Groaning in every sheet of plate steel, her submerged hull began to roll and in one smooth, inexorable shift swung through the perpendicular. The killing pressure of the pot on Kate's shoulders eased. "For every action," she muttered as her feet pushed against the slippery deck, "there is an equal and opposite reaction. For every action, there is-"

The Avilda began her heel to starboard. With an involuntary sound, half grunt, half howl, in harmony with the shriek of the straining ship, Kate shoved with all her strength. The pot shuddered, moved a fraction of an inch, another, gave a sudden, stuttering lurch and began to slide. Kate, almost running to keep pace, shoved and slid and cursed her way behind it and across the deck, to fetch up against the opposite railing with a solid thump.

Behind her she heard Andy Pence give a whoop and a shout of approval mixed with amazement, and she thought she heard Seth Skinner swear in a tone distinctly admiring, but she was busy catching her breath. Besides, it was a point of honor not to acknowledge that she had done anything out of the ordinary. Panting, she clutched at the pot for support, fighting a wave of dizziness that made her close her eyes and lean her forehead against the cold, wet mesh. She tried to remember the last time she'd eaten something, anything. When she couldn't, she straightened painfully and looked around for the burly figure of the deck boss. "Hey! Ned!"

Ned Nordhoff looked as if he were wading through a nest of pale spiders, up to his knees in the long, knobbled legs of tanner crab scrabbling frantically for purchase whether they were on their way into the hold as keepers or over the side and back into the Bering Sea. At Kate's shout, he looked up. She held up a hand, rubber-gloved fingers splayed, and jerked a thumb aft toward the cabin. He scowled, his hands barely checking.

"You just went!"

Kate was soaked through to the skin and chilled through to the bone. Hunger had been gnawing on her for so long that her stomach felt like it was about to crawl up her esophagus. Her first, knee-jerk response to the deck boss's terse comment was anatomically impossible, her second sociologically taboo, both eminently satisfactory.