john ward, god helper, hung in his chair like a damp, empty uniform. an open, four-foot port showed a circle of blazing blue sky and a regular glimpse of a high, curving topsail. the humid, hot salty flavor of a strange sea blanketed the cabin, and sparked a sudden thought:

"what the hell am i doing here?"

there was no prompt answer. the wind rushed and moaned. the roiling water crashed and hissed under the stern. the following ship heaved its topsail into sight again, and withdrew it. a lilting chant drifted like smoke on the wind.

we ride the wind down like sleek, skimming birds.

the seething foam furrows follow true.

the sky is clouded with our singing sails.

we ride the wind down, down the wind.

he was comet colonel john ward, terran confederation, earth; he was certain of that. age? forty-two, more or less. specialty? historical naval tactician. if you had to call it something you might as well call it that. hobby? sailing. but, god, snipes and lightnings aren't ships-of-the-line! reading? well ... lyric poetry and ancient history, if you must know. present occupation? god helper. no, call that commander advisor to the kali, aqua. future? oh, hell-yes; right up the....

wide shouldered, wave exploding, trim twin-hulled we come.

first, the sky tall, fine first-liners.

then the seconds, flanking fast.

lean and level slide the frigates.

all around us flash the corvettes.

ride the wind down, kali seamen, down the wind to ande-ke.

six months ago he had a future all outlined, but six months ago he was a shining god helper, come in glory. now he was simply a god helper, and sometimes not even that.

we are the kali. the fortunate ones. yes!

heirs to our wind and water world.

like our ships we are tall and proud.

like our wind we are wild and restless.

like our sea we are strong and savage.

this is our world, wide and lonely.

ride the wind down. kali brothers, down the wind to anda-ke.

six months on this barely discovered, one per cent land area, behind-the-galaxy planet, with piercing confederation insight: aqua. where the land was scattered about like pepper on an egg, and even the wind tried to run backwards.

down the wind at anda-ke—there is trouble.

there we meet the stupid grimnal.

there the challenging, groveling grimnal.

he will plead for his wives and children.

and, as proper kali seamen.

we will keep them soft and happy.

after, we send their men away,

under the hungry gray-green water:

under the wind as we ride the wind down, down the wind to victory.

and here he still was, trying to show some life-loving, song-singing, battle-mad, contrary-thinking, conceived of leather and salt spray, five-foot humanoids how to fight a sea war.

and that was really quite a joke. the kali and the grimnal had been at this for a hundred years, and doing quite well. they were in no danger of getting overpopulated for one thing, and had evolved a dual power political system over the entire planet before the invention of an explosive. but now, being newly discovered by bigger and better dual powers, they were being shown how to fight in a bigger and better way. only the grimnal seemed to be learning, however. oh, the kali listened, and even followed directions, but they seemed incapable of understanding that slamming two corvettes upwind into the guns of eight first-liners was simply not good military tactics.

they had a game. something like tag in reverse. one man was it, and everyone on ship tried to catch him. he could go anywhere, do anything, even cut the rigging as long as it didn't endanger the ship. the more daring he was, the better. ward had watched one make a hundred and fifty foot dive from a skysail yard with the ship making about twenty knots in a heavy sea. how do you go about explaining caution to a people like that?

but he had to. somehow. since the big boys had taken sides the kali had been losing. or, more accurately, ward had been losing.

all the gods are busy beings.

we know.

but even they have noticed now,

ward's wandering mind snapped back. this was a new verse.

and sent a sky man down to help us;

sent a helper down to lead us.

but the ways of gods are strange.

the grimnal leaps from isle to island,

while the kali stand and watch him.

while the gods and helpers falter.

ride the wind down, kali brothers. at anda-ke we stand the test.

a polite cough from behind reminded him that captain tahn was still in the cabin. the kali coughed to express anything from rage to sheer joy, and this one probably meant that ward's hearing the last verse was an accident. ward swung around and glanced at him, but the kali deliberately kept his slitted eyes on the chart before him. ward was reminded again of the kali likeness to the long vanished american indian: black, straight hair; narrowed, snapping black eyes; high, angular cheek bones. but not much beyond that. if you took a fine featured sioux of long ago ... shortened him about a foot, thinned him down—bones and all, raised his shoulders to a perpetual shrug, stretched his arms so that they still reached his hips, then starved him for a month ... you might be close. but if you took a picture of him then, and looked at it slightly sideways, you would almost have it. an extremely thin, short, shrugging strip of muscled rawhide.

tahn coughed again; the your-attention-please cough. he swung a chart around for ward to see. it was a rough drawing of anda-ke, the largest of the grimnal group, and more or less the home island. it looked somewhat like a startled elephant: mouth open, trunk arced out at an angle. the mouth was anda bay, and was guarded by anda passage where the lower lip came within two miles of the upper. the trunk was pelo head, and was broken about halfway down by pelo break. the area between the drooping trunk and the neck was the grimnal sea. it was into this that the kali fleet was charging like a peanut sailing for the mouth.

tahn tapped a pencil-like finger at the rearmost reach of anda bay.

"there," he said, in the kali-confederation mixture they found to be the shortest distance between two cultures. "anchored there like marks on a sail. feeling so safe in their home. thinking we do not dare come after them. grimnal rafts just waiting to go to the bottom."

"and the gliders?" ward asked. "are they returned? we have no information but the tales of two natives."

tahn glanced at a water trickling, time-measuring device hanging from the overhead.

"soon the gliders return, but...." he shrugged, somehow.

"and those are not rafts," ward went on. "the natives said three, two and single gun rows. that means first and second-liners, frigates and probably corvettes. and they said 'many,' which means anywhere from fifty to two hundred."

tahn coughed his agreement.

"but with grimnal stupidity," he said, "they can do no more than run around in terror as we shell the city and fire their ships. we have this won."

ward looked down at his bands, caught a deep breath, and continued.

"i have said before. we are not fighting just the grimnal. we are fighting god helpers too. men like myself have come to help the grimnal." he caught tahn's flickering glance and added quickly, "men who are probably better fighters than i am."

tahn coughed and leaned his head sideways, fairly equivalent to a casual 'so what?'

"false gods. false helpers," he said.

ward held his breath and swung back to face the port. great, sizzling hell! he wondered if his opposite with the grimnal had such problems. probably not. problems weren't allowed in the united peace worlds. and with the grimnal preference for island life over the sea, it apparently took little urging to make them want all the islands in the world.

"you realize," ward said without turning, "that they have probably known of our coming for days."

"good."

"and what would they still be doing at anchor?"

cough, cough. probably meaning how the hell should i know?