ONE SOL • EDOM TO ERDE-TYRENE THE BOAT’S CREW banked the fires, disengaged the steam engine, and raised the cal iope horn from the water. The bubbling clockwork song died out with a series of clicks and sad groans; it hadn’t been working wel to begin with. Twenty kilometers away, the central peak of Djamonkin Crater rose through blue- gray haze, its tip outlined in ruddy gold by the last of the setting sun. A single bril iant moon rose bright and cold behind our boat. The crater’s inland lake rippled around the hul in ways no tide or wind had ever moved water. Under the swel s and whorls, sparkling with reflected sunset and moon, pale merse twisted and bobbed like the lilies in my mother’s pond. These lilies, however, weren’t passive flowers, but sleeping krakens growing in the shal ows on thick stalks. Ten meters wide, their thickened, muscular edges were rimmed with black teeth the length of my forearm. We sailed over a garden of clannish, self-cloning monsters. They covered the entire flooded floor of the crater, skulking just below the surface and very defensive of their territory. Only boats that sang the lul ing song the merse used to keep peace among themselves could cross these waters unmolested. And now it seemed our tunes were out of date. The young human I knew as Chakas crossed the deck, clutching