A city rose from the sea.

The Puffin Three was a fortress of girders, tanks, towering piping, slanting necks of cranes. She was an unsunken Atlantis as envisioned during a semi-grimy petrochemical age. She stood nearly sixty feet off the gray-blue sea on six round massive legs; her height, from her red grated decks to the tip of her tallest primer-gray stack, was nearly a hundred and ninety feet. Her crew's quarters, mess, leisure rooms, and medical facilities hung like big flat-blue boxes off her eastern side, strung to one another with catwalks and steel stairs. Piotr steered the Bell toward the helicopter pad above the housing modules, eighty-five feet off the water on the Puffin's north-east corner. The pad was painted white; the Bell's skids touched down on a chopper-sized blue star.

As the rotors slowed, a woman in a red down jacket and three men in coveralls came up stairs on the pad's west side. They waited just below the pad until the chopper's moving parts were utterly still. Piotr climbed from the cockpit as they stepped up level with the Bell.

"Hello, Virgil," he called.

"Piotr. Good flight, I hope." The foremost of the men, a fellow nearly as tall as Piotr, fair-haired, weathered, came forward, shook Piotr's hand.

"Smooth weather from the coast, yes."

"You said you have a wounded man," said the woman with the group. She was striking, Asian. Her black hair, pony-tailed, flicked in the breeze. She looked at Jim sharply as he jumped from the chopper. "You--?"

"No," said Robbie, hobbling to the Bell's side door. "Me."

"Do you need a stretcher?" Her voice was deep, American.

Robbie looked out at the two burly fellows standing with her, at the edge of the chopper pad behind them, the narrow railing at the downward-leading stairs, the vertiginous drop beyond.

"A hand'll do, thanks."

"This is Dr. Huelsmann," said the man fair-haired and weathered. "I'm Virgil Cooper. I'm the toolpusher here." He nodded to Dr. Huelsmann. "You want to see to him, Tammy, and I'll have a word with 'em after. Okay?"

"Sounds good, Virg." Huelsmann gave Robbie a brief but thorough look; seemingly assured of his stability, she stood aside for her assistants. "Help him downstairs, guys."

Down the steel stairs they went, the newcomers holding tight to the side railings and most of them avoiding the view down the sheer drop to the rippling flat-blue sea; down they went into the human areas of the rig, Dr. Huelsmann, Robbie and the men helping him, Laurel, Selena, and Jim: the steel stairs led to a deck roughly fifteen feet square, with double doors on their left; through the doors was a yellow-walled entrance area and two halls, one leading straight ahead, the second leading to the right. The Puffin's medic preceded her burly entourage and their small Scottish burden down the right-hand hall, past a room of personal computers, to the rig's sickbay, very modern, capacious, shining. There, his escorts helped Robbie onto an examination table and excused themselves; Dr. Huelsmann finished the maiming Selena had begun on Robbie's jeans, gave him a local, removed the bolt from his leg-- no backward-barbed head on the thing, thank God, no severing of tendons or arteries-- and stitched and bandaged the wound, asking questions of Selena while she worked. Laurel stood off to the side, out of the way but near enough to offer Robbie verbal support and empathetic looks; Jim hung back.

"This should heal well," Dr. Huelsmann told Robbie. "Be easy on it for a few days. Shower around it today; have the medic on the Helvig check it tomorrow."

She helped Robbie off the table. Before Laurel moved in to offer him an arm, she passed by Jim, quietly pressed something into his hand.


After he and Hannah secured the Bell, Piotr sought out Cooper. She went with him, stood back as he and the Puffin's toolpusher entered an office near the mess.

Cooper led off by giving her a stony glance; he asked Piotr: "Who is she?"

"My co-pilot."

If Cooper's look had been rocky, Piotr's would have outmassed half the Urals. Cooper stopped trying to outglare him, finally grinned over at Hannah.

"Hey, there. Sorry." He held out his hand. "I'm Virg."

"Hannah." She smiled back at him, shook his hand.

"You're one of Pete's refugees, aren't you?"

"Yes, sir."

Cooper looked back at Piotr. "The guy who called said you had three."

"We picked up two more. Infected overran their town."

"We've heard of guys running boats full of 'em," Cooper said grimly. "Using 'em like weapons--"

"That's what it was," said Hannah. "From the air, that's what we saw."

"That ain't right. Indecent, that's what it is. They're dangerous bastards, those infected, but hell, they're still people. Sick people." Cooper frowned, shook his head. "We haven't had trouble here, but there've been rigs hit, too. Pretty much sitting ducks, what with the no-guns policy. Can't do a thing to protect ourselves."

"Will you be evacuating?" Piotr asked.

"Not until the word comes down. Bosses think your navy can keep us safe." He looked at Piotr, his brows coming down lower over his sea-gray eyes. "That said, that's a stolen chopper, Pete. Your message didn't say anything about that. Can't say I approve. Can't say Andersen'll approve, either."

"It was an emergency." Piotr stiffened across the shoulders. "I need to ask-- despite its being stolen-- do I have permission to refuel?"

Cooper paused. He looked, thought Hannah, honestly apologetic. "Kind of embarrassing, this being an oil rig, but we're running short on aviation fuel."

"How much can you spare, Virgil?"

"Ninety gallons. Maybe ninety-five."

"That's less than an hour's flight time--"

"I'm sorry, Pete. One area the Danes haven't been keeping up on. Our people either. Last chopper here had to fly back out on its reserve tanks. Like I said, damn embarrassing, but there you have it. Shouldn't be needing that much anyway, just to make a jump to the Helvig. Right?"

"Right," Piotr said quietly. An uncertain quiet, not his usual stoic one. Hannah could already tell the difference. "Thank you, Virgil."

"Welcome to it, Pete." Cooper patted him on the shoulder. Then he looked at Hannah. "Let's round up the rest of you. Got a few rules you need to know."


As Piotr went off to claim his fuel, Cooper met the remainder of his guests as they left the sickbay. He administered the rig's house rules in the entryway just outside the mess.

He was well taller than any of them; he had no trouble looking authoritative. But Selena could sense he wasn't entirely comfortable speaking to strangers. Might be why he was a foreman out in the middle of the ocean.

"First off, no weapons," Cooper said. "That means especially--" and he cleared his throat-- "that damn cannon one of you brought along." (A twitch from Laurel, a corresponding smirk from Robbie.) "No smoking, except in the designated smoking room--" (And this time it was Robbie who flinched, and in a manner that suggested smoking had until that moment been most distant from his mind.) "--You're free to move about the rig, only stay outside any areas lined in red and stay inside the yellow lines everywhere else. Would prefer you wear environment suits on deck, but you're not employees; we can't force you to. Safer moving in pairs. Use your common sense by the railings. Sea's about fifty degrees Fahrenheit, so if you fall in and the fall doesn't kill you, you've got about fifteen minutes before hypothermia turns you to lead and you sink." He scratched behind his right ear. "Think that's about it."

"Done with the pep talk, boss?" Dr. Huelsmann passed behind him, leaned into the doorway leading straight back from the outer entrance.

"Yep." Cooper nodded his visitors in her direction. "Doctor Huelsmann's acting steward. She'll get you oriented. Welcome to the Puffin Three."

He went through them and back out the outer doors. "This way," said Huelsmann. They followed her into the Puffin's mess. It looked eminently different than Selena had imagined a rig mess looking: it was large and airy and well lit, with seating for possibly three dozen people at tables seating four apiece; on the left, there was a long buffet counter with a window opening onto the kitchen beyond. Ahead of them, across the room, a television hung from a ceiling bracket. Against the wall behind it stood-- of all things-- a jukebox, an old-style curve-top Wurlitzer, its arches glowing in gold and red. Selena nudged Jim, tipped her head toward it. He nodded back.

"Surreal enough--?" he asked softly.

"It'll do."

Huelsmann was looking toward the kitchen. "Edie, you dead back there?"

"Nope. Just doing the work of many men." From the kitchen came a short, solid woman in jeans and an off-white heavy apron and a blue-checked flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled to her elbows. She had reddish-brown hair worn short and keen blue eyes. The right one lazed a bit toward her nose, but that only seemed to make her look more focused. "Hello, there."

"Edie Irving, cook, meet our prisoners. Prisoners, meet our cook," said Dr. Huelsmann. "Our Miss Irving is almost toxically cheerful. Be warned."

"Side effect of being a token Canadian," said Edie. She surveyed them with a smile. "If you were planning to starve here, you're out of luck. Dinner's at six. We're having lasagna tonight. In the meantime, there's pancakes and sausage left over from breakfast, fixings for sandwiches--"

Behind Edie, Selena spotted something on the buffet: a big steel bowl. She breathed out: "Jesus, look: oranges."

She looked beseechingly at the Puffin's cook and token Canadian; Edie Irving finished, amiably: "--and oranges, too. Help yourselves."

A stampede for the buffet. Laurel and Robbie weren't immune. They and Selena and Hannah and Jim went at the citrus bowl like, well, like people who hadn't seen fresh fruit in quantity for over a month.

"You're supposed t' peel these, right--?" asked Jim, eyes bright, holding up a navel beauty. Selena smiled over at him, pulling skin from a grapefruit. Hannah plinked him with a chunk of orange rind.

"Well, they're easy to please," said Edie to the Puffin's medic.

Huelsmann gave them ten minutes to snag pulp in their teeth, render their fingers and chins sticky, and get rind dug in under their nails. Then she walked her freshly fruit-scented charges back to the Puffin's living areas. They trailed after her through the mess into a rec room with gym equipment, a pool table, another television, this one with a VCR; beyond the television, a doorway opened onto a narrow pale-yellow hall with doors spaced evenly along its walls.

"Crew quarters are through here," she said. "Normally, we bunk up to four to a cabin, but we're running sub-skeletal right now. Crew of thirty-eight. So you're pretty much free to pick your rooms. There are four cabin hallways. Just make sure you're oriented in relation to the mess. That's the meeting area in case of emergency. Each cabin has a washbasin and head, but the shower rooms are separate. Three male, one female, six stalls to a room, end of each hall. Water filtration's fully operational, and I just checked the bacteria screens and the desalinization units this morning, so there's no shortage of hot and cold." To the girls, she said: "Clean clothes you can borrow off of me or Edie. You guys--" -- to Jim and Robbie-- "-- you're pretty close to Leo's size. Leo Chaney, one of the mechanics. I'll get him in here. He'll fix you up."

They split up at the shower rooms, which had benches running up their centers and lockers recessed in their walls. Jim went for a quick cleaning in a private steel-walled stall. Out of curiosity, he caught a few drops of spray on his tongue: not a trace of salt; if anything, the taste was almost too flat. When he emerged, wrapped in a towel, a man was laying clothes on the center bench. He was wiry, average in height; his hair was short and dark; and he was magnificently homely. More politely, he had a face of great character, well lined, a sober set to his mouth. He glanced at Jim with deep brown eyes, looked quickly away again, as though seeing a stranger in a towel were a breach of protocol.

"Tammy said you'd appreciate some clothes. I'll leave you to it." He gestured at the things he'd laid out, went to the door. "There's a toothbrush and a razor there, too, in case you want 'em. I'm Chaney. Leo. Welcome aboard--"

"Jim. Thank you."

"--Jim. You're welcome."

He left. Jim dried and dressed himself. He kept the cargo trousers from Infinity, but he traded his gray army sweater for a worn blue sweatshirt. Out into the hall he went; near the shower room, he looked into an empty bunkroom, its door standing open. Spacious-- not the submarine-crew-style quarters he'd been imagining. Nightstand with a digital clock, dresser, a polished steel lamp bolted to the wall next to each bunk. He stepped in, looked at one of the made-up bunkbeds, decided to try it-- just a try, understand. He stretched out, put his head on the pillow, and fell instantly and deeply asleep.

Selena, en route to the women's shower room, glanced in through the open door: she saw him sprawled there looselimbed and sleeping, smiled, paused, and passed on. She had her shower; for afterward, she had an assortment of necessaries and sensible wearables from Doctor Huelsmann, who matched her lankiness almost inch for inch. Hannah and Robbie and Laurel had returned to the PC lab off the medical center, the two from Preneen wondering if they could get e-mails off to their parents. Piotr, according to Hannah, was off in the control room at the rig's western end with Dalton, the Puffin's comptroller, cementing details of tomorrow's pickup with the Helvig via the Puffin's marine radio. Practically part of society again, weren't they? Hard to believe anything sinister could go on here, amid the rig's homely bustle. Cooper seemed a decent man, Huelsmann a very decent, if disgruntled, woman. Edie Irving, as open and friendly a person as Selena had ever seen, had hinted at a story backing that discontent. Selena smiled, toweling her hair. Gossip. They'd rejoined civilization, and that was a fact.

When she left the shower room, she saw a man in the hall ahead, looking into the cabin in which she'd seen Jim asleep. He was dark-haired, about six feet tall, thin, dressed in blue coveralls.

Selena said clearly: "Can I help you? Has he taken your room?"

He turned, watched her approach. He had nearly colorless eyes. He fixed them on her with an interest that made her uncomfortable.

"Nope. Just trying to figure out if I know him. I don't." He smiled at her. His smile made her uncomfortable, too. It hadn't been nearly long enough since a man had looked at her that way. "Don't know you, either. I'm Jason. Jason McCrae."

It was only polite: she shook his offered hand. "Selena."

His smile deepened. "So who's the lucky guy?"

"Pardon?"

"You're giving off a real engagement-ring vibe."

Selena frowned for him. "Handy, isn't it--?"

"Isn't it." His eyes, she thought, would look not at all out of place in a crocodile's sockets. He nodded, without looking, toward Jim, who was still flat on his back and by all appearances still peacefully napping. "Him?"

"Yeah."

"Like I said: lucky guy. Catch you later, Selena."

"Sure."

She felt him look her up and down as he passed her, walking off. She shuddered, scowled. Lewd stares from a gang of army crazies aside, had it really been only two months since her last legitimate ogling? She was well out of practice; just eight minutes out of the shower, and here she was feeling grimy, a bit used.

She brought her resentments with her into the bunkroom. Then she looked at Jim, focused on his stillness, and her irritation flashed into something like panic-- He'd been looking at Jim first off, not at me, McCrae had--

Jim grunted softly in his sleep, rolled onto his side, sighed. He punched absently at his pillow and slumbered on.

Selena released the breath she'd been holding. "Paranoia, girl," she murmured. "It'll keep you alive-- if it doesn't drive you utterly bloody nuts first."

That said, a nap suddenly seemed a very attractive idea. Hannah knew roughly where she and Jim were; if nothing else, Selena was certain she could count on Piotr to keep the girl clear of reptiles like McCrea for the space of an hour. So up she went, climbing the steel tube frame, onto the bunk above Jim's. She lay back, listened for and heard his breathing. She put her hands palm-up beneath her head on the white pillowcase and closed her eyes.


Jim woke. According to the clock, he'd been out for just under three hours. He wandered back to the mess. Warm, wonderful cooking odors met him midway, drew him along, his stomach rumbling. Selena. who'd swapped her gray sweater for a long black sweatshirt, was standing just inside the doorway leading from the residence hall to the rec room. She glanced at him as he came in.

"Have a nice sleep?"

Jim stretched his shoulders, smiled. "Yeah."

"Good timing, too. Right in time for dinner. I was just coming to get you."

"How've you been keepin'?"

"Had a nap myself. Then Mr. Chaney gave me and Hannah a tour, a short one."

"That nap-- Y'know, you might've joined me."

"You were so quiet, I took the bunk above. Didn't want to bother you."

"Maybe later, then--?"

"Maybe." She smiled, her eyes amber-warm. "Come on, let's eat."


A scene so normal-- so homey and normal: dinner in the bright clean mess. Edie Irving had laid out food enough for at least fifty people. Four huge pans of lasagna sat on the buffet, flanked by bowls of salad, stacks of toast. Behind Jim and Selena in the chow line, a brick-solid man with a broad, friendly face scooped a layered sloppy slab of noodles onto his plate. "Didn't you get the memo, Edie? We're running with a crew of thirty-eight now."

Irving brushed past him with a tray of clean flatware. "My math's awful, Larry. Can't adjust recipes to save my life. That's why I cook for mobs." She winked at Jim, who was helping himself to toast. "Anyway, I thought our guests looked hungry."

He and Selena found themselves seats at a table with Hannah. Robbie and Laurel, one table over, were already eating. They looked up, waved. Hannah, who had cleared at least one plate of lasagna, was now acting the part of a human composting machine with regard to a mound of greens.

"Too bad you're feelin' only peckish," Jim said.

Hannah picked lettuce from her teeth with her tongue, reached for a glass of water standing to the right of her plate. "Shut it, yeah?"

Jim smirked, started eating. A moment later, big Larry, full plate in hand, paused at their table. Hannah glanced up, smiled. He smiled back, surveyed Jim and Selena. "Hannah I've met," he said. "I'm Larry Dalton, the Puffin's controller. You must be Jim."

Jim wiped his fingers on a paper napkin and reached to shake Dalton's hand. He spoke around a mouthful of lasagna: "How're yeh?"

"You'll have to excuse him; he's from Deptford." Selena grinned wryly, got a handshake of her own. "I'm Selena."

"Larry. Glad to know you. Enjoy your stay." Dalton nodded around the table, then took his plate and went to join Cooper, Chaney, and Dr. Huelsmann, sitting three tables over. Robbie, watching good-naturedly, motioned him in as he passed, introduced himself and Laurel. Minutes later, Piotr entered the mess. He obtained for himself a mountain of food and set it on the tabletop across from Selena, between Hannah and Jim. He seated himself, shrugged at their stares.

"We have very little lasagna in Denmark," he said.


After dinner, those of the Puffin's evening shift excused themselves, went out onto the rig. Over Edie's protests, Selena and Hannah and Jim helped with the clearing up. Cooper and Dalton went off toward Cooper's office, talking. Dr. Huelsmann and Chaney took mugs of coffee into the rec room. Robbie and Laurel checked out the jukebox.

"What kind of nutter loaded this thing?" Robbie scowled at the Wurlitzer's offerings. "Do you know any of these songs--?"

"Try that one." Laurel pointed at a title card. "That one there."

Robbie punched a button. A click, a pause. And then-- three-quarter time. Fiddles. Accordians. And Deborah Harry's voice, blowsy and brassy, singing out: "I wake up laughin'/Thrown from a nightmare--"

Laurel stared at the Wurlitzer. "What in th' hell is that--?"

I come down standin'/When I'm tossed in the air--

"It says 'Blondie' on the selector."

"That's not bloody 'Heart of Glass.' It's a bloody country-western song, for Christ's sake."

Robbie scratched at his cropped reddish hair. "Don't I bloody know it. I'm not deaf."

"Don't be tauntin' th' tune-box, boy." One of the last remaining second-shifters, a man roughly a foot taller than Robbie, bumped by with a stack of dirty plates for the bus tray. He wore the coveralls of a rigworker, and his hair was a wild pepper-and-salt tangle. He fixed Robbie with wry, glittering eyes under dense black brows. "Property o' Miss Whitby here, it is."

He slapped the shoulder of a short, coveralled woman with cropped brown hair who was parking her own dirties. She nodded at Robbie and Laurel. "Hi, there." Then the wildman and she and a second man, sandy-haired, younger, and more neatly trimmed than the first, bellowed their way out of the mess with Miss Harry's help: "I come out shootin'/When trouble comes knockin'--"

"Therapy, please," said Robbie.

"--I greet bad news/By sendin' it walkin'--"

Off to the side, Jim touched Selena's hand. "Would yeh care t' dance?"

Out the outer door, and still too loud: "Happy or just crazy/Relaxed or lazy/Gonna keep my vision hazy--"

Selena closed her fingers around his. "I'd love to, yes."

Jim smiled, drew her close, and led her into a waltz.

From the jukebox and from the stairs outside, descending, fading but not quite swallowed by the deep thrumming of machinery: "And the dream's lost on me--"

"Actually, it's growin' on me," said Laurel.

Robbie looked hopeless. "Alright, then." He held out his arms, and she stepped into them, swayed with him into the rhythm. He flinched. "Gently, gently: I'm wounded, remember--"

Across the room, Piotr Kalinovich, the same brave young Russian who had fought and killed a rabidly infected co-pilot, who had engineered a daring escape, and who had, just earlier that day, piloted a crippled helicopter out of the path of a giant fireball at an exploding airbase, looked at the dancing pairs, looked at Hannah, mumbled something about re-checking the skid-locks on the Bell, grabbed his jacket, and went out the door.

"Chicken," Hannah muttered.

"Oh, he'll be back," said Edie Irving, behind her, from the kitchen window. "It's nearly time for dessert. Found enough apples to make pie. Care to help me dish it up?"

"Sure." Hannah smiled, boosted herself out of her chair, and followed Edie into the stainless steel reaches of the Puffin's kitchen.


The pie was just sweet enough, just tart enough, the apples Granny Smith and fulfilling perfectly the only role for which their ill-tempered lime-green selves were suited. Post-pie, the Puffin's refugees went for a cold breath of fresh air and a look at the lingering daylight. This far north, Edie told them, the midsummer sun wouldn't set 'til after ten. It was just past nine. The sun was hesitating over a bank of clouds to the west; the wind pushed waves toward them from the horizon.

Jim, in a borrowed coat, looked out over the water and shivered. "It's cold."

Too open, too wild as well. Selena preferred a wilderness of paving and buildings. Beautiful but too trackless, this. She slipped her arm through his. "Come on. Let's go in."

"Saw where the movies are hidden," Robbie was saying. He and Laurel made for a cabinet on the south wall of the rec room. Chaney was talking to Hannah, and she was laughing at what he was saying. Good to see, that. Dr. Huelsmann, having conjured another tune from the Wurlitzer-- it sounded like Bruce Springsteen, but he was singing a folk song, for heaven's sake-- was refilling her coffee.

Selena lingered, wandered away. She drew Jim with her into the corridor just beyond the rec room. They stood for a moment in the dimmer light, looking back at the brightness, the movement, listening to the music and talk. Selena could feel her heart beating. Jim watched her peripherally; she could sense the light from his eyes, a pressure light as thought on her skin. Finally she moved in, nuzzled his throat.

"Why don't you show me what you looted?" she asked quietly.

He nuzzled back. He'd managed a shave, by the feel of it. His skin was smooth and warm. "What I--"

"From the store."

"Oh, you mean the, umm--"

"Yeah."

He was touching her with his hands now, caressing her cheeks, her neck. "I gave 'em back," he said softly.

"Jim--!"

"It was stealing, Selena. You as much as said--"

"I don't believe it--"

He nodded, his face angelically sober. "That's good."

Selena broke away, stood beside him muttering. "We've been-- Weeks, we've been waiting-- I've been waiting-- and you gave them--" She paused, frowned. "That's good? How is that good--? Oh." She elbowed him; Jim winced, laughing. "You, Jim, are a sad, sorry excuse for a man."

"Mm hm. I am that." He turned to her, caught her near the hips, gently but firmly. He nuzzled his way to her mouth and kissed her. Selena followed the draw of his hands, pressed up to him. She met him in another kiss, another kiss after that. Jim broke for a moment, murmuring, "Laurel said we could keep 'em."

Selena bristled. "Laurel said--?"

"Yeah. The two of us." His lips brushed hers. "For services rendered."

"I'll render your services." Her breath was becoming a bit rough. His was, too. She removed herself from his arms, caught his hand, matched the love in his eyes with the love in her own. She drew him toward the bunkrooms, smiling. "Come on. Come on, come on--"


Laurel spotted them going off together down the quiet hallway; Robbie, reading titles on a row of VHS tapes, didn't quite see. Hannah and Chaney had just engaged Huelsmann in an old-fashioned game of Battleship, their board red, hers blue.

Laurel asked Robbie: "Anything worth seein'?"

He kept his voice low: "If you're a fan of ancient history. I don't think there's a single one post-dating the Second World War--"

"Come and play Battleship then, malcontent," Huelsmann said. "I have to be up at five." She stood, surrendered the blue board. Robbie took her place, Laurel in tow.

Said the doctor: "Goodnight, everyone. Nice to meet you."

Unsure of the sincerity of the second sentence, Laurel said her goodnight after Robbie's; still, she saw Huelsmann smile ever so slightly as she nodded toward Chaney.

"'Night, Leo."

"Sleep tight, Doc." Chaney waited as she walked off. Then he fixed Robbie with his black-brown eyes. "You up for absolute defeat, kid?"

"Absolute defeat: one of my specialties." Robbie surveyed the pattern of pegs and gray plastic boats on his and Laurel's fold-up board. "How are we doing so far?"

"Leaking and limping, by the look of it," said Laurel.

"Oh, that's just me. How's our fleet--?"

Chaney laughed, and looked like a friendly gargoyle doing it. Hannah scanned the room. "Did Selena and Jim pack it in, then?"

Laurel exchanged a cocked brow with Robbie; he nodded her on. She said, "Think they did, yeah. They looked well tired, th' both of 'em--"

Hannah looked at her, looked at Robbie. She looked calmly back at the board. "You mean they're off for a shag."

Laurel felt herself go silently red. Robbie sputtered, burst out laughing.

"B-nine." Hannah fixed her eyes on them. "Well, they are, aren't they--?"

"You're remarkably, umm--" Robbie wrestled his dimples into submission. "--undisturbed by the idea."

"I've been livin' with 'em for a month, haven't I--?"

"B-nine," Chaney prompted.

"And that is-- That is a hit. Congratulations."

"Thanks." Hannah beamed, pressed a red peg into her and Chaney's marker board. "Been two weeks of it, at least, yeah? --them gettin' all gushy an' tryin' t' hide it, an' me pretendin' I can't see 'em tryin' t' hide it--"

"Who is hiding what?" Piotr came up, radiating traces of cold. Laurel felt it, six feet away. The outside temperature had to be dropping quickly.

"Nothin'--" Abruptly, Hannah blushed. "How's th' chopper?"

"Fine." Piotr placed his hand on her shoulder. "I wanted to thank you for your help today."

And adoration takes human form, thought Laurel, watching Hannah look up at him.

"You're welcome, yeah--?"

"Catch me; I feel faint," whispered Robbie.

Piotr looked out from Hannah to him and Laurel. "I will be bunking four doors off the recreation center, on the left. It might be best if we stay together. Goodnight."

"Think I've had enough for one day, too," said Chaney, getting up. He nudged Hannah. "Think you can take 'em, kid?"

"No doubt."

"Good. See ya in the morning."

He went off, past the room Piotr had chosen, well back down the bunk hall. Hannah watched him go.

"Sure you don't mind?" she asked.

"What--? Sharing a room with Piotr?" Laurel countered.

"Yeah."

"Frankly and absolutely, not at all." Robbie studied the pattern of hits on the vertical board before him. "Especially if it means Selena not killing us in the morning for leaving him to your tender mercies, missy."

"But, umm--"

"Think we've a blind chance just there." Laurel pointed at the marker board on her and Robbie's side. "'But, umm' what--?" she echoed amiably.

"Aren't you an' him--" Hannah nodded at Robbie. "You know."

"Not quite," said Laurel. "See, we-- he--"

"Let's put it this way--" said Robbie. "G-six."

"Miss. What?"

"Damn--" Robbie winced, smiled over at Hannah. "Me and Jim: in an instant. Me and Piotr: not quite my type."

Hannah's eyes widened. "Waitaminnit: you're--"

"Shh. This is an oil rig, ducks."

"But I thought you an' her--" She pointed at Laurel.

"Nope. Sorry." Robbie leaned back in his chair, tipped his nape against the top. "The rebuilding and repopulating duties will fall squarely on others, I'm afraid. On our absent friends, for instance."

"Not t'night it won't," murmured Laurel. "Tonight they are free an' clear." She caught Robbie's quizzical look. "The johnnies, you dope. Of course I let him keep 'em--"

"B-ten," said Hannah. "That should be your destroyer gone."

"Hit and gone, indeed. Scourge of the bloody seas, y' are." Laurel plucked a gray plastic destroyer from the Scottish board, dropped it and its crest of red pegs to the metal tabletop. "I'm no savage, Robert. Looked like they had a break comin' to 'em."

"Well, then, here's to you, Saint Laurel of the Responsible Intimate Encounter." Robbie grinned, leaned forward, had another look at their peppered plastic fleet. "And to absent friends."

"And to makin' your move before we all turn t' skeletons sittin' here," said Hannah.

"Bloodthirsty British-- A-six."

"Miss, innit--?"


While the Scottish fleet took its tiny beating at the hands of a girl from London, Jason McCrae finished business near the mud room on the cellar deck of the Puffin. He sidestepped the watchstanders coming on duty, kept from the pools of light cast by the caged-bulb lamps bolted to the rig's steel skeleton. Kim Whitby, the Puffin's remaining female mechanic, passed by with Rich Donnelly and Jeff Nelson in tow, the three of them snarking and sniping at one another on their way to the mud room, the ballast room, the central hydraulics room, the roomful of gauges off the idle wellhead. The rig might be on standby, but there remained plenty to monitor, especially with the crew reduced by nearly seventy percent. Fewer eyes to see him. McCrae stood in a pocket of shadow, watched the three retreating backs, the light glinting off hardhats. Then he made his way off the cellar deck, upward, well upward, all the way to the helicopter pad.

Just a quick errand. He stepped from the grated metal stairs onto the white solid deck. The Bell 212 stood there like a great dragonfly in its private pool of light, still and gleaming in the rising wind, its skids secure in their deckclamps. McCrae made for the cockpit door on the near side.

"Hey, Jason." Doug Pickford stepped suddenly into view from the Bell's seaward side. "What brings you up here?"

McCrae was nearly touching the Bell's door handle. He lowered his hand. "Evening, Doug. All quiet?"

"Sure." Pickford looked at McCrae, at the hand McCrae had just dropped to his side. He frowned, just a trace. "Told that Russian kid I'd spot him for a few hours. Don't think he's slept in days."

McCrae stepped away from the Bell. He felt Pickford watching him. He strolled to the edge of the pad, leaned against the steel fencing, facing into the wind blowing from the west. The last of the lingering dusk was gone, but he found himself looking after it. He knew that at night the Puffin, casting light from its stacks and cranes, seeping light from its living quarters and lower-deck working areas, looked like a castle suspended in space; tonight, the sky directly overhead was black velvet spackled with diamond flecks. From the nearing west, though, a rolling of clouds was snuffing stars by the wideflung handful. The wind was rising, the temperature falling. When he'd started on the night's tasks, he couldn't see his breath. He could see it now.

"It's gonna be a nasty one tomorrow," he said.

Pickford joined him. "Sure is. Don't need the weather page to know that. My knee's been aching all evening."

"Should have Doc look at that."

"And have her diagnose me with what? Weather knee?" He laughed, his easy, friendly laugh. McCrae joined him, kept his sound to a chuckle. He reached in his jacket pocket.

Pickford, looking out at the wind-puckered black sea, didn't hear the click of the blade lock. McCrae slipped an arm around his throat from behind, pulled him off balance, and punched him in the belly with the knife. One stab, two, three, four. He twisted the blade on the last one. Pickford stumbled against him, choking. His hands clawed at McCrae's clamping arm.

"Sorry, Dougie. Nothing personal."

He wrangled Pickford against the fence and shoved him up and over.

Pickford, flailing, gagging, fell away and down.

But not before his hand caught the shoulder of McCrae's jacket. Caught and held and pulled.

This isn't right, thought McCrae, as his feet left the helicopter pad, as his stomach caught hard on the railing. He was looking into Pickford's dark, dying, betrayed eyes, and suddenly the air around them was cold and moving fast. There's still the Bell. There's still Leg Two. There's still--

The water came at them like a wall of black glass. Jason McCrae's back broke against it. His neck did, too.

-- my easy million.


The Scottish fleet in ruins, Robbie, Laurel, and Hannah made their way to bed. First, though, they stopped off in the kitchen.

"If we're going to share a bunk room," said Robbie, opening steel cupboard doors and scanning contents, "we must have cocoa. It'll be absolutely like a prison melodrama that way."

"Robbie, you great fruit." Laurel turned jars, read labels. "Co-ed prison, hey?"

"Yes, pet. Only in civilized countries such as England they call it 'university.'"

Hannah popped the lid off a square tin, peered in. "Here we are," she said. "All we need's the sugar."


Four doors off the rec room to the left they went, Hannah bringing an extra mug of cocoa for Piotr. If he were sleeping, the other three of them could split it. He was in fact asleep when they trundled into the room, his big frame flat-out and fully dressed on the left-side lower bunk. But he woke when Hannah set the mug on the nightstand by his head; he saw and smiled sleepily and propped himself on an elbow, reaching for the ceramic handle. "Thank you."

"You're welcome, yeah?"

"Per suggestion, here we are, stickin' together," said Laurel.

Hannah sipped her cocoa. "What about Jim an' Selena--?"

"Oh," said Robbie, "I definitely think they're sticking together."

"Robbie, you pervert." Laurel knocked him in the arm, looking at the empty bunks. "So, how should we divvy this?"

Robbie showed his dimples. "Girls on top?"

"Sounds as it should be."

"And I'm the pervert here--?"

"I was thinkin' of you an' your bad leg, yeh gimp. Hold this." She handed him her mug, clambered up onto the top bunk on the right-hand side of the room. "Give."

Robbie handed her her mug, seated himself on the bunk below hers. Hannah, mug in hand, climbed up above Piotr. A general rustling as bodies settled, as pillows and blankets were rearranged. Robbie took a good long drink of his cocoa, stretched out on his back, sighed.

"Oh," he said, "lights out--?"

"Leave one on," Laurel replied. "And let there be no sayin' of 'Goodnight, John-Boy.'"

"Yes, ma'am."

In semi-darkness, with only the light from Robbie's lamp remaining, they lay for maybe thirty seconds, sharing stillness. Then Piotr asked: "Who is 'John-Boy'?"

"I was wonderin' th' same thing," said Hannah.

Laurel kept quiet; Robbie intoned, "And she lies there, alone, in her cultural obsolescence."

"Shut it, Robert."

He chuckled; a moment passed. In Hannah's direction, he said, "Actually, I was wondering-- What's the story behind our Romeo and his very, very intense Juliet?"

Hannah's voice, above him and to the left: "Are you askin' me?"

"I'm asking you, yes. Selena. Jim. There's something between them, isn't there? The way they act toward one another-- that scene in the chopper, back home on the beach: they didn't just meet one day on the tube, did they--?"

A muffled muttering from Laurel: "Oh, go t' sleep, Robbie."

"No, it's okay." Hannah paused. Robbie waited, listening. He supposed, from the quality of the silence, that Laurel and Piotr were listening, too. When Hannah spoke again, Robbie could hear her picturing places hundreds of miles away. People who'd died, her father among them. Lacunae of calm in a terrible adventure that had culminated in an abandoned hospital outside Manchester, she and Selena alone with Jim as he lay shot and dying on an operating table. She had a Londoner's flat voice, Hannah did; she had no trouble quelling her emotions as she spoke. Robbie, listening to her, felt his throat tighten.

"I think he was good with goin'," she said quietly, from the darkness. "You could see it in him, lyin' there. He looked so tired. She brought him back. Selena did. She was givin' him stuff, injections and such; she said later on that it was th' adrenaline that did it--"

"But you think not," Robbie prompted.

"I think he heard her. Wherever he was, he heard, and he came back to her. It was like-- it was like she was wishin' for it, wantin' it so hard, and it came true. He was gone, y'know? He was dead, right there on th' table. You could see it. It was horrible. I was cryin'; I was useless. Selena-- she was mad with it, like furious mad, screamin' for him--"

"Going face-to-face with God--" Robbie said softly.

"She'd'a done it, yeah. Must've worked. He came back to her."

"Wishes can come true, then."

"That time. Not always, yeah--?"

"But that one did." Robbie's voice was dreamy.

"Ah, Robbie, let it be," Laurel murmured above him.

"No, Laurelei. That such things are possible: it's good to know."

Laurel snorted; he heard her roll onto her side, toward the wall. "I'll leave yeh to it then, Socrates," she said. "Goodnight."

"Goodnight," Hannah echoed quietly.

Piotr was silent; he was likely already asleep. Robbie said, gently, "Sweet dreams, Hannah."


They'd left on the one small steel lamp, hooded and private as it was. One small pool of light.

Selena lay now at its periphery, warm and comfortable under a shared blanket, a rumpled sheet. Completely, deeply relaxed. Content in all the right ways. Satisfied in all the right ways. Sore, too, here and there, but that just made all the good of it better.

Just past round two they were, a bit more polished than the shy clumsiness and breathless desperation-- always a killer combination-- of round one, and she was happy where she was, half holding Jim as he half held her. (She would use the term "ecstatic"-- a pulse-pounding, heedlessly grinning, full-on "ecstatic"-- but it seemed somehow risky, this early on. "Happy" would do for now.) They'd had practice in this part of the process back in Cumbria: the half-hold, facing one another, arms draped comfortably, possessively, across waists, knees and elbows parked where they were least likely to leave bruises. She and he were completely at ease touching one another-- in any sense, now, as it turned out-- and she was grateful for that. No bump-and-grind-and-beat-a-retreat for her Jim. For her, either.

Oddly, the only thing she was hesitant to do was to lie with her head against his chest. It wasn't that he was entirely bones, or that she doubted his sturdiness-- "You won't break me," he'd say, gently, and she'd believe him, and look in his lovely clear eyes, and move to her own pillow-- none of that: it was simply that, after what she'd done to save him, she liked to have him like this, where she could see him breathing. Where she could study his clean perfect lines, watch the dreams nudging the backs of his eyelids.

He was having a doze now: his nap before dinner couldn't erase his having had no sleep the night before, or the day he'd just had. She was nearly asleep herself. She lay absorbing the warmth of him. She lay still and heavy and content and felt her breathing modulate to match his. She thought at his sleeping beautiful face, I love you, Jim. I love you absolutely.

She closed her eyes and slept beside him.


Two-thirty. Robbie, too lightly dozing, lay wishing that Virgil Cooper had never mentioned the Puffin's smoking room. He'd assumed, coming aboard, that smoking would have to be absolutely forbidden on a rig-- ridiculous, in fact, in a steel-frame microworld where one misplaced spark could light off a fossil-fuel eternal flame. But mention the smoking room Cooper had. And then Huelsmann had pointed it out. Just through a door at the side of the mess. Boxes of safety matches on the steel tables. Ashtrays filled with fire-suppressant sand. The ghosts of smoky cravings.

"Damn it," Robbie murmured.

He rolled out of his bunk, stood, his repaired leg twinging and a little stiff. He checked around him. Two sleeping faces on the upper bunks, a third sleeping face in the second bunk below. He pulled on his boots and went quietly into the dim hall. No sounds but rig sounds, the general thrum all around, more generalized machinery roaring from away across the platform. He made his way to the mess, to the right, bore toward the door on the room's far eastern side. Just enough light to see by and move safely. No one about. Robbie pulled a battered paper packet from his trousers pocket, passing through the door to the smoking room.

He switched on a hooded lamp at one of the steel tables and reached for a box of safety matches. He shook a cigarette from the pack, put it between his lips.

Sounds from the mess. A door opening and shutting. Stumping and rustling. Clattering. Then silence.

Robbie frowned. He edged up to the door-- and a dark, huge, wild-haired figure suddenly filled it.

Robbie jumped back. "Agh--!"

"'Agh,' yerself." It was the wildman from just after dinner, the rigworker who'd warned Robbie off insulting the Wurlitzer. He was carrying a white mug full of coffee and a piece of pie on a plate; he gestured with the plate, fixed Robbie with his glittering eyes. Behind him, the sturdy short woman named Whitby and their more neatly trimmed cohort, the younger man who had been the third of their bellowing, coveralled trio, were seating themselves at a mess table with their own pie and coffee. All three of them were well smudged. "In for our break, aren't we--?"

"Right. Sorry."

"Right y'are."

"Goodnight, then."

"G'night."

Robbie retreated back into the smoking room, hearing chuckles behind him. He smoked and finished the first cigarette, lit a second.

"'Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,' old son." Laurel would have none of his death sticks, and he was sensing a similar attitude from their new friends. Only one more left in the pack, anyway. The wildman and his grimy co-workers went back out onto the rig in a shuffling and a slamming of doors; as Robbie was lighting coffin nail third and last, sounds again came from the mess.

Again, suspensive silence followed. "It only works once," Robbie called at the dark room.

No reply.

"Damn it." Robbie stubbed out his cigarette, went to the door. "I said--"

"What only works once?" asked Larry Dalton. He was just inside the door of the mess, shrugging his way into a blue down jacket.

"Nothing--" Robbie looked around the mess, looked back at Dalton. "I thought you were that Yeti who's running loose."

Dalton laughed. "Must mean Donnelly. He can be a sneaky bastard, and that's a fact." He opened the door leading out. "I'll let him know he's got a new nickname. We'll call him 'MacYeti.' He'll love it. Goodnight, kid." He went out, chuckling.

"Goodnight." Robbie swallowed, muttered to himself: "Sure he'll love tearing me limb from limb, too. Clever, Robert."


Breathe, Jim. Breathe. Please. Breathe, God damn it--

"I am breathin', love," Jim said softly.

Selena opened her eyes. He was lying inches away, watching her, sleepy, tender, concerned.

"Was I talking--?"

"Murmuring, yeah." He touched her face. "You okay?"

"Yeah. Really okay." She smiled, caressed the back of his hand. "You?"

"Mmm. Actually--" He looked a little sheepish. "I'm sorry--"

"What for?"

"Fallin' asleep like that."

"I fell asleep, too, didn't I?" She snuggled closer to him. "Think we had a bit of a long day."

Jim ran his fingers along her arm. "Was wonderful, though, wasn't it?"

"Yeah, it was. Bit of amazing, actually."

He smiled, shifted, realigned himself; she did the same, stretching her joints, relaxing. When she re-settled with him, they were if anything closer than they'd been before. Jim wrapped her in his arms, gently, most thoroughly, bringing himself belly to flat belly with her; Selena's breath left her in a long, slow tingle that was in no way a reaction to the chilly air in the room. She maneuvered, found his mouth, brushed fingertips across his full lips, kissed him. Jim kissed her in return. He had his eyes half closed, and his face was a perfect portrait of bliss. She had a sneaking thought that hers was, too.

Round three, then, wasn't it--?


Some forty-five minutes post-break, Kim Whitby, Richie Donnelly, and the better-groomed if equivalently grimy Jeff Nelson were back on their rounds at the Puffin's cellar level, prowling the supply area and the mud room and the ballast room, checking stores and gauges and pressure levels.

At the flow monitor in the mud room, Donnelly chuckled. "That poor wee shite. Gave him a fright, you did, Kimberly."

"Wasn't lookin' at me, you big hairy werewolf."

"Right, then. Well, I gave 'im a fright. An' proud of it."

"Not nice," said Nelson, smirking.

"Did yeh see him jump? Like we're Morlocks come up outta th' muck."

Kim Whitby twisted a pressure valve, paused, scowled, twisted again. "Well, aren't we--?"

"What's a 'Morlock'?" asked Nelson.

Donnelly snorted. "Behold our Jeffrey, proudly broadcastin' his ignorance for all th' world." He gestured broadly out at the sea, the rising wind. "Someone's actin' th' part of th' lucky man t'night, anyway, no lie."

Said Nelson: "That guy Jim? No acting going on there. Girl like that? Oh, man--"

"Cinnamon-skinned Amazon, she is. Lucky wee man. Oh, for fifteen minutes wi' a lass like that. Or jus' the right ten. What's he got a fella like me hasn't--?"

Whitby considered. She left the valve, wrote numbers in ballpoint on a clip-boarded form. "Dunno. A personality--?"

"Ah, there is that. But, yeh see, Kimberly--"

"My name's not Kimberly, dick."

"As mine is not 'dick.' See, personality only goes so far--"

"And then-- Wait, don't tell me: it's on to animal attraction, right--?"

"Exactly."

"Think he's got you beat there, too, Richie-- Hold on."

A good-sized splash, well below, off near the south edge of the rig. Another one after that.

"Seals--?" said Nelson.

"Not this far out: you know that, Jeff." Whitby set aside the clipboard, turning to the left. "Sounds like it came from Leg Three."

"Pirates--?" Nelson frowned through his coating of grease.

"Not unless they're throwin' each other in." Donnelly followed Whitby out of the mud room, toward the topside end of Leg Three.

She leaned out over the railing and looked down the tower to the oil-black water. "Maintenance lights are out again. Shit."

Donnelly came to stand beside her, joined her in looking down. He pointed. "What's that--? There's somethin' bobbin' there in th' water."

"Looks like a-- Crap, it's a lifepod."

"Why are we launchin' pods?" Nelson asked.

"Think we need to ask Virg that."

"Hold on, hold on. There's somethin' else." Donnelly took a flashlight from his tool belt, shone it down the tower. "Y'see-- just inside, there."

Nelson and Whitby followed the light down the flat red of the leg. Nearly halfway down, about twenty feet below the rigid mesh decking where they stood, was a squared brown bundle, like a set of sheets or a folded parachute.

"What th' hell is that--?"

"Maybe one of the science guys stuck a new weather pack in place. I'll have a look," Whitby said. "Richie, call Virg."

She climbed out onto the tower ladder, descended.

"You're a braver man than I, Kimberly," Donnelly called to her.

"Don't I know it."

"Don't look so panicked, Jeff." Donnelly slapped Nelson's coveralled shoulder. "Got a malfunction in Control is all. Gonna be hell gettin' those pods back."

He ambled over to the nearest yellow 'com box, hooked to an upright fifteen feet from Leg Three. Twenty feet below him, midway down the tower, Kim Whitby shone her helmet lamp onto the squared bundle. A small black box was attached to its far left side. A wire ran from the box upward, toward the Puffin's grated decking. The box itself bore a red digital display. Numbers, 00:47:48, descending.

Counting down.

"Oh, shit--" she breathed. She looked up the tower, shouted against the wind: "Richie-- Jeff-- Shit, I think it's a--"

Twenty feet above Whitby's head, right next to the steel upright holding the 'com box, Donnelly's boot hooked itself on something.

"Th' hell--"

A wire, at ankle level.

Below, the wire detached itself from the black box. The display went blank. Whitby closed her eyes.

The explosion shattered the top twenty feet of Leg Three; it vaporized Whitby, Donnelly, and Nelson. A crane on the top deck directly above Leg Three jolted free and toppled with a wrenching and twisting and breaking of anchoring bolts directly into the Puffin's core. It made a gaping hole for itself through two grated steel decks on its tumbling, cracking, roaring descent; though it missed the wellhead, which was off-center on the rig, nearer the southwest corner, it managed to hit almost everything else. It plummeted through the main machinery room and the ballast room and the mud room; in a shower of sparks it clipped the generator room and a science lab. It gashed Leg Five. And along with a snarling of girders, storage tanks, crates, lesser machinery, and a forklift, it took with it into the black water most of the rig's second shift. Lights in unshattered areas flickered and died; claxons rang out. The Puffin itself staggered in the sea, slumped southward over its missing leg.

Across the rig, loudspeakers barked through static: Emergency. All personnel to the mess. This is not a drill. Emergency. All personnel to the mess--

Three fifty-four. Under a ceiling of charcoal clouds and sluicing cold rain, the midsummer night was already ending.

The Puffin had roughly an hour to live.