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his. “To us there is only one kind of death to be greatly feared.”
    “But there are the snake-devils-“ protested the colony scout.
    “To be hunted down by snake-devils is death, yes. But it is a quick death, a death which can come to any living thing that is not swift or wary enough. For to the snakedevils all things that live and move are merely meat to fill the aching pit in their swollen bellies. But there were in the old days other deaths, far worse than what one meets under a snake-devil’s claws and fangs. And those are the deaths we fear.” He was running the smooth haft of his spear back and forth through his fingers as if testing the balance of the weapon because the time was not far away when he must rely upon it.
    “Those Others!” Dalgard shaped the words with his lips as well as in his mind.
    “Just so.” Sssuri did not nod, but his thought was in complete agreement.
    “Yet they have not come before-not since the ship of my fathers landed here,” Dalgard protested, not against Sssuri’s judgment but against the whole idea.
    The merman got to his feet, sweeping his arm to indicate not only the cove where they now sheltered but the continent behind it.
    “Once they held all this. Then they warred and killed, until but a handful lay in cover to lick their wounds and wait. It has been many threes of seasons since they left that cover. But now they come again-to loot their place of secrets Perhaps in the time past they have forgotten much so that now they must renew their knowledge.”
    Dalgard stowed the bow in the bottom of the outrigger. “I think we had better go and see,” he commented, “so that we may report true tidings to our Elders-something more than rumors learned from night runners.”
    “That is so.”
    They paddled out to sea and turned the prow of the light! craft north. The character of the land did not change. Cliffs‘ still walled the coast, in some places rising sheer from the: water, in others broken by a footing of coarse beach. Only, flying things were to be sighted over their rocky crowns.
    But by midday there was an abrupt alteration in the scene. A wide river cut through the heights and gave birth to a’ fan-shaped delta thickly covered with vegetation. Half hidden’. by the riot of growing things was a building of the dome’ shape Dalgard knew so well. Its windowless, doorless surface reflected the sunlight with a glassy sheen, and to casu inspection it was as untouched as it had been on the day its masters had either died within it or left it for the last time, perhaps centuries before.
    “This is one way into the forbidden city,” Sssuri announced. “Once they stationed guards here.”
    Dalgard had been about to suggest a closer inspection of‘ the dome but that remark made him hesitate. If it had been:. one of the fortifications rimming in a forbidden ground, there: was more than an even chance that unwary invaders, even this long after, might stumble into some trap still working, automatically.
    “Do we go upriver?” He left it to Sssuri, who had the traditions of his people to guide him, to make the decision. _
    The merman looked at the dome; it was evident from his= attitude that he had no wish to examine it more closely. ‘ “They had machines which fought for them, and sometimes. those machines still fight. This river is the natural entrance for an enemy. Therefore it would have been well defended.”
    Under the sun the green reach of the delta had a most: peaceful appearaffce. There was a family of duck-dogs fishing from the beach, scooping their broad bills into the mud to locate water worms. And moth birds danced in the air currents overhead. Yet Dalgard was ready to agree with his’ companion-beware the easy way. They dipped their paddles deep and, cut across the river current toward the cliffs to the north.
    Two days of steady coastwise traveling brought them to a great bay. And Dalgard gasped as the full sight of the port confronting them burst