I leaned forward. Feelings played flopdoodle in my guts. I knew everybloody inch of the big raft, but the feelings you once took for grantedchange when their source is out of reach. Truthfully, I'd had my doubts I'dever board the hulk again. But now, now I could almost believe inpredestination. There it was!

A tensquare football field of a ship. A-powered. Flat as a pancake,except for the plastic blisters in the middle and the "Rooks" fore and aft,port and starboard.

The Rook towers were named for their corner positions--and any two canwork together to hoist, co-powering the graffles between them. Thegraffles--half gaff, half grapple--can raise enormous weights to near waterlevel; their designer had only one thing in mind, though, which accounts forthe gaff half. At water level, the Slider has to implement elevation for sixto eight feet before the graffles are in a position to push upward, ratherthan pulling.

The Slider, essentially, is a mobile room--a big box capable of movingin any of Tensquare's crisscross groovings and "anchoring" on the strikeside by means of a powerful electromagnetic bond. Its winches could hoist abattleship the necessary distance, and the whole craft would tilt, ratherthan the Slider come loose, if you want any idea of the strength of thatbond.

The Slider houses a section operated control indicator which is themost sophisticated "reel" ever designed. Drawing broadcast power from thegenerator beside the center blister, it is connected by shortwave with thesonar room, where the movements of the quarry are recorded and repeated tothe angler seated before the section control.

The fisherman might play his "lines" for hours, days even, withoutseeing any more than metal and an outline on the screen. Only when the beastis graffled and the extensor shelf, located twelve feet below waterline,