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would not happen to Yavobo.
    "Tanks blown," the white-faced pilot bit out the words. "We're over the Lip and still going down."
    The alien glanced once at Murs. He had a contract, but this foolish man had refused his advice to secure a second craft. If they had had one, Yavobo could be assisting the distressed vessel right now. Instead, his own life was endangered in a way that never would have happened if he had been master of his own fate.
    “Ayesh-kha.'' The alien spat the phrase at Murs with a sideways slash of his hand.
    "Do something!" the Senior Advisor screamed. The rushing waters were up to mid-thigh and continued to rise. More metal surrendered to the sea with a hull-shuddering groan.
    Yavobo exposed his canine fangs in an angry grimace. "I rescind my contract," he loosely translated the ritual phrase. "I owe blood-debt to your heirs. You I can no longer help."
    "We had a deal!" Murs shrieked, terror raising his voice two octaves in pitch.
    Yavobo slipped into the airlock, half-filled with water, and punched the cycle button. Nothing happened. As Murs struggled after him against the rushing water, the Aztrakhani gripped the hatch and pulled it shut with brute force, overwhelming grudging hydraulics with inhuman strength.
    Murs pounded on the plasglas view port while Yavobo yanked the breather locker open. Muffled screams and pleading curses came from the Advisor while the red-skinned bodyguard affixed his flotation belt. Breather mask secure, he turned to the outside hatch. A quick jab on the cycle button showed that system was shorted, too, but for that lock there was an emergency lever to the right of the door.
    Yavobo looked back at Murs, afloat now in the sea-filled skiff, his face with wide, frightened eyes bobbing in an air pocket near the top of the airlock view port. Albek's fingers scrambled for a grip on the plasglas as the Aztrakhani turned away and heaved upon the manual lever for the external lock.
    The hatch gave way. A sudden rush of water slammed Yavobo against the far wall, then the pocket of displaced air belched him out of the lock of the doomed skiff.
    He ignored the sudden shattering pain in his ears and smothering pressure on his chest and organs. Aztrakhani were made of tougher stuff than mere human tissues. He adjusted one float on his belt and, with lighter weight, began a slow, controlled ascent to the surface.
    Remember to exhale, he cautioned himself, continue to exhale. Like the other land-dwellers he had traveled at one atmosphere of pressure, so didn't fear sudden decompression—but breather gases expanded in his lungs at a rate greater than normal as he ascended tens of meters every minute. He concentrated on his breathing and glared at the murk below.
    Only one flickering orange light from within the water-filled cabin marked the vessel's final descent into the abyss. That, and a flurry of air bubbles as the broken hull was crushed in the depths below.

XII
    Reva had a good sense for these things. She was lounging in her hotel room when an androgynous vidcaster interrupted the regular newscast only twenty minutes after the time patch did its dirty deed.
    "While en route to the Obai Economic Summit, a vessel bearing Senior Advisor Albek Murs experienced mechanical failure and is believed to have sunk into the Alauna Abyss. One emergency hail was received from the hydrocraft before transmissions ceased. The skiff is feared lost with all hands. Air and sea vessels are quartering the area now, searching for survivors. Stay tuned for further updates as they happen."
    Reva congratulated herself, and found she had nervous energy that needed burning up. There was Alia Lanzig yet to go, but she could think about that later. For now, it was time to hit the nightlife. Amasl had been forbidden ground to her when she grew up on R'debh, but there were no longer disapproving parents to make her stay away from the clubs and trip-dens.
    Parents. She shrugged a grim note from her mood and headed for