include the wealth around them. "They
have taken some, perhaps to them the most needful. But they will not
be able to resist gathering the rest. Surely they will return, perhaps
not once but many times. Until--"

"Until they come to stay." Dalgard was grim as he completed that
sentence for the other.

"That is what they will work for. This land was once under their
mastery. This world was theirs before they threw it away warring among
themselves. Yes, they dream of holding all once more. But"--Sssuri's
yellow eyes took on some of the fire which had shone in those of the
snake-devil during its last seconds of life--"that must not be so!"

"If they take the land, you have the sea," Dalgard pointed out. The
mermen had a means of escape. But what of his own clansmen? Large
families were unknown among the Terran colonists. In the little more
than a century they had been on this planet their numbers, from the
forty-five survivors of the voyage, had grown to only some two hundred
and fifty, of which only a hundred and twenty were old enough or young
enough to fight. And for them there was no retreat or hiding place.

"We do not go bask to the depths!" There was stern determination in
that declaration from Sssuri. His tribe had been long hunted, and it
wasn't until they had made a loose alliance with the Terran colonists
that they had dared to leave the dangerous ocean depths, where they
were the prey of monsters more ferocious and cunning than any
snake-devil, to house their families in the coast caves and on the
small islands off-shore, to increase in numbers and develop new skills
of civilization. No, knowing the stubbornness which was bred into
their small, furry bodies, Dalgard did not believe that many of the
sea people would willingly go back into the sunless depths. They would
not surrender tamely to the rulership of the loathed race.

"I don't see," Dalgard spoke aloud, half to himself, as he studied the
tables closely packed, the machines standing on bases about the walls,
the wealth of alien technology, "what we can do to stop them."

The restriction drilled into him from early childhood, that the
knowledge of Those Others was not for his race and in some way
dangerous, gave him an uneasy feeling of guilt just to be standing
there. Danger, danger which was far worse than physical, lurked
there. And he could bring it to life by merely putting out his hand
and picking up any one of those fascinating objects which