The Andre Norton Megapack - 15 Classic Novels and Short Stories

stripped to his swimming trunks, all his equipment taken from him. There was a dark bruise on his left temple, the angry weal of a lash mark on neck and shoulder.
    Ross’s hands clenched. Never in his life had he so desperately wanted a weapon as he did at that moment. To spray the company below with a machine gun would have given him great satisfaction. But he had nothing but the knife in his belt and he was as cut off from Ashe as if they were in separate cells of some prison.
    The caution which had been one of his inborn gifts and which had been fostered by his training, clamped down on his first wild desire for action. There was not the slightest chance of his doing Ashe any good at the present. But he had this much—he knew that Gordon was alive and that he was in the aliens’ hands. Faced by those facts Ross could plan his own moves.
    The Foanna chant began again, and the three prisoners moved; the two Hawaikans turned, set themselves on either side of Ashe, and gave him support. Their actions had a mechanical quality as if they were directed by a will beyond their own. Ashe gazed about him at the Wreckers and the robed figures. His awareness of them both suggested to Ross that if the natives had come under the control of the Foanna, the Terran resisted their influence. But Ashe did not try to escape the assistance of his two fellow prisoners, and he limped with their aid back down the hall, following the Foanna.
    Ross deduced that the captives had been transferred from the lord of the castle to the Foanna. Which meant Ashe was on his way to another destination. The Terran was on his feet and headed back, intent on returning to the sea cave and starting out after Ashe as soon as he could.
    “You have found Gordon!” Karara read his news from his face.
    “The Wreckers had him prisoner. Now they’ve turned him over to the Foanna—”
    “What will they do with him?” the girl demanded of Loketh.
    His answer came roundabout as usual as the native squatted by the analyzer and clicked his answer into it.
    “They have claimed the wreck survivors for tribute. Your companion will be witches’ meat.”
    “Witches’ meat?” repeated Ross, uncomprehending.
    Then Karara drew a gagged breath which was a gasp of horror.
    “Sacrifice! Ross, he must mean they are going to use Gordon for a sacrifice.”
    Ross stiffened and then whirled to catch Loketh by the shoulders. The inability to question the native directly was an added disaster now.
    “Where are they taking him? Where?” He began that fiercely, and then forced control on himself.
    Karara’s eyes were half closed, her head back; she was manifestly aiming that inquiry at the dolphins, to be translated to Loketh.
    Symbols burned on the analyzer screen.
    “The Foanna have their own fortress. It can be entered best by sea. There is a boat…I can show you, for it is my own secret.”
    “Tell him—yes, as soon as we can!” Ross broke out. The old feeling that time was all-important worried at him. Witches’ meat…witches’ meat…the words were sharp as a lash.
    CHAPTER 8
    The Free Rovers
    Twilight made a gray world where one could not trace the true meeting of land and water, sea and sky. Surely the haze about them was more than just the normal dusk of coming night.
    Ross balanced in the middle of the skiff as it bobbed along the swell of waves inside a barrier reef. To his mind the craft carrying the three of them and their net of supplies was too frail, rode too high. But Karara paddling in the bow, Loketh at the stern seemed to be content, and Ross could not, for pride’s sake, question their competency. He comforted himself with the knowledge that no agent was able to absorb every primitive skill, and Karara’s people had explored the Pacific in out-rigger canoes hardly more stable than their present vessel, navigating by currents and stars.
    Smothering his feeling of helplessness and the slow anger that roused in him, the Terran busied himself with study of a sort. They had had the longer part of the day in the cave before Loketh would agree to venture out of hiding and paddle south. Ross, using the analyzer, had, with Loketh’s aid, set about learning what he could of the native tongue.
    Now possessed of a working vocabulary of clicked words, he was able to follow Loketh’s speech so that translation through the dolphins was not necessary except for complicated directions. Also, he had a more detailed briefing of the present situation on