Out in the estuary there was nothing visible but mist and the sea. Nirgal had been in clouds before, especially on the west slope of Tharsis, where fronts ran up the rise of the bulge; but never of course while on water. And every time before the temperatures had been well below freezing, the clouds a kind of flying snow, very white and dry and fine, rolling over the land and coating it with white dust. Nothing at all like this liquid world, where there was very little difference between the choppy water and the mist gusting over it, the liquid and the gaseous phasing back and forth endlessly. The boat rocked in a violent irregular rhythm. Dark objects appeared in the margins of the mist, but Bly paid them no attention, keeping a sharp eye ahead through a window beaded with water to the point of opacity, and also watching a number of screens under the window.

Suddenly Bly killed the engine, and the boat’s rocking changed to a vicious side-to-side yaw. Nirgal held the side of the cabin and peered through the watery window, trying to see what had caused Bly to stop. “That’s a big ship for Southend,” Bly remarked, motoring on very slowly.

“Where?”

“Port beam.” He pointed to a screen, then off to the left. Nirgal saw nothing.

Bly brought them into a long low pier, with many boats moored to it on both sides. The pier ran north through the mist to the town of Southend-on-Sea, which ran up and disappeared in the mist covering a slope of buildings.

A number of men greeted Bly—”Lovely day eh?” “Brilliant”— and began to unload boxes from his hold.

Bly inquired about the Asian woman from Vlissingen, but the men shook their heads. “The Jap? She ain’t here, mate.”

“They’re saying in Sheerness she and her group came to Southend.”

“Why would they say that?”

“Because that’s what they think happened.”

“That’s what you get listening to people who live underwater.”

“The Paki grandma?” they said at the diesel fuel pump on the other side of the pier. “She went over to Shoeburyness, sometime back.”

Bly glanced at Nirgal. “It’s just a few miles east. If she were here, these men would know.”

“Let’s try it then,” Nirgal said.

So after refueling they left the pier, and puttered east through the mist. From time to time the building-covered hillside was visible to their left. They rounded a point, turned north. Bly brought them in to another floating dock, with many fewer boats than had been moored at Southend pier.

“That Chinese gang?” a toothless old man cried. “Gone up to Pig’s Bay they have! Gave us a greenhouse! Some kind of church.”

“Pig’s Bay’s just the next pier,” Bly said, looking thoughtful as he wheeled them away from the dock.