When next he glanced back, K'tha-Jon had closed to within about a kilometer. Akki warbled a sigh and redoubled his efforts.

A line of green-topped mounds lay near the horizon, perhaps four or five kilometers away. He had to hold on long enough to reach them!

Moki drove the sled at top speed to the south, blasting its sonar ahead like a bugle.

"… calling Haoke, calling Moki. This is Heurkah-Pete. Come in. Verify p-please!"

Moki tossed his head in irritation. The ship was trying to reach him again. Moki clicked the sled's transmitter on and tried to talk clearly.

"Yesss! What-t-t you want-t!"

There was a pause, then, "Moki, let me talk to Haoke."

Moki barely concealed a laugh. "Haoke… dead! K-k-killed by intruder! I'm ch-chasing now. T-t-tell Takkata-Jim I'll get-t 'em!"

Moki's Anglic was almost indecipherable, yet he didn't dare use Trinary. He might slip into Primal in public, and he wasn't ready for that yet.

There was a long silence on the sonar-speak line. Moki hoped that now they'd leave him alone.

When he and Haoke had found the Baskin woman's empty sled, drifting slowly westward at low power, something had finally snapped within him. He had then entered a confused but exalted state, a blur of action, like a violent dream.

Perhaps they were ambushed, or perhaps he merely imagined it. But when it was over Haoke was dead and he, Moki, had no regrets.

After that his sonar had picked up an object heading south. Another sled. Without another thought he had given chase.

The sonar-speak crackled. "Heurkah again, Moki. You're getting out of saser range, and we still can't use radiosss. You are now given two ordersss. First — relay a sonar-speak message to K'tha-Jon, ordering him back-k! His mission is cancelled!

"Number two — after that, turn around yoursself! That'sss a direct order!"

The lights and dots meant little to Moki anymore. What mattered were the patterns of sound that the sled's sensors sent him. The expanded hearing sense gave him a god-like feeling, as if he were one of the Great Dreamers himself. He imagined himself a huge catodon, a sperm whale, lord of the deep hunting prey that fled at any hint of his approach.

Not far to the south was the muffled sound of a sled, the one he had been chasing for some time. He could tell that he was catching up to it.

Much farther away, and to the left, were two tiny rhythmic signals, sounds of rapid cetacean swimming. That had to be K'tha-Jon and the upstart Calafian.

Moki would dearly love to steal K'tha-Jon's prey from him, but that could wait. The first-enemy was dead ahead.

"Moki, did you copy me? Answer! You have your ordersss! You must…"

Moki clapped his jaws in disgust. He shut off the sonarspeak in the middle of Heurkah-pete's complaint. It was getting hard to understand the stuck-up little petty officer anyway. He had never been much of a Stenos, always studying Keneenk with the Tursiops, and trying to "better himself."

Moki decided he would look the fellow up after he had finished taking care of his enemies outside the ship.

54 ::: Keepiru

Keepiru knew he was being followed. He had expected that someone might be sent after him to keep him from reaching Hikahi.

But his pursuer was some sort of idiot. He could tell from the distant whine of the engines that the fin's sled was being driven well beyond its rated speed. What did the fellow hope to accomplish? Keepiru had a long enough head start to make it within sonar-speak range of the Thennanin wreck before his pursuer caught up. He only had to push his sled's throttle slightly into the red.

The fin behind him was spraying sonar noise all over the place, as if he wanted to announce to all and sundry that he was coming.

With all his screeching, the imbecile was making it hard for Keepiru to piece together what was going on to the southeast. Keepiru concentrated and tried to block out the noise from behind.

Two dolphins, it seemed, one almost out of breath, the other powerful and still vigorous, were swimming furiously toward a bank of sonar shadows fifty kilometers away.

What was going on? Who was chasing whom?

He listened so hard that Keepiru suddenly had to veer to avoid colliding with a high seamount. He passed on the west side, banking hard to sweep past by meters. The mountain's bulk momentarily cast him into silence.

* Ware shoals

Child of Tursiops!

He trilled a lesson-rhyme, then switched to Trinary Haiku.

* Echoes of the shore

Are like drifting feathers

Dropped by pelicans!

Keepiru chided himself. Dolphins were supposed to be hot pilots it was what had won them their first starship berths over a century before and he was known far and wide as one of the best. So why were forty knots underwater harder to handle than fifty times light speed down a wormhole?

His thrumming sled left the shadow of the seamount and came into open water. East of southeast came a faint image-gestalt of racing cetaceans, once again.

Keepiru concentrated. Yes, the one in pursuit was a Stenos, a big one. It used a strange pattern of search sonar.

The one in front…

…It has to be Akki, he thought. The kid is in trouble. Bad trouble.

He was almost deafened as a blast of sound from the sled behind him caught him directly in a focused beam. He chattered a curse-glyph and shook his head to clear it.

He almost turned around to take care of the self-sucking turd swallower behind him but he knew his duty lay ahead.

Keepiru was tormented by a choice. Strictly speaking, his duty was to get a message to Hikahi. Yet it went against everything inside him to abandon the middie. It sounded like the youngster was exhausted. His pursuer was clearly catching up.

But if he swung to the east he would give his own pursuer a chance to catch up…

But he might also distract K'tha-Jon, force him to turn around.

It didn't become a Terragens officer. It didn't reflect Keneenk. But he couldn't decide logically.

He wished some distant, great-great-grandchild of his were here now, a fully mature and logical dolphin who could tell his crude, half-animal ancestor what to do.

Keepiru sighed. What makes me think they'll let me have great-grandchildren, anyway?

He chose to be true to himself. He banked the sled to the left and pulled the engine throttle one more notch into the red."

55 ::: Charles Dart

One of the two Earthlings in the room — the human — rummaged through dresser drawers and distractedly tossed things into an open valise on the bed. He listened while the chimpanzee talked.

"… the probe is down below two kilometers. The radioactivity's rising fast, and the temperature gradient, too. I'm not sure the probe will last more'n another few hundred meters, yet the shaft keeps going!

"Anyway I'm now positive that there's been garbage dumping by a technological race, and recently! Like hundreds of years ago!"

"That's very interesting, Dr. Dart. Really, it is." Ignacio Metz tried not to show his exasperation. One had to be patient with chimps, especially Charles Dart. Still, it was hard to pack while the chimp ran on and on, perched on a chair in his stateroom.

Dart went on obliviously. "If anything made me appreciate Toshio, as inefficient as that boy is, it's having to work with that lousy dolphin linguist Sah'ot! Still, I was gettin' good data until Tom Orley's damned bomb went off and Sah'ot started hollering stuff about 'voices' from below! Crazy bloody fin…"