Invader (61 page)

Not just one chute.

Two.

Banichi leaned down and pounded with his fist on the hatch, the bottom edge of which was underwater.

Something inside thumped back. Twice.

And very slowly the hatch began to loosen its seal.

"Can you hear me?" Bren shouted. He didn't think they could. And where the seal gave, water was surely going in.

A further gap. A flood. And the hatch folded back, dropped to the inside, in a small waterfall of incoming brown water — giving him two sweaty, scared, and very human faces.

Nokhada stuck her nose toward them and he reined her over with a wrench that half-killed his shoulder.

"Hello, there," he said. "Better vacate."

"Don't believe him!" Hanks yelled from the shore.

'That's Hanks," he said. "I'm Bren. This is Banichi." He suddenly realized he was smudged, sooted, and there was smoke on the wind.

The visitors to the world, with water risen over their couches, their stowed gear, and up to their waists, took a fearful look outside — at a dark sky, rolling smoke, and a batch of armed and suspicious riders on brass-tusked mecheiti.

Two mecheiti were still riderless.

"It's perfectly all right," Bren said. "They've got planes coming. They're beginning to put the fire out. They swear to us." He held out his hand, sooty, slightly bloodied, and shaking as it was, and put on his friendliest smile. "Welcome to the world. For the rest, you've got to trust me."

The End