he water, heading toward the boat, it turned to face us.

What followed happened so quickly I had no time to consult with Miela. She
directed our flight. I turned the current into our projector and tried to
bring its beam to bear on the boat. We approached within some eight
hundred feet of it, darting back and forth, sometimes rising a hundred
feet or more, sometimes skimming the surface, but always keeping behind
the boat as it turned in an endeavor to face us.

My light-ray beam hit the water frequently, with a great boiling and
hissing, sending up clouds of steam that for a moment obscured the scene.
Once or twice our opponent's beam flashed over us, but we were beyond its
arc before they could bring it directly to bear.

I grew confused at the rapid turns we made. The dark outlines of the boat,
with its twenty or thirty flashing red and green lights, seemed everywhere
at once. I swung my projector about as best I could, but the swiftly
shifting target seemed too elusive. Once, as we dropped suddenly downward,
I thought we should plunge into the hissing, roaring water below. Again,
the opposing ray swung directly under us, as we darted upward to avoid it.

"I can't make it, Miela," I said. "Hold steady toward them if you can."

She did not answer, but kept her face over the platform's end and issued
her swift directions to the girls. Once, as we tilted sharply upward, I
caught a glimpse of a black-shape sweeping past, overhead. It was Mercer's
platform, flying unswervingly toward the boat, its red-green beam steady
before it like a locomotive headlight. We turned to follow; my own light
swung dangerously near Mercer, and I turned the current off hastily.

The wind of our forward flight whistled past my ears; Miela's directions
to the girls rose shrill above it. I caught a glimpse of the darting
lights of the boat ahead. Then, when we were hardly more than six hundred
feet away, Mercer's light picked it up. I saw the little lurid red circle
it made as it struck the boat's canopy top, and roved along it end to end.
Mercer's platform darted lower, and from that angle his light swept under
the canopy. A man's scream of agony came to us across the water. The
lights on the boat were extinguished; only the yellow glare of the flames
rising from its interior fittings remained.

Then, a moment later, the boat's stern rose into the air, and it slid
hissing into the water, leaving only a little wreckage and a few
strugglin