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other methods of information, your secret was spread too far to -remain a
secret
She broke off. Koll was quivering. The vocal slit made spitting sounds.
We d been minded to spare you, the Tuvela began again. But
Guardian, be silent! The voice was squeezed down to an angry whine. Lies
and tricks! The Everliving will not listen!
The Tuvela laughed. When I come to them with a Great Palach tied in a rag,
dangling headdown from my belt, they won t listen?
Koll squealed and became a blur of rubbery motion.
The long legs swung up, brought the fettered feet to his shoulder. Something
projected in that instant from the shoulder, a half-inch jet of fire. It
touched the tanglecord, and the tanglecord parted. The webbed toes of one foot
gripped one of the jewels on Koll s head, pulled it free. The other leg was
beneath him again; it bent, straightened; and he came toward Nile in a long,
one-legged hop, quick and balanced. The jewel-handled needle gripped in his
foot leveled out. . . .
Nile was in motion herself by then, dropping back, rolling sideways
The needle spat a thread of pink radiance along her flank as she triggered the
UW.
And that was that. The UW s beam was hot, and Koll was in mid-jump, moving
fast, as it caught him. His lumpy torso was very nearly cut in two.
Nile got up shakily, parted the sestran stems through which he had plunged,
and looked down from the floatwood branch. Nothing but the waving, shadowy
greenery of the vertical jungle below . . . and no point in hunting around for
the body of the Great Palach down there. Ticos had neglected to mention that
the thick Parahuan hide could be used to conceal an arsenal, but after seeing
the communicator Koll carried grafted to himself, the possibility should have
occurred to her.
Why had he attacked at that particular moment? She hadn t convinced him Porad
Anz faced destruction unless the invading force withdrew or else he had such a
seething hatred for mankind that the fate of his own race was no longer of
sufficient consideration. But apparently she had convinced him that a majority
of the Palachs would accept what she said.
He should know, Nile thought. She d lost her prisoner, but the Great Palach
Koll dead, silenced, vanished, remained an impressive witness to the Tuvelas
capability and stern ruthlessness.
Let the Everliving stew in the situation a while. She d give them indications
presently that she was still around the island. That should check any impulse
to launch a hasty military operation. Meanwhile she d try to find out where
Ticos was held, and prepare to carry out other plans . . . And now it was time
to check with Sweeting and learn what her water scouting had revealed.
Nile dropped quietly down out of the sestran thicket to lower branches to
avoid arousing the chaquoteels, and slipped away into the forest.
Back down at the water s edge, she looked out from a niche between two trunks
at the neighboring island section. It was the largest of the five connected
forests, a good half wider and longer than this one and lifting at least a
hundred yards farther into the air. From the car she d seen thick clusters of
a dark leafless growth rising higher still from a point near the forest s
center, like slender flexible spear shafts whipping in the wind. Oilwood it
was called. Weeks from now, when the island rode into the electric storm belts
of the polar sea, the oilwood would draw lightning from the sky to let its
combustible sheathing burn away and the ripened seeds beneath tumble down
through the forest into the ocean.
Set ablaze deliberately tonight, it should provide a beacon to mark the island
for Parrol and let him know where she was to be found.
The water between the two forests wasn t open. The submerged root system
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extended from one to the other; and on the roots grew the floatwood s aquatic
symbiotes, pushing out from the central lagoon, though their ranks thinned as
they approached the rush of the open sea. The Parahuans wouldn t have stopped
hunting for her, and ambushes could easily be laid in that area. The sea south
of the forest seemed to offer a safer crossing, now that evening darkened the
sky and reduced surface visibility. The Meral Current carried weed beds: dense
moving jungles which provided cover when needed.
Nile gave the otter caller on her wrist another turn. Sweeting should be here
quickly. A receiver embedded in her skull transmitted the signals to her
brain, and she homed in unerringly on the caller.
Nile
Over here, Sweeting!
Sweeting came up out of the water twenty feet away, shook herself vigorously,
rippled along the side of the floatwood bole and settled beside Nile.
These are new bad guys! she stated.
Yes, said Nile. New and bad. They don t belong on our world. What can you
tell me about them?
Much, Sweeting assured her. But found two Nile-friends. They tell you
more.
Two Nile broke off. In the surging sea five yards below, two dark whiskered
heads had appeared on the surface, were looking up at her.
Wild otters.
Chapter 6
The wild otters were a mated pair who d selected the floatwood lagoon as their
private preserve. The male would nearly match Spiff in size. The female was
young, a smaller edition of Sweeting. They might be three or four generations
away from domestication, but they used translingue as readily as Sweeting and
much in her style. Interspersed were unfamiliar terms based on their
independent oceanic existence, expressing matters for which no human words had
been available. Usually Nile could make out their sense.
When the Parahuans arrived, the curious otters had made a game of studying the
unfamiliar creatures and their gadgetry. There was a ship anchored to the
island under the floor of the lagoon. It was considerably bigger than the
average human submersible, chunky and heavily built evidently a spaceship. Its
lock was always open on the water. A second ship, a huge one, was also in the
vicinity. Normally it stayed deep in the sea, but at times it had moved up
almost to the island. Ticos had said that the headquarters ship of the
Parahuan expedition seemed to be accompanying this floatwood drift.
Above sea level the Parahuans had set up ten or twelve posts in the forest.
Most of them were small, probably observation points or weapon emplacements.
The exception was in the island section to which Nile wanted to go. Big
house, Sweeting said. It was set near the edge of the lagoon, extending well
back into the floatwood and completely concealed by it. Perhaps a fifth of the
structure was under water. Nile got the impression of something like a large
blockhouse or fort, a few hundred yards beyond the rookery of the sea-havals.
She wouldn t have selected the giant kesters as neighbors herself the rookery
was an evil-smelling and very noisy place but alien senses might not find that
disturbing.
The immediately important thing about the blockhouse was that it told her
exactly where Ticos could be found, unless he d been taken away after her
arrival. He d said his captors had shifted him and his equipment to such a
structure and described its location.
The wild otters knew nothing of Ticos, but they did know about the tarm. When
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