Durg was clearly faster and stronger than a normal human. But then, so was Shad. And Shad had the longer reach.

Durg charged, trying to get inside Shad's guard. Shad sidestepped the rush and caught Durg in the solar plexus with a wheel kick, then stepped to the side and rear again, spun, lifted a rear kick, caught Durg in the solar plex yet again with a force that jarred Shad's spine.

Durg grunted but kept coming. Shad spun again as the range closed, lashing out with a backfist followed by a reverse punch that landed square in the center of Durg's face. It felt as if Shad had punched a bridge abutment.

Durg fired a short chopping wheel kick off his front foot. Shad blocked with both arms, but the kick knocked him twelve inches sideways in any case. Durg bored in and followed up, fists and elbows flashing. Shad managed to block most of the strikes, but one punch was only partly deflected, and a bolt of agony crackled up Shad's left side. He could feel his ribs bending as they absorbed the punch.

Shad clawed for the shorter man's eyes, then slammed an elbow into Durg's face and drove the Morakh back. Pain rang through Shad's arm. It was like trying to shove a cement truck.

Durg blinked blood from his eyes, and in that instant Shad focused his wild card and drew more heat from him. Durg shuddered, but his fighting instinct was still to attack.

Shad kicked him full force in the knee as he came on, but it slowed Durg only slightly, and the Takisian fired a glancing heel hook by way of reply that rattled Shad's teeth. Shad blocked one strIke after another, pulling more heat from the alien, watching with cold incredulity as the Morakh blanched but kept on coming.

Somewhere in Shad's mind flashed the memory that Takis was a wintery planet. They liked the cold there.

He kept eating photons anyway. He was out of ideas. Durg put his head down and charged. Pain crackled through Shad's ribs again as the Morakh's head thudded into his torso. Shad was driven back, and then his injured leg folded, and he went down with the Morakh on top. Despairingly he grabbed for all the heat he could. The Morakh's hands wrapped Shad's throat, and the memory of Robert Penn and his garrote rose like bile. Shad slammed desperate palm heels into Durg's temples.

And then the Morakh shuddered and collapsed. His skin was ice-cold. Shad rolled the heavy body off and rose. Something was grinding along his left shoulder and back. If he was lucky, he'd just ripped a lot of muscle tissue and ligament: otherwise, he'd lost some ribs. He limped for the harbor. Tachyon stood with Kafka and one of his joker soldiers, standing on the pier, watching a Zodiac inflatable boat roll dangerously in the tidal surge twelve feet below.

Shots split the air. They were far off.

"Some of my soldiers," Kafka said. "Bloat is telling them you're over on the south side."

Shad looked down at the wooden ladder, slippery with spray, leading to the boat lurching at the end of its painter. He picked up Tachyon gently, and his ribs screamed in shock. He ignored them, and went down the ladder. A wave soaked his legs below the knee as he waited for the Zodiac to move closer to the ladder, and then he gathered his legs under him and jumped. His injured leg put them a little off course, but Shad landed on the soft rubber bottom of the boat, caught his balance against the surging movement, eased Tachyon to a position near the bow, and jumped aft to the outboard. He peered at it, reached uncertainly for the pull-start.

"There's a self-starter, "-Kafka called.

Shad found it, grateful not to have to torque his torso after all he'd been through. "Thanks, brother," he said. "In the name of the widow's son."

He started the engine, revved it, put it in gear. Kafka dropped the painter.

They were off.

Kafka didn't wave good-bye. The Zodiac breasted every wave and crashed heavily into the troughs with a thud that rattled more pain from Shad's ribs. A frigid Atlantic wind made a mockery of the August night. Spray drenched both passengers, but at least the boat moved fast. Shad surrounded the boat with darkness, taking in all the warmth he could. He headed out into the bay until the lights of the coast guard facility on Governor's Island began looking too bright, then swung south.

If there was any pursuit, he never saw it.

The Statue of Liberty glowed on the right, its torch seeming to twinkle in the rushing air. Shad let the darkness fall away from them so that Tachyon could see.

"There," he said. "Your lucky sign for tonight." Tachyon gazed out in wonder. Her long blond hair whipped out in the wind. Shad couldn't tell whether her face sparkled with spray or tears.

"Liberty," Shad said.

The lights of Bayonne and the south Jersey City docks loomed to their front. Then there was something else, a black pillar rising out of the darkness dead ahead. It made a sucking, growling noise.

"Look out!" Tachyon shouted, and Shad threw the rudder over. The Zodiac skated over a roller, then fell. The pillar passed astern. Shad could see something rotating on top.

He dropped the cloak of darkness around the boat. Tachyon gazed at him with blinded eyes. "What was that?"

"I'm not sure. I think maybe it was the snorkel of a submarine."

"The what?"

"A snorkel, along with the periscopes and radars. The old-time diesel subs used to have to surface for air, see, till the Germans invented the snorkel during World War Two. Now they just put the snorkel up and breathe through that. But I don't know if we've got any diesel subs left in the fleet."

"Who'd put a submarine here?"

"The Russians. If we're lucky."

"In New York harbor?"

"You'd never get a nuclear sub over Sandy Hook-too big. But maybe a small diesel." Something cold climbed Shad's spine. "Look," he said, "this is too weird. If that was a submarine, they're listening to our prop on their hydrophones, and they heard us leave from Ellis Island. If they've got their radio mast up, they could be telling other people we're here. I don't think I want to get close to the Military Ocean Terminal in Bayonne. There might be some kind of military op going on. I'm going farther south."

"Where?"

"I don't want to get out into the Atlantic. You'd freeze to death out there. I think I'll head for the Kill Van Kull. We can get lost in the commercial traffic and try to get ashore either in Jersey or Staten Island."

Tachyon said nothing, just huddled deeper into her blanket.

The Zodiac spent most of its time in the trough of waves, and Shad's visibility was not ideal, but he scanned the bay when the boat was on the crests and saw two big coast guard cutters heading for them, searchlights panning the water. Both were right on target. It had been a sub, then, and it was guiding the cutters right to them.

Shad zigzagged-north, then south-then increased speed and dashed between the two boats. They were wearing dark wartime camouflage instead of their normal white paint. One of them was using a loud-hailer, but Shad didn't understand a word.

The boats seemed to lose track of him after that probably distance affecting the sub's ability to track his outboard propeller.

Its entrance white with swirling tidal foam, the brightly lit commercial channel of the Kill Van Kull gaped ahead. Somewhere a siren whooped, its sound torn by the wind. A helicopter came out of nowhere, a strange insectlike thing, and passed directly overhead at high speed.

Shad looked up in surprise to see an odd-looking ballbearing-shaped turret on its nose, a stubby muzzle questing left and right as if sniffing for a target. The rotor downdraft turned the water white.

Tachyon, blind, turned an alarmed face upward. Shad curved toward the Staten Island shore, his head swiveling wildly as he tried to keep the chopper in view. The helicopter banked and came back again, heading straight for him.