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understand.
"She's all right," Twisp said. "She's coming out of it. Bushka, you come
back here and look after her while I get a line aboard that gondola."
"How're you going to do that?" Bushka asked.
"I'm going to swim it over! What else? Brett, hold us steady as you can
right here."
"They're Mermen," Bushka said. "Why can't they bring a line to us?"
"The minute they open their hatch, that gondola is going down," Twisp said.
"It'll fill like a punctured float."
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Scudi's voice came clearly then: "What's . . . what's happening?"
Bushka released his safety harness and made his way back to her. Brett heard
the hatch open and close. Bushka's voice, quite low, gave Scudi her answer.
"An LTA?" she asked. "Where are we?"
"Near Outpost Twenty-two." There was a scuffling sound and Bushka's voice:
"Stay down there!"
"I have to get to the controls! It's shallow here. Very shallow! In these
seas --"
"All right!" Bushka said. "Do what you have to do."
Scuffing footsteps on the deck, then water sloshing from a wet dive suit.
Scudi's hand gripped Brett's shoulder. "Dammit, but my head hurts," she said.
Her hand touched his neck and he felt a flash of pain on the side of his
temple.
It was a throbbing pain, as though something had struck him there.
Scudi leaned across him, her hand over his shoulder to steady herself. Their
cheeks touched.
Brett felt something flow between them, creating a moment of panic followed by
a sudden inrush of awareness. His neck hair prickled as he realized what had
happened. He felt that he was two people become one but aware of the
separation
-- one person standing beside the other.
I'm seeing with Scudi's eyes!
Brett's hands moved automatically on the wheel, a new expertise he had not
known he possessed. The foil gentled its way close to the gondola and hung
there with just enough headway to counteract the wind.
What's happening to us?
The words formed silently in their minds, a simultaneous question, shared in
an instant and answered in an instant.
The kelp has changed us! We share our senses when we touch!
With this odd double vision, Brett saw Twisp swimming now, moving through a
channel in the kelp and very close to the gondola. Faces peered out through
the plaz. Brett thought he recognized one of those faces and, with that
recognition, came a bursting daydream, instantaneous -- a sense of people
talking inside the gondola. The sensation vanished and he was left staring at
white-whipped waves breaking across the LTA, Twisp clinging there while he
fastened his line to a handgrab beside the plaz lock.
Scudi whispered to Brett: "Did you hear them talking?"
"I couldn't make out the words."
"I could. Gallow's people are in there and they have prisoners. The
prisoners are being taken to Gallow."
"Where is Gallow? Here?"
"I think so, but I recognized a prisoner -- it's Dark Panille, Shadow. I've
worked with him."
"The man who treated me in the passageway!"
"Yes, and one of the captors is that Gulf Nakano. I'm going to warn Bushka.
He has the weapon. We will have to lock them into one of the cargo bays."
Scudi turned away and worked her way back to Bushka, steadying herself along
the overhead grabs. Brett heard her explain the situation to Bushka, saying
she had recognized Nakano through the gondola's plaz.
"They've opened their hatch," Brett said. "People are coming out. I see
Shadow
. . . there's Nakano. Waves are slopping into the hatch. Everybody's coming
out."
Scudi slipped into the command seat beside Brett. "I'll take it. You help
Bushka at the entry hatch."
"No tricks!" Bushka yelled as he followed Brett down the passageway.
"We've got to get Twisp out of there!" Brett said.
"He's staying at the gondola to unfasten the line when it goes under."
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They were at the hatchway then, wind whipping around them and spray in their
eyes. Brett was thankful for his dive suit. In spite of the chill, sweat
poured from his body. The muscles of his arms and legs were tightly humming
bands. A wave broke against the hull below them. Brett sighted along the
line
-- a long row of bobbing heads worked their way toward the foil. He
recognized
Nakano in the lead, staying close to Panille. The line snaked up and down the
waves.
"We'll bring them aboard one at a time, right into the cargo bay behind me,"
Bushka said.
"We'll have to disarm them."
Nakano was first through the hatch. His face had the single-minded
aggressiveness of a bull dasher. Bushka leveled the lasgun from the far side
of the hatchway, slipped a similar weapon from the thigh pocket of Nakano's
dive suit, grabbed a knife from Nakano's waist sheath and motioned with his
head for the Merman to enter the open hatch to the cargo bay.
For a blink, Brett thought Nakano would attack Bushka despite the lasgun, but
the man shrugged and ducked through into the bay.
Panille stayed down below to help others and the next person through was a
woman, red-haired, beautiful.
"Kareen Ale," Bushka said. "Well, well." He sent his gaze licking over her
body, saw no weapon and nodded toward the cargo hatch. "In there, please."
She stared at the lasgun in Bushka's grip.
"Do it!"
A shout from below the hatch brought Brett whirling around to face the sea.
"What is it?" Bushka demanded. He was trying to divide his attention between
the open cargo hatch and the outer hatch where survivors still waited to be
brought aboard.
Brett peered out across Panille, who hung below the hatch with an arm wrapped
through a loop in his safety line. The gondola beyond him had begun to sink,
slowly dragging the orange LTA bag under the waves. The safety line lay
across the waves with Twisp pulling himself along it. Something was happening
about midway along the line, though, and Brett tried to make out what had
caused the shout.
"What's happening?" Bushka asked. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]