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the fact that
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they'd never been able to find the Visitor Center and Initial Indoctrination
Module.
The earthslide had whisked it into a smear of stone.
"Stop lazing, lover," Krysty panted. "Many a mile to go before we sleep."
"How far d'you figure we've gone?" he asked J.B.
"Not far enough, Ryan."
"Halfway?" Jak gasped. It wasn't entirely clear whether it was a question or a
statement.
"More than half," Donfil replied, still digging in his clumsy paddle with a
rhythmic, almost mechanical drive, the water swirling in tiny circles about
the tip of his blade.
"Yeah. Half is done. Two halfs done, way I feel now." Lori pushed her blond
hair out of her eyes and continued paddling.
Doc was resting, chest heaving. "I was never much of an oarsman in my
university days, I fear."
"More of cocksMan, Doc?" Jak grinned. But the old man was so tired from his
labors that the crude joke didn't even prompt a blush.
"Just shut up and keep rowing," Ryan ordered. They were about two-thirds of
the way across, and it was now possible to make out the trees above the
shoreline. But the tide was turning, and their progress seemed to be slowing.
"GONNA MAKE IT," Ryan gasped, lips peeled back off his strong white teeth in a
feral grin.
The raft was bobbing along steadily, now only a quarter mile or so off the
beach ahead of them. Every yard of progress was harder than the one before as
the swirling tide worked against their efforts. Some of the ropes were
becoming loose,
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the drums rattling and banging against one another. Also, Ryan noticed that
they were slowly settling deeper in the water, indicating that some of the
chemical containers had tiny leaks.
Lori and Doc had both given up, tired out from paddling. Krysty, Jak and
Donfil were all laboring, breath rasping, sweat-soaked. Only J.B. and Ryan
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kept up a steady stroke, plowing their way remorselessly north.
Away to their left and a little beyond them, Ryan had noticed some kind of
disturbance of the sea. But the rise and fall of the long Atlantic rollers
made it hard to see what was happening. There was some spray and tossing white
water, and a horde of screaming black-capped gulls.
But the muscle-tearing effort of fighting against the pitching of the raft
distracted him from trying to investigate the incident any further.
Two narrow promontories of jumbled granite boulders stuck out into the sea for
a couple of hundred yards, sheltering the beach from the wind, giving an area
of calmer water. Once they were within the horns Ryan relaxed a little,
knowing they could almost glide in from there. The others also felt it,
smiling at one another.
Donfil spread himself across the cans, allowing his long arms to dangle into
the sea, peering down.
"Very clear, the water," he said, voice lifted above the lapping of the waves
on the nearby beach. "Must be thirty feet deep, but you can see nearly all the
way to the bottom."
"Any buried treasure?" Doc asked, lifting himself ;on one elbow.
The Apache shook his head, his jet-black, shoulder-length hair trailing into
the water. "No. Lot of sand and some rocks."
Doc was chirpier now that they were so close to safety. "I dabbled somewhat in
ichthyology in my youth."
"You what?"
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"Ichthyology."
"What's that, Doc?" Krysty asked.
He dabbed spray off his face. "It is, my dearest flame-headed lady, the study
of big fishes that have little fishes to bite them. And little fishes, smaller
fishes and so on, ad infinitum." He cackled with laughter at a joke that
nobody understood.
"You read all 'bout fishes?" Jak asked. "How they kill?"
"Yes. I recall that these chilly waters off the northeastern states were
particularly fruitful for the larger fish and mammals of the oceans."
"Sharks and whales? We had them not far from my ville when I was a boy," Ryan
said. "Some big bastards, so the fishermen said. I never saw none of them that
big."
"I never saw any
," Krysty corrected.
"You haven't done that in an age," he complained, keeping the rough paddle
dipping and pulling.
"Haven't needed to, lover." She smiled.
"This used to be a big center for the Yankee whaling industry when I was a
shaver," Doc reminisced. "New England's bravest. Battling monster whales from
cockleshell dories. All done now. They got hunted near to destruction. Right
whales, blues, sperm whales. Lots of species, I'm ashamed to say. Man's
inhumanity to his fellow creatures that What was that?"
The raft tipped suddenly, sending solid water across its rough deck of bound
timbers. As quickly as it had rocked, it became still again.
"See anything, Donfil?" Ryan asked, half standing, holding his hewn branch
like a harpoon, hefted against any threat.
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