living things
were fleeing before them. And in that moment Dalgard had been forced
to give up his plan for an unseen spy ring, which would depend upon
the assistance of the animals. His information must come via his own
eyes and ears.

So he kept on, posting the last of the mermen in his mental relay well
away from the city, but swimming upstream himself. Now that he was
here, he could see no traces of the invaders. Since they could not
have landed their sky ships in the thickly built-up section about the
river, it must follow that their camp lay on the outskirts of the
metropolis.

He pulled himself out of the water. Bow and arrows had been left
behind with the last merman; he had only his sword-knife for
protection. But he was not there to fight, only to watch and wait.
Pressing the excess moisture out of his scant clothing, he crept along
the shore. If the strangers were using the streets, it might be well
to get above them. Speculatively he eyed the buildings about him as he
entered the city.

Dalgard continued to keep at street level for two blocks, darting from
doorway to shadowed doorway, alert not only to any sound but to any
flicker of thought. He was reasonably sure, however, that the aliens
would be watching and seeking only for the merpeople. Though they
were not telepathic as their former slaves, Those Others were able to
sense the near presence of a merman, so that the sea people dared not
communicate while within danger range of the aliens without betraying
themselves. It was the fact that he was of a different species,
therefore possibly immune to such detection, which had brought Dalgard
into the city.

He studied the buildings ahead. Among them was a cone-shaped structure
which might have been the base of a tower that had had all stories
above the third summarily amputated. It was ornamented with a series
of bands in high relief, bands bearing the color script of the aliens.
This was the nearest answer to his problem. However the scout did not
move toward it until after a long moment of both visual and mental
inspection of his surroundings. But that inspection did not reach some
twelve streets away where another crouched to watch. Dalgard ran
lightly to the tower at the same moment that Raf shifted his weight
from one foot to the other behind a parapet as he spied upon the knot
of aliens gathered below him in the street....

The pilot had followed them since that early morning hour when Soriki