[1][2] It later appeared in the collections The Reluctant Shaman and Other Fantastic Tales (Pyramid, 1970), The Best of L. Sprague de Camp (Doubleday, 1978),[1][2] and Aristotle and the Gun and Other Stories (Five Star, 2002),[2] as well as the anthologies The Fantasy Hall of Fame (Arbor House, 1983), The Science Fictional Olympics (Signet, 1984), Mermaids!

Another layer of mystery is added when Herb asks Mark if he can legally accept gold coins hundreds of years old in exchange for ten thousand swimming caps; a deal supposedly proposed by Iantha.

When the next day they enter Iantha in the swim meet, Connaught is naturally outraged to discover his star pupil will be going up against a mermaid.

Mark lets the referee and the coaches fight it out and attends to Iantha, now extremely inebriated, sitting on the edge of the pool, paddling her flukes in the water, and eating some of the goldfish.

Mark convinces her to return to her wheelchair, albeit with difficulty, but in picking her up misjudges her weight; both fall into the pool, and Iantha, thinking he is being playful, nearly drowns him responding in kind.

The merfolk, friendly with land people in ancient times, grew wary of them over the ages and now try to keep their existence secret except when they need to trade for goods they cannot make themselves, like knives and spears ... and now, swimcaps.

Chosen as her people's representative in negotiating the swimcap deal, she only agreed to appear in Herb's competition because she hadn't realized how much fuss it would raise.

After the men see the mermaid off the morose Mark has Herb drop him off at a bar where he can drown his sorrows and try to forget the lovely Iantha.

"[3] Kristiana Gregory, writing for the Los Angeles Times, finds the tale "humorous,"[4] while David Bratman in Mythprint calls it his "favorite" among de Camp's Unknown stories.

"[6] De Camp had previously explored the subject of intelligent creatures adapted to undersea life in a science fiction context in "The Merman" (Astounding Science-Fiction, December, 1938).

He continued to explore the possibility of romantic entanglements between human beings and merpeople of the traditional mythical type in "The Water Wife," an inset tale in the novel The Unbeheaded King (Del Rey Books, 1983).