Free Startide Rising by David Brin

“All right. Go down after the sled. When you’ve found it, put on a breather. I don’t want you hampered by need for air, and you need a constant reminder with you, too!
    “Then bring the sled up near the island, but not too close!”
    Keepiru flung his head up in a huge nodding motion. “Yesss!” he cried. Then he flipped and dove into the water. It was just as well Keepiru had left all the thinking to him.
    The fin might have balked if he’d caught onto what Toshio had in mind to do next.
    A kilometer to the island; there was only one way to get there fast and avoid a scramble up the slanting, abrasive, metal-coral surface. He checked his orientation one more time, then a drop in the water level told him that the wave was coming.
    The fourth wave seemed the gentlest by far. He knew the feeling was deceptive. He was in water deep enough so that the swell came at him as a gentle lump in the ocean, rather than a crested breaker. He dove down into the hump and swam against the direction of motion for a time before rising to the surface.
    He had to gauge it just right. Swim back too far and he wouldn’t reach the island before the following trough arrived and pulled him out to sea again. To remain at the front of the wave would be to body-surf a vicious breaker onto the beach, undertow and all.
    It was all happening too fast. He swam hard, but couldn’t tell if he had passed the peak of the wave or not. Then a glance told him that it was too late for remedial measures. He flipped around to face the looming, foliage-topped mound.
    The breaker started a hundred yards ahead, but the slope rapidly ate away at the wave as bottom dragged the cycloid into a crested monster. The peak moved backward, toward Toshio, even as the wave hurtled upward onto the beach.
    The boy braced himself as the crest reached him. He was prepared to look down on a precipice, and then see nothing more.
    What he saw was a cataract of white foam as the wave began to die. Toshio cried out to keep his ear channels open, and started swimming furiously to stay atop the churning tide of spume and debris.
    Suddenly, there was greenery all around. Trees and shrubs which had withstood the earlier assaults shook under this attack. Some tore loose of their moorings even as Toshio flew past them. Others stood and flailed at him as he hurtled through.
    No sharp branch impaled him. No unbreaking vine garroted him as he passed. In a tumbling, tossing confusion he finally came to rest, somehow hugging the trunk of a huge tree, while the wave churned, and finally receded.
    Miraculously, he was on his feet, the first man to stand on the soil of Kithrup. Toshio stared dazedly at his surroundings, briefly not believing his survival.
    Then he hurriedly opened his faceplate, and became the first man to lose his breakfast on the soil of Kithrup.
     

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::: Galactics
    « ^ »
    S lay them!” The Jophur high priest demanded. “Slay the isolated Thennanin battlecruisers on our sixth quadrant!”
    The Jophur chief of staff bowed its twelve-ringed trunk before the high priest.
    “The Thennanin are our allies-of-the-moment! How can we turn on them without first performing the secret rituals of betrayal? Their ancestors will not be appeased!”
    The Jophur high priest expanded its six outer sap-rings. It rose high upon its dais at the rear of the command chamber.
    “There is no time to perform the rites! Now, as our alliance finishes sweeping this sector, as our alliance has become the strongest! Now, while this phase of the battle still rages. Now, while the foolish Thennanin have opened up their flanks to us. Now may we harm them greatly!”
    The chief of staff pulsed in agitation, its outer sap-rings discoloring with emotion.
    “We may change alliances as it suits us, agreed. We may betray our allies, agreed. We may do anything to win the prize agreed. But we may not do so without performing the rituals! The rituals are what make us the appropriate vessels for the will