"Good, everyone'll be glad to hear that," Betty said with genuine relief. "And I won't have to ditch some of the urgent stuff Joel begged me to take to make room for his body. Eat. You're lucky to get room service today."

She settled back then on her heels, and Jim got the impression that she wasn't going to move until they finished what she'd brought: klah, of course, slices of fresh fruit, and rolls that were still warm from the oven. That was enough to make him attack the meal ravenously, and he mumbled gratitude.

"Yes, we've civilized your camp since you're likely to be here long enough to appreciate a few—" She paused, making a funny grimace. "comforts."

"What's happening at Fort?" Jim asked, pinning Betty with a stern eye.

She raised her eyebrows and lifted her hands in a gesture that told him she didn't care to go into any great detail. "There's good—we're safe in Fort. There's bad—we haven't enough power packs left for sleds to mount any sort of defense against Fall." She shrugged. "So we'll sit tight. Safe enough in a cliff Thread can't penetrate."

"Emily?"

Betty pulled mouth and head to one side and rocked a hand. Though the medics had done all that their not-inconsiderable skill could do to repair Emily Boll's broken body after the crash landing of the shuttle ferrying people from Landing to the new settlement at Fort, she was making a very slow recovery from the trauma. No wonder Paul had sounded so defeated: he and Emily made a superb team, each supporting the other. Without her active participation, Paul Benden would have a great deal to cope with even with Ongola's help.

"She's some better," the pilot said, "but it'll be a long convalescence. Pierre's taking real good care of her. Ongola's a rock, as always, and if Joel would only stop yapping about losing so much cargo. . ."

"We haven't lost it…" Jim and Theo said in chorus.

Betty chuckled. "If you two won't give up, I don't see that Paul should. And so I'll tell him." She looked down at the wide digital on her arm and rose. "I gotta go. Good to see you've got your appetites back." And with a nod to each, she pushed back the foliage again.

Jim caught a reassuring glimpse of the beach and the people moving about. "Leave it open, can you, Betty?"

"I suppose so." She found a string that had been left for such a purpose and tied back the branch. "Keep an eye on him, Theo."

"Glad to," the dolphineer said with a deep chuckle.

"Oh, one last bit of news, Jim," Betty said. "Kaarvan sailed the Venturer out of Fort last night on the tide. He'll come straight down. Be here in a couple of days."

Not long after, they both heard the swish of a powered sled rising and craned their necks out their impromptu door to see the rear of the big airborne sled as it flew northwest toward Fort. Jim was just gathering himself to rise when Beth Eagles appeared.

"You both should have been on that sled," she said without preamble, staring down at them with an expressionless face. "Unfortunately, Dart refuses to work with Anna Schultz"—Theo looked almost happy about that non-compliance as Beth turned to Jim—"and Paul said that you'd probably crucify anyone else who tried to sail your precious Cross, so we'd better get you well enough to captain her. Kaarvan's bringing more supplies and enough technicians so you can get this ridiculous fleet floating again."

"It isn't ridiculous," Jim said, leaning back and sighing with relief.

"However," Beth continued, kneeling to run an instrument over his body, "I think the sooner you're out on that boat—"

"Ship," Jim corrected automatically.

"Ship, then, the more likely you are to rest."

"But I have to…" He waved at the activity he could plainly see.

"You have to rest, same as Theo here, or you won't be any good to any of us, and Paul doesn't need anything else to worry him—like the recuperation of Captain James Tillek!" She turned her back on him to check Theo. "And you're going out to the Cross with him so that little mammal of yours can see you. But Teresa, Kibby, Max, and Pha have been told to make sure she won't let you in the water until you've got skin again. Hear me, Theo Force?"

"How could I avoid it?" There was a ripple of laughter in the dolphineer's husky voice.

That evening they were carefully escorted—they refused to be carried, though Theo walked stiff-legged and had turned very white under her tanned skin—to a dinghy and towed by Dart and Pha out to the Southern Cross. After being hoisted aboard by Efram and one of the crew, Jim managed a dignified descent to his own cabin, which he noticed had been set to rights after the storm had thrown his few possessions around. Theo had to be carried to her bunk, unable to bend her abraded knees to get down the short companionway.

"We're sleeping aboard," Efram said, handing Jim a handunit, "but if you've any problems, just give a shout.

"Or call that Dart," Anna Schultz said, poking her head around the door. She made a grimace, but it wasn't ill-natured. "She's on patrol around the ship. I just hope she doesn't keep Theo awake, banging her nose into the hull by her bunk."

Both dolphineers had scrapes and bruises where their bodysuits hadn't adequately protected them, but neither had sustained the serious injuries Theo had.

"I'm cook," Anna went on, "but I've orders not to wake you for breakfast, so it'll be laid out in the wardroom whenever you do get up."

When the Venturer arrived, she dropped anchor near the Southern Cross and Kaarvan rowed over to pay his respects to Jim Tillek, who was trying to schedule repairs and set the next day's duty roster. Kaarvan stood in the doorway for a long look, then grunted when he saw what Jim was doing.

"As I heard it, you're supposed to be convalescing. You don't look even that fit."

Jim laughed. "Old sailors never die…"

"But they fade away, my friend." Deftly, without offense, Kaarvan removed the notepad from the desk. "This is my job for now."

Since even the minor decisions he'd had to make to get halfway through the schedule had tired him, Jim threw up his hands and grinned cheerfully up at the swarthy skipper. It was only sensible to let Kaarvan take over. But each evening, the unsmiling Kaarvan came on board the Cross to report the day's achievements and how much the dolphin teams had retrieved from the seabed, and to discuss the next day's schedule of repair. Jim appreciated that: he felt less a supernumerary and somewhat involved in the restoration of his command.

During the day, he went topside to watch the antics of the working dolphins and to peer through binoculars at the temporary shipyard. Since Theo said the sun and fresh sea air promoted healing, she somehow managed to get herself on deck and stretched out on the cockpit, trailing a hand over the side for Dart, whom Theo had talked into "cooperating temporarily" with Anna, to nudge from time time.

The dolphins were tireless, finding netted materiel and pallets that had been rolled considerable distances away on the ocean floor by the tide, and coming back to ask for harnesses to haul their finds back to the beach.

"They're wearing us out," Efram told Jim one evening, so tired that raising his fork to his face was an effort.

"You all need some time off," Anna said severely. "Give us apprentices a chance to see how the dolphins do underwater salvage. They know. We should."

Jim raised that point with Kaarvan that evening, and immediately all the regular dolphineers were given three days' shore leave. Not being affected by that order, since she was a substitute swimmer, Anna continued to berth on the Cross when the others went ashore, but Jim took over the cooking and prided himself on being able to make a decent meal out of their limited supplies.

"How come you know how to cook so well?" Theo asked, having complimented him once again on the stuffed fish roll-ups he had served her. "You were married?"