Night fell over the bare foundation. Eleven workers huddled on the cold stone, and their bellies growled. Gil Spindle counted them twice. He had promised food he did not have. By morning they would leave, and the walls would stay a trench. Sheldon Tidecrawler crawled to the edge, testing the water with one claw. "They won't last two tides hungry," Sheldon said. He did not soften it. "Find food tonight, or you lose them." Gil pushed off the stone and swam the drift path. He needed a store, enough to feed eleven for days. He passed a glittering heap of lost scrap and metal, oily and useless. No food there. His arms ached. Then, along the far ledge, he saw a shape rising from the silt. A huge silo, taller than any slab he had ever set, wrapped in coconut planters. Star fruit plants sprouted along its sides. He knew the builder at once. "Bertram," Gil said. His friend clicked out from behind the silo, six legs busy. Bertram Rollwright never rested. He had built the timber cradle that saved the foundation. Now he had built this. "You look thin," Bertram said. "Your crew looks thinner. I watched them from here." "I have no food stored," Gil said. "They leave at dawn." Bertram tapped the silo door. "I fill this thing until it overflows. Coconuts. Star fruit. I can't stop. It's a problem, really." He pried the door open. Inside, food packed every shelf. "Take it. All of it. I built too much again." Gil stared at the full shelves. "This feeds eleven for a season." "Then feed them," Bertram said. "Get the walls up before I build another one of these." Gil and Bertram loaded the food. Two drifters had followed from the trench to help. A hermit crab with no proper shell hauled coconuts, counting each one aloud. "Forty," Calidan Xe said. "Forty-one. I'm not tired. I could carry more." A plump pink octopus gripped star fruit in six arms and a book in the other two. "I'll read while I work," Neville Octavius said. "The star fruit tastes like the universe. Someone told me that once. I choose to believe them." They ferried the load to the foundation. Gil set the food on the stone and split it among the crew. Hungry mouths bit into star fruit and coconut. The growling stopped. Eleven workers ate, then slept warm on the firm stone. Sheldon read the water one last time. "They'll stay now," he said. "For a while." Gil looked at the fed crew and the long empty trench beyond them. The food would hold. But it sat far off, behind the drift path, in Bertram's silo. Each meal meant a journey, and the crew ate faster than one starfish could carry. He had kept them alive tonight. Tomorrow he had to move the food closer, or spend every day hauling instead of building.