ke a complete
mop-up.

Karara moved a little to his right, Taua between them, the dolphin's
super senses their guide and warning. The swiftest of the cruisers had
departed, Loketh on board to communicate with Tino-rau in the water.
Since the male dolphin was the best equipped to provide a fox for salkar
hounds, he was the bait for this weird fishing expedition.

"No farther!" Ross's sonic pricked a warning against his body. Through
that he took a jolt which sent him back, away from the bay entrance.

"On the reef." Karara's tapped code drew him on a new course. Moments
later they were both out of the water, though the wash of waves over
their flippered feet was constant. The rocks among which they crouched
were a rough harborage from which they could see the shore as a dark
blot. But they were well away from the break in the reef through which,
if their outlandish plan succeeded, the salkars would come.

"A one-in-a-million chance!" Ross commented as he put up his mask.

"Was not the whole Time Agent project founded on just such chances?"
Karara asked the right question. This was Ross's kind of venture. Yes,
one-in-a-million chances had been pulled off by the Time Agents. Why, it
had been close to those odds against their ever finding what they had
first sought along the back trails of time--the wrecked spaceships.

Just suppose this could be a rehearsal for another attack? If the
salkars could be made to crack the guard of the Baldies, could they also
be used against the Foanna gate? Maybe.... But take one fight at a time.

"They come!" Karara's fingers gripped Ross's shoulder. Her hand was
hard, bar rigid. He could see nothing, hear nothing. That warning must
have come from the dolphins. But so far their plan was working; the
monsters of the Hawaikan sea were on their way.

12

Baldies

"Ohhhh!" Karara clutched at Ross, her breath coming in little gasps,
giving vent to her fear and horror. They had not known what might come
from this plan; certainly neither had foreseen the present chaos in the
lagoon.

Perhaps the broadcast energy of the enemy whipped the already
vicious-tempered salkars into this insane fury. But now the moonlit
water was beaten into foam as the creatures fought there, attacking each
other with a ferocity neither Terran had witnessed before.

Lights gleamed along the shore where the alien invaders must have been
drawn by the clamor of the fighting marine reptiles. Somewhere in