The Torian Pearls

«Like Loya's breasts,» Blade thought, looking at the sail. He did not say this out loud, although he knew Fudan made no effort to act as his sister's guardian. He'd seen Loya often during the past few weeks. She never wore more than the trousers in which he'd first seen her, and sometimes less. Other women of the Hauri might cover themselves from throat to ankles, but not Loya, in the pride of her rank or perhaps in the even greater pride of her beauty.

The pearl bed they sought lay no more than sixty feet down, shallow water for the pearl oysters. Closer to the mainland, such a shallow bed would long since have been stripped of its choicest pearls. Here they were a good thirty miles farther out than the canoes of the Hauri usually came. Only a bold sailor such as Fudan would come this far.

A flash of light low on the horizon caught Blade's attention. It was far too bright to be sunlight reflected on the sea. It came and went irregularly. Blade realized that it was indeed reflected sunlight, but sunlight flashing from something made of polished metal, moving slowly just above the water. It appeared to be moving toward the lee side of the island, where Blade and Fudan were pla

A moment came when the sunlight was not blazing from the moving object. Blade got a clear view of a streamlined metal cylinder with a high fin aft and a bubble canopy forward.

It was a flying machine of the Menel. He'd seen them before in the Dimension of the Ice Dragons. In fact he'd flown a force of raiders aboard one into the polar regions, to destroy the Ice Dragons and the Ice Master and liberate his slaves and prisoners. The one he'd flown against the Ice Dragons was several times larger than the one he saw now, but they were of the same basic design.

As Blade watched, he realized that the machine was not under full control. It was weaving erratically from side to side and bobbing up and down, sometimes barely skimming the crests of the waves, at other times soaring high into the air. Gradually it took a nose-down attitude. Blade held his breath, watching and waiting for the inevitable.

The machine swooped low, and this time its nose dug into the crest of a wave. Spray exploded around it as it cartwheeled for a hundred feet, the canopy shattering and the tail fin ripping loose. Blade thought he saw an elongated dark shape with four waving arms hurtling out of the spray. Then the machine struck again and arrowed straight down into the water. A spreading patch of foam marked the spot.

It was a moment before Blade realized that Fudan had watched the final gyrations and fall of the Menel flying machine. Blade stared at the man, trying to read the expression on the weather-beaten brown face.

«It will not come again, after this,» said Fudan quietly.

Blade was startled and his voice showed it. «You mean-this is nothing new to you? You've seen-that-before?»

«Oh yes. Our fishermen see it come up from the south, oh, once a month, for two years now. Always the same one, we think.»

«For two years, you say?» Blade went on. He was finding Fudan's calmness harder to deal with than panic or superstitious awe.

«Oh yes. It began after the great star fell from the sky onto the island to the south. So we think it comes from that island, where the Sky People must live.»

Blade realized that if the conversation went on this way much longer, he was going to either lose his temper or sound like an idiot. Neither would do any good. «You know that people from the sky have come to this world, and are living on an island to the south. Their machine has come once a month for the past two years. Didn't you do anything about this?»

Fudan looked i

Blade's temper nearly snapped. «Why didn't you tell me?» he said, an edge in his voice.

«You never asked me,» said Fudan.

Blade let out his breath in a long whoooossssh and began to laugh. Fudan was quite right. It had never occurred to him that the Hauri might have seen the Menel without thinking them worth mentioning. It had seemed wise to keep the Menel as much a secret from the Hauri as he'd kept them from the Kargoi.

So much for what had seemed wise.

«I understand,» said Blade. «But I must tell you that Sky People, the Menel, are indeed using the creatures of the sea and the birds of the air against us. They are enemies to the Kargoi. They may become enemies to the Hauri as well. Now that their machine has fallen, we have a good chance to learn more about them. We must dive down to that machine and look at it and everything in it. This will be more dangerous than letting the Menel fly over your canoes and look at you, but-«

«Do you think the Hauri become afraid so easily?» said Fudan. He did not sound angry, merely implying that Blade was being rather silly to even raise the point.

«No. I have fought the Hauri and know they are a brave people. But the Menel have weapons against which the courage of the Hauri and the Kargoi together may be nothing. There may be such weapons in this machine, and some of the Menel may still be alive to use them. So let us not treat them like stranded sea turtles, to be knocked on the head with a stick.»

«Certainly, that would not be wise,» said Fudan. He put the helm over, and the canoe turned toward the position of the crash. «Blade, look to our weapons. The weapons of the Hauri have slain green sharks and death eels, so perhaps they will make even the Menel know that the Hauri are not easy prey.»

If the Menel beamers didn't work under water, Fudan might very well be right. The Hauri's underwater weapons would not have been turned down by a Home Dimension skin diver. They had tridents and thrusting spears, hooked bars for prying shellfish loose from rocks, crossbows with elastic bands of fish skin that propelled heavy barbed darts, and curved knives that could slit the throat of a man or the gills of an eight-foot green shark with equal ease. The Hauri never killed or took more than they needed from the sea, but they made sure they could always take that much.

Fudan started the canoe zig-zagging as they approached the crash position, to make a difficult target for anyone who might be waiting. Blade hoped the wreck would be no more than eighty feet down. He was a good enough skin diver to reach that depth easily, but he was no more than an amateur by the standards of the Hauri. Their best divers could bring up shells and coral from a hundred and seventy feet down.

As they drew closer to the position Blade sca

They were entering the area of the crash when Blade saw a gray-white cloud of shrieking sea birds whirling over something floating in the water. Without a word Fudan steered for it. A few more strokes, and Blade could make out the floating object as one of the Menel. A few more, and they were alongside the body.

There was no doubt the Menel was dead. No living creature could survive with its head crushed into featureless pulp, two arms torn out of their sockets, and half its body split open so that strange internal organs trailed out into the water. Small fish were already nibbling at those organs while the sea birds swooped on them from above.