Startide Rising (Uplift Trilogy Book 2)

by David Brin

You serve me now, but in the long run, am I using you, or are you using me?

It was almost as if Orphan Earth had been a planetary laboratory, upon which a series of senseless and bizarre experiments were tried.

Whatever was good enough for horny old Flipper is good enough for his brainy descendant.

Nice people, these Tandu, Gillian thought, putting the flat reading plate down beside the tree where she sat.

As I sit here on a beach while reading this book on my own ‘flat reading plate’

We’re soldiers. They say there’s a kind of satisfaction in sacrificing oneself for others. I guess it’s true; otherwise there wouldn’t ever be legends.”