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hugging the bottom, and pulls the other woman clear.
    Ballard's knife continues to dip and twist. The giganturid is a mutilated wreck behind the gills, but its grip remains unbroken. Ballard can't twist around far enough to reach the skull. Clarke comes in from behind and takes the creature's head in her hands.
    It stares at her, malevolent and unthinking.
    "Kill it!" Ballard shouts. "Jesus, what are you waiting for?"
    Clarke closes her eyes, and clenches. The skull in her hand splinters like cheap plastic.
    There is a silence.
    After a while, she opens her eyes. The gulper is gone, fled back into darkness to heal or die. But Ballard's still there, and Ballard is angry.
    "What's wrong with you?" she says.
    Clarke unclenches her fists. Bits of bone and jellied flesh float about her fingers.
    "You're supposed to back me up! Why are you so damned — passive all the time?"
    "Sorry." Sometimes it works .
    Ballard reaches behind her back. "I'm cold. I think it punctured my diveskin—"
    Clarke swims behind her and looks. "A couple of holes. How are you otherwise? Anything feel broken?"
    "It broke through the diveskin," Ballard says, as if to herself. "And when that gulper hit me, it could have—" She turns to Clarke and her voice, even distorted, carries a shocked uncertainty. "—I could have been killed. I could have been killed !"
    For an instant, it's as though Ballard's 'skin and eyes and self-assurance have all been stripped away. For the first time Clarke can see through to the weakness beneath, growing like a delicate tracery of hairline cracks.
    You can screw up too, Ballard. It isn't all fun and games . You know that now.
    It hurts, doesn't it?
    Somewhere inside, the slightest touch of sympathy. "It's okay," Clarke says. "Jeanette, it's—"
    "You idiot! " Ballard hisses. She stares at Clarke like some malign and sightless old woman. "You just floated there! You just let it happen to me!"
    Clarke feels her guard snap up again, just in time. This isn't just anger, she realizes. This isn't just the heat of the moment. She doesn't like me. She doesn't like me at all.
    And then, dully surprised that she hasn't seen it before:
    She never did.

A Niche

    Beebe Station floats tethered above the seabed, a gunmetal-gray planet ringed by a belt of equatorial floodlights. There's an airlock for divers at the south pole and a docking hatch for 'scaphes at the north. In between there are girders and anchor lines, conduits and cables, metal armor and Lenie Clarke.
    She's doing a routine visual check on the hull; standard procedure, once a week. Ballard is inside, testing some equipment in the communications cubby. This is not entirely within the spirit of the buddy system. Clarke prefers it this way. Relations have been civil over the past couple of days—Ballard even resurrects her patented chumminess on occasion—but the more time they spend together, the more forced things get. Eventually, Clarke knows, something is going to break.
    Besides, out here it seems only natural to be alone.
    She's examining a cable clamp when a razormouth charges into the light. It's about two meters long, and hungry. It rams directly into the nearest of Beebe's floodlamps, mouth agape. Several teeth shatter against the crystal lens. The razormouth twists to one side, knocking the hull with its tail, and swims off until barely visible against the dark.
    Clarke watches, fascinated. The razormouth swims back and forth, back and forth, then charges again.
    The flood weathers the impact easily, doing more damage to its attacker. Over and over again the fish batters itself against the light. Finally, exhausted, it sinks twitching down to the muddy bottom.
    "Lenie? Are you okay?"
    Clarke feels the words buzzing in her lower jaw. She trips the sender in her diveskin: "I'm okay."
    "I heard something out there," Ballard says. "I just wanted to make sure you were—"
    "I'm fine," Clarke says. "Just a fish."
    "They never learn, do they?"
    "No. I guess not. See you