"What do you?" said Zei. "Make skids wherewith to travel over the terpahla-vine? In sooth, a levin-flash of genius. If, that is, we fall not through a gap in the vine to provide a banquet for the monsters of the sea."
"Let's see your foot. Damn these flimsy sandal effects…"
The hours slipped by as Barnevelt worked. When he again opened the northeast door, the light of the three clustered moons no longer shone in through the portal, for they had ridden across the meridian to the western half of the starlit sky.
Barnevelt planned his next steps with care. First he made the circuit of the deck once more, looking and listening for sights and sounds of pursuit. Finding none, he peered to northward across the moonlit waste of weed. It would be the easiest thing in Krishna to get lost while splashing around on the vines at night without map or compass. He could no longer see the pale speck on the horizon that he had thought to be the sail of the rendezvous raft, but the nose of the up-ended derelict still stood out plainly.
Then he knocked at the door, saying: "Put out the lamp and come."
Zei obeyed him. Together they lugged out the four skis, the two oars he had chosen for balancing poles, and an armful of rope. He belayed one end of a length of heavy rope to a cleat on the deck and let the rest of it hang down into the water.
Then he discarded his vest of chain mail, which would make swimming impossible, and with the lighter rope set about making ski lashings. He had already cut notches in the sides of the skis for the rope, since it would have to pass under the skis. His own skis gave no great trouble. Though he had never made a ski lashing before, he was sophisticated in the ways of ropes from his boating experience on Earth, and his expressman's boots afforded his feet the necessary protection.
Zei's feet, however, were something else. Although he had cut a couple of pieces of sailcloth which he wrapped around her feet to protect them from the rope, he still feared she would be chafed. However, there was no help for it…
"The Sunqaruma are coming!" she said in a loud whisper.
He listened. Over the subdued ground noise of nocturnal Sunqaro activity came a more definite sound of many feet, a clink of steel, and a murmur of voices.
He frantically finished Zei's bindings and hurried to the hulk's side, his boards going clickety-clack on the deck.
"I shall have to go first," he said, and lowered himself over the edge, holding the heavy rope.
He let himself down to the weed and heard the skis strike water. Then he felt the coolth of the sea around his ankles. For an instant he thought the weed would not bear his weight; that if he let go the rope he would go right on in up to his chin.
The noise of the approaching men grew rapidly louder. Barnevelt could now make out different voices, though not the words.
"Make haste!" came the voice of Zei from above. Barnevelt, choking down an impulse to bark at her: what did she think he was doing? lowered himself further. The tension in the rope decreased, and he found himself standing on the weed with the water not yet halfway up his calves. He took a gingerly step, and then another, still holding the rope, and found that the vine afforded more substantial support away from the ship's side. He also learned that if one kept moving, oae kept comparatively dry, whereas to stand in one place meant to sink gradually to one's knees in water as one's weight pushed the terpahla under.
"Hand me down my oar!" he said softly. When Zei had done so, he tried it and found it not a bad ski pole.
He judged from the sound that the approaching searchers were now coming across the gangplank on the other side of the hulk. That fact left them only seconds' leeway.
"All right," he murmured, "hand me down yours and the rest of the light rope… Now climb down."
"Will you not stand under to catch me?"
"Can't. It would put too much weight in one place."
She began to lower herself down as best she could, her skis rapping against the hulk's side. On the far side of the hulk feet sounded on the deck, and Barnevelt caught snatches of speech:
"… the gods know we've searched everywhere else…"
"… if they be not here, they must have flown…"
"… go around the deck in the other direction, you, lest they…"
Zei reached water level, took a staggering step on the vine, fouled the whittled nose of her right ski in the terpahla, and almost took a header.
"Watch out!" hissed Barnevelt frantically. "The terpahla's more solid over here. Here's your oar. Now come quickly."
They started hiking off to northward, their skis swishing over the weedy water. Barnevelt snatched a look back at the hulk. Althouth the hither side of it was now in shadow, there was a hint of movement around the deck-and the sound of a door being opened. Someone called: "They broke in here! Fetch lights!"
Perhaps, thought Barnevelt, the Morya would be too occupied with searching the hulk to notice that their quarry was escaping in plain sight; not expecting to see people walking on the water, they would not even glance out across the weed.
No such luck. A voice said: "What does this rope here? Ohe, there they go!"
"Where?"
"Yonder, across the terpahla!"
" 'Tis a thing impossible!"
"Yet there they…"
"Witchcraft!"
"Bows! Bows! Who bears a bow?"
"No one, sir, for you did command…"
"Never mind what I commanded, fool, but run to fetch…"
"Can you not throw…"
"Keep on," said Barnevelt, lengthening his stride. Behind him the voices merged into a buzzing babel.
"Watch out for that hole," he told Zei.
The distance increased with agonizing slowness. Behind them came the snap as of a twanged rubber band, followed by a short sharp whistle passing close.
"They shoot at us," said Zei, in a voice near tears.
"That's all right. They can't hit us at long range in this light." Barnevelt did not feel as confident as he sounded. He felt even less so when the next whsht came by so close that he could swear he felt the wind of it. What would they do if one were hit?
Whsht! Whsht! That mail-shirt would have felt good despite its weight.
Little by little the distance lengthened, and the invisible missiles ceased to whizz about their ears.
"We're safe now," he said. "Stand still and catch the end of this rope. Tie it around your waist. That's so if one of us falls into a hole, the other can pull him out. Thank the great god Bakh you're not one of these tiny girls! Off we go again, and remember to keep moving."
They plodded towards the bow of the up-ended derelict.
Zei remarked: "An uncommon sight it is to see all the moons full and in conjunction simultaneously. Old Qvansel avers that this event portends some great upheaval in the realm's mundane affairs, though my mother will not have it SO, holding that Varzai governs all and that the old man's talk of astrological whys and wherefores be nought but impious superstition."
" '… and rhymes, and dismal lyrics, prophesying change beyond all reason.' Why does she keep him on the payroll jf she doesn't believe his line?"
"Oh, he's a legacy from my grandmother's reign, and my mother, however harsh she may appear to those who do not know her intimately, cannot bring herself to cast adrift a longtime faithful servant. Besides which, be his star lore true or false, he's still a man of mighty erudit… glub!"
A sudden tug on the safety rope staggered Barnevelt. Zei had fallen into a hole. Talking women! Barnevelt thought savagely as her head appeared above the water with a strand of terpahla draped over one eye.
"Pull yourself out, Mistress Zei!" he snapped, moving his skis to keep a constant tension on the line. "On hands and knees, like that."
She seemed to be hopelessly tangled in her skis, but finally got squared away.