If the Terrans only knew more about them! Those Others had blasted their world. Dard remembered the callous cruelty of that barn in the valley. Raids, looting, the blasted city, the robot-controlled guns to shoot anything passing out of the air, the warnings of the merpeople.
He plodded across the sand to the inner valley, beading for the cliff house. Rogan had set up the projector the night before, and they had put the first of the discovered tapes in it. If something about the rulers of this world could be learned from those-this was the time to do it!
“Where’re you bound for, kid?” Kimber fell into step.
“The cliffs.” Dard was being pushed by the feeling that time was not his to waste, that he must know-now!
The pilot asked no more questions but followed Dard into the rock cell where Rogan had installed his machine. The boy checked the preparation made the night before. He turned off the light-the screen on the wall was a glowing square of blue-white and then the projector began to hum.
“This one of those rolls from the carrier?”
But Dard did not answer. For now the screen was in use. He began to watch…
“Turn it off! Turn that off!”
His frenzied fingers found the proper button. They were surrounded by honest light, clean red-yellow walls.
Kimber’s face was in his hands, the harshness of his breathing filled the room. Dard, shaken, sick, dared not move. He gripped the edge of the shelf which supported the projector, gripped so tightly that the flesh under his nails turned dead white. He tried to concentrate upon that phenomenon-not on what he had just seen.