“Yes, sir?”
“You’ve seen the lizards, ask Oaaatak if those are what he is trying to tall us about. We can’t get the right impression of what he means and it seems to be vitally important.” Kordov edged back for the boy to take his place. Dard clasped the readily extended claws of the merchief.
“Do you wish to tell us about—” He shut his eyes in order to concentrate better upon a mental image of the huge reptiles,
“No!” The answer was a decided negative. “Those we have seen, yes-hunting down other land dwellers. They were once subordinate to those we speak of now. These—”
Another picture indeed-a biped-humanoid in outline-but somehow all wrong. Dard had seen nothing like it. And the image was fuzzy, indistinct as if he observed it from a distance-or through water!
Through water! That was caught up eagerly by Aaaatak.
“Now you are thinking straight. We do not come out of hiding when those are about! So we see them in that fashion—”
“They live on land then? Near here?” Dard demanded. The emotion of fear colored so strongly all the impressions he received from the merchief.
“They live on land, yes. Near here, no, or we should not be here. We hunt out shores where they do not come. Once they were very, very many, living everywhere-here-across the sea. They were the builders of those pens where creatures of my kind were imprisoned for them to work their will upon. Then something happened. There came fire raining from the sky, and a sickness which struck them. They died, some quickly, some much more slowly, when my people burst from the pens.” There was a cold and deadly satisfaction in that flash of memory. “After that we fled into the wilds of the sea where they could not find us. Even when I was but a new-hatched cub we lived in the depths. But through the years our young warriors went out to search for food and for a safer place to live-there are monsters in the deeps as horrible as the lizards of the land. And these parties discovered that those”—again Dard saw the queer biped—“were gone from long stretches among the reefs, as we had always longed to do. There are none of those left in this land now but—” The chief hesitated before suddenly withdrawing his hand from Dard’s and turning to his followers as if consulting them. Dad took the opportunity to translate to the others what he had learned.
“Survivors of Those Others,” Kimber caught him up. “But not here?”