He stepped back then, clenching his teeth, railing against the brutality of the pirates. He wondered bitterly just how many more beasts had been tapped dry, just how many more black, bloated corpses would roll in on the fresh tides after the storm?

He waited, hoping for some sign of change in the creature. There was no way of knowing how long ago the tap had occurred—hours, days? Or how swiftly the infusion would correct the whale's deficiency.

A fresh wind came up, and the outboard panel chattered metallically, then began to crackle with an authoritative noise. A craft approaching? Odis scanned the clouds. Suddenly a second drone broke into view, higher and north of him. He glanced down at the seaviewer, waiting for the indication that another fishboat approached. The drone whistled overhead, but the seaviewer remained empty.

Murv was the only other fishman out! Where was he that he would send his drone back alone? Had he been caught by mach-violence? A wilder shriek tore the air; and the whale reacted with a nervous bobbing, then pulled away from the fishboat.

Odis swung the Christmas tree, got a fix on the sound, and followed it. The intruder was high up but lancing downward, downward and right into the machstorm. He nipped the track toggle, keeping the outboard panel lined up with the visual trace of the spaceship until it disappeared into the clouds.

That boiling trail had come from nothing based on Welladay. And it was heading away from the only settlement on the water world. Odis retracted the outboard panel. As he climbed down the ladder, he shot a final look at the whale, now moving slowly in a northerly direction. No, the iodine had not been a waste. If the creature could just make it out of the storm's path, it could feed itself back to strength on the plankton in the northern waters.

Odis slammed the hatch down and searched the pilot's couch just as the computer printed out the intruder's course: straight into the storm, directly in line with the only other permanent landfall. Crown Lagoon. The realization was particularly bitter to Odis, for that was the direction from which Murv's drone had just come,

Slowly, Odis tapped out a new course for the fishboat. Not back to the safety of Shoulder Blade, but straight into the storm, directly on the intruder's tail. Then he fed into the computer the details that Okker had transmitted on the roach-storm. As the printout chattered, Odis sank back into the padded couch, his suspicions confirmed. In approximately five hours, the eye of the mach-storm would be centered over the gigantic old volcano whose mouth formed a twenty-kilowide lagoon. The shards and lava plateaus of its slopes were like a galactic-sized crown, thrown down just above the equator of Welladay in the shallow meadows of the western seas.

Murv could hold up in the deep beyond the island's shores—safe enough even with a mach-storm lashing deep into the ocean—until the eye of the storm covered Crown. Murv could then surface, deliver the stolen iodine to the ship which had sneaked in under cover of the storm. Well, Murv would do well to leave with that pirate. Once the Investigator got here—and the planet was registered as bankrupt and taken over by the Federation, Welladay would be no place for any freedom-loving man. Finds! Murv must have enough of the iodine on him to buy a planet. He sure had sold out Welladay!

Grimly Odis settled down for the long run. He'd stay on the surface and run on the hydrofoil as long as he could, at least until the storm's violence forced him to the relatively quieter, but slower depths. He had to intercept Murv before the traitor got the iodine off-planet.

But where had the man hidden the valuable substance all this time? Every possible crevice on Shoulder Blade had been searched repeatedly once the fishermen realized what was happening. Hadn't Tallav initiated the drone-escort to prevent any fishman from tapping too deeply? How the flads had Murv managed?

True, he had sent his drone back. But you couldn't tap a whale in the midst of a storm and he was within his rights. Indeed, Tallav would have screamed if Murv had kept the drone.

Odis leaned forward, tapped his own drone's controls. He printed out a message for it to transmit once the squall lifted over Shoulder Blade, then sent it to track him miles above the coming storm. He might just find it useful to have a drone in the eye. He would risk Tallav's tantrums. As there was nothing more he could do now, Odis settled down to a short nap.

The old survey charts had better be right about that underwater channel into the lagoon, Murv thought as he listened to the stress noises of the fishboat and grimly watched the danger lights blink warnings. The fathometer marked the unsteady ascent as the craft bucked tidal pulls and storm rips. He must be nearing the archipelago.

The straps that held Murv firmly to the pilot's seat cut into his flesh and he cursed absently as he began to match the chart to sea-viewer.

Blighted planet! The whole thing had appeared so fardling simple. He was used to risks, trained to surmount them. So he had opted to contract as a fishman, to look around for a while, spot the trouble, and then back out again, ready for more demanding work. On a watery planet, with only one permanent settlement, and only one product that was in great demand throughout the galaxy, what could have been simpler? He had not, however, counted on such a trivial detail as weather. Nor had he counted on the mimsy-pimsy fardling parasite of a Planetary Administrator coming up with a drone escort to prove his fishmen were not the murdering pirates. That wrinkle had restricted Murv's investigations, but it didn't make him trust Tallav. Murv knew better than to trust anyone.

Furthermore, Murv had not counted on sympathizing with the great whales. After he had been taught to milk them, after he had been assigned a school, it had annoyed the hell out of him to see the rotting carcasses of whales that had trustingly let humans tap them to death. They even lined up to get milked. No, the waste—the fladding waste of it—galled Murv the most.

He must be nearing the tunnel mouth; he could feel the fishboat being sucked relentlessly toward the basaltic shelf. His fingers flew over the pitch and yaw controls, decreased the play in the helm, and ignored the neck-jarring rolls. On the fathometer and on the roiled viewscreen in front of him, the bottom of the ocean met the ramparts of the old volcano in a solid wall of tortured lava!

Shahanna was roused by the shrieking hiss of the insistent wind. She opened her eyes to grayness, to the realization that the crash foam was dissipating, to the knowledge that she was still alive and breathing. In spite of the cushioning foam and the padding of her seat, she felt thoroughly wrung out. Motion was painful. She turned her head, groaning as stiff muscles protested. A solitary yellow light gleamed on the control panel, then blinked off as she watched. The ship had sent out its death knell, the last thing this type of spacecraft was programmed to do before all its systems failed.

Shahanna reached with an enfeebled hand to her side pouch, fumbled for a stimulant and a pain depressor. Clumsily, she jabbed the drugs into her arm and then, gasping at the discomfort even that slight motion caused, lay back. The drugs worked swiftly. She staggered to her feet and worked her muscles, relieved that nothing had broken or split. Her wrist chrono showed that some eight hours had elapsed since the unexpected attack. Automatically, she reached toward the log recorder.

"All systems dead, gal," she reminded herself, and looked out the plastight window.

Jagged black rock surrounded the nose of the scout and sheets of water scudded across the window.

How lucky can a gal get? She thought. I cracked up on land? Shahanna frowned. "Shoulder?" The Rib Reefs had been half a planet away when she had been shot down. There was no possible entry she could have made that would land her on Shoulder. But she remembered some other semi-permanent land masses on the charts, if one could dignify a wayward archipelago or a transient volcano as land mass.