WITH THE LIGHTNINGS(45)

"Madame Margrethe," Daniel said; the girls resolutely refused either to call him "Daniel" or to give him their last names. It was a piece of coquetry that he didn't understand, not a concern for their security. "I can honestly say that no female company has impressed me as favorably as that by which I now am honored."

That wasn't true, of course, but it wasn't any greater a lie than failing to correct the impression that he was well-travelled. Besides, the girls were quite adequately pretty and Daniel shared with most men of his acquaintance the feeling that availability enhanced a woman's attractiveness. He knew there were other philosophies on the question, but he didn't hold them.

Bet giggled again. That could get old; but not in the length of time Daniel expected to know the lady.

Candace cleared his throat. "Why don't you switch places with Daniel now, Margrethe?" he said, his tone smoothing as the sentence continued. "That'll let Bet and our guest get to know each other better. And some wine wouldn't be amiss."

"Ooh, yes!" Bet said, perhaps the longest sentence Daniel had thus far heard from her lips. She turned and knelt on the seat to lean into the luggage space. "I brought the special white from Herrick's own vineyard!"

Bet wore a thin dress that shone either orange or golden depending on how the light struck it. The fabric was opaque but very clinging. From this angle, Daniel was willing to say that Bet's face wasn't her most attractive feature after all.

"Here, you come back and then I can take your seat, lieutenant," Margrethe said as she half-rose and smiled at him.

It was going to be close quarters to trade seats like this. Daniel could only hope that Candace wouldn't turn to watch the inevitable contact between the moving parties. Daniel doubted the Kostroman lieutenant would abandon him on a deserted island, but jealousy was an emotion Daniel had enough second-hand experience with to respect.

He rose; something in the sea thirty feet below caught his eye. "Say!" he said. "Circle here! Candace, can you circle here?"

"What?" said Candace. He banked the car slightly but he didn't throw it in the tight circle Daniel had wanted. It didn't matter; there was no longer anything to see.

"It was a sweep," Daniel said, giving the others a smile of glum embarrassment. "I'm pretty sure it was a sweep, I mean. It's a predator in your seas here."

The seascape they overflew had remained much the same for the past fifty kilometers. Reefs neared the surface and shelved away into valleys that were rarely more than a few hundred feet deep. In this clear water, bottom life even in those relative depths was visible as movement and shadow.

Daniel had noticed coral standing unusually high and vivid in an oval area which sprawled up the side of an approaching reef. Fish in their striped and flickering brilliance were relatively sparse against the lush background. The beaks of the reef fish hadn't browsed the sessile life of this patch to the same degree as they had neighboring regions.

Only because he was already focused on the unusual region did Daniel see the paired tentacles lash swiftly over the top of the coral and withdraw into the cave from which they'd so briefly extended. The coral shuddered: all the animalcules went limp in their self-secreted lime caverns, changing the look of the setting without any individual movement great enough to be visible from where Daniel watched.

Simultaneously all the fish in the water through which the tentacles passed rolled onto their backs and began to sink, stunned by the electrical charge the sweep had released into the water. A few fins wobbled randomly.

The coral animals would recover from the shock. Most of the fish would not have time to do so, because when the sweep was sure it was safe from retaliation the tentacles would project again from the pit in which the creature hid. This time they would pick over the reef, searching for the slight electrical charge that all life-forms generated.

The hooked teeth on the tentacles would draw the fish, quivering and still alive, back to the sweep's lair. Its beak would complete the job the electric shock had begun.

"Oh, it must be wonderful to know so many things, Lieutenant Leary," Margrethe said.

Daniel wondered if he could've gotten the same response by saying, "The sun is shining."

"My uncle is a great naturalist," he said aloud. "For a serving naval officer, that is."

On the other hand, Margrethe was trying to communicate something beyond her interest in Kostroman natural history. From the way Candace hunched over the steering yoke, Daniel wasn't the only one getting that message.

Margrethe too must have decided she was being overly obvious. She joined Daniel in an attempt to minimize contact as they squeezed in turn through the narrow center aisle between the front seats.