Percy crashing around under it, was dragged up the side of the cliff. “You got it all right, all right.”

  “That Dictys,” another commented admiringly. “He’s death on sea monsters. This’ll be the third he caught this week.”

  “The fourth,” Dictys corrected as he scrambled to the top of the cliff with the bathtub and the net-enclosed man both securely on his shoulder. “You forgot the pigmy mermaid—half-woman, half-sardine. I count it even though she was kind of small. But this’ll be the best of the lot. I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

  He unwound the net rapidly with long-practised gestures. Percy climbed out of the tub and flopped on the ground. He felt like a bag of well-gnawed bones.

  Dictys picked him up with a huge hand, held him out for inspection. “This isn’t a monster,” he said in evident bitter disappointment. “It comes apart: half of it is a man and the rest is a round sort of chest. And I thought it was something really unusual! Oh well,” he mused, lifting Percy over his head with the obvious intention of throwing him back into the sea, “You can’t hit it all the time.”

  “Maybe,” suggested an oldster on the edge of the group, “maybe he is a monster. He could have changed into a man just now. He might know that if he’s a monster we’d put him in your brother’s zoo, but if he’s a man we’d throw him back because we’ve got lots of people here already.”

  The tall man nodded thoughtfully. “You might have something there, Agesilaus. I’d hate to go back to King Polydectes empty-handed. Well, there’s an easy way of finding out”

  What kind of world is this? Percy was frantic “—if he’s a man we’d throw him back because we’ve got lots of people here already!”

  And what kind of test were they going to apply?

  He noticed that the well-dressed fisherman had unsheathed the great single-bladed sword he wore on his back. He ground the point of it into Percy’s chest interrogatively.

  “You better change to your particular monstrous form fast, sonny. Because you’re not going to have the pleasure of being returned to the drink. Instead, I’m going to cut you up into six distinct and separate slices in just a few seconds.

  You’ll be much better off in my brother’s cages. Now then, what exactly are you?”

  Percy beat against his forehead with an open palm. What was he supposed to do—develop a quick-change routine on the spot that included wings, flippers and a Siamese twin? Because if he didn’t, he was evidently going to become cutlets.

  “All right,” Dictys said, frowning. “Go ahead—be stubborn. See what it gets you.”

  He whirled the bronze blade experimentally around his head, then curved it back for a tremendous stroke.

  Percy swallowed as he saw it glint redly at him. “I’ll talk,” he babbled. “I’ll tell you about myself! I’m—I’m—”

  What could he tell them that would make sense in their terms? What kind of lie could he compose in a hurry that they would believe? They wanted him to make like a monster.

  Monster! He’d talked to a—

  The words boiled rapidly out of his lips. He had no time to weigh them. “I’m the man the sea-serpent welcomed as the son of Danae.” He hoped it would at least give the big fellow pause.

  It did.

  Dictys lowered his sword and stepped back staring. “The—the son of Danae? The one who’s going to kill the Gorgon?”

  “The same.” Percy nodded with the self-conscious grandeur of a celebrity discovered by the nightclub m.c. at a ringside table. “The…the famous Gorgon killer. The—the man who brought the islanders the head with the writhing snake-locks, the Terror that—”

  “Who will bring, you mean,” Dictys corrected him. “It’s not done yet. Well, well, well. You’re kind of scrawny for that sort of job, even if you do have red hair. What’s your name?”

  “Percy. Percy S. Yuss.”

  “Right!” Agesilaus yelped from the rear. He came hurrying up, his beard flaunting behind him like an oversized white woolen necktie. “It figures, Dictys, it figures! Right on the dot of the prophecy. His name’s Perseus, he has red hair, you caught him in a fishnet—everything happened exactly the way the oracle said—”

  Dictys thrust out his lower lip and shook his head. “Oracles are one thing. Muscles are another. Nobody’s going to tell me that this weakling is going to tackle the beast that frightens the bravest men and even other monsters, no matter how powerful. Look at him—he’s quivering with fear already!”

  This was not exactly true. Percy became chilled standing on the windy hillside in nothing but his wet skin. There was, besides, an emotional reaction to all his recent experiences setting in. But there was also a mounting discomfort’ at the way they were discussing his capabilities as a Gorgon-killer. He’d thrown in the sentence merely as a means of distracting Dictys temporarily; now it seemed they couldn’t get off the subject. The beast that frightened men and gods!

  He thought back wistfully to a few minutes ago when he’d been riding a serpent-infested sea in a leaky bathtub. Ah, those were carefree, happy times!

  “His name’s not even Perseus,” Dictys was arguing. “It’s Persaesus or something. You’re not going to tell me that this bedraggled bumpkin will become the most famous hero of all time?”

  Agesilaus nodded vehemently. “He certainly will! As far as the name’s concerned, I think it’s close enough. Sometimes the oracle gets names mixed up. But here’s the chest in which the oracle said Perseus would arrive with his mother, Danae, after King Acrisus of Argos tossed them into the sea.”

  “Yes, but the oracle said the infant Perseus,” another loin-clothed man broke in. “Didn’t she?”

  “Well,” Agesilaus hedged. “Sometimes the oracle gets ages mixed up too.” The old man looked a little now as if he were no longer certain about oracular dependability on any matter.

  Percy found himself sympathizing with him. Agesilaus was evidently pleading his case, but he wasn’t certain which way he’d be worse off, if the old man won or lost.

  Dictys came in fast for the argumentative kill. “If King Acrisus of Argos, according to the oracle, threw Perseus and his mother into the chest, then where is Danae? And another thing, Agesilaus. Argos is that way,” he pointed with a braceleted hand. “Northwest. This fellow came from the east. No, he’s an impostor trying to cash in on the prophecy. And I don’t like impostors.”

  He reached down for a couple of lengths of rope with which several of the men had been repairing holes in the net. Before Percy could get a word of protest out of his slowly opening mouth, he was tripped expertly and tossed to the ground. In a moment, he was tied up as tightly as an expensive Christmas present.

  “What’s the penalty for impersonating a hero?” Dictys asked Agesilaus. The packaging job completed, he removed his knee from the gasping young man’s back and rose.

  “For impersonating a hero,” the old man said thoughtfully, with an unsatisfied frown still creasing his face, “the penalty’s the same as for blasphemy. Cooking over a slow fire. In fact, since your brother, King Polydectes, reformed the legal system, practically every crime is punishable by cooking over a slow fire. Your brother says it makes it easier for him to pass sentence that way. He doesn’t have to remember a whole calendar of complicated punishments.”

  “That’s why we call him Wise King Polydectes,” one of the younger men exclaimed, and everyone nodded enthusiastically.

  “Listen—” Percy began screaming from the ground. Dictys stuck a handful of grass into his mouth. There was enough loose soil attached to make the gag a verb as well as a noun. He was so busy strangling that he had little energy for observation and less for an attempt to escape when two of the men slung him to a pole and began carrying him downhill over highly uneven ground.

  “Hi, there, Menon,” he heard someone call as he was borne choking and sneezing along a dusty road. “Whatcha got?”

  “Don’t know for sure,” the forward bearer replied. “I think it’s kettle bait.”

  “You don’t say! This crime-wave gets more frightening every week!”

  By the time Percy had worked the last of the foliage out of his mouth, they had passed through the huge gateway of a stonewalled citadel and into a cluster of small but surprisingly well-built brick houses.

  His pole was placed in two forked sticks set upright in the main thoroughfare of the town. He dangled from the tight ropes, feeling his blood grinding to a halt.

  A group of curious men and women gathered around asking questions of his two guards.

  “Is that the latest monster Dictys has caught?” a woman wanted to know. “He doesn’t seem to be very unusual.” She poked experimentally at choice spots on his naked body. “Practically normal, I’d say.”

  “Stew-job,” the bearer said laconically. “Nice tender stew-job.”

  As far as was possible in his tightly laced condition, Percy writhed. No, this couldn’t be happening to him—this just couldn’t be! A man doesn’t start taking a bath in a new apartment and wind up in a world where everything from burglary to barratry is punished by—

  “I will not consider that thought,” his mind announced. “I know when I’m well off.”

  Certain things were clear to him, though, disagreeably clear. He had somehow fallen into a past which had never really existed, the time of the Greek mythos. Never really existed? The sea-serpent’s indignation had been real enough, and so were the ropes with which he was bound. So, he suspected, would be the punishment, if he were found guilty of impersonating a hero.

  Odd, that. The serpent addressing him as the son of Danae, who was evidently the mother of. Perseus. His own name, which formed a combination of syllables remarkably like the Gorgon killer’s. The bit of parchment he’d found in the apartment which evidently had helped precipitate him into this mess, and the subject of the snatch of poetry written upon it. The way he’d come close to the legend in various other ways, such as the arrival by sea—

  No! When his trial came up, he wanted to plead absolute innocence, that he had no knowledge whatever of the Perseus prophecy and no interest at all in it. Otherwise, thinking all those other thoughts could only lead in one direction…

  He shivered violently and vibrated the pole briefly.

  “Poor fellow, he’s cold!” a girl’s voice said sympathetically.

  “That’s all right. King Polydectes will warm him up,” a man told her. Everyone guffawed. Percy vibrated the pole again.

  “I never said I was Perseus!” the bound young man broke out despairingly. “All I did was tell your Dictys that the sea-serpent—”

  “You’d better shut up,” the bearer who had been called Menon advised him in a confidential, friendly manner. “For trying to influence the jury before a trial, you can have your tongue tom out by the roots—whether you’re eventually found guilty or innocent.”

  Percy decided to keep quiet.

  Every time he opened his mouth, he put the local criminal code in it. He was getting deeper and deeper into the most fantastic trouble and didn’t have the slightest idea how to go about getting out of it. Or how he’d gotten into it in the first place.

  Mrs. Danner. He hated Mrs. Danner, how he hated that profiteering old female souse! She, if anyone, was responsible for his present situation. She’d evidently known that the apartment was some kind of exit apparatus; when she’d walked in unannounced, she had expected to find the place empty. If only he’d given a little more attention to her gleeful maunderings!

  How long had people been noticing that sign outside the tenement entrance? “Three-Room Apartment for Rent Very Cheap. Immediate Occupancy!”

  How many had run in and excitedly paid her the thirty-five dollars “renting-fee” she demanded, then bolted home to gather up enough personal belongings to take formal possession? And then, a few moments after entry, while measuring the bedroom for furniture arrangements perhaps, or considering the walls relative to a daring color scheme idea, or prying loose a badly stuck window—had suddenly fallen through into this world of magic and violence?

  How long had Mrs. Danner been making a good thing out of this apartment, how many “renting-fees” had she acquired? Percy didn’t know, but he thought dreamily of coming upon her some time in a locked room. Forgetting his painfully bound hands and feet for a moment, he mused gently on the delightful softness of her throat under a pair of insistent thumbs.

  Although she couldn’t be the whole answer. She didn’t know enough about anything outside of the latest quotations on whiskey-by-the-case-F.O.B.-distillery to have created the peculiar chronological trap that the apartment contained. Who was it then? Or what? And, above all and most important, why?

  Dictys had come up, surrounded by his bullyboys in semi-sarongs.

  “A bad day,” he told the townsfolk. “Didn’t catch a single solitary horror. Just this fake hero.”

  “That’s all right, Dictys,” the man who had previously expressed confidence in the King’s thermal reliability reassured him. “He’ll still be a good excuse for a party.”

  “Sure,” someone else chimed in. “With an execution, the evening won’t be entirely lost.”

  “I know, I know,” Dictys admitted morosely. “But I wanted a specimen for the zoo. An execution won’t be the same thing at all.”

  While most of the surrounding individuals applauded the extremely commendable detachment of so scientific an attitude, Percy saw a man with a voluminous white mantle push out to the front of the group and look at him more closely and curiously than anyone else had. The man had a peculiarly bright saffron skin, Percy noticed, when a fold of the cloak came down from his face for a moment.

  “What made you think he was a monster?” the man asked Dictys, putting the fold carefully back in place.

  “The chest he was riding from the cliff, it looked like part of him. It was round and white and had all kinds of metal pieces sticking out. I’ve never seen anything like it before—and I’ve been to the mainland twice.”

  “Where is the chest?”

  The large man pointed over his shoulder with a thumb the size of a small banana. “Oh, we left it on the cliff with the rest of the stuff he had in it. You can never tell about strange pieces of furniture: sometimes they come alive or burst into flame or—Say! Are you a stranger in town?”

  The white-cloaked man dropped a hand to his midsection.

  He passed it once across his abdomen and, as Dictys advanced truculently upon him, he disappeared.

  There were breaking bubbles of comment all through the crowd.

  “What was that?”

  “Where in the world did he go, Eunapius?”

  “I don’t know but, if you ask me, he wasn’t all human.”

  “Mama, I wanna go home!”

  “Sh-h-h, Leontis. There may be a cooking today. You wouldn’t want to miss that, would you?”

  “What do you think he was, Dictys?”

  Their leader scratched his matted hair. “Well, he couldn’t have been what I thought he was, just an ordinary stranger passing through. I wanted to grab him and put him under arrest. If he was a stranger or a wandering merchant and had forgotten to register with the commander of the palace guard, he’d have been liable to the Foreigner’s Penalty Tax.”

  “You mean all his goods impounded and his right arm burned off before his face?”

  “More or less, at the discretion of the guard commander. But I think he must have been either a wizard or a major monster. In fact, from the color of his skin, I’d say he was a human-type monster. Wasn’t it gold?”

  Agesilaus nodded. “It was gold, all right. What they call on the mainland the Olympian type of monster. Those aren’t supposed to be too bad. According to the mainlanders, they help men lots of times.”