It was a tough choice, but there was no time to agonize over it. She felt for a squat metal cylinder in one of the rings on her belt and pulled it out.

“What’s that, sweetness?” asked Orion, who had just recovered from the belly jab.

Holly answered the question with one of her own. “Would you do anything for me, Orion?”

The boy’s face seemed to light up. “Of course. Absolutely anything.”

“Close your eyes and count to ten.”

Orion was disappointed. “What? No tasks? Not even a dragon to slay?”

“Close your eyes if you love me.”

Orion did so immediately, and Holly prodded him in the neck with a battery-powered Shokker. The electrocuted boy slumped in the harness, two electrode burns smoking gently on his neck.

“Nicely done,” said Foaly nervously. “Not in the neck for me, if you don’t mind.”

Holly checked the Shokker. “Don’t worry. I only had enough charge for one.”

Foaly could not suppress a sigh of relief, and when he glanced guiltily across at Orion, knowing that really he should be the unconscious one, Holly hit him in the flank with the second charge.

Foaly did not even have time to think You sneaky elf before slumping in the corner.

“Sorry, guys,” said Holly, then made a silent vow not to speak again until it was time to send the message.

The pod powered toward the surface, its prow slicing through the water. Holly steered through a vast underwater canyon that had developed its own ecology completely safe from human exploitation. She saw huge undulating eels that could crush a bus, strange crabs with glowing shells, and some kind of two-legged creature that disappeared into a crevice before she could get a proper look at it.

She took the most direct line she could through the canyon, finding a rock chimney that allowed her to exit into open sea.

There was still nothing on the communications array. Solidly blocked. She needed to get farther away.

I could really do with some warlock magic right now, Holly thought. If N ?1 were here, he could wiggle his runes and turn carbon dioxide into oxygen.

Water, fish, and bubbles flashed past the window, and could that be a shaft of light from the surface? Had the craft reached the photic zone?

Holly tried the radio again. She heard static this time, but maybe with some chatter inside it.

Good, she thought, but her head was fuzzy. Did I imagine that?

No, you heard it all right, said the unconscious Foaly. Did I ever tell you about my kids?

Oxygen deprivation. That’s all it was.

Why did you shoot me, sweetness? wondered passed-out Orion. Did I displease you?

It’s too late. Too late.

Holly was shaking now. She filled her lungs but was not satisfied with the foul air. The pod walls suddenly became concave, bending in to crush her.

“It’s not happening,” she called, breaking her vow of silence.

She checked the coms again. Some signal now. There were definitely words among the static.

Enough to transmit?

One way to find out. Holly tapped through her options on the dashboard readout and selected transmit only to be informed that the external antenna was not available. The computer advised her to check the connection. Holly pressed her face to the starboard and saw that the connection was pretty well defunct, as the entire thing had been knocked out of its housing by one impact or another.

Why doesn’t this tug bucket, Stone Age piece of junk have an internal antenna? Even glooping phones have internal antennae.

Phones! Of course.

Holly punched the harness-release button on her chest and dropped to her knees. She slid along the deck, moving toward Foaly.

It smells bad down here. Stale air.

For a second, one of the handrails grew a snake’s head and hissed at her.

Your time is running out, it said. Your odds are short, Short.

Don’t listen to the snake, said Foaly, without moving his lips. He’s just bitter because his soul is stuck in a handrail because of some stuff that happened in a previous life.

I still love you, said sleeping Orion, breathing slow and steady, using hardly any oxygen.

I am really going insane this time, thought Holly.

Holly pulled herself along Foaly’s frame, reaching into his shirt pocket for his phone. The centaur never went anywhere without his precious phone, and was proud of its modified clunkiness.

I love that phone, said Foaly proudly. Over five hundred mi-p’s. All my own design. I did a nice one called Offspring. Say you find the love of your life: all you need to do is take a photo of you and your beloved, and Offspring will show you what your potential kids will look like.

Fascinating. I hope we get to talk about it for real sometime.

The phone was switched on, so there was no need for a password, although knowing Foaly as she did, Holly supposed that his password would be some version of his own name. His screen was a crazy jumble of mi-p’s that probably made sense if you were a centaur.

The problem with all these applications is that sometimes a person just wants to make a quick call. Where’s the phone icon?

Then the icons started waving at her. “Pick me,” they chorused. “Over here.” That’s not a hallucination, said passed-out Foaly proudly.

Those little guys are animated.

“Phone,” Holly shouted into the communicator’s microphone, hoping for voice control. To her relief, a blurry old-fashioned cone phone icon expanded to fill the screen.