Real storms, complete with rain and wind, were usually preceded by clouds down to the surface.

This fact helped Kahvi to keep her hopes up; Earrin could not keep memory of the frequent exceptions to it out of his mind.

Bones, under water fifty meters ahead, was giving no particular thought to the weather. Neither was the raft’s other occupant, playing quietly with her toys in the air tent and looking up every little while to see whether her parents were doing anything new. The transparent tissue of the tent let her see them clearly enough, though the two thicknesses of it between them rather blurred the adults’ view of each other.

Danna had never in her memory been this far from shore, but was quite used to having the floats tossed even more violently than they were now, so she saw no reason to be afraid. Unless she was told to put on breathing gear, she would assume that everything was all right with the raft-and even then she would probably suppose it was only a drill. She was well along in acquiring the hang-ups needed for survival as a Nomad. She already knew how to check the bubbles of transparent tissue in which the Sparrel pseudolife produced breathing oxygen. She could even be trusted to warn her parents if the rise in tent pressure indicated that cartridge material was becoming saturated, though she had not been trustedwith the delicate task of bleeding off excess air. She was not, of course, strong enough to bring buckets of nitrogen under the raft to restore the tent’s breathing balance.

She did, however, know smoke when she saw it, and it was Danna who called her parents’ attention to what lay ahead. Her voice came clearly through the tent tissue as the rafts drew within three hundred meters of the Canton shore.

“Mother! Dad! Isn’t that a fire on the other side of the hill? The clouds are going up, so something must be hot!”