yes at his service whenever he wanted them.
There was little chance of being taken by surprise, no matter how
dangerous this journey north might be.

"The city--" He formed the words in his mind even as he spoke them
aloud. "How far are we from it?"

The merman hunched his slim shoulders in the shrug of his race. "Three
days' travel, maybe five. And it"--though his furred face displayed no
readable emotion, the sensation of distaste was plain--"was one of the
accursed ones. To such we have not returned since the days of falling
fire--"

Dalgard was well acquainted with the ruins which lay not many miles
from Homeport. And he knew that that sprawling, devastated metropolis
was not taboo to the merman. But this other mysterious settlement he
had recently heard of was still shunned by the sea people. Only
Sssuri and a few others of youthful years would consider a journey to
explore the long-forbidden section their traditions labeled as
dangerous land.

The belief that he was about to venture into questionable territory
had made Dalgard evasive when he reported his plans to the Elders
three days earlier. But since such trips were, by tradition, always
thrusts into the unknown, they had not questioned him too much. All in
all, Dalgard thought, watching Sssuri flake the firm pink flesh from
the fish, he might deem himself lucky and this quest ordained. He went
off to hack out armloads of grass and fashion the sleep mats for the
sun-warmed ground.

They had eaten and were lounging in content on the soft sand just
beyond the curl of the waves when Sssuri lifted his head from his
folded arms as if he listened. Like all those of his species, his
vestigial ears were hidden deep in his fur and no longer served any
real purpose; the mind touch served him in their stead. Dalgard caught
his thought, though what had aroused his companion was too rare a
thread to trouble his less acute senses.

"Runners in the dark--"

Dalgard frowned. "It is still sun time. What disturbs them?"

To the eye Sssuri was still listening to that which his friend could
not hear.

"They come from afar. They are on the move to find new hunting
grounds."

Dalgard sat up. To each and every scout from Homeport the unusual was
a warning, a signal to alert mind and body. The runners in the
night--that furred monkey race of hunters who combed the moonless dark
of Astra when most of the higher fauna were asleep--were very
distantly related to Sssuri's