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Updated: June 26, 2025
"Not a snake-devil," Dalgard deduced. As far as he knew only the huge reptiles or their smaller flying-dragon cousins preyed upon animals. But a snake-devil would have left no remains of anything as small as a hopper, one mouthful which could not satisfy its gnawing hunger. And a flying dragon would have picked the bones clean. "Them!" Sssuri's reply was clipped. "They hunt for sport."
The colony scout supplied the only two explanations he had, sending his own thought out questing. But as usual he could not hope to equal the more sensitive merman whose race had always used that form of communication. "Those who have long haunted the darkness," was the only reply he could get. But Sssuri's actions were far more indicative of danger.
Nor could he distinguish more than a very shadowy glimpse of forms which glided close to the ground with an unpleasant sinuosity. "Ahhhhh!" Again Sssuri's paean of triumph. There was the grate of unwilling metal forced to move, a puff of air redolent with the sea striking their bodies in chill threat, the brightness of violet light stepped up to a point far beyond the lamps in the corridor.
Sssuri's claws were clicking over the surface of the hatch, seeking the secret of its latch. Panting, Dalgard leaned against the opposite wall. Just as a protest formed in his mind he heard something else, the pad of feet, many feet, echoing down the corridor. And somehow he was able now to look.
Having so broken the other's absorption he asked a question: "Would it not be well, brother of the knife, if with the rising sun you returned to the sea and struck out to join your tribesmen, leaving me here to watch until you return?" Sssuri's answer came with a speed which suggested that he, too, had been considering that problem. "We shall see what happens with the sun's rising.
The runners in the night that furred monkey race of hunters who combed the moonless dark of Astra when most of the higher fauna were asleep were very distantly related to Sssuri's species, though the gap between them was that between highly civilized man and the jungle ape.
And the presence of earth falls here and there, over which they stumbled and clawed their way, led him to consider the wisdom of keeping on to what might be a dead end. But his trust in Sssuri's judgment was great, and as the merman plowed forward with every appearance of confidence, he continued to trot along without complaint. They snatched moments of rest, taking turns at guard.
They stole any small bright object which aroused their interest. But they could also be persuaded to trade, and they usually had no fear of either colonist or merman. Sssuri's furred face might not convey much emotion, but by all the signs Dalgard could read he knew that the merman was as startled as he by the strange behavior of the grass dweller.
They are not in the city now," the merman declared with certainty. "But they will come again." "How do you know that?" Sssuri's hand swept about to include the wealth around them. "They have taken some, perhaps to them the most needful. But they will not be able to resist gathering the rest. Surely they will return, perhaps not once but many times. Until " "Until they come to stay."
A man would have to be dying of thirst, Dalgard thought, before he would palm up any of the stagnant water from the passage pools. He drifted off into a troubled sleep in which he fled beneath a sky which was a giant lid in the hand of an unseen enemy, a lid which was slowly lowered to crush him flat. He awoke with a start to find Sssuri's cool, scaled fingers stroking his shoulder.
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