Star Born | Page 2

But those who had awakened on Astra were different.
And their sons and daughters, and the sons and daughters of two more generations were
warmed by a new sun, nourished by food grown in alien soil, taught the mind contact by
the amphibian mermen with whom the space voyagers had made an early friendship --
each succeeding child more atuned to the new home, less tied to the far-off world he had
never seen or would see. The colonists were not of the same breed as their fathers, their
grandfathers, or great-grandfathers. So, with other gifts, they had also a vast,
time-consuming patience, which could be a weapon or a tool, as they pleased not
forgetting the instantaneous call to action which was their older heritage.
The hopper returned. On the rock beside the shining things it coveted, it dropped dried

and shriveled fruit. Dalgard's fingers separated two of the gleaming marbles, rolled them
toward the animal, who scooped them up with a chirp of delight. But it did not leave.
Instead it peered intently at the rest of the beads. Hoppers had their own form of
intelligence, though it might not compare with that of humans. And this one was
enterprising. In the end it delivered three more loads of fruit from its burrow and took
away all the beads, both parties well pleased with their bargains.
Sssuri splashed out of the sea with as little ado as he had entered. On the end of his spear
twisted a fish. His fur, slicked flat to his strongly muscled body, began to dry in the air
and fluff out while the sun awoke prismatic lights on the scales which covered his hands
and feet. He dispatched the fish and cleaned it neatly, tossing the offal back into the water,
where some shadowy things arose to tear at the unusual bounty.
"This is not hunting ground." His message formed in Dalgard's mind: "That finned one
had no fear of me."
"We were right then in heading north; this is new land." Dalgard got to his feet.
On either side, the cliffs, with their alternate bands of red, blue, yellow, and white strata,
walled in this pocket. They would make far better time keeping to the sea lanes, where it
was not necessary to climb. And it was Dalgard's cherished plan to add more than just an
inch or two to the explorers' map in the Council Hall.
Each of the colony males was expected to make his man journey of discovery sometime
between his eighteenth and twentieth year. He went alone or, if he formed an attachment
with one of the mermen near his own age, accompanied only by his knife brother. And
from knowledge so gained the still-small group of exiles added to and expanded their
information about their new home.
Caution was drilled into them. For they were not the first masters of Astra, nor were they
the masters now. There were the ruins left by Those Others, the race who had populated
this planet until their own wars had completed their downfall. And the mermen, with their
traditions of slavery and dark beginnings in the experimental pens of the older race,
continued to insist that across the sea -- on the unknown western continent -- Those
Others still held onto the remnants of a degenerate civilization. Thus the explorers from
Homeport , went out by ones and twos and used the fauna of the land as a means of
gathering information.
Hoppers could remember yesterday only dimly, and instinct took care of tomorrow. But
what happened today sped from hopper to hopper and could warn by mind touch both
merman and human. If one of the dread snake-devils of the interior was on the hunting
trail, the hoppers sped the warning. Their vast curiosity brought them to the fringe of any
disturbance, and they passed the reason for it along. Dalgard knew there were a thousand
eyes at his service whenever he wanted them. There was little chance of being taken by
surprise, no matter how dangerous this journey north might be.
"The city--" He formed the words in his mind even as he spoke them aloud. "How far are
we now from it?"

The merman hunched his slim shoulders in the shrug of his race. "Three days' travel,
maybe five. And it" -- though his furred face displayed no readable emotion, the
sensation of distaste was plain -- "was one of the accursed ones. To such we have not
returned since the days of falling fire--"
Dalgard was well acquainted with the ruins which lay not many miles from Homeport.
And he knew that that sprawling, devastated metropolis was not taboo to the mermen.
But this other mysterious settlement he had recently heard of was still shunned by the