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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
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Deathlands 26 - Shadowfall 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
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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?"
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Deathlands 26 - Shadowfall
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 [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]