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He would have liked to have taken one with him for investigation, but it was out of the question to pry it off that scaled limb. Sssuri straightened up from his last gruesome bit of stage-setting with a sigh of relief. "Go ahead." He pointed to one of the other archways. "I will confuse the trail."
Trying not to speculate on the amount of air he could carry in the cylinders, Dalgard fastened on the mask, adjusted the air tube, and sucked. Air flowed he could breathe! Only for how long? Sssuri, seeing that his companion was fully provided for, worked at the bar locking the sea hatch.
And this one was enterprising. In the end it delivered three more loads of fruit from its burrow and took away all the beads, both parties well pleased with their bargains. Sssuri splashed out of the sea with as little ado as he had entered. On the end of his spear twisted a fish.
Dalgard obeyed, treading as lightly as he could, avoiding all stretches in which he could leave a clear print. Sssuri ran lightly back and forth mixing the few impressions to the best of his ability. They backtracked to the river, retrieved the boat and recrossed, to leave the city behind and strike into the open country beyond its sinister walls.
The skiff was rounded at bow and stern with very shallow sides and displayed a tendency to whirl about in the current, until Sssuri, with his instinctive knowledge of watercraft, used one of the queerly shaped paddles tucked away in the bottom to both steer and propel them.
"So, long ago which may be months, weeks, or just days there came death out of the sea, and those who lived past its coming fled " Dalgard repeated the scanty information Sssuri had won for them the night before by patient hour-long coaxing. "What kind of death?" Sssuri's great eyes, somber and a little tired, met his. "To us there is only one kind of death to be greatly feared."
But before they jabbed him into movement with the muzzles of their weapons, Dalgard located at last the source of that disturbing mental touch, not only located it, but in some manner broke through the existing barrier between the strange mind and his and communicated as clearly with it as he might have with Sssuri. And the excitement of his discovery almost led to self-betrayal! Terran!
"There are islands off the coast many islands " Sssuri caught him up. "It is in my mind that we shall find our door on one of those. But run now, knife brother, for those at our heels awake and thirst for flesh and blood. They have decided that we are not to be feared but may be run down for their pleasure." Dalgard weighed his knife in his hand.
By the faint and limited light of the purple disks he could see little or nothing. An army might creep there undetected. "But " His protest was in answer to the merman's seeming unconcern. Sssuri at the first intimation that the hunters were behind them had shown wariness. Now he did not appear to care. "They had fed," he replied. "Scouts follow because we are something new and thus suspect.
And when he had watched them intently it had seemed that something happened inside his mind and he knew, here and there, a word, a fragment of alien thought just as he normally communicated with the cub who was Sssuri or the hoppers of the field. And his surprise had been so great that he had gone running to his father with the cube and the story of what happened when one watched it.
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