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They dashed for the embarkation float, hopping one by one to the tow-raft. Shazeen, who had watched the whole encounter, loosed a blast from his blowhole. Closing a nictitating membrane over his eye, he ducked beneath the water to reemerge with his head through the tow harness, commanding, “Cast off!” Badure, last in line, brought the raft’s painter with him.

They had expected Shazeen to move off quickly, but the Swimmer warped the raft out slowly. When he had put a few dozen meters between the raft and the dock, he slipped the tow harness by submerging, then resurfaced to nudge it to a stop with his rocklike snout. “That was some fine thumping!” he hailed. Throwing his head back, he issued an oscillating call that rolled across the water. “Shazeen salutes you,” he clarified.

“Uh, thanks,” Han replied dubiously. “What’s the holdup?”

“We wait for Kasarax,” Shazeen answered serenely.

Han’s outburst was forestalled when another sauropteroid surfaced next to Shazeen, whistling and hissing with mouth and blowhole. “Use their language, woman,” Shazeen chided the newcomer, who was smaller and lighter of hide but nearly as battle-scarred as the big bull. “These are Shazeen’s friends. That pipsqueak there with the hairy face can really thump, can’t he?”

The female switched to Standard. “Will you really oppose Kasarax?”

“No one tells Shazeen where he may or may not swim,” replied the other creature.

“Then the rest of us are behind you!” she answered. “We’ll keep Kasarax’s followers out of it.” The lake water swirled as it closed over her head.

“Drop anchor!” shouted Han. “Cut the power! Cancel the reservations! You never said anything about a faceoff.”

“A race, a mere formality,” assured Shazeen. “Kasarax must pretend now that it’s a right-of-way dispute, to conform with the Law.”

“If he can get passengers,” Hasti broke in. “Look!”

Kasarax was having trouble getting any of his shore gang aboard his tow-raft. The clash at the dock had put doubt in them; now they were having second thoughts about being dragged into the middle of a Swimmer dispute. Their chief, too, hesitated.

Kasarax lost his temper and thrashed himself up over his tow-raft, half onto the dock. Men drew back from the enormous bulk and the steaming, gaping mouth. Kasarax bent down at the chief.

“You’ll do as I say! There’s nowhere you can hide from me, even in that shelter you built under your house. If you make me, I’ll dig you out like a stoneshell from the lake bottom. And the whole time, you’ll hear me coming!”

The shore-gang chief’s nerve broke. White-faced, he scurried aboard the tow-raft, pulling along several unwilling followers and browbeating several others to accompany him.

“Mighty persuasive lad, that nephew of mine,” reflected Shazeen.

“Nephew?” Hasti burst out.

“That’s right. For years and years I whipped every challenger who came along, but I finally got tired of being Top Bull. I drifted north, where it’s warm and the fish are fat and tasty. Kasarax has been running wild too long; partly my fault. I think shore folks put this takeover nonsense into his head, though.”

“Another victory for progress,” Badure murmured. Kasarax was nudging his tow-raft up even with Shazeen’s.

“Anyway, don’t worry,” Shazeen told them. “The Swimming People won’t attack you, so don’t use your weapons on them, or you’ll turn it into a death-matter. That’s the Law.”

“What about the other humans?” Han called, but too late; Shazeen had gone to confront Kasarax. The shore-gang members had brought along their harpoon spring-guns and a variety of dockside cutlery.

The two bulls churned the water, trumpeting to one another. At length Shazeen switched to human speech. “Stay clear of my course!”

“And you from mine!” Kasarax retorted. They both plunged for their tow-rafts, flippers beating with full force, diving for their harnesses and creating rolling swells. They reemerged with heads through harnesses and snapped the towing hawsers taut. The hawsers creaked with the strain, wringing the water from them. Water gushed up from the rafts