WITH THE LIGHTNINGS(95)

Daniel turned and paddled feebly parallel to the shore. He'd used a good deal of his strength fighting the tide when it tried to push him in this direction; now when he could use some help he was in quiet water.

He could really use some help. Well, so could his detachment. What Adele and the ratings had was Daniel Leary, and on his honor that would be enough.

Twice he turned toward shore again. Twice the clamped gill covers of an outraged worm prodded him back. He giggled: Kostroman tube worms had a sense of honor very similar to that of Cinnabar nobles. All this time he'd thought society on the two planets was very different.

He supposed the pain in his lungs and shoulders was giving him hallucinations. Well, his present reality had very little to recommend it.

Daniel wasn't fully aware that his fourth attempt to reach shore had succeeded until his left hand dug into mud. He collapsed, still in the water, and dragged sobbing breaths into his lungs. It was nearly a minute before he managed to crawl out of the lagoon and stand upright.

A bush rubbed him; its leaves felt like sandpaper. He ignored them and waved toward the shore he'd left a lifetime ago. Woetjans would be watching through the goggles.

Daniel tested the fishline. It still had the tension of its own full length. Slowly, careful not to snap it now against an unseen snag, Daniel began to hand in the line and the heavier cord that his ratings would by now have fastened to its end.



A bird whose wings were a meter across swooped over the lagoon with a coo-o-o, then vanished again in the overhanging trees. Adele jumped; the Kostromans across the twenty feet of water from her bellowed and sprang away from their campfire. One of them got to his feet and hurled a stone into the night when he was sure that the creature was gone.

The thugs settled again. One of them tried to build up the fire, but the wood he added was damp. The flames sank to a hissing glow and the rest of the gang snarled curses at him. They were very nervous.

They had even better reason to be than they knew.

Adele shivered. The air, though warm in any normal sense, cooled her by evaporation as it dried the salt water from her skin. She'd been too exhausted to eat when she and Daniel returned from scouting, and she hadn't eaten later because tension and the flurry of activity had masked her hunger.

Now she was cold and wet and alone in the darkness. She liked to think of herself as a creature of the mind, but her body was reimposing its own reality.

She'd know better the next time. The thought of there being a next time like this made her grin despite herself: Dangerous Adele, the Pistol-Packing Librarian.

She sobered. There probably would be a next time, if she survived this one.

The Kostromans subsided into glum speculation again. They were urban thugs, as unused to these sorts of conditions as Adele herself was, and they didn't have her self-disciplined willingness to deal with a situation as she found it.

Ganser had pulled into a notch midway along the lagoon side of this islet. He hadn't built a real camp. Open ration cans winked orange in the firelight; one floated near where Adele crouched on the opposite shore.

The inflatable liferaft was drawn up on the mud near the fire. Adele wondered if it was tied. The thugs probably didn't think they'd need the boat again, but the Cinnabar sailors certainly did.

She and the Cinnabar sailors. For the first time since the Mundys of Chatsworth were massacred, Adele Mundy belonged to a group.

Something plopped loudly in the lagoon. A thug cried out and turned. The rhythm of night-sounds shifted for a moment after the cry, then resumed at its previous level.

Daniel Leary stepped out of the undergrowth on the other side of the Kostromans' fire. He carried a wooden baton a meter long.

"Good evening," Daniel said. "Surrender quietly right now. You're surrounded."

The thugs bawled and scrambled away from the fire. One of them aimed a submachine gun at Daniel. Adele was no longer cold. She shot the gunman in the knee. The gunman screamed in rising pain and fell backward.

Ganser swung at Daniel. Daniel jabbed his baton into the thug's soft belly, then rang the wood off Ganser's scalp as he doubled over.

A Kostroman squatting at the edge of the light had a submachine gun also. Adele hadn't noticed it until the thug pulled the trigger. They'd retrieved guns from the lagoon, but unlike the sailors they hadn't even tried to wash the salt out of the circuitry.

The submachine gun blew up in a vivid green flash: its battery had shorted through the mechanism. Vaporized metal and globs of burning plastic casing splattered in all directions like the contents of an incendiary grenade.

Daniel shouted, but the thugs themselves caught most of the fireball. Woetjans and Barnes burst from the undergrowth to either side of their commander and joined him in clubbing every Kostroman still standing.