“They want to be friends, too,” Dessie reported. “Dardie, if you put your hand on theirs, then they can talk to you. They don’t talk with their mouths at all. This is Ssssat—”
Dard got to his feet slowly so as not to alarm the mermen and crossed the strip of shore until he could sit face to face. Then he held out his hand. Cool and damp the scaled digits and palm of the other lay upon his warmer flesh. And, Dard almost broke the contact in his surprise and awe, for the other was talking to him! Words, ideas, swept into his mind-some concepts so alien he could not understand. But bit by bit he pieced together much of what the other was striving to tell him.
“Big ones, land dwellers, we have watched you-with fear. Fear that you have come to lead us once more into the pens of darkness—”
“Pens of darkness?” Dard echoed aloud and then shaped a mental query.
“Those who once walked the land here-they kept the pens of darkness where our fathers’ fathers’ fathers’ ” … -the concept of a long stretch of past time trailed through the Terran’s receptive mind-"were hatched. The days of fire came and we broke forth and now we shall never return.” There was stern warning, an implied threat, in that.
“We know nothing of the pens, nor do we threaten you,” Dard thought slowly. “We, too, have broken out of pens of darkness, he added with sudden inspiration.
“It is true that you are not the color or shape of those who made the pens. And you have shown only friendship. Also you killed the flying death which would have slain my cub. I believe that you are good. Will you stay here?”
Dard pointed inland. “We build there.”
“Do you wish the fruits of the river?” came next.
“The fruits of the river?” Dard was puzzled until a dear picture of one of the red spider plants formed in his mind. Then he shook his head to reinforce his unspoken denial.