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It now seemed as if his guide were eager to get him away. It was when they reached the street level that the officer did pause by one door, beckoning Raf imperiously to join him. The Terran obeyed reluctantly and was almost sick. He was staring down at a dead, very dead body. By the stained rags still clinging to it, it was one of the aliens, a noble, not one of the black-clad warriors.
This tribe knows not my people, save by rumor. We wait." Raf looked over the ranks of the sea folk. The light came from globes borne by every twentieth warrior, a globe in which something that gave off phosphorescent gleams swam around and around. The spears which each merman carried were slender and wickedly barbed, the knives almost sword length.
Hobart swung around. "Somehow the balance of power has changed," he observed, "in their favor. I'd give anything to know more about that prisoner of theirs. You're sure it wasn't one of the furry people?" he asked Raf, as if hoping against hope that the pilot would reply in doubt. "Yes, sir." Raf hesitated.
I ben a-buyin' pots en pans en vittles, as I got a chanst, en a-patchin' up de raf' nights when " "WHAT raft, Jim?" "Our ole raf'." "You mean to say our old raft warn't smashed all to flinders?" "No, she warn't.
Instead he waved the Terran to join his own party. And since Raf had no reason not to, he did. Leaving the dead, both alien and enemy, where they had fallen, the warriors took another way out of the underground maze, a way which brought them out into a street running to the river. Here the party spread out, paying close attention to the pavement, as if they were engaged in tracking something.
Yet he was impressed now by no feeling that the officer, eagerly trying to make contact, was a degenerate member of a dying race. In fact, as Raf glanced at the aliens about the room, he was conscious of an alertness, of a suppressed energy which suggested a young and vigorous people.
But if we find their boat we can put ALL of 'em in a bad fix for the sheriff 'll get 'em. Quick hurry! I'll hunt the labboard side, you hunt the stabboard. You start at the raft, and " "Oh, my lordy, lordy! RAF'? Dey ain' no raf' no mo'; she done broke loose en gone I en here we is!" WELL, I catched my breath and most fainted. Shut up on a wreck with such a gang as that!
He says: "I was a-listenin' to all de talk, en I slips into de river en was gwyne to shove for sho' if dey come aboard. Den I was gwyne to swim to de raf' agin when dey was gone. But lawsy, how you did fool 'em, Huck! Dat WUZ de smartes' dodge! I tell you, chile, I'spec it save' ole Jim ole Jim ain't going to forgit you for dat, honey." Then we talked about the money.
That warning, in the slang current when they had left Terra, was reassuring simply because it was of the earth he knew. Raf grinned. But he did not head toward the roof opening and the ramp inside the building.
At the other end of the room Lablet and Hobart were trying to communicate with the nobles about them, while Soriki, a small palm recorder in his hand, was making a tape strip of the proceedings. Raf glanced from one of his neighbors to the other.
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