He plunged deep enough for the light to turn green, then kicked his way to the surface. The water was cool enough for the coolness to be noticeable, but not enough for it to be uncomfortable. That was fortunate. He might have landed in the local equivalent of the Arctic Ocean, in which case he would have been dead within three minutes. Even so, this was the first time he had found himself in water immediately after a transition.

Treading water, he took stock of the situation as he had done eight times before. As always, he had a splitting headache. And as always, the loincloth had gone, leaving him as naked as any fish that might swim in this-river, lake, sea? — where he had landed. He licked his lips. Salt. So it was an ocean or sea. Next question: how far was he from shore? He was a powerful swimmer-twenty miles was nothing to him-but if he was out in the middle of something the size of, say, the Atlantic Ocean, he was in a sticky situation. Before, it had been a question of landing in the middle of battles or at least of some inhabited territory where he had to fight or at least communicate with the local inhabitants immediately. Now, half his problem was the lack of people.

The headache had faded enough now so that he could raise his head and look around. The sea was calm, broken only by a gentle swell no more than two or three feet high. Above its surface nothing moved except the faintest of breezes. The air itself was warm and moist, faintly scented with something Blade at first had trouble identifying. Then he realized it was the smell of smoke. Smoke? In the middle of an ocean? He resumed his scanning of the horizon-not far away, for a man in the water.

It was apparently late afternoon, with a westering sun sliding down from a flawless blue sky. But the western horizon itself had sprouted several tall columns of smoke, coiling greasily straight up into the sky for hundreds of feet before they plumed out at the top into broad, feathery clouds.