Nightmare journey

more if we didn't bother with sails.
    Chaney smiled knowingly, returned to the controls. Then again, the engines might cut out on us when we're in the middle of all that damned water, leave us stranded there until our food and fresh water were gone. Maybe we could boil up a drinkable brew from seawater and survive a bit longer. In the end, though, we'd starve to death.
    But those engines have been working for thousands of years, Chaney! Why should they suddenly quit on us when we need them?
    And why should they not quit on us? Chaney asked.
    Jask decided there was something to be desired in having a skipper who was at least a little pessimistic.
    In all of Kittlesticks there was no cloth to be had-just tattered, mildewed, mold-covered, rotting lumps of stuff that could never be fashioned to fit their needs. Finally, though, in a dockside nautical shop they found a great length of lightweight metallic sailcloth whose metal fibers had withstood the gnawing of the years.
    This material proved difficult to cut and sew, and they remained in Kittlesticks five days, working up three serviceable sails. They saw no Indians during the night, though their unearthly companion remained, haunting their sleep and forcing its mental aura into their esp perceptions all the time they were awake.
    At last, in the early morning, with only a suggestion of the sun in the sky, they carried the three sails down to the ship.
    Mist drifted in from the sea, oddly sweet scented.
    They mounted the sails on the electrically controlled yard-arms, drew them up for testing, then rolled them down again and bound them fast until they might be needed. The noise of their labor echoed across the flat waters like footfalls in a tomb.
    That afternoon, on the edge of town, they gathered wild fruit of many kinds, and packed it all into baskets and sacks. They killed a large animal that had descended from pure cattle but which was now a nine-horned, broader-shouldered, taller and meaner creature than its ancestors had been. They skinned and butchered this brute and salted several large pieces of meat. These stores were loaded in the galley of the ship, below the waterline, where they might be kept cool.
    The espers dreamed at night; a living city, rooms of flesh, streets of pulsing tissue…
    Before dawn of the seventh day they boarded the yellow ship, which they had christened Hadaspuri Maiden, half in fun and half in hopes that after being accorded such an honor the sea would look with favor upon their journey. The engines were brought up to full power, and the ship was taken from the dock at Kittlesticks. They had still seen no Indians.
    The Hadaspuri was amber near the coast but grew a dirty green and then a rich blue color as they moved out onto it and it grew deeper beneath them.
    As they passed the last of the atolls twenty kilometers from shore, rainbow-colored flying fish danced before their bow. Their wings were as much as four feet across, spreading gloriously as they arced from the sea and folding sleekly as they plummeted back in.
    Standing by the rail on the deck of the open bridge door, looking at the heaving sea, through which the Maiden sliced like a knife, Tedesco 'pathed to Chaney, What do you know of the Hadaspuri?
    It's six hundred kilometers from west to east, eight hundred from Kittlesticks on the south to any point on the north shore.
    Is it inhabited?
    The sea? Chaney 'pathed, perplexed.
    Yes.
    By fish.
    How big are the fish?
    Chaney grinned. So far as I know, the Hadaspuri contains no beasts. It is not, after all, a Wildlands sea.
    Let's hope you're right.
    If anything attacks our little ship, Chaney promised, I'll skin it, butcher it, and store it below.
    No need. I hate fish.
    The sunny sky grew overcast as they thrust deeper into the heart of the Hadaspuri. The clouds were light gray, riding high, bothersome but not threatening a storm.
    Before long the air smelled only of the sea, without a single trace of land in it.
    They ate a light lunch of fruit, a dinner of roasted beef basted in the juice of apples and pears.
    The unseen creature remained with them.
    It nagged at the periphery of their extrasensory perception, its voice a wail, its note that of endless suffering, its effect stronger than ever on the five espers.
    Later, when Kiera took the first watch on the bridge, before the wheel and instruments, the others went below to sleep in the two main cabins, aft. Despite the fact that they were separated by the metal bulkheads,