Makanee's eyes re-opened, but she did not appear to be looking at them.

Metz nodded. "Thank you, Doctor," he said. "You've told us what we need to know. I'm. sorry we took so much of your time. I'm sure you're doing your best."

When she did not answer, the human slipped his oxymask over his face and slid into the water. He motioned to Takkata-Jim and turned to leave.

The male dolphin clicked at Makanee for a moment longer, but when she did not move he flipped about and followed Metz toward the exit.

A shudder passed through her as the two entered the lock. She lifted her head to call after them.

"Don't forget-t when you call a ship's council that I'm a member! And Hikahi and Gillian and T-Tom Orley!" The lock was hissing shut behind them as she called. She couldn't tell if they had heard.

Makanee settled back into the water with a sigh. And Tom Orley, she thought. Don't forget him, you sneaky bastards! He'll not let you get away with this!

Makanee shook her head, knowing she was thinking irrationally. Her suspicions weren't based on facts. And even if they were true, Thomas Orley couldn't stretch his hand across two thousand kilometers to save the day. There were rumors that he was already dead.

Metz and Takkata-Jim had her all confused. She had a gut feeling that they had told her a complex assortment of truths, half-truths, and outright lies, and she had no way of knowing which was which.

They think they can fool me, just because I'm female, and old, and two uplift generations cruder than any other fin aboard but Brookida. But I can guess why they're giving special favors to the one chimpanzee member on the ship's council. Here and now, they have a majority to back up any decision they make. No wonder they're not anxious to have Hikahi or Gillian back!

Maybe I should have lied to them… told them Creideiki would awaken any minute.

But then, who can tell how desperate they are? Or what they'd resort to? Was the accident with the buoy really an accident? They could be lying to cover up ignorance — or to cover up a conspiracy. Could I protect Creideiki, with only two female aides to help me?

Makanee let out a low moan. This sort of thing wasn't her department! She sometimes wished that being a dolphin physician, like in the old days, simply meant you lifted the one you were trying to save up on your brow, and held his head above the water until he recovered, or your strength failed you, or your own heart broke.

She turned back toward Intensive Care. The chamber was darkened except for a light that shone upon a large gray neo-dolphin, suspended in a shielded gravity tank. Makanee checked the life-maintenance readings and saw that they were stable.

Creideiki blinked unseeingly, and once a brief shudder passed down the length of his body.

Makanee sighed and turned away. She swam over to a nearby comm unit and considered.

Metz and Takkata-Jim can't be back on the bridge yet, she thought. She clicked a sonar code that activated the unit. Almost instantly the face of a young, blue-finned dolphin appeared before her.

"Communications. C-can I help you?"

"Akki? Yes, child, it's Dr. Makanee. Have you made any plans for lunch? You know, I do think I still have some of that candied octopus left. You're free? How sssweet. I'll see you soon, then. Oh, and let's keep our date our little secret. Okay? That'sss a good lad."

She departed Intensive Care, a scheme beginning to form in her mind.

In the quiet grayness of the gravity tank, a faint moaning cry.

* Desperate, he swims

Tossed by gray storm winds, howling:

Drowning! Drowning! *

A foul-tempered mountain growled in the middle of a scum-crusted sea.

It had stopped raining a while ago. The volcano grumbled and coughed fire at low overhanging clouds, casting orange on their undersides. Thin, twisting trails of ash blew into the sky. Where the hot cinders finally fell, it was not to a quenching by clean sea water. They landed in a muddy layer atop a carpet of dingy vines which seemed to go on forever.

Thomas Orley coughed in the dank, sooty air. He crawled up a small rise of slippery, jumbled weeds. The dead weight of his crude sledge dragged a tether wrapped around his left hand. With his right he clutched a thick tendril near the top of the weed-mound.

His legs kept sliding out from under him as he crawled. Even when he managed to wedge them into gaps in the slimy mass, his feet frequently sank into the mire between the vines. When he awkwardly pulled them out, the quagmire would let go reluctantly, giving off an awful sucking sound.

Sometimes "things" came out with his feet, squirming along his legs and dropping off to slither back into the noisome brine.

The tightly wrapped thong cut into his left hand as he pulled the sledge, a meager remnant of his solar plane and supplies. It was a miracle that he had been able to salvage even that much from the crash.

The volcano sent ochre flickers across the weedscape. Rainbow specks of metallic dust coated the vegetation in all directions. It was late afternoon, almost a full Kithrup day since he had banked his glider toward the island, searching for a safe place to land.

Tom raised his head to look blearily over the plain of weeds. All of his well-laid plans had been brought down by this plain of tough, ropy sea plants.

He had hoped to find shelter on an island upwind of the volcano, or, barring that, to land at sea and turn the glider into a broad and seaworthy raft from which to perform his experiment.

I should have considered this possibility. The crash, those dazed, frantic minutes diving after gear and piling together a crude sledge while the storm lashed at him, and then hours crawling among the fetid vines toward a solitary hump of vegetation — it all might have been avoided.

He tried to pull forward, but a tremor in his right arm threatened to turn into a full-scale cramp. It had been badly wrenched during the crash, when the plane's wing pontoons had come off and the fuselage went tumbling across the morass, splashing at last into an isolated pool of open water.

A gash across the left side of his face had almost sent him into shock during those first critical moments. It reached from his jaw almost to the neural socket above his left ear. The plastic cover that normally protected the delicate nerve interface had spun out into the night, hopelessly lost.

Infection was the least of his worries, now.

The tremor in his arm grew worse. Tom tried to ride it out, lying face down on the pungent, rubbery weeds. Gritty mud scraped his right cheek and forehead each time he coughed.

Somewhere he had to find the energy. He hadn't time for the subtleties of self-hypnosis, to coax his body back into working. By main force of will, he commanded the abused muscles to behave for one final effort. He could do little about what the universe threw at him, but dammit, after thirty hours of struggle, within meters of his goal, he would not accept a rebellion by his body!

Another coughing fit ripped at his raw throat. His body shook, and the hacking weakened his grip on the dry root. Just when he thought his lungs could take no more, the fit finally passed. Tom lay there in the mud, drained, eyes closed.

He hadn't the breath to whistle the Trinary Haiku, but it blew through his mind, and he spared the energy for a brief smile through cracked, mud-crusted lips.

Somewhere, he found the reserves for one more effort. He clenched his teeth and pulled himself over the last stretch. The right arm almost buckled, but it held as his head rose over the top of the small hill.