"Maybe you'd better save them," Laura said, accepting one.

"No, no. No problem. I can get anything! Cigarettes, blood components. Megavitamins, embryos.... My name's

Desmond, miss. Desmond Yaobang."

"Hi," Laura said. She accepted a light. Her mouth imme- diately filled with choking poisoned soot.

She couldn't understand why she was doing this.

Except that it was better than doing nothing. Except that she felt sorry for him. And maybe the presence of Desmond

Yaobang would keep everyone else at a distance.

"What do you think they'll do to us, in Abadan? Do with us, I mean." Yaobang's head just topped her shoulder. There was nothing obviously repulsive about him, but the chemical fear had etched itself into the set of his eyes, the lines of his face. It had soaked him through with an aura of creepiness.

She felt the strong, irrational urge to kick him. The way a flock of crows will peck an injured one to death.

"I dunno," Laura drawled, contempt making her careless.

She looked at her sandaled feet, avoiding his eyes. "Maybe they'll give me some decent shoes.... I'll be okay if I can make a few phone calls."

"Phone calls," Yaobang parroted nervously, "capital idea.

Yes, get Desmond to a phone and he can get you anything.

Shoes. Surely. You want to try it?"

"Mmm. Not just yet. Too crowded."

"Tonight then. Fine, miss. Splendid. I won't be sleeping anyway."

She turned away from him and put her back to the rail. The sun was setting between two of the whirling wind columns.

Vast underlit cloud banks of mellow Renaissance gold. Yaobang turned and looked as well, biting his lip, mercifully silent.

Along with the filthy brain buzz of the cigarette, it gave

Laura an expansive feeling of sublimity. Beautiful, but it wouldn't last long-the sun sank fast in the tropics.

Yaobang straightened, pointed. "What is that?"

Laura looked. His paranoia-sharpened senses had caught something-a distant, airborne glint.

Yaobang squinted. "Some little kind of chopper, maybe?"

"It's too small!" Laura said. "It's a drone!" Light had winked briefly from its blades and now she'd lost it against the clouds.

"A drone?" he said, alarmed by her tone of voice. "Is it voodoo? Can it hurt us?"

"Shut up!" Laura shoved away from the rail. "I'm gonna climb up to the crow's nest-I want a better look." She hurried across the deck, her sandals flopping.

The ship's foremast had a radar horn and video for the guidance computer. But there was access for repair and hu- man backup: a crow's nest, three stories above the deck.

Laura grabbed the cool iron rungs, then stopped in frustra- tion. The damned sari-it would tangle her feet. She turned and beckoned to Yaobang.

There was a shout from above. "Hey!"

A man in a popsicle-red rain slicker was leaning over the crow's-nest railing. "What are you doing?"

"Are you crew?" Laura shouted, hesitating.

"No, are you?"

She shook her head. "I thought I saw something"-she pointed--over there!"

"What did you see?"

"I think it was a Canadair CL-227!"

The man's shoes clattered as he came down quickly to the deck. "What's a canadare?" Yaobang demanded plaintively, hopping from foot to foot. He noticed a pair of Zeiss binocu- lars around the other's neck. "Where'd you get those?"

"Deck room," said Red Raincoat, meaninglessly.

"I know you, right? Henderson? I'm Desmond Yaobang.

Countertrade section."

"Hennessey," Red Raincoat said.

"Hennessey, yes ..."

"Give me those," Laura demanded. She grabbed the bin- oculars. Under the flimsy poncho, Hennessey's chest was padded and huge. He was wearing something. Bulletproof vest?

A life jacket.

Laura tore her sunglasses off, felt hastily for a pocket- none, in a sari-and propped them on her head. She focused the binoculars.

She found the thing almost at once. There it was, hovering malignantly at the twilit skyline. It had been in her night- mares so many times that she couldn't believe she was seeing it.

It was the drone that had strafed her Lodge. Not the identical one, because this one was military green, but the same model-double rotors, dumbbell shape. Even the stupid landing gear.

"Let me see!" Yaobang demanded frantically. To shut him up, Laura passed him the binoculars.

"Hey," Hennessey protested mildly. "Those are mine."

He was a thirtyish Anglo with prominent cheekbones and a small, neatly trimmed mustache. He had no accent-straight

Mid-Atlantic Net talk. Below the baggy plastic poncho there was something lithe and weaselish about him.

He smiled at her, tightly, looking into her eyes. "You

American? USA?"

Laura felt for her sunglasses. They'd pushed the sari back, showing her blond hair.

"I see it!" Yaobang burst out excitedly. "A flying ground nut!"

Hennessey's eyes widened. He'd recognized her. He was thinking fast. She could see him shift forward onto the balls of his feet.

"Maybe it's Grenadian!" Yaobang said. "Better warn everyone!

I'll watch the thing-missy, you go running!"

"No, don't do that," Hennessey told her. He reached under his poncho and tugged out a piece of machinery. It was small and skeletal and looked like a cross between a vice-grip wrench and a putty applicator. He stepped near Yaobang, holding the device with both hands.

"Oh, God," Yaobang said blindly. Another wave of it was hitting him-he was trembling so hard he could barely hold up the binoculars. "I'm frightened," he sniveled. A cracked, reflexive, little-boy voice. "I can see it coming.... I'm afraid!"

Hennessey pointed the machine at Yaobang's ribs and pulled its trigger, twice. There were two discreet little coughs, barely audible, but the thing jumped viciously in Hennessey's hands.

Yaobang convulsed with impact, arms flying, chest buckling as if hit with an axe. He fell over his own feet and hit the deck with a clatter of binoculars.

Laura stared at him in stunned horror. Hennessey had just blown two great smoking holes in Yaobang's jacket. Yaobang lay unmoving, face livid and black. "You killed him!"

"No. No problem. Special narcotic dye," Hennessey blurted.

She looked again. Just for a second. Yaobang's mouth was clogged with blood. She stared at Hennessey and began back- ing away.

With a sudden smooth, reflexive motion Hennessey cen- tered the gun on her chest. She saw the cavernous barrel of it and knew suddenly that she was looking at death. "Laura

Webster!" Hennessey said. "Don't run, don't make me shoot!"

Laura froze.

"Police officer," Hennessey said. He glanced nervously off the port bow. "Vienna Convention, Special Operations

Task Force. Just obey orders and everything will be fine."

"That's a lie!" Laura shouted. "There's no such thing!"

He wasn't looking at her. He kept looking out to sea. She followed his gaze.

Something was coming toward the ship. It was rushing over the waves, with astonishing, magic swiftness. A long white stick, like a wand, with sharp square wings. Behind it a slim straight billow of contrail air.

It rushed toward the bridge, at the stem, a needle on a thread of steam. Into it. Through it.

Raw fire bloomed, taller than houses. A wall of heat and sound surged up the deck and knocked her from her feet. She was down, bruised, flash-blinded. The bow of the ship bucked under her like a huge steel animal.

Roaring seconds. Pieces of plastic and steel were pattering onto the deck. The bridge superstructure-the radar mast, the phone antennas-was one vast, ugly conflagration. It was like someone had built a volcano in it-thermite heat and white- hot twisting spars of metal and lava globs of molten ceramic and plastic. Like a firecracker in a white wedding cake.

Below them, the ship was still pitching. Hennessey had lurched to his feet and made a run for the railing. For a moment she thought he was going to jump. Then he was back with a life preserver-a big ceremonial flotation ring marked in Parsi script. He stumbled and rolled and got back to her.