When he felt it top his boots and begin running down around his socks, Ruto screamed, thrashed this way and that, and in a fleeting instant of clarity, knew that instant when he lost his balance.

And then he was falling, the panic like a bright fire as he flopped into the cold goo, felt it closing around him, thick as it entombed his beating arms. Cold soaked in around his coveralls, eating into his skin.

For a moment, he whimpered, every muscle in his body quivering, the cold and wet running down his neck, seeping in around the back of his head and into his hair.

And through it all came the throbbing contractions as the algae slowly spread up around his body.

His glance—as the slick goo rose around his nostrils—fixed on the blinking blue icon on the com above the work bench.

The algae swallowed his last scream.

67

When the door to the dome burst open, Dek came staggering in with something long, shiny, and wet hanging over his shoulder. Talina did a double take as Dek duck-walked his way over to the small kitchen and flopped the heavy thing onto the counter there.

Talina rose from where she’d been on the radio with Two Spot, asking, “What the hell is that?”

“Supper,” Dek told her proudly. “It’s a fish. Er, uh, it’s a snake. Well, maybe it’s a . . . ? Who the hell knows what it is? I caught it out of the river. Made a lure out of a piece of chrome I took from one of the old engines out in the shed. Fashioned a hook from a bent bracket. For line I used some of that carbon-fiber twine. The pole I made out of old antennae. And, what do you know? Third cast and wham!” His gaze went slightly askance. “Of course, the thing came within a whisker of dragging me right into the water. If it had been one of the big ones, I might have ended up half drowned and going over the waterfall again.”

“Yeah, well . . . you’d have been on your own. I’m not doing that again. Not even for you.” She studied the sleek beast. The thing measured a meter and a half in length. Must have weighed in at around forty kilos. Brownish-green above shading into silver and finally a snowy white on what she thought was the bottom. Three lines of fins ran down the creature’s muscular sides, eyes equidistant around the triple jaws with their long, in-curved teeth. A trio of tail vents must have been used for propulsion.

“You think it’s edible?” she asked.