The travelers had sighted the cove from the sea--a narrow bite into
the land, the first break in the cliff wall which protected the
interior of this continent from the pounding of the ocean. And,
although it was still but midafternoon, Dalgard pointed the outrigger
into the promised shelter, the dip of his steering paddle swinging in
harmony with that wielded by Sssuri in the bow of their narrow,
wave-riding craft.
The two voyagers were neither of the same race nor of the same
species, yet they worked together without words, as if they had
established some bond which gave them a rapport transcending the need
for speech.
Dalgard Nordis was a son of the Colony; his kind had not originated on
this planet. He was not as tall nor as heavily built as those Terran
outlaw ancestors who had fled political enemies across the Galaxy to
establish a foothold on Astra, and there were other subtle differences
between his generation and the parent stock.
Thin and wiry, his skin was brown from the gentle toasting of the
summer sun, making the fairness of his closely cropped hair even more
noticeable. At his side was his long bow, carefully wrapped in
water-resistant flying-dragon skin, and from the belt which supported
his short breeches of tanned duocorn hide swung a two-foot blade--half
wood-knife, half sword. To the eyes of his Terran forefathers he would
have presented a barbaric picture. In his own mind he was amply clad
and armed for the man-journey which was both his duty and his
heritage to make before he took his place as a full adult in the
Council of Free Men.
In contrast to Dalgard's smooth skin, Sssuri was covered with a fluffy
pelt of rainbow-tipped gray fur. In place of the human's steel blade,
he wore one of bone, barbed and ugly, as menacing as the spear now
resting in the bottom of the outrigger. And his round eyes watched the
sea with the familiarity of one whose natural home was beneath those
same waters.
The mouth of the cove was narrow, but after they negotiated it they
found themselves in a pocket of bay, sheltered and calm, into which
trickled a lazy stream. The gray-blue of the seashore sand was only a
fringe beyond which was turf and green stuff. Sssuri's nostril flaps
expanded as he tested the warm breeze, and Dalgard was busy
cataloguing scents as they dragged their craft ashore. They could not
have found a more perfect place for a camp site.
Once the canoe was safely beached, Sssuri picked up his spear and,
without a word or backward glance, waded out into the sea,
disappearing into the depths, while his companion set about his share
of camp tasks. It was still early in the summer--too early to expect
to find ripe fruit. But Dalgard rummaged in his voyager's bag and
brought out a half-dozen crystal beads. He laid these out on a
flat-topped stone by the stream, seating himself cross-legged beside
it.
To the onlooker it would appear that the traveler was meditating. A
wide-winged living splotch of color fanned by overhead; there was a
distant yap of sound. Dalgard neither looked nor listened. But perhaps
a minute later what he awaited arrived. A hopper, its red-brown fur
sleek and gleaming in the sun, its eternal curiosity drawing it,
peered cautiously from the bushes. Dalgard made mind touch. The
hoppers did not really think--at least not on the levels where
communication was possible for the colonists--but sensations of
friendship and good will could be broadcast, primitive ideas
exchanged.
The small animal, its humanlike front pawhands dangling over its
creamy vest, came out fully into the open, black eyes flicking from
the motionless Dalgard to the bright beads on the rock. But when one
of those paws shot out to snatch the treasure, the traveler's hand was
already cupped protectingly over the hoard. Dalgard formed a mental
picture and beamed it at the twenty-inch creature before him. The
hopper's ears twitched nervously, its blunt nose wrinkled, and then it
bounded back into the brush, a weaving line of moving grass marking
its retreat.
Dalgard withdrew his hand from the beads. Through the years the Astran
colonists had come to recognize the virtues of patience. Perhaps the
mutation had begun before they left their native world. Or perhaps the
change in temperament and nature had occurred in the minds and bodies
of that determined handful of refugees as they rested in the frozen
cold sleep while their ship bore them through the wide, uncharted
reaches of deep space for centuries of Terran time. How long that
sleep had lasted the survivors had never known. But those who had
awakened on Astra were different.
And their sons and daughters, and the sons and daughters of two more
generations were warmed by a new sun, nourished by food grown in alien
soil, taught the mind contact by the amphibian mermen with whom the
space voyagers had made an early friendship--each succeeding child
more attuned to the new home, less tied to the far-off world he had
never seen or would see. The colonists were not of the same breed as
their fathers, their grandfathers, or great-grandfathers. So, with
other gifts, they had also a vast, time-consuming patience, which
could be a weapon or a tool, as they pleased--not forgetting the
instantaneous call to action which was their older heritage.
The hopper returned. On the rock beside the shining things it
coveted, it dropped dried and shriveled fruit. Dalgard's fingers
separated two of the gleaming marbles, rolled them toward the animal,
who scooped them up with a chirp of delight. But it did not leave.
Instead it peered intently at the rest of the beads. Hoppers had their
own form of intelligence, though it might not compare with that of
humans. 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. His fur, slicked flat to his
strongly muscled body, began to dry in the air and fluff out while the
sun awoke prismatic lights on the scales which covered his hands and
feet. He dispatched the fish and cleaned it neatly, tossing the offal
back into the water, where some shadowy things arose to tear at the
unusual bounty.
"This is not hunting ground." His message formed in Dalgard's mind.
"That finned one had no fear of me."
"We were right then in heading north; this is new land." Dalgard got
to his feet.
On either side, the cliffs, with their alternate bands of red, blue,
yellow, and white strata, walled in this pocket. They would make far
better time keeping to the sea lanes, where it was not necessary to
climb. And it was Dalgard's cherished plan to add more than just an
inch or two to the explorers' map in the Council Hall.
Each of the colony males was expected to make his man-journey of
discovery some time between his eighteenth and twentieth year. He went
alone or, if he formed an attachment with one of the mermen near his
own age, accompanied only by his knife brother. And from knowledge so
gained the still-small group of exiles added to and expanded their
information about their new home.
Caution was drilled into them. For they were not the first masters of
Astra, nor were they the masters now. There were the ruins left by
Those Others, the race who had populated this planet until their own
wars had completed their downfall. And the mermen, with their
traditions of slavery and dark beginnings in the experimental pens of
the older race, continued to insist that across the sea--on the
unknown western continent--Those Others still held onto the remnants
of a degenerate civilization. Thus the explorers from Homeport went
out by ones and twos and used the fauna of the land as a means of
gathering information.
Hoppers could remember yesterday only dimly, and instinct took care of
tomorrow. But what happened today sped from hopper to hopper and could
warn by mind touch both merman and human. If one of the dread
snake-devils of the interior was on the hunting trail, the hoppers
sped the warning. Their vast curiosity brought them to the fringe of
any disturbance, and they passed the reason for it along. Dalgard knew
there were a thousand eyes at his service whenever he wanted them.
There was little chance of being taken by surprise, no matter how
dangerous this journey north might be.
"The city--" He formed the words in his mind even as he spoke them
aloud. "How far are we from it?"
The merman hunched his slim shoulders in the shrug of his race. "Three
days' travel, maybe five. And it"--though his furred face displayed no
readable emotion, the sensation of distaste was plain--"was one of the
accursed ones. To such we have not returned since the days of falling
fire--"
Dalgard was well acquainted with the ruins which lay not many miles
from Homeport. And he knew that that sprawling, devastated metropolis
was not taboo to the merman. But this other mysterious settlement he
had recently heard of was still shunned by the sea people. Only
Sssuri and a few others of youthful years would consider a journey to
explore the long-forbidden section their traditions labeled as
dangerous land.
The belief that he was about to venture into questionable territory
had made Dalgard evasive when he reported his plans to the Elders
three days earlier. But since such trips were, by tradition, always
thrusts into the unknown, they had not questioned him too much. 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. Like all those of his species, his
vestigial ears were hidden deep in his fur and no longer served any
real purpose; the mind touch served him in their stead. Dalgard caught
his thought, though what had aroused his companion was too rare a
thread to trouble his less acute senses.
"Runners in the dark--"