When the period ended and the last fisherman cast off, Old Sam fired up the engine and they left Alaganik Bay for the cannery in Cordova. Johnny hid out in the chart room, nose stuck assiduously in an beat-up paperback copy of Zenna Henderson’s Pilgrimage. They could have used a Presence on the Freya, was what he was thinking.

Old Sam didn’t say a word to Kate the whole way, even when she brought his lunch to the bridge. It was a corned beef sandwich, too, with lots of mayo and mustard and a layer of lettuce thick enough to choke a horse, served on homemade sourdough bread, his favorite sandwich in the whole entire world.

Still in silence, they delivered their fish, took on fuel, and found their slip in the boat harbor. Shitting Seagull waved from the harbormaster’s shack and disappeared, leaving Kate to wonder why he hadn’t come down to say hi like he always did. She had a bit of walrus tusk that she’d scored from Ray in Bering, part of a gift package she’d received from the Chevak family. She should probably head on out to Bering sometime soon, come to think of it, see if Stephanie was the youngest astronaut in NASA yet, and if she wasn’t, to sit down and help her figure out a career path to get her there.

In the meantime, the walrus tusk would go to Gull, who carved ivory whenever he got his hands on some, and sold the results through a gift shop in Anchorage. If they hadn’t already been presold to Andromedans who’d stopped in town on a joyride from the Great Spiral Nebula. Kate pulled the last knot tight and climbed the ladder to the wheelhouse.

“Hold it,” Old Sam said. He was still sitting in the captain’s chair, tilted back against the bulkhead.

She paused. “What’s up, Uncle?”

He cranked his head around the door into the chart room. “You?”

“Me?” Johnny said.

“You. Uptown. Go visit your girlfriend.”

“I don’t have a girlfriend,” Johnny said.