Piranha

Picture, new picture.

“Anything you want to ask them? Or give them a lead or something?”

picture, new picture.

“Zen?”

“No.”

Picture, new picture. He glanced down at the lower portion of his screen, reading the instruments—the fuel consumption was nudging a little higher than anticipated, but otherwise everything was in the green. He selected the forward video—nothing there, of course, since he was coming through sixty thousand feet—then went back to the routine.

Picture, new picture. Picture, new picture.

“Jeff, one of the Navy planes thinks it picked up a radio signal. We’re going to change our course and see if we can get over there,” said Major Alou. “It’s going to take us toward your search area. It’s about two hundred miles from our present position. So it’ll be a bit.”

Yes. Finally.

“Give me coordinates,” he said.

“I ill when we have them. we’re going very close to the Chinese fleet,” added Alou.

“Okay.” Zen reached to the console to pull up the mapping screen—he’d need to work out a new pattern with the team back at Dreamland, but he wanted a rough idea of it first. Just as his fingers hit the key sequence, something flickered at the right side of the picture.

“Dreamland is wondering about the performance of the number-two engine,” said Je

Asymmetric. Stinking scientists.

The map came up. Zen’s fingers fumbled—he wasn’t used to working these controls, couldn’t find the right sequence.

Picture, new picture.

“What should I tell them?” said Je

“We have a good location on that signal,” broke in Alou. “I’m going to turn you over—”

“Wait!” said Zen. He pushed up the visor and looked at the keyboard, finding the keys to bring the picture back up. “Everybody just give me a minute.”

South China Sea

Date and time unknown

As he leaned down toward her, something caught his attention. Stoner looked toward the horizon. There was something there—or he thought there was.

“Water,” she said.

He reached for the small metal bottle, gave it to her. She took half a gulp.

She was so beautiful.

“It’s almost empty,” she told him.

He nodded, took his own small sip, put it in his pants leg. “We have another,” he said.

“Where?”

Where? He didn’t see it.

She lifted up, looking.

It was gone. They must have lost it when the sharks attacked.

The radio was gone too. They had an empty water bottle and an empty gun.

“It’s all right,” he told her. “It’s okay—look.”

“What?”

He put his arms around her, then pointed toward the horizon.

“I don’t see anything.”

“Look,” he said. Stoner put his head on her shoulder, pointing with his arm. His cheek brushed hers. “There,” he said.

Aboard Iowa

1353

The resolution of the optics in the UMB’s belly were rated good enough to focus on a one-meter object at an altitude of 22,300 miles, roughly the height necessary for a geosynchronous orbit. A number or variables affected that focus, however, and the designers at Dreamland had found it more expedient and meaningful in presentations to say that, at any altitude above twenty thousand feet, the camera array could see what a person with 20/10 vision could see across a good-sized room. The metaphor was both memorable and accurate, and often illustrated with the added example that a person with that vision could read the letters on a bracelet as she reached to embrace and kiss her lover.

Zen saw it as clearly as that.

The edge of a raft. A foot. A leg.

Then bodies entwined.

Their cheeks were together—had they just kissed?

“I have them,” he said, mouth dry. “Here are the coordinates.”

South China Sea

Date and time unknown

“Don’t,” said Brea