I shook my head to clear the woolgathering and turned my attention back to the view. A mat floated in the calm, impossibly blue ocean at middle distance, with a city hovering just to one side. I could have looked up the name, but didn’t bother. These days, mats were strictly industrial or agricultural locations, usually owned and controlled by specific cities. No one lived on the mats except the occasional self-exiled hermit. The technological defenses kept the ocean predators so completely at bay that a new ecosystem was evolving on the mats based on the lack of predation. Howard’s wife, Bridget, had visited us several times to do studies.