One of the scavengers was just coming up under the Tomah. The streak of watery fire that was Binichi converged upon him and his heavy shape shot struggling from the surface, the sound of a dull impact heavy in the night. Then the phosphorescence of Binichi’s path was among the others, striking right and left as a swordfish strikes on his run among a school of smaller feed fish. The scavengers scattered into darkness, all but the one Binichi had first hit, which was flopping upon the surface of the moonlit sea as if partially paralyzed.
Binichi broke surface himself, plowing back toward the Tomah. His head butted the envoy and a second later the envoy was skidding and skittering like a toy across the water’s surface to the raft. A final thrust at the raft’s edge sent him up and over it. He tumbled on his back on the raft’s floor, glittering with wetness; and, righting himself with one swift thrust of his claw, he whirled, claw high, to face Binichi as the Lugh came sailing aboard.
Binichi sprang instantly erect on the curved spring of his tail; and Chuck, with no time for thought, thrust himself between the two of them.
For a second Chuck’s heart froze. He found himself with his right cheek bare inches from the heavy double meat-choppers of the Tomah claw, while, almost touching him on the left, the gaping jaws of the Lugh glinted with thick, short scimitarlike teeth, and the fishy breath of the sea-dweller filled his nostrils. In this momentary, murderous tableau they all hung motionless for a long, breathless second. And then the Tomah claw sank backward to the shiny back below it and the Lugh slid backward and down upon his tail. Slowly, the two members of opposing races retreated each to his own end of the raft.
Chuck, himself, sat down. And the burst of relieved breath that expelled itself from his tautened lungs echoed in the black and moonlit world of the seascape night.
III
Some two hours after sunrise, a line of land began to make its appearance upon their further horizon. It mounted slowly, as the onshore wind, and perhaps some current as well, drove them ahead. It was a barren, semiarid and tropical coastline, with a rise of what appeared to be hills—light green with a sparse vegetation—beyond it.
As they drifted closer, the shoreline showed itself in a thin pencil-mark of foam. No outer line of reefs was apparent, but the beaches themselves seemed to be rocky or nonexistent. Chuck turned to the Lugh.
“We need a calm, shallow spot to land in,” he said. “Otherwise the raft’s liable to upset in the surf, going in.”
Binichi looked at him, but did not answer.
“I’m sorry,” said Chuck. “I guess I didn’t explain myself properly. What I mean is, I’m asking for your help again. If the raft upsets or has a hole torn in it when we’re landing, the envoy and I will probably drown. Could you find us a fairly smooth beach somewhere and help us get to it?”
Binichi straightened up a little where he half-sat, half-lay propped against the end of the raft where the thrust unit had been attached.
“I had been told,” he said, “that you had oceans upon your own world.”
“That’s right,” said Chuck. “But we had to develop the proper equipment to move about on them. If I had the proper equipment here I wouldn’t have to ask you for help. If it hadn’t been for our crashing in the ocean none of this would be necessary.”
“This ‘equipment’ of yours seems to have an uncertain nature,” said Binichi. He came all the way erect. “I’ll help you.” He flipped overboard and disappeared.
Left alone in the raft with the envoy, Chuck looked over at him.
“The business of landing will probably turn out to be difficult and dangerous—at least we better assume the worst,” he said. “You understand you may have to swim for your life when we go in?”
“I have given my word to accomplish this mission,” replied the envoy.
A little while after that, it became evident from the angle at which the raft took the waves that they had changed course. Chuck, looking about for an explanation of this, discovered Binichi at the back of the raft, pushing them.
Within the hour, the Lugh had steered them to a small, rocky inlet. Picked up in the landward surge of the surf, the raft went, as Chuck had predicted, end over end in a smother of water up on the pebbly beach. Staggering to his feet with the solid land at last under him, Chuck smeared water from his eyes and took inventory of a gashed and bleeding knee. Binding the cut as best he could with a strip torn from his now-ragged pants, he looked about for his fellow travelers.
The raft was flung upside down between himself and them. Just beyond it, the envoy lay with his claw arm flung limply out on the sand. Binichi, a little further on, was sitting up like a seal. As Chuck watched, the envoy stirred, pulled his claw back into normal position, and got shakily up on all four legs.
Chuck went over to the raft and, with some effort, managed to turn it back, right side up. He dug into the storage boxes and got out food and water. He was not sure whether it was the polite, or even the sensible thing to do, but he was shaky from hunger, parched from the salt water, dizzy from the pounding in the surf—and his knee hurt. He sat down and made his first ravenous meal since the pot had crashed in the sea, almost two days before.
As he was at it, the Tomah envoy approached. Chuck offered him some of the water, which the Tomah accepted.
“Sorry I haven’t anything you could eat,” said Chuck, a full belly having improved his manners.
“It doesn’t matter,” said the envoy. “There will be flora growing farther inland that will stay my hunger. It’s good to be back on the land.”
“I’ll go along with you on that statement,” said Chuck. Looking up from the food and water, he saw the Lugh approaching. Binichi came up, walking on his four short limbs, his tail folded into a club over his back for balance, and sat down with them.
“And now?” he said, addressing Chuck.
“Well,” said Chuck, stretching his cramped back, “we’ll head inland toward the Base.” He reached into his right-hand pants pocket and produced a small compass. “That direction”—he pointed toward the hills without looking—“and some five hundred miles. Only we shouldn’t have to cover it all on foot. If we can get within four hundred miles of Base, we’ll be within the airfoils’ cruising range, and one of them should locate us and pick us up.”
“Your people will find us, but they can’t find us here?” said Binichi.
“That’s right.” Chuck looked at the Lugh’s short limbs. “Are you up to making about a hundred-mile trip overland?”
“As you’ve reminded me before,” said Binichi, “I made a promise. It will help, though, if I can find water to go into from time to time.”
Chuck turned to the envoy.
“Can we find bodies of water as we go?”
“I don’t know this country,” said the Tomah, speaking to Chuck. “But there should be water; and I’ll watch for it.”
“We two could go ahead,” said Chuck, turning back to the Lugh. “And maybe we could work some way of getting a vehicle back here to carry you.”
“I’ve never needed to be carried,” said Binichi, and turned away abruptly. “Shall we go?”
They went.
Striking back from the stoniness of the beach, they passed through a belt of shallow land covered with shrub and coarse grass. Chuck, watching the envoy, half-expected him to turn and feed on some of this as they passed, but the Tomah went straight ahead. Beyond the vegetated belt, they came on dunes of coarse sand, where the Lugh—although he did not complain, any more than the envoy had when he fell overboard from the raft—had rough going with his short limbs. This stretched for a good five miles; but when they had come at last to firmer ground, the first swellings of the foothills seemed not so far ahead of them.