"Are you all right?" Brett asked.

"Just bruised."

"Nakano's getting soft," Gallow said. "He pulled that kick. He can crush your throat, just like that!" Gallow snapped his fingers to illustrate.

Nakano returned, dripping more water. "We're in kelp and it's holding us pretty steady. The sub's stabilized directly under us and the foil's shadow should hide it until it's too late for them to do anything about it."

"Good," Gallow said. "Now, where do we keep these two until it's time for their performance?" He thought for a moment, then: "We turn the cabin lights on and put them in the open hatchway. They'll be seen right away."

"And we wait beside the hatch," Nakano said. "You kids understand?"

When Brett did not respond, Scudi said, "We understand."

"We'll run forward and turn out the lights," Brett said. "That'll make sure the Security people have to come aboard."

"Good!" Gallow said. "Very good."

He sure likes the sound of his own voice, Brett thought. He took Scudi's arm, careful of her wrist. "Let's get those lights on and go back to the main hatch."

"Nakano, escort our guests back and see that they're in plain sight," Gallow said. He moved to the command console and flipped a series of switches. Lights blazed all over the foil.

Brett suddenly hesitated. Open hatch? "Dashers," he said.

Scudi tugged him along toward the corridor into the rear of the foil. "Our chances are just as good with the black variety," she muttered.

Survival is staying alive one breath at a time, Brett thought. That was another of Twisp's sayings. And Brett thought if he and Scudi survived this, Twisp would have to learn how his teaching had helped. It was a way of studying things and reacting truly - something that could not be taught, but could be learned.

"Hurry it up, you two!" Nakano ordered.

They followed him down the long passage to the open hatch, its lip washed in a blaze of light. Brett stared out at a dark flow of kelp-littered waves slapping against the hull.

Nakano said, "You two wait right here. And you better be standing in plain sight when I come back." He sped up the passage.

"What's that guy doing up there in the cockpit?" Brett asked.

"Probably disabling the starting system," Scudi said. "They don't intend to let us go."

"Of course not."

She glanced behind her at the storage locker where Brett had found the survival kits. "If it weren't for the sub under us, I'd take off right now."

"There's nobody in the sub," Brett said. "There's just these two ... and maybe one who needs the doctor. That one won't be able to do anything about us."

"How do you know?"

"It was obvious from what they said and the way they're acting. And remember what Bushka said? Three of them."

"Then what're we waiting for?"

"For them to disable the starting mechanism," he said. "We can't have them dashing around in this thing looking for us." He moved to the storage locker and lifted out two more packs, tossing one to Scudi. "Have they had enough time?"

"I ... think so."

"I do, too."

Scudi slipped a length of line from an outside pocket on her kit and fixed one end to Brett's belt, the other to her own waist. "We stay together," she said. "Let's go."

Far up the corridor, Gallow's voice suddenly bellowed, "Hey! You two! What're you doing?"

"We're going swimming," Brett shouted. Holding hands, they leaped off into the ocean.

A glut of kelp rasped the coracle's bow in time with the waves. A touch of reality, Twisp thought. The otherwise silent blackness yawned before the first hint of dawn. Twisp heard Bushka twisting uncomfortably near the bow cuddy. In the long night since leaving Brett and Scudi, Bushka had not slept well.

Water's very flat tonight, Twisp thought. Only the faintest of breezes cooled his left cheek as the coracles drifted slowly in the encumbering kelp.

Twisp tipped his head to look up at a spattering of cloud-framed stars, picking out the familiar arrowhead shape of the Pointers before the frame shifted to a new section of sky.

Still on course, current favorable.

It was always good to check the compass against the stars. The course angled toward an unmarked place on the sea where they could turn and make a swift run to Vashon. The RDF-RDC announcement of the Island's distant locator-beep had been silenced for the night but a red light blinked near his knee in time with Vashon's signal. His receiver was working.

Dawn would find them still hull-down out of sight of the launch tower but not out of range of the kid and the girl.

Did I do the right thing? Twisp asked himself.

It was a question he had repeated many times, aloud to Bushka and silently to himself. At the moment of decision, it had felt right. But here in the night ...

Momentous changes gathered force on their world. And who were they, pitted against the evils he could sense in that change? One overage fisherman with arms too long for anything but hauling nets. One whining intellectual ashamed of his Islander ancestry, maybe capable of wholesale murder. One kid out to make himself a man, a kid who could see in the dark. And a Merman girl who was heir to the entire food monopoly of Pandora. The consequences of Ryan Wang's death had a bad feel.

The squawks began to stir in their cage near Twisp's feet. Faintly at first, then louder, somewhere off to the right in the thicker kelp, Twisp heard a dasher purring. Putting a finger on the stunshield switch, he waited, straining to see something, anything, in the blackness where that ominous purr stroked the still air.

A purring dasher could mean many things: it might be asleep, or well-fed, or responding to the smell of rich food ... or just generally contented with its life.

Twisp slipped a leg over the tiller, prepared to start the motor and steer away from that perilous noise. With his free hand he groped for and found the lasgun in its hiding place behind his seat.

Bushka began to snore.

The dasher's purr stopped, then began once more on a lower note. Had it heard?

Bushka snorted, rolled over and resumed his snoring. The dasher continued to purr, but the sound began to fade, moving farther to the right and behind the drifting coracles.

Asleep, Twisp hoped. Trust my squawks. The birds had not stirred again.

The dasher's contentment faded away in the distance. Twisp listened for movement there, straining to hear over the sound of Bushka's fatigue. Slowly, Twisp forced himself to relax, realizing that he had been holding his breath. He exhaled, then inhaled a deep breath of the sweet night air. A dry swallow rasped the back of his throat.

Although he could not hear the dasher, tension still rode him. Abruptly, the squawks came full awake and began living up to their name. Twisp flipped the stunshield switch. There came the unmistakable splash of something stiffening in the water close behind, then the frenzied whines and chuckles of dashers feeding.

Filthy cannibals, he thought.

"Whuzzat?" Bushka demanded.

The coracle shifted as Bushka sat up.

"Dashers," Twisp said. He aimed the lasgun toward the feeding sounds and fired six quick bursts. The buzzing vibration of the weapon was hard against his sweaty hand. The thin purple beams lanced into the night. At the second shot, the dashers erupted in a frantic cacophony of yelps and screeches. The sounds receded rapidly. Dashers had learned to turn tail at the buzzing, purple shaft of a lasgun.

Twisp turned off the stunshield and reached for his handlight as another sound far off to his left caught his attention: the hiss-hiss-hiss of paddles cutting through wet kelp. He aimed the handlight toward the sound but the night sucked it dry without sending anything back but the sea's pulse in dark strands of kelp.