For nearly a quarter of an hour it was a touch-and-go battle, one of the hardest that Ryan had ever been involved in. His panga was the best weapon they had for hacking away at the brown fronds, and he shipped his oar, leaving it to the others to carry on with the rowing.

Lori started to cry, slumping in the bottom of the boat, oblivious to the struggle of the others. Jak left the tiller and double-banked an oar with Doc. Steering was no longer important. All they had to do was break clear of the patch of killing weed.

Eventually, having lost another oar, they were in clear water. Doc was doubled up, fighting for breath, finally managing to pant, "At my age to fall victim to an aquatic herbaceous border!"

"I can smell land," Krysty said a few minutes later. "Earth and growing things."

Above the layer of mist they could all hear the lonely cry of swooping gulls, cut off from their food in the invisible ocean.

Doc called out that his oar blade had struck something. "Must be a rock. Must be closer in than we thought." He stopped rowing and leaned over the side of the boat, recoiling with a gasp and shifting to the center of the thwart. His lined face was as pale as a laundered sheet.

"Doc?" Ryan said. "What's wrong? Are we running aground?"

The old man managed a nervous laugh. "Run aground, my dear fellow? I think not. A blessing, that would be. No, I believe... yes, I am certain of it, that we would do well to bend our backs and hasten for the shore yonder."

"Doc," Ryan repeated, fighting for patience. "Just tell us what you saw."

"You recall, shortly after our arrival in this part of old New England, that we had something of a difficulty with a mutated killer whale and great white shark?"

"Yeah. Fireblast! You mean there's..."

The boat shifted uneasily as something grated along its keel. Doc waved his hand in the air as he struggled for expression. "The great-grandfather of all mutie sharks. Upon my soul, but it's so. Fifty feet if it's... I looked straight down into the grinning jaws and that devil's eye, empty and without soul. Oh, let us away, friends."

Nobody needed any further encouragement, bending to the remaining oars, propelling the little boat forward in a series of great rushes, the whirlpools from the blades vanishing swiftly behind them.

Krysty, in the bow, kept careful watch for any sharp-fanged rocks that might suddenly tear the bottom from the whaleboat and dump them all in the treacherous chill water.

"Left, Jak, left," she called, hearing the sucking noise of the sea, tangling around the gray boulders that marked the mixing of land and ocean.

The fog was finally showing a willingness to clear away. Visibility improved, and the sun broke through above their heads in a vapid glow. Ryan twice spotted the great dorsal fins of the mutie carnivores as they skimmed toward the shore. The bodies of the chilled seamen from the Salvationhad obviously attracted several of the whale-sharks, and the noise of the oars in the water had brought them in close to hand.

"I can see it!" Krysty called. "Bit to the right. There's a channel between rocks. Looks like it leads to a beach."

Now they could all see land, the rowers squinting over their shoulders. There were cliffs above a strip of glistening shingle, and on either side of the boat they could make out numerous tiny islands, mostly peaks of rock sticking above the calm sea.

"Recognize it?" Ryan asked J.B.

"No. Once we get ashore I'll use the sextant to get a bearing. Deacon knows this coast and figured we were close to the redoubt. Fortress was what he called it. Got to be same place."

"Take it slow and easy," Krysty warned. "Lots of stuff just below the surface."

The narrowing channel twined between the fragments of the old reef. Ryan remembered now the state of the redoubt, with its sunken corridors and tidal damage from the old nukings — and wondered how easy they'd find it to get back inside and reach the gateway.

The final few yards to the shingle were between jaws of rocks less than a dozen feet across. Beyond them was a last stretch of water where tiny waves tumbled ceaselessly, one upon another, whispering to the smooth pebbles. Under the keel, Ryan could see through clearer water, to the bottom, perhaps twenty feet below. Even as he glanced over the side of the boat he saw the sinuous form of one of the lethal whale-sharks, white-bellied, move past them, teeth bared in its eternal smile.

"Put the oars in," he ordered. "Too narrow. Sea'll carry us in from here."

They floated in, silently, all of them staring up at the lowering cliffs, their shining flanks streaked with bright splashes of emerald moss. The last remnants of the mist still clung to the rock walls, like ghostly webs.

"Let me come in the bow," Ryan said, changing places with Krysty. He held his automatic rifle in his right hand. As he moved, his boots slipped on the long whaling spears that were tucked in near the bow, their hafts ready for the hand of the harpooneer. For a moment his mind flicked back to Donfil, and he thought how he'd miss the tall Apache.

As he'd missed so many good companions over the years.

"Hurry up, boat," Lori said crossly, shuffling on her seat.

Gradually, riding three feet forward and then two back, the boat came in closer. The rocks loomed on both sides of them, seamed with narrow caves and shadowed inlets. But their attention was on the beach, where the keel eventually grounded.

Ryan stood, ready to leap onto the shingle to haul them up higher when the familiar rasping voice froze him in place.

"Not a blink of an eye, cully, or it's fins over for everyone."

Chapter Thirty-Three

"Blasters at your feet. Slow, slow and very slow."

Ryan lowered the Heckler & Koch, putting it on the thwart of the boat, seeing from the corner of his eye that the others were doing the same. Only Jak, in the stern, wasn't moving. The boy's mouth was set in a tight, etched line, and his fingers moved toward the butt of his Magnum.

"Snow-hair's about to meet his Maker," Pyra Quadde cackled. "Does he bleed white as a mutie or red as the roses?"

"Let it alone, Jak," Ryan snapped. "She'll chill you! Put the blaster down."

Reluctantly the boy did as he was told.

Moving like a scout through a trembler mine field, Ryan turned to face the woman, knowing that life and death were now a breath apart for all of them in the whaleboat.

She stood in the bow of the dory. He guessed that she must have heard their approach and chosen the tiny cove to hide. The boat was pulled in so that it could only be seen when one was past it. She wore the long dress, with seaboots beneath it, and the Spanish pistol was held steady in her hand. She was smiling.

Just behind her and a little to the side was Cyrus Ogg, holding his own blaster aimed at the six friends. They were only about twenty feet apart.

"Well, now, here's a thing, isn't it, Mr. Ogg?" Pyra Quadde sneered.

"Indeed, ma'am, here's a thing, indeed. As thou sayest, Captain Quadde, here's a thing indeed," he agreed.

"Rowing all this blighted way through fog and sharks to meet up again like the best of friends, wouldn't thou say, Mr. Ogg?"

"I would say that, ma'am. Indeed, I would surely say that."

"Now, easy to pick off as stabbing a legless roach in a tin basin, Mr. Ogg?"

"Even easier, Captain. Even easier than that, I'd say."

Ryan had rarely seen two people looking so smugly pleased with themselves.

Something moved near the edge of the rocks, darting toward the water with a fast, skittering gait. It caught everyone's eye, but neither Pyra Quadde nor Cyrus Ogg relaxed their vigilance, or let the muzzles of their blasters wander away from the whaleboat.