• 59869 words
• Language: English

Synopsis

Ross and Arthur are helped by Karara and two trained dolphins in Hawaika, which was settled by Hawaiian and Polynesian settlers. The planet Hawaikan is a warm tropical planet that is mostly ocean. It is so different from what they had expected that they decide to risk a time trip back in the planet's history. Just as they are about to use the time gate a storm blows up and Murdock is flung through the gate and into the planet's past. The time gate is destroyed and Murdock is left to cope with this different and alien world on his own.

Excerpt

There was a shading of rose in the pearl arch of sky, deepening at the horizon meeting of sea and air in a rainbow tint of cloud. The lazy swells of the ocean held the same soft color, darkened with crimson veins where spirals of weed drifted. A rose world bathed in soft sunlight, knowing only gentle winds, peace, and—sloth.

Ross Murdock leaned forward over the edge of the rock ledge to peer down at a beach of fine sand, pale pink sand with here and there a glitter of a crystalline "shell"—or were those delicate, fluted ovals shells? Even the waves came in languidly. And the breeze which ruffled his hair, smoothed about his sun–browned, half–bare body, caressed it, did not buffet on its way inland to stir the growths which the Terran settlers called "trees" but which possessed long lacy fronds instead of true branches.

Hawaika—named for the old Polynesian paradise—a world seemingly without flaw except the subtle one of being too perfect, too welcoming, too wooing. Its long, uneventful, unchanging days enticed forgetfulness, offered a life without effort. Except for the mystery…