“Barly will probably take it off him,” Maddalena said
sourly.
“He won’t get the chance. I obtained his permit to
clear the trawler for open sea last night, and then Nole
fixed himuha liquid lullaby. He’ll sleep till noon.”
“A shame. I had as much as I could stand of synthe-
siser cake away back when on Fourteen. Well, all I have
to do now, I guess, is wait.”
“Exactlyanril you’re hull-down away from the last
of the Cyclopean ships watching this area. And then-
swift journey!”
Maddalena gave a throaty laugh and signed off.
Bracy Dyge played his part magnificently, Langen-
schmidt had to admit. He came down the steps to the
dock with just the right mixture of regret at leaving the
comfortable island and the luxuries the Corps enjoyed,
and eagerness to try out the new solar sails and mended
fish-finder which were the official extent of the modifica-
tions to his boat.
“There was no call to go to such trouble for the lad,”
said one of the Cyclopean inspectors, a man with a face
like a lemon whom Langenschmidt had preferred not to
fix a name on in case it was as ugly as he was. “I’m sure
Alura Quist will see he gets properly rewarded.”
“I’m sure,” Langenschmidt agreed blandly, forbearing
to mention that if all went well Quist would be getting a
reward of her own quite shortly.
He was almost holding his breath as the trawler eased
out to open water, with Bracy proudly waving at his
new solar sails. Then he relaxed. In two hours, or three
at the most, the boat would have passed the outermost
circle of quarantine vessels, and then some remarkable
changes would come over it.
The solar sails would be furled, and a pair of hydro-
foils would extrude from a hidden compartment under
the hull, and the compact fusion reactor which had re-
placed the old stored-power accumulators would feed
power to the pipesand the trawler, shaking a little, but
perfectly sound after what the engineers had done to it,
would take off for Rimerley’s private island at a com-
fortable hundred and fifty knots.
Quite neat. Quite neat. He only hoped he would have
been able to wipe the grin from his face by the time he
next had to confront Barly and explain about the need
for his departure to attend this important conference
about a base to substitute for the one being closed down.
xvn
That voyage was among the most extraordinary ex-
periences of Maddalena’s chequered life. She had hung
from the talons of a parradile; she had dropped through
atmosphere with nothing but a spacesuit’s reacdon jets to
save her from a fatal crash; she had canoed over rapids
and ridden all manner of odd beasts of burden. But
streaking across the oceans of Cyclops was perhaps the
weirdest journey of all.
To start with, the news that a Gratignol trawlerlast
seem limping along at a typical speed of a few knots-
was outrunning all but the fastest passenger skimmers
plying between the more densely inhabited islands would
certainly have alerted someone’s interest if it had been
noised around. Accordingly, whenever the automatic de-
tectors spotted another vessel in the vicinity, they cut
the power and spread the solar sails. Bracy and Mad-
dalena then sat out idly on the deck looking as though
they hadn’t a worry in the universe bar the shortage of
oilfish in these waters. The danger past, the power re-
turned, the sails furled, and once more they leapt
towards their goal at the front tip of a mile-long jet of
heated water.
Bracy, although he had been very willing to start on
this mission, and at the outset was delighted with what
had been done to his craft, grew bored within a few
hours. Maddalena had shown him the operation of ev-
erything, including the devices which had no connection
with seafaring, in order to entertain him, but the fact
that control of his vessel had been given over to
machinery disturbed him, and he sat with a worried ex-
pression staring at the wake and listening with head
cocked to the hum of power emanating from below.