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Updated: June 22, 2025
I can say this much, there is no listing for anything even remotely akin to this in the Archives." Shann's eyes widened. He absently rubbed the fingers which had held the bone coin if it was a coin back and forth across the torn front of his blouse. That tingle ... did he still feel it? Or was his imagination at work again?
"More likely they are paying attention to our friend back in the valley," Thorvald said dryly, rightly reading Shann's glance to the clouds overhead. "Ought to keep them busy." Clak-claks were meat eaters, only they preferred their chosen prey weak and easy to attack. The imprisoned hound would certainly attract their kind.
Only one Thorvald had ever noticed Shann's existence in the Survey camp, and that had been Garth. Garth Thorvald, a far less impressive one could say "smudged" copy of his brother. Swaggering with an arrogance Ragnar never showed, Garth was a cadet on his first mission, intent upon making Shann realize the unbridgeable gulf between a labor hand and an officer-to-be.
Thorvald loosened the wires which held the younger man to the frame and stood ready to catch him as he slumped forward. And the officer's hold wiped away the last clammy residue of the mist. Though he did not seem able to keep on his feet, Shann's mind was clear. "What happened?" he demanded. "The power." Thorvald was examining him hastily but with attention for every cut and bruise.
The other's fingers fumbled on the band about Shann's slim waist until they gripped tight at his back. He started on into the opening, drawing Thorvald by that hold with him. Luckily, they did not have to crawl far, for shortly past the entrance the fault or vein they were following became a passage high enough for even the tall Thorvald to travel without stooping.
Shann's own hold on the weapon tightened, and the force of the other's pull dragged him partly around. "Let's have that " "Why?" Shann supposed that because it had been the other's well-aimed rock which had put the Throg out of commission permanently, the officer was going to claim their only spoils of war as personal booty, and a hot resentment flowered in the younger man.
And he thought by the way that it moved that it must be flotsam of the storm, buoyant enough to ride the waves with close to cork resiliency. To Shann's dismay his companion began to strip. "What are you going to do?" "Get that." Shann surveyed the water about the rock. The forked tail had sunk just there.
But the seraph nestled into the hollow of Shann's two palms and looked up at him with all the old liquid trust. "Trav! Trav!" He cradled the tiny creature carefully, regarded with joy its feathered body, the curled plumes on its proudly held head, felt the silken patting of those infinitesimal claws against his protecting fingers. Shann sat down in the sand, hardly daring to breathe. Trav again!
Neither of the other's upper limbs stirred, their claws still gripping the small rocks in readiness for throwing. All Shann's knowledge of the alien's history argued against an unarmed advance. The Throg's marksmanship, as borne out by the circle of small bodies, was excellent. And one of those rocks might well thud against his own head, with fatal results.
His dazed attention was outwardly on the alien with the translator, but that inner demand had given him a shock. "Here! Thorvald? Where?" The other struck in again with an urgent demand singing through Shann's brain. "Give us a fix point away from camp but not too far. Quick!" A fix point what did the Survey officer mean?
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