"We're trying to help him!" Bandicut shouted. "He decompressed too fast!"

"Decompression," hissed another lander, "does not give our people--" ssss "--demonic fits--"

Demonic? Bandicut wasn't sure of the translators' rendering, but-- "/ R was close enough.

They think something is wrong with you, and with Harding coming back bean'ng stones.

Demonically wrong."/ /But that's--/ "/Crazy, yes. But they don't know that."/ Bandicut looked up, trying desperately to think of what he could say to convince them of his intentions. Harding was still struggling to sit up. "I might be able to heal him," Bandicut insisted.

"If you'll let me try."

The dark-dressed Astari spoke again as the crowd parted to let him through. "What could you do that his own people cannot?"

Bandicut squinted, trying to meet the Astari's gaze. "Heal him with the help of the stones. We helped him before, when the pressure below was killing him. Will you at least let us try?"

"You helped him by giving him the eyes of a demon?" muttered one of the other Astari.

Bandicut shifted his gaze, trying to find the speaker. "No! Please let me explain, while there's still--" But the voices rose in a clamor to overwhelm him. Bandicut looked at his friends in alarm. He guessed from Antares' face that she was concentrating on the crowd, trying to offer calming emotions, and failing.

Harding was coughing now. Flecks of purplish foam appeared at the corners of his mouth. His eyes looked as if they were going in and out of focus, and he was raspily trying to say something.

"L-l-lissssten... t-to..." He wheezed and sank back.

"He will die if nothing is done!" Bandicut snapped. "Do you want to kill him? Because if--"300 * *

He was interrupted by a sudden shuddering in the deck under him. One of the landers lost his balance and fell. Those standing near the railing began to shout. "Explosions in the water!" "A quake!"

"They're threatening us with their stones!"

/d.a.m.n. Not now!/Bandicut managed to stumble toward the railing.

There were Astari in the way, but he maneuvered past them to see the flashes beneath the surface of the water, like heat lightning in an upside-down sky. Dear G.o.d, he thought. Is this it? The big eruption?

The closest Astari confronted him angrily. "Why are you doing this?" "Do you control it?" "Do the amphibians?"

Bandicut hesitated. If the landers became convinced that the sea- people controlled these eruptions, the mission was already lost.

"--stealing parts of our ship to make this happen?"

"No. No./Listen to me! Look at what's happening out there! It comes from the bottom of the ocean, from the abyss! None of us can control that--not you, not the Neri, not any of us!" Bandicut waved his hands at L'Kell. "But his people might have a way to try to stop it!" He swung and pointed to Harding, helpless on the deck.

"And he risked his life, to try to tell you to help the Ner/--for your sake as well as theirs!"

The deck lurched, and the landers began to shout, "Help them?"

"Why should we help them?"

A husky voice cried, barely audible through the clamor, "You--must--!"

It was Harding, gasping.

Bandicut and Li-Jared, almost as one, broke through the crowd and knelt beside him. His stones were flickering weakly. Bandicut reached out to touch him.

"/That's it. Hold on if you can."/ He felt Harding's presence. He felt pain. The struggle for breath.

Failing of strength. Darkening of hope. Stones helpless to recom-press the gas bubbles, Bandicut's stones trying to lend strength...

He was wrenched away with a grip that sent a blaze of pain through his shoulder.

"/d.a.m.n""

"Don't be fools!" he gasped. "Harding--try to hold on!" He wished for a frantic instant that his stones would turn him into a terrifying alien vision, as they had once before--or send out bolts of energy--but he knew that they didn't dare; their mission was to end conflict, not promote it. Even if at the cost of his friend's life.THE INFINITE SEA * 301'

He became aware of L'Kell calling, "Would it help, John Bandi-cut, if we took him back down to depth?"

He tried to think. "It might." If they took Harding back down to the Neri city, they might recompress the bubbles; he might recover there.

"No!" shouted a lander. "You took him once already! If he dies here, that's his right--"

"He came back here to help you!" Antares cried out. "Don't you understand? Don't you want to understand?"

Hearing Antares' voice crack with emotion, her words falteringly translated into Astari, Bandicut suddenly knew that they had lost.

But he was stunned when one of the Astari shouted, "You want to take him back? We'll help you take your demon eyes back!" While two landers held Bandicut in a vice grip, two others picked Harding up like a sack of feed and carried him with a few swift strides to the railing. With a single glance back, they flung him out over the water.

"NO/" Bandicut bellowed. He tore free from the landers holding him and ran to the side of the ship. Leaning out, he saw Hard- ing bobbing unconscious in the waves twenty or thirty feet below.

"Who told you to do that?" shouted the Astari leader.

"Let the amphibians have him back!" someone answered.

The cry was joined by others, and while the landers were shouting at each other, Harding slipped beneath the waves.

Bandicut acted without thinking, only dimly aware of L'Kell doing the same. He climbed up, then jumped from the railing--L'Kell airborne at his side--and crashed into the sea with a tremendous impact, and sank with a rush of bubbles. His shoulder blazed with pain as he kicked back to the surface, then treaded water, looking around for Harding. He gasped, choking as a wave hit him in the face; he caught half a breath and went under again, peering around in the alien salt sea, the water stinging his eyes. He caught sight of L'Kell struggling beneath the waves--the impact from the jump had hurt him, too--but L'Kell had a hand on a shadowy form.

He had Harding, and was straining to bring him back up.

Bandicut kicked forward, lungs burning. Together, they broke the surface with Harding. Bandicut gasped for air, fighting to get Harding's head above water. L'Kell pushed up from below, and Bandicut kicked with all his strength. Something hit him in the head, stunning him. It took a couple of breaths to realize what it was--302 , .

a line, thrown from the ship. He caught it in his right hand, and got his left arm around Harding and pulled him into a cross-chest carry.

Then something else hit the water, a log-shaped float, and he managed to get that under his arm. L'Kell broke the surface, looked around, and dove back under to continue supporting them from beneath.

Soon there were Astari in the water, a.s.sisting, and the three of them were being pulled back to the ship.

Bandicut coughed, shivering, and bent over the still form of Harding.

They were once more surrounded by landers, but this time at a more respectful distance. Bandicut's hand was on the Astari's chest, and Charlene was reaching out, searching.., but there was no life left in his friend, except some residual energy in the daughter-stones.

Even they seemed to have shut down.

"/I'm sorry, John, truly sorry.

He29robably died when he hit the water."/ /He knew he was going to die. I think he knew it, when we made that last contact./With a sigh of exhaustion, Bandicut rocked back from the body of his friend. Such a short time together, but still a friend. Sharer of stones.

* We grieve.*

He was startled to hear the voice of the stones, but after that, they were silent. He looked up at L'KeI1, who had shaken himself up pretty badly in the jump into the water. And Li-Jared, crouching in bewilderment and grief, Li-Jared whose daughter-stones were Harding's now, and who so obviously could not comprehend what had driven Harding's own people to kill him. "I'm sorry, Li-Jared,"

Bandicut whispered, touching the Karellian's arm.

Li-Jared looked startled by the touch. His eyes pulsed; the electric-blue, horizontal slit of his pupils widened for a moment, then contracted again. "So--" bwong "--mokin' stupid. So mokin'

fokin' stupid."

"Yes," Bandicut said. He gazed at Harding's still face and wondered, was there still life in those stones? Some of Harding's life, or at least his knowledge?

"/Maybe. Maybe.

I would say that it's Li-Jared's move."/ Li-Jared seemed to have the same thought. He reached out a wiry, black-fingered hand and almost touched the lightless stonesTHE INFINITE SEA * 303 in the dead Astari's neck. Almost. Whether it was out of concern for what the landers might think, or what their taboos about death might be, Bandicut couldn't tell. But Li-Jared stopped with his fingers poised a few centimeters above the dark stones.

"You... risked your lives trying to save this one."

Bandicut turned to face the Astari leader. "Yes," he said simply.

"Why?"

Bandicut straightened painfully, and rose to his feet. "Because he was our friend. And--because he was trying to bring an im- portant message to you."

"What message?"

Bandicut suddenly felt weary to the depths of his bones. If they hadn't gotten the point yet... He cast a glance out over the water, and noted that the flashing from the Maw had subsided somewhat.

"He was trying to make peace. Between your people and the Neri."

Bandicut nodded in the direction of L'Kell, and S'Cali and Jontil, crouching close to L'Kell. "But your people didn't want to hear it, I guess."

"Neri," repeated the Astari. "Amphibs, we call them. We have known about them--a little, anyway. But your kind we have never seen before. Who are you? And your friends?"

"We are not," Bandicut said, "from your world." He drew a breath. "I am John Bandicut, human of a world called Earth." He introduced the others. By the time he was finished, he seemed to have caught the Astari leader's interest.

"And still you risked your life to save this one, Harding."

"I told you why."

"Yes. But you have not told us what you were planning to offer us, or ask of us. And what these stones have to do with it." The leader spoke as though it was now irrelevant to him how the other Astari had reacted to the stones. Having watched their pa.s.sion and anger play itself out, would he now make a rational decision on their behalt?.

"I will answer all of your questions if I can. But first, may I ask--how shall I address you? Are you the leader of this ... ship?"

"You may call me Morado. I am the--" krrrll "--commander of the salvage operation."

"Morado," Bandicut said. "Well, then." He rubbed his wrist, thinking. "The stones allow those of us who are not of this world304 * *

to survive in a place that is alien to us. And they allow us to talk to you. They are tools of negotiation."

"Yes? Negotiation?" Morado angled his head slightly. "And if I thought they were demon eyes, and ordered my people to take them out of your body and destroy them?"

Bandicut stared at him for a moment. "I would not recommend that," he said dryly.

Morado said nothing, but gestured to two of the Astari nearby.

One of them grabbed Bandicut's left wrist; the other drew a blade nearly as long as Bandicut's forearm. Bandicut grunted, and tried to pull his arm away. The Astari's grip tightened. The knife-point gleamed as it poked at his wrist near the black stone.

"/Brace yourself."/ A pulse of light shot from the stone, and with a whump, a force-field flared out momentarily, hurling both landers back into the crowd. The concussion made Bandicut's ears ring. A smell of ozone lingered in the air.

Morado watched in stunned silence.

Bandicut stared coldly at the two Astari who had a.s.saulted him, then turned slowly to Morado. "As I was saying," he began. He paused, seeing a movement out of the corner of his eye.

Li-Jared bent to scoop up two marble-sized b.a.l.l.s of light, which were suddenly floating above Harding's body. "Here," Li-Jared said.

"Perhaps you would like to inspect them." He handed them to Morado.

The Astari leader's eyes seemed to contract with suspicion, but he took the stones from Li-Jared. He held them carefully in what served for a palm of his hand, where they shrank slightly and glowed like illuminated gems. "How do they change like that?" he rasped.

Bandicut and Li-Jared looked at each other. "We don't really know," Bandicut said finally. "We did not make them, and we don't wholly control them. But they don't control us, either." He glanced down at Harding's body, with a pang of sadness. "They tried to save his life, right to the end." Bandicut sighed heavily, and felt a touch on his arm.

It was Antares, who stepped forward to Morado. "May I say something?" Her words were translated more clearly this time, perhaps because she was calmer.

Morado's ringed irises seemed to contract and expand for a moment as he studied her. He looked like a cartoonish nightmare ofTHE INFINITE SEA * 305 a fox, gazing at his prey. But Antares remained unfearful. "Were you also a friend of Harding?" Morado said finally.

"I did not know him as these two knew him--through the connection of the stones," Antares replied, "but I spoke with him, and listened to him, and yes, he was my friend. I know how uncertain you are of those stones that you hold. Uncertain whether to trust them or fear them."

Morado's head tipped slightly back, and his lips parted slightly.

"And you wish to tell me to trust them?" he asked, raising the stones to eye level.

"No," said Antares, which seemed to startle him a little. "I wish to tell you that they are a very great treasure, and that Li-Jared's gift of them to Harding was a very great gift. And whether or not you trust them, you would be wise to respect them."

Morado glanced at Bandicut--perhaps thinking of the demonstration his stones had put on--then back at Harding's stones. But before he could answer Antares, there was another flash of light in the sea off the starboard side of the ship--then a rumble, vibrating through the deck. Morado's hands closed over the stones as he shouted, "Crew, to your stations! Secure for high seas! Communications, contact port and warn of possible--" hssssk "--crash-waves!

Deck monitors, take this crewman's body below." He watched for a moment, then gestured to Antares and Bandicut and Li-Jared to step closer. When L'Kell joined them, he stared at the Neri for a moment, but did not ask him to leave. "What do the stones have to do with this?" he demanded.

Bandicut raised his voice to be heard over the noise of the crew.

"Nothing!" He raised his hands helplessly, and finally gestured toward the undersea flashes. "Morado, we know these quakes and disruptions threaten your people on the coast. But they also threaten the Neri, even more. There is a thing down there that is causing it.