What he saw was a cataract of white foam as the wave began to die. Toshio cried out to keep his ear channels open, and started swimming furiously to stay atop the churning tide of spume and debris.

Suddenly, there was greenery all around. Trees and shrubs which had withstood the earlier assaults shook under this attack. Some tore loose of their moorings even as Toshio flew past them. Others stood and flailed at him as he hurtled through.

No sharp branch impaled him. No unbreaking vine garroted him as he passed. In a tumbling, tossing confusion he finally came to rest, somehow hugging the trunk of a huge tree, while the wave churned, and finally receded.

Miraculously, he was on his feet, the first man to stand on the soil of Kithrup. Toshio stared dazedly at his surroundings, briefly not believing his survival.

Then he hurriedly opened his faceplate, and became the first man to lose his breakfast on the soil of Kithrup.

8 ::: Galactics

"Slay them!" The Jophur high priest demanded. "Slay the isolated Thennanin battlecruisers on our sixth quadrant!"

The Jophur chief of staff bowed its twelve-ringed trunk before the high priest.

"The Thennanin are our allies-of-the-moment! How can we turn on them without first performing the secret rituals of betrayal? Their ancestors will not be appeased!"

The Jophur high priest expanded its six outer sap-rings. It rose high upon its dais at the rear of the command chamber.

"There is no time to perform the rites! Now, as our alliance finishes sweeping this sector, as our alliance has become the strongest! Now, while this phase of the battle still rages. Now, while the foolish Thennanin have opened up their flanks to us. Now may we harm them greatly!"

The chief of staff pulsed in agitation, its outer sap-rings discoloring with emotion.

"We may change alliances as it suits us, agreed. We may betray our allies, agreed. We may do anything to win the prize agreed. But we may not do so without performing the rituals! The rituals are what make us the appropriate vessels for the will of the ancients! You would bring us down to the level of the heretics!"

The dais shook with the high priest's anger.

"My rings decide! My rings are those of priesthood! My rings…"

The oration-peak of the pyramidal high priest erupted in a geyser of hot, multi-hued sap. The explosion spewed sticky amber liquor across the bridge of the Jophur flagship.

"Continue fighting." The chief of staff waved the crew back to work with its sidearm. "Call the Quartermaster of Religiosity. Have it send up rings to make up a new priest. Continue fighting while we prepare to perform the rituals of betrayal:

The chief of staff bowed to the staring section chiefs. "We shall appease the ancestors of the Thennanin before we turn on them.

"But remember to make certain the Thennanin themselves do not sense our intentions!"

9 ::: From The Journal of Gillian Baskin

It's been some time since I've been able to make an entry in this personal log. Since the Shallow Cluster it seems we've constantly been in frantic motion… making the discovery of the millennia, getting ambushed at Morgran, and fighting for our lives from then on. I hardly ever see Tom any more. He's always down in the engine or weapons pods. I'm either here in the lab or helping out in sick bay.

Ship's surgeon Makanee has a mouthful of problems. Fen have always had a talent for hypochondria. A fifth of the crew shows up every sick call with psychosomatic complaints. You can't just tell them it's all in their heads, so we stroke them and tell them what brave fellows they are, and that everything's going to be all right.

I think if it weren't for the captain, half of this crew would be hysterical by now. To many of them he seems almost like a hero out of the Whale Dream. Creideiki moves about the ship, watching the repairs and giving little lessons in Keneenk logic. The fen seem to buck up whenever he's nearby.

Still, reports keep coming in about the space battle. Instead of tapering off, it's only getting thicker and heavier!

And we're all getting more than a little worried about Hikahi's party.

Gillian put down her stylus. From the small circle of her desk lamp, the rest of the laboratory appeared dark and gloomy. The only other light came from the far end of the room. Silhouetted against the spots was a vaguely humanoid shape, a mysterious shadow, lying on a stasis table.

"Hikahi," she sighed. "Where in Ifni's name are you?"

That Hikahi's survey party hadn't even sent back a monopulse confirmation of the recall order was now of great concern. Streaker couldn't afford to lose those crewfen. For all of his frequent unreliability outside the bridge, Keepiru was their best pilot. Even Toshio Iwashika had a lot of promise.

But most of all, the loss of Hikahi would hurt. Without her, how could Creideiki manage?

Hikahi was Gillian's best dolphin friend, at least as close to her as Tom was to Creideiki or Tsh't. Gillian wondered why Takkata-Jim had been appointed vice-captain instead of Hikahi. It made no sense. She could only imagine that politics was behind it. Takkata-Jim was a Stenos. Perhaps Ignacio Metz had had a hand in choosing the complement for this mission. Metz was a passionate advocate of certain dolphin racial types back on Earth.

Gillian didn't write these thoughts down. They were idle speculations, and she didn't have time for speculation.

Anyway, it's time I got back to Herbie.

She closed her journal and got up to walk over to the stasis table, where a dry, dessicated figure floated in a heavily shielded field of suspended time.

The ancient cadaver grinned back at her through the glass.

It wasn't human. There hadn't even been multi-cellular creatures on Earth when this thing had lived and breathed and flown spaceships. Yet it looked eerily humanoid. It had straight arms and legs, and a very man-like head and neck. Its jaw and eye orbits were strange-looking, but its skull still had a very man-like grin.

How old are you, Herbie? she asked in her thoughts. One billion years? Two?

How is it your fleet of ancient hulks waited undiscovered by Galactic civilization for so long, waited until we came along… a bunch of wolfling humans and newly uplifted dolphins? Why were we the ones to find you?

And why did one litle hologram of you, beamed home to Earth, make half the patron-lines in the galaxy go crazy?

Streaker's micro-Library was no help. It refused to recognize Herbie at all. Maybe it was holding back. Or perhaps it was simply too small an archive to remember an obscure race so long extinct.

Tom had asked the Niss machine look into it. So far the sarcastic Tymbrimi artifact had been unable to cozen out an answer.

Meanwhile, between sick bay and her other duties, Gillian had to find a few hours a day to examine this relict non-destructively, and maybe figure out what was stirring up the Eatees so. If she didn't do it, no one would.

Somehow she would make it until tonight.

Poor Tom, Gillian thought, smiling. He'll be coming back from his engines, wiped out, and I'll be feeling amorous. It's a damned good thing he's a sport.

She picked up a pion microprobe.

Okay Herbie, let's see if we can find out what kind of a brain you had.