ars earlier their
species' intelligence had surprised, almost shocked, men. Experiments,
training, co-operation, had developed a tie which gave the water-limited
race of mankind new eyes, ears, minds, to see, evaluate, and report
concerning an element in which the bipeds were not free.

Hand in hand with that co-operation had gone other experiments. Just as
the clumsy armored diving suits of the early twentieth century had
allowed man to begin penetration into a weird new world, so had the
frog-man equipment made him still freer in the sea. And now the
gill-pack which separated the needed oxygen from the water made even
that lighter burden of tanks obsolete. But there remained depths into
which man could not descend, whose secrets were closed to him. There the
dolphins operated, in a partnership of minds, equal minds--though that
last fact had been difficult for man to accept.

Ross's irritation, unjustified as he knew it to be, did not rest on
Tino-rau or Taua. He enjoyed the hours when he buckled on gill-pack and
took to the sea with those two ten-foot, black-and-silver escorts
sharing the action. But Karara ... Karara's presence was a different
matter altogether.

The Agents' teams had always been strictly masculine. Two men partnered
for an interlocking of abilities and temperaments, going through
training together, becoming two halves of a strong and efficient whole.
Before being summarily recruited into the Project, Ross had been a
loner--living on the ragged edges of the law, an indigestible bit for
the civilization which had become too ordered and "adjusted" to absorb
his kind. But in the Project he had discovered others like himself--men
born out of time, too ruthless, too individualistic for their own age,
but able to operate with ease in the dangerous paths of the Time Agents.

And when the time search for the wrecked alien ships had succeeded and
the first intact ship found, used, duplicated, the Agents had come from
forays into the past to be trained anew for travel to the stars. First
there had been Ross Murdock, criminal. Then there had been Ross Murdock
and Gordon Ashe, Time Agents. Now there was still Ross and Gordon and a
quest as perilous as any they had known. Yet this time they had to
depend upon Karara and the dolphins.

"Tomorrow"--Ross was still not sorting out his thoughts, truly aware of
the feeling which worked upon him as a thorn in the finger--"I will
come."

"Good!" If she recognized