"There will be no future for you here," he spoke slowly, trying with all his power to get through to the other. "They will not allow you to found another Homeport. You will have no colony—"
"Will you get it into your thick head," burst out the pilot, "that I'm not here to start a colony! We can take off from this blasted planet whenever we want to. We didn't come here to stay!"
Beneath the suntan, Dalgard's face whitened. The other had come from no outlaw ship, seeking a refuge across space, as his own people had fled to a new life from tyranny. His first fears had been correct! This was a representative of Pax, doubtless sent to hunt down the descendants of those who had escaped its throttling dictatorship. The slender strangely garbed Terran might be of the same blood as his own, but he was as great an enemy as Those Others!
"Pax!" He did not know that he had said that word aloud.
The other laughed. "You are living back in history. Pax has been dead and gone almost two centuries. I'm of the Federation of Free Men—"
"Will the stranger use his fire now?" The question formed in Dalgard's mind. The mermen were growing impatient, as well they might. This was no time for talk, but for action. Could Raf be persuaded to aid them? A Federation of Free Men—Free Men! That was what they were fighting for here and now.
"You are free," he said. "The sea people won their freedom when Those Others fought among themselves. My people came across the star void in search of freedom, paying in blood to win it. But these, these are not the weapons of the free." He pointed to the supplies about the globe, to the globe itself.
The mermen were waiting no longer. With the butts of their spears they smashed anything breakable. But the damage one could do by hand in the short space of time granted them—Raf was surprised that a guard was not already down upon them—was sharply limited. The piled-up secrets of an old race, a race which had once ruled a planet. He thought fleetingly of Lablet's preoccupation with this spoil, of Hobart's hope of gaining knowledge they could take back with them. But would the aliens keep their part of the bargain? He no longer believed that.
Why not give these barbarians a chance, and the colonists. Sure, he was breaking the stiffest rule of the Service. But, perhaps by now the flitter was gone, he might never reach the RS 10. It was not his war, right enough. But he'd give the weaker side a fighting chance.
Dalgard followed him into the globe ship, climbing the ladders to the engine level, watching with curious eyes as Raf inspected the driving power of the ship and made the best disposition possible of one of the bombs.