“I don’t think we’ll be able to use the hull,” Daniel said. “It’s a one-piece casting and very tough, but when the integrity’s breached the core of the sandwich starts to fray. Since we can’t reheat the edges to three thousand degrees Kelvin, we’re better off using wood. I’m pretty sure we can get the waterjet back in operation, though, and at least one of the solar sails.”
“I see,” Adele said, not that she did. She stared at the jungle, visualizing a boat made of that.
“You can access a forestry database from here, can’t you?” Daniel said. “I’ve only got the once-over-lightly from the Aglaia’s library. We don’t want to learn that we’re building the hull of a tree whose sap makes people turn blue and die in a week.”
He laughed. In the lagoon the divers were back at work, bringing up objects so disguised by clinging mud that Adele couldn’t guess their identity. The atoll’s outer face was clean sand and clear water, but the lagoon-side shores were gray-black muck that the ocean currents didn’t reach to scour away.
“I can access any electronic information that I could have found for you while we were in Kostroma City,” Adele said, feeling disassociated from the cheerful bustle about her. It was as though a thick glass wall encircled her, keeping her apart from her companions despite her presence in their midst. “I suppose there are botanical files as well as the zoological ones we’ve used in the past.”
“You know?” Daniel said, looking out into the lagoon. He’d finished the nut; he tossed the rind into the undergrowth behind him to decay into nutrients like those that stained the still water. “If the Ahura hadn’t been an electrofoil, we’d never have learned about the sweep. They’re quite harmless to humans, you know. Though—”
His grin.
“—I wouldn’t care to have gone swimming with that one.”
“Yes, that’s probably true,” Adele said.
The contrast between her dour feelings of defeat and the cheerful optimism Daniel shared with his sailors suddenly amused her. She chuckled also. Daniel was genuinely glad to have observed a creature of previously unknown size. It had almost killed him and his companions; it had almost wrecked his plans to escape Kostroma—
But “almost” was the key word with Daniel Leary. He didn’t worry about things that were past; it was at least an open question in Adele’s mind whether he worried about the future either. Though she wasn’t about to call him a simple man. . . .
Daniel and Woetjans were discussing food and water. Daniel nodded to the sailor’s queries and clipped another ripe nut as he listened.
Adele walked past Lamsoe and Sun, stepping carefully so that the wind didn’t blow sand particles from her soles over the dismantled weapons. Hogg, cleaning sap from his knife with a fibrous leaf, nodded to her, then grimaced.
Hogg had a bad bruise on the right side of his head. A film of ointment closed the scrapes and the cut above his temple, but Adele was afraid he needed better medical attention than was available here.
She stepped between Hogg and Dasi, facing the group of former prisoners. They stopped their low-voiced conversations and looked at her with a mixture of emotions. A sort of bestial hunger was part of the brew she saw now in the thugs’ eyes.
Adele smiled. It was her usual version, an expression nobody could mistake for good-humored.
“You’ll have noticed that all the guns were soaked when the boat was wrecked,” Adele said. “You may believe that they won’t work until they’re properly cleaned, probably cleaned better than is possible here on this island.”
“Mistress!” Dasi blurted in horror behind her. In the corner of her eye Adele saw Hogg move, putting a restraining hand on his companion.
Adele drew her own pistol from her jacket pocket. She fired off-hand. A bell-shaped fruit exploded on a branch twenty feet in the air, spraying pulp and seeds down onto the Kostromans. Ganser shouted and covered his bald scalp with his hands.
“My gun was made on Cinnabar,” she said. “It works quite well.”
Adele slid the weapon back into her pocket. “And so do I,” she added over her shoulder as she returned to Daniel’s side.