"Much good eating soon," Dart commented at one point.

"Don't overeat, you glutton," Theo told her warningly. "She likes ‘em when they're bloated with water," she explained to the others.

Jim's shudder went unseen, since his coolie hat touched the water and obscured his face. Once he tipped the hat up so he could see, but Theo tugged it back down.

"You'd lose your looks with a Threadscore across that prominent nose of yours," she said, her words muffled under her own hat.

Jim felt his nose, which he had never considered as particularly prominent.

"All there is to see are coolie hats and Thread," Theo told him.

"How d'you know?"

"I've already had a look. Thread bores me on the ground. It was much more fun flying sleds through it." Waves rippled out from her as if she had shrugged.

"Which do you prefer? I mean, profession—pilot or dolphineer?"

"I've done enough flying, though Threadfall was more exciting than the routine stuff I did," she told him in a thoughtful voice as her body drifted toward his in the water. Their legs touched; his were much longer than hers, he noted absently in the clear water around them. They had drifted slightly away from the others, having let their safety lines play out to the full length. "Dolphineering's something else again. Dart's super," she said, and Jim could hear the pride and the depth of her friendship for her sea partner. "Sure beats the hell out of the one-sided arrangement you could have with domestic animals. Though I used to be right fond of an old moggie I had once on ol' Earth. But teaming with Dart's totally superior to that sort of thing."

"Did you try for a dragon?"

"No. You got asked to stand in that circle." Theo snorted. "They wanted younger riders. Like I said, I've done enough flying."

"You're not old…"

Theo's laugh was genuine amusement. "Maybe not from where you swim, Granddad," she said, but he took no offense from her teasing. He was, after all, in his sixth decade, twice her age, and should have been a grandfather… if he hadn't chosen a profession that would have denied him most of the pleasures of marriage and children. A month's home leave after sixteen or seventeen months in space wasn't enough time for a wife or kids. He'd never tried for any more than casual relationships.

He felt Thread plunk on the crown of his coolie and inadvertently flinched, but the stuff slid off the slick plastic and hissed into the sea. He swung his legs out of danger as the Thread continued down into the water deep enough to be swallowed by Dart or one of the other dolphins, or some of the schools of fish that flitted about to feast on the manna. Hunger made them fearless, and Jim felt the caress of scales now and then on his bare skin: startling the first time, and producing a knowing laugh from Theo, who was completely accustomed to such contact. The result was that he felt as protected by the sea as by the man-made artifacts. And the fire-lizards. At Theo's direction, he looked up through the semi-transparency of the cone's flange to see the first of the fire-lizards flaming around and above them, deflecting Thread from the deck of the Cross. Since the deck was made of teakwood he had imported as part of his allowable weight as Buenos Aires captain, he was particularly happy to see it protected from Threadscore.

Then, almost too soon, the loud chuffings, squee-eeings, and ecstatic breachings of dolphins told him the danger had passed.

"We'll do a quick tour," Theo told him, holding her hand out in the water for Dart to supply a dorsal fin and the tow. "Peri," she said to the other dolphineer nearby, "you go to port, I'll go starboard."

"Lemme know if there's been any scoring, especially any damage to the ships," Jim called after them.

Thinking on how well they had survived this recurrent menace, Jim hauled himself back on board, stowed his hat within easy reach, dried off, and ordered sail hoisted again.

"The enemy has been met and… consumed," he muttered, grinning to himself at his paraphrase as he unlashed the helm that had been set on a course diagonally away from the main Thread rain. But, oddly, he felt the better for that short brush—and for Theo's company. She was a sort of… comfortable person. He grinned again. That was not the sort of compliment a woman would appreciate.

The second emergency was more life-threatening: a burst plank below the waterline nearly sank a six-meter ketch, save for the quick action of the dolphins, who all but swam it into shore on their own backs. As the cargo of the ketch was mainly irreplaceable orange-coded supplies, its timely rescue was a double blessing.

They anchored early that day so that they could not only find a replacement plank from those that had been extruded during the layover at Paradise River but also check sails and lines for Threadscore. No human had received injury, and even those who had doubted the efficacy of coolies against Thread had been reassured by the experience.

Though the ketch crew worked all night with the plastics experts, the flotilla did not make sail until noontime the next day. A good wind helped make up lost time and certainly relieved Jim's frustrations. He missed Theo's company in the cockpit, but she had this first watch off and was sleeping. It was a shame she was missing the best part of this fine day. Nothing, but nothing, on any world could be a more stimulating and satisfying occupation than sailing a good ship in a brisk wind down sparkling clear blue-green coastal waters. He wondered if Theo could appreciate that, too.

The tropical storm, brewing up suddenly as they neared Boca, drove them back toward Sadrid.

Jim's nautical instinct had been warning him since early morning as they sailed westward on the gentle swells. One of the Sadrid fishermen had reminded him only the night before of the suddenness of squalls on this stretch of coast. So he was watching for those little signs the experienced sailor knows: a smudge on the horizon that wasn't Thread, the sudden drop of the barometer, a change in the color of the water, a sultry feeling of pressure in the air around him. Then he noticed the alteration from blue-green to grayish green and the rippling change of the wave patterns

He turned to Theo, who was back in the cockpit with him. "Theo, I think—"

The storm struck with a ferocity and abruptness he had rarely encountered on any previous sea. He had the impression of black suit and bare legs going over the side into the suddenly heavy sea as he tightened his hold on the helm. He didn't even have time to get the bow turned into the huge comber bearing down on them, but he did manage to avoid meeting the four-and five-meter waves broadside. His crew struggled to get the sails down and reefed, fighting the waves that tried to wash them off the deck—in some cases only the life rails prevented them from going overboard. Young Steve Duff, struggling to tie down the boom, was barely missed by the lightning that flashed across the ship, slicing through the mast two-thirds of the way up its length, snapping the mainstays into lethal lashes until they fell over the life rail. Jim barely managed to keep the bow turned into the towering seas as once again the Cross thudded into a trough left by the latest monumental wave. Worry about the more vulnerable small craft of his fleet drove terror into Jim's heart—until the more immediate threat to the lives of himself and his crew banished all thought but that of survival.

Now and then, during the brief but thoroughly devastating squall, he caught sight of dolphins, hurtling in midair across a seething watery surface, purpose evident in every line of the sleek bodies. Sometimes their partners clung to the dorsal fins; other times the dolphins seemed to be acting independently, but always in accordance with their training.