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Updated: September 18, 2025
But there was no harm in visiting this city, and certainly he must make some report to the Council about what might be taking place here, especially if Those Others were in residence or visited the site. Sssuri still kept to the fields, avoiding the highway, until mid-morning, and then he made an abrupt turn and brought them out on the soil-drifted surface of the road.
But he had no idea which, or which combination, would do it. And here Sssuri could be no help. The mermen had made great strides forward in biological and mental sciences, but mechanics was a closed section of learning because of their enforced habitat under the sea, and of machines they knew less than the colonists.
The presence of those two-horned creatures, so like the pictures he had seen of Terran horses, was insurance that the snake-devils did not hunt in this district, for the swift-footed duocorns were never found within a day's journey of their archenemies. Late afternoon faded into the long summer twilight and still Sssuri kept on. As yet they had come across no traces of Those Others.
Sssuri, his fur sleeked tight to his body, waded ashore, shook himself free of excess water, and turned immediately to study the wall of the cliff which guarded the interior of the island. This was one of a chain of such isles, Dalgard noted, now that he had had time to look about him.
The first expedition sent out from Homeport after the landing of the Terran refugee ship had been shot down by robot-controlled guns still set against some long-dead invader. Would this territory be so guarded? If so they had better go carefully now Sssuri suddenly struck off at an angle, heading not northeast now, but directly north.
We may flee into the sea once more, and there live as did our fathers' fathers, and they dare not follow us there " "Who knows?" It was Sssuri who raised that objection. "With their ancient knowledge once more theirs, even the depths of the sea may not be ours much longer. Do they not know how to ride upon the air?" The knot of mer-warriors stirred. Several spears thudded butt down into the sand.
" down to the lower levels " the thought came slowly, forced out by a weakening will. "Lower levels roads to the sea " That was what Dalgard had been hoping for, some passage which would run seaward and so to safety, such as he had found with Sssuri in that other city. "What are we hunting?" the stranger broke in, and Dalgard realized that perhaps the other did not follow the mind talk.
The buildings on this side of the river were not set so closely together. Each, standing some two or three stories high, was encircled by green, as if this had been a section of private dwellings. They pulled the light boat out of the water and Sssuri pointed at the open door of the nearest house. "In there " Dalgard agreed that it might be well to hide the craft against the return.
All in all, Dalgard thought, watching Sssuri flake the firm pink flesh from the fish, he might deem himself lucky and this quest ordained. He went off to hack out armloads of grass and fashion the sleep mats for the sun-warmed ground. They had eaten and were lounging in content on the soft sand just beyond the curl of the waves when Sssuri lifted his head from his folded arms as if he listened.
That his own great-grandfather Dard Nordis, who had been one of the first of the mutant line of sensitives, had discovered that. And Dalgard, impressed by Forken, by his father's concern, and by all the circumstances of that day, had never forgotten nor lost that warning. "We cannot hope to stop them," Sssuri pointed out.
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