All the fishing vessels had been constructed to exactly the same plan, mass-produced in some shipyard somewhere, and all of them were painted the same shade of blue. It was a wonder to Zula that the people who lived and worked here could tell them apart. There was one, though, that stood apart simply because it literally did stand apart, being anchored a little farther out in the bay and not rafted to any other vessel. That was the one they headed for. They came up along its seaward flank, where fewer eyes could see them, and scaled a ladder to its deck. Like all of them, it had a heavy-looking prow, jutting high out of the water and laden with technical gear. Just aft of that was an expanse of open deck cluttered with gray plastic tubs nested together in stacks. Over that loomed a superstructure that occupied most of the aft half of the vessel. This was two decks high. The cabins in its lower story had only a few small portholes. The upper level sported a few windows and a couple of hatches opening out onto a narrow walkway that ran around its periphery. These were nothing more than brief impressions that Zula gained while she was being hustled straight back to a cabin, apparently used as a berth by fishermen who lived aboard the vessel, since the next thing that happened was that two men came in and dragged all their stuff out of it, leaving her alone in a stripped room with no decoration except a Middle Eastern rug on the steel deck, and two faded posters with Arabic lettering, featuring men in turbans and beards, pointing to the ceiling and unburdening themselves of some profound thoughts about (wild guess here) global jihad. The cabin had a single porthole that, fifteen minutes after her arrival, was unceremoniously sealed off by the simple expedient of taping a piece of paper over it on the outside. Openings and closings of the cabin door were accompanied by clanging sound effects that she interpreted as signifying that the hatch was chained shut on the outside. In a wordless, somewhat poignant act of chivalry, someone opened the door and handed her a bucket. Yuxia had also been taken aboard, but Zula had no idea where she was, or what might be happening to her.