“Are you going to deny me? Are you like the others? They’d have nothing to do with me. They mocked at me, they spat upon me, they drove me away with kicks and laughs. They said. . .”
It clapped its flippers together and twisted its face and large tears ran from the moss-green eyes and down the blue cheeks. “Oh, Jadawin, don’t be like the rest! You were always my favorite, my beloved! Don’t be cruel like them!”
The others, Wolff thought. There had been others. How long ago?
Impatiently, he said, “Let’s not play games-whoever you are. Your name!”
The creature rose on its boneless legs, muscles raising the fat that coated them, and took a step forward. Wolff did not back away, but he held the beamer steady. “That’s far enough. Your name.”
The creature stopped, but its tears kept on flowing. “You are as bad as the others. You think of nobody but yourself; you don’t care what’s happened to me. Doesn’t my suffering and loneliness and agonies all this time-oh, this immeasurable time-touch you at all?”
“It might if I knew who you were,” Wolff said. “And what’s happened to you.”
“Oh, Lord of the Lords! My own brother!”
It advanced another giant splayfoot, the wetness squishing from out under the webs. It held out a flipper as if beseeching a tender hand. Then it stopped, and the eyes flicked at a spot just to one side of Wolff. He jumped to his left and whirled, the beamer pointing to cover both the creature and whoever might have been behind him. There was no one.
And, as the thing had planned, it leaped for Wolff at the same time that Wolff jumped and turned. Its legs uncoiled like a catapult released and shot it forward. If Wolff had only turned, he would have been knocked down. Standing to one side, he escaped all but the tip of the thing’s right flipper. Even that, striking his left shoulder and arm, was enough to send him staggering numbly to one side, making him drop the beamer. Wolff was enormously solid and powerful himself, with muscles and nerve impulses raised to twice their natural strength and speed by the Lords’ science. If he had been a normal Earthman, he would have been crippled forever in his arm, and he would not have been able to escape the second leap of the creature.
Squalling with fury and disappointment, it landed on the spot where Wolff had been, sank on its legs as if they were springs, spun, and launched itself at Wolff again. All this was done with such swiftness that the creature looked as if it were an actor in a speeded-up film.
Wolff had succeeded in regaining his balance. He jumped.out for the beamer. The shadow of the creature passed over him; its shrieking was so loud it seemed as if its lips were pressed against his ear. Then he had the beamer in his hands, had rolled over and over, and was up on his feet. By then the thing had propelled itself again towards him. Wolff reversed the beamer, and using his right hand, brought the light but practically indestructible metal stock down on top of the creature’s head. The impact of the huge body hurled him backward; he rolled away. The sea-thing was lying motionless on its face, blood welling from its seal-like scalp.
Hands clapped, and he turned to see two human beings thirty yards away inland, under the shadow of a frond. They were male and female, dressed in the magnificent clothes of Lords. They walked towards him, their hands empty of weapons. Their only arms were swords in crude leather, or fish-skin, scabbards. Despite this seeming powerlessness, Wolff did not relax his guard. When they had approached within twenty yards of him, he told them to stop. The creature groaned and moved its head but made no effort to sit up. Wolff moved away from it to be outside its range of leap.
“Jadawin!” the woman called. She had a lovely contralto voice which stirred his heart and his memory. Although he had not seen her in five hundred or more years, he knew her then.