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Had they been sucked up and out in the inferno they had created with their unleashing of energy against the Baldies' installation? "Ross look!" Karara's cry, her upflung arm directed his attention aloft. Under the sullen gathering of the storm a sphere arose as a bubble might seek the surface of a pool before breaking. A ship a Baldy ship taking off from the ruined citadel!
Was this what they had meant when they warned of a change which might come to those who followed them into the ritual of this place? Ross looked from the girl to Ashe with searching intensity. No, he could see no outward change in Gordon. And he felt none within himself. "Come!" Some of Karara's old impetuousness returned as she tugged at them, urging them to their feet and drawing them with her.
"Look farther ... spread out," the sonic clicked. Within a matter of minutes the dolphins reported new remains two more saucers, each larger than the first, set in a line on the ocean floor, pointing directly to Karara's Finger Island. Cautiously explored, these were discovered to be free of any but harmless life; they stirred up no more dragons.
To study them was danger, he knew without being warned. Karara's nails bit into his flesh and he welcomed that pain; it kept him alert, conscious of what was Ross Murdock, holding him safely apart from something greater than he, but entirely alien. The designs and patterns were lines on a pavement.
Then she spoke: "Broken stone holds no value. Take hands, my brothers, my sister, it is time we go hence." Karara's hand in Ross's right, Ashe's in his left, and both linked to Ynvalda in turn. Then they were indeed elsewhere, in a courtyard where bodies lay flaccid under the drenching downpour of the rain.
A sleek dark body broke water and the dolphin grin was exposed as Tino-rau answered his call. Though Ross's communication powers with the two finned scouts was very far from Karara's, he caught the message in part and swung around to face the Rovers who had crowded after him. "We have a way now of learning more about your enemies." "A boat it comes without sail or oars!" One of the crew pointed.
At first, I think, he was pleased ... happy." "But why?" The girl shook her head. "I do not know; I can only feel. Wait!" Her hand rose in imperious command. She did not rise to her feet, but crawled on hands and knees to the edge of the ledge. Both dolphins were there, raising their heads well out of the water, their actions expressing unusual excitement. "Ross!" Karara's voice rang loudly.
He enjoyed the hours when he buckled on gill-pack and took to the sea with those two ten-foot, black-and-silver escorts sharing the action. But Karara ... Karara's presence was a different matter altogether. The Agents' teams had always been strictly masculine.
Karara's hands went out, and the slender fingers of one of the Foanna lifted, closed about firm, brown Terran flesh. Ashe was doing the same! Ross thought he cried out, but he could not be sure, as he watched Karara's head begin to sway in concert with her Foanna partner, her black hair springing out from her shoulders to rival the rippling strands of the alien's.
He comforted himself with the knowledge that no agent was able to absorb every primitive skill, and Karara's people had explored the Pacific in out-rigger canoes hardly more stable than their present vessel, navigating by currents and stars. Smothering his feeling of helplessness and the slow anger that roused in him, the Terran busied himself with study of a sort.
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