Starrigger

'This way ? and hurry!'

We went out on deck and made our way aft, keeping a lookout for falling fireballs. The bombardment continued, but most of the orbiting lights had fallen. It seemed like a coordinated attack, with the bombardment probably scheduled to cease just prior to the boarding attempt. I saw now that the fireballs were making circular epicycles as they orbited, and when two searchlight beams from the ship converged in the air above us and to our right, I saw what bore them. These weren't merely sailing fish, but giant airborne animals that looked like mythic sea serpents, with long tapering bodies and mighty pinions beating the night air. On their backs rode smaller animals, Arfies; from what I could make out. One Arfie in each flight crew, the bombadier, twirled a fireball around his head before letting it go. The ship's exciter batteries were taking their toll. The beast in the searchlight beams blossomed into an orange ball of fire, momentum carrying flaming remnants into a descending arc ahead. But there were too many of them, and apparently only two operating batteries.

'Look out!'

It was Roland, and I looked back. Something was swooping toward us, coming directly from behind. We all hit the deck, and I felt air swoosh over me as the animal passed. It smacked into the deck further ahead and went crashing into a canopied dining terrace, then stopped. We got up and looked, backing away prudently, but before anyone could make the intelligent decision to turn and run, big shapes flopped toward us from out of the darkness ? Arfies, four 9f them, armed with crude axes and other, stranger implements. I shot at one of them but apparently missed, or it may have been that the animal was very hard to bring down. Roland and Darla started firing. Darla's first shot seared off a forward flipper of one of them, but he kept coming too, barking insanely, picking up his dropped weapon with the other flipper and charging. Roland used half a charge to flame another of them in its tracks, then turned the beam on the one I had missed, with the same result. But the two remaining were fast ? and big. Up until then I had only seen Arfies at a distance. They were massive beasts, with blubbery rolls of fat padding their undersides and powerful muscles along the flanks to work the flippers. They looked almost nothing like seals or walruses now ? more like amphibian versions of a Brahma bull. We backed as we fired. I got off two more shots with little effect, but Darla finally got her target cut to pieces and it slumped over unmoving. Roland was digging in his pockets for another charge, and Darla was now out. I fired my last round at the remaining Arfie, then threw the gun at it. He kept coming and we all ran, scattering, but the thing chose to follow me. I was wondering what happened to the kid. He was off to my right, hitting his gun with his fist as he ran.

'Won't work!' he yelled.

I yelled for him to throw it over and he did. It was an odd make with a tricky safety catch, which I knew about from having owned one. I thumbed off the safety, turned, and emptied the powerpak in one steady beam right at the creature's head. It was dead by the time it hit me, but it hit like a runaway rig.

The next thing I knew, I was being helped to my feet. I was shaken up, but more or less in one piece.

'You almost flew off the deck,' Roland told me, handing me the dream wand, which I had stuffed in my back pocket.

'Thanks.' I took the wand and slipped it into a side pocket of John's backpack. I looked aft and saw that the flying sea serpent was still pinned in the wreckage of the dining terrace, its wings snarled in the canvas canopy and thrashing uselessly. 'We can't go that way, unless we want to deal with that thing. Lori, can you get us belowdecks another way?'

'We'll have to go back through the ship.'

We found the nearest hatch and went back in. Smoke was hanging thick in the corridors. Shouting came from all directions as passengers clogged the halls in an effort to get to the stairways. It was bedlam. Lori took my arm. We followed her back the way we had come, made a few turns, then ducked into a small room lined with cabinets that held bedding and linen. Near the back wall a ladder descended through a hatchway in the floor. I looked down. The ladder went down a long way. She told us these were quick-access shafts, and that only the crew used them. We started down. It took a good while and a few trod-upon fingers before all of us made it down to C Deck, winding up in a storage room full of crates and miscellaneous equipment.

'Where to now?' I asked Lori, taking off my shirt and handing it to her. She had doffed the sheet before taking the ladder.

'Thanks. You'll have to take the ventilation shafts to get below decks. They'll have the elevators shut down.'

'Ventilation shafts?'

'Yeah. Otherwise you couldn't breathe down there, leastwise not very well.'

It made sense, but I had a question. 'Isn't all that air kind of hard on Fiona's tummy?'

'Sometimes. Every so often she burps and it all empties out. That's why you can't stay down there.'

'You mean she can burp up a vehicle or two?'

'Sometimes she does, but we spray the sacs down with antispasmodics to keep that from happening often.'

'Well, let's go.'

It was a long trek through the ship to the stem. We passed more storerooms, then the crew's quarters, where Lori stopped to get decent. I got my shirt back. We continued aft, past the infirmary and the topside holds, through the crew's mess, the galley, and some workshops, then through a section of economy-class cabins, and finally into heating and ventilation rooms. The machinery was still running, but if the fires got out of control, it wouldn't be for long.

'What happens when the equipment shuts down?' I asked our guide as we climbed through a thicket of pipes.

'Oh, there's enough air down there to last for a while. But if Fiona gets upset over the attack, she may start burping.'

'Oh.'

Access to the shaft was through a tiny door in a metal cylinder into which fed a maze of piping. 'This is the outtake shaft. The intake one has a bunch of filters. Watch the updraft.' She held the door open for me. 'There are rungs running down it.'

I poked my head through and saw a tubular shaft dropping straight down into darkness. The updraft almost made me bang my head against the door frame. I took my head out and stood up. 'What about light?'

'I have a torch in my kit-bag,' John said. 'I can lash it to my epaulets. Roland has one too, I think.'

I handed him his pack, then said to Lori, 'Are you coming?'

'No, I belong here,' she said firmly. 'I should report for

fire detail.'

'Well, okay. I don't think you'll be in any danger now, except to answer to Pendergast for hiding Winnie.'

'I can handle him.' She frowned, and asked, 'What arc you going to do down there anyway?'

'Find a place to hide,' I said, 'until I can convince your captain that we're no threat to him… or to the Outworlds.'

'But you'll never find your way down there. You could wind up as Fiona merte.'

'Well, I've been called worse.'

'But you might hurt her too!' Conflicting impulses crossed and recrossed her mind. Then something hit her and her mouth hung open. 'Oh, my God! Where's Winnie?'

'She's safe, down in my rig.'

'Huh? How did she get down there? And why did she leave

the radio shack? I told her to?' She slapped her forehead. 'The siren! The general quarters alarm is right above the shack. She must have got frightened when it went off during the gorgon attack! God, am I stupid,' she groaned.

'Don't think about it. Turned out for the best anyway. Just take care of yourself.' I gave her a peck on the cheek. 'And thanks.'

I stooped toward the hatch, but she caught my arm. 'No, wait. I want to see if Winnie's all right. I'll go down fust.'

The updraft actually made it easier to descend, but the rungs were small and slippery, and the shaft started tilting to an awkward angle. I stopped now and then to look up and check everyone's progress. Darla and the men