'Only predict.' Charles Sub-Lunar, from The Lights In The Sky Are Photofloods

In the false dawn a warm wind blew out of the east, shaking the dry reed cases.

The marsh mist broke into ribbons and curled away. Small night creatures burrowed hastily into the slime. In the distance, hidden by the baroque mist curls, a night bird screeched in the floating reed beds.

In one of the big lakes near the open sea three delicate white windshells hoisted their papery sails and tacked slowly towards the incoming surf.

Dom waited just beyond the breakers, two metres below the dancing surface, a thin stream of bubbles rising from his gill pack. He heard the shells long before he saw them. They sounded like skates on distant ice.

He grinned to himself. There would only be one chance. Some of those pretty trailing tendrils were lethal. There might never be another chance, ever. He tensed.

And knifed upwards.

The shell bucked violently as he grabbed the blunt prow, and he swung his legs hard over to avoid hitting the dangling green fronds. The world dissolved into a salt-tasting, cold white bubble of foam. Small silver fish slipped desperately past him, and then he was lying across the upper hull.

The shell had gone berserk, flailing with the bony mast in great slow sweeps. Dom watched it, getting his breath back, and then half-leapt, half-scrambled to the big white bulge near the base of the mast.

A shadow passed over him, and he rolled to one side as the mast nicked a furrow in the hull. As it passed he followed it, grabbed at the nerve knot, and pulled himself forward.

His fingers sought for the right spot. He found it.

The shell stopped its frenzied rush through the wavetops, hitting the water again with a slap that jarred Dom's teeth. The sail wavered uncertainly.