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Ada's red-headed half-sister, Lucette, ingests a strong dose of dimenhydrinate via a series of fluorescing gin and quinine cocktails. She steps across a rolling deck, quickly gathering salinity, and plummets, vomits, sinks.

A rock, white granite flecked with mica, a superposition of pyramidal forms. A hole is bored through its center with a diamond-tipped drillbit. 2500-pound, ⅛-inch diameter spectra line is tied through the hole. The rock sinks to a depth of 100 fathoms (600 feet), and by the time it returns to the surface a light coating of rust has formed on the band of iron that runs through the center of it.

Another rock, darker and less geometric, rests in a round-bottom flask. An aqueous solution of hydrochloric acid and hydrogen peroxide is poured into the flask. At once the rock begins to rust. Red-brown hydrated iron oxide seeps into the solution for 29 days. When it is removed, the rock appears to have developed a coating of sulfur. When disturbed, the rock disintegrates into a fine wet powder of lemon-yellow sintered microcrystals.

Two radar transducers pulse high-frequency light as they rotate, listening in the pauses for altered forms of their own emission.