the trial. It came quickly, traces of inimical, alien thought, which changed as they touched his mind, reading there only all the friendliness he and his held for the sea people.
“He is not of them.” The admission was grudging. As if they did not want to believe that. “Why comes one from the south to this place—now?”
There was an inflection to that “now” which was disturbing.
“After the manner of his people he seeks new things so that he may return and report to his Elders. Then he will receive the spear of manhood and be ready for the choosing of mates,” Sssuri translated the reason for Dalgard’s quest into the terms of his own people. “He has been my knife brother since we were cubs together, and so I journey with him. But here in the north we have found evil—”
His flow of thought was submerged by a band of hate so red that its impact upon the mind was almost a blow. Dalgard shook his head. He had known that the merpeople, aroused, were deadly fighters, fearless and crafty, and with a staying power beyond that of any human. But their rage was something he had not met before.
“They come once again—they burn with the fire—They are among our islands—”
A cub whimpered and a merwoman stooped to pat it to silence.
“Here they have killed with the fire—”
They did not elaborate upon that statement, and Dalgard had no wish for them to do so. He was still very glad that it had been dark when he had climbed to the top of that cliff, that he had not been able to see what his imagination told him lay there.
“Do they stay?” That was Sssuri.
“Not so. In their sky traveler they go to the land where lies the dark city. There they make much evil against the day when this shall be their land once more.”
“But these lie if they think that.” Another strong thought broke across the current of communication. “We are not now penned for their pleasure. We may flee into the sea once more, and there live as did our fathers’ fathers, and they dare not follow us there—”
“Who knows?” It was Sssuri who raised that objection. “With their ancient knowledge once more theirs, even the depths of the sea may not be ours much longer. Do they not know how to ride upon the air?”
The knot of mer-warriors stirred. Several spears thudded butt down into the sand. And Sssuri accepted that as an invitation to descend, summoning Dalgard after him with a beckoning finger.
Later they sat in a circle in the cushioning gray powder, the two from the south eating dried fish and sea kelp, while Sssuri related, between mouthfuls, their recent adventures.
“Three times have they flown across these islands on their way to that city,” the Elder of the pitifully decimated merman tribe told the explorers.
“But this time,” broke in one of his companions, “they had with them a new ship—”
“A new ship?” Sssuri pounced upon that scrap of information.
“Yes. The ships of the air in which they travel are fashioned so”—with his knife point he drew a circle in the sand—“but this one was smaller and more in the likeness of a spear with a heavy point—thus”—he made a second sketch beside the first, and Dalgard and Sssuri leaned over to study it.
“That is unlike any of their ships that I have heard of,” Sssuri agreed. “Even in the old tales of the Days Before the Burning there is nothing spoken of like that.”
“It is true. Therefore we wait now for the coming of our scouts, who were set in hiding upon their sea rock of resting, that they may tell us more concerning this new ship. They should be here within this time of sleeping. Now, go you to rest, which you plainly have need of, and we shall call you when they come.”
Dalgard was willing enough to stretch out in the sand in the shadows of the far end of the cave. Beyond him three cubs slumbered together, their arms about each other, and a feeling of peace was there such as he had not known since he left the stronghold of Homeport.
The weird glow of the imprisoned sea monsters gave light to the main part of the cave, and it might still have been night when the scout was shaken awake once more. A group of the merpeople were sitting together, and their thoughts interrupted each other as their excitement arose. Their spies must have returned.
Dalgard crossed to join that group, but it seemed to him that his welcome was not unqualified, and that some of the openness of the early hours of the night was lacking. He might have been once more under suspicion.
“Knife brother”—to Dalgard’s sensitive mind that form of address from Sssuri was used for a special purpose: to underline the close bond between them—“listen to the words of Sssim who is a Hider-to-Watch on the island where they rest their ships during the voyage from one land to another.” He drew Dalgard down beside him to face a young merman who was staring round-eyed at the colony scout.
“He is like—yet unlike”—his first wisp of thought meant nothing to the scout. “The strangers wear many coverings on their bodies as do they, and they had also coverings upon their heads. They were bigger. Also from their minds I learned that they are not of this world—”
“Not of this world!” Dalgard burst out in his own speech.
“There!” The spy was triumphant. “So did they talk to one another, not with the mind but by making mouth noises, different mouth noises from those that they make. Yes, they are like—but unlike this one.”
“And these strangers flew the ship we have not seen before?”
“It is so. But they did not know the way and were guided by the globe. And at least one among them was distrustful of those and wished to be free to return to his own place. He walked by the rocks near my hiding place, and I read his thoughts. No, they were with them, but they are not them!”
“And now they have gone on to the city?” Sssuri probed.
“It was the way their ship flew.”
“Like me,” Dalgard repeated, and then the truth which might lie behind that exploded within his brain. “Terrans!” he breathed the word. Men of Pax perhaps who had come to hunt down the outlaws who had successfully eluded their rule on earth? But how had the colonists been traced? And why? Or were they other fugitives like themselves? So much, so very much of what the colonists should know of their past had been erased during the time of the Great Sickness twenty years after their landing. Then three fourths of the original immigrants had died. Only the children of the second generation and a handful of weakened Elders had remained. Knowledge was lost and some distorted by failing memories, old skills were gone. But if the new Terrans were in that city.… He had to know—to know and be able to warn his people. For the darkness of Pax was a memory they had not lost!
“I must see them,” he said.
“That is true. And only you can tell us what manner of folk these strangers be,” the merman chief agreed. “Therefore you shall go ashore with my warriors and look upon them—to tell us the truth. Also we must learn what they do here.”
It was decided that using waterways known to the merpeople, one which Dalgard could also take wearing the diving equipment, a scouting party would head shoreward the next day, with the river itself providing the entrance into the heart of the forbidden territory.
CHAPTER 12
Alien Patrol
Raf leaned back against the wall. Long since the actions of the aliens in the storage house had ceased to interest him, since they would not allow any of the Terrans to approach their plunder and he could not ask questions. Lablet continued to follow the officer about, vainly trying to understand his speech. And Hobart had taken his place by the upper entrance, his hand held stiffly across his body. The pilot knew that the captain was engaged in photographing all this activity with a wristband camera, hoping to make something of it later.
But