"Agreed. Then again, it won't be coming after anybody for a while."

The Armorer dropped his voice, making sure nobody could overhear them. "If we don't try the raft, we

have to jump again. How do you feel about that? And the boy?"

"Rather face that mutie crab's mother and father. No, seriously, I think we have to try for the mainland.

Despite the stink of farts."

J.B. looked around. "Fog's lifting. Be dawn in an hour or so. When do we go?"

Ryan stood and stretched, grunting at the tightness in his shoulders. "What I remember about the western islands, word was that they weren't heavily occupied. Rad hot spots as well as the boiling mud and stuff."

"I checked the rad counter."

"Yeah, me too. Been veering between the low yellow and a sort of mid-orange. Bad, but not too bad."

The Armorer stared into the mist that still obscured the other side of the channel. "Best we try and get

landed soon after first light."

"In case anyone's on lookout?"

"Sure. Be dead meat, floundering around on that raft, if anyone's got hostile intentions toward us. And if

they got a good long gun."

"Can't argue with that. Best tell everyone to get themselves ready. We'll push off in fifteen minutes."

THE OCEAN WAS AS FLAT and as still as a sheltered millpond, with only the slightest suggestion of a swell.

They launched the raft as near to the end of the beach as they could, to minimize the struggle through the thick, clogging weed, finding themselves in clear water within a few yards. The wooden craft settled lower than they'd expected, with only a couple of inches freeboard, and some of the makeshift timbers shifted as everyone clambered carefully on board.

But it floated.

The mist was almost totally cleared, and the unknown mainland beckoned them.

They were on their way.

Chapter Eleven.

" 'Row, row, row the boat, gently down the stream,' " Doc sang, digging the crude paddle into the limpid waters of the strait, watching the tiny whirlpool as it drifted away behind every stroke.

"Keep your voice down," Ryan warned. "You know how sound carries across water. This part of the day, just before the dawn, is a quiet time."

"My sincere apologies, my dear fellow. Just brought back the merry days of punting down the Cherwell when I was at Oxford. I had a small rented room in the suburb called Jericho, just south of Summertown. Ah, me, such happy days were those. The dreaming spires of honey-colored Cotswold stone and the warm, green-muffled Cumnor Hills."

"Don't you ever shut your fucking mouth?" snapped Trader, who had been in a foul mood since driving a

splinter of wood deep into his palm in the first minutes of their journey.

"Only when I have nothing to say," the old man replied. "And when I do open my mouth I endeavor to avoid foul and obscene language whilst in the presence of ladies."

"Well said, Doc." Mildred paused in paddling to clap her hands.

Trader sucked at the jagged wound, spitting crimson over the side of the raft into the sea, "Might attract the sharks, blood like that," Abe said worriedly.

Krysty smiled. "I think it might take more than that to bring in the great whites."

"You never know." Abe was kneeling on a triangular slab of timber, leaning out to paddle, and he kept

glancing around through the vanishing veil of mist.

There was a swirling ripple in the dark water, about fifty yards from the raft, on the starboard side. Dean saw it and called out to his father, finger pointing.

"Seal," Jak said calmly.

"Sure?" the boy asked.

"Sure."

A moment later the albino was proved right when a sleek whiskered head popped out of the sea in a welter of silver bubbles, grinning directly into Dean's face, making him jump so much that he nearly lost his balance and fell over the side.

"Told you," said Jak.

RYAN WAS AWARE that the sulfurous smell was becoming stronger as they made their way over the placid water. But, by now, he had to admit that he hardly seemed to notice it anymore.

Dawn was rushing across the land, bringing a lightening of the sky from the east. It was becoming possible, now that they were better than halfway over from the island, to make out some of the features of the mainland.

"Something behind us," J.B. said, holding his dripping paddle clear of the water, looking at the ocean a hundred yards or so astern. The first sliver of sun was peering over the distant mountains, glancing off his glasses.

"What?" Ryan asked. "Everyone stop paddling for a minute. All quiet."

"Don't know what, but I'm sure I saw the surface kind of change. Like something big had moved by, deep down." Ryan stood, steadying himself with a hand on the shoulders of Krysty and Doc Tanner, trying to see beneath the glittering water. At first there was nothing.

"Hope it's not another of those mutie crabs," Dean said, shuddering.

There was a flicker under the sea, about twenty yards off, slightly behind and off to the port side. Ryan

shaded his eye and stopped a little to see more clearly.

Then he saw it.

"Hang on. No sudden movements. It's several big whales."

Everyone promptly turned to see for themselves, tipping the raft sharply to the left, coming close to

toppling it. There was some splashing and shouting, but it eventually settled down again on an even keel.

Now the whales were very close, one on either side and two more off a little distance to starboard.

Mildred stared at them, a fascinated smile on her face. "They won't hurt us. Not deliberately."

"How do you know?" Trader had pulled out the Armalite, holding it across his lap.

"Use that and you could easily get us all chilled," the woman warned. "All the guns we got together

wouldn't do more than irritate one of these fellows."

One surfaced, whooshing a great jet of spray from its paired blowholes. Its side was scarred and marked, slick and shining. Dean put out a wondering hand and stroked it. The tiny eye seemed to revolve in its socket and look solemnly at the boy.

"What kind is it?" Doc asked. "Right whale?"

Mildred shook her head. "No. Saw them from a small boat, more fragile than this, down in Baja, the summer before skydark. Gray whales. Eschricktius robustus . Grow up to fifty or sixty feet. They were endangered once from the bloody harpoons. Became protected and were flourishing when the world ended. Probably there's more of them now than ever."

"Will they eat us?" Dean asked. "No, honey. They're mainly bottom feeders. Scooping up thousands of the tiny crabs and the like. What the scientists call gammarid amphipods. Sailors named them devilfish because they would fight hard to protect their young." Everyone sat still.

One of the whales rubbed its back along the rough timbers of the raft, making it rock from side to side. Trader cursed softly under his breath, hanging on tight with one hand, blaster in the other.

"They are the true wonders of the Lord in the deep," Doc whispered, sounding as reverential as if he were sitting in a cathedral.

"There's a young calf over there," Ryan said to his son, pointing to the left toward the mainland. "See how its mother keeps between it and us."

The whales moved on southward with a wonderful, ponderous grace. As they came closer together, a couple of hundred yards in front of the raft, they all dived in perfect unison. The last of them showed its flukes as it rolled, its enormous tail hanging in the dawn light for a few magical moments before it finally disappeared.

"Wow," Dean said on a sigh. "Now that was something."

Ryan picked up his paddle. "Time to get moving again."

"LOOK AT THE SMOKE, or the steam, from those hot springs and geysers," Krysty said. "Seems like the whole of the land's boiling or on fire."

"They dangerous?" Abe asked.

"Only if you get too close." Ryan was steering them carefully toward what looked like a natural inlet.

Jak and Dean had stopped paddling, both standing near the front of the raft, keeping watch for any signs of danger from the shore.

"Small hut," Jak said, "right by water. Could be boathouse."

"Any smoke from a fire?" Ryan asked.

The albino hesitated. "Can't be sure. So much steam and shit. Don't think so."

They were about a hundred yards away, moving through shallow water with rock protruding above the water and many more lying in wait below the surface. Dean was kneeling, calling out warnings. "Bit to the right, now left." The clumsy craft was moving so slowly it was hardly likely to be damaged by any collision.

"I just saw a gigantic conger eel," Doc reported. "Long and thick as a telegraph pole. I don't think that I would relish swimming in these waters."

It was full dawn, enabling them all to see the extent of the blighted land ahead of them.

There was a beach and some rocks, with the building that Jak had mentioned. It seemed like there was a track leading away from it, vanishing inland. Then there came a belt of mist, smoke and steam, with the tops of distant mountains, snow-capped, visible far behind it.