“Not here-across the sea,” Dard was beginning when Rogan broke in.
“That chieftain doesn’t think much of them, does he?”
“He says they’re enemies.”
“They aren’t his kind,” Harmon pointed out. “And his people were their slaves once.”
“We,” Kimber said slowly, “have had some experience with slavery ourselves, haven’t we? On Terra we’d have been in labor camps, if we hadn’t been lucky-that is if we weren’t shot down in cold blood. I have a pretty good memory of the last few years there.”
Harmon sifted a palmful of sand from one hand to an- other. “Yeah, I know. Only we don’t want to get into no local war.”
That echoed after his voice died away. No entangling alliances to drag them into any war! Dard sensed the electric agreement which ran through them at that thought. Only Kimber, Santee, and maybe Kordov, did not wholly agree with Harmon.
Dard gazed down to the river bank. The merpeople had almost completed the harvest and were gathering up their possessions and slipping in family groups back to the sea. He wondered what Kordov would tell the chief.
Suddenly he could not stand the uncertainty any longer. He wanted to get away-to escape from the thought that perhaps it was going to start all over again-the insecurity- the constant guard duty against a hostile force.
According to the merchief Those Others were now across the sea-but would they remain there? Wouldn’t this fertile, deserted land where they had once ruled draw them back again? And they would not accept new settlers kindly.