The Drac's three fingered hands flexed.  In the thing's yellow eyes I could read the desire to either have those fingers around a weapon or my throat.  As I flexed my own fingers, I knew it read the same in my eyes.

"Irkmaan!" the thing spat.

"You piece of Drac slime," I brought my hands up in front of my chest and waved the thing on.  "Come on, Drac; come and get it."

"Irkmaan vaa, koruum su!"

"Are you going to talk, or fight?  Come on!" I could feel the spray from the sea behind me—a boiling madhouse of whitecapped breakers that threatened to swallow me as it had my fighter.  I had ridden my ship in.  The Drac had ejected when its own fighter had caught one in the upper atmosphere, but not before crippling my power plant.  I was exhausted from swimming to the gray, rocky beach, and pulling myself to safety.  Behind the Drac, among the rocks on the otherwise barren hill, I could see its ejection capsule.  Far above us, its people and mine were still at it, slugging out the possession of an uninhabited corner of nowhere.  The Drac just stood there and I went over the phrase taught us in training—a phrase calculated to drive any Drac into a frenzy.  "Kiz da yuomeen, Shizumaat!" Meaning: Shizumaat, the most revered Drac philosopher, eats Kiz excrement.  Something on the level of stuffing a Moslem full of pork.

The Drac opened its mouth in horror, then closed it as black anger literally changed its color from yellow to reddish-brown.  "Irkmaan, yaa stupid Mickey Mouse is!"

I had taken an oath to fight and die over many things, but that venerable rodent didn't happen to be one of them.  I laughed, and continued laughing until the guffaws in combination with my exhaustion forced me to my knees.  I forced open my eyes to keep track of my enemy.  The Drac was running toward the high ground, away from me and the sea.  I half-turned toward the sea and caught a glimpse of a million tons of water just before they fell on me, knocking me unconscious.

◊

"Kiz da yuomeen, Irkmaan, ne?"

My eyes were gritty with sand and stung with salt, but some part of my awareness pointed out "Hey, you're alive." I reached to wipe the sand from my eyes and found my hands bound.  A straight metal rod had been run through my sleeves and my wrists tied to it.  As my tears cleared the sand from my eyes, I could see the Drac sitting on a smooth black boulder looking at me.  It must have pulled me out of the drink.  "Thanks, toad face.  What's with the bondage?"

"Ess?"

I tried waving my arms and wound up giving an impression of an atmospheric fighter dipping its wings.  "Untie me, you Drac slime!" I was seated on the sand, my back against a rock.

The Drac smiled exposing the upper and lower mandibles that looked human, except instead of separate teeth, they were solid.  "Eh, ne, Irkmaan."  It stood, walked over to me and checked my bonds.

"Untie me!"

The smile disappeared.  "Ne!" It pointed at me with a yellow finger. "Kos son va?"

"I don't speak Drac, toad face.  You speak Esper or English?"

The Drac delivered a very human looking shrug, then pointed at its own chest.  "Kos va son Jeriba Shigan." It pointed again at me.  "Kos son va?"

"Davidge.  My name is Willis E. Davidge."

"Ess?"

I tried my tongue on the unfamiliar syllables.  "Kos va son Willis Davidge."

"Eh." Jeriba Shigan nodded, then motioned with its fingers.  "Dasu, Davidge."

"Same to you, Jerry.

"Dasu, dasu!" The toad face began sounding a little impatient.  I shrugged as best I could.  The Drac bent over and grabbed the front of my jump suit with both hands and pulled me to my feet.  "Dasu, dasu, kizlode!"

"All right!  So dasu is 'get up.' What's a kizlode?"

Jerry laughed.  "Gavey 'kiz'?"

"Yeah, I gavey."

Jerry pointed at its head.  "Lode." It pointed at my head.  "Kizlode, gavey?"

I got it, then swung my arms around, catching Jerry upside its head with the metal rod.  The Drac stumbled back against a rock looking surprised.  It raised a hand to its head and withdrew it covered with that pale pus that Dracs think is blood.  It looked at me with murder in its eyes. "Gefh!  Nu Gefh, Davidge!"

"Come and get it, Jerry, you kizlode sonofabitch!"

Jerry dived at me and I tried to catch it again with the rod, but the Drac caught my right wrist in both hands and, using the momentum of my swing, whirled me around, slamming my back against another rock.  Just as I was getting back my breath, Jerry picked up a small boulder and came at me with every intention of turning my melon into pulp.  With my back against the rock, I lifted a foot and kicked the Drac in the mid section, knocking it to the sand.  I ran up, ready to stomp Jerry's melon, but he pointed behind me.  I turned and saw another tidal wave gathering steam, and heading our way.  "Kiz!"

Jerry got to its feet and scampered for the high ground with me following close behind.  With the roar of the wave at our backs, we weaved in and out the black, water and sand ground boulders, until we reached Jerry's ejection capsule.  The Drac stopped, put its shoulder to the egg shaped contraption, and began rolling it uphill.  I could see Jerry's point.  The capsule contained all of the survival equipment and food either of us knew about.  "Jerry!" I shouted above the rumble of the fast approaching wave.  "Pull out this damn rod and I'll help!" The Drac frowned at me.  "The rod, kizlode, pull it out!" I cocked my head toward my outstretched arm.

Jerry placed a rock beneath the capsule to keep it from rolling back, then quickly untied my wrists and pulled out the rod.  Both of us put our shoulders to the capsule, and we quickly rolled it to higher ground.  The wave hit and climbed rapidly up the slope until it came up to our chests.  The capsule bobbed like a cork, and it was all we could do to keep control of the thing until the water receded, wedging the capsule between three big boulders.  I stood there, puffing.

Jerry dropped to the sand, its back against one of the boulders, and watched the water rush back out to sea. "Magasienna!"

"You said it, brother." I sank down next to the Drac we agreed by eye to a temporary truce and promptly passed out. . . .