"Hey!" Nate opened his eyes. A softly lit fence of spiky teeth smiled over at him, steamy fish breath washed over his face.

"Uh-oh," said Emily 7, her voice high and rasping, verging on duck-speak.

Nate leaped out of bed and bounced off the wall on the other side of the cabin.

Emily 7 pulled the sheet up over her head and burrowed against the wall, digging her melon under the pillow. Then she lay still.

Nate stood trying to catch his breath. As soon as he'd hit the floor, the biolighting had come up to high. He pushed back against the flexible wall, then suddenly became self-conscious and pulled his T-shirt off the back of the chair to cover his erection, which was rapidly losing its will to live.

She was just lying there.

"Hello? I can see you."

Curled up. Not moving. There under the sheets. All whaley.

"You aren't fooling anyone. You're bigger than I am. You're not hidden."

Just the soft sound of her blowhole opening and closing. Nate realized that it might be easier to hide under the covers if one had a blowhole, as one could cover one's mouth and face and still breathe. Addled by sleep deprivation, residual sleep medication, two cups of coffee, and now a few endorphins, he started to speculate on how a creature might adapt for hiding under the covers, then shook off the biologist rising up in him.

"Come on, we're different species and stuff. That's creepy."

Now a bit of a squeak, more like a whimper, followed by a tiny "Uh-oh," like a small elf had been mashed under the covers with a heavy book and had uh-ohed its last pathetic gasp.

"Well, you can't stay here."

He remembered how he'd felt when Libby had left him and by way of explanation she'd said, "Nate, I don't know, I don't even feel like we're the same species." At the time he'd felt as if his stomach were being turned inside out. It had ruined him socially for more than a year. Longer than that if he counted the fiasco attraction to Amy.

He stepped over to the bunk. Emily 7 scrunched into the corner between the wall and the bed. Nate worked the edge of the sheet loose and cautiously slid one leg under the covers. The lump that was Emily 7's head moved as if she was listening.

"You have to stay on your side, okay?"

"Okay," wheezed Emily 7 in the mashed-elf voice.

Nate awoke to the exhultations of killer whales — high-pitched hunting calls. The pod seemed to be gleefully celebrating a hunt, or at least calling another pod to come along and help. It occurred to him that he was actually riding in a craft that qualified as food for the orcas, and the ship might be in danger of attack. He'd have to ask Nuñez about that. He swung his feet off the bunk, and the lights came up. He realized that he was alone and sighed with relief.

There was a fresh set of khakis hung over the chair and a bottle of water on the table. There was a small basin on the wall opposite the bunk, no bigger than a cereal bowl and made out of the same skin as the rest of the ship. He hadn't even noticed it the night before. There were three lit nodules above the basin, like those used to activate the portals, but Nate could see nowhere for the water to come out. He pushed one of the nodules, and the basin started filling from a sphincter in the bottom. He pushed another, and the water was sucked out the same orifice. He tried to foster scientific detachment toward the whole thing but failed miserably: He was creeped out. Nate desperately needed a shave and a shower, but he didn't want to try to wash his whole six-foot-two-inch body in an eight-inch bowl with a… well, a butt hole at the bottom. He'd had just about enough of advanced poop-chute technology, thank you. He splashed some water on his face and dressed in the khakis, wondering as he did if the whale ship could actually grow a mirror for him to shave in if he needed it.

The whole crew appeared to be up and milling about the bridge when Nate came in. There were four whaley boys at the table with the charts to the right of the hatch, the two pilots at their consoles. Nuñez stood by the table to the left of the hatch, where there were seated a blond woman in her thirties and two men, one dark, perhaps in his early twenties, and one bald and gray-bearded, a healthy fifty, maybe. Not a very military-looking bunch. Everyone turned when Nate came in. All conversations — words or whistles — stopped abruptly. The echo of killer-whale calls bounced around the bridge. Emily 7 turned away from Nate's gaze. Nuñez was leaning against the wall near the nook that housed the coffeepot, actively trying not to look at him.

"Hi," Nate said, catching eye contact with the bald guy, who smiled.

"Have a seat," said the bald guy, gesturing toward the empty seat at the table. "We'll get you something to eat. I'm Cal Burdick." He shook Nate's hand. "This is Jane Palovsky and Tim Milam."

"Jane, Tim," Nate said, shaking hands. Nuñez smiled at him, then looked away quickly as if the coffeepot needed some immediate attention or she was going to crack up — or both.

Everyone at the table nodded, sort of staring at the spot in front of them, like So here we are on a giant blue-whale ship, hundreds of feet below the surface of the ocean, with killer whales calling about us, and Nate fucked an alien, so…

"Nothing happened," Nate said to the whole bridge.

"What?" said Jane.

"Your quarters satisfactory, then?" asked Tim, an eyebrow raised.

"Nothing happened," Nate repeated, and even though nothing had happened, from the tone of his voice he wouldn't have believed it either. "Really."

"Of course," said Tim.

All of the whaley boys except Emily 7 were snickering. When he looked around, all the males were waving their willies back and forth in time in the air, as if swaying to a pornographic Christmas carol. Emily 7 put her big whaley head down on the table and covered it with her arms.

"Nothing happened!" Nate shouted at them. Silence again on the bridge, just the echo of killer-whale calls. "Are we in danger?" Nate asked Nuñez, trying desperately to change the subject. "Are they going to attack the ship? Those are feeding calls, right?" Often, when killer whales found a whale that was too big to be taken by their family pod, or when they happened on to an especially rich school of fish, they would call to other pods for help. Nate recognized the calls from some work he'd done with a biologist friend in Vancouver.

"No, these are residents," Nuñez said. "They're just excited about a bait ball they've found. Probably sardines." Resident killer whales ate only fish; transients ate mammals, whales and seals. Over the last few years scientists tended to refer to them as completely different species, even though they appeared the same to the layman.

"You know what they are by their call?"

"More than that," Cal said, "we know what they're saying. The whaley boys can translate."

"All killer whales are named Kevin. You knew that, right?" said Jane. She had a slight Eastern European accent, Russian maybe. She looked a little amused, her blue eyes dark under the yellow cast of the bioluminescence, but she didn't appear to be joking. She patted the seat next to her, indicating that Nate should sit down.

"Like all the pilots are named Scooter and Skippy?" Nate said.

"Actually, they have numbers like Emily — their choice, by the way — but since there are never more than one pair of them on a ship, we don't bother with the numbers."

Nate suddenly realize that in all his time on both of the whale ships, except when one of the pilots had gone outside to catch fish, the pilots always seemed to be at the controls. "Don't they ever sleep?"

"Sure," said Jane. "We're pretty sure they sleep with half their brain at a time, like whales, so between two of them the ship always has a full pilot. Without one of them at the controls, it's basically a big lump of meat."