Startide Rising

1 ::: Toshio

Fins had been making wisecracks about human beings for thousands of years. They had always found men terribly funny. The fact that humanity had meddled with their genes and taught them engineering hadn't done much to change their attitude.

Fins were still smart-alecks.

Toshio watched the small instrument panel of his seasled, pretending to check the depth gauge. The sled thrummed along at a constant ten meters below the surface. There were no adjustments to be made, yet he concentrated on the panel as Keepiru swam up alongside undoubtedly to start another round of teasing.

"Little Hands, whistle!" The sleek, gray cetacean did a barrel roll to Toshio's right, then drew nearer to eye the boy casually. "Whistle us a tune about shipsss and space and going home!"

Keepiru's voice, echoing from a complex set of chambers under his skull, rumbled like the groaning of a bassoon. He could just as well have imitated an oboe, or a tenor sax.

"Well, Little Hands? Where is your sssong?"

Keepiru was making sure the rest of the party could hear. The other fins swam quietly, but Toshio could tell they were listening. He was glad that Hikahi, the leader of the expedition, was far ahead, scouting. It would be far worse if she were here and ordered Keepiru to leave him alone. Nothing Keepiru said could match the shame of being protected like a helpless child.

Keepiru rolled lazily, belly up, next to the boy's sled, kicking slow fluke strokes to stay easily abreast of Toshio's machine. In the crystal-clear water of Kithrup, everything seemed strangely refracted. The coral-like peaks of the metal-mounds shimmered as though mountains seen through the haze of along valley. Drifting yellow tendrils of dangle-weed hung from the surface.

Keepiru's gray skin had a phosphorescent sheen, and the needle-sharp teeth in his long, narrow, vee mouth shone with a teasing cruelty that had to be magnified… if not by the water, then by Toshio's own imagination.

How could a fin be so mean?

"Won't you sing for us, Little Hands? Sing us a song that will buy us all fish-brew when we finally get off this sssocalled planet and find a friendly port! Whistle to make the Dreamers dream of land!"

Above the tiny whine of his air-recycler, Toshio's ears buzzed with embarrassment. At any moment, he was sure, Keepiru would stop calling him Little Hands and start using the new nickname he had chosen: "Great Dreamer."

It was bad enough to be taunted for having made the mistake of whistling when accompanying an exploration crew of fins — they had greeted his absentminded melody with razzberries and chittering derision — but to be mockingly addressed by a title almost always reserved for great musicians or humpback whales… it was almost more than he could bear.

"I don't feel like singing right now, Keepiru. Why don't you go bother somebody else?" Toshio felt a small sense of victory in managing to keep a quaver out of his voice.

To Toshio's relief, Keepiru merely squeaked something high and fast in gutter Trinary, almost Primal Dolphin — that in itself a form of insult. Then the dolphin arched and shot away to surface for air.

The water on all sides was bright and blue. Shimmering Kithrupan fish flicked past with scaled backs that faceted the light like drifting, frosted leaves. All around were the various colors and textures of metal. The morning sunshine penetrated the clear, steady sea to glimmer off the peculiar life forms of this strange and inevitably deadly world.

Toshio had no eye for the beauty of Kithrup's waters. Hating the planet, the crippled ship that had brought him here, and the fins who were his fellow castaways, he drifted into a poignantly satisfying rehearsal of the scathing retorts he should have said to Keepiru.

"If you're so good, Keepiru, why don't you whistle us up some vanadium!" Or, "I see no point in wasting a human song on a dolphin audience, Keepiru."

In his imagination the remarks were satisfyingly effective. In the real world, Toshio knew, he could never say anything like that.

First of all, it was the cetacean, not the anthropoid, whose vocalizings were legal tender in a quarter of the spaceports in the galaxy. And while it was the mournful ballads of the larger cousins, the whales, that brought the real prices, Keepiru's kin could buy intoxicants on any of a dozen worlds merely by exercising their lungs.

Anyway, it would be a terrible mistake to try to pull human rank on any of the crew of the Streaker. Old Hannes Suessi, one of the other six humans aboard, had warned him about that just after they had left Neptune, at the beginning of the voyage.

"Try it and see what happens," the mechanic had suggested. "They'll laugh so hard, and so will I, if I have the good luck to be there when you do. Likely as not, one of them will take a nip at you for good measure! If there's anything fins don't respect, it's a human who never earned the right, putting on patron airs."

"But the Protocols…" Toshio had started to protest.

"Protocols my left eye! Those rules were set up so humans and chimps and fins will act in just the right way when Galactics are around. If the Streak gets stopped by a Soro patrol, or has to ask a Pilan Librarian for data somewhere, then Dr. Metz or Mr. Orley — or even you or I — might have to pretend we're in charge… because none of those stuffedshirt Eatees would give the time of day to a race as young as fins are. But the rest of the time we take our orders from Captain Creideiki.

"Hell, that'd be hard enough — taking brown from a Soro and pretending you like it because the damned ET is nice enough to admit that humans, at least, are a bit above the level of fruit flies. Can you imagine how hard it would be if we actually had to run this ship? What if we had tried to make dolphins into a nice, well-behaved, slavey client race? Would you have liked that?"

At the time Toshio had shaken his head vigorously. The idea of treating fins as clients were usually treated in the galaxy was repulsive. His best friend, Akki, was a fin.

Yet, there were moments like the present, when Toshio wished there were compensations for being the only human boy on a starship crewed mostly by adult dolphins.

A starship which wasn't going anywhere at the moment, Toshio reminded himself. The acute resentment of Keepiru's goading was replaced by the more persistent, hollow worry that he might never leave the water world of Kithrup and see home.

* Slow your travel — boy sled-rider *

* Exploring pod — does gather hither *

* Hikahi comes — we wait here for her *

Toshio looked up. Brookida, the elderly dolphin metallurgist, had come up alongside on the left. Toshio whistled a reply in Trinary.

* Hikahi comes — my sled is stopping *

He eased the sled's throttle back.

On his sonar screen Toshio saw tiny echoes converging from the sides and far ahead. The scouts were returning. He looked up and saw Hist-t and Keepiru playing at the surface.

Brookida switched to Anglic. Though somewhat shrill and stuttered, it was still better than Toshio's Trinary. Dolphins, after all, had been modified by generations of genetic engineering to take up human styles, not the other way around.

"You've found no t-traces of the needed substances, Toshio?" Brookida asked.

Toshio glanced at the molecular sieve. "No, sir. Nothing so far. This water is almost unbelievably pure, considering the metal content of the planet's crust. There are hardly any heavy metal salts at all."

"And nothing on the long ssscan?"

"No resonance effects on any of the bands I've been checking, though the noise level is awfully high. I'm not sure I'd even be able to pick out monopole-saturated nickel, let alone the other stuff we're looking for. It's like trying to find that needle in a haystack."

It was a paradox. The planet had metals in superabundance. That was one reason Captain Creideiki had chosen this world as a refuge. Yet the water was relatively pure… pure enough to allow the dolphins to swim freely, although some complained of itching, and each would need chelating treatments when he got back to the ship.

The explanation lay all around them, in the plants and fishes.

Calcium did not make up the bones of Kithrupan life forms. Other metals did. The water was strained and sieved clean by biological filters. As a result, the sea shone all around with the bright colors of metal and oxides of metal. The gleaming dorsal spines of living fish — the silvery seedpods of underwater plants — all contrasted with the more mundane green of chlorophyllic leaves and fronds.

Dominating the scenery were the metal-mounds, giant, spongy islands shaped by millions of generations of coral-like creatures, whose metallo-organic exoskeletons accumulated into huge, flat-topped mountains rising a few meters above the mean water mark.

Atop the islands the drill-trees grew, sending their metalripped roots through each mound to harvest organics and silicates from below. The trees laid a non-metallic layer on top and created a cavity underneath the metal mound. It was a strange pattern. Streaker's onboard Library had offered no explanation.

Toshio's instruments had detected clumps of pure tin, mounds of chromium fish eggs, coral colonies built from a variety of bronze, but so far no convenient, easily gathered piles of vanadium. No lumps of the special variety of nickel they sought.

What they needed was a miracle — one which would enable a crew of dolphins, with the aid of seven humans and a chimpanzee, to repair their ship and get the hell out of this part of the galaxy before their pursuers caught up with them.

At best, they had a few weeks to get away. The alternative was capture by any of a dozen not-entirely-rational ET races. At worst it could mean interstellar war on a scale not seen in a million years.

It all made Toshio feel small, helpless, and very young.

Toshio could hear, faintly, the high-pitched sonar echoes of the returning scouts. Each distant squeak had its tiny, colored counterpoint on his scanner screen.

Then two gray forms appeared from the east, diving at last into the gathering above, cavorting, playfully leaping and biting.

Finally one of the dolphins arched and dove straight down toward Toshio. "Hikahi's coming and wants the sssled topside," Keepiru chattered quickly, slurring the words almost into indecipherability. "Try not to get lost on the way up-p-p-p…

Toshio grimaced as he vented ballast. Keepiru didn't have to make his contempt so obvious. Even speaking Anglic normally, fins usually sounded as if they were giving the listener a long series of razzberries.

The sled rose in a cloud of tiny bubbles. When he reached the surface, water drained along the sides of the sled in long, gurgling rivulets. Toshio locked the throttle and rolled over to undo his faceplate.

The sudden silence was a relief. The whine of the sled, the pings of the sonar, and the squeaks of the fins all vanished. The fresh breeze swept past his damp, straight, black hair and cooled the hot feeling in his ears. It carried the scents of an alien planet — the pungence of secondary growth on an older island, the heavy, oily odor of a drill-tree in its peak of activity.

And overlying everything was the slight tang of metal.

It shouldn't harm them, they'd said back at the ship, least of all Toshio in his waterproof suit. Chelating would remove all of the heavy elements one might reasonably expect to absorb on a scouting trip… though no one knew for sure what other hazards this world might offer.

But if they were forced to stay for months? Years?

In that case the medical facilities of the Streaker would not be able to deal with the slow accumulation of metals. In time they would start to pray for the Jophur, or Thennanin, or Soro ships to come and take them away for interrogation or worse — simply to get off a beautiful planet that was slowly killing them.

It wasn't a pleasant thought to dwell on. Toshio was glad when Brookida drifted alongside the sled.

"Why did Hikahi have me come up to the surface?" he asked the elderly dolphin. "I thought I was to stay out of sight below in case there were already spy-sats overhead."

Brookida sighed. "I suppose she thinkss you need a break. Besides, who could spot as small a machine as the ssled, with so much metal around?"

Toshio shrugged. "Well, it was nice of Hikahi, anyway. I did need the rest."

Brookida rose up in the water, balancing upon a series of churning tail-strokes. "I hear Hikahi," he announced. "And here she isss."

Two dolphins came in fast from the north, one light gray in appearance, the other dark and mottled. Through his headphones Toshio could hear the voice of the party leader.

* Flame-fluked I — Hikahi call you *

* Dorsal listening — ventral doing *

* Laugh at my word — but first obey them *

* Gather at the sled — and listen! *

Hikahi and Ssattatta circled the rest of the party once, then came to rest in front of the assembled expedition.

Among mankind's gifts to the neo-dolphin had been an expanded repertoire of facial expression. A mere five hundred years of genetic engineering could not do for the porpoise what a million years of evolution had done for man. Fins still expressed most of their feelings in sound and motion. But they were no longer frozen in what humans had taken (in some degree of truth) to be a grin of perpetual amusement. Fins were capable now of looking worried. Toshio might have chosen Hikahi's present expression as a classic example of dolphin chagrin.

"Phip-pit has disappeared," Hikahi announced.

"I heard him cry out, over to the south of me, then nothing. He was searching for Ssassia, who disappeared earlier in the same direction. We will forego mapping and metals search to go and find them. All will be issued weaponss."

There was a general sussuration of discontent. It meant the fins would have to put on the harnesses they had only just had the pleasure of removing, on leaving the ship. Still, even Keepiru recognized this was urgent business.

Toshio was briefly busy dropping harnesses into the water. They were supposed to spread naturally into a shape suitable for a dolphin to slip into easily, but inevitably one or two fins needed help fitting his harness to the small nerve amplifier socket each had just above his left eye.

Toshio finished the job quickly, with the unconscious ease of long practice. He was worried about Ssassia, a gentle fin who had always been kind and soft-spoken to him.

"Hikahi," he said as the leader swam past, "do you want me to call the ship?"

The small gray Tursiops female rose up to face Toshio. "Negative, Ladder-runner. We obey orders. Spy-sats may be high already. Set your speed sled to return on auto if we fail to survive what is in the sssoutheast."

"But no one's seen any big animals…"

"Thatt is only one possibility. I want word to get back whatever our doom… should even rescue fever strike us all."

Toshio felt cold at the mention of "rescue fever." He had heard of it, of course. It was something he had no desire at all to witness.

They set out to the southeast in skirmish formation. The fins took turns gliding along the surface, then diving to swim alongside Toshio. The ocean bottom was like an endless series of snake tracks — pitted by strange pock-holes like deep craters, darkly ominous. In the valleys Toshio could usually see bottom, a hundred meters or so below, gloomy with dark blue tendrils.

The long ridges were topped at intervals by the shining metal-mounds, like hulking castles of shimmering, spongy armor. Many were covered with thick, ivy-like growths in which Kithrupan fishes nested and bred. One metal-mound appeared to be teetering on the edge of a precipice — the cavern dug by its own tall drill-tree, ready to swallow the entire fortress when the undermining was done.

The sled's engine hummed hypnotically. Keeping track of his instruments was too simple a task to keep Toshio's mind busy. Without really wishing to, he found himself thinking. Remembering.

A simple adventure, that's what it had seemed when they had asked him to come along on the space voyage. He had already taken the jumpers' Oath, so they knew he was ready to leave his past behind. And they needed a midshipman to help with hand-eye work on the new dolphin ship.

Streaker was a small exploratory vessel of unique design. There weren't many finned, oxygen-breathing races flying ships in interstellar space. Those few used artificial gravity for convenience, and leased members of some client species to act as crafters and handmen.

But the first dolphin-crewed starship had to be different. It was designed around a principle which had guided Earthlings for two centuries: "Whenever possible, keep it simple. Avoid using the science of the Galactics when you don't understand it."

Two hundred and fifty years after contact with Galactic civilization, mankind was still struggling to catch up. The Galactic species which had been using the aeons-old Library since before the first mammals appeared on Earth — adding to that universal compendium of knowledge with glacial slowness had seemed almost god-like to the primitive Earthmen in their early, lumbering slowships. Earth had a branch Library, now, supposedly giving her access to all of the wisdom accumulated over Galactic history. But only in recent years had it proven to be much more a help than a confusing hindrance.

Streaker, with its complex arrangements of centrifugally held pools and weightless workshops, must have seemed incredibly archaic to the aliens who had looked it over just before launch. Still, to Earth's neo-dolphin communities, she was an object of great pride.

After her shakedown cruise, Streaker stopped at the small human-dolphin colony of Calafia to pick up a few of the best graduates of its tiny academy. It was to be Toshio's first, and possibly last, visit to old Earth.

"Old Earth" was still home to ninety percent of humanity, not to mention the other terrestrial sapient races. Galactic tourists still thronged in to gawk at the home of the enfants terribles who had caused such a stir in a few brief centuries. They were open in their wagering over how long Mankind would survive without the protection of a patron.

All species had patrons, of course. Nobody reached spacefaring intelligence without the intervention of another spacefaring race. Had not men done this for chimps and dolphins? All the way back to the time of the Progenitors, the mythical first race, every species that spoke and flew spaceships had been raised up by a predecessor. No species still survived from that distant era, but the civilization the Progenitors established, with its all-encompassing Library, went on.

Of the fate of the Progenitors themselves there were many legends and even violently contradicting religions.

Toshio wondered, as just about everyone had for three hundred years, what the patrons of Man might have been like. If they ever existed. Might they even be one of the species of fanatics that had ambushed the unsuspecting Streaker, and even now sought her out like hounds after a fox?

It wasn't a pleasant line of thought, considering what the Streaker had discovered.

The Terragens Council sent her out to join a scattered fleet of exploration vessels, checking the veracity of the Library. So far only a few minor gaps had been found in its thoroughness. Here a star misplaced. There a species miscatalogued. It was like finding that someone had written a list describing every grain of sand on a beach. You could never check the complete list in a thousand lifetimes of a race, but you could take a random sampling.

Streaker had been poking through a small gravitational tide pool, fifty thousand parsecs off the galactic plane, when she found the Fleet.

Toshio sighed at the unfairness of it. One hundred and fifty dolphins, seven humans, and a chimpanzee; how could we have known what we found?

Why did we have to find it?

Fifty thousand ships, each the size of a moon. That's what they found. The dolphins had been thrilled by their discovery — the biggest Derelict Fleet ever encountered, apparently incredibly ancient. Captain Creideiki had psicast to Earth for instructions.

Dammit! Why did he call Earth? Couldn't the report have waited until we'd gone home? Why let the whole eavesdropping galaxy know you'd found a Sargasso of ancient hulks in the middle of nowhere?

The Terragens Council had answered in code.

"Go into hiding. Await orders. Do not reply."

Creideiki obeyed, of course. But not before half the patron-lines in the galaxy had sent out their warships to find Streaker.

Toshio blinked.

Something. A resonance echo at last? Yes, the magnetic ore detector showed a faint echo toward the south. He concentrated on the receiver, relieved at last to have something to do. Self-pity was becoming a bore.

Yes. It would have to be a pretty fair deposit. Should he tell Hikahi? Naturally, the search for the missing crewfen came first, but…

A shadow fell across him. The party was skirting the edge of a massive metal-mound. The copper-colored mass was covered with thick tendrils of some green hanging growth.

"Don't go too close, Little Hands," Keepiru whistled from Toshio's left. Only Keepiru and the sled were this close to the mound. The other fins were giving it a wide berth.

"We know nothing of this flora," Keepiru continued. "And it'ss near here that Phip-pit was lost. You should stay safe within our convoy." Keepiru rolled lazily past Toshio, keeping up with languid fluke strokes. The neatly folded arms of his harness gleamed a coppery reflection from the metal-mound.

"Then it's all the more important to get samples, isn't it?" Toshio replied in irritation. "It's what we're out here for, anyway!" Without giving Keepiru time to react, Toshio banked the sled toward the shadowy mass of the mound.

Toshio dove into a region of darkness as the island blocked off the afternoon sunlight. A drifting school of silverbacked fish seemed to explode away from him as he drove at an angle along the thick, fibrous weed.

Keepiru squeaked in startlement behind him, an oath in Primal Dolphin, which showed the fin's distress. Toshio smiled.

The sled hummed cooperatively as the mound loomed like a mountain on his right. Toshio banked and grabbed at the nearest flash of green. There was a satisfying snapping sensation as his sample came free in his hand. No fin could do that! He flexed his fingers appreciatively, then twisted about to stuff the clump into a collection sack.

Toshio looked up and saw that the green mass, instead of receding, was closer than ever. Keepiru's squawling was louder.

Crybaby! Toshio thought. So I let the controls drift for a second. So what? I'll be back in your damned convoy before you finish making up a cuss-poem.

He steepened his leftward bank and simultaneously set his bow planes to rise. In a moment he realized it was a tactical mistake. For it slowed him down just enough for the cluster of pursuing tendrils to reach his sled.

There must have been larger sea creatures on Kithrup than the party had seen so far, for the tentacles that fell about Toshio were obviously meant to catch big prey.

"Oh, Koino-Anti! Now I've done it!" He pushed the throttle over to maximum and braced for the expected surge of power.

Power came… but not acceleration. The sled groaned, stretching the long, ropy strands. But forward movement was lost. Then the engine died. Toshio felt a slithery presence across his legs, then another. The tendrils began to tighten and pull.

Gasping, he managed to twist around onto his back, and groped for the knife sheathed at his thigh. The tendrils were sinuous and knotty. The knots clung to whatever they touched, and when one brushed against the back of Toshio's exposed left hand the boy cried out from the searing pain of contact.

The fins were crying out to each other, and there were sounds of vigorous movement not far away. But other than a brief hope that nobody else was caught, Toshio had little time to think of anything but the fight at hand.

The knife came free, gleaming like hope. And hope brought hope as two small strands parted under his slashing attack. Another, larger, one, took several seconds to saw through. It was replaced almost instantly by two more.

Then he saw the place to which he was being drawn.

A deep gash split the side of the metal-mound. Inside, a writhing mass of filaments awaited. Deep within, a dozen meters farther up, something sleek and gray lay already enmeshed in a forest of deceptively languid foliage.

Toshio felt open-mouthed steam fill his facemask. The reflection of his own eyes, dilated and stricken, was superimposed on the motionless figure of Ssassia. Gentle as her life had been, though not her death, the tide rocked her.

With a cry, Toshio resumed hacking. He wanted to call out to Hikahi-to let the party leader know of Ssassia's fate — but all that came out was a roar of loathing of the Kithrupan creeper. Leaves and fronds flew off through the churning water as he sliced out his hatred, but to little good, as the tendrils fell more numerous about him to draw him toward the gash.

Hikahi calling.

Above the churning of his struggle and the hoarseness of his breath, Toshio could hear the combat sounds of dolphin teamwork. Quick trills of Trinary, unslowed for human ears except for that one brief command, and the whining of their harnesses.

"Here! Here I am!" He slashed at a leafy vine that threatened his air hose, barely missing the hose itself. He licked his lips and tried to whistle in Trinary.

Lousy form and rhythm, but the fins would hear it better than they would a shout in Anglic. After only forty generations of sapience, they still thought better in an emergency when using whistle rhyme.

Toshio could hear the sounds of combat coming closer. But, as if hurried by the threat, the tentacles began drawing him back more rapidly, toward the gash. Suddenly a suckercovered strand wrapped itself around his right arm. Before he could shift his grip, one of the burning knots reached his hand. He screamed and tore the tendril away, but the knife was lost into the darkness.

Other filaments were falling all about him. At that moment Toshio became distantly aware that someone was talking to him slowly, and in Anglic!

"…says there are ships out there! Vice-Captain Takkata-Jim wants to know why Hikahi hasn't sent a monopulse confirmation…"

It was Akki's voice, calling from the ship! Toshio couldn't answer his friend. The switch for the sled radio was out of reach, and he was a bit preoccupied.

"Don't respond to this message," Akki went on obligingly. Toshio moaned at the irony as he tried to pry a tendril off his facemask without doing further insult to his hands. "Just transmit a monopulse and come on back-k, all of you. We think there's a space battle going on over Kithrup. Probably those crazy ETs followed us here and are fighting over the right to capture us, just like at Morgran.

"Gotta c-close up, now. Radio silence. Get back as soon as you can. Akki out."

Toshio felt a tendril seize hold of his air hose. A solid grip, this time.

"Sure, Akki, old friend," he grunted as he pulled at it. "I'll be going home just as soon as the universe lets me."

The air hose was crimped shut, and there was nothing he could do. Fog filled his facemask. As he felt himself blacking out, Toshio thought he saw the rescue party arrive, but he couldn't be sure if it was real or a hallucination. He wouldn't have expected Keepiru to lead the charge, for instance, or for that fin to have such a ferocious demeanor, heedless of the burning suckers.

In the end, he decided it was a dream. The laser flashes were too bright, the saser tones too clear. And the party came toward him with pennants waving in their wake like the cavalry that five centuries of Anglic-speaking man had come to associate with the image of rescue.

2 ::: Galactics

On a ship in the center of a feet of ships, a phase of denial was passing.

Giant cruisers spilled out of a rent in space, to fall toward the pinpoint brilliance of a non-descript reddish sun. One by one, they tumbled from the luminous tear. With them came diffracted starlight from their point of departure, hundreds of parsecs away.

There were rules that should have prevented it. The tunnel was an unnatural way to pass from place to place. It took a strong will to deny nature and call into being such an opening in space.

The Episiarch, in its outraged rejection of What Is, had created the passage for its Tandu masters. The opening was held by the adamant power of its ego — by its refusal to concede anything at all to Reality.

When the last ship was through, the Episiarch was purposely distracted, and the hole collapsed with soundless violence. In moments, only instruments could tell that it had ever been. The affront to physics was erased.

The Episiarch had brought the Tandu armada to the target star well ahead of the other fleets, those who would challenge the Tandu for the right to capture the Earth ship. The Tandu sent impulses of praise to the Episiarch's pleasure centers. It howled and waved its great furry head in gratitude.

To the Tandu, an obscure and dangerous form of travel had once again proved worth the risks. It was good to arrive on the battlefield before the enemy. The added moments would give them a tactical edge.

The Episiarch only wanted things to deny. Its task now finished, it was returned to its chamber of delusions, to alter an endless chain of surrogate realities until its outrage was needed by the Masters once again. Its shaggy, amorphous shape rolled free of the sensory web, and it shambled off, escorted by wary guardians.

When the way was clear, the Acceptor entered, and climbed on spindly legs to its place within the web.

For a long moment it appraised Reality, embracing it. The Acceptor probed and touched and caressed this new region of space with its farflung senses. It gave out a crooning cry of pleasure.

"Such leakage!" the Acceptor joyously announced. "I had heard the hunted were sloppy sophonts, but they leak even as they scan for danger! They have hidden on the second planet. Only slowly do the edges of their psychic shields congeal to hide from me their exact location. Who were their masters, to teach these dolphins so well to be prey?"

"Their masters are the humans, themselves unfinished," the Leading Stalker of the Tandu replied. Its voice was a rhythmic pattern of rapid clicks and pops from the ratchet joints of its mantis-legs. "The Earthlings are tainted by wrong belief, and by the shame of their own abandonment. The noise of three centuries shall be quieted when they are eaten. Then our hunter's joy will be as yours is, when you witness a new place or thing."

"Such joy," the Acceptor agreed.

"Now stir to get details," the Stalker commanded. "Soon we do battle with heretics. I must tell your fellow clients their tasks."

The Acceptor turned in the web as the Stalker left, and opened its feelings to this new patch of reality. Everything was good. It passed on reports of what it saw, and the Masters moved the ships in response, but with the larger part of its mind it appreciated… it accepted… the tiny red sun, each of its small planets, the delicious expectancy of a place soon to become a battlefield.

Soon it felt the other war fleets enter the system, each in its own peculiar way. Each took a slightly inferior position, forced by the early arrival of the Tandu.

The Acceptor sensed the lusts of warrior clients and the cool calculations of calmer elders. It caressed the slickness of mind shields rigidly held against it, and wondered what went on within them. It appreciated the openness of other combatants, who disdainfully cast their thoughts outward, daring the listener to gather in their broadcast contempt.

It swept up savage contemplations of the Acceptor's own annihilation, as the great fleets plunged toward each other and bright explosions began to flash.

The Acceptor took it all in joyfully. How could anyone feel otherwise, when the universe held such wonders?

3 ::: Takkata-Jim

High in the port quarter of Streaker's spherical control room, a psi operator thrashed in her harness. Her flukes made a turmoil of the water, and she cried out in Trinary.

The operator's report confirmed the discovery made by the neutrino detector only minutes before. It was a litany of bad news, related in trance-verse.

From another station came a calmer bulletin in dolphin accented Anglic.

"We're getting heavy graviton traffic, Vice-Captain Takkata-Jim. Gravitational disturbances confirm a major battle is forming up not far from the planet-t."

The executive officer of the Streaker listened to the report quietly, letting himself drift sideways slightly in the circulating currents of the command center. A stream of bubbles emerged from his blowhole as he inhaled some of the special fluid that filled the ship's bridge.

"Acknowledged," he said at last. Underwater, his voice was a muted buzz. The consonants came out slurred. "How far away is the nearest contact?"

"Five AU, sssir. They couldn't get here for at leasst an hour, even if they came hell-bent."

"Hmmm. Very well, then. Remain in condition yellow. Continue your observationsss, Akeakemai."

The vice-captain was unusually large for a neo-fin, thickbodied and muscular where most of the others were sleek and narrow. His uneven gray coloring and jagged teeth were marks of the Stenos sub-racial line, setting him and a number of others aboard apart from the Tursiops majority.

The human next to Takkata-Jim was impassive as the bad news came. It only confirmed what he had already feared.

"We had better inform the captain, then," Ignacio Metz said. The words were amplified by his facemask into the fizzing water. Bubbles floated away from the tall human's sparse gray hair.

"I warned Creideiki this would happen if we tried eluding the Galactics. I only hope he decides to be reasonable, now that escape's become impossible."

Takkata-Jim opened and closed his foodmouth diagonally, an emphatic nod.

"Yesss, Doctor Metz. Now even Creideiki must recognize that you were right. We're cornered now, and the captain will have no choice but to listen to you."

Metz nodded, gratified. "What about Hikahi's team? Have they been told?"

"I've already ordered the prospecting party back. Even the sled might be too much of a risssk. If the Eatees are already in orbit they might have means to detect it." "Extraterrestrials…" Metz corrected, automatically professorial. "The term 'Eatee' is hardly polite."

Takkata-Jim kept an impassive face. He was in command of the ship and its crew while the captain was off watch. Yet the human treated him like a fresh-weaned pupil. It was quite irritating, but Takkata-Jim was careful never to let Metz know how much it bothered him. "Yes, Dr. Metz," he said.

The man went on. "Hikahi's party should never have left the ship. I warned Tom Orley that something like this might happen. Young Toshio's out there… and all those crewfen, out of contact with us for so long. It would be terrible if anything happened to them!"

Takkata-Jim felt he knew what was really on Metz's mind. The human was probably thinking about how terrible it would be if any of Streakers crew got themselves killed away from his sight… out where he was unable to judge how they behaved for his behavioral and genetic studies. "If only Creideiki had listened to you, sssir," he repeated. "You always have so much to say."

It was a little chancy, but if the human ever saw through Takkata-Jim's respectful mask to the core of sarcasm, he never gave it away.

"Well, it's nice of you to say so, Takkata-Jim. And very perceptive. I know you have many things to do now, so I'll find a free comm line and awaken Creideiki for you. I'll break the news gently that our pursuers have followed us to Kithrup."

Takkata-Jim gave the human a deferential nod from high body stance. "That-t is kind of you, Doctor Metz. You do me a favor."

Metz patted the lieutenant on his rough flank, as if to reassure him. Takkata-Jim bore the patronizing gesture with outward calm, and watched as the human turned to swim away.

The bridge was a fluid-filled sphere which bulged slightly from the bow of the cylindrical ship. The main ports of the command center looked out into a murky scene of ocean ridges, sediment, and drifting sea creatures.

The crew's web-lined work stations were illuminated by small spotlights. Most of the chamber lay in quiet shadows, as the elite bridge personnel carried out their tasks quickly and almost silently. The only sounds, other than the swish and fizz of recycling oxywater, were the intermittent click of sonar pulses and terse, professional comments from one operator to another.

Give Creideiki his due, Takkata-Jim told himself. He has crafted a finely tuned machine in this bridge crew.

Of course, dolphins were less consistent than humans. You couldn't tell in advance what might cause a neo-fin to start unraveling until you saw him perform under stress. This bridge crew performed as well as any he had ever seen, but would it be enough?

If they had overlooked a single radiation or psi leak, the ETs would be down on them quicker than orcas upon harbor seals.

The fins out there in the prospecting team were safer than their comrades aboard ship, Takkata-Jim thought somewhat bitterly. Metz was a fool to worry about them. They were probably having a wonderful time!

Takkata-Jim tried to recall swimming free in an ocean, without a harness, and breathing natural air. He tried to recall diving in deep water, the deep water of the Stenos, where the big-mouthed, smart-aleck, shore-hugging Tursiops were rare as dugongs.

"Akki," he called to the E. L. E radio operator, the young dolphin midshipman from Calafia. "Have you received confirmation from Hikahi? Did she get the recall?"

The colonial was a small Tursiops variant of yellowish-gray coloration. Akki replied with some hesitation. He still wasn't used to breathing and speaking in oxywater. It required a very odd dialect of Underwater Anglic.

"I'm… sh-sorry, Vice-Captain, but there's no reply. I checked for a monopulse on all… ch-channels. There's been nothing."

Takkata-Jim tossed his head in irritation. Hikahi might have decided that even a monopulse reply would be too much risk. Still, confirmation would have taken from his back an unpleasant decision.

"Mm-m-m, sir?" Akki tipped his head down and lowered his tail in respect.

"Yess?"

"Ah… shouldn't we repeat the message? There's a chance they were distracted and missed it the firsh… first time…"

Like all dolphins from the colony planet Calafia, Akki was proud of his cultured Anglic. It apparently bothered him to have trouble with such simple sentences.

That suited the vice-captain fine. If there was one Anglic word that translated perfectly into Trinary, it was "smartass." Takkata-Jim didn't care for smartass midshipmen.

"No, comm-operator. We have our orders. If the captain wants to try again when he gets here, he's welcome. Meantime, attend your possst."

"Heth… er, aye aye, shir." The young dolphin spun about to return to his station, where he could breathe from an airdome instead of gulping water like a fish. There he could speak like a normal person while he awaited word from his closest friend, the human middie out in the wide, alien ocean.

Takkata-Jim wished the captain would come soon. The control room felt closed and dead. Breathing the fizzing, gas-charged oxywater always left him tired at the end of his shift. It never seemed to provide enough oxygen. His supplementary gill-lungs itched with the irritation of defied instinct, and the pills — the ones that forced extra oxygen into his system through his intestines — always gave him heartburn.

Once again he caught sight of Ignacio Metz. The whitehaired scientist clutched a stanchion, with his head thrust under a comm airdome to call Creideiki. When he finished he would probably want to hang around. The man was always hovering nearby, watching… always making him feel he was being tested.

"I need a human ally," Takkata-Jim reminded himself. Dolphins were in command of Streaker, but the crew seemed to obey an officer more rapidly if he appeared to have the confidence of one of the patron race. Creideiki had Tom Orley. Hikahi had Gillian Baskin. Brookida's human companion was the engineer, Suessi.

Metz would have to be Takkata-Jim's human. Fortunately, the man could be manipulated.

The reports on the space battle were coming in faster on the data displays. It seemed to be turning into a real conflagration over the planet. At least five big fleets were involved.

Takkata-Jim resisted the sudden urge to turn and bite something, to lash out hard with his flukes. What he wanted was something to fight! Something palpable, instead of this hanging pall of dread!

After weeks of fleeing, Streaker was trapped at last. What new trick would Creideiki and Orley come up with to get them away this time?

What if they failed to come up with a plan? Or worse, what if they contrived some squid-brained scheme that could only get them all killed? What would he do then?

Takkata-Jim mulled over the problem to keep his mind busy while he waited for the captain to come and relieve him.

4 ::: Creideiki

It had been his first really restful sleep in weeks. Naturally, it had to be interrupted.

Creideiki was used to taking his rest in zero gee, suspended in moist air. But as long as they were in hiding, anti-gravity beds were banned, and sleeping in liquid was the only other way for a dolphin.

He had tried for a week to breathe oxywater all through his rest period. The results had been nightmares and exhausting dreams of suffocation.

The ship's surgeon, Makanee, had suggested he try sleeping in the old-fashioned way, drifting at the surface of a pool of water.

Creideiki decided to try Makanee's alternative. He made sure that there was a big air-gap at the top of his state-room. Then he verified three times that the redundant oxygen alarms were all in perfect order. Finally, he shrugged out of his harness, turned off the lights, rose to the surface and expelled the oxywater in his gill-lung.

That part was a relief. Still, at first he just lay at the air-gap near the overhead, his mind racing and his skin itching for the touch of his tool harness. It was an irrational itch, he knew. Pre-spaceflight humans, in their primitive, neurotic societies, must have felt the same way about nudity.

Poor Homo sapiens! Mankind's histories showed such suffering during those awkward millennia of adolescence before Contact, when they were ignorant and cut off from Galactic society.

Meanwhile, Creideiki thought, dolphins had been in almost a state of grace, drifting in their corner of the Whale Dream. When men finally achieved a type of adulthood, and started lifting the higher creatures of Earth to join them, dolphins of the amicus strain moved fairly easily from one honorable condition to another.

We have our own problems, he reminded himself. He badly wanted to scratch the base of his amplifier socket, but there was no way to reach it without his harness.

He floated at the surface, in the dark, awaiting sleep. It was sort of restful, tiny wavelets lapping against the smooth skin above his eyes. And real air was definitely more relaxing to breathe than oxywater.

But he couldn't escape a vague unease over sinking… as if it would harm him any to sink in oxywater… as if millions of other dolphins hadn't slept this way all their lives.

Disconcerting was his spacer's habit of looking up. The ceiling bulkhead was inches away from the tip of his dorsal fin. Even when he closed his eyes, sonar told him of the nearness of enclosure. He could no more sleep without sending out echolocation clicks than a chimp could nap without scratching himself.

Creideiki snorted. Beach himself if he'd let a shipboard requirement give him insomnia! He blew emphatically and began to count sonar clicks. He started with a tenor rhythm, then slowly built a fugue as he added deeper elements to the sleep-song.

Echoes spread from his brow and diffracted about the small chamber. The notes drifted over one another, overlapping softly in faint whines and basso growls. They created a sonic structure, a template of otherness. The right combinations, he knew, would make the walls themselves seem to disappear.

Deliberately, he peeled away the duty-rigor of Keneenk — welcoming a small, trusted portion of the Whale Dream.

The desk, the cabinets, the walls, were covered under false sonic shadows. His chant began to open on its own accord a rich and very physical poetry of crafted reflections.

Floating things seemed to drift past, tiny tail-flicks of schools of dream creatures. The echoes opened up space around him, as if the waters went on forever.

Soon he felt a presence nearby, congealing gradually out of reflections of sound.

She formed slowly next to him as his engineer's consciousness let go… the shadow of a goddess. Then Nukapai floated beside him… a ghost of ripples, ribbed by motes of sound. The black sleekness of her body passed back into the darkness, unhindered by a bulkhead that seemed no longer there.

Vision faded. The waters darkened all around Creideiki, and Nukapai became more than just a shadow, a passive recipient of his song. Her needle teeth shone, and she sang his own sounds back to him.

A type of bliss settled over him as his heartbeat slowed. Creideiki slept next to the gentle dream-goddess. She chided him only teasingly for being an engineer, and for dreaming her in the rigid, focused verse of Trinary rather than the chaotic Primal of his ancestors.

She welcomed him to the Threshold Sea, where Trinary sufficed, where he felt only faintly the raging of the Whale Dream and the ancient gods who dwelt there. It was as much of that ocean as an engineer's mind could accept.

How rigid the Trinary verse sometimes seemed! The patterns of overlapping tones and symbols were almost human precise… almost human-narrow.

He had been brought up to think those terms compliments. Parts of his own brain had been gene-designed along human lines. But now and then chaotic sound-images slipped in, teasing him with a hint of ancient singing.

Nukapai clicked sympathetically. She smiled…

No! She did no such land-ape thing! Of cetaceans, only the neo-dolphin "smiled" with their mouths.

Nukapai did something else. She stroked against his side, gentlest of goddesses, and told him,

The tension of several weeks at last broke, and he slept. Creideiki's breath gathered in glistening condensation on the ceiling bulkhead. The breeze from a nearby air duct brushed the droplets, which shuddered, then fell on the water like gentle rain.

When the image of Ignacio Metz formed a meter to his right, Creideiki was slow to become aware of it.

"Captain…" the image said. "I'm calling from the bridge. I am afraid the Galactics have found us here sooner than we expected…"

Creideiki ignored the little voice that tried to call him back to deeds and battles. He lingered in a waving forest of kelp fronds, listening to long night sounds. Finally, it was Nukapai herself who nudged him from his dream. Fading beside him, she gently reminded,

Nukapai alone could speak Primal to Creideiki with impunity. He could no more ignore the dream-goddess than his own conscience. One eye at last focused on the hologram of the insistent human, and the words penetrated.

"Thank you, Doctor Metz," he sighed. "Tell Takkata-Jim I'll be right-t there. And please page Tom Orley. I'd like to see him on the bridge. Creideiki out."

He inhaled deeply for a few moments, letting the room come back into shape around him. Then he twisted and dove to retrieve his harness.

5 ::: Tom Orley

A tall, dark-haired man swung one-handed from the leg of a bed, a bed that was bolted to the floor in an upside-down room. The floor slanted over his head. His left foot rested precariously on the bottom of a drawer pulled from one of the inverted wall cabinets.

At the sudden yellow flash of the alert light, Tom Orley whirled and grabbed at his holster with his free hand. His needler was half-drawn before he recognized the source of the disturbance. He cursed slowly and re-holstered the weapon. Now what was the emergency? He could think of a dozen possibilities, offhand, and here he was, hanging by one arm in the most awkward part of the ship!

"I initiate contact, Thomas Orley."

The voice seemed to come from above his right ear. Tom changed his grip on the bed leg to turn around. An abstract three-dimensional pattern swirled a meter away from his face, like multicolored motes caught in a dust devil.

"I suppose you would like to know of the cause of the alarm. Is this correct?"

"You're damned right I do!" he snapped. "Are we under attack?"

"No." The colored images shifted. "This ship is not yet assailed, but Vice-Captain Takkata-Jim has announced an alert. At least five intruder fleets are now in the neighborhood of Kithrup. These squadrons appear now to be in combat not far from the planet."

Orley sighed. "So much for quick repairs and a getaway." He hadn't thought it likely that their hunters would let them escape again. The damaged Streaker had left a noisy trail behind her when she slipped away from the confusion of the ambush at Morgran.

Tom had been helping the crew in the engine room repair Streaker's stasis generator. They had just finished the part calling for detailed hand-eye work, and the moment had come to steal away to the deserted section of the dry-wheel where the Niss computer had been hidden.

The dry-wheel was a band of workrooms and cabins that spun freely when the ship was in space, providing pseudogravity for the humans aboard. Now it was still. This section of upside-down corridors and cabins was abandoned in the inconvenient gravity of the planet.

The privacy suited Tom, though the topsy-turvy arrangement was irksome.

"You weren't to announce yourself unless I switched you on manually," he said. "You were to wait for my thumbprint and voice i.d. before letting on you were anything but a standard comm."

The swirling patterns took on a cubist style. The machine's voice sounded unperturbed. "Under the circumstances, I took the liberty. If I erred, I am prepared to accept discipline up to level three. Punishment of a higher order will be considered unjustified and be rejected with prejudice."

Tom allowed himself an ironic smile. The machine would run him in circles if he let it, and he would gain nothing by asserting his titular mastery over it. The Tymbrimi spy who had lent the Niss to him had made it clear that the machine's usefulness was partly based upon its flexibility and initiative, however irritating it became.

"I'll take the level of your error under advisement," he told the Niss. "Now, what can you tell me about the present situation?"

"A vague question. I can access the ship's battle computers for you. But that might entail an element of risk."

"No, you'd better not do that quite yet." If the Niss tried to inveigle the battle computer during an alert, Creideiki's bridge crew might notice. Tom assumed Creideiki knew about the presence of the Niss aboard his ship, just as the captain knew that Gillian Baskin had her own secret project. But the dolphin commander kept quiet about it, leaving the two of them to their work.

"All right, then. Can you patch me through to Gillian?"

The holo danced with blue specks. "She is alone in her office. I am placing the call."

The motes suddenly faded. They were replaced by the image of a blonde woman in her early thirties. She looked puzzled briefly, then her face brightened with a brilliant smile. She laughed.

"Ali, you're visiting your mechanical friend, I see. Tell me, Tom, what does a sarcastic alien machine have that I don't have? You've never gone head over heels so literally for me."

"Very funny." Still, her attitude relieved his anxiety over the alert. He had been afraid they would be in combat almost immediately. In a week or so, Streaker might be able to make a good accounting of herself before being destroyed or captured. Right now, she had all the punch of a drugged rabbit.

"I take it the Galactics aren't landing yet."

Gillian shook her head. "No, though Makanee and I are standing by in the infirmary just in case. Bridge crew says at least three fleets have popped into space nearby. They immediately started having it out, just like at Morgran. We can only hope they'll annihilate each other."

"Not much hope of that, I'm afraid."

"Well, you're the tactician of the family. Still, it might be weeks before there is a victor to come down after us. There will be deals and last-minute alliances. Well have time to think of something."

Tom wished he could share her optimism. As the family tactician, it was his job to "think of something."

"Well, if the situation's not urgent…"

"I don't think it is. You can spend a little while longer with your roomie there — my electronic rival. I'll get even by getting intimate with Herbie."

Tom could only shake his head and let her have her joke. Herbie was a cadaver — their one tangible prize from the derelict fleet. Gillian had determined that the alien corpse was over two billion years old. The ship's mini-Library seemed to have seizures every time they asked what race it had once belonged to.

"All right, then. Tell Creideiki I'll be right down, okay?"

"Sure, Tom. They're waking him now. I'll tell him I last saw you hanging around somewhere." She gave him a wink and switched off:

Tom watched the place where her image had been, and once again wondered what he had done to deserve a woman like her.

"Out of curiosity, Thomas Orley, I am interested in some of the undertones of this last conversation. Am I right in assuming that some of these mild insults Dr. Baskin conveyed fell into the category of affectionate teasing? My Tymbrimi builders are telempathic, of course, but they, also, seem to indulge in this pastime. Is it part of a mating process? Or is it a friendship test of some sort?"

"A little of both, I guess. Do the Tymbrimi really do the same sort of…" Tom shook himself. "Never mind about that! My arms are getting tired and I've got to get below quickly. Have you anything else to report?"

"Not of major significance to your survival or mission."

"I take it, then, that you haven't managed to coax the ship's mini-Library to deliver anything on Herbie or the derelict fleet."

The holo flowed into sharp geometries. "That is the main problem, isn't it? Dr. Baskin asked me the same question when she last checked in on me, thirteen hours ago."

"And did you give her any more direct an answer than you're giving me?"

"Finding ways to bypass the access programming on this ship's mini-Library is the reason I was put aboard in the first place. I would tell you if I had succeeded." The machine's disembodied voice was dry enough to desiccate melons. "The Tymbrimi have long suspected that the Library Institute is less than neutral — that the branch Libraries sold by them are programmed to be deficient in very subtle ways, to put troublesome races at a disadvantage.

"The Tymbrimi have been working on this problem since days when your ancestors wore animal skins, Thomas Orley. It was never expected we would achieve anything more on this trip than a gathering of a few shards of new data, and perhaps elimination of a few minor barriers."

Orley understood how the long-lived machine could take such a patient perspective. Still, he found he resented it. It would be nice to think something had come of all the grief Streaker and her crew had fallen into. "After all the surprises we've encountered, this voyage must have served up more than just a few new bits for you to crunch," he suggested.

"The propensity of Earthlings to get into trouble, and to learn thereby, was the reason my owners agreed to this mad venture in the first place — although no one ever expected such a chain of unusual calamities as have befallen this ship. Your talents were under-rated."

There was no way to answer that. Tom's arms had begun to hurt. "Well, I'd better get back. In an emergency I'll contact you via ship's comm."

"Of course."

Orley let go and landed in a crouch by the closed doorway, a rectangle high on one steeply sloping wall.

"Dr. Baskin has just passed on word to me that Takkata-Jim has ordered the survey party to return to the ship," the Niss spoke abruptly. "She thought you would want to know"

Orley cursed. Metz might have had a hand in that. How were they to repair the ship if the crew weren't allowed to go looking for the raw materials they needed? Creideiki's strongest reason for coming to Kithrup had been the abundance of pre-refined metals in an oceanic environment accessible to dolphins. If Hikahi's prospectors were called back the danger had to be severe… or someone was panicking.

Tom turned to go, but paused and looked up. "Niss, we must know what it is the Galactics think we found."

The sparkles were muted. " I have done a thorough search of the open files in this ship's onboard micro-branch Library for any record that might shed light on the mystery of the derelict fleet, Thomas Orley. Aside from a few vague similarities between the patterns we saw on those gigantic hulls and some ancient cult symbols, I can find no support for a hypothesis that the ships we found are in any way connected to the fabled Progenitors."

"But you found nothing to contradict it, either?"

"Correct. The derelicts might or might not be linked with the one legend which binds all oxygen-breathing races in the five galaxies."

"It could be we found huge bits of flotsam of almost no historical significance, then."

"True. At the other extreme, you may have made the biggest archaeological and religious find of the age. The mere possibility helps to explain the battle that is shaping up in this solar system. The refusal of the ship's mini-Library to give more details is indicative of how many of the Galactic cultures feel about events so long ago. So long as this ship is the sole repository of information about the derelict fleet, the survey vessel Streaker remains a great prize, valued by every brand of fanatic."

Orley had hoped the Niss would find evidence to make their discovery innocuous. Such proof might have been used to get the ETs to leave them alone. But if the derelict fleet was really as important as it seemed, Streaker would have to find a way to get the information to Earth, and let wiser heads figure out what to do with it.

"You just keep contemplating, then," he told the Niss. "Meanwhile I'll do my best to see that the Galactics stay off our backs. Now, can you tell me…"

"Of course I can," the Niss interrupted again. "The corridor outside is clear. Don't you think I would let you know if anyone were outside?"

Tom shook his head, certain the machine had been programmed to do this now and again. It would be typical of the Tymbrimi. Earth's greatest allies were also practical jokers. When a dozen other calamitous priorities had been settled, he intended taking a monkey wrench to the machine, and explaining the mess to his Tymbrimi friends as "an unfortunate accident."

As the door panel slipped aside, Tom grabbed the rim and swung out to drop onto the dim hallway ceiling below. The door hummed shut automatically. Red alert lights flashed at intervals down the gently curved corridor.

All right, he thought. Our hopes for a quick getaway are dashed, but I've already thought out some contingency plans.

A few he had discussed with the captain. One or two he had kept to himself.

I'll have to set a few into motion, he thought, knowing from experience that chance diverts all schemes. As likely as not, it will be something totally unexpected that turns up to offer us our last real hope.

6 ::: Galactics

The first phase of the fight was a free-for-all. A score of warring factions scratched and probed at each other, exploring for weaknesses. Already a number of wrecks drifted in orbit torn and twisted and ominously luminous. Glowing clouds of plasma spread along the path of battle, and jagged metal fragments sparkled as they tumbled.

In her flagship, a leathery queen looked upon viewscreens that showed her the battlefield. She lay on a broad, soft cushion and stroked the brown scales of her belly in contemplation.

The displays that rimmed Krat's settee showed many dangers. One panel was an overlay of curling lines, indicating zones of anomalous probability. Others pointed out where the slough from psychic weapons was still dangerous.

Clusters of lights were the other fleets, now regrouping as the first phase drew to a close. Fighting still raged on the fringes.

Krat lounged on a cushion of vletoor skin. She shifted her weight to ease the pressure in her third abdomen. Battle hormones always accelerated the quickening within her. It was an inconvenience which, in ancient days, had forced her female ancestors to stay in the nest, leaving to stupid males the fighting.

No longer, though.

A small, bird-like creature approached her side. Krat took a ling-plum from the tray it proffered. She bit it and savored the juices that ran over her tongue and down her whiskers. The little Forski put down the tray and began to sing a crooning ballad about the joys of battle.

The avian Forski had been uplifted to full sapiency, of course. It would have been against the Code of Uplift to do less with a client race. But while they could talk, and even fly spacecraft in. a pinch, independent ambition had been bred out of them. They were too useful as domestics and entertainers to be fated anything but specialization. Adaptability might interfere with their graceful and intelligent performance of those functions.

One of her smaller screens suddenly went dark. A destroyer in the Soro rearguard had been destroyed. Krat hardly noticed. The consolidation had been inexpensive so far.

The command room was divided into pie sections. From the center, Krat could look into every baffled unit from her couch of command. Her crew bustled about, each a member of a Soro client race, each hurrying to do her will in its own sub-specialty.

From the sectors for navigation, combat, and detection, there was a quieting of the hectic battle pace at last. In planning, though, she saw increased activity as the staff evaluated developments, including the new alliance between the Abdicator and Transcendor forces.

A Paha sub-officer poked its head out of detection sector. Under hooded eyes, Krat watched it dash to a food station, snatch a steaming mug of amoklah, and hurry back to its post.

The Paha race had been allowed more racial diversity than the Forski, to enhance their value as ritual warriors. It left them less tractable than suited her, but it was a price one paid for good fighters. Krat decided to ignore the incident. She listened to the little Forski sing of the coming victory — of the glory that would be Krat's when she captured the Earthlings, and finally squeezed their secrets out of them.

Klaxons shrieked. The Forski leapt into the air in alarm and fled to its cubbyhole. Suddenly there were running Paha everywhere.

"Tandu raider!" the tactical officer shouted. "Ships two through twelve, it has appeared in your midst! Take evasive maneuvers! Quickly!"

The flagship bucked as it, too, went into a wild turn to avoid a spread of missiles. Krat's screens showed a pulsing, danger-blue dot — the daring Tandu cruiser that had popped into being within her fleet — which was even now pouring fire into the Soro ships!

Curse their damnable probability drives! Krat knew that nobody else could move about as quickly as the Tandu, because no other species was willing to take such chances!

Krat's mating claw throbbed in irritation. Her Soro ships were so busy avoiding missiles, nobody was firing back!

"Fools!" Krat hissed into her communicator. "Ships six and ten, hold your ground and concentrate your fire on the obscenity!"

Then, before her words reached her sub-captains, before any Soro even fired back, the terrible Tandu ship began to dissolve on its own! One moment it was there, ferocious and deadly, ranging in on a numerous but helpless foe. The next instant the spindly destroyer was surrounded by a coruscating, discolored halo of sparks. Its shield folded, and the cruiser fell into itself like a collapsing tower of sticks.

With a brilliant flash, the Tandu vanished, leaving a cloud of ugly vapor behind. Through her own ship's shields, Krat could feel an awful psychic roar.

We were lucky, Krat realized as the psi-noise slowly faded. It was not without reason that other races avoided the Tandus' methods. But if that ship had lasted a few moments longer…

No harm was done, and Krat noted that her crew had all done their jobs. Some of them were slow, however, and these must be punished…

She beckoned the chief tactician, a tall, burly Paha. The warrior stepped toward her. He tried to maintain a proud bearing, but his drooping cilia told that he knew what to expect. Krat rumbled deep in her throat.

She started to speak, but in the emotion of the moment, the Soro commander felt a churning pressure within. Krat grunted and writhed, and the Paha officer fled as she panted on the vletoor cushion. Finally she howled and found relief. After a moment, she bent forward to retrieve the egg she had laid.

She picked it up, punishments and battles temporarily banished from her mind. In an instinct that predated her species uplift by the timid Hul, two million years before, she responded to the smell of pheromones and licked the birthing slime from the tiny air-cracks which seamed the leathery surface of the egg.

Krat licked it a few extra times for pleasure. She rocked the egg slowly in an ancient, untampered reflex of motherhood.

7 ::: Toshio

There was a ship involved, of course. All of his dreams since the age of nine had dealt with ships. Ships, at first, of plasteel and jubber, sailing the straits and archipelagos of Calafia, and later ships of space. Toshio had dreamt of ships of every variety, including those of the powerful Galactic patron races, which he had hoped one day to see.

Now he dreamt of a dinghy.

The tiny human-dolphin colony of his homeworld had sent him out with Akki riding on the outrigger, his Calafian Academy button shining brightly under Alph's sunshine. It started out a balmy day.

Only soon the weather darkened, and all around became the same color as the water. The sea grew bilious, then black, then changed to vacuum, and suddenly there were stars everywhere.

He worried about air. Neither he nor Akki had suits. It was hard, trying to breathe vacuum!

He was about to turn for home when he saw them chasing him. Galactics, with heads of every shape and color, long, sinuous arms, or tiny, grasping claws, or worse — were rowing toward him steadily. The sleek prows of their boats were as lambent as the starlight.

"What do you want?" he cried out as he paddled hard to get away. (Hadn't the boat started out with a motor?)

"Who is your master?!" They shouted in a thousand different tongues. "Is that He beside you?"

"Akki's a fin! Fins are our clients! We uplifted them and set them free!"

"Then they are free," the Galactics replied, drawing closer. "But who uplifted you? Who set you free?"

"I don't know!" he screamed. "Maybe we did it ourselves!" He stroked harder as the Galactics laughed. He struggled to breathe the hard vacuum. "Leave me alone! Let me go home!"

Suddenly the Fleet loomed ahead. The ships seemed bigger than moons — bigger than stars. They were dark and silent, and their aspect seemed to daunt even the Galactics.

Then the foremost of the ancient globes began to open. Toshio realized, then, that Akki was gone. His boat was gone. The ETs were gone.

He wanted to scream, but air was very dear.

A piercing whistle brought him around in a painful, disorienting instant. He sat up suddenly and felt the sled bounce unhappily with the motion. While his eyes made a blurred jumble of the horizon, a stiff breeze blew against his face. The tang of Kithrup greeted his nostrils.

"About time, Ladder-runner. You gave us quite a scare."

Toshio wavered, then saw Hikahi floating nearby, inspecting him with one eye.

"Are you okay, little Sharp-Eyes?"

"Um… yes. I think so."

"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 -

* Of other seas that are that are -

and others in them, dreaming — *

Toshio reached out and snapped on the hydrophones.

"Brookida! Are you okay! Is your air all right?"

There was a sigh, tremulous and tired.

"Fleet-t-t Fingers, hello. Thank you for saving my life. You flew as truly as any Tursiops."

"That ship we saw must have crashed! If that's what it was you can bet there will be aftershocks! Maybe we'd better stay down here a while. I'll turn on the sonar so others can find us and come for air while the waves pass." He flicked a switch, and immediately a low series of clicks emanated into the surrounding water. Brookida groaned.

"They will not come, Toshio. Can't you hear them? They won't answer your call."

Toshio frowned. "They have to! Hikahi will know about the aftershocks. They're probably looking for us right now! Maybe I'd better head back…" He moved to turn the sled and blow ballast. Brookida had started him worrying.

"Don't go, Toshio! It will do no good for you to die as well! Wait until the waves pass-s-s! You must live to tell Creideiki!"

"What are you talking about?"

"Listen, Sharp-Eyes. Listen!"

Toshio shook his head, then swore and pulled back on the throttle until the engine died. He turned up the gain on the hydrophones.

"Do you hear?" Brookida asked.

Toshio cocked his head and listened. The sea was a mess of intonation. The roar of the departing wave dopplered down as he lay there. Schools of fish made panicky noises. All around came the reports of rockslides and surf pounding on the islands.

Then he heard it. The shrill repetitive squeals of Primal Dolphin. No modern dolphin spoke it when fully in command of his faculties.

That, in itself, was bad news.

One of the cries was clear. He could easily make out the basic distress call. It was the earliest Dolphin signal human scientists had understood.

But the other noise… at least three voices were involved in that one. It was a strange sound, very poignant and very wrong!

"It isss rescue fever," Brookida groaned. "Hikahi is beached and injured. She might have stopped this, but she is delirious and now adds to the problem!"

"Hikahi…"

"Like Creideiki, she is an adept of Keneenk… the study of logical discipline. She would have been able to force the others to ignore the cries of those washed ashore, to make them dive to safety for a t-time."

"Don't they realize there will be aftershocks?"

"Shockss hardly matter, Sharp-Eyes!" Brookida cried. "They may beach themselves without assist! You are Calafian. How can you not know this about usss? I thrash here to go and die answering that call!"

Toshio groaned. Of course he knew about rescue fever, in which panic and fear washed aside the veneer of civilization, leaving a cetacean with only one thought — to save his comrades, whatever the personal risk. Every few years the tragedy struck even the highly advanced fins of Calafia. Akki had told him, once, that sometimes the sea itself seemed to be calling for help. Some humans claimed to have felt it, too — particularly those who took dolphin RNA in the rites of the Dreamer Cult.

Once upon a time the Tursiops, or bottlenose dolphin, had been about the least likely cetacean to beach himself. But genetic engineering had upset the balance somewhere. As the genes of other species were spliced onto the basic Tursiops model, a few things had been thrown out of kilter. For three generations human geneticists had been working on the problem. But for now the fins swam along a knife edge, where irrationality was a perpetual danger.

Toshio bit his lip. "They have their harnesses," he said uncertainly.

"One can hope. But is it likely they'll use them properly when they are even now speaking P-primal?"

Toshio struck the sled with his balled fist. Already his hand was growing numb from the chill. "I'm going up," he announced.

"No! You must not! You must guard your safet-ty!"

Toshio ground his teeth. Always mothering me. Mothering or teasing. The fns treat me like a child, and I'm sick of it!

He set the throttle to one-quarter and pulled up on the bow planes. "I'm going to unlash you, Brookida. Can you swim okay?"

"Yesss. But-t…"

Toshio looked at his sonar. A fuzzy line was forming in the west.

"Can you swim!" he demanded.

"Yesss. I can swim well enough. But don't cut me loose near the rescue fever! Don't you risk the aftershocksss!"

"I see one coming now. They'll be several minutes apart and weakening with time. I'll fix it so we rise just after this one passes. Then you've got to get going back to the ship! Tell them what's happened and get help."

"That's what you should do, Toshio."

"Never mind that! Will you do as I ask? Or do I have to leave you lashed up!"

There was an almost unnoticeable pause, but Brookida's voice changed. "I shall do exactly as you say Toshio. I'll bring help."

Toshio checked his trim, then he slipped over the side, holding onto the rim stanchions with one hand. Brookida looked at him through the transparent shell of the airdome. The tough bubble membrane surrounded the dolphin's head. Toshio tore loose the lashings holding Brookida in place. "You're going to have to take a breather with you, you know."

Brookida sighed as Toshio pulled a lever by the airdome. A small hose descended, one end covering Brookida's blowhole. Like a snake, ten feet of hose wrapped around Brookida's torso. Breathers were uncomfortable, and hindered speech. But by wearing one Brookida would not have to come up for air. The breather would help the old metallurgist ignore the cries in the water — a constant, uncomfortable reminder of his membership in a technological culture.

Toshio left Brookida tied in place by a single lashing. He pulled himself back onto the upper surface just as the first aftershock rolled overhead.

The sled bucked, but he was prepared this time. They were deep, and the wave passed with surprising quickness.

"Okay, here goes." He pushed the throttle forward to max and blew ballast.

Soon the metal island appeared on his left. The screams of his comrades became distinctly louder over the sonar set. The distress call was now pre-eminent over the rescue fever response.

Toshio steered past the mound to the north. He wanted to give Brookida a big head start.

Just then, however, a sleek gray figure shot past Toshio, just overhead. He recognized it at once, and where it was headed.

He cut the last lashing. "Get moving, Brookida! If you come back anywhere near this island again I'll rip off your harness and bite your tail in half!"

He didn't bother looking back as Brookida dropped away and the sled turned sharply. He kicked in emergency power to try to catch up with Keepiru. The fastest swimmer in the Streak's crew was heading directly for the western beach. His cries were pure Primal Dolphin.

"Damn you, Keepiru. Stop!"

The sled sped quickly, just under the water's surface. The afternoon had aged, and there was a reddish tinge to the clouds, but Toshio could clearly see Keepiru leaping from wavelet to wavelet up ahead. He appeared indifferent to Toshio's calls as he neared the island where his comrades lay beached and delirious.

Toshio felt helpless. Another aftershock was due in three minutes. If it didn't beach the dolphin, Keepiru's own efforts probably would. Keepiru came from Atlast, a new and rather rustic colony world. It was doubtful he had learned the tools of mental discipline studied by Creideiki and Hikahi.

"Stop! If we time it right we can work as a team! We can avoid the aftershocks! Will you let me catch up?" he screamed. But it was no use. The fin had too much of a head start. The futile chase frustrated Toshio. How could he have lived and worked with dolphins all his life and known them so poorly? To think the Terragens Council had chosen him for this tour because of his experience with fins! Hah!

Toshio had always taken a lot of kidding from fins. They kidded all human children, while protecting them ferociously. But on signing aboard Streaker, Toshio had expected to be treated as an adult and officer. Sure, there'd be a little repartee, as he'd seen between man and fin back home, but mutual respect, as well. It hadn't worked out that way.

Keepiru had been the worst, starting right off with heavy sarcasm and never letting up.

So why am I trying to save him?

He remembered the fierce courage Keepiru had shown in saving him from the weed. There was no rescue fever then. The fin had been in full control over his harness.

So, he thinks of me as a child, Toshio realized bitterly. No wonder he doesn't hear me now.

Still, it offered a way. Toshio bit his lip, wishing vainly for an alternative. To save Keepiru's life he would have to humiliate himself utterly. It wasn't an easy thing to decide to do, his pride had taken such a beating.

With a savage curse, he pulled back on the throttle and set the bow planes to descend. He turned up the hydrophones to maximum, swallowed, then cried out in pidgin Trinary.

* Child drowning — child in danger! *

* Child drowning — child's distress *

* Human child — in need of savior *

* Human child — come do your best! *

He repeated the call over and over, whistling through lips dry with shame. The nursery rhyme was taught to all the children of Calafia. Any kid past the age of nine who used it usually pleaded for transfer to another island to escape the subsequent razzing. There were more dignified ways an adult called for help.

None of which Keepiru had heard!

Ears burning, he repeated the call.

Not all Calafian kids did well with the fins, of course. Only a quarter of the planet's human population worked closely with the sea. But those adults were the ones who had learned the best ways to deal with dolphins. Toshio had always assumed he'd be one of them.

Now that was all over. If he got back to Streaker he'd have to hide in his cabin… for at least the few days or weeks it took for the victors of the battle over Kithrup to come down and claim them all.

On his sonar screen, another fuzzy line of static was approaching from the west. Toshio let the sled slip a little deeper. Not that he cared. He continued to whistle, but he felt like crying.

# where — where — where child is — where child is? where #

Primal Dolphin! Nearby! Almost, Toshio forgot his shame. He fingered a rope left over from Brookida's lashings, and kept whistling.

A streak of gray twilight flashed past him. Toshio gathered his knees under him and took the rope in both hands. He knew Keepiru would circle below and come up the other side. When he saw the first hint of gray hurtling upward, Toshio launched himself from the sled.

The bullet-like body of the dolphin twisted in an abrupt, panicky attempt to avoid collision. Toshio cried out as the cetacean's tail struck him in the chest. But it was a cry more of glee than pain. He had timed it right!

As Keepiru twisted around again, Toshio flung himself backward, allowing the fin to pass between himself and the rope. He clamped his feet around the dolphin's slick tail and pulled the rope with all the will of a garroter.

"Got you!" he cried.

At that instant the aftershock hit.

The cycloid clutched and pulled at him. Bits of flotsam struck him as the suction tossed his body about in apparent alliance with the mad, bucking dolphin.

This time Toshio felt no fear of the wave. He was filled with a fierce battle lust. Adrenalin seared through him like a hot flux. It pleased him to save Keepiru's life by physically punishing him for weeks of humiliation.

The dolphin writhed in panic. As the shock rolled past them, Keepiru cried out the basic call for air. Desperately, the fin drove for the surface.

They breached, and Toshio just missed getting blasted by the spume from Keepiru's blowhole. Keepiru commenced a series of leaps, gyrating to shake loose of his unwelcome rider.

Each time they went underwater Toshio tried to call out.

"You're sentient," he gasped. "Damn you, Keepiru… you're… you're a starship pilot!"

He knew he should be doing his coaxing in Trinary, but it was no use even trying, when he could barely hold on for dear life.

"You pea-brained… phallic symbol!" he screamed as the water slammed against him. "You over-rated fish! You're killing me, you goddamed… The Eatees own Calafia by now because you fins can't hold your tongues! We never should have taken you along into space!"

The words were hateful. Contemptuous. At last Keepiru seemed to have heard. He reared out of the water like an enraged stallion. Toshio felt his grip tear loose, and he was flung away like a rag doll, to hit the sea with a splash.

Only eighteen cases were known, in the forty generations of dolphin uplift, in which a fin had attacked a human with murderous intent. In each case, every fin related to the perpetrator had been sterilized. Still, Toshio expected to be crushed at any instant. He didn't care. He had realized, at last, the cause of his depression. It had come to the surface when he was wrestling with Keepiru.

It hadn't been his ability to go home that had hurt, these last few weeks. It was another fact that he had not allowed himself to think of even once since the battle off Morgran.

The ETs… the extraterrestrials… the Galactics of every stripe and philosophy which were chasing Streaker… would not settle for hunting down the dolphin-crewed ship.

At least one ET race would have seen that the Streak might successfully go into hiding. Or they might imagine, erroneously, that her crew had succeeded in passing the secret of her discovery to Earth. Either way, the logical next step for one of the more amoral or vicious Galactic races would be coercion.

Earth might be able to defend herself. Probably Omnivarium and Hermes, as well. The Tymbrimi would defend the Caanan colonies.

But places like Calafia, or Atlast, must be captured by now. They were hostages, his family and everyone he had known. And Toshio realized that he blamed the fins.

Another aftershock was due any minute now. Toshio didn't care.

Pieces of floating debris drifted all about nearby. Not more than a kilometer away Toshio could see the metal-mound. At least it looked like the same one. He couldn't tell if there were dolphins stranded on the shore or not.

A large piece of flotsam drifted near him. It took him a moment to realize that it was Keepiru.

Toshio treaded water as he opened his faceplate.

"Well," he asked, "are you proud of yourself?"

Keepiru turned slightly to one side, and one dark eye looked up at Toshio. The bulge at the top of the cetacean's head, where human meddling had created a vocal apparatus from the former blowhole, gave out a long, soft, warbling sound.

Toshio couldn't be certain it was just a sigh. It might have been an apology in Primal Dolphin. The possibility alone was enough to make him angry.

"Can that crap! I just want to know one thing. Do I have to send you back to the ship? Or do you think you can stay sentient long enough to help me? Answer in Anglic, and it had better be grammatically correct!"

Keepiru moaned in pure anguish. After a moment of heavy breathing he finally spoke, quite slowly.

"Don't sssend me back. They're still calling for help! I will do what you ask-k-k!"

Toshio hesitated. "All right. Go down after the sled. When you've found it, put on a breather. I don't want you hampered by need for air, and you need a constant reminder with you, too!

"Then bring the sled up near the island, but not too close!"

Keepiru flung his head up in a huge nodding motion. "Yesss!" he cried. Then he flipped and dove into the water. It was just as well Keepiru had left all the thinking to him.

The fin might have balked if he'd caught onto what Toshio had in mind to do next.

A kilometer to the island; there was only one way to get there fast and avoid a scramble up the slanting, abrasive, metal-coral surface. He checked his orientation one more time, then a drop in the water level told him that the wave was coming.

The fourth wave seemed the gentlest by far. He knew the feeling was deceptive. He was in water deep enough so that the swell came at him as a gentle lump in the ocean, rather than a crested breaker. He dove down into the hump and swam against the direction of motion for a time before rising to the surface.

He had to gauge it just right. Swim back too far and he wouldn't reach the island before the following trough arrived and pulled him out to sea again. To remain at the front of the wave would be to body-surf a vicious breaker onto the beach, undertow and all.

It was all happening too fast. He swam hard, but couldn't tell if he had passed the peak of the wave or not. Then a glance told him that it was too late for remedial measures. He flipped around to face the looming, foliage-topped mound.

The breaker started a hundred yards ahead, but the slope rapidly ate away at the wave as bottom dragged the cycloid into a crested monster. The peak moved backward, toward Toshio, even as the wave hurtled upward onto the beach.

The boy braced himself as the crest reached him. He was prepared to look down on a precipice, and then see nothing more.

What he saw was a cataract of white foam as the wave began to die. Toshio cried out to keep his ear channels open, and started swimming furiously to stay atop the churning tide of spume and debris.

Suddenly, there was greenery all around. Trees and shrubs which had withstood the earlier assaults shook under this attack. Some tore loose of their moorings even as Toshio flew past them. Others stood and flailed at him as he hurtled through.

No sharp branch impaled him. No unbreaking vine garroted him as he passed. In a tumbling, tossing confusion he finally came to rest, somehow hugging the trunk of a huge tree, while the wave churned, and finally receded.

Miraculously, he was on his feet, the first man to stand on the soil of Kithrup. Toshio stared dazedly at his surroundings, briefly not believing his survival.

Then he hurriedly opened his faceplate, and became the first man to lose his breakfast on the soil of Kithrup.

8 ::: Galactics

"Slay them!" The Jophur high priest demanded. "Slay the isolated Thennanin battlecruisers on our sixth quadrant!"

The Jophur chief of staff bowed its twelve-ringed trunk before the high priest.

"The Thennanin are our allies-of-the-moment! How can we turn on them without first performing the secret rituals of betrayal? Their ancestors will not be appeased!"

The Jophur high priest expanded its six outer sap-rings. It rose high upon its dais at the rear of the command chamber.

"There is no time to perform the rites! Now, as our alliance finishes sweeping this sector, as our alliance has become the strongest! Now, while this phase of the battle still rages. Now, while the foolish Thennanin have opened up their flanks to us. Now may we harm them greatly!"

The chief of staff pulsed in agitation, its outer sap-rings discoloring with emotion.

"We may change alliances as it suits us, agreed. We may betray our allies, agreed. We may do anything to win the prize agreed. But we may not do so without performing the rituals! The rituals are what make us the appropriate vessels for the will of the ancients! You would bring us down to the level of the heretics!"

The dais shook with the high priest's anger.

"My rings decide! My rings are those of priesthood! My rings…"

The oration-peak of the pyramidal high priest erupted in a geyser of hot, multi-hued sap. The explosion spewed sticky amber liquor across the bridge of the Jophur flagship.

"Continue fighting." The chief of staff waved the crew back to work with its sidearm. "Call the Quartermaster of Religiosity. Have it send up rings to make up a new priest. Continue fighting while we prepare to perform the rituals of betrayal:

The chief of staff bowed to the staring section chiefs. "We shall appease the ancestors of the Thennanin before we turn on them.

"But remember to make certain the Thennanin themselves do not sense our intentions!"

9 ::: From The Journal of Gillian Baskin

It's been some time since I've been able to make an entry in this personal log. Since the Shallow Cluster it seems we've constantly been in frantic motion… making the discovery of the millennia, getting ambushed at Morgran, and fighting for our lives from then on. I hardly ever see Tom any more. He's always down in the engine or weapons pods. I'm either here in the lab or helping out in sick bay.

Ship's surgeon Makanee has a mouthful of problems. Fen have always had a talent for hypochondria. A fifth of the crew shows up every sick call with psychosomatic complaints. You can't just tell them it's all in their heads, so we stroke them and tell them what brave fellows they are, and that everything's going to be all right.

I think if it weren't for the captain, half of this crew would be hysterical by now. To many of them he seems almost like a hero out of the Whale Dream. Creideiki moves about the ship, watching the repairs and giving little lessons in Keneenk logic. The fen seem to buck up whenever he's nearby.

Still, reports keep coming in about the space battle. Instead of tapering off, it's only getting thicker and heavier!

And we're all getting more than a little worried about Hikahi's party.

Gillian put down her stylus. From the small circle of her desk lamp, the rest of the laboratory appeared dark and gloomy. The only other light came from the far end of the room. Silhouetted against the spots was a vaguely humanoid shape, a mysterious shadow, lying on a stasis table.

"Hikahi," she sighed. "Where in Ifni's name are you?"

That Hikahi's survey party hadn't even sent back a monopulse confirmation of the recall order was now of great concern. Streaker couldn't afford to lose those crewfen. For all of his frequent unreliability outside the bridge, Keepiru was their best pilot. Even Toshio Iwashika had a lot of promise.

But most of all, the loss of Hikahi would hurt. Without her, how could Creideiki manage?

Hikahi was Gillian's best dolphin friend, at least as close to her as Tom was to Creideiki or Tsh't. Gillian wondered why Takkata-Jim had been appointed vice-captain instead of Hikahi. It made no sense. She could only imagine that politics was behind it. Takkata-Jim was a Stenos. Perhaps Ignacio Metz had had a hand in choosing the complement for this mission. Metz was a passionate advocate of certain dolphin racial types back on Earth.

Gillian didn't write these thoughts down. They were idle speculations, and she didn't have time for speculation.

Anyway, it's time I got back to Herbie.

She closed her journal and got up to walk over to the stasis table, where a dry, dessicated figure floated in a heavily shielded field of suspended time.

The ancient cadaver grinned back at her through the glass.

It wasn't human. There hadn't even been multi-cellular creatures on Earth when this thing had lived and breathed and flown spaceships. Yet it looked eerily humanoid. It had straight arms and legs, and a very man-like head and neck. Its jaw and eye orbits were strange-looking, but its skull still had a very man-like grin.

How old are you, Herbie? she asked in her thoughts. One billion years? Two?

How is it your fleet of ancient hulks waited undiscovered by Galactic civilization for so long, waited until we came along… a bunch of wolfling humans and newly uplifted dolphins? Why were we the ones to find you?

And why did one litle hologram of you, beamed home to Earth, make half the patron-lines in the galaxy go crazy?

Streaker's micro-Library was no help. It refused to recognize Herbie at all. Maybe it was holding back. Or perhaps it was simply too small an archive to remember an obscure race so long extinct.

Tom had asked the Niss machine look into it. So far the sarcastic Tymbrimi artifact had been unable to cozen out an answer.

Meanwhile, between sick bay and her other duties, Gillian had to find a few hours a day to examine this relict non-destructively, and maybe figure out what was stirring up the Eatees so. If she didn't do it, no one would.

Somehow she would make it until tonight.

Poor Tom, Gillian thought, smiling. He'll be coming back from his engines, wiped out, and I'll be feeling amorous. It's a damned good thing he's a sport.

She picked up a pion microprobe.

Okay Herbie, let's see if we can find out what kind of a brain you had.

10 ::: Metz

"I'm sorry, Dr. Metz. The captain is with Thomasss Orley in the weapons section. If there's anything I can do…?"

As usual, Vice-Captain Takkata-Jim was unfailingly polite. His Anglic, diction, even while breathing oxywater, was almost perfect. Ignacio Metz couldn't help smiling in approval. He had a particular interest in Takkata-Jim.

"No, Vice-Captain. I just stopped by the bridge to see if the survey party had reported in.

"They haven't. We can only wait."

Metz tsked. He had already concluded that Hikahi's party was destroyed.

"Ah, well. I don't suppose there has been any offer of negotiations by the Galactics yet?"

Takkata-Jim shook his large, mottled-gray head left to right.

"Regrettably, no sir. They appear to be more interested in slaughtering each other. Every few hours, it seems, yet another battle fleet enters Kthsemenee's system to join in the free-for-all. It may be a while before anyone initiates diplomacy"

Dr. Metz frowned at the illogic of it. If the Galactics were rational, they'd let Streaker hand her discovery over to the Library Institute and have done with it! Then everyone would share equally!

But Galactic civilization was unified more in the breach than in fact. And too many angry species had big ships and guns.

Here we are, he thought, in the middle, with something they all want.

It can't just be that giant fleet of ancient ships. Something more must have set them off. Gillian Baskin and Tom Orley picked something up out there in the Shallow Cluster. I wonder what it was.

"Will you be wanting me to join you for dinner this evening, Dr. Metz?"

Metz blinked. What day was it? Ah, yes. Wednesday. "Of course, Vice-Captain. Your company and conversation would be appreciated, as usual. Shall we say sixish?"

"Perhapsss nineteen-hundred hours would be better, sir. I get off duty then."

"Very well. Until then."

Takkata-Jim nodded. He turned and swam back to his duty station.

Metz watched the fin appreciatively.

He's the best of my Stenos, Metz thought. He doesn't know I'm his godfather… his gene-father — But I am proud nonetheless.

All the dolphins aboard were of Tursiops amicus stock. But some had genetic grafts from Stenos bredanensis, the deep-water dolphin that had always been the closest to the bottlenose in intelligence.

Wild bredanensis had a reputation for insatiable curiosity and reckless disregard for danger. Metz had led the efort to have DNA from that species added to the neo-fin gene pool. On Earth many of the new Stenos had turned out very well, showing streaks of initiative and individual brilliance.

But a reputation for harsh temperament had lately caused some resentment in Earth's coastal communities. He had worked hard to convince the Council that it would be an important gesture to appoint a few Stenos to positions of responsibility on the first dolphin-crewed starship.

Takkata-Jim was his proof. Coldly logical, primly correct, the fin used Anglic almost to the exclusion of Trinary, and seemed impervious to the Whale Dream that so enthralled older models like Creideiki. Takkata-Jim was the most manlike dolphin Metz had ever met.

He watched the vice-captain manage the bridge crew, with none of the little Keneenk parables Creideiki was always inserting, but rather with Anglic precision and brevity. Never a word wasted.

Yes, he thought. This one is going to get a good report when we get home.

"Doctor Metssss?"

Metz turned, and recoiled at the size of the dolphin that had silently come up beside him. "Wha… ? Oh. K'tha-Jon. You startled me. What can I do for you?"

A truly large dolphin grinned at him. His blunt mouth, his counter-shaded body and bulging eyes, would have told Metz everything about him… if he hadn't already known.

Feresa attenuata, the human savored the thought. So beautiful and savage. My most secret project, and nobody, not even you, K'tha-Jon, knows that you are more than just another Stenos.

"Forgive the interruption, Dr. Metsss, but the chimp scientist Charlesss Dart-t has asked to speak with you. I think the little ape wantsss to bitch to somebody again."

Metz frowned. K'tha-Jon was only a bosun, and not expected to be as refined as Takkata-Jim. Still, there were limits, even considering the giant's hidden background.

I will have to talk to this fellow, he reminded himself. This kind of attitude will never do.

"Please inform Dr. Dart that I'm on my way," he told the fin. "I'm finished here for now"

11 ::: Creideiki Orley

"So we're armed again," Creideiki sighed. "After a fashion."

Thomas Orley looked up from the newly repaired missile tubes and nodded. "It's about as good as we're going to get, Creideiki. We weren't expecting any trouble when we popped out into a battle at the Morgran transfer point. We were lucky to get away with as little damage as we took."

Creideiki agreed.

"Just ssso," he sighed moodily. "If only I had reacted faster."

Orley noticed his friend's mood. He pursed his lips and whistled. His breather mask amplified a faint sound-shadow picture. The little echo danced and hopped like a mad elf from corner to corner in the oxywater-filled chamber. Workers in the weapons pod lifted their narrow, sound-sensitive jaws to follow the skipping sonar image as it scampered unseen, chittering in mock sympathy.

* When one commands,

One is envied by people -

But, oh! the demands! *

The sound-wraith vanished, but laughter remained. The crew of the weapons pod spluttered and squawled.

Creideiki let the mirth settle. Then, from his brow came a pattern of chamber-filling clicks that merged to mimic the sounds of thunderclouds gathering. In the closed room those present heard raindrops blown before the wind. Tom closed his eyes to let the sound-image of a sea squall close over him.

* They stand in my road,

The mad, ancient, nasty things

Tell them "move, or else!" *

Orley bowed his head, acknowledging defeat. No one had ever beaten Creideiki at Trinary haiku. The admiring sighs of the fen only confirmed this.

Nothing had changed, of course. As Orley and Creideiki turned to leave the weapons pod, they knew that defiance alone would not get this crew through the crisis. There had to be hope, as well.

Hope was scarce. Tom knew that Creideiki was desperately worried about Hikahi, though he hid it well.

When they were out of earshot, the captain asked, "Has Gillian made any progressss studying that thing we found… the cause of all this trouble?"

Tom shook his head. " I haven't spent more than an hour with her in two days, so I don't know. Last I checked, the ship's micro-Library still claims nothing like Herbie ever existed."

Creideiki sighed. "It would have been nice to know what the Galacticsss think we found. Ah, well…"

They were stopped by a sudden whistle behind them. Tsh't, the ship's fourth officer, flew into the hallway in a cloud of bubbles.

"Creideiki! Tom! Sonar reports a dolphin at long range, far to the eassst, but apparently swimming this way at high speed!"

Creideiki and Orley looked at each other. Then Tom nodded at the captain's unspoken command.

"Can I take Tsh't and twenty fen?"

"Yesss. Get a team ready. But don't leave until we find out who this is. You may want to take more than twenty. Or it may be hopelesss to go at all."

Tom saw pain in the captain's eye. The next hour or so of waiting would be hard.

Orley motioned for Lieutenant Tsh't to follow him, then he turned to swim at top speed down the flooded corridor toward the outlock.

12 ::: Galactics

Feeling the joy of patronhood and command, the Soro, Krat, watched the creatures, the Gello, the Paha, the Pila, her creatures, as they guided the Soro, fleet toward battle once more.

"Mistress," the Gello detection officer announced. "We are approaching the water world at one-quarter of light speed per your instructions."

Krat acknowledged with a bare flick of her tongue, but secretly she was happy. Her egg was healthy. When they won here she would be due to go home and mate once more. And the crew of her flagship was working together like a finely tuned machine.

"The fleet is one paktaar ahead of timetable, mistress," the detection officer announced.

Of all the client species owing allegiance to the Soro, the Gello were special to Krat. They were her own species' first clients, uplifted by the Soro long ago. The Gello had in their turn become patrons as well, and brought two more client races into the clan. They had made the Soro proud. The chain of uplift went on.

Deep in the past had been the Progenitors, who began Galactic Law. Since then, race had aided race to sentience, taking indentured service as payment.

Many millions of years ago, the ancient Luber had uplifted the Puber or so the Library said. The Luber were now long extinct. The Puber still existed, somewhere, though now degenerate and decadent.

Before their decadence, though, the Puber raised up the Hui, who in turn made clients of Krat's stone-chopping, Soro ancestors. Shortly thereafter, the Hui retired to their homeworld to become philosophers.

Now the Soro themselves had many clients. Their most successful upspring were the Gello, the Paha, and the Pila.

Krat could hear the high voice of the Pila tactician Cubber-cabub, haranguing its subordinates in planning section. It was insisting they strive harder to coax the information she had requested from the shipboard mini-Library. Cubber-cabub sounded frightened. Good. It would try harder if it feared her.

Alone of those aboard, the Pila were mammals, short bipeds from a high-gravity world. They had become a powerful race in many Galaxy-wide bureaucratic organizations, including the important Library Institute. The Pila had raised clients of their own, bringing credit to the clan.

Still, it was too bad the Pila were no longer indentured clients. It would have been nice to meddle with their genes again. The furry little sophonts shed, and had a bothersome odor.

No client race was perfect. Only two hundred years ago, the Pila had been thoroughly embarrassed by the humans of Earth. The affair had been difficult and expensive to cover up. Krat did not know all of the facts, but it had something to do with the Earthlings' sun. Since that time, the Pila had hated humans passionately.

Krat's mating claw throbbed as she thought of Earthlings. In only three hundred of their years they had become almost as great a nuisance as the sanctimonious Kanten, or the devil-trickster Tymbrimi!

The Soro race patiently awaited the right opportunity to erase the blot on their clan honor. Fortunately, the humans were almost pathetically ignorant and vulnerable. Perhaps the chance had already come!

How delicious it would be to have Homo sapiens assigned to the Soro as indentured foster clients. It could happen! Then what changes could be made! How humans could be molded!

Krat looked at her crew and wished she were free to meddle, to alter, to shape at will even these adult species. So much could be done with them! But that would require changing the rules.

If the upstart water-mammals from Earth had discovered what she thought they had, then the rules might be changed… if the Progenitors had, indeed, come back. How ironic that the newest spacefaring race should discover this derelict fleet! She almost forgave them for existing, for giving those humans the status of patrons.

"Mistress!" the tall Gello announced. "The Jophur-Thennanin alliance has broken up. They are fighting amongst themselves. This means they are no longer pre-eminent!"

"Maintain vigilance." Krat sighed. The Gello shouldn't make a big deal out of one little act of treachery. It was not unusual. Alliances would form and dissolve until one force emerged supreme. She intended that that force be Soro. When the battle was won she would collect the prize.

The dolphins must be here! When she won this battle, she would pry the handless ones out from their underwater sanctuary and make them tell all!

With a languid wave of her left paw, she summoned the Pil Librarian from his niche.

"Look into the data on these water creatures we pursue," she told it. "I want to know more about their habits, what they like and dislike. It is said their bonds to their human patrons are weak and corruptible. Give me a lever to pervert these… dolphins."

Cubber-cabub bowed and withdrew into the Library section, the sector with the rayed spiral glyph above its opening.

Krat felt destiny all around her. This place in space was a fulcrum of power. She didn't need instruments to tell her that.

"I will have them! The rules will be changed!"

13 ::: Toshio

Toshio found Ssattatta by the bole of the giant drill-tree. The fin had been thrown against the monstrous plant and crushed. Her harness was a jumble of broken pieces.

Toshio stumbled through the ruined undergrowth whistling a Trinary call when he felt able. Mostly he tried very hard to stay on his feet. He hadn't walked much since leaving Earth. Bruises and nausea didn't help much, either.

He found K'Hith lying on a soft bed of grass-like growth. His harness was intact, but the dolphin planetologist had already bled to death from three deep gashes in his belly. Toshio made a mental note of the spot and moved on.

Closer to the shore he found Satima. The little female was bleeding and hysterical, but alive. Toshio bound her wounds with fleshfoam and repair tape. Then he took the manipulator arms of her harness and used a large rock to pound them into the loam. It was the best he could do to bind her to the ground before the fifth wave hit.

It was more a flooding than a wave. Toshio clung to a tree as it flowed past, tugging at him and rising almost to his neck.

As soon as the wave began to recede, he let go and floundered over to Satima. He groped until he found the catch on her harness, then released her to float in the growing backtow. He pushed hard to join the flood and keep from being left behind.

He was struggling to shove her around a clump of shrubs, against the growing pull of the backwash, when a swift motion in a tree overhead caught his eye. The movement didn't fit into the overall pattern of swaying subsidence. He looked up, and met the gaze of a pair of small, black eyes.

There was little time for more than a startled double take before the tide pulled him and Satima straight through the obstruction and into a small, recently made marsh. Toshio was suddenly too busy to look anywhere but straight ahead.

He had to pull Satima down the last few yards of slippery sea-plant, taking care not to reopen her wounds. In the last few minutes it had seemed she was more lucid. Her Dolphin squeakings were starting to take on form and sound like Trinary words.

A whistle brought Toshio's head up. Keepiru was only forty meters offshore, driving the sled toward him. The fin had on a breather, but he could still signal.

"Satima!" Toshio shouted to the wounded dolphin. "Go to the sled! Go to Keepiru!"

"Lash her to an airdome!" he called to Keepiru. "And keep your eye on that sonar screen! Get back out there when you see a wave coming!"

Keepiru tossed his head. As soon as Satima was a hundred feet out he used the sled to herd her toward deeper water.

Five accounted for. That left Hist-t and Hikahi.

Toshio climbed back up the sea-plant and stumbled into the undergrowth once again. The territory of his mind seemed as torn up and desolated as the island he trod upon. He had seen too many corpses for one day — too many dead friends.

He realized now that he had been unfair to the fins all along.

It had been unjust to blame them for teasing him. They couldn't help the way they were built. All of man's genetic meddling notwithstanding, dolphins had been dealing with humanity on a level of good-natured derision since the first person paddled a log canoe out to sea. That pathetic image had been enough to set a pattern that uplift could only alter, not eliminate.

And why eliminate it? Toshio now saw that those humans he had known on Calafia, who worked best with dolphins, had had a special type of personality, generally featuring a mixture of a thick skin, firmness, and a willing sense of humor. No one worked for long with fins who hadn't earned their respect.

He hurried over to a gray form that lay in the underbrush. But no. It was Ssattatta again. She had been moved by the last wave. Toshio stumbled on.

Dolphins were quite well aware of what Mankind had done for them. Uplift was a painful process. But none of them would go back to the Whale Dream if they could help it.

The fins knew, as well, that the loose codes that ruled behavior among the Galactic races, rules established in the Library for aeons, would have let humanity demand a hundred thousand years of servitude from its clients. Men had collectively shuddered at the thought. Homo sapiens himself was barely that age. If Mankind did have a patron out there — one strong enough to lay claim to the title — that species wasn't going to pick up Tursiops amicus as an added bonus.

There wasn't a fin alive who wasn't aware of Earth's attitude. There were dolphins on the Terragens Council, as well as chimpanzees.

Toshio knew at last how he had hurt Keepiru with his words during their struggle at sea. Most of all he regretted the remark about Calafia. Keepiru would willingly die a thousand times to save the humans of Toshio's homeworld.

Toshio's tongue would fall off before he said such things again. Ever.

He staggered into a clearing. There, in a shallow pool, lay a Tursiops dolphin.

"Hikahi!"

The fin was scratched and battered. Tiny bloody tracks lay along her sides. But she was awake. And as Toshio started forward she called out.

"Stay there, Sharp-Eyes! Don't-t move! We have company here!"

Toshio stopped in his tracks. Hikahi's command was specific. Yet the need to go to her was urgent. The dolphin's scratches did not look pleasant. If there were slivers of metal lodged under the skin they had to be removed soon, before blood poisoning set in. And it wasn't going to be easy getting Hikahi out to sea.

"Hikahi, there'll be another wave soon. It may reach this high. We've got to be ready for it!"

"Stay, Toshio. The wave will not reach here. Besides, look around. See how much more important this isss!"

For the first time, Toshio really noticed the clearing. The pool was set near one side, with scratch marks all around, indicating that it had been recently dug. Then he saw that the manipulator arms from Hikahi's harness were missing.

Then who… ? Toshio's perception shifted. He saw twisted debris at the far end of the clearing, scattered through the undergrowth, and recognized the fragments of a ruined, shattered village.

In the chronic shimmering of a Kithrupan forest he saw the fragments of rude, torn, woven nets, scattered pieces of wrecked thatching, and bits of sharp metal crudely bound to wooden staves.

In the tree branches he saw fleet little movements. Then, one by one, small, splayed, web-fingered hands appeared — followed by slowly peeking, shining black eyes that peered back at him from under low, greenish brows.

"Abos!" he whispered. "I saw one earlier, then forgot completely! They look pre-sentient!"

"Yesss," Hikahi sighed. "And this makes secrecy even more vital than ever. Quickly Sharp-Eyes! Tell me what has happened!"

Toshio related only what he had done since the first wave struck, leaving out only the details of his battle with Keepiru. It was hard to concentrate, with the eyes in the trees first staring down at him, then skittishly darting under cover whenever he glanced their way. He barely finished his story as the last wave arrived.

The breakers could be seen driving up the sloping shore with a loud roar and a white foaming. But clearly Hikahi was right. The water wouldn't rise this high.

"Toshio!" Hikahi whistled. "You've done very well. You may have saved these little people, as well as ourselves. Brookida will succeed. He will bring help.

"So saving me is not that important. You must do as I say! Have Keepiru dive at once! He must stay out of sight and remain quiet as possible as he searches for bodies and debris. You must bury Ssattatta and K'Hith and gather the fragments of their harnesses. When help comes we must be able to move quickly!"

"Are you sure you'll be all right? Your wounds…"

"I'll be fine! My friends keep me wet-t. The trees overhang to keep me hidden. Watch the skies, Sharp-Eyes! Don't be seen! When you're finished I hope to have coaxed our friends here into trusting you."

She sounded tired. Toshio was torn. Finally, he sighed and turned back to the forest. He forced himself to run through the broken foliage, following the receding waters to the shore.

Keepiru was just emerging as he arrived. The fin had removed his breather and wore an airdome instead. He reported finding the body of Phip-pit, the dolphin supposed lost earlier to the killer weed. The sucker-bruised body must have been torn loose during the tsunami.

"Any sign of Hist-t?" Toshio called.

Keepiru answered negative. Toshio passed on Hikahi's command and watched as the sled sank below again.

For a moment he stood there, then, looking out over the west.

Kithrup's reddish sun was setting. A few stars poked rays through the scattered clouds overhead. In the east the clouds were beginning to look ominous. There would be rain during the night. Toshio decided against taking off his drysuit, though he compromised by pulling the rubberized headpiece off. The breeze was chilling, but a huge relief.

He glanced to the south. If the battle in space continued, Toshio saw no sign of it. Kithrup's rotation had taken them past the shining globe of plasma and debris that must be drifting out there now.

Toshio lacked the will to shake his fist, but he grimaced toward the southern sky, hoping the Galactics had wiped each other out.

It wasn't likely. There would be victors. And someday soon they would be down here looking for dolphins and men.

Toshio pulled his shoulders back, in spite of his fatigue, and walked with deliberateness toward the forest, and the protecting, overhanging trees.

They found the young man and the dolphin shortly after landing. The two were huddled together under a crude shelter which dripped warm rain in long rivulets. Lightning flashes drowned out the muffled yellow light from the lamps the rescuers brought. In the first flash, Thomas Orley thought he saw a half-dozen small squat figures clustered around the Earthling and the Calafian. But by the time he and his partner had shoved through the undergrowth for a better view, the animals — or whatever they were-were gone.

His first fear that they had been carrion-eaters disappeared

when he saw Toshio move. Still, he kept his right hand on the butt of his needler and held up the lantern to let Hannes Suessi pass underneath. He looked carefully around the clearing, taking in the smells and the sounds of the living surface of the metal-mound, memorizing details.

"Are they all right?" he asked after a few seconds.

"Shh, It's okay Toshio. It's just me, Hannes," he heard the engineer mutter. The fellow sounded downright maternal. "Yes, Mr. Orley." Suessi called back, "They're both awake, but not in much shape for talking."

Thomas Orley took in the clearing once more, then moved over to set the lamp down beside Suessi. "This lightning would cover anything," he said. "I'm going to call up the mechanicals so we can get these two out of here as quickly as possible." He touched a button on the rim of his faceplate and whistled quickly in perfect Trinary. The message lasted six seconds. It was said that Thomas Orley could actually speak Primal Dolphin, though no human had ever witnessed it.

"They'll be here in a few minutes. They have to cover their tracks." He squatted down next to Toshio, who was sitting up now that Suessi had moved over to Hikahi.

"Hello, Mr. Orley," the boy said. "I'm sorry we dragged you away from your work."

"That's all right, son. I've been wanting to have a look around up here, anyway. This gave the captain a good excuse to send me. After we get you started back toward the ship, Hannes and Tsh't and I will be going on to look over that ship that crashed.

"Now, do you think you can lead us to Ssattatta and K'Hith? We want to comb this island clean before the storm passes."

Toshio nodded. "Yes, sir. I should be able to stumble around that long. I don't suppose anyone's found Hist-t?"

"No. We're worried about that, but nowhere near as worried as we were when Brookida got back. Keepiru's told us most of the story. That fin thinks rather highly of you, you know. You did quite a job here."

Toshio turned away, as if ashamed to receive the praise.

Orley looked at him curiously. He had never given much thought to the middie before. During the first part of the voyage, the youth had seemed bright, but a bit irresponsible. Later, after they found the derelict fleet, he had begun to

turn morose, as their chances of ever going home diminished. Now there was this new note. It was too soon to tell what the long-term effects would be, but this had obviously been a rite of passage for Toshio.

Humming sounds drifted up from the beach. Soon two spider-like mechanicals strode into view, a hammocked and harnessed dolphin piloting each of them.

Toshio sighed a little raggedly as Orley helped him up. Then the older man stooped to pick up an object from the ground. He hefted it in his left hand.

"A scraper, isn't it? Made from bits of metal fish spine glued to a wood handle…"

"I guess so."

"Do they have much of a language yet?"

"No, sir; well, the rudiments. They seem to be stabilized. Strict hunter-gatherers. Hikahi guesses they've been stuck for half a million years."

Orley nodded. This native species looked ripe, at first glance. A pre-sentient race at just the right stage for uplift. It was a miracle some Galactic patron line hadn't snapped them up already, for client status and an aeon of servitude.

Now the men and fen of Streaker had still another obligation, and secrecy was more important than ever.

He put the artifact in his pocket, then laid his hand on Toshio's shoulder.

"Well, you can tell us all about it back on the ship, son. In the meantime, you have some pondering to do."

"Sir?" Toshio looked up in confusion.

"Well, it isn't everybody who gets to name a future space-faring race. You know, the fen will be expecting you to make up a song about it."

Toshio looked at the older man, uncertain if he was joking. But Thomas Orley had on his usual enigmatic expression.

Orley glanced up at the rain clouds, As the mechanicals moved in to claim Hikahi, he stepped back and smiled at the curtain which, temporarily, hung across the theater of the sky.