'Then you had better get to work on your hose. We had to nip it to give you air.'
Toshio felt the knife-edged cut. He noticed that both hands were neatly bandaged.
'Was anyone else hurt?' he asked as he felt through his thigh pocket for his repair kit.
'A few minor burns. We enjoyed the fight, after learning you were all right-t. Thank you for telling us about Ssassia. We'd never have looked there had you not been caught and then told us what you found.
'They are cutting her loose now'
Toshio knew he should be grateful to Hikahi for putting the misadventure in that light. By rights he should be getting a tongue-lashing for rashly leaving formation, and almost losing his life.
But Toshio felt too lost to allow himself even gratitude to the dolphin lieutenant. 'I suppose they haven't found Phip-pit?'
'Of him there's been no sign.'
The slow rotation of Kithrup had taken the sun past what would look like four o'clock, Earth time. Low clouds were gathering on the eastern horizon. There was a choppiness to the water that had been absent before.
'There may be a small squall later,' Hikahi said. 'It may be unwise to use Earth instincts on another world, but I think we have nothing to fear…'
Toshio looked up. There was something to the south… He squinted.
There it was again, a flash, and then another. Two tiny bursts of light followed in quick succession, almost invisible against the sea glare.
'How long has that been going on?' he gestured toward the southern sky.
'What do you mean, Toshio?'
'That flashing. Is it lightning?'
The fin's eyes widened and her mouth curled slightly. Hikahi's flukes churned and she rose up in the water to turn first one eye, then the other, toward the south.
'I detect nothing, Sharp-Eyes. Tell me what you see.'
'Multicolored flashes. Bursts of light. Lots of…' Toshio stopped wrapping his air hose. He stared for a moment, trying to remember.
'Hikahi,' he said slowly. 'I think Akkia called me during the fight with the weed. Did you get anything over your set?'
'No I didn't, Toshio. But remember, we fins aren't yet so good at abstract thought while fighting. T-try to recall what he said, please.'
Toshio touched his forehead. The encounter with the weed wasn't something he wanted to think about, right now. It all blended in with his nightmare, a jumbling of colors and noises and confusion.
'I think… I think he said something about wanting us to keep radio silence and come home… something about a space battle going on?'
Hikahi let out a whistling moan and flipped out of the water in a backward dive. She was back immediately, tail churning.
* Close-up
Lock-up
* Go the other way — than up!
Sloppy Trinary There were nuances in Primal Dolphin which Toshio, of couse, couldn't understand. But they sent a thrill down his spine. Hikahi was the last fin he would ever have expected to slip into Primal. As he finished wrapping his air hose, he realized with chagrin what his failure to tell Hikahi earlier might have cost them all.
He slapped his faceplate shut and flopped over to press the buoyancy valve on the sled, checking simultaneously the telltales on his helmet rim. He ran through the pre-dive checklist with a rapidity only a fourth-generation Calafian colonist could have achieved.
The bow of the sled was sinking quickly as the sea erupted to his right. Seven dolphins breached in a spume of water and exhaled breath.
'S-s-sassia's tied to your stern, Toshio. Can you shake your leg?' Keepiru urged. 'Now is no time to dawdle making up t-t-tunes!'
Toshio grimaced. How could Keepiru have fought so hard earlier to save the life of someone he ridiculed so?
He remembered the way Keepiru had torn into the weed, the desperate look in his eye, and the glow it had taken when he saw it. Yet now he was cruel and taunting as ever.
A sharp blast of light flashed in the east, searing the sky all around them. The fins squealed almost as one, and immediately dove — all except Keepiru, who stayed beside Toshio-as the eastern cloudline spat fire into the afternoon sky.
The sled finally sank, but in the last instant Toshio and Keepiru saw a hurtling battle of giants.
A huge, arrowhead-shaped space vessel plummeted down on them, pitted and fiery. Wind-swept trailers of purple smoke boiled out of great gashes in its sides, to be flung back into the needle-narrow shock front of its supersonic flight. The shock wave warped even the shimmer of the great ship's defensive shields, shells of gravity and plasma that sparkled with unhealthful overload.
Two grapnel-shaped destroyers dogged it no more than four ship lengths behind. Beams of accelerated anti-matter flashed from each of the trefoils, hitting their mark twice in terrible explosions.
Toshio was five meters below the surface when the sonic boom hit. It slammed the sled over, and kept it tumbling amid a roar that sounded like a house caving in. The water was a churning maelstrom of bubbles and bodies.
As he struggled with the sled, Toshio thanked Infinity he hadn't been at the surface to hear the battle passing by. At Morgran they had seen ships die. But never this close.
The noise finally settled down to a long, loud growling. Toshio got the sled righted at last.
Ssassia's sad corpse still lay tied to the rear end of the sled. The other fins, too scared or prudent to go above, began taking turns at the small airdomes that lined the bottom rim of the sled. It was Toshio's job to keep the sled still. It wasn't easy in the churning water, but he did it without a thought.
They were near the sloping western edge of a huge, grayish metal-mound. Sea-plants grew at intervals along its side. They looked nothing like the strangle weed, but that was no guarantee.
More and more, Toshio was coming to dislike being here. He wished he was home, where the dangers were simple, and easily handled — kelp Wingers and island turtles and the like — and where there were no ETs.
'Are you all right?' Hikahi asked as she came by. The dolphin lieutenant radiated calm.
'I'm fine,' he grumped. 'It's a good thing I didn't wait any longer to tell you about Akki's message, though. You have every reason to be mad at me.'
'Don't be silly. Now we head back. Brookida is fatigued, so I've lashed him under an airdome. You will forge ahead with the scouts. We'll follow. Now t-take off!'
'Aye, sir.' Toshio took his bearings and pushed the throttle. The thrusters hummed as the sled accelerated. Several of the stronger swimmers maintained pace alongside, as the mound slowly receded on the right.
It had taken them five minutes or so to get started. They were barely under way before the tsunami hit.
It was not a huge wave, merely the first of a series of ripples spreading from a point where a pebble had plunked into the sea. The pebble happened to be a space ship half a kilometer long. It had plunked, at supersonic speed, a mere fifty kilometers away.
The wave jerked the sled upward and sideways, almost shaking the boy off. A cloud of sea debris, torn-up plants, and dead and living fish whirled about him like clods in a cyclone. The roar was deafening.
Toshio clutched the controls desperately. Somehow, against incredible momentum, he managed slowly to drive the prow of the sled up and away from the wave front. Just in time, he thrust out of the curling, downward circulation and sent the tiny craft flying along the direction the current wanted to go. Eastward.
An ash-gray form speared past him on his left. In a flash he recognized Keepiru, struggling to keep control in the churning waters. The fin squeaked something indecipherable in Trinary, then was gone.
Some instinct guided Toshio, or perhaps it was the sonar screen, now a mess of jumbled snow, but still bearing the faint, fading traces of the terrain map it had shown only moments before. Toshio forced the sled to bear to the left as hard as possible.
The emergency-power roar of the engines changed to a scream as he suddenly slewed hard to port in desperation. The huge, dark bulk of a metal-mound loomed ahead! Already he could feel undertow as the wave began to form breakers to his right, curling as the cycloid rode up the sloping shore of the island.
Toshio wanted to cry out, but the struggle took all of his breath. He clenched his teeth and counted as the terrible seconds passed.
The sled drove past the cliff-like northern shore amid a cloud of bubbles. Though he was still underwater, he could look downward a dozen meters to his right, and see the lower beach plants of the island. He was riding in the center of a tall mound of water.
Then he was past! The sea opened up and one of the deep oceanic rills lay beneath him, dark and seemingly bottomless. Toshio slammed the bow planes forward and vented his tanks. The sled plummeted faster than he had ever dived before.
His stern pulled forward precariously. Toshio passed clouds of falling debris. The darkness and cold came up at him, and he sought the chill as a refuge.
The valley sloped below him as he brought the sled to a quiet depth. He could sense the tsunami rolling by above him. The sea plants all around waved in an obviously unaccustomed manner. A slow rain of falling rubbish drifted down on all sides, but at least the water wasn't trying to beat him to death anymore. Toshio flattened out his dive and headed toward the valley center, away from everything. Then he let himself sag in an agony of bruised muscles and adrenalin reaction.
He blessed the tiny, man-designed symbiotes that were right now scavenging his blood of excess nitrogen, preventing narcosis raptures at this depth.
Toshio cranked the engines down to one-quarter, and they sighed, sounding almost relieved. The lamps on the sled's display were mostly green, surprisingly, after the treatment the sled had received.
One of the telltales caught his eye — it indicated an airdome in operation. Suddenly Toshio noticed a faint, singing sound; it was a whistling of patience and reverence.
* The Ocean is as is as is -
the endless sigh of dreaming -
