Free Margaret St. Clair by The Dolphins of Altair

undertaken —making sure that human beings would never molest us again —was still in front of us. As Dr. Lawrence had said, it was a large order. None of us had a clear idea how it was to be done.
    Blitta was close beside me in the water. We were so happy to be together again! The sea was too cold for us to think much about mating, but we were planning to slip away for a few days to the warm blue South Pacific. We had been separated for two years.
    Abruptly Madelaine got t o her feet, pressing her hands against her breast. She seemed to be listening. Then she yelled at us, “Dive, all of you! Swim out and dive! Quick!”
    She turned and ran up from the beach toward the rock.
    We acted on her warning instantly. But Blitta, who was not used to trusting Splits, was a little slower about obeying than the rest of us. This momentary hesitation of hers was certainly the reason why …
    A plane appeared out of the empty sky. It was a very fast reconnaissance plane. It swooped down over the Rock.
    It came so low that Madelaine, who had pressed herself against the rock face for protection, said she thought it was going to gut itself on t he granite crest. She could see the big navy insignia on its belly and wings.
    The plane pulled out of its dive at the last minute. It was only a few yards above the rocky beach. Bullets began to patter. The plane was straffing the water and the shore.
    The barrage lasted only an instant. Then the plane was up and high in the air again like a flash of light.
    It circled the Rock twice, very high. Madelaine, hugging the granite wall, hoped it was going away. Then it made another swoop. Bullets pocked and whined against the hard surface. This time the plane was straffing the Rock. I don’t know whether or not the pilot saw Madelaine. Probably not, or he would have continued his straffing until he killed her. At any rate, he made one more pass over the top o f the crest, while the bullets spatted. Then he shot up and away. In an instant he had vanished in the east.
    Madelaine came running down to the water. “Amtor! Blitta! Ivry!” she called. “Are you —”
    She stopped. She had seen the pink tinge in the ripples on the little beach. “Who’s hurt?” she demanded anxiously. “Who’s been hurt?”
    “It’s Blitta,” I replied after an instant. “She’s —Moonlight, I think she’s dead.”
    “Oh, Amtor!”
    “The pilot hit her twice. The first bullet went in her back, I think. The second —it must have gone into her heart.”
    Madelaine was silent. For the first time since the straffing, I looked at her. Then I saw that she had been wounded. Her left shoulder was streaming with blood.
    “Maddy, you’ve been wounded,” I said.
    “Have I?” she replied absently. “It doesn’t hurt.”
    “It will. We must get Sven and have him bandage it for you.”
    “There’s no time,” she answered. “There’s not time for anything, Amtor. We haven’t even time to warn Sven. Dr. Lawrence has betrayed us. That was a navy scouting plane. There’ll be fifty planes here soon. We must leave the Rock.”
    Was this the trouble Madelaine had forseen for us? There was no time for speculation —no time even for grief. She was right. The air would be full of bombers in a few minutes. Lawrence had betrayed us. We must leave the Rock.
    -

Chapter 6
    Madelaine’s shoulder kept bleeding. The left side of her dress was soaked with blood. From the look of the wound and what happened later, I think it mu st have been made by a flying rock splinter chipped off one of the places where the sea gulls used to perch. It was a long gash, not very deep, but it ought to have been stitched up by a doctor.
    We did not discuss where we should go. Really, we had little choice. It was plainly impossible to take Sosa (we called Madelaine that sometimes, after a dolphin heroine) westward, to the open sea. The nearest land in that direction was China. North or sou t h, along the coast, the nearest place where we