begun this fantastic adventure.
A sleek dark body broke water and the dolphin grin was exposed as Tino-rau answered his call. Though Ross's communication powers with the two finned scouts was very far from Karara's, he caught the message in part and swung around to face the Rovers who had crowded after him.
'We have a way now of learning more about your enemies.'
'A boat—it comes without sail or oars!' One of the crew pointed.
Ross waved vigorously, but no hand replied from the skiff. Though it came steadily onward, the three cruisers its apparent goal.
'Karara!' Ross called.
Then side by side with Tino-rau were two wet heads, two masked faces showing as the swimmers trod water—Karara and Loketh.
'Drop ropes!' Ross gave that order as if he rather than Torgul commanded. And the Captain himself was one of those who moved to obey.
Loketh came out of the sea first and as he scrambled over the rail he had his sword ready, looking from Ross to Torgul. The Terran held up empty hands and smiled.
'No trouble now.'
Loketh snapped up his mask. 'So the Sea Maid said the finned ones reported. Yet before, these thirsted for your blood on their blades. What magic have you worked?'
'None. Just the truth has been discovered.' Ross reached for Karara's hand as she came nimbly up the rope, swung her across the rail to the deck where she stood unmasked, brushing back her hair and looking around with a lively curiosity.
'Karara, this is Captain Torgul,' Ross introduced the Rover commander who was staring round-eyed at the girl. 'Karara is she who swims with the finned ones, and they obey her.' Ross gestured to Tino-rau. 'It is Taua who brings the skiff?' he asked the Polynesian.
She nodded. 'We followed from the gate. Then Loketh came and said that ... that....' She paused and then added, 'But you do not seem to be in danger. What has happened?'
'Much. Listen—this is important. There is trouble at an island ahead. The Baldies were there; they murdered the kin of these men. The odds are they reached there by some form of sub. Send one of the dolphins to see what is happening and if they are still there....'
Karara asked no more questions, but whistled to the dolphin. With a flip of tail Tino-rau took off.
Since they could make no concrete plan of action, the cruiser captains agreed to wait for Tino-rau's report and to cruise well out of sight of the fairing harbor until it came.
'This belief in magic,' Ross remarked to Karara, 'has one advantage. The natives seem able to take in their stride the fact the dolphins will scout for us.'
'They have lived their lives on the sea; for it they must have a vast respect. Perhaps they know, as did my people, that the ocean has many secrets, some of which are never revealed except to the forms of life which claim their homes there. But, even if you discover this Baldy sub, what will the Rovers be able to do about it?'
'I don't know—yet.' Ross could not tell why he clung to the idea that they could do anything to strike back at the superior alien force. He only knew that he was not yet willing to relinquish the thought that in some way they could.
'And Ashe?'
Yes, Ashe....
'I don't know.' It hurt Ross to admit that.
'Back there, what really happened at the gate?' he asked Karara. 'All at once the dolphins seemed to go crazy.'
'I think for a moment or two they did. You felt nothing?'
'No.'
'It was like a fire slashing through the head. Some protective device of the Foanna, I think.'
A mental defense to which he was not sensitive. Which meant that he might be able to breach that gate if none of the others could. But he had to be there first. Suppose, just suppose Torgul could be persuaded that this attack on the gutted Kyn Add was useless. Would the Rover commander take them back to the Foanna keep? Or with the dolphins and the skiff could Ross himself return to make the try?
That he could make it on his own, Ross doubted. Excitement and will power had buoyed him up throughout the past Hawaikan day and night. Now fatigue closed in, past his conditioning and the built-in stimulant of the Terran rations, to enclose him in a groggy haze. He had been warned against this reaction, but that was just another item he had pushed out of his conscious mind. The last thing he remembered now was seeing Karara move through a fuzzy cloud.
Voices argued somewhere beyond, the force of that argument carried more by tone than any words Ross could understand. He was pulled sluggishly out of a slumber too deep for any dream to trouble, and lifted heavy eyelids to see Karara once again. There was a prick in his arm—or was that part of the unreality about him?
'—four—five—six—' she was counting, and Ross found himself joining in:
'—seven—eight—nine—ten!'
On reaching 'ten' he was fully awake and knew that she had applied the emergency procedure they had been drilled in using, giving him a pep shot. When Ross sat up on the narrow bunk there was a light in the cabin and no sign of day outside the porthole. Torgul, Vistur, the two other cruiser captains, all there ... and Jazia.
Ross swung his feet to the deck. A pep-shot headache was already beginning, but would wear off soon. There was, however, a concentration of tension in the cabin, and something must have driven Karara to use the drug.
'What is it?'
Karara fitted the medical kit into the compact carrying case.
'Tino-rau has returned. There
'Then they are still there.' Ross accepted the dolphin's report without question. Neither of the scouts would make a mistake in those matters. Energy waves beamed shoreward—power for some type of unit the Baldies were using? Suppose the Rovers could find a way of cutting off the power.
'The Sea Maid has told us that this ship sits on the bottom of the harbor. If we could board it—' began Torgul.
'Yes!' Vistur brought his fist down against the end of the bunk on which the Terran still sat, jarring the dull, drug-borne pain in Ross's head. 'Take it—then turn it against its crew!'
There was an eagerness in all Rover faces. For that was a game the Hawaikan seafarers understood: Take an enemy ship and turn its armament against its companions in a fleet. But that plan would not work out. Ross had a healthy respect for the technical knowledge of the galactic invaders. Of course he, Karara, even Loketh might be able to reach the sub. Whether they could then board her was an entirely different matter.
Now the Polynesian girl shook her head. 'The broadcast there—Tino-rau rates it as lethal. There are dead fish floating in the bay. He had warning at the reef entrance. Without a shield, there will be no way of getting in.'
'Might as well wish for a depth bomb,' Ross began and then stopped.
'You have thought of something?'
'A shield—' Ross repeated her words. It was so wild this thought of his, and one which might have no chance of working. He knew almost nothing about the resources of the invaders. Could that broadcast which protected the sub and perhaps activated the weapons of the invaders ashore be destroyed? A wall of fish—sea life herded in there as a shield ... wild, yes, even so wild it might work. 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! 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
