Involution Ocean

Chapter 12 Anemones

Once we were past the Cliffs, Desperandum threw his nets overboard again and tugged them sluggishly behind the ship. I wondered what he was after. Plankton was sparse here.

While he waited, Desperandum went below into the storeroom. He soon emerged with a folding table Under one arm and a huge glass jar or urn in his other hand. It was one of the largest glass containers I had ever seen. I could have curled up inside of it. It was cylindrical, as wide as it was tall, and it had no lid.

Desperandum lumbered over by the mainmast and set the jar down with a clink. Then he opened the folding table with precise snaps, straightening its legs. From a large cloth pocket on the bottom of the table he pulled out four large suction cups, plastic ones as large as dinner plates. Rubbery knobs on the tops screwed neatly into the bottoms of the table legs. Desperandum fitted on the cups, turned the table right side up, and set it on the deck. He put a little of his massive weight on the table and the suction cups flattened instantly. It would have taken at least five men to tear that table loose.

I noticed that the tabletop had a wide circular indenta­tion in it, just the size of the bottom of the glass jar. Sure enough, Desperandum picked up the jar and set it neatly into the hole. He stepped back to admire his work.

“Mr. Bogunheim!” Desperandum rumbled.

“Yes, sir?” said the third mate.

“Have this jar filled up with dust About three-quarters of the way to the top will do.”

Soon Calothrick and a scrawny Nullaquan deckhand were busy carrying buckets. Desperandum retired to his cabin.

There were odd convection currents in that tubful of dust. Particles heated by sunlght through the wall of the jar crept upwards along the side of the glass and diverged across the surface. Cooler dust flowed sluggishly to replace it. The patterns of circulation would change as the sun slid across the sky.

Day was evenly divided here at the center of the crater. Morning lasted five hours. There was no waiting for morn­ing in the dry.shadow of the eastern cliffs as we had in Arnar. In the Highisle dusk came early. It came at the same time every day, and the sun rose at the same spot. Nullaqua had an axial tilt of less than a degree. There were no seasons, no weather to speak of, only sameness, con­stancy, stasis both physical and cultural, forever and ever, amen.

After the last meal of the day Desperandum retrieved his net. He spread it gently on the deck. There were dozens of hard little nuggets in it: three or four hundred pebbles of green-faceted plankton, small white pearls of fish eggs, wormlike coiled cylinders, greenish-speckled ovoids, flat­tened spheres marked with broken brown lines against cream white. There was even a spiny, shiny black egg as large as my fist.

Desperandum kneeled and began to sort his catch, mak­ing quick notes in an open booklet. Then the selected eggs and some of the plankton went into the tub of dust. Des­perandum sent a crewman down to the kitchen for water; when the man returned, Desperandum sprinkled a few ounces over the dust.

“They’ll hatch soon,” Desperandum told me. “Then well see what we’ve got.”

I’ nodded; Desperandum left. It was getting colder now that the sun had set. The dust was flowing in a different way; it cooled at the surface and slid away down the sides of the jar. Carried by the tiny current, the plankton clus­tered against the edge of the glass.

In a way the jar was a microcosim of the crater. Too round of course, and it needed the rocky jutting of islands and cities here and here and here and here. The Highisle, Arnar, Brokenfoot, and shadowy Perseverance. The Lun­glance would be about here, creeping slowly along the north­ern margin of the crater; aboard it, the tiny fleck of proto­plasm that was John Newhouse, visible only with a microscope. A quaint conceit, I told myself. I went below and fell asleep. The ship sailed on.

Next morning there were faint stirrings in the dust. Des­perandum was soon up, fishing delicately in the jar with a long-handled strainer made of woven string. Every few minutes he would pull out a twitching minnow or crablike anthropod and check off an egg on his list. Tinny bass humming came from his mask speaker. He was enjoying himself. I didn’t like the look of the black webwork of stitches on his injured arm. The slash on his neck had healed well, but his arm was puffy and inflamed. I hoped he was taking antibiotics.

There was a discrepancy between the number of eggs on his list and the number of organisms he had been able to catch. It didn’t seem to bother him. He could hardly expect to catch every animal just by fishing blindly with a strainer. After he had caught the same fish three times he shrugged good-naturedly and abandoned his efforts. It showed an un­usual tolerance for frustration on Desperandum’s part, and it surprised me. I had expected him to empty the whole tub through a net. Apparently he thought that might endanger the health of the specimens.

All in all he had caught sixteen specimens from twenty-eight eggs. On the next day he tried again. There were more nuggets of plankton now; their spores had been pres­ent when the dust was first added. Besides that, the other plankton, sensing the presence of water, had spawned. There were dozens of tiny nuggets, no larger than chips of glass. Some of the larger nuggets were missing. They had been eaten.

Desperandum added a little more water to promote the growth of the major food source, then began fishing again.” He had more success this time; he caught twenty speci­mens. Oddly, he was unable to catch some of the earlier specimens, including the fish he had caught three times yesterday. It didn’t seem to bother him. After all, every creature there was entirely under his control.

I stopped my speculation. It was past my ability to fathom Desperandum’s mental states; like all old people, he had passed into a different orientation, as different from my own as childhood is from adulthood.

We killed a whale that day and dumped three eggs overboard.

On the next day Desperandum caught only fifteen speci­mens. One of them was a small predatory octopus, which accounted for the disappearance of a few of the fish. Des­perandum pulled it out of the tank and dissected it.

Twelve specimens on the next day. Desperandum rid himself of three omnivorous fish, assuming that they were the culprits. On his checklist he had correlated twenty-seven of the twenty-eight eggs. The shiny, spiny, black one remained unidentified.

When he found only four specimens on the day after that Desperandum grew annoyed. He emptied out the jar. Dust rustled sluggishly across the deck and flowed under the rail into the sea. Desperandum quickly rescued the specimens that lay struggling or scuttling on the deck; three crabs, a small vegetarian octopus, and the larva of a dust strider. He frowned. All of his captives ate nothing but plankton or, when they could get it, the long linked ropes of kelp common in this part of the crater.

Then he turned to the jar. There, stuck to the side of the glass with a dust-colored suction disk, was a small Nulla­quan anemone.

“Astonishing!” Desperandum said aloud. “An anemone. What a stroke of luck.”

The anemone looked quite healthy, as might be ex­pected when it need only reach out one of its thorny arms for prey. It had eight arms, long, supple, pale brown tenta­cles studded with nastily sharp black thorns, like the branches of a rosebush. Each thorn was. hollow, as were the arms; each thorn was a sacking, vampirish beak. Hie arms sprouted from a short, thick trunk; at the bottom of the trunk was a snaillike suction foot At the junction of the arms was a complicated pink arrangement of layers, not unlike the petals of a flower. Like a flower, it was a genital organ. The anemone was quite strong for a creature of its size. It’s foot-long tentacles waved freely even without the support of the dust. It breathed through the siphonlike tips of its arms; they were thin, so it was not surprising that they had never been noticed.

The anemone seemed disturbed by the loss of its dust. It waved its tentacles indecisively, and finally hooked one over the rim of the jar. Then it released its suction hold on the glass with a faint pop and began to pull itself slowly and laboriously up the side of the glass.

“Dust! Quickly!” Desperandum snapped, watching the anemone with all the concern of a devoted parent for a sick child. Soon a crewman arrived with a bucket and Desper­andum poured it slowly into the tub. “More, more,” Des­perandum demanded impatiently. Soon the level of the dust swirled up to one of the anemone’s slowly threshing tenta­cles. The plantlike animal released its hold and slipped into the dust almost gratefully, it seemed to me.

Desperandum noticed my attention. “They’re extremely rare,” he told me. “I’d heard that there was a last colony of them living in the bay northwest of here, but I’d never seen one. No wonder I couldn’t account for that last egg.” Des­perandum laughed jovially. He was enjoying himself.

I hoped that his new pet wouldn’t bite him. The way it had tried to climb out of its jar struck me as ominous. I would hate to wake up some night and pry its barbs away from my throat.

Next day I climbed up on deck after leaving the break­fast dishes for Dalusa. I found Desperandum standing be­side the glass urn, holding a wiggling spratling over the . dust. Hesitantly, a brown, barbed arm lifted from the opac­ity and wrapped itself around the fish. The fish flapped weakly a few times and then stiffened. Testing the anem­one’s strength, Desperandum kept a firm grip on the fish’s dry gray tail. Soon another tentacle snaked upward out of the dust; Desperandum snatched his fingers back just before the second tentacle lashed out at his hand. The fish disappeared under the surface.

“Strong little monster!” Desperandum said admiringly. “They were all over the crater before it was settled, you know. They kept attacking ships, innocently enough, and poisoned themselves. One sip of human blood through one “of those thorn-beaks killed them almost instantly. I’d even heard that they were extinct. No one would visit their last stronghold up north for fear of mutual destruction. Perhaps they’re making a comeback.”

Wonderful, I thought. A few hundred camouflaged kill­ers would add spice to the Nullaquan existence. I wondered how large the creatures grew. Ten feet? Perhaps as much as twenty? There appeared the image of a venomous mon­ster as big as a sequoia, biding its time in the dry black darkness beneath the ship. One massive barbed tentacle wrapped around the Lunglance, a negligent tug, and there would be another quick addition to the mysteries of the sea. Hunger would be too strong a motive; why, mere curi­osity would be abundantly fatal.

Dalusa spotted a pod of dustwhales that day, but by the time the Lunglance reached the spot they had vanished.

The anemone continued to grow. Desperandum pru­dently put a weighted iron grating on top of the urn. Hie crewman gave the jar a wide berth whenever possible, es­pecially when the creature would stick its barbed appen­dages out into the open air and wiggle them energetically. As it grew, the anemone was growing darker; now its arms were the color of dried blood.

When young Meggle came in for the officers’ lunch at noon, he told me sullenly that the captain wanted to see me. I reported to the cabin after a suitable lapse of time. Desperandum was just finishing his meal.

We went to the cabin; Desperandum ostentatiously shut the door. “I suppose you must have heard the rumor that I’m thinking of heading the ship for Glimmer Bay.”

That was the reputed home of the last anemones. “Yes, I’ve heard it,” I lied decisively.

“What do you think of it?” he said.

I felt that his frankness called for an evasion on my part.

“I’d like to hear your reasons for going first.”

“Very well. It concerns the specimen, of course. I’d like to keep it on board and study its habits, perhaps donate it later to the Church Zoo in the Highisle. On the other hand, it would be unethical to deprive an endangered species of a potential member of its gene pool. I’d have to see the situa­tion for myself, take a census of the anemone population. Of course, that could be inconvenient.”

The captain did not seem inclined to go further. He leaned back in his swivel chair and steepled his blunt broad fingers.

“Let’s count up the advantages and disadvantages of each course of action,” I said at last. “First the case against going. It’s out of our way and will lengthen the voyage. It’s a voyage into essentially unexplored territory, with danger from shoals and currents. And the Lunglance might be attacked by anemones.”

“There’s not really much danger in that,” Desperandum interrupted mildly. “Even at their heyday the largest known anemone was only thirty feet long. Not large enough to menace the ship as a whole.”

“We might lose a crew member, though.”

“Possible. And you’ve left out a hazard. Glimmer is a very small bay, almost completely landlocked. The sun shines there for only about an hour a day. The gloominess and the walls are said to cause acute depression, melancho­lia, claustrophobia, even for the native Nullaquan.”

I lifted my brows.

“Oh, it’s quite plausible,” Desperandum said. “Have you ever visited Perseverance?”

“No, sir.”

“I have, of course. It’s quite depressing there, too; it’s built half a mile up fhe cliff on the western side of a narrow bay, with an unpleasant climate and an overwhelming sense of the presence of thousands of miles of solid rock. I have little doubt that the choice of that site as a center of religion and government has had a profound effect on the Nullaquan character.” Desperandum sighed and folded his hands over his stomach.

“Well, then, sir, considering the advantages of this side trip,” I said, when an uncomfortable silence had hobbled by on crippled feet. “I can only think of two. First, knowl­edge about the anemone population; second, a decision as to what to do with your little specimen! Now, as I see it, the first erne involves danger to both the crew and the wild­life. And as for the second, well, it depends on the rarity of the specimens. And since you caught one in a single day, with a single net, I can hardly believe that they are really very rare.

“And one last thing. We’re approaching Perseverance now. It would be simple to stop there and consult the Church about mounting a special expedition.”

Desperandum looked at me stonily. “I tried that four years ago. They listened politely and then asked me for my Academy diploma.”

I thought about apologizing and decided against it. It would have only have heightened the captain’s sense of in­feriority, his resentment at his lack of legitimate status. “Your arguments are good, but I’m not convinced,” Des­perandum said. “We will explore the bay.”

I had expected as much.

The crew showed no surprise when ordered to sail north, tacking against the wind. Theirs was not to reason why. Besides, by this time they were probably incapable of it.

Later, I leaned on the starboard rail and looked at the tier after tier of ridged and battered rock that rose and rose in ragged rows to the planet’s surface. It was a dry, bright morning, like all Nullaquan mornings. The monotony irri­tated me. A blast of freezing wind, a thick fog, or a savage hailstorm would have been a relief. My sinuses were giving me trouble; my chapped and itchy hands were slick with some unpleasant lotion that the first mate had given me. I didn’t like the lotion much. Below in the kitchen, where I could remove my mask, it stank.

I heard the rasp of thorns on an iron grating. The anem­one had been growing quickly on Desperandum’s pam­pering diet, as if it were only too eager to reach breeding age and help in its species’ promised comeback. It seemed cramped In its jar and pulled repeatedly on its grating, as if building up its strength.

Dalusa was out on patrol, trying to locate the narrow inlet into Glimmer Bay. Desperandum navigated using ae­rial maps of the crater, made by the original colony ship. They were five hundred years old. Glimmer Bay had not even existed then.

I saw Dalusa come winging in from the north-northwest. She alighted neatly in the crow’s nest, honked her horn to alert the crew, and then leapt into space. She fell in a neat parabola, opening her wings and with a snap just before breaking her ribs on the rail. She enjoyed that.

Dalusa flew swiftly away until she was a white speck against the dark background of cliff. There she caught a thermal and circled as the Lunglance tacked sluggishly after her.

When we reached an immense promontory of fallen rock, Dalusa swept gracefully around it, out to sea. Sud­denly she shot southwards, flapping energetically but mak­ing no more headway than a swimmer in a rip tide. It was a wind, a strong one. Dalusa wheeled to face it. She still made no headway, but began to gain height. The ship sailed nearer. I was able to see a thin, sleeting fog now, at the dust-air interface. There were no waves.

Dalusa seemed to be tiring. She kept gaining height, but now she was losing ground out to sea.

Suddenly she entered an area of calm. She slowed her climb, but was then caught by another wind, equally pow­erful but blowing in the opposite direction. She backed against it, tried to turn, looped sickeningly when she hit a patch of turbulence. Wind tore at the loose dress that was all she wore.

Recovering, Dalusa shut her wings and dropped. She gained speed, corrected her trajectory slightly in mid-fall, then opened her wings and swooped toward the ship. She had judged the windspeed beautifully. She faced the edge of the promontory. She faced it—there had always been something a little odd about the structure of her neck. Tlie two vectors, correcting one another, sent her gliding to­ward the ship. She made it, soared gracefully over the port rail, and collapsed silently on the deck in a wing-shrouded heap.

Mr. Flack was at her side in an instant. He extended a hand to touch her shoulder, remembered in time, and drew back. Dalusa’s long thin arms trembled with fatigue. She had hidden her face—her mask, actually—under one wing. Flack could do nothing for her. His medical knowledge did not extend to nonhumans.

“Get the lady a pallet,” Flack said harshly. “Water. Rest.”

The doctor’s panacea for those beyond his comprehen­sion. I took a blanket from our harpooneer, Blackburn, wrapped it carefully around Dalusa, and lifted her effort­lessly. She weighed perhaps forty pounds, that was mostly muscle. Dalusa’s pale shapely legs were mostly decoration. They had the texture of human flesh—more or less— but they were no denser than cork.

I carried Dalusa down to the kitchen, turned my pallet over so that no residual contamination could reach her, and set her down. She pulled her mask off.

“I’m all right,” she said. “You shouldn’t have troubled yourself.” She immediately fell asleep.

There was nothing more to be done. I went back on deck.

We rounded the promontory. The wind caught us imme­diately; there was a sandpaper rattle of particles on the bow. The sails filled, the braces strained tight, and the Lunglance actually listed, a surprising feat for a trimaran of her bulk. Desperandum wore ship and started on a star­board tack.

North, there was a huge gap in the rock. Five hundred years ago there had been a narrow cliff there, separating the Nullaqua Crater from a minor subcrater that was now Glimmer Bay. There bad been a crack in that cliff. The Glimmer Crater, receiving sunlight only at noon, was much colder than the parent crater. A cold draft developed, laden with abrasives. Soon a small natural arch formed, housing a vertical whirlwind, hot air above, cold below. Over two centuries, the arch expanded.

On the two hundred and thirty-seventh year of human settlement on Nullacfua, the cliff collapsed with a report heard throughout the crater. It was insufficient warning. Thousands of tons of rock fell into the sea, and the resulting tsunami wiped out almost the entire Nullaquan fleet. Five ships survived: three fishing ships accidentally sheltered by the Highisle, a single retired Arnafian warship in the Pentacle Islands, and a whaler from Brokenfoot. There were no surviving ships from Perseverance. Perseverance had been razed a year earlier in the Nullaquan Civil War.

The year after the Glimmer Catastrophe was known as the Hungry Year.

The Lunglance headed as closely into the wind as possi­ble. Mr. Bogunheim was at the tiller; the sails luffed a little and Captain Desperandum chided the man absently. The captain was gazing into the dim recesses of the bay, his binoculars pressed tightly to the lenses of his dustmask.

Films of dust were forming in the wind shadows of ob­jects on deck. The anemone rattled its bars. I wondered if it recognized our location. Like one of those homing birds, widgets, pidgets, some name like that . . .

It was after noon now. Dim light filtered into the bay from two sources, the entrance, two miles wide, and a glow­ing sliver of hills at the eastern part of the crater. An im­mense ridge of dark rock blocked most of the afternoon light that shone on the hills beyond. It was as dim, as gloomy as the interior of a shuttered cathedral. There was a church­like atmosphere inside. The Lunglance soon passed the bordering guardian cliffs and sailed eastward in the hushed, weak wind.

Behind us an immense vertical beam of pale light, fifty miles high, shone through the mouth of the bay and across to the broken, battered cliff wall. It was sublime in the ex­treme. Everyone on deck, with the’ exception of Desperan­dum, stared, completely rapt, at the dim colossus of light. It glowed like the promise of redemption.

I tore my eyes away and shivered. It was as cold and gloomy as the bottom of a well in Glimmer Bay, but dry. Dessicated. Mercilessly dry, drier than the driest desert on Earth, Bunyan, or Reverie, dry enough to make one’s nose split and bleed at night, dry enough to make one’s hair crackle with static electricity, dry enough to make sparks sting one’s knuckles over and over again. It stole the water from my mouth, the tears from my eyeballs.

And cold. The men got out their night gear and put it on. Nullaquan nights were cold; here they would be much worse.

Hot air coming into the bay cooled by expansion; cold air replaced it. There was a faint, shuddery draft in Glim­mer Bay, like the breath of a beast with lungs of ice. Dry ice.

The beam behind us gave no heat. The narrowness of the channel caused it to be absolutely stationary; the sun’s movement would have no effect on it except to change its brightness. The lowest part of the beam was slightly fuzzy with dust mist; the beam grew fainter with height as the air grew thinner and clearer. Eventually the beam vanished, but the light itself still made the airless cliff wall glow with a dim vacuum radiance, forty miles away.

At sea level, the entire bay was a rough oval, fifty miles long, twenty-six miles across. The inlet was located at about the middle of the bay.

.. We sailed east. It grew dimmer; many times the sailors turned to stare regretfully at the light behind us.

Now the captain decided to conduct a test for the pres­ence of anemones. Under his orders the crew scampered up the ratlines and furled the sails. Desperandum heaved a dust drag overboard, then threw out an immense gutted chunk of shark meat. A wired-on float kept it from sinking.

The meat began to drift slowly from the ship. There were no signs of questing tentacles. Perhaps it was too deep for the creatures. A dust strider came skating creakily up out of the distance on saucer-shaped feet. He began to chew thoughtfully on the meat. The diet of adult striders differed from that of their larvae. The strider found the meat ac­ceptable and was soon joined by a dozen relatives, skating up rapidly out of the gloom like roaches after a forgotten crumb. Desperandum grew impatient; he pulled the shark meat back on board. The striders clung to it tenaciously. Desperandum dropped the meat to the deck with a thump and the striders scattered, but not for long. Brushed aside, they returned single-mindedly to the meal. Desperandum finally had to swat one of their number with a whaling spade, whereupon the rest scuttled energetically away and leapt overboard.

There was not much plankton here; the light was too scarce. The Glimmer Bay ecology must be based on car­rion washed in by the currents, I thought. The light was growing dimmer ahead of us as the sun sank. Desperandum set out lanterns.

The light was welcome, but it seemed almost a profana­tion of the titanic gloom and stillness. I felt uncomfortably conspicuous. The lights were like a shouted challenge to whatever denizens lived in this stagnant backwater, this nasty little rock coffin. I didn’t like this place. I didn’t like the black, looming cliffs, going up and up and up until they seemed taller than God. Those cliffs seemed eager to give in under their own massive weight, to slump together into the narrow gloom-choked bay and flatten the Lunglance like a bug between two bricks. I didn’t like the cold and the silence.

I decided to go below and start work on the day’s last meal. As I turned to go I glanced over the rail. .

The dimness was speckled with hundreds of little red sparks. It was the reflection of lamplight in the multifaceted eyes of an incredible horde of dust striders. The Lunglance was surrounded by the little beasts, silently watching our lamps with the devotion of moths for a candle.

It must be a spawning ground, I thought. They could flatten themselves and ride the currents into the bay, then rush back out after breeding, skipping lightly across the dust with the wind at their backs.

More appeared even as I watched. They were thick for yards in every direction. The first mate engaged Desperan­dum in rapid conversation. The captain looked over the rail and shrugged.

The striders grew agitated. Panic spread through the packed thousands; they began to jump up and down lightly like water droplets on a red-hot griddle. They were going into a frenzy. I was disquieted. It was a good thing that the rail was four feet above the water. The spidery little mon­sters, six inches across, were leaping energetically upwards, but the deck was out of their reach.

Then they started to climb atop one another, careless of life, smothering the weak underfoot in the dust, inspired to some inexplicable peak of insectine fanaticism by the unwonted stimulus of light. Soon the first dozens were over the side, scuttling insanely across the deck, running in cir­cles, falling onto their backs and kicking their spiny, saucered legs frantically. The men drew back indecisively as the creatures poured onto the deck. I also began to with­draw. I passed the anemone’s jar; with a cunning whiplash movement it almost managed to sink its black hook-thorns into the back of my neck.

Slowly, not seeming to realize it, the men were forced into the dimmest area of the deck, behind the mizzenmast and close to the hatch that led to the captain’s cabin and the hold.

Suddenly one of the creatures leapt up and sank its mul­tiple mandibles into Mr. Grent’s calf. He yelped with pain. Tliat did it; the men went berserk, and soon the pattering rattle of little cup-shaped feet was joined by the brittle crunching of striders mashed underfoot.

Desperandum gave orders, bellowing so loudly that his mask speaker shrieked with distortion: “Get below, men! I’ll handle this!”

The captain bounced across the deck to the nearest lan­tern and shut it off. With a few final vindictive dance steps the men began to file through the hatch. Desperandum, brushing bugs off his legs, headed for the second lantern. I stepped nimbly onto half a dozen hapless striders and ducked through the kitchen hatch. I slammed it behind me and felt my way down the stairs to the light switch.

There were two striders on the kitchen floor. I flattened them with a saucepan and started cooking.

Mr. Flack spread ointment on the bites of the crewmen. That night fhe men ate in the hold. They slept there, too, as the striders showed no inclination to leave the ship. We peeked up every half hour, the lantern invariably drew an eager horde of light-crazy striders. They seemed deter­mined to set up housekeeping.

Hie captain showed no concern. “They tire, men,” he told the crew as, preparing to sleep, they nestled uncom­fortably in their blankets. “And if they don’t tomorrow we’ll drive them off. We have plenty of whale oil; we’ll go up with torches and burn them out”.

The men looked cheered at this. Personally, I suspected that the plastic-clad deck was highly flammable. I foresaw the ship in a sheet of flame. The stored water in the hold would make a magnificent bloom in Glimmer Bay; but no one would ever see it.

But my fears were unfounded. Next morning, the light from the inlet slowly shamed the few wretched stars in our limited sky into hiding their faces, then turned the darkness into slate gray shadow. A splinter of light showed on the western rim of the crater behind us. It grew to a glow.

The striders liked their new home. They were getting along famously. Doubtless any novelty was welcome here. With morning they seemed much calmer, they were even magnanimous enough to tolerate a few sailors on deck. They bore no grudges.

Taking advantage of their good nature, Desperandum spread a thick pool of raw whale oil onto the deck on the port side of the ship, between the foremast and the main­mast A faint breeze bore the odor along the ship; soon the striders came clicking across the deck to investigate. They approved. They w&re silent but they pantomimed their ap­preciation thoroughly, wading through the shadow, cozy stuff and slurping it into their complicated, chitinous mouths. A few of them even danced like bees.

Desperandum waited at a distance, patiently, holding a pipe lighter in one massive hand. The oil was slowly spreading. Now the striders were trampling one another in their urge to get at the juice, with that lack of fraternal concern that seemed to be their trademark. They scamp­ered in eagerly from all over the ship.

“Issue whaling spades to take care of any survivors,” Desperandum said calmly lighting a strip of cloth. He tossed it neatly into the center of the pool of oil.

It went up with a roar. The striders began to scream, high-pitched ee-ee-ee sounds like rusty meat griders. They caught like tinder. A few of them even exploded, showering their brethren with the flaming contents of their stomachs. Striders ran desperately across the deck, faltered, and crumpled, their smoldering legs splitting and spitting over­heated juices. Some made it over the rail to the sea, and ran screeching along the surface, trailing fire.

The men began to kill the rest with the flat sides of their whaling spades. Each flattened strider left a smoldering patch on the deck. The plastic under the puddle of oil had melted a little; charred bits of strider exoskeleton were stuck in its cooling surface, but it had not caught fire.

The last screeches were cut off suddenly by the efficient crunching of spades.

“Good work, men,” said Captain Desperandum. He was all satisfaction.^J’Weigh drag. Jump lively aloft and loose the sails, and let them hang in the clews and bunts.”

The men did this. I was turning below to prepare lunch when I heard it.

Ee-ee-ee-ee-ee.

From the east, from the dry, dead dimness at the dust-washed base of the cliffs, came an astounding host of strid­ers. The twilit surface of the bay was black with them, close-packed millions scuttling furiously toward the Lun­glance. The tepid winds could never bear us away in time. The hideous little vermin were moving so fast that their saucered feet sent up puffs of dust.

They moved like a million tightly wound clockwork roaches.

Desperandum walked calmly to the stern to observe the advancing multitude. At that moment the sun appeared, edging slowly over the rim of the bay. The effect of direct sunlight was immeasurably cheering. The bay was brighter, airier place, less reminiscent of open graves, abandoned mine shafts, and similar unpleasant places. The striders were changed from an unnerving menace to a mere irrita­tion.

“Get below and fetch me a barrel of oil,” Desperandum said. Three crewmen, one of them Murphig, hurried below and were soon back, groaning under their ivory burden. Desperandum picked up the barrel and held it casually under one arm as he walked to the stem raffing. He touched the catch with one foot and folded the railing down. The striders were closing fast now, showing no fear of the sud­den sunlight, their faceted eyes glittering like cheap imita­tion rubies.

Desperandum peeled off the barrel’s watertight whale-skin top and started to pour the oil overboard in a thick stream. Having never before poured whale oil on dust, he was unaware of its peculiar properties. It did not spread out in a thin flammable film, as he had expected. Instead it soaked up dust in a thick black cake and sank like a rock.

I could not see Desperandum’s expression because of his dustmask, but I imagine that he was aghast. The creatures were almost on us now; their rusty creaking was deafening.

Desperandum set the barrel down. “Get below!” he shouted. The men stood stunned for a second, then rushed for the hatches.

The striders surrounded us now, trampling one another in their eagerness to get on deck. There were not as many as I had first thought Perhaps there were as few as a mil­lion. Still making a head-hurting noise like metal files on one’s own teeth, they began to swarm up under the railing. The ship was still moving; this gave them some difficulty. Desperandum was trying to rescue his anemone. It seemed to resent rescue and kept him at bay with snaps of its tenta­cles. They were as effective as threats of suicide.

Another day cramped in the hold was more than I could bear. I had been enjoying the sunlight Nullaqua’s sun, usually more tinged with blue than I thought aesthetically necessary in a star, had never looked so beautiful. Besides, Dalusa was out on patrol and I wanted to wait for her. So, as the rest of the crew ducked through the hatches, I sprang energetically into the ratlines and climbed up sev­eral feet above the deck. My head was on-a level with the mainsail yard.

Desperandum was still fiddling with his specimen. Now he was cut off from both of the hatches in the center hull. Worst of all, his specimen did not need any of his help, if I could judge by the sixteen drained strider corpses I had found outside its urn that morning.

Desperandum was surrounded. Suddenly the faithful Flack stuck his dustmasked head out of the kitchen hatch. “Captain! Captain, this way!” he shouted, but his voice was barely audible over the intolerable screeching. Neverthe­less, Desperandum looked up.

Something thudded gently against the side of the ship.

The screeching stopped, cut off short and unanimously. My ears rang with silence. As one, the striders leapt off the starboard side of the ship, and, in panic-stricken silence, began to skate off at top speed across the dust.

It was one of the most extraordinary things I had ever seen.

Then came something that made it pale into insignifi­cance.

Over the port railing came an immense tapering tube the size of a young tree trunk, studded with layered rosebush thorns at least six inches in diameter. It was followed by the rest of a sluggishly weaving nest of tentacles, black, thorned atrocities thick enough to use for water mains. I didn’t get a very good look as I was too busy panicking and running up the ratline.

By the time I had caught my breath, the new anemone had ensconsed itself comfortably between the mainmast and the mizzenmast, and it showed every sign of willing­ness to make its stay permanent.

It was a full-grown specimen, I noted from my somewhat shaky position on the main lower topgallant yard. Its tenta­cles were a good twenty-five feet long; its barrel body per­haps four feet high, a little over five feet if one counted its immense, rather discolored rose. It looked fat and happy, reminiscent somehow of a well-fed Nullaquan. It had seven tentacles; the eighth had apparently been chewed off in some childhood mishap.

It languidly draped three of its tentacles across the top­sail braces and the main brace, wrapping them securely like grapevine tendrils around the wires of a trellis. The inner and outer lifts of the yard beneath my feet sang with tension. I immediately abandoned it and headed for the crow’s nest.

A questing tentacle found the mainmast and tugged at it.

The entire thing shook; I clung with cramped fingers to the ratline.

For a moment the idea had struck me that the anemone had boarded us to rescue its captive offspring. That notion was dispelled a few moments later when, with a negligent sweep of one arm, the anemone knocked the glass jar from its table. It hit the deck with a crash and a clang.

The heavy iron grating had crushed two of the young anemone’s tentacles; a shard of glass had stabbed its tubu­lar body. It dragged itself with crippled slowness across the deck.

Somehow the anemone sensed movement. With unerring accuracy it picked its young kinsman from the deck and tasted it with a neat thorn puncture just above the suction foot. It found cannibalism less than appealing and dropped its victim to the deck with a complete lack of interest. Deeply wounded, perhaps mortally, the young anemone crawled painfully to the rail, trailing yellowish juice. It fell overboard and sank without a trace.

The situation was critical. One of the anemone’s long thorny tentacles was laid neatly on top of the kitchen hatch. Another was within easy striking range of the tiller. It would be very difficult to change course. Worse yet, in another hour or so we would crash into a nasty-looking fanged promontory, dead ahead. We had to tack.

Now the hatch to the captain’s cabin snapped open and half a dozen crewmen came up to join Desperandum. One of them was Flack, the first mate. He and Desperandum held a hurried consultation. Desperandum shook his head. His objection was obvious. He had seen the injury of his once-captive anemone; now this leathery monster might be the last of its kind. It was not to be harmed.

The anemone was quiet now; three tentacles clinging to fhe braces, four others sprawled limply across the deck. If It stretched hard it might be able to reach the hatch to the captain’s cabin, but it had apparently gone to sleep. The lack of a supporting medium did not seem to bother it I looked north. A faint dust cloud marked the path of the striders, still in full retreat Beyond that, bright sunlight showed a distance-shrunken figure winging our way. It was Dalusa.

I felt uncomfortable in the rigging. I decided to descend, very carefully, while the anemone was still quiet.

Most of the crew had joined the captain by now. He was still discussing tactics with his three mates. The crew stood marveling; three of them nervously clutched whaling spades, and Blackburn had one of his harpoons. I began to creep quietly down the ratline. The anemone showed no sign of noticing me.

I was almost within dropping distance of the deck when Desperandum saw me.

“Newhouse!” he shouted. His cry alerted both of us, but the anemone reacted faster. A tentacle swung up off the deck like the boom of a crane, directly at me. I don’t know how I did it, but seconds later I found myself poised per­ilously on the footrope of the main lower topsail yard, clutching the lifts for balance with rope-burned hands.

“Watch your step, Newhouse!” Desperandum admon­ished loudly. “You might have poisoned it!”

Maritime protocol could not have stifled my retort, but my mask was still on. I soon had my trembling under con­trol. “As long as you’re up there, Newhouse, start furling the sails. We have to reduce our speed or we’ll hit the rocks.”

interspecies aggression was not my forte but I could see any number of simpler solutions to our problem. I made something of a botch job of furling the sails. It didn’t help much, anyway, as I could only work four of them and the Lunglance had twenty.

Dalusa flapped nearer. She was flying low, and therefore, she was nearly grabbed by a cunning snap of tentacles. My heart leapt into my mouth. I swallowed with difficulty, re­turning it to its proper anatomical position. Human blood was reputed to kill anemones; I accepted that, although I did not care to put it to the test. But Dalusa’s was different. She might be lethal, deadly even to Nullaquan sharks whose heavy-duty digestive systems made hors d’oeuvres out of human beings. On the other hand, the anemone might find her eminently delectable, even as I did.

The anemone seemed restless. It was not often that ft got a chance at a tidbit like Dalusa, and the lost opportu­nity must have annoyed it. Rather pettishly, I thought, it wrapped two of its tentacles around the mainsail yard and ripped it loose with a snap. Another tentacle grabbed the young anemone’s table, tugged it free from the deck, and threw it The men scattered and the anemone, sensing movement reached for them. Its arms stretched a surpris­ing distance, so close to the hatch that several of the men abandoned that means of escape and leapt with commend­able energy into the rigging.

While the anemone was distracted I streaked down the ratline, ignoring my injured hands, and ducked into the kitchen hatch. And just in time, too; as I shut it behind me a tentacle descended on it with such force that a thorn punched through the thin metal with a terrific report.

I dodged through the storeroom to the captain’s dining room. Desperandum, surrounded by crewmen, was sitting on the table! It bowed under his weight.

“Fire would work. Harpoons would make short work of it. Killing it’s no problem, it’s at our mercy. What I want is some way to immobilize it.”

The crew looked at him stonily. I pulled off my dust­mask.

“I think that five good men could wrap it in a sail and have it completely trapped. Do I have any volunteers?”

I lifted my hand to wipe the sweat off my forehead.

“Not you, Newhouse. I need you to cook.” He looked at me kindly, his small, wrinkle-shrouded eyes filled with ap­preciation. “No other volunteers?”

I broke in before the rest of the crew could be embar­rassed by the revelation of their good sense.

“Captain, I have an idea.”

“And that is?”

“We might drug the creature. A minimal dose of human blood should reduce its ability to resist”.

“Drug it?”

“Yes, Captain. Drug.” He looked so blank that I contin­ued, “Drugs. Foreign chemicals introduced into its blood­stream.”

“I know the meaning of the word, yes. That sounds prac­ticable. Crewman Calothrick, bring a basin. I’ve been meaning to have this lanced, and this looks like a conve­nient time.”

Calothrick still had his mask on, doubtless to hide his features, frozen in a Flare-blasted grin. By the time he re­turned with a basin, Desperandum had rolled up the sleeve of his white blouse and unwrapped a long stained bandage on his arm. The amount of infection and inflammation on that single arm would have put two or three lesser men to bed. Flack, lancet in hand, stared at the wound, then at the captain, as if expecting him to drop dead of blood poison­ing on the spot. Desperandum refused to collapse, however, and at last Flack made a tentative puncture. I could tell by the crew’s intake of breath. I had averted my eyes; infection disgusted me.

When the ordeal was over, Desperandum poured the loathsome fluids into a thin black plastic bag and sealed it with a twist of wire.

“I’ll have Dalusa fly overhead and bomb the creature from a height,” he said. “That flower petal arrangement it has looks vulnerable, wouldn’t you say, Mr. Flack?”

Flack said, “Yes, sir. Have you a fever?”

“When I need medical help I’ll request it. Fresh band­ages.”

“Needs open air, sir.”

“I don’t want any dust on it. Besides, it would stick to my sleeve.” That was undoubtedly true. “Open that hatch a little, crewman. Lively now.”

The man nearest the hatch opened it a tentative crack.

“Peek out. You see any of its tentacles nearby?”

“No, sir, I—"

The hatch was slammed instantly shut from the outside, rapping the crewman on the head so that he fell stunned down three stairs into the arms of crewman Murphig.

I looked up at the hatch. There were no thorn holes in it That was lucky for the stunned crewman, as he had just escaped an instant trepanation.

“That settles that, then,” Desperandum said. “The crea­ture has shifted position. It cant reach both hatches at once. Mr. Bogunheim, go to the kitchen hatch and call this lookout In.”

“Take your mask,” I said. “The anemone punched a hole through the hatch just before I left” The dust-repelling electrostatic field cut off automatically when the hatch was shut, and even now dust was doubtless percolat­ing downwards Into the air in fhe hull.

Bogunheim returned in a few moments with Dalusa. She -stared rather blankly at the supine figure of the stunned crewman, now being ministered to by Flack.

“Here,” Desperandum said, handing her the black bag of blood. “I want you to fly over the anemone and bomb it with this. Try to be accurate, Dalusa.”

“What is contained?” Dalusa asked, shaking the bag.

“Water,” Desperandum said, lying so convincingly that I almost did a double take. “While you were aloft did you notice the creature’s latest position relative to the hatches?”

“Yes, Captain. It had three of its arms over by this hatch—" she pointed with a dramatic flare of wing—“but the other was unguarded.”

“Fine. The men will be equipped with spades and nets. We will exit through the kitchen hatch and surround the specimen. Any actions taken will.be strictly in self-defense and will involve the least amount of harm possible to the specimen. Try not to let it catch you. Remember your blood will poison it”.

The men seemed eager to obey this order.

I went up on deck, armed with a spade, beside Calo­thrick. In desperate circumstances I thought it would be eas­ier to kill the monster by feeding it Calothrick than by stabbing it to death. Any creature as simply constituted as an anemone would be hard to kill.

I had high hopes that the blood in Desperandum’s bag would be an overdose. Poison would work, as long as Da­lusa believed Desperandum’s lie and carried out her job. I wondered if she had smelled the blood inside when she had her mask off. I had never asked her about the keenness of her sense of smell. What would she do if she knew it was blood? Bathe in it thereby blistering off her entire skin sur­face, or perhaps sip K, scorching her gullet and earning almost certain death from bacterial infestation?

But it was all beside the point now. Dalusa sculled swiftly upward on skin-taut, bat-furred wings and dropped the bag with a nasty splatter right onto the rosebud trunk junction of the anemone’s limbs.

The anemone waved its tentacles indecisively as a gruel of dotting blood trickled down its trunk. Then it vomited, ejecting a thick yellow )>aste from the hollow tips of its thorn beaks. The paste squished nastily as it squeezed out; the noise lasted about five seconds.

Then the anemone stopped retching and, with apparent finickiness, flicked its arms and spattered the crew with its paste. A glob barely missed my head. Most of the crew, however, had been hit, as they had been closing in on the beast, with commendable courage. Disconcerted by the barrage of filth, they fell back in confusion. The anemone unstuck itself from the deck, threw out four tentacles, and dragged itself loopily through a group of crewmen. One alert sailor threw a net over the creature, which it promptly stole as it slid overboard to disappear beneath the dust.

Two of its breathing siphons appeared a dozen yards from the ship, each spitting a plume of dust.

Desperandum wiped splattered filth from the lenses of his dustmask and looked over the side. “Good! We can still track it!” he shouted. “Lookout!” Dalusa had disappeared. “Lookout! Dalusa! Where is that woman?” There was a crunch and a scream of metal. The impact of the collision threw me on my face. I rolled over next to a splatter of vomit.

“Hard about!” bellowed Desperandum. “Shoals!” The rocks beneath the surface must have been smoothed by erosion, otherwise they would have punched a hole through our starboard hull. As it turned out, we were only dented, and we were able to make the middle of the bay by sunset It came early here, at a little before one o’clock. Once again the beam from the bay’s inlet was our only source of light Soon eighteen of our twenty-six crew members began to complain of nausea, Including the captain. It did not take Mr. Flack long to determine that the cause of the illness was some microorganism from the anemone. Wherever the vomit had spattered, the crewmen’s skins were alive with clustered scarlet bumps. Those most severely affected began to run fevers. None of the sick men showed an appe­tite for dinner.

Except for Captain Desperandum. As young Meggle was ill, I brought in the officer’s meals myself after helping the skeleton crew clean the deck. Desperandum was not badly afflicted. Only the fingers of his right hand had the rash, where he had wiped clean the spattered lens of his dust­mask.

When I brought in the tray Desperandum was talking to Flack. Flack was stripped to the waist; the rash mottled his chest where the contagion had penetrated his thin shirt. His face was flushed, but his physician’s duty to the crew kept him on his feet where a more sensible man would have gotten drunk and gone to sleep.

“Heard rumors of an allergy connected with anemones,” said Flack. “If it clears up in a week or so we’ll be all right. I’m not trained to treat forgotten diseases, though. Anem­ones have not been the vector of an illness for three hundred years. There are records in Perseverance, though, and better-trained personnel. I say we should sail there, quickly.”

I lifted the lid from a shrimp casserole. Steam gushed upwards; Flack turned slightly green. It was one of Captain Desperandum’s favorite dishes, but he dug in with a marked lack of enthusiasm and passed the dish to Mr. Grent. Bogunheim was on deck sick with the men, but Grent, like me, had been lucky.

“I agree,” said Desperandum, picking up a fork left-handed. “We cannot risk the health of the crew. It’s a bitter disappointment for me; I had intended to make a start on a full study. But shoals, the sickness, and the strider menace ... I’ll return sometime later. Soon though.” Desperandum lifted a morsel to his lips and swallowed it with difficulty.

Flack closed his eyes. “Sir,” he said faintly. “When we reach Perserverance, medical clergy should look at your arm. These things can creep up on a man, sir. . . .”

Desperandum looked annoyed. He inflicted another mouthful of casserole on himself. “You are a fine medical officer,” he said after he had caught his breath. “But you must realize that my own medical knowledge is extensive, and I was trained in a culture whose medical technology is several centuries ahead of your own. It is solely a question of will, you see, of teaching the body to obey. Ovor the years I have had some measure of success. Perhaps you would like something to eat.”

Flack shuddered. “No sir. If I might be excused . . .”

“Certainly, Mr. Flack. I forget that you are a sick man.” Desperandum was still eating, painfully, when I left.

Dalusa was not in the kitchen. Instead I found Calo­thrick there, rummaging through the cabinets in search of my private stock of Flare.

“Have you run out again?” I said.

Calothrick started, then turned and grinned nervously. “Yeah.”

“I thought you were sick. You’re supposed to be fiat on your back on deck.”

“Well, that . . . yeah . . .” Calothrick mumbled. I could almost hear gears mesh in his head as he dedded to tell the truth. “I was hit all right and I got part of the rash on my arm. But after I took a blast of Flare, it went away, and I had to rub it to bring it back. See?” He held out his thin freckled arm. The rash did not look very convincing to me, but Flack would probably chalk it up to Calothrick’s off-world physique.

“So you’ve been rdaxing on deck while the rest of the healthy ones are working overtime.”

“Wouldn’t you do the same -thing? Death, give me a break, John.”

It was a difficult question.

“Besides, everyone saw me take that first splatter. If I got well too soon they’d get suspidous.”

I nodded. “A good point Except that your bdng up and about is twice as suspicious. Get back on deck before Mur­phig sees you’re missing.”

“Hell just think I’ve gone down to the recycler to puke,” Calothrick said. “Besides, like you said, he’s too busy working to pay me much attention.”

“Murphig is healthy?” I said. “I thought I saw him take a splatter right across the leg.”

“No, he . . . well, I’m not sure if he did or not, come to think of it. Oh, here we go.” Calothrick brightened as he pulled out a jug of Flare and sniffed it. He took a frighten­ing dose and then pulled a plastic packet out from under his flared sailor’s trousers. It was held to his skinny calf with elastic bands. He started filling it with Flare.

“I saw it,” I said. “He was hit. You realize what this means? Murphig has that bottle of Flare, the stolen one. He’s cured himself.”

“Murphig one of us?” Calothrick said incredulously. “Can’t be. He’s too much of a jerk.” Suddenly the packet began to overflow. “Look out!” I said. Calothrick stopped hastily and looked at the small beaded splash on the plastic counter top.

“But he’s not an idiot; he’d do what you’re doing, faking it. There must be some other explanation.”

Calothrick strapped the packet back onto his leg. The Flare didn’t seem to be affecting him as strongly as usual. By now a blast like that was probably only just enough to hold him together. “I’m awful hungry, man,” he com­plained. “You got anything to eat?”

“Get back on deck and try to look weak,” I said. “The starvation will help.”

“Hey, thanks a lot,” Calothrick said resentfully. Then he bent over and licked up the counter top puddle of Flare with his broad, spatulate tongue.

It seemed that he was hardly gone before Murphig came into the kitchen. He pulled off his mask; we eyed each other warily.

“You’re looking well,” he said at last.

“So are you.”

“I thought I saw you hit.”

“I know I saw you,” I said. “How’s the leg?”

“No worse than your neck.”

“Listen, Murphig,” I said patiently, “what’s on your mind? Food not to your taste?”

“Let’s quit fencing, Newhouse,” Murphig said. (Were his eyewhites just the faintest shade of yellow? No.) “You were hit, and I was hit, and neither one of us is sick. Fine. So you know it’s psychosomatic. Are you going to tell the captain about it?”

Confused, I kept silent.

“If Desperandum finds out he’ll keep us in the stinking backwater until something eats us alive,” Murphig said anxiously. “We’re breaking custom to come here. We’re begging for death, do you understand? This is their game preserve. The men know it. Even Desperandum knows it, somewhere inside, or else he wouldn’t be sick. We’re crack­ing . . . panicking. The longer we stay in here the worse the men will get”.

He seemed to expect an answer. I nodded.

“Even your little winged friend, huh?” Murphig said nas­tily. “She’s like a bird in a cage here. You know what birds are? Yeah, of course ... I saw her crack right after she hit the anemone; she headed east for the shadows. If you don’t get her out of here, she’ll die. You have influence with the captain. Get us out”.

“We’re leaving already,” I said. “And Dalusa, while no miracle of stability, is probably closer to sanity than you are.”

Murphig thought that over. “Yes. I can see how an off-worlder might think that”.

“Murphig,” I said, “get out of my kitchen before you make me break into hives.”

“You and I will have to work double shifts until we get out of here and the crew heals But I suppose you know that”.

“Out Murphig!”

Murphig left.

The outrushing cold breeze at the mouth of Glimmer Bay had caught the Lunglance; with the wind directly at our backs, we made for the middle of the channel. It was a simple maneuver; the bay seemed to usher us back into the sunlight. Mr. Grent had taken the tiller, below, Desperan­dum and I conversed in his cabin.

“I’ve had to face a temporary defeat here, Newhouse,” the captain said. “I can’t say I like that much. I’d turn this bay upside down, plague or no plague, if I didn’t know I’d be back. But I’ll be here next year, I swear that. With a... well, did you ever hear of a helicopter?”

“Certainly.”

“After this voyage I’ll have one built—secretly. I’ll run it on whale oil. I’ll need a crewman.”

“I don’t know much about Nullaquan law, Captain, but isn’t that illegal?”

“Why should that stop us?”

It was a good question. “Why a helicopter?”

“Because they’re fast, mobile, and invulnerable. I’ll take it on board ship—no one will recognize it for what it is, since there’s not a Nullaquan alive that’s ever seen a flying machine. Too wasteful of resources. But the Lunglance will stop outside the bay; well row off under cover of darkness and ride the updraft inside. Then, whatever’s necessary a few mild depth charges, for instance, should bring any anemones to the surface. I consider it a damn shame that I didn’t get a population count. For all we know, those two were the only members of their species left on the planet”.

I glanced past Desperandum’s shoulder and out of the window in the stern. Behind us, outlined by the inpouring glow from the crater, came Dalusa. She looked tired; her wings moved slowly and laboriously, as if she had been fly­ing all night.

“Only two, Captain? Unlikely. A fertilized egg in our nets implies at least two adults. Or are they hermaphrodi­tic?”

“No. But solid proof, you see, an actual specimen or au­thenticated eyewitness account . . . well, they’re lacking. We can’t be rock-solid certain.”

I gestured at the windows. “The lookout is coming in.”

Desperandum glanced outwards. “That’s good. I’ll dock her pay for the time she missed.”

An inch on his splattered hand distracted him. He ran one blunt finger gently over an inflamed knuckle.

We were halfway through the strait now, moving at a tremendous rate for the Lunglance. Behind us a strong gust caught Dalusa and she swooped low.

A forest of barbed tentacles leapt upwards from beneath the surface, scattering dust that trailed off, stolen by the wind. Dalusa beat desperately upwards; monster thorns scratched the air she had just vacated. As she gained height the anemones—a dozen at least—sank regretfully beneath the dust.

Desperandum was still fiddling with his knuckle. “Cap­tain, did you see that?” I said.

“See what?” said Desperandum.