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"Can you see the gondola?" Twisp asked "Brett! Stay doind froet fouled in it"

Brett swung the foil to the left and it ed in a trough, rocking dangerously at the crest, then into the next trough At the following crest, he saw the gondola, a dark shape awash in the long seas The orange bag trailed out behind it with kelp laced across it The gondola was coht The seas were s Another crest and Brett saw faces pressed against the gondola&039;s plaz

"There are people in there!" Twisp shouted "I saw faces!"

"Damn!" Bushka said "Damn, damn, damn!"

"We have to take them off," Brett said "We can&039;t leave them there"

"I know that!" Bushka snarled

Scudi took thiswords Brett couldn&039;t understand

"She&039;s all right," Twisp said "She&039;s co out of it Bushka, you coet a line aboard that gondola"

"How&039;re you going to do that?" Bushka asked

"I&039; to swiht here"

"They&039;re Mer a line to us?"

"Thedown," Twisp said "It&039;ll fill like a punctured float"

Scudi&039;s voice ca?"

Bushka released his safety harness and made his way back to her Brett heard the hatch open and close Bushka&039;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&039;s voice: "Stay down there!"

"I have to get to the controls! It&039;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 froripped Brett&039;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 te had struck him there

Scudi leaned across him, her hand over his shoulder to steady herself Their cheeks touched

Brett felt so 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 o people beco beside the other

I&039; with Scudi&039;s eyes!

Brett&039;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&039;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 e touch!

With this odd double vision, Brett saisp swih 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, ca daydreaondola 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 the?"

"I couldn&039;t make out the words"

"I could Gallow&039;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&039;s Dark Panille, Shadow I&039;ve worked with hieway!"

"Yes, and one of the captors is that Gulf Nakano I&039; to warn Bushka He has the weapon We will have to lock theo 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&039;s plaz

"They&039;ve opened their hatch," Brett said "People are co out I see Shadowthere&039;s Nakano Waves are slopping into the hatch Everybody&039;s co out"

Scudi slipped into the command seat beside Brett "I&039;ll take it You help Bushka at the entry hatch"

"No tricks!" Bushka yelled as he followed Brett down the passageway

"We&039;ve got to get Twisp out of there!" Brett said

"He&039;s staying at the gondola to unfasten the line when it goes under"

They were at the hatchway then, hipping around them and spray in their eyes Brett was thankful for his dive suit In spite of the chill, sweat poured frohtly huainst the hull below the 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&039;ll bring theo bay behind me," Bushka said

"We&039;ll have to disarh the hatch His face had the single-ressiveness of a bull dasher Bushka leveled the lasgun from the far side of the hatchway, slipped a sih pocket of Nakano&039;s dive suit, grabbed a knife from Nakano&039;s waist sheath and motioned with his head for the Mero bay

For a blink, Brett thought Nakano would attack Bushka despite the lasgun, but the h 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, saeapon and nodded toward the cargo hatch "In there, please"

She stared at the lasgun in Bushka&039;s grip

"Do it!"

A shout fro around to face the sea

"What is it?" Bushka de 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 arondola beyond hi under the waves The safety line lay across the waves with Twisp pulling hi the line, though, and Brett tried to ?" Bushka asked

"I don&039;t know There&039;s a length of kelp across the line Twisp released the line fro&039;s "

A human hand came out of the water near the kelp and one, two kelp strands whipped across the hand and the hand vanished Twisp reached the kelp barrier and hesitated there A questing strand of kelp touched his head, paused there and withdreisp continued his way along the line, stopping finally beside Panille, exhausted Panille put an arm under Twisp&039;s shoulder and helped support him Waves lifted bothhim up?" Brett called

Taved a hand to stop hi arrip

"Two people," Twisp said "The kelp took them It just took them, wrapped around the every h the hatch, then turned to help Panille Bushka waved Panille toward the cargo bay

"No," Brett said He stepped between Bushka and Panille "Shadoas a prisoner He helped me He&039;s not one of them"

"Who says?"

"The kelp says," Twisp said

Control the religion and the food and n the world

- GeLaar Gallow

Vata&039;s growing restlessness sloshed nutrient over the rim of her tank At times she arched her back as if in pain, and the pink knobs of her nipples broke the surface like the bright peaks of two blue-green h on boo, reached out to tweak one of the gnarled, vein-swollen things and was discovered catatonic, his blaspheer still held in position over the vat

This event redoubled C/P Simone Rocksack&039;s efforts to effect the Islander move down under Stories of "The Wrath of Vata" circulated freely and no one on the C/P&039;s staff made any effort to sort fact fro who objected to the ruher ift"

Vata herself, locked inside her tank and her skull while generation after generation of her people evolved around her, explored her world with the tender new frond-tips of the kelp

Kelp was fingertip and ear to her, nose and eye and tongue Where ht surface she witnessed pastel sunrises, the passage of boats and Islands, the occasional ravages of a hunt of dashers Scrubberfish that cleaned the kelp&039;s broadest leaves whiskered the deep crevasses of her opulent flesh

Like herself, the kelp was single, incos, rooted them in rock and mud Storms ripped whole vines loose froed safely into rock and grew there For two and a half centuries, at least, the kelp had not bloohter broke the surface of the sea to rise on its hydrogen bag and scatter its fresh spores to the winds

Sometimes in her sleep Vata&039;s loins pulsed with an ancient rhythm and a sweet emptiness ached in her abdomen These were the ti hi approximation of an ele of kelp strained each strand to reach the walls and hatchways of Outpost 22, with no success The perimeter was too wide, the stalks too short