Marcel Kwong had received the mayday signal, but gotten only an azimuth, not a location. Not knowing of Yukiko's delay to message the dolphins, he assumed the two were somewhere north of Cedar Point. When he reached the point without spotting them, he turned back, flying higher to see more area.

After flying halfway back to where he'd received the mayday, Marcel consulted briefly again with Bertrand, then turned south once more, seriously anxious. The sun was low, cut off by the cliffs now. This time he crossed Cedar Point instead of stopping. Seventeen miles from Home Base, his wife spotted the twisted, surf-battered scooter on the rocks, each successive breaker compounding the destruction. Angling lower, they approached it at an altitude of twenty feet. Not surprisingly its cab was empty, its hood torn half off. He made two sweeps above the shelf, watching for bodies, and found none. That didn't surprise them either. There'd be an undertow here, and a south-flowing current offshore.

He switched on his microphone. "Dennis," he called, "this is Marcel. Dennis, this is Marcel. We've found the wreckage of a scooter on the shelf rock nine miles south of Cedar Point. But no bodies or survivors. We need help in finding either bodies or survivors. Over."

"Marcel, this is Bertrand. Elisio and Nona just arrived from North Bay, and Ngozi is on her way from the atoll. How badly was the scooter damaged? Over."

"It was utterly demolished, and I can't picture a human surviving the breakers here. There's shelf rock and lots of boulders. Over."

"All right, follow the offshore current south. They could be riding it on their seat cushions, watching for a gap. My chart shows a good-sized stream coming down off the plateau about four miles south of the wreck. There'll be a break in the boulder line there, and the outflow current should make the surf less dangerous. Over."

"Got it. We'll follow the offshore current south. Marcel out." He angled southward at about fifty feet above the waves.

He glanced at the time display: 1714 base time. It seemed to him they needed to find David and Yukiko today. Tomorrow would be too late.

Chapter 7

Reconnaissance

For a pirate, Henry Morgan was amiable. Almost always.

Seven years before the Wyzhnyny arrived, his Squadron One had captured the hyperspace yacht Guinevere, whose owner/master was identified in the yacht's records as Gomer Colwyn-though Morgan at first didn't know that. Trapped in F-space and under the pirate's beamgun, Colwyn had asked for quarter, and Morgan, as always, granted the plea. In the case of merchantmen, his practice was to disarm the ship, then loot it before giving it back. But the Guinevere was well suited for use as a corsair. So when she hove to, Morgan decided to load her personnel and passengers aboard a lifeboat and send them off, then put a prize crew aboard the yacht to fly it to Tagus.

The yacht's master had other ideas. After accepting the pirate's clemency, Gomer Colwyn had drawn a blaster from inside his blouse. With shocking quickness and force, Morgan disarmed and disabled the man. Colwyn cursed him then-surely those were curses-in a language unfamiliar to the crew.

Morgan's face turned stony hard, and he replied in what sounded like the same language. Then he ordered all the captives manacled, and told Colwyn to flip a coin for each of the twenty others the Guinevere had carried. Heads they lived, tails they died. Either that or choose ten to live. Colwyn wilted-he couldn't do either-so Morgan decided for him. One by one, ten of the yacht's eleven-male crew-stoic or struggling, pleading or praying or silent-were jettisoned out the trash lock. To float as corpsicles in the empty vastness between Not Worth Much and New Pecos. The yacht's second officer he spared.

Morgan's boarding party was stunned. A few were near mutiny.

The eight passengers remained. A broken Colwyn pleaded for their lives; one was his wife and another his daughter. After listening, Morgan had all eight loaded into the forty-foot lifeboat with the second officer, and let them go. When they were gone, he told Colwyn he'd had the lifeboat's strange-space generator disabled. It would take them decades to reach a habitable world. Except of course they couldn't; not alive. In a few months they'd run out of food.

At that, Colwyn went psychotic. Morgan had him strapped screaming into a workboat, personally disabled its drive, then set it adrift.

When it was gone, Morgan sagged. With the boarding party, he returned to his modest flagship, leaving only the six-man prize crew. Then he generated hyperspace, set course for Tagus, and retired to his suite.

What, if anything, he told Connie Phamonyong, none of his men knew. But after comparing notes, there was one thing they did know: their commodore had not had the lifeboat's strange-space generator disabled. Only the workboat had been sabotaged. The yacht owner's family and guests, and the second officer, were safely on their way to whatever world they'd chosen. In that, Morgan had been merciful. Not that it made up for murdering eleven people, only one of whom had done anything to earn it.

In his suite, Morgan told Connie nothing, simply opened a bottle of brandy, and drank from it. He had known Colwyn, but hadn't recognized him till Colwyn cursed him in Welsh. Then Morgan had identified himself. Morgan had been eleven the last time they'd seen each other, and Colwyn had been in his twenties-his father's first cousin, his own second cousin. Colwyn had always treated him badly, pouring sarcasm over him, sometimes slapping him around. Though never abusing him sexually. That right his father reserved for himself. As a young man, Morgan had suspected his father had sodomized Colwyn when he was a child, and that Colwyn took it out on him.

If he hadn't told Colwyn who he was, this wouldn't have happened. Not that he regretted deep-sixing him. What troubled him was having killed the ten crew members. Telling himself he'd been insane at the time hadn't helped.

An hour later, Morgan had moved into a vacant crew cabin. When he finally emerged again, three days later, he smelled of brandy. But although he may have been drunk much of the time, he lacked severe tremor, and showed no sign of hallucinating. So, two days drunk and one getting well, the crew concluded.

Meanwhile, even those who'd been most disturbed by their captain's actions aboard the Guinevere had recovered from their shock. Largely because of their commodore's reaction to his own deeds. It was agreed he must have known the yacht's skipper earlier in life.

After emerging from his isolation, Morgan began showing up for meals, saying something now and then, and sweating regularly in the workout room. His second continued to run the ship. He also moved back in with Connie and Robert. Long before they reached Tagus, Henry Morgan seemed normal once more, and the crew was at ease with him again.

All of that, though, had been seven years earlier, and seldom did anyone, including Morgan, think of it anymore.

The first night after the Wyzhnyny arrived, Henry Morgan wakened from an ugly dream, its events remaining sharply in his mind. In the dream he'd been a little boy. His father had been flogging Morgan's mother with a large penis, like a horse's, while she'd cried bitterly. Then he'd turned to Morgan, raised the penis, and began to beat him too.

It was then Morgan had wakened, and discovered his face and pillow wet with tears. It had been a very long time since he'd revisited those days. The stories he told Robert were fictions. He wasn't entirely sure what Robert might have experienced or remembered. He himself had run away-escaped-at age fourteen.

Apparently he'd been crying aloud, or perhaps thrashing around, because Connie was awake, her eyes wide, and white by the nightlight. Without saying anything, he'd patted her shoulder reassuringly, then got up and went into the small kitchen, to drink himself into a stupor. Something he hadn't done since just after the Guinivere.