"Why'd you cut loose the net?" Brett's voice was petulant, demanding. He sounded near tears.

Shock, Twisp thought. And losing the catch.

"They tore the net to get the ... to get him," Twisp explained. "We'd have lost the catch anyway."

"We could've saved some of it," Brett muttered. "A third of it was right here." Brett slapped the rimline at the stern, his eyes two gray threats against a harsh blue sky.

Twisp sighed, aware that adrenaline could arouse frustrations that needed release.

"You can't activate a stunshield with the lines over the side like that," he explained. "It's got to be all the way in or all the way out. With this cheap-ass model, anyway ..." His fist slammed one of the thwarts.

I'm as shook as the kid, he thought. He took a deep breath, ran his fingers through the thick kinks of his black hair and calmed himself before activating the dasher-warning signal on his radio. That would locate them and reassure Vashon.

"They'd have turned on us next," he said. He flicked a finger against the material between thwarts. "This stuff is one thin membrane, two centimeters thick - what do you think our odds were?"

Brett lowered his eyes. He pursed his full lips, then stuck the lower lip out in a half-pout. His gaze looked away past a rising of Big Sun come to join its sister star already overhead. Below Big Sun, just ahead of the horizon, a large silhouette glowed orange in the water.

"Home," Twisp said quietly. "The city."

They were in one of the tight trade currents close to the surface. It would allow them to overtake the floating mass of humanity in an hour or two.

"Big fucking deal," Brett said. "We're broke."

Twisp smiled and leaned back to enjoy the suns.

"That's right," he said. "And we're alive."

The boy grunted and Twisp folded his meter-and-a-half arms behind his head. The elbows stuck out like two strange wings and cast a grotesque shadow on the water. He stared up across one of the elbows - caught as he sometimes was reflecting on the uniqueness of his mutant inheritance. These arms gangled in his way most of his life - he could touch his toes without bending over at all. But his arms hauled nets as though bred for it.