y before.
Stripped of his burned rags of clothing, coated with the healing stuff
of the merpeople--that thick jelly substance which was their bulwark
against illness and hurt--lashed into a hammock of sea fibers, he had
the outward appearance of a thick bundle of supplies. The scout had
seen miracles of healing performed by the gel, he could only hope for
one now. "Sleep--" he made the soothing suggestion over and over and
felt the other begin to relax, to sink into the semicoma in which he
must rest for at least another day.

It was true that they had watched the strange flying machine take off
from a roof top. And none of the mermen who had survived the battle
which had raged through the city had seen any of the off-worlder's
kind among the living or the dead of the alien forces. Perhaps,
thinking Raf dead, they had returned to their space ship.

Now there were other, more immediate, problems to be met. They had
done everything that they could to insure the well-being of the
stranger, without whom they could not have delivered that one
necessary blow which meant a new future for Astra.

The aliens were not all dead. Some had gone down under the spears of
the mermen, but more of the sea people had died by the superior
weapons of their foes. To the aliens, until they discovered what had
happened to the globe and its cargo, it would seem an overwhelming
triumph, for less than a quarter of the invading force fought its way
back to safety in the underground ways. Yes, it would appear to be a
victory for Those Others. But--now time was on the other side of the
scales.

Dalgard doubted if the globe would ever fly again. And the loss of the
storehouse plunder could never be repaired. By its destruction they
had insured the future for their people, the mermen, the slowly
growing settlement at Homeport.

They were well out of the city, in the open country, traveling along a
rocky gorge, through which a river provided a highway to the sea.
Dalgard had no idea as yet how he could win back across the waste of
water to his own people. While the mermen with whom he had stormed the
city were friendly, they were not of the tribes he knew, and their own
connection with the eastern continent was through messages passed
between islands and the depths.

Then there was the stranger--Dalgard knew that the ship which had
brought him to this planet was somewhere in the north. Perhaps when he
recovered, they could travel in that direct