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By our customs, yes, they are cowards. But what care they for our judgments? Did we think of the salkars when we used them to force the lagoon? No, they were only beasts to be our tools. So now it is the same with us, except that we know what they intend. And we shall not be such obedient tools.
"These star men" Ross set down the cup, tried to choose the most telling words in his limited Hawaikan vocabulary "possess weapons and powers you can not dream of, that you have no defense against. Back at Kyn Add we were lucky. The salkars attacked their sub and halted the broadcast powering their flamers. Otherwise we could not have taken them, even though we were many against their few.
Almost helplessly beached, they continued to dig into the yielding sand with their flippers in a vain effort to pursue the aliens. Ross skirted the clamoring barrier of salkars and headed for the fairing. A neck snapped about; a head was lowered in his direction. He smelled the rank stench of reptile combined with burned flesh.
The rocks among which they crouched were a rough harborage from which they could see the shore as a dark blot. But they were well away from the break in the reef through which, if their outlandish plan succeeded, the salkars would come. "A one-in-a-million chance!" Ross commented as he put up his mask. "Was not the whole Time Agent project founded on just such chances?"
Ross had not realized that the salkars could operate out of what he thought was their natural element, but this wild-eyed dragon was plainly bent on reaching its tormentors. For a moment or two the Baldies continued to front the creature, almost, Ross thought, as if they could not believe that their weapons had failed them.
Torgul drew lines with the point of his sword on the table top. "And here is Kyn Add. Salkars have a great hunger at this time. Show them bait and they will follow; especially will they follow swimming bait." There were a great many holes in the plan which had only a halfway chance of working. But the Rovers seized upon it with enthusiasm, and so it was set up.
But Ross was also certain that a successful cruiser commander must possess a level-headed leaven of intelligence and be a strategist of parts. The Hawaikan force needed a key which would open the Baldy base as the salkars had opened the lagoon. And all they had to aid them was a handful of facts gained from their prisoners.
Adjusting his mask, Ross dropped into the water, cutting away from the reef and then turning to swim parallel with it. Tino-rau matched him as he went, guiding Ross to a second break in the reef, toward the shore some distance from where the conflict of the salkars still made a hideous din in the night.
Salkars driven in ... they might even wreck this undersea ship with their weight and anger." "And you can find these salkars near-by?" Ross began to take fire. That dragon which had hunted him the bulk of the thing was well above any other sea life he had seen here. And to its ferocity he could give testimony. "At the spawning reefs.
Ross outlined the idea, speaking more to Karara than to the Rovers. "I do not know," she said doubtfully. "That would need many fish, too many to herd and drive " "Not fish," Torgul cut in, "salkars!" "Salkars?" "You have seen the bow carving on this ship. That is a salkar. Such are larger than a hundred fish!
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