They were herded through the door into an enormous, brightly lit space hundreds of feet across, and vaulted by a high, rounded ceil- ing. She looked behind her as the rectangle of forest vanished, and she realized that they had stepped into a building masked by a clever camouflage. While the structure itself was an architectural wonder, what caught their breath was the huge silvery-white airship that took up a good portion of the space inside the dome.

They gazed up in astonishment at the torpedo-shaped leviathan that was longer than two football fields. Its tail tapered down to a point that was surrounded by four triangular stabilizing fins, giving it a streamlined appearance despite its enormous size. Four massive engines in protective nacelles hung from struts below the belly of the aircraft. The airship rested on a complicated system of fixed and mov- able gantries. Dozens of men in coveralls swarmed around and over the airship. The air echoed with the sound of machinery and tools. The guards nudged the prisoners forward under the rounded nose of the airship, which loomed overhead as if it could crush them at any second. Therri had a fleeting image of what a bug must feel like just before a shoe comes down.

A long, narrow control cabin, ringed by big windows, was set into the aircraft's belly a short distance back from the nose, and they were ordered inside. The roomy interior reminded Therri of a ship, com- plete with its spoked wheel and binnacle. A man stood inside giving orders to several others. Unlike the guards, who all looked as if they had sprung from the same mold, he was tall and his skin looked as if it had been bleached. His head was shaved bald. He turned at the arrival of the prisoners and looked at them through dark sunglasses then handed off the electronic clipboard he was holding.

“Well, well, what a pleasant surprise. SOS to the rescue.” He smiled, but his voice had all the warmth of a wind blowing off a gla- cier.

Ryan responded as if he hadn't heard the taunt. “My name is Mar- cus Ryan, the director of Sentinels of the Sea. This is Them Weld, our legal counsel, and Chuck Mercer, SOS operations director.”

“There's no need to go through the routine of name, rank and se- rial number. I know perfectly well who you are,” the man said. “Let's not waste time. In the white-man's world, I go by the name of Fred- erick Barker. I'm called Toonook by my own people.”

“You and these others are Eskimos?” Ryan said.

“Ignorant people call us by that name, but we are Kiolya.”

“You don't fit the stereotype for an Eskimo.”

“I've inherited the genes of a New England whaling captain. What started as a humiliating liability has enabled me to pass myself off in the outside world without question, to the benefit of the Kiolya.”