"That wouldn't help anyway," said Wilding gently. "The eel lairs in the plenum chamber, but it hunts outside."
The officer-trainee leaned cautiously over the railing and pointed forward along the hovercraft's side. There was a flared tunnel in the sand where the skirts began to curve in toward the bow. Fragments of crab shell were particularly concentrated near that end of the vessel.
From the size of the opening, the moray was three feet in diameter. That was even bigger than Brainard had thought. A grenade could still do the job.
They couldn't just wait until fresh prey drew the eel away from the torpedoes, though. . . .
"Leaf," the ensign said. "I've seen the damage-control menu, I know what it says. But will K44 really float if we just patch her plenum chamber?"
The motorman frowned as he met Brainard's gaze. "Well, sir," he said, "the one fan's fucked, that's a dockyard job to replace. But three fans 're plenty if you don't need top speed—and if your skirts ain't shot to shit, so they won't hold pressure."
He shrugged. "The read-out says there's nothing so big we can't patch it. Eyeballing the skirts from up here on deck, it looks the same. Lotta little holes, one maybe from a six-inch—but just the hole, it didn't go off. Maybe we get down inside the chamber, there'll be a problem after all. But I don't see bloody why there oughta be."
Caffey, back in the cockpit studying the holographic display Brainard had called up, nodded. "Get rid of the eel, run patching film around the plenum chamber—and we're golden. We can sail the sucker home."
"Then why," said Brainard, "didn't K44's crew do that? They must've known that with their ascender gear shot off, nobody was going to pick up their distress calls more than a few miles away."
His eyes glazed with the vision of spike-thorned honeysuckle, toppling toward him to drain his blood. "Why did they stay here to d-d-die?"
Nobody spoke for a moment. Officer-Trainee Wilding put his hand on Brainard's arm.
"Sir," Wilding said, "I don't think you can understand, because you've never been afraid. But they were just normal men, Holman and his crew. Maybe there wasn't an eel in the plenum chamber, not at first. But something was—crabs, bloodworms. Or it might have been."
"Down there, it gets darker 'n a yard up a hog's ass," Leaf said soberly. "And nobody was gonna risk his life because a chickenshit like Ted Holman told him t' do it."
"Don't tell me about being afraid," Brainard whispered.
A column of spike-thorned honeysuckle toppling forward to drink. . . .
"Right," he said. "We need to bait the eel into the open."
He put his rifle on the deck and bent to unfasten his boots. Boots and trousers would drag in the water, slowing him down.
"Caffey and Wheelwright, you'll hold my left wrist and haul me back aboard when Mr Wilding gives the order," Brainard went on. "Leaf and Newton, you're on my right. Mr Wilding, you'll be in charge of the operation—"
The ensign kicked off one boot, then the other. He was afraid to order anybody else to do what had to be done. Ulcers on Brainard's insteps had leaked blood and serum, gluing his socks to his feet.
"—and you'll throw the grenade. Are you up to that?"
"Look, sir," said the motorman, "I can—"
"Shut up," said Brainard. "Are you up to that duty, Mr Wilding?"
The officer-trainee licked his lips. "Yes sir," he said. "Ah, we'll want to—be—here at the stern, as far from the eel's tunnel as we can get."
"Yes," said Brainard. "Yes, of course."
He pulled off his trousers, moving stiffly because of fatigue and injuries . . . and fear.
"Then let's get on with it, shall we?" he said.
Before the jaws of the moray eel in his mind closed and crushed him into a trembling fetal ball.
* * *
December 14, 380 AS. 0655 hours.
Brainard and four other youths sat in a circle on the Commons of Iowa Keep, drinking and viewing air-projection holograms.
Commuters watched as they rode to work on the slidewalks surrounding the Commons. There wasn't much entertainment in the gathering, but the youths at least showed some life. They were a relief from the backs of other workers going to empty jobs—or the pensioners hunched on benches beneath the elms, waiting for their empty lives to end.
"See, Brainard?" Rufus said. "It's past time already. They decided they didn't want you—so let's go home, huh?"
He swigged and offered Brainard the bottle. Its original contents had been replaced with a sweet punch made from fruit juice and industrial alcohol.
Brainard waved the bottle away. He looked at the clock on a pole in the middle of the Commons.