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Updated: May 24, 2025
The dull pain which throbbed through Dalgard's skull with every beat of his heart was confusing, and it was hard to think clearly. But the colony scout, soon after he had fought his way back to consciousness, had learned that he was imprisoned somewhere in the globe ship.
Dalgard's feet touched gravel; he waded cautiously to the bank, where a bridge across the river made a concealing shadow on the water. None of the mermen had accompanied him this far. Sssuri, as soon as his human comrade had started for the storage city, had turned south to warn and rally the tribes.
He bounded forward with a spurt, which Dalgard copied, and they ran lightly, the dust undisturbed in years puffing up beneath the merman's bare, scaled feet and Dalgard's hide boots. Still the unbroken walls, the feeble patches of violet in the ceiling. But no exit. And what good would any exit do him, Dalgard thought, if it opened under the sea?
Dalgard scrambled out of the space under the opening, heading on into the murk where the merman waited. There was a splash as the stranger hit the stream, and the rope lashed down behind him at their united jerk. "Where do we go from here?" The voice carried through the dark. Scaled fingers hooked about Dalgard's right hand and tugged him on.
He turned to the right-hand wall and with a running leap reached its broad top. The lane curved to end in an archway cut through another wall, which was higher than Dalgard's head even when he stood on his present elevation. But bands of ornamental patterning ran along the taller barrier, and he was certain that it could be climbed.
Wild thoughts of a big signal fire But how could that be sighted across a mountain range. Of some sort of an improvised com unit "I said our way." There was a smile on Dalgard's face, visible to Raf's slowly clearing vision. "We shall provide another kind of machine, and these" he waved at the mermen "will give us the power, or so we hope.
They wanted him to use the blast bombs. And one part of him was calculating the best places to set his two remaining bombs for the wildest possible destruction. That part of him could accept the logic of Dalgard's reasoning. He doubted if the aliens could repair the globe if it were damaged, and he was sure that much which they had brought back from the eastern continent was irreplaceable.
And at that moment a shrill keening note arose from the depths to ring in Dalgard's ears, startling him so that he almost lost his footing. Once again Sssuri made answer vocally but no mind touch. Then they rounded a curve, and the scout was able to see into the heart of the amphibian territory.
The smaller mermen had no difficulty in getting through, but twice Raf's equipment belt caught on projections and he had to fight his way free. They crawled one by one into a ventilation shaft much like the one he had climbed at the Center. Dalgard's whisper reached him. "We are now in the building which houses their sky ship."
"They shall find us with fangs," he promised grimly. "It will be better if they do not find us at all," returned Sssuri. A burning arch of pain encased Dalgard's lower ribs, and his breath came in gusts of hastily sucked air as their flight kept on, down the endless corridor.
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