“Bah! Details! I am not an engineer. Engineers I hire. My job is not to do what is impossible, it is to make others do it for me. Only how can I organize things when I am only a more-than-half prisoner of a king who is not interested in meeting my peoples? Hah?”

“Whereas the Lannach tribe is hard pressed and will let you, what they say, write your own ticket. Yes.” Sandra laughed, with a touch of genuine humor. “Very good, my friend! Only one question now, how do we get to the Lannachs?”

She waved a hand at their surroundings. It was not an encouraging view.

The Gerunis was a typical raft: a big structure, of light tough balsalike logs lashed together with enough open space and flexibility to yield before the sea. A wall of uprights, pegged to the transverse logs, defined a capacious hold and supported a main deck of painfully trimmed planks. Poop and forecastle rose at either end, their flat roofs bearing artillery and, in the former case, the outsize tiller. Between them were seaweed-thatched cabins for storage, workshops, and living quarters. The overall dimensions were about sixty meters by fifteen, tapering toward a false bow which provided a catapult platform and some streamlining. A foremast and mainmast each carried three big square sails, a lateen-rigged mizzen stood just forward of the poop. Given a favoring wind — remembering the force of most winds on this planet — the seemingly awkward craft could make several knots, and even in a dead calm it could be rowed.

It held about a hundred Diomedeans plus wives and children. Of those, ten couples were aristocrats, with private apartments in the poop; twenty were ranking sailors, with special skills, entitled to one room per family in the main-deck cabins; the rest were common deckhands, barracked into the forecastle.

Not far away floated the rest of this squadron. There were rafts of various types, some primarily dwelling units like the Gerunis, some triple-decked for cargo, some bearing the long sheds in which fish and seaweed were processed. Often several at a time were linked together, to form a little temporary island. Moored to them, or patrolling between, were the outrigger canoes. Wings beat in the sky, where aerial detachments kept watch for an enemy: full-time professional warriors, the core of Drak’ho’s military strength.

Beyond this outlying squadron, the other divisions of the Fleet darkened the water as far as a man’s eyes would reach. Most of them were fishing. It was brutally hard work, where long nets were trolled by muscle power. Nearly all a Drak’ho’s life seemed to go to back-bending labor. But out of these fluid fields they were dragging a harvest which leaped and flashed.

“Like fiends they must drive themselves,” observed Van Rijn. He slapped the stout rail. “This is tough wood, even when green, and they chew it smooth with stone and glass tools! Some of these fellows I would like to hire, if the union busybodies can be kept away from them.”

Sandra stamped her foot. She had not complained at danger of death, cold and discomfort and the drudgery of Tolk’s language lessons filtered through Wace. But there are limits. “Either you talk sense, Freeman, or I go somewhere else! I asked you how we get away from here.”

“We get rescued by the Lannachska, of course,” said Van Rijn. “Or, rather, they come steal us. Yes, so-fashion will be better. Then, if they fail, friend Delp cannot say it is our fault we are so desired by all parties.”

Her tall form grew rigid. “What do you mean? How are they to know we are even here?”

“Maybe Tolk will tell them.”

“But Tolk is even more a prisoner than we, not?”

“So. However—” Van Rijn rubbed his hands. “We have a little plan made. He is a good head, him. Almost as good as me.”

Sandra glared. “And will you deign to tell me how you plotted with Tolk, under enemy surveillance, when you cannot even speak Drak’ho?”

“Oh, I speak Drak’ho pretty good,” said Van Rijn blandly. “Did you not just hear me admit how I eavesdrop on all the palaver aboard? You think just because I make so much trouble, and still sit hours every day taking special instruction from Tolk, it is because I am a dumb old bell who cannot learn so easy? Horse maneuvers! Half the time we mumble together, he is teaching me his own Lannach lingo. Nobody on this raft knows it, so when they hear us say funny noises they think maybe Tolk tries words of Earth language out, ha? They think he despairs of teaching me through Wace and tries himself to pound some Drak’ho in me. Ho, ho, they are bamboozles, by damn! Why, yesterday I told Tolk a dirty joke in Lannachamael. He looked very disgusted. There is proof that poor old Van Rijn is not fat between the ears. We say nothing of the rest of his anatomy.”

Sandra stood quiet for a bit, trying to understand what it meant to learn two nonhuman languages simultaneously, one of them forbidden.

“I do not see why Tolk looks disgusted,” mused Van Rijn. “It was a good joke. Listen: there was a salesman who traveled on one of the colonial planets, and—”

“I can guess why,” interrupted Sandra hastily. “I mean… why Tolk did not think it was a funny tale. Er… Freeman Wace was explaining it to me the other day. Here on Diomedes they have not the trait of, um, constant sexuality. They breed once each year only, in the tropics. No families in our sense. They would not think our” — she blushed — “our all-year-around interest in these questions was very normal or very polite.”

Van Rijn nodded. “All this I know. But Tolk has seen somewhat of the Fleet, and in the Fleet they do have marriage, and get born at any time of year, just like humans.”

“I got that impression,” she answered slowly, “and it puzzles me. Freeman Wace said the breeding cycle was in their, their heredity. Instinct, or glands, or what it now is called. How could the Fleet live differently from what their glands dictate?”

“Well, they do.” Van Rijn shrugged massive shoulders. “Maybe we let some scientist worry about it for a thesis later on, hah?”

Suddenly she gripped his arm so he winced. Her eyes were a green blaze. “But you have not said… what is to happen? How is Tolk to get word about us to Lannach? What do we do?”

“I have no idea,” he told her cheerily. “I play with the ear.”

He cocked a beady eye at the pale reddish overcast. Several kilometers away, enormously timbered, bearing what was almost a wooden castle, floated the flagship of all Drak’ho. A swirl of bat wings was lifting from it and streaming toward the Gerunis. Faintly down the sky was borne the screech of a blown sea shell.

“But I think maybe we find out quick,” finished Van Rijn, “because his rheumatic majesty comes here now to decide about us.”

The admiral’s household troops, a hundred full-time warriors, landed with beautiful exactness and snapped their weapons to position. Polished stone and oiled leather caught the dull light like sea-blink; the wind of their wings roared across the deck. A purple banner trimmed with scarlet shook loose, and the Gerunis crew, respectfully crowded into the rigging and on the forecastle roof, let out a hoarse ritual cheer.

Delp hyr Orikan advanced from the poop and crouched before his lord. His wife, the beautiful Rodonis sa Axollon, and his two young children came behind him, bellies to the deck and wings over eyes. All wore the scarlet sashes and jeweled armbands which were formal dress.

The three humans stood beside Delp. Van Rijn had vetoed any suggestion that they crouch, too. “It is not right for a member of the Polesotechnic League, he should get down on knees and elbows. Anyway I am not built for it.”

Tolk of Lannach sat haughty next to Van Rijn. His wings were tucked into a net and the leash on his neck was held by a husky sailor. His eyes were as bleak and steady on the admiral as a snake’s.