The wind was light and her engines were silent but she was making good headway. Her sleek sails were patterned in red and yellow, shining brightly in the warm subtropical sunlight. The sun was so low in the western sky that the whole world, including the surface of the sea, seemed to be painted in shades of crimson and ocher. Karol Kachellek didn’t come up to the deck until the boat was coming about, carefully shedding speed so that she could drift to the quay under the gentle tutelage of her steersman. Kachellek saw Damon waiting but he didn’t wave a greeting—and he took care to keep his unwelcome visitor waiting even longer while he supervised the unloading of a series of cases which presumably held samples or specimens. Two battered trucks with low-grade organic engines had already limped down to the quayside to pick up whatever the boat had brought in. Kachellek ostentatiously helped the brightly clad laborers load the cases onto the trucks. He was the kind of man who took pride in always doing his fair share of whatever labor needed to be done.
