Favor, and they climb. They don't climb straight up, though. The wind
carries them. The reason I think so is that the one I saw must have been
driven by the wind, right down the creek toward me. It didn't climb
until it got away from the funneling effect of the creek and into the
river, then it went up pretty fast. At least it seemed to have risen
fast when I looked over the top of the boat at it."

Scotty crunched an ice cube. "We're getting somewhere. There's only one
kind of unpowered, vertical rising thing I know of. Are you with me?"

Rick finished his drink. "Balloon," he said crisply.

"On the beam," Scotty approved. "The only thing that doesn't fit is the
shape."

Rick asked, "What's a balloon? It's just a gas-tight container. We're
used to thinking of balloons as spheres, because it's the most efficient
shape for internal pressure. But a balloon can be any shape. Another
thing--balloons for high altitudes aren't fully inflated on the ground.
Maybe the flying stingarees have a different shape when they get higher
and in less dense atmosphere where the gas distends them."

"An odd shape could be used as camouflage, too, if you didn't want
people to recognize the balloon. But why would a strange assortment of
characters like Merlin and company send up balloons?" Scotty wondered.

Rick smiled. "I've been wondering that myself. Would they send up a
balloon that didn't carry something?"

"I don't know. Was the one you saw carrying anything?"

Rick sat upright. "Maybe it was! You know, I haven't even thought of it
since then, but I think there was a splash when it went by. Something
sort of clanged off the rail over me, even if it didn't dent the rail.
Do you suppose the thing dropped its payload right next to us?"

"You'll have to decide that," Scotty said. "If you heard something
bounce off the rail, then a splash, I'd say there might be a pretty good
chance that's what happened. I couldn't see any marks on the rail when
we looked." They had checked the rail during the first day at Steve's.

Rick closed his eyes and made himself remember what it had been like
when he went down the catwalk to the bow. His mind drew a picture, and
he saw himself bent forward into the wind. In his memory he felt the
slashing rain, the slipperiness of the wet anchor line. He could
visualize the water whipped into dimpled wavelets by wind and rain. He
saw the flying stingaree loom, and saw himself dropping flat. There had
been