Storm Over Warlock

brine slime across the skin. Yet Thorvald hunted no shelter, in spite of the promise in the rough shoreline at their backs. The sand in which their boots slipped and slid was coarse stu

o arouse Shann's distrust, perhaps a

lants, forced the starkness of the heights. Yet there had been through all that journeying a general resemblance to his own past on other worlds. A t

o wet his torn clothing, between him and that wild wrack of long-ago storms. He could put out his hand and touch sand, drift, spray; yet they were a setting w

e fury of the tossing sea. The sun was still a pale smear just above the horizon. A

gar

d, the strange word hol

e with one hand. "Utgard, those outermost islands where dw

decided, giants or the malignant spirits of any race. Perhaps even the Throgs had their tales of evil things in the nigh

the storm strikes." To Shan

rs. And from that barrier of stones piled into a breastwork by chance, interwoven with bone-bare drift, arose the first of the cliffs. Shann studied the terrain with increasing uneasiness. To be caught between a sea, whipped inland by a storm wind, and that c

h the mountain. Taggi nosed into a darker line down the face of the cliff and disappear

t above the beach he was able to look back and down through the seaward slit. Open to the sky the crevice proved a doorway to a narr

uld attempt to fly in the face of the coming storm, they dared make a fire. The warmth was a comfort to their bodies, just as the light of the flames, men's age-old hearth companion, was a comfort to the fugit

shelter the Terrans not only heard the thunderous boom of surf, but felt the vibration of that beat pounding through the very ground on which they lay. The sea must have long since covered

tly into darkness. The wolverines crowded into their small haven, whining deep in their throats. Shann ran his hands along their furred bodies, trying to give them a reassurance he hi

ich must be in part the breath of the sea driven in upon them. The comforting fire vanished, chill and dankness crept up to cramp

rain bullet-hard against and through their flimsy shelter.

apping inward between gaps of missing teeth-which were really broken fangs of rock-as if the skull now and then sucked reviving moisture from the water. The aperture marking the nose was closer to a snout, and the hole was dark, dark as the empty eye sockets. Yet that darkness was drawing him past an

ulsion-and the dream. Shann opened his eyes with

hey grew from seeds planted by the storm. But there was no wind, no sound from the peaks. Only under h

r. The officer's face was drawn so finely that his features, sharp under the tanned

m's o

pressure. He felt as if he would never be warm again. When he moved sluggishly to the pit where th

ears, as if some of the moisture thick in th

m the back of their lean-to, where the protection of their own bodies had kept tha

y steaming piece on sticks by the warmth of the flames. The moist air bit at their bodies and they mo

m?" Thorvald

dream had been, the feeling that it was not to b

d said bleakly. "You sa

n you awoke me," Shann

eil when Taggi took off and wakened

es

tood up, the firelight marking plainly the lines between his tanned arms, his brown face

n that he would sometime, somewhere, find that skull, and that when he did he would climb to the doorway of the snout, pas

n Thorvald's, deepening to a warm brown where it had been weathered. His hair, unclipped now for a month, was beginning to curl about his head in tight dark rings. Since he had always been the youngest or the smallest or the weakest in the wor

." He gave the traditional reply of the Service recruit. And a litt

Lantee?" He asked as if h

yr

automatically matched planet to pro

did his kind know about the labor Barracks where the dull-minded, the failures, the petty criminals on the run, lived hard under a secret social system of their own? It had taken every bit of physical endurance and energy, every fraction of stubborn will Shann could summon, for him to s

ff. Three years it had taken, but he had made Team stature. Not that that meant anything now. Shann pulled his boots on over the legs of r

ger, dull but persistent. It was a feeling he had had so many

t and the practical. What did it matter why or how on

eep for emergencies." Thorvald made no move to open th

hout enthusiasm as one of the varieties of native produce which could be safely digested by Terran stomachs. The stuff was almost tasteless and possessed a

. He disagreed with Shann's suggestion for tracking Taggi and Togi when those two emerge

dn't you ever hear of fish, Lantee? After a storm such as las

as not only the thought of food w

in white lace about the barrier of boulders. There was no change in the dullness of the sky; no sun broke through the thick lid of clouds. And the green of the sea was

lost, the inner ones more isolated by the rise in water,

into the air; a double tail split into equal forks for half-way down its length. A leg lifted as a forefoot, webbed, clawed for a new h

ted supply of strength. The head sank forward, resting across one of the forelimbs. Then Shann sighted the fearsome wound in the side just before one of the larger

is t

tudying the dying creature with avid attention. "Must have been drive

ically to the sky. The jaws opened and from between them came a moaning whistle, a complaint which was drowned out by the wash of the waves. Then, as if that was the last effort, the w

gain, sighted another object, a rounded shape floatin

oo

rom their perch on the cliff to the broad rock where the scaled sea dweller had lain moments earlier. He stood

hann could make out in the half-light the color was a reddish-brown, the surface rough. And he thought by the way that it moved that it mu

you goin

t t

enaced through a sea which might be infested with more such creatures? It seemed that he was, for Thorvald's white body arched out in a di

eached it, his outstretched hand rasping across the surface. And it responded so quickly to th

ey flipped the find over, to discover it hollow. They had, in effect, a ready-made craft not unlike a canoe with blunted bow

. "We have our boat," he c

protest. If the officer determined to try such a voyage, he would do it.