"Aye."

"Where, for instance?"

He was as unforthcoming as a fish—or herself.

"Oh, all over. Spiderfish, crackerjaw, bluefin, skaters and Welladay whales."

The young man spoke casually, as if encounters with aquatic monsters were of no account. And how, Killashandra wondered to herself, did she know that's what he'd named? Nervously, she glanced to one side and saw Orric's eyes light up, as if he had hoped that the catalog would impress her.

"A crackerjack opened his back for him on Spindrift," Orric said proudly. "And he flew five miles with a skater and brought it down, the largest one ever recorded on Mandalay."

Killashandra wasn't sure why Orric Thursday wished to extol his friend. But it made him more acceptable in her eyes. Shad was too young, anyhow. Killashandra made no further attempt to draw Shad out but turned to Tir and Orric.

Despite a continued concern for her consumption of harmat, Orric kept ordering until full dark closed down abruptly on the planet and the artificial lights came on in the room.

"Mealtime," Biyanco announced in a loud, penetrating voice, and activated a barrier that dropped over the bar. He appeared through a side door and briskly gestured them to a table for four on the other side of the room. Killashandra made no resistance to Orric's suggestion that they all dine together, and she spent the rest of the evening—listening to fish stories—in their company. She spent her night alone—by choice. She had not made up her mind yet.

When the sun came up over the edge of the sea, she was down in the hotel's private lagoon, floating on the buoyant waters, just as the lunk ships, sails fat with dawn winds, slid out to open sea with incredible speed.

To her surprise, Orric appeared at midday and offered to show her Trefoil's few diversions. Nothing loath, she went and found him most agreeable company, conversant on every phase of Trefoil's domestic industry. He steered her from the usual tourist path, for which she was grateful. She abhorred that label, though tourist she was, on any world but Ballybran. Nor did she give Orric Thursday any hint of her profession, despite all his attempts to wheedle the information from her.

It wasn't that she liked being secretive, but few worlds understood the function of crystal singers, and some very odd habits and practices had been attributed to them. Killashandra's discretion and caution was instinctive now.

Late that afternoon, a bleeper on Orric's belt alerted him to return to the dock: the fishing boats had been sighted.

"Sorry, m'dear," he said as he executed a dipping turn of his fast airflipper. "Duty calls."

She elected to join him on the wharf, allowing him to think it was his company she preferred. Actually, she wanted to watch the silent teamwork of docking, and see the mahogany figure of Shad Tucker again. He was much too young for her, she told herself again, but a right graceful person to observe.

They had made a quick plenteous catch that day, Killashandra was told as the fishermen drowned their thirsts in harmat at the Golden Dolphin. Tucker seemed unusually pleased, and Killashandra couldn't resist asking why.

"He's made enough now to go off-world," Orric said when Shad replied with an indolent shrug. "He won't go." Orric shook his head, a wry grin on his face. "He never does. He's been here longer than on any other planet."

"Why?" Killashandra asked Shad, then had to hush Orric. "Let Tucker reply. He knows his own mind, doesn't he?"

Shad regarded her with mild surprise, and the indolent look left his blue eyes, replaced by an intensity she found hard to ignore.

"This is a real sea world," Shad said, picking his words in his soft-accented way, "not some half-evolved plankton planet."

He doesn't open his lips wide enough to enunciate properly, she thought, and wondered why he guarded himself so.

"You've lunk for profit, territ and flatfish for fine eating, the crustaceans and bivalves for high livers, then the sea fruits for a constant harvest. Variety. I might buy myself a strip of land and stay."

"You do ship on more than the lunk boats?"

Shad was surprised by her question. "All the boats fish lunk when it runs. Then you go after the others."

"If you've a mind for drudgery," Tir Od Nell said gloomily.

Shad gave Tir a forbearing glance. "Lunk requires only muscle," he said with a sly grin.

This appeared to be an old challenge, for Tir launched into a debate that Shad parried with the habit of long practice.

For the sake of being perverse, Killashandra took Tir to bed that night. She didn't regret the experience, although there was no harmony between them. If it gave her no peace, his vehemence did take the edge off her hunger. She did not encourage him to ask for more. Somewhere, long ago, she had learned the way to do that without aggravating a lover.

He was gone by dawn. Orric dropped by a few hours later and took her to see a sea-fruit farm on the peninsula, ten klicks from Trefoil to the south. When she assured Max Ennert, the farmer, of her experience, they were all fitted out with breather tanks and went submarine.

Enclosed by water, isolated by her trail of bubbles, though attached by guideline to Max and Orric, she realized—probably not for the first time—why crystal singers sought water worlds. Below sea level, there was insulation against aural sound, relief from the play of noise against weary eardrums.

They drifted inches above the carefully tended sea gardens, Max and Orric occasionally pruning off a ripe frond of grape or plum and shoving them in the net bags they towed. They bypassed reapers in a vast sea-valley where weed was being harvested. Occasionally, loose strands would drift past them, the fuller, longer ones deftly caught and netted by the men.

Killashandra was content to follow, slightly behind Max, slightly ahead of Orric, craning her neck, angling her body to enjoy as much of the clear-sea view as possible. One or the other man checked her gauges from time to time. Euphoria could be a curse undersea, and they didn't know of the professional immunity she enjoyed.

Perhaps that was why Orric argued with Max at one point, when they had been below some two hours. But they stayed down almost three more before they completed the circuit. As they walked out of the sea at Max's landing, night was approaching with the usual tropical dispatch.

"Stay on, Orric, Killashandra, if you've no other plans," Max said but the words sounded rehearsed, strained.

She entered the room where she had changed to sea dress and heard Orric's footsteps right behind her. She didn't bother closing the door. He did, and had her in his arms the next instant. She made no resistance to his advance nor did she respond. He held her from him, surprised, a question in his eyes.

"I'm not susceptible to euphorics, Orric," she told him.

"What are you talking about?" he asked, gray eyes wide with innocence.

"And I've submarined on more worlds than Shad has sailed."

"Is it Tucker you're after?" He didn't seem jealous, merely curious.

"Shad's . . ." She shrugged, unwilling to place the young man in any category.

"But you don't fancy me?" He did not seem aggrieved—again, merely curious.

She looked at him a long moment. "I think . . ." She paused then voiced an opinion that had been subconscious till that moment. "You remind me too much of someone I've been trying to forget."

"Oh, just remind you?" Orric's voice was soft and coaxing, almost like Tucker's. She put that young man firmly out of her mind.

"No offense intended, Orric. The resemblance is purely superficial."

His eyes twinkled merrily, and Killashandra realized that the resemblance was not purely superficial, for the other man would have responded in just the same way, amused with her and taking no offense. Perversely that annoyed her more.