Part 17 (2/2)
”Much. Listen--this is important. There is trouble at an island ahead.
The Baldies were there; they murdered the kin of these men. The odds are they reached there by some form of sub. Send one of the dolphins to see what is happening and if they are still there....”
Karara asked no more questions, but whistled to the dolphin. With a flip of tail Tino-rau took off.
Since they could make no concrete plan of action, the cruiser captains agreed to wait for Tino-rau's report and to cruise well out of sight of the fairing harbor until it came.
”This belief in magic,” Ross remarked to Karara, ”has one advantage. The natives seem able to take in their stride the fact the dolphins will scout for us.”
”They have lived their lives on the sea; for it they must have a vast respect. Perhaps they know, as did my people, that the ocean has many secrets, some of which are never revealed except to the forms of life which claim their homes there. But, even if you discover this Baldy sub, what will the Rovers be able to do about it?”
”I don't know--yet.” Ross could not tell why he clung to the idea that they could do anything to strike back at the superior alien force. He only knew that he was not yet willing to relinquish the thought that in some way they could.
”And Ashe?”
Yes, Ashe....
”I don't know.” It hurt Ross to admit that.
”Back there, what really happened at the gate?” he asked Karara. ”All at once the dolphins seemed to go crazy.”
”I think for a moment or two they did. You felt nothing?”
”No.”
”It was like a fire slas.h.i.+ng through the head. Some protective device of the Foanna, I think.”
A mental defense to which he was not sensitive. Which meant that he might be able to breach that gate if none of the others could. But he had to be there first. Suppose, just suppose Torgul could be persuaded that this attack on the gutted Kyn Add was useless. Would the Rover commander take them back to the Foanna keep? Or with the dolphins and the skiff could Ross himself return to make the try?
That he could make it on his own, Ross doubted. Excitement and will power had buoyed him up throughout the past Hawaikan day and night. Now fatigue closed in, past his conditioning and the built-in stimulant of the Terran rations, to enclose him in a groggy haze. He had been warned against this reaction, but that was just another item he had pushed out of his conscious mind. The last thing he remembered now was seeing Karara move through a fuzzy cloud.
Voices argued somewhere beyond, the force of that argument carried more by tone than any words Ross could understand. He was pulled sluggishly out of a slumber too deep for any dream to trouble, and lifted heavy eyelids to see Karara once again. There was a p.r.i.c.k in his arm--or was that part of the unreality about him?
”--four--five--six--” she was counting, and Ross found himself joining in:
”--seven--eight--nine--ten!”
On reaching ”ten” he was fully awake and knew that she had applied the emergency procedure they had been drilled in using, giving him a pep shot. When Ross sat up on the narrow bunk there was a light in the cabin and no sign of day outside the porthole. Torgul, Vistur, the two other cruiser captains, all there ... and Jazia.
Ross swung his feet to the deck. A pep-shot headache was already beginning, but would wear off soon. There was, however, a concentration of tension in the cabin, and something must have driven Karara to use the drug.
”What is it?”
Karara fitted the medical kit into the compact carrying case.
”Tino-rau has returned. There _is_ a sub in the bay. It emits energy waves on a sh.o.r.eward beam.”
”Then they are still there.” Ross accepted the dolphin's report without question. Neither of the scouts would make a mistake in those matters.
Energy waves beamed sh.o.r.eward--power for some type of unit the Baldies were using? Suppose the Rovers could find a way of cutting off the power.
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