Children of the Storm

at this distance, she was able to see the high sheets of white spray that exploded along the tanker's bow each time it slammed through another wall of moving water.
        It occurred to her that the savage ways of Nature could be far more dangerous than anything a human agent could do-even if the man in question were a certified lunatic. She fervently hoped that Greta would by-pass Distingue.. .
        They walked near the water's edge, the children five paces ahead of them, and they did not say much of anything.
        “Chilly,” Sonya said.
        “A bad sign.”
        When, in a few more comments, they had exhausted the subject of the weather, they lapsed into complete silence.
        Ahead, Alex and Tina had found three-quarters of a crate washed to shore by the stormy seas, and they were clambering over it, playing with it as all kids play with boxes. Sonya and Rudolph walked past them a few feet, then stopped to watch over them. The game the two were playing was inexplicable, but they were both enjoying it; Tina was giggling so hard, as Alex popped in and out of the huge crate, that her small face was cherry-tinted at the cheeks and nose.
        Sonya looked for the freighter.
        It was gone.
        Farther along the beach, however, another show was in progress, one that appeared to be quite lively. About twenty paces away, half a hundred sand crabs, and perhaps twice that number, were thickly congregated around some object which, like the wooden crate, seemed to have been washed ashore. They scuttled over it in such numbers, with such devotion, that they reminded Sonya of flies on honey, and they obscured the general outline of their prize.
        “Isn't that strange?” she asked Saine.
        “The crabs?”
        “Yes.”
        “Probably a dead fish that washed ashore-and now they're having a real feast.”
        “They'd eat dead meat?”
        “That's about the only kind they eat. They're scavengers, not genuine predators.”
        “An unpleasant diet,” she said.
        “At least they keep the beaches clean,” Saine said.
        “It's an awfully large fish,” she said.
        “Could be a dead shark or porpoise.”
        The crabs scuttled back and forth, tossed around by the foaming waves that sluiced over half of their prize.
        “Will they devour it all?”
        “All but the bones.”
        She felt uneasy.
        She was not sure why.
        “Rudolph-?”
        “Hmmm?”
        Alex popped out of his box.
        Tina giggled and slapped at him.
        “Something's wrong,” Sonya said.
        The bodyguard was instantly alert.
        His hand had gone to his holster.
        “Nothing like that,” she said.
        “What, then?”
        She nodded toward the crabs.
        “What about them?”
        “I'm not sure, but-”
        “It's not pleasant, I'll agree,” he said, regaining his composure. “But it's a perfectly natural scene, an ecological cycle that takes place a million times each hour.”
        “No,” she said adamantly.
        “Sonya-”
        A heavy wave, taller than all of the rest that had been so regularly preceding it, swept in from the dark edges of the sea, rising twelve feet above the surface, curling down like a water hammer. It began to break, swept completely across the crabs and their meal, scattering the determined crustaceans before it.
        When the roiling waters poured back into the sea, baring the beach again, they left the crabs' meal free of pincered diners for one brief moment, and the outlines of the thing were, at last, painstakingly clear and recognizable.
        “My God,” Saine gasped.
        Sonya gagged.
        The crabs rushed in again.
        In a second, they had obscured the thing once more.
        The kids noticed the shift in their elders' attention, sensed that something special had just happened and, laughing, waving their arms, ran away from the broken crate toward the congregation of crabs.
        “Alex, stop!” Sonya screamed.
        Her damaged throat, which she would have thought incapable of that volume, produced a hoarse, terrified explosion of sound that stopped the children in their tracks.
        Alex turned and said, “Sand crabs won't hurt you.”
        “They run when you get close,” Tina said.
        “I don't care,” Sonya said, with all the authority she could muster. “You come back here right now, right away,