"Could one of you swim out there and steer that boat around to the lower side of the island?" he demanded.
"Yes, Nidan," clicked Thod and with a slash of his crude stone knife he made an opening and was gone.
Rurak waited until he saw the derelict craft shift its drifting course and move away downriver and then he led the way back to the others. If they could sink the boat or conceal it under the bulk of the island until darkness came....
"A close shave that," Elko Sohm growled as he paddled the boat along a salty watercourse parallel with the Great Sea, "if the Yzaps had come back before Thod reached us and we hid the boat we would all be dead. I'm thinking yet we should have remained on the hilltop. A foolhardy undertaking this."
"All that happened a week ago," Nitha laughed up into Elko's stubby, filthy, moon of a face, "and still you're grumbling. We got away didn't we?"
"Almost there," Rurak said to Elko. "Around the second loop ahead of us lies the edge of the crystalline horde near which we landed. Before long we will be with our friends and then back to Mars. Home again, Elko!"
Abruptly the ominous hushed sounds of the swamplands, the hum of insects and the raucous cries of the flying lizards among the treetops, was smashed across by a vast explosion. It was a continuous explosion that swelled louder as it continued, a rapid series of controlled blasts.
"The Tekna!" cried Rurak in despair, "blasting off for Mars!"
A long gleaming pencil of metal soared on a long slant into the sky overhead; the flame of her rocket jets boomed a thunderous farewell, and then the Tekna was gone.