Dune_ House Atreides - Brian Herbert [172]
He missed his own collection of gems and crystals, agates and geodes from Ix. He had wandered through caves and tunnels and shafts to find them. He had learned so much of geology that way—and then the Tleilaxu had driven him and his family from their world. He’d been forced to leave everything behind. Although he left it unsaid, Rhombur decided if he ever saw his mother again, he could make a grand gift for her.
Leto leaned out of the galley door. “Lunch is ready. Come and eat before I feed it to the fishes.”
Rhombur trotted in to sit at the small table while Leto served up two bowls of steaming Caladanian oyster chowder, seasoned with nouveau wine from House Atreides vineyards. “My grandmother came up with this recipe. It’s one of my favorites.”
“Well, not bad. Even if you made it.” Rhombur slurped from his bowl and licked his lips. “It’s a, um, good thing my sister didn’t come along,” he said, trying to hide the joking tone in his voice. “She probably would have tried to wear fancy clothes, and you know she’d never have gone swimming with us.”
“Sure,” Leto said, unconvinced. “You’re right.” It was obvious to anyone how he and Kailea flirted with each other, though Rhombur understood—politically speaking—that a romance between them would be unwise at best, and dangerous at worst.
Out on the midship deck just aft of them, the sun beat down, warming the wooden floorboards, drying the splashed water—and exposing the fragile coral gems to the open, oxidizing air. Simultaneously, the three largest gems burst into incandescent flares, merging into a miniature nova of intense heat, hot enough to burn through a metal star-ship hull.
Leto leaped to his feet, knocking aside his bowl of chowder. Through the broad plaz windowports he could see blue-orange flames shooting up, setting the deck on fire, including the lifeboat. One of the coral gems shattered, spraying hot fragments in all directions, each of which started secondary fires.
Within seconds, two more gems burned completely through the coracle deck and dropped into the cargo hold below, where they ate through crates. One burned open a spare fuel container, igniting it with an explosive burst, while the second gem seared all the way through the bottom hull until it extinguished itself in the refreshing water again. The wickerwood hull, though treated with a fire-retardant chemical, would not hold up against such heat.
Leto and Rhombur rushed out of the galley, shouting at each other but not knowing what to do. “The fire! We’ve got to get the fire out!”
“They’re coral gems!” Leto looked for something with which to extinguish the blaze. “They burn hot, can’t be put out easily.” Swelling flames licked the deck, and the coracle rocked with an explosion belowdecks. On its davits the lifeboat was a lost cause, completely enveloped in flames.
“We could sink,” Leto said, “and we’re too far from land.” He grabbed a chemical extinguisher, which he sprayed on the flames.
He and his companion took out the hoses and pumps from a front compartment and doused the boat with seawater, but the cargo hold was already engulfed. Greasy black smoke drifted through cracks in the top deck. A warning beep signified that they were taking on large amounts of water.
“We’re going to sink!” Rhombur shouted, reading the instrumentation. He coughed from the acrid smoke.
Leto tossed a flotation vest to his friend as he buckled another one around his waist. “Get on the shore-com. Announce our position and send a distress. You know how to operate it?”
Rhombur yelped an affirmative, while Leto used another chemical extinguisher, but soon exhausted its charge without effect. He and Rhombur would be trapped out here, floating with only the debris of the boat around them. He had to reach land