In places the avanc’s skin was broken by jags that looked like rock or horn-whiskers reaching up around the Ctenophore like ossified trees. Chion steered the submersible carefully between them.

They passed over orifices. Puckered impurities in the avanc’s flesh that would suddenly and randomly dilate, open gaping pits, smooth-edged, pulsing tunnels into the interior of the carcass, lined with alveoli bigger than men.

The Ctenophore drifted like dust over the skin.

"What in the gods’ names are we doing?" Johannes whispered.

Kruach Aum was sketching rapidly, making notes, as Johannes stared at what he had helped conjure.

"We don’t have more than a couple of hours’ light," said Chion anxiously.

The submersible edged up, over a little copse of those steeple-sized hairs, and descended again between two extrusions-maybe the ends of gills, or scars, or fins. The skinscape heaved and rippled with subcutaneous motion. Its contours were slowly changing, the plain sloping away and down.

"We’re coming to its flank," said Johannes.

Quite suddenly the corium below them was precipitous, a callused dermal cliff into dense darkness. Johannes heard his breath come shaky as the avanc fell away and the Ctenophore descended by its side. Light played over strata of cells and parasitic life that were suddenly sheer beside them, an organic precipice.

The geography of their patient humbled them.

Wrinkles began to appear, scores of great rucks like the edges of tectonic plates, where the avanc’s skin rode over itself in slablike folds, curving to what might be a haunch, a paddle, or a tail.

"I think…" said Johannes, pointing for the others. "I think we’re coming to a limb."

The water spasmed and was still, again and again. The corrugations of skin grew tighter. Here, with every beat of the avanc’s heart, great networks of the huge veins appeared, as intricate as shattered glass, tracing muscles like mountains. Crabs scuttled out of the light, into their burrows in the avanc’s skin.

There were impurities in the water. The lamp caught on a billow of opaque liquid like ink.

"What’s that?" whispered Johannes, and Kruach Aum wrote something down for him.

Blood.

The heart beat again, and the water was full of the dark stuff. It dissipated quickly, folding in all directions. The lamplight broke through the blood’s tentacles and glinted on something beyond: a hard, regular surface.

The bathynauts gasped. It was the massive iron edge of Armada’s harness. Crusted with the remains of limpets long-killed by pressure, and the rude life native to these deeps. One corner, one clasp, folding around the avanc’s body.

"Gods," whispered Chion, "maybe it’s us. Maybe it’s just the buckles, the bridles-maybe they’ve been rasping it sore."

The Ctenophore bobbed through currents of displaced blood, back over the avanc’s body. The blood welled up from behind hills in its hide.

"Look there!" shouted Johannes suddenly. "There!"