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could hear a faint hiss as valves were opened and a regulator was tested. His valves. His regulator.
    “You motherfucker!” Palmer shouted. He tried the adjacent door, but it wouldn’t budge. He went back to ramming himself against the first door. He jerked the handle toward him as tight as he could, then threw his shoulder into the wood, thought he felt the chair budge a little. Again and again. The door opened a crack. And then a gap. Enough to get his arm through. He reached inside and felt the rim of the chair, held it while he pulled the door shut tight against his arm, and the chair popped off the knob and went tumbling. Palmer shoved his way inside, banging his elbows on the two doors, swimming between those priceless walls of wood, tripping over the upturned chair, to see Hap still on the floor, tugging on a flipper.
    Hap scrambled to his feet as Palmer raced around the table and past the long row of chairs. His friend lowered his visor down over his wide eyes, had a grimace of determination on his face as he staggered toward the slope of sand, running awkwardly in his fins, one of them flapping with its buckles loose.
    Palmer ran and dove after Hap, who jumped headfirst into the sand. The drift gave way, absorbing him, but Palmer caught one of his fins. The sand was hard and unyielding; it knocked Palmer’s breath out as he crashed into it. He looked down at his hands, at the flipper that had come loose. His friend was gone. And he had taken Palmer’s air with him.

8 • What Pirates Do
    Hap kicked his way out of the building and into a wall of sand. So thick. He hadn’t been prepared, felt like he was moving through mush 3 . He concentrated on the flow, tried to breathe, realized he had a fin missing. Goddamn. He was going to die out here. Die right on top of fucking Danvar.
    He coaxed a sip of air out of Palmer’s regulator. There was sand in his mouth. Hadn’t had time to clear it off. Fuck, the look on Palmer’s face. But what choice did he have? Stay down there and wait for Palmer to come back for him? Fuck no. Fuck that.
    He loosened the sand above him and kicked off the hard pack below. It was almost impossible to move his arms. He let the sandflow do most of the work, tried to remember all the older divers who laughed at noobs for using fins in the first place. It wasn’t kicking, it was thinking that moved a man. That’s what they said. He’d never believed them. He tried to now. He tried to breathe. So damn hard to breathe. Like a tourniquet across his chest, like his ribs were knitted together, like the whole world was sitting on top of him.
    Up. He made the mistake of looking down, could feel the pull of gravity, the sucking of those purples and blues, that hard earth far below, fading now, becoming invisible, just a handful of buildings until there was only one, and then he kept his visor pointed up, looking for the blinking transponders, watching the gauge drop back to under three hundred meters. Two fifty. Hell yeah, a breath. He sucked on the tanks, was damn glad for Palmer’s lungs for once, wasn’t jealous in the slightest, and as he rose up and up he felt that distance between him and his friend grow, that crushing depth, and some part of him knew, some dark sliver, that there was no going back. He had discovered Danvar. Him. It would be for some other asshole to risk his neck exploring it, pulling up all those artifacts. Hell, he hadn’t even grabbed that brewer. Hadn’t been any time. Breathing deeply now, sucking the tank down from yellow to red, he got under a hundred meters and no longer cared how much air was in the tank. He could get there. He could make it. The transponders above were blindingly bright. The orange and yellow glow of the shaft walls could be seen. Hap kicked straight for the white beacons and the soft bottom of the shaft, his legs sore, his ribs bruised from the effort, a joy in his throat—
    Hap!
    He heard the faint murmur in his jawbones. Palmer. Probably