What was chiefly worrying him, Maddalena puzzled
out at last, was not being able to see where they were
going with his own eyes; he had known of radar, of
coursesome of the wealthier fishing-families in Grad-
gnol could afford both it and a fish-finder, whereas the
poor families had to settle for the latter onlybut the
little screen was no psychological equivalent for eye-
sight.
It was, naturally, out of the question to go on deck
with a hundred-fifty-knot wind howling past them; they
were only able to sit in the after cockpit because the
fairing over the cabin had been subtly altered to make it
aerodynamically efficient at these speeds. But when
Bracy showed signs of real distress at this headlong
career, she decided they might risk running for a while
on manual control, to show that the ultimate responsibil-
ity had not been ceded to the machines.
That was almost the last decision she took in life.
Some enormous marine creaturenot a wolfshark, but
nearly as large and quite as solidshowed up on the
fish-finder, and seeing such a huge obstacle dead ahead
Bracy yelled with alarm and put the helm hard over.
The boat dipped its side in the water, because the foils
could not cope with such a violent change of direction,
and for half a mile they skidded in a tight circle with
spray streaming over the deck and great shuddering
slams of water battering the hull.
By the time Maddelena got the helm away from him
and let the boat straighten of her own accord, the cause
of the trouble was miles astern. But that was the last at-
tempt the fisher-boy made to control his craft at its new
maximum velocity.
Especially when they were compelled to slow to avoid
comment on sighting other ships, Maddalena had a good
deal of time to talk to the boy, and by the end of the
voyage had come to like him a great deal. Faced with
such problems as he had, many youths would have given
np at once; instead, orphaned, with nothing but this
trawler as a means of livelihood, he had grimly set out to
replace two healthy, hard-working adults with decades
of seafaring experience. That sort of thing took guts of a
different kind than those needed to save one from panic
at the sight of strange armoured figures chasing a hospi-
tal patient through a nightmare of menacing machinery.
She had thought of him entirely as an instrument, a way
to escape the surveillance of the Cyclopeans and follow
Kobi to Rimerley’s island; now at last she came to see
him as a personshy, ambitious even though trapped by
circumstances, and intensely proud.
Also, handicapped as he was by his overdose of radia-
tion, he had the kind of tough persistence legend attrib-
uted to the pre-galactic coolie who, half-starved,
half-frozen, dressed in rags, had maintained unstoppable
energy.
By the time they came over the horizon to Rimerley’s
island, and accordingly had to slow to typical trawler
speed to escape notice, she had extensively revised her
original plan and spent a couple of hours before nightfall
and the landing in briefing him with the new instruc-
tions.
It was ironical that they should be able to drift with
the current here, in plain view, Maddalena thought as she
surveyed the doctor’s private domain. So much the bet-
ter, thoughto have had to wait till dark before coming
into line-of-sight would have imposed extra difficulties.
With a powerful magnifying periscope which had
been built into the mast of the trawler and projected a
needle-sharp image on a screen at the bottom, she studied
the prospect before her. Clearly, Rimerley was one of
Cyclops’s “top twentieth”, as Gus Langenschmidt called
themindeed, he must be among the thousand wealthiest
men on the planet to maintain premises like these. A
huge house, part of it extending out into the ocean so
mat one coma en)oy tne sensation or t)emg in a vast
aquarium by descending a short flight of steps; a private
dockyard with two skimmers at the quay; a ‘copter
parked behind the house, and beyond that a road wind-
ing up to the topmost point on the island, where trees