"Is that all there is to it? Shouldn't we—" Maia cut off as her stomach did a somersault. Gravity yanked her downward, as if either she or Stratos had suddenly gained mass. There are advantages to not having eaten, Maia thought. Yet, after the first few seconds, she found perverse pleasure in the sensation. Indicators flickered, changing an alphanumeric display that Maia couldn't read because the bottom half had gone dead. What if another, more critical part fails while we're in motion?

She quashed the thought. Anyway, who was she to question something that still worked after millennia? The passenger, that's who I am!

There came another disconcerting-exciting sensation. The pressure beneath her feet abruptly eased, and now she felt a lessening of weight. An experience not unlike falling or riding a pitching ship-deck down a swell. Or, Maia supposed, flight. Involuntarily, she giggled, and slapped a hand over her mouth. The other hand, she discovered, was wrapped tightly around Brod's elbow. "Ow!" he complained succinctly, as the elevator car came to a halt and they both stumbled in reaction.

The doors slid apart, making them blink and shade their eyes. "Will they stay open?" Maia asked hastily, while staring onto a stony plateau capped with a fantastic, cloud-flecked sky.

"I'll wedge my sandal in the door," Brod answered. "If you'll let go of my arm for a minute."

Maia laughed nervously and released the boy. While he secured their line of retreat, she stepped further and regarded a vista of ocean surrounding the archipelago known as the Dragons' Teeth. Sunlight on water was just one sparkling beauty among so many she had not expected to see again. Its touch upon her skin was a gift beyond words.

I knew it! The military clans from Caria wouldn't arrive by boat. They're too high-caste, too busy. Besides, they wouldn't risk someone seeing them, and noticing a pattern. So they come here only rarely to train, and only by air.

The flat surface extended several hundred meters to the south, west, and east. Here at the northern end of the plateau, the elevator shed sheltered machinery that included a substantial winch, probably for tethering and deploying dirigibles. Maia also noted huge drums of cable.

The Dragons' Teeth were even more magnificent when seen from above. Tower after narrow stony tower stretched into the distance, arrayed like staggered spikes down the back of some armored beast. Many bore forested tips or ledges, like Grimke, while others gleamed in the afternoon sunshine, bare and pristine products of extruding mantle forces that long predated woman's tenure on Stratos.

No tooth in sight reached higher than this one, at the northern edge of Jellicoe. Because of its position, she couldn't see due south, where lay other giant island clusters, such as Halsey, the sole site officially and legally inhabited. No doubt the war clans counted on this shielding effect, and timed their rare visits to minimize chances of being seen. Still, Maia wondered if the men who staffed Halsey ever suspected.

Perhaps that's why they rotate the station assignment among low-ranked guilds. Less chance of a rhythm being noticed, even if men did happen to spy a zep, now and then. Especially with visits only three times in a lifetime.

She turned and marched to the right, where more than two score monoliths could be seen clustered close at hand — some of the many peaks which, welded together, made Jellicoe the chief molar of this legendary chain of Teeth. When Maia got close enough to see how vast the collection was, she realized how even the extensive tunnel network below could easily be hidden in this maze of semicrystalline stone.

Maia had to descend a rough, eroded staircase in order to reach a lower terrace, and then crossed some distance before at last nearing the vista she wanted. Brod cried out for her to wait, but impatience drove her. I've got to know, she thought, and hurried faster.

At last, she stopped short of a precipice so breathtaking, it outshadowed Grimke as a gull might outsoar a beetle. Her pulse pounded in her ears. So good was it to be in open air, breathing the sweet sea wind, that Maia forgot to experience vertigo as she edged close and looked down at Jellicoe Lagoon.

The anchorage already lay in dimness, abandoned by the sun after a brief, noontime visit. Her gaze bypassed still-bright stony walls, readjusting until at last she found what she had hoped to see. Two ships, she realized with a thrill. Reckless and Manitou.

I was afraid they'd change hideouts. They should, since their ketch was captured. Maybe they're planning to, soon.

Maia realized, with not a little disbelief, that the escape from Grimke with Brod and Naroin and the others had only been three or four days ago. That may mean we still have time.

She felt Brod's presence as he came alongside, and heard his ragged sigh of relief. "We're not too late, after all." He turned to regard her, a glitter in his eye. "I sure hope you've got a plan, Maia. I'll help rescue your starman, and your sister. But first, there's a band of unsuspecting reavers down there with a pantry to raid. If I don't get food soon—"

"I know," Maia interrupted with a wave of one hand, and quoted,

"A much worse thing to see by far, Than a summer rutter, Stand between a hungry man, And his bread and butter."

Brod grinned, showing a lot of teeth. When he spoke, it was in thick dialect.

"Aye, lass. Ye don't want me reduced to bitin' the nearest thing at hand now, do ye?"

She laughed, and so did he. Such was her trust in his nature and friendship that it never occurred to Maia, as it might have months earlier, to take him at his literal word.

.T©fin3 (oHal is HiDDEH … under strange lost stars

 — from the Book of Riddles

24

Maia lowered her sextant and peered at the little calibrated dials a second time. The horizon angle, where the sun had set, fixed one endpoint. The other, almost directly; overhead, fell within the constellation Boadicea.

"You know, I think it may be Farsun Eve?" she commented after a quick mental calculation. "Somewhere along the way, I lost track of several days. It's midwinter and I never noticed." She sighed. "We're missing all the fun, in town,"

"What town?" Brod asked, as he knotted thick ribbons of cable at the edge of the bluff. "And what fun? Free booze, so we don't notice the whispery sound of clone-mothers stuffing proxies into ballot boxes? Getting pinched on the streets by drunks who wouldn't know frost from hail-fall?"

"Typical man," Maia sniffed. "You grouches never get into the spirit of the holidays."

"Sometimes we do. Throw us a party in midsummer, and we might be less grumpy half a year later." He shrugged. "Still, it could help if the reavers are celebrating tonight, wearing paper hats and going all moony. Maybe the pirates won't notice gate-crashers droppin' in while they're busy harassing male prisoners."

There's an idea, Maia thought, folding away her sextant. Providing the men are still alive. After the massacre aboard the Reckless, the reavers' next logical step would be to eliminate all other witnesses, before moving on to a new hiding place. That included not only the men of the Manitou, but also the rads, and perhaps even recent recruits, such as Leie. Renna was probably still too valuable, but even his fate would be uncertain if Baltha's gang were ever cornered.

Such dire thoughts lent urgency to their wait as Maia and Brod watched full darkness settle over the archipelago. With twilight's fading, the many spires of Jellicoe Island merged into a single serrated outline that cut jagged bites out of a starry sky. Below, in the inky darkness of the lagoon, tiny pale pools of color encircled lamps stationed on the narrow dock where the two ships were moored. Now and then, clusters of smaller lanterns could be seen moving quickly, accompanied by stretched, bipedal silhouettes. Faint, indecipherable shouts carried up to Maia's ears, funneled by the narrow, fluted confines of the island's cavity. "Looks like they're in a festive mood, after all," Brod commented as a company of torch-bearing shadows trooped off the larger vessel, filing down the pier and into a wide stone portal, set in the base of the cliff. "Maybe we should wait. At least till they've turned in?"