"Ship's balls!" Twisp shouted. "What's that?"

Through the spray-drenched plaz ahead and to his left, Brett saw a great splash of bright orange, something floating a wave out there. He bent forward to peer through the salted plaz. It was a long orange something that stretched into the anonymous gray of the storm. Kelp lay tangled all around it.

The foil was coming up on the orange thing fast, bringing it close to their port side.

"It's an LTA bag," Bushka said. "Somebody's gone down."

"Can you see the gondola?" Twisp asked. "Brett! Stay downwind from it. The bag will act like a sea anchor. Don't get fouled in it."

Brett swung the foil to the left and it wallowed in a trough, rocking dangerously at the crest, then into the next trough. At the following crest, he saw the gondola, a dark shape awash in the long seas. The orange bag trailed out behind it with kelp laced across it. The gondola was coming up on their right. The seas were smoother there, flattened by the great spread of the bag. Another crest and Brett saw faces pressed against the gondola's plaz.

"There are people in there!" Twisp shouted. "I saw faces!"

"Damn!" Bushka said. "Damn, damn, damn!"

"We have to take them off," Brett said. "We can't leave them there."

"I know that!" Bushka snarled.

Scudi took this moment to begin muttering ... words Brett couldn't understand.

"She's all right," Twisp said. "She's coming out of it. Bushka, you come back here and look after her while I get a line aboard that gondola."

"How're you going to do that?" Bushka asked.

"I'm going to swim it over! What else? Brett, hold us steady as you can right here."

"They're Mermen," Bushka said. "Why can't they bring a line to us?"

"The minute they open their hatch, that gondola is going down," Twisp said. "It'll fill like a punctured float."

Scudi's voice came clearly then: "What's ... what's happening?"

Bushka released his safety harness and made his way back to her. Brett heard the hatch open and close. Bushka's voice, quite low, gave Scudi her answer.

"An LTA?" she asked. "Where are we?"

"Near Outpost Twenty-two." There was a scuffling sound and Bushka's voice: "Stay down there!"

"I have to get to the controls! It's shallow here. Very shallow! In these seas -"

"All right!" Bushka said. "Do what you have to do."

Scuffing footsteps on the deck, then water sloshing from a wet dive suit. Scudi's hand gripped Brett's shoulder. "Dammit, but my head hurts," she said. Her hand touched his neck and he felt a flash of pain on the side of his temple. It was a throbbing pain, as though something had struck him there.

Scudi leaned across him, her hand over his shoulder to steady herself. Their cheeks touched.

Brett felt something flow between them, creating a moment of panic followed by a sudden inrush of awareness. His neck hair prickled as he realized what had happened. He felt that he was two people become one but aware of the separation - one person standing beside the other.

I'm seeing with Scudi's eyes!

Brett's hands moved automatically on the wheel, a new expertise he had not known he possessed. The foil gentled its way close to the gondola and hung there with just enough headway to counteract the wind.

What's happening to us?

The words formed silently in their minds, a simultaneous question, shared in an instant and answered in an instant.

The kelp has changed us! We share our senses when we touch!

With this odd double vision, Brett saw Twisp swimming now, moving through a channel in the kelp and very close to the gondola. Faces peered out through the plaz. Brett thought he recognized one of those faces and, with that recognition, came a bursting daydream, instantaneous - a sense of people talking inside the gondola. The sensation vanished and he was left staring at white-whipped waves breaking across the LTA, Twisp clinging there while he fastened his line to a handgrab beside the plaz lock.

Scudi whispered to Brett: "Did you hear them talking?"

"I couldn't make out the words."

"I could. Gallow's people are in there and they have prisoners. The prisoners are being taken to Gallow."

"Where is Gallow? Here?"

"I think so, but I recognized a prisoner - it's Dark Panille, Shadow. I've worked with him."

"The man who treated me in the passageway!"

"Yes, and one of the captors is that Gulf Nakano. I'm going to warn Bushka. He has the weapon. We will have to lock them into one of the cargo bays."

Scudi turned away and worked her way back to Bushka, steadying herself along the overhead grabs. Brett heard her explain the situation to Bushka, saying she had recognized Nakano through the gondola's plaz.

"They've opened their hatch," Brett said. "People are coming out. I see Shadow ... there's Nakano. Waves are slopping into the hatch. Everybody's coming out."

Scudi slipped into the command seat beside Brett. "I'll take it. You help Bushka at the entry hatch."

"No tricks!" Bushka yelled as he followed Brett down the passageway.

"We've got to get Twisp out of there!" Brett said.

"He's staying at the gondola to unfasten the line when it goes under."

They were at the hatchway then, wind whipping around them and spray in their eyes. Brett was thankful for his dive suit. In spite of the chill, sweat poured from his body. The muscles of his arms and legs were tightly humming bands. A wave broke against the hull below them. Brett sighted along the line - a long row of bobbing heads worked their way toward the foil. He recognized Nakano in the lead, staying close to Panille. The line snaked up and down the waves.

"We'll bring them aboard one at a time, right into the cargo bay behind me," Bushka said.

"We'll have to disarm them."

Nakano was first through the hatch. His face had the single-minded aggressiveness of a bull dasher. Bushka leveled the lasgun from the far side of the hatchway, slipped a similar weapon from the thigh pocket of Nakano's dive suit, grabbed a knife from Nakano's waist sheath and motioned with his head for the Merman to enter the open hatch to the cargo bay.

For a blink, Brett thought Nakano would attack Bushka despite the lasgun, but the man shrugged and ducked through into the bay.

Panille stayed down below to help others and the next person through was a woman, red-haired, beautiful.

"Kareen Ale," Bushka said. "Well, well." He sent his gaze licking over her body, saw no weapon and nodded toward the cargo hatch. "In there, please."

She stared at the lasgun in Bushka's grip.

"Do it!"

A shout from below the hatch brought Brett whirling around to face the sea.

"What is it?" Bushka demanded. He was trying to divide his attention between the open cargo hatch and the outer hatch where survivors still waited to be brought aboard.

Brett peered out across Panille, who hung below the hatch with an arm wrapped through a loop in his safety line. The gondola beyond him had begun to sink, slowly dragging the orange LTA bag under the waves. The safety line lay across the waves with Twisp pulling himself along it. Something was happening about midway along the line, though, and Brett tried to make out what had caused the shout.

"What's happening?" Bushka asked.

"I don't know. There's a length of kelp across the line. Twisp released the line from the gondola and it's already under. But something's ..."

A human hand came out of the water near the kelp and one, two kelp strands whipped across the hand and the hand vanished. Twisp reached the kelp barrier and hesitated there. A questing strand of kelp touched his head, paused there and withdrew. Twisp continued his way along the line, stopping finally beside Panille, exhausted. Panille put an arm under Twisp's shoulder and helped support him. Waves lifted both men and lowered them beside the foil.