With a tremendous snap, the taut steel cable humming in over the stern sheaves suddenly leaped high. The winch screamed briefly as the cable skipped its guides. Before power could be shut off it had snarled badly, and the frayed end of it had thrashed a splintery dent into the Mermaid's deck. By this time, Second Mate Stanley Kort reflected grimly, the net itself had probably bottomed on the floor of Venus's largest ocean—the Molo Ivrum , or Deadly Sea, thus named for the paradoxical reason that