Cradle

1

The full moon rises over the placid ocean. Troy stares at the moonbeams, watching them shimmer on the quiet water. Angie appears and stands in the water in front of him. She is wearing a skintight white bathing suit, one piece, and is submerged from the waist down.

She beckons to him and he walks across the damp sand toward the water. He is barefoot and is also wearing a white bathing suit. The water is surprisingly warm. Angie begins to sing. Her magnificent voice enfolds him as Troy draws nearer to her in the light surf.

They touch and kiss. She pulls away and gives him a smile of encouragement. Troy feels himself becoming aroused. Suddenly a siren pierces the air, destroying the calm of the night. Instantly the sea becomes choppy, agitated, full of whitecaps. Troy turns around, alarmed, and glances at the shore. He sees nothing special. He looks back at the ocean. Angie has disappeared. Out in the distance, near the horizon, Troy thinks he sees the beginning of a tidal wave. The siren shrieks again and Troy sees a large shapeless mass riding a nearby wave in the moonlight.

He goes toward the object. The tidal wave is now defined in the distance, filling half his dream screen. The bulky object nearby is a black body dressed in a red muscle shirt and bluejeans. The siren grows louder. Troy rolls the body over and looks at the face. It is his brother, Jamie.

Troy Jefferson bolted upright in bed. his heart pounding furiously, his mind making the transition from the dream world to reality. Outside his duplex apartment a siren raged. He could tell from the frequency change that the police car or ambulance had just sped past his front door. He shook himself and crawled out of bed. The digital clock on the end table read 3:03.

Troy walked to the kitchen. He went to the refrigerator and poured himself a glass of grapefruit juice. He listened to the siren in the distance until it faded away altogether. Then he started back to the small second bedroom where he slept. In the hallway he was stopped by the sound of another siren, this one even louder, that seemed to be coming toward him. For a few seconds he thought the siren was just outside his front door and he recalled, vividly, another siren in the middle of another night. His heart began to pound anew. “Jamie,” Troy said to himself almost involuntarily, “Jamie. Why did you have to die?”

Troy could still see the events of that evening with perfect clarity. Nothing in the first tableau had faded even a little. The beginning memory was the three of them, Jamie, Troy, and their mother, sitting silently at the dinner table, eating fried chicken and mashed potatoes. Jamie had just arrived home from Gainesville for spring break that afternoon and had spent almost an hour, before they had sat down to eat, regaling his fifteen-year-old brother with stories of football and university life. Jamie had been Troy’s idol throughout his childhood. Handsome, intelligent, and articulate, Jamie had also been blessed with incredible physical gifts. As a result, he had been the starting halfback for the Florida Gators in his sophomore year and was being touted as a potential All-American for the following season. Troy had bitterly missed Jamie when he had first gone away to the university, but in the intervening eighteen months he had learned to accept his absence and to look forward to his brother’s holiday visits.

“So, bro,” Jamie had said with a smile, when he finished his dinner and pushed his plate away, “what about you? You’ve finished another quarter already. Did you make the grades of a future astronaut?”

“I did okay,” Troy had replied, hiding his pride. “I made a B plus in Social Studies because my teacher thought I had taken an anti-American position in my paper on the Panama Canal.”

“I guess an occasional B plus is acceptable,” Jamie had laughed, his affection for his younger brother clearly showing. “But I bet Burford didn’t make many B’s when he was in the ninth grade.”

Whenever Troy recalled the fateful evening that his brother was killed, he always remembered the mention of Guion Burford, the first American black astronaut. Most of the time his memory, because it was so painful to proceed immediately to the terrible recollection of his dying brother in his arms, would choose to digress to a happier time, to a remembrance of his brother Jamie that was almost as vivid as the death scene, but was happy and reinforcing instead of being gut wrenching and depressing.

During the summer before his death, on a hot, humid day in late August, Jamie Jefferson had arranged a third personal meeting with his football coach at Florida to request permission to skip practice for two days. He wanted to take his little brother, Troy, to see the launch of the space shuttle. In the first two meetings, the coach had vigorously opposed Jamie’s taking the time away from the important workouts, but he had stopped short of denying the request.

“You still don’t understand, coach,” Jamie had said firmly at the start of their third and final meeting on the subject. “My little brother has no father. And he’s a genius at math and science. He blows the top off those standardized aptitude tests. He needs a role model. He needs to know that blacks can do something significant other than sports.” The coach had eventually relented and given Jamie permission, but only because he had figured out that Jamie was going to go under any circumstances.

Jamie had driven his battered Chevrolet nonstop across Florida, picked up his brother in Miami, and continued northward without sleeping for another four hours to Cocoa Beach. They had arrived in the middle of the night. Jamie, by now exhausted, parked the car in a beach access zone next to a seven-story condominium along the nicest part of the beach. “All right, little brother.” he had said, “now get some sleep.”

But Troy had not been able to sleep. He had been too excited thinking about the launch scheduled the next evening, the eighth shuttle launch in all, the first one that had ever occurred at night. He had been reading everything he could find about astronaut Burford and the plans for the mission. He kept imagining that it was the future and that he, Troy Jefferson, was an astronaut about to be launched into space. After all, Burford was living proof that it could indeed be done, that a black American could attain the upper echelons of society and become a popular hero on the basis of his intelligence, personality, and hard work.

At sunrise Troy had crawled out of the car and walked the few yards to the beach. It was very quiet. Troy’s company was limited to a few walkers and joggers plus a couple of those bizarre sand crabs, whose eyes wavered back and forth at the end of peculiar stalks as they raced sideways into their holes in the sand. To the north Troy could see some of the launch pads for the unmanned rockets at Cape Canaveral Air Force Base, but in his mind’s eye he saw them as the launching apparatus for the shuttle. He wondered what astronaut Burford was doing at that very moment. What was he eating for breakfast? Was he with his family or with the astronaut crew?

Jamie had awakened around noon and the brothers had spent the early afternoon on the beach together, laughing and playing in the surf. Then they picked up some hamburgers and drove the final half hour to the Kennedy Space Center. Jamie had strongarmed an avid Gator booster, an aerospace executive who lived in Melbourne, for tickets to the VIP viewing area. They arrived there just before nightfall. Four miles away, the impressive shuttle launch configuration. consisting of the orbiter mounted on top of an orange external tank with two solid rocket boosters on the side, stood erect against its launching tower as the final countdown began.

No observing experience in Troy’s life would ever come close to rivaling his watching the space shuttle blast off that night. As he listened to the countdown being announced over the loudspeakers in the VIP area, he was eager and anticipant, but not yet in awe. The moment the engines ignited, however, filling the Florida night with reddish-orange flame and thick white clouds of billowing smoke, Troy’s eyes nearly popped out of his head. But it was the combination of his seeing the giant spaceship, slowly and majestically lifting itself into the heavens riding a long slender flame, and his hearing the astonishing sound, a constant roar punctuated with unexplained pops (which at only four miles away still arrived twenty or so seconds behind the sight of the engine ignition), that really caused the goose bumps to break out on his skin, the tears to come to his eyes, and the tingle to spread through his body. Troy’s intense emotional excitement lasted well over a minute. He stood beside his brother Jamie, tightly holding his hand, his back arched as he strained to follow the flame rising higher and higher and then finally disappearing in the night sky above him.

After the launch they slept again in the car. Jamie then dropped Troy at the bus station in Orlando and headed back to Gainesville for football practice. Young Troy felt that he was a new person, that he had been transformed by his experience. In the week that followed he obsessively followed the flight. Burford became his hero, his new idol. During the first two quarters of the following year, he applied himself avidly to his schoolwork. He had a goal. He was going to be an astronaut.

Little did Troy know that on a March night only seven months later he would have another experience, this one devastating and deeply disturbing, that would completely overshadow the thrill he had felt at the shuttle launch. On that later March evening, his brother Jamie would stop by his room before leaving the house around eight o’clock. “I’m going over to Maria’s, bro,” Jamie would say. “We’ll probably take in a movie.”

Maria Alvarez was eighteen and still a senior in high school. She had been Jamie’s steady girl for a couple of years. She lived in Little Havana together with her Cuban family and eight siblings.

Troy had given his brother a hug. “I’m glad you’re here, Jamie. There are so many things that I want to show you. I made you a set of headphones in school—”

“I want to see everything.” his brother had interrupted him. “But tomorrow, first thing in the morning. Now don’t stay up too late. Astronauts need plenty of sleep so they can be alert.” Jamie had smiled and walked out of Troy’s room. It was the last thing Troy would ever hear him say.

Troy never could remember what he had heard first when he had awakened in the middle of that night. His mother’s wild wail had mixed with the screech of the nearby sirens to create an imbroglio of sound that was unforgettable and terrifying. Troy had raced to the door and into the front yard wearing only his pajama bottoms. The sound of the ambulance siren was drawing closer. His mother was at the end of the short walkway in front of the house, bending down over a dark body spread partly in the street in front of Jamie’s Chevrolet and partly in their yard. Three policemen and half a dozen curious bystanders were huddled around his distraught mother.

“Somehow,” he heard one of the policemen say as Troy, in a panic, tried to figure out what was happening, “he managed to drive home. It’s incredible after all the blood he lost. He must have been hit four times in the stomach…”

His mother’s cry intensified again and, at that moment, Troy put all the pieces together and recognized the body lying on its back. A chill went through him, he gasped, and then Troy fell on his knees beside his brother’s head. Jamie was struggling for breath. His eyes were open but they did not seem to be focusing on anything.

Troy cradled Jamie’s head in his hands. He looked down at his brother’s stomach. His red shirt was awash in blood that seemed to be flowing in a continuous stream from an area just above the genitals. Blood was on Jamie’s jeans, on the ground, everywhere. Troy felt himself gag, then retch involuntarily. Nothing came up. Hot tears filled his eyes.

“We think it was a gang shooting, Mrs. Jefferson,” the policeman droned on. “Probably some kind of a mistake. Everybody knows that Jamie wasn’t mixed up with that kind of crowd.” Reporters had arrived. Lights were flashing from cameras. More sirens approached.

Jamie’s eyes went blank. There was no sign of breathing. Troy pulled his brother’s head to his chest. He instinctively knew that Jamie was dead. He began to sob uncontrollably. “No,” he mumbled. “No. Not my brother. Not Jamie. He never hurt anybody.”

Someone tried to comfort him, to pat him on the shoulder Troy shrugged them off violently “Leave me alone,” he shouted between sobs. “He was my brother. He was my only brother.” After a couple of moments, Troy tenderly placed Jamie’s head back down on the ground. He then collapsed in total despair beside him.

At almost three-thirty in the morning some ten years later, in March of 1994, Troy Jefferson would be at home, alone in his duplex, awake with the memory of that terrible moment when Jamie had died. He would feel a new the heartbreak of that loss. And he would realize again, very clearly, that most of his adolescent dreams had died with his brother, that he had forsaken his dreams of college and being an astronaut because they were inextricably coupled with his memory of Jamie.

Somehow he had stumbled through high school in the three years that had followed Jamie’s death. But it had taken the combined efforts of his mother and the school and the city authorities to keep Troy from abandoning school altogether. Then, as soon as he had graduated, he had left Miami. Or rather, ran away. Away from what had happened and what might have been. For over two years he then wandered in a desultory manner throughout North America, a young, solitary black man, bereft of love and friendship, looking for something to overcome the feeling of emptiness that was his constant companion.

So I finally came to Key West, Troy would think, years later, as he settled back in his bed in the middle of the morning for a couple more hours of sleep. And for some reason made myself a home. Maybe it was just time. Or maybe I had learned enough to know that life goes on. But somehow, although the wound has never healed, I got past Jamie. And found the lost Troy. Or so I hope.

The dream that had been interrupted by the siren suddenly came back into his mind. Angie was beautiful in the moonlight in her white bathing suit. And now for some unfinished business, Troy laughed to himself, concentrating on the image of Angie as he returned to sleep.

2

“GOOD morning, angel,” Troy said with a grand smile as Carol approached the Florida Queen. “Ready to do some fishing?” He hopped out of the boat and shouted at Nick, who was around at the back on the other side of the canopy. “She’s here, Professor,” he hollered “I’m going out to the parking lot to get her stuff.” Carol gave Troy the keys to her car and he took off in the direction of the marina office.

Carol paced for a few moments on the jetty before Nick emerged from behind the canopy. “Come on down on the boat,” he said, scowling a little as he wiped some heavy dredging chain with a dark cloth. Nick felt terrible. He had a nasty hangover. And he was still bothered by the events of the night before Carol didn’t say anything at first. Nick stopped cleaning the chain and waited for her to speak.

“I don’t know exactly how to say this,” she began in a firm but pleasant voice, “but it’s important to me that I say it before I get on the boat.” Carol cleared her throat. “Nick,” she said deliberately, “I don’t want to dive with you today. I want to dive with Troy.”

Nick gave her a quizzical look. He was standing in the sun and his head was aching. “But Troy—” he began.

“I know what you’re going to say,” she interrupted him. “He doesn’t have much experience and it could be a dangerous dive.” She stared directly at Nick. “That doesn’t matter to me. I have enough diving experience for both of us. I prefer to dive with Troy.” She waited a few seconds. “Now if you’re not willing—”

This time it was Nick who interrupted Carol. “All right, all right,” he said, turning away. He was surprised to find that he was both hurt and angry. This woman is still pissed, he said to himself. And I thought maybe… Nick walked away from Carol and went back on the other side of the canopy to finish preparing the small rented salvage crane he and Troy had installed the night before. Since they had used this old equipment several times on other excursions, the installation had been straight forward and without major problems.

Carol climbed onto the boat and put her copy of the photos on top of the counter next to the steering wheel. “Where’s the trident?” she called to Nick. “I thought I’d take another look at it this morning.”

“Bottom left drawer, under the nav equipment,” was his swift and sharp reply. She took the gray bag out of the drawer, opened it, and pulled out the golden trident. She held it by the long middle rod. It felt funny for some reason. Carol put the object back in the bag and pulled it out a second time. Again she held the heavy trident in her hands. It still didn’t feel right. Carol remembered grasping the rod underneath the overhang in the water and wrapping her hand slowly around the central rod. That’s it, she said to herself. It’s thicker.

She turned the object over in her hands. What’s the matter with me? she thought. Have I lost my mind? How could it he thicker? She examined it one more time with great care. This time she thought that the individual tines of the fork had lengthened and that she could detect a perceptible increase in the overall weight. Good grief. Can this be possible? she wondered.

Carol pulled out the photos she had brought along. All the images of the trident that she had with her had been taken underwater. But she was certain that she could discern two subtle changes since it was first photographed. The axis rod did appear to be thicker and the tines of the fork did indeed look longer.

“Nick,” she said in a loud voice. “Nick, can you come here?”

“I’m right in the middle of something,” an unfriendly voice responded from the other side of the canopy. “Is it important?”

“No. I mean yes,” Carol answered. “But it can wait until your first available moment.”

Carol’s mind was racing. There are only two possibilities, she said to herself with logical precision, either it has changed or it hasn’t. If it hasn’t changed, then I must be spooked. For it definitely seems thicker. But how could it change? Either on its own or someone changed it. But who? Nick? But how could he… ?

Nick came up to her. “Yes?” he said in a distant, almost hostile tone. He was obviously annoyed.

Carol handed him the trident. “Well?” she said, smiling and looking at him expectantly.

“Well, what?” he answered, totally confused by what was happening and still angry about the earlier interaction.

“Can you tell the difference?” Carol continued, nodding at the trident in his hand.

Nick turned it upside down as she had done. The sunlight glinted off the golden surface and hurt his eyes. He squinted. Then he switched the object from hand to hand and looked at it from many different angles. “I think I’m lost,” Nick said at length. “Are you trying to tell me that there’s some change in this thing?”

He held it out between them. “Yes,” she said. “Can’t you feel it? The central rod’s thicker than it was on Thursday and the tines or individual elements of that fork on one end are a little longer. And don’t you think the whole thing is heavier?”

Nick’s headache continued to throb. He looked back and forth between the trident and Carol. As far as he could tell, the object had not changed. “No, I don’t,” he said. “It seems the same to me.”

“You’re just being difficult,” Carol persisted, grabbing the trident back. “Here, look at the pictures. Check out the length of the fork there compared to the overall rod and then look at it now. It’s different.”

There was something in Carol’s general attitude that really irritated Nick. She always seemed to assume that she was right and everyone else was wrong. “This is absurd,” Nick nearly shouted in reply, “and I have a lot of work to do.” He paused for a moment and then continued. “How the hell could it change? It’s a metal object, for Christ’s sake. What do you think? That somehow it grew? Shit.”

He shook his head and started to walk away. After a couple of steps, he turned around. “You can’t trust the pictures anyway,” he said in more measured tones. “Underwater photos always distort the objects…”

Troy was approaching with both the cart and Carol’s equipment. He could tell from the body positions, even without hearing the words, that his two boatmates were at it again. “My, my,” he said as he walked up, “I can’t leave you two alone for a minute. What are you fighting about this morning, Professor?”

“This supposedly intelligent reporter friend of yours,” Nick replied, looking at Carol and speaking in a patronizing manner, “insists that our trident has changed shape. Overnight I guess. Although she has not yet begun to explain how. Will you please, since she won’t believe me, explain to her about the index of refraction or whatever it is that fouls up underwater pictures.”

Carol appealed to Troy. “But it has changed. Honest. I remember clearly what it felt like at first and now it feels different.”

Troy was unloading the cart and putting the ocean telescope system on the Florida Queen. “Angel,” Troy said, stopping to check the trident that she was extending toward him with both hands, “I can’t tell whether it has changed or not, but I can tell you one thing. You were very excited when you found it the first time and you were also underwater. With that combination I wouldn’t trust my own memory of how something felt.”

Carol looked at the two men. She was going to pursue the discussion but Nick abruptly changed the subject. “Did you know, Mr. Jefferson, that our client Miss Dawson has requested your services as a diving partner today? She doesn’t want to dive with me.” His tone was now acerbic.

Troy looked at Carol with surprise. “That’s real nice, angel,” he said quietly, “but Nick is really the expert. I’m just a little more than a beginner.”

“I know that,” Carol responded brusquely, still chafing from the outcome of the previous conversation. “But I want to dive with someone I can trust. Someone who behaves responsibly. I know enough about diving for both of us.”

Nick gave Carol an angry look and then turned and walked away. He was pissed. “Come on, Jefferson,” he said. “I’ve already agreed to let Miss High and Mighty have her way. This time. Let’s get the boat ready and finish setting up that telescope thing of hers again.”

“My father finally divorced my mother when I was ten,” Carol was saying to Troy. They were sitting together in the deck chairs at the front of the boat. After they had gone over the procedures for the dive a couple of times, Carol had mentioned something about her first boating experience, a birthday on a fishing boat with her father when she was six, and the two of them had moved comfortably into a discussion of their childhood. “The breakup was awful.” She handed the can of Coke back to Troy. “I think you might have been luckier, in some ways, never to have known your father.”

“I doubt it,” Troy replied seriously. “From my earliest days, I resented the fact that some of the kids had two parents. My brother, Jamie, tried to help, of course, but there was only so much he could do. I purposely chose friends who had fathers living at home.” He laughed. “I remember one dark black kid named Willie Adams. His dad was at home all right, but he was an embarrassment to the family. He was an older man, nearing sixty at the time, and he didn’t work. He just sat on the front porch in his rocking chair all day and drank beer.

“Whenever I went over to Willie’s house to play, I would always find some excuse to spend a little time on the porch sitting next to Mr. Adams. Willie would fidget uncomfortably, unable to understand why I wanted to listen to his father tell his old, supposedly boring stories. Mr. Adams had been in the Korean War and he loved to tell about his friends and the battles and, particularly, the Korean women and what he called their tricks.

“Anyway, you could always tell when Mr. Adams was about to start one of his stories. His eyes would begin to stare in front of him, as if he were looking intently at something far off in the distance, and he would say, as much to himself as anybody, ‘Tell the truth, Baby Ruth.’ Then he would recite the story, almost as if he were quoting from a written book, ‘We had driven the North Koreans back to the Yalu and our battalion commander told us they were ready to surrender,’ he would say. “We were feeling good, talking about what we were all going to do when we got back to the States. But then the great yellow horde poured out of China…’ ”

Troy stopped. He stared out at the ocean. It was easy for Carol to see him as a young boy, sitting on a porch with his embarrassed friend Willie and listening to stories told by a man who lived hopelessly in the past but who, nevertheless, represented the father that Troy had never had. She leaned over to Troy and touched his forearm. “It makes a pretty picture,” she said. “You probably never knew how happy you made that man by listening to his stories.”

Around on the other side of the canopy, Nick Williams was sitting by himself in another deck chair. He was reading Madame Bovary and trying without success to ignore both his residual hangover and the scattered tidbits of conversation he was overhearing. He had programmed the navigation system to return automatically to the dive site from Thursday, so there was nothing else he really needed to do to pilot the boat. Nick almost certainly would have enjoyed sharing the conversation with Carol and Troy, but after his earlier confrontation with her, in which he felt she had made it clear that she didn’t want to associate with him, he was not about to join them. It was now necessary that he ignore her. Otherwise she would conclude that he was just another wimp.

And besides, he liked his book. He was reading the part where Emma Bovary gives herself over completely to the affair with Rudolph Boulanger. Nick could see Emma sneaking away from her house in the small French provincial village and racing across the fields into the arms of her lover. Most of the time in the past, whenever Nick had read a novel about a beautiful, dark heroine, he had pictured Monique. But interestingly enough, the Emma Bovary that he was envisioning while he was reading on the boat was Carol Dawson. And more than once that morning, when Nick had read Flaubert’s descriptions of the passions of Emma and Rudolph, he had imagined himself in the role of the bachelor from the French landed gentry making love to Emma/Carol.

The automatic navigation system that guided the boat while Nick was reading consisted of a simple transmitter/receiver combination and a small miniprocessor. Taking advantage of a worldwide set of synchronous satellites, software in the processor established the boat’s location very precisely and then followed a preprogrammed steering algorithm to the desired final site. Along the way, the two-way link with the satellite overhead provided the necessary information to up date the path through the ocean.

When the Florida Queen was within a mile of the dive site, the nav system sounded a tone. Nick then went to the controls and changed to manual guidance. Carol and Troy rose from their chairs. “Remember,” she said, “the primary purpose of our dive is to photograph and salvage whatever it was that we saw down in that fissure on Thursday. If we have enough time afterward, we will go back to the overhang where we found the trident.”

Carol walked over and switched on the monitor attached to the ocean telescope. She was standing only a few feet away from Nick. They had not exchanged any words since right after the boat left Key West. “Good luck,” he said quietly.

She looked at him to see whether he was serious or was being sarcastic. She couldn’t tell. “Thank you,” she said evenly.

Troy joined Carol at the monitor. She pulled the photographs out of the envelope so they could be used to define the exact spot to anchor. For a couple of minutes she issued instructions to Nick, based on what she was seeing from the telescope, commanding small corrections to the boat’s position. At last the ocean floor underneath them looked almost exactly as it had on Thursday when they had seen the whales. With one major difference.

“Now where’s that hole in the reef?” Troy said innocently. “I don’t seem to be able to find it on the monitor.”

Carol’s heart was speeding as she glanced back and forth from the telescope screen to the photographs. Where is that fissure? she thought, It can’t have disappeared. The boat drifted away from the dive site and Nick steered it back. This time Troy dropped the anchor overboard. But Carol still could not see any sign of the fissure. She could not understand it.

“Nick,” she said finally, “could you give us a hand? We were down there together and we both saw the hole. Are Troy and I just confused in some way?”

Nick came over from the steering wheel under the canopy and stared into the monitor. He too was puzzled. But he thought he saw other things on the bottom of the ocean that also looked a little different. “I don’t see the hole either,” he said, “but maybe it’s just the lighting. We were here in the afternoon last time and now it’s ten in the morning.”

Troy turned to Carol. “Maybe Nick ought to dive with you. He was there before, has seen the fissure, and knows how to find the overhang. Everything I know is from the pictures.”

“No,” said Carol quickly. “I want to dive with you. Nick’s probably right. We just can’t see the fissure because of the different lighting.” She picked up her underwater camera and walked around the canopy toward the back of the boat. “Let’s get going,” she said. “We’ll do just fine.”

Troy gave Nick a silent shrug, as if to say “I tried,” and followed her a few moments later.

3

“BUT Richard,” Ramirez said, “we could get into big trouble.”

“I don’t see how,” Lieutenant Todd replied. “Or why anybody ever has to know. The Navy built the system, after all, primarily for its own ships. We just allow everyone else to use it. All we have to do is interrogate the master register and get the Doppler and ranging time history for their particular identification code. Then we can figure out where they are. It’s easy. We do it all the time for our own vessels.”

“But we signed a maritime convention restricting our access to the private registers except in life-or-death or national security cases,” Ramirez continued. “I can’t just tap into the satellite files because you and I suspect a certain boat of being on an illegal mission. We need more authority.”

“Look, Roberto,” Todd argued vehemently, “who do you think is going to give us permission? We don’t have the photographs. We only have your word for it. No. We must act on our own. If we’re wrong, then nobody ever has to know about it. If we’re right, we’ll nail that bastard, we’ll both be heroes, and nobody will give us a hard time about what we’ve done.”

Ramirez was silent for a few seconds. “Don’t you at least think we should inform Commander Winters? He is, after all, the officer in charge of this Panther investigation.”

“Absolutely not,” said Lieutenant Todd quickly. “You heard him at the meeting yesterday. He thinks we’re out of line already. He’d like nothing better than to shit all over us. He’s jealous.” Todd saw that Ramirez was still undecided. “I’ll tell you what,” he said, “we’ll call him after we find out where the vessel is.”

Lieutenant Ramirez shook his head. “That won’t make any difference. We still will have exceeded our authority.”

“Shit,” said Todd in exasperation. “Tell me what has to be done and I’ll do it. Without you. I’ll take all the risk.” He stopped and looked directly at Ramirez. “I can’t fucking understand it. I guess you Mexicans really are gutless. You’re the one who actually saw the missile in the photograph, but…”

Ramirez’s eyes narrowed. His voice became hard. “That’s enough, Todd. We’ll get the data. But if this turns out to be a disaster, I will personally break your neck with my own hands.”

“I knew you’d see it my way,” Lieutenant Todd replied, smiling as he followed Ramirez to a command console.

Commander Winters put the extra six-pack of Coke on the top of the ice and then closed the cooler. “Anything else,” he shouted out the door at his wife and son, “before I haul this thing out to the car?”

“No, sir,” was the reply from the driveway. The commander picked up the cooler and carried it through the screen door. “Whew,” he said, as he loaded it in the open trunk of the car, “you have enough food and drink in here for a dozen people.”

“I wish you were coming, sir,” said Hap. “Most of the rest of the fathers will be there.”

“I know. I know,” answered Winters. “But your mother’s going. And I need to do some private rehearsing for tonight.” He gave his son a brief hug. “Besides, Hap, we’ve talked about this before. Lately I haven’t felt comfortable at organized church activities. I believe that religion is between God and the individual.”

“You haven’t always felt that way,” Betty interjected from the other side of the car. “In fact, you used to love church picnics. You’d play softball and swim and we would laugh all evening.” There was just a trace of bitterness in her voice. “Come on, Hap.” she said after a momentary pause “We don’t want to be late. Thank your father for helping us pack.”

“Thanks, Dad.” Hap climbed into the car and Winters closed the door behind him. They waved to each other as the Pontiac backed out of the driveway into the street. As they drove away, Winters mused to himself, I must spend more time with him. He needs me now. If I don’t it will soon be too late.

He turned around and walked back into the house. At the refrigerator he stopped and opened the door. He poured himself a glass of orange juice. While he was drinking it, he looked idly around the kitchen. Already Betty had cleaned up the breakfast dishes and put them in the dishwasher. The counters were scrubbed. The morning paper was neatly folded on the breakfast table. The kitchen was tidy, orderly. Like his wife. She abhorred messes of all kinds. Winters remembered one morning, back when Hap was still in diapers and they were living in Norfolk Virginia. The little boy had been exuberantly pounding the kitchen table and suddenly his arms had flailed out, knocking Betty’s cup of coffee and the creamer onto the floor. They both broke and made quite a mess all over the kitchen. Betty had stopped her meal abruptly. By the time she had returned to her cold scrambled eggs, there was not the slightest indication anywhere, not on the floors, the lower cupboard, or even in the wastebasket (she packed all the broken pieces neatly in the basket liner and then removed the entire bag to the outside cans), that there had been an accident.

Just to the right of the refrigerator in the Winterses’ kitchen, hanging on the wall, there was a small plaque with simple lettering. “For God so loved the world,” it said, “that He gave His only begotten son, that whosoever shall believe in Him shall have everlasting life… John 3:16.” Vernon Winters saw this kitchen plaque every day, but he had not actually read the words for months, maybe even years. On this particular Saturday morning he read them and was moved. He thought about Betty’s God, a God very similar to the one he had worshipped in his childhood and adolescence in Indiana, a quiet, calm, wise old man who sat up in heaven somewhere, watching everything, knowing everything, waiting to receive and answer our prayers. It was such a simple, beautiful image. “Our Father, Who art in Heaven,” he said, recalling the hundreds maybe thousands of times that he had prayed in church, “Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done. On Earth as it is in Heaven…”

And what is Thy will for me, old man, Winters thought, a little taken aback by his own irreverence. For eight years You have let me drift. Ignored me. Tested me like Job. Or maybe punished me. He walked over to the kitchen table and sat down. He took another sip from his orange juice. But have I been forgiven? I don’t yet know. Never once in all that time have You given me a definite sign. Despite my prayers and my tears. One time, he thought, right after Libya, I wondered if maybe…

He remembered being half asleep on the beach, lying on his back with his eyes closed on a big comfortable towel. In the distance he could hear the surf and children’s voices, occasionally he could even distinguish Hap’s voice or Betty’s. The summer sun was warm, relaxing. A light began to dart about on the inside of his eyelids. Winters opened his eyes. He couldn’t see much because the sunlight was too bright and there was also a glare, a metal glint of some kind, in his eyes. He shaded his forehead with his hand. A little girl with long hair, a year old perhaps, was standing just above him, staring at him. The glint was coming from the long metal comb in her hair.

Winters closed his eyes and opened them again. Now he could see her better. She had shifted her head just a little so the glare was gone. But she was still staring fixedly at him, with absolutely no expression on her face. She was wearing only diapers. He could tell that she was foreign. Arab perhaps, he had thought at the time, looking back into her deep brown, almond-shaped eyes. She didn’t move or say anything. She just watched him, curious, relentless, without seeming to notice anything that he did.

“Hello,” Winters said quietly. “Who are you?”

The little Arab girl gave no sign that she had heard anything. After a few seconds, however, she suddenly pointed her finger at him and her face looked angry. Winters shuddered and sat up abruptly. His quick action frightened her and she began to cry He reached for her but she pulled away, slipped, lost her balance, and fell on the sand. Her head hit something sharp when she fell and blood started running down her scalp and onto her shoulder. Terrified, first by the fall and then by the sight of her own blood, the little girl began to wail.

Winters hovered over her, struggling with his own panic as he watched the blood splatter the sand. Something unrecognized flashed through his mind and he decided to pick the little Arab girl up to comfort her. She fought him violently, with the reckless abandon and surprising strength of the toddler, and struggled free. She fell again on the sand, on her side, the blood from her scalp injury scattering drops of red around the light brown sand. She was now completely hysterical, crying so hard she often could not catch her breath, her face suffused with fear and anger. She pointed again at Winters.

Within seconds a pair of dark brown arms swooped out of the sky and picked her up. For the first time Winters noticed that there were other people around, lots of them in fact. The little girl had been picked up by a man who must have been her father, a short, squat Arab man in his mid-twenties wearing a bright blue bathing suit. He was holding his daughter protectively, looking as if he were expecting a fight, and consoling his distraught young wife whose sobs intermingled with the little girl’s frantic cries. Both the parents were looking at Winters accusingly. The mother daubed at the little girl’s bleeding head with a towel.

“I didn’t mean to hurt her,” Winters said, recognizing as he spoke that what he said would be misinterpreted. “She fell and hit her head on something and I…” The Arab couple were backing away slowly. Winters turned to the others, maybe a dozen people who had come over in response to the little girl’s cries. They also were looking at him strangely. “I didn’t mean to hurt her,” he repeated in a loud voice. “I was just…” He stopped himself. Big tears were falling off his face and onto the sand. My God, he thought, I’m crying. No wonder these people…

He heard another cry. Betty and Hap had apparently just walked up behind him as the Arab couple had backed away with their bleeding daughter. Now, having seen the blood on his father’s hands, five-year-old Hap had broken into tears and buried his face in his mother’s hip. He sobbed and sobbed. Winters looked at his hands, then at the people standing around him. Impulsively he bent down and tried to clean his hands in the sand. The sound of his son’s sobbing punctuated his vain attempt to wipe his hands free of the blood.

As he was kneeling in the sand, Commander Winters glanced at his wife Betty for the first time since the incident had started. What he saw on her face was abject horror. He entreated her for support with his eyes, but instead her eyes glazed over and she too fell to her knees, careful not to disturb her tearful son who was clinging to her side. And Betty began to pray. “Dear God,” she said with her eyes closed.

The crowd dispersed slowly, several of them going over to the Arab family to see if they could be of any help. Winters stayed on his knees in the sand, shaken by his own actions.

At length Betty stood up. “There, there,” she consoled her son Hap, “everything will be all right.” Without saying another word, she carefully picked up the beach bag and towels and started walking toward the parking lot. The commander followed.

They left the beach and drove back to Norfolk where they were living. And she never asked about it, Winters thought, as he sat at his kitchen table eight years later. She wouldn’t even let me talk about it. For at least three years. It was as if it had never happened. Now she mentions it once in a blue moon. But we still have never discussed it.

He finished his orange juice and lit a cigarette. As he did so, he thought immediately of Tiffani and the night before. Fear and arousal simultaneously stirred in Winters when he thought of the coming evening. He also found that he had a curious desire to pray. And now dear God, he said tentatively, are You testing me again? He was suddenly aware of his own anger. Or are You laughing at me? Maybe it wasn’t enough for You to forsake me, to leave me adrift. Maybe You won’t he satisfied until I am humiliated.

Again he felt like crying. But he resisted. Winters crushed out his cigarette and stood up from the table. He walked over to the side of the refrigerator and pulled the plaque containing the Bible verse off the wall. He started to throw it in the trash but, after hesitating for a second, he changed his mind and put it in one of the kitchen drawers.

4

Carol was swimming rapidly about six feet above the trench as they approached the final turn. She took a few photographs while she waited for Troy to catch up, pointed down below her to where the tracks turned to the left, and then started swimming again, more slowly this time, following the tracks in the narrow crevice toward the overhang. Nothing here had changed. She motioned for Troy to stay back and swam down into the trench, carefully, as she had done before when she was with Nick. Her search of the area under the overhang was very thorough. She did not find anything.

She gestured to Troy that nothing was there, and then, after another quick sequence of photographs, the two divers began retracing their path, going back along the tracks toward the area under the boat where they had already spent fifteen minutes earlier searching fruitlessly for the fissure they had seen on Thursday. It had mysteriously vanished. All the tracks, although somewhat eroded, still converged in front of the reef structure where the hole had been just two days before. Carol had poked and prodded, even damaged the reef in several places (which, as an environmentalist, she hated to do, but she was certain the hole had to be there), but had not found the fissure. If Troy had not seen it so clearly, first on the ocean telescope monitor and then in the pictures, he would have thought that it was just a figment of Nick and Carol’s collective imagination.

As Carol, deep in her thoughts, turned right over the main trench after leaving the side path that had led to the overhang, she was careless and brushed ever so slightly against a crop of coral that was extending outward from the reef. She felt a sting on her hand. She looked down and saw that she was bleeding. That’s funny, she thought, I just barely touched it. Her mind flashed back to ten minutes before, when she had been roughly pushing the coral and kelp aside in search of the fissure. And I wasn’t even scratched…

A wild, inchoate idea started forming in her mind. Excited now, she intensified her swimming down the long trench where the fissure had been. Troy could not keep up with her. It was a long swim but Carol completed it in about four or five minutes. She checked her regulator pressure as she waited for her diving partner. They exchanged the thumbs-up sign when he arrived and Carol tried. without success, to explain her idea to Troy using hand signals. Finally, she bravely reached out and grabbed a piece of coral with her hand. Carol saw Troy’s eyes open wide and his face grimace behind his mask. She opened her hard. There were no cuts, no scrapes, no blood. Astounded, Troy swam over beside her to look at the coral colony she had just disturbed. He too could touch and even hold this strange coral without cutting his hand. What was going on?

Carol was now pulling the coral and kelp away from the reef. Troy watched in amazement as a huge segment of the reef structure seemed to peel off, almost like a blanket…

They heard the great WHOOSH only milliseconds before they felt the pull. A giant chasm opened in the reef behind them and everything in the area, Troy, Carol, schools of fish, plants of all kinds, and an enormous volume of water, was swept into the hole. The current was very swift but the channel was not too large, for Carol and Troy bounced against what felt like metallic sides a couple of times. There was no time to think. They were carried along, as if on a water slide, and simply had to wait for the ride to be over.

The dark gave way to a deep dusk and the current slowed markedly. Separated by about twenty feet, Carol and Troy each tried to gather his wits and figure out what was happening. They appeared to be in the outer annulus of a large circular tank and were going around and around, passing gates of some kind after every ninety degrees of revolution. The water in the tank was about ten feet deep. Carol rolled on her back and looked up. She could see a lot of large structures above her, some of them moving, that seemed to be made out of metal or plastic. She could not see Troy anywhere. She tried to grab the sides of the tank so she could stop and look for him. It was useless. She could not resist the motion of the current.

They made three or four trips around the circle without seeing each other. Troy noticed that all the fish and plants had slowly disappeared from their annulus, suggesting that some kind of sorting process was underway. Suddenly the current increased and he was pitched forward and down, under the water and then through a half-open gate, into darkness again. Just as a trace of light appeared above the water and the rate of flow again slowed, he felt something clamp on to his right arm.

Troy was lifted out of the water a foot or so. In the dim light he couldn’t see exactly what it was that had caught him, but it felt very strong. It held him without additional movement. Troy looked behind him in the current, where he had been, and he saw Carol’s tumbling body approaching. With his free left arm he grabbed at her. She felt his arm and immediately wrapped herself around it. She composed herself, lifted her head out of the water, and struggled to reach the trunk of Troy’s body. She succeeded in holding tight to him as the current rushed past. She caught her breath and for just a moment their eyes met behind their diving masks.

Then, inexplicably, the clamp released. When they were back in the water, the current did not seem so strong. They were able to hold on to each other without much difficulty. After about fifteen seconds, the flow of the water slowed down altogether. They had been deposited in a pool in what appeared to be a large room and the water was draining out, running into some unseen orifice at the far end of the room. The last of the water disappeared. Shaken and exhausted Carol and Troy started to stand up in their diving gear.

Carol had great difficulty getting to her feet. Troy helped her up and then pointed to his regulator. Ever so slowly, he slipped out of his mouthpiece and sampled the ambient environment. One breath, then another. As far as he could tell, he was breathing normal air. He shrugged his shoulders at Carol and, in a fit of bravado, took off his mask as well. “Hellooo,” he shouted nervously, “Anybody there? You have guests out here.”

Carol slowly removed both her mask and her regulator. She had a dazed look on her face. The two of them looked around. The ceiling was about ten feet above them. Overall the dimensions of the chamber were roughly equivalent to a large living room in a nice suburban home. The walls, however, were quite unusual. Instead of being flat and forming nice right-angle joints at each of the intersections, the walls were made of large, curved surfaces, some concave and some convex, that were alternately colored red and blue. Without thinking, Carol began walking around, slowly of course because of the bulky diving gear, and taking photographs.

“Uh, just a moment, Miss Dawson,” Troy said with a hesitant smile. He pulled off his flippers and followed her. “Before you take any more pictures, angel, would you kindly tell this unsophisticated black boy just where in the fuck he is? I mean, last I knew, I was going down under the boat to look for a hole. I think I found it, but I must say it’s a trifle unnerving to be visiting someone and not know just who it is. So could you stop with the journalism bit for just a minute and tell me why you are so calm.”

Carol was right in front of one of the concave blue wall panels. There were two or three indentations in the wall structure, at about eye level, that formed circles or ellipses. “Now what do you suppose this is?” Carol wondered aloud. Her voice sounded flat, as if she were far away.

“Carol,” Troy almost shouted. “Stop it. Stop right now. We can’t just blissfully walk around here as if this is a typical afternoon stroll through a model house. We have to talk. Where are we? How are we going; to get out and go home? Home, remember the place? I guarantee you it’s not under the ocean two hours away from shore.” He grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her.

She started to snap out of her daze. She looked slowly around the entire room and then back at Troy. “Jesus,” she said. “And shit.” He saw her tremble a little and stepped forward to hug her. She indicated for him to leave her alone. “I’m all right. At least almost.” Carol took a couple of deep breaths and then smiled. “Anyway, I’ve sure got one hell of a story here.” She looked around the room again. “Uh Troy,” she said with her brow wrinkled, “how did we get in here? I don’t see a doorway or an opening or anything.”

“Good question,” Troy replied. “A very good question, to which I might have the answer. I think these crazy colored walls move around. I believe I saw the walls rolling into place when I was under the water. So all we have to do is push them aside and find our way out.” He tried to wedge his hands into a crack that was a connection between a red and a blue piece of the wall structure. He was unsuccessful.

Carol left Troy and started to pace around the perimeter of the room in her ungainly diving apparatus. She quickly stopped and took off everything except her bathing suit. She seemed intent on both examining and photographing every single panel in the wall. Troy took off his own air tanks and buoyancy vest as well, dropping them on the light metal floor with a clank. He watched her for a minute.

“Carol, oh Carol,” he said from across the room, a big fake grin spreading across his face. “Would you like to tell me what you’re doing now? I mean, after all, angel, I may be able to help.”

“I’m looking for something that says ‘Eat Me’ or ‘Drink Me,’ ” she replied with a nervous laugh.

“Of course,” Troy mumbled to himself, “that was absolutely obvious.”

“Do you remember Alice in Wonderland?” Carol asked from the opposite side of the room. She had found a long, thin protuberance that looked like a handle sticking out from the center of one of the red panels. She waved and he came over. The two of them tried to twist and turn the handle. Nothing happened. Carol became frustrated struggling with it.

Troy thought he saw a first sign of panic in Carol as her eyes frantically scanned the rest of the room. He pulled himself up and stood at attention, military style. “Speak roughly to your little boy… And beat him when he sneezes… He only does it to annoy… because he knows it teases.”

The deep furrows in Carol’s face showed that she thought Troy had temporarily lost his mind. “That was the Queen of Hearts, I think.” Troy laughed. “I’m not sure exactly. But I had to learn it for a play when I was in the fifth grade.” Carol had relaxed and was also laughing in spite of her fear. She reached up and gave Troy a kiss on the cheek. “Careful, now, careful,” he said with a twinkle in his eye. “We black men are easily aroused.”

Carol slid her arm through Troy’s as they finished walking around the rest of the room, searching the walls for any sign of an exit Troy’s banter made Carol feel comfortable. “When I was in the eighth grade a black teacher of mine told me that Alice was a racist story. He contended that it was very significant that it was a white rabbit that Alice followed. He said that no nice little white girl would ever have pursued a black rabbit down a hole.” He stopped in front of another red panel. “Well, well,” he said. “What have we here?”

This red panel looked just like the rest of the wall from a distance. But up close, within a range of a couple of feet or so, all kinds of patterns, made with small white dots, could be seen stippled on top of the red paint. An array of consecutive rectangular sections outlined by the white dots high-lighted the center of the panel “Hey, angel,” Troy said, pushing on the sections at random, “don’t you think this looks suspiciously like a keyboard?” Troy began to push on the keys at random. Carol joined him. It became a game. The two of them stood at the red panel for almost a minute, putting their fingers into every outlined section and pushing hard.

Suddenly Carol backed away from the panel, turned around, and started walking directly across the room. “Where are you going?” yelled Troy, as Carol, spinning around to answer, nearly stumbled over her diving gear on the floor.

“I have a crazy idea,” called Carol. “Call it feminine intuition. Call it psychic if you will.” She had reached the red panel where they had struggled with the handle. Now she pulled it down easily and immediately heard a creak. She jumped back, startled, as the entire panel folded back and away from her, revealing a dark opening large enough for a truck to enter. Troy came over beside her and the two of them stared into the void.

“Holy shit,” he said “Are we supposed to go in there?”

Carol nodded. “I’m certain we are.”

Troy looked at her with a curious expression. “And just how do you know that?”

“Because it’s the only way out of here,” Carol replied.

Troy cast one final glance around the strange room with the curved and colored walls. There was an indisputable logic to what Carol had said. He took a deep breath, held Carol’s hand, and walked into the black tunnel.

Behind them they could barely see the small shaft of light coming from the room where they had left their diving gear. Inside the pitch-black hallway they moved very slowly, cautiously. Troy kept one hand on the wall and the other clenched around Carol’s. The sound of their labored breathing, heightened by the constant fear and apprehension, reverberated off the rounded walls. They didn’t talk. Twice Troy had started to sing a few lines from a popular song, to assuage his own disquiet, but both times Carol stopped him. She wanted to be able to hear in case there were any other noises.

At one point she squeezed his hand and stopped. “Listen,” she said in a whisper. Troy held his breath. There was utter silence, except for something very soft that he couldn’t quite identify, way off in the distance. “Music,” Carol said. “I think I hear music.”

Troy strained to identify the sound just below the threshold of his hearing. It was useless. He pulled on Carol’s hand. “It’s probably inside your head,” he said. “Let’s go.”

They had made a turn and the light behind them had disappeared. Altogether they had been in the tunnel for about ten minutes. Carol was becoming despondent. “What if this doesn’t go anywhere?” she asked Troy.

“That doesn’t make any sense,” he replied quickly. “Somebody built it for some purpose. It’s obviously a connecting passageway.” He fell silent.

“Who built it?” Carol asked the question that had been troubling both of them during the long tense walk down the dark hallway.

“Another good question,” Troy replied. He hesitated just a minute before continuing with his answer. “My guess is the United States Navy. I think we’re in some kind of top-secret underwater laboratory that nobody knows about.” Of course, he thought, not saying it out loud because he didn’t want to disturb Carol, it could also be Russian. In which case we are in deep shit. If the Russians have a large, secret laboratory this close to Key West, they are not going to be happy…

“Look, Troy,” Carol said excitedly. “I see a light. There is somebody here after all.” The tunnel was about to split into two pans. At the end of one of the two forks, the one sharply to the left, a patch of illumination could clearly be seen. Still holding hands, Troy and Carol walked briskly toward the light. Troy was aware that his heart was beating very rapidly.

Carol almost raced into the new room. She had expected that they were about to be found, that this mysterious adventure was now going to end and everything would be explained. Instead, as she looked around her in a small, oval chamber with the same bizarre panels for walls (except these were colored brown and white, instead of red and blue as in the previous room), she felt a tremendous confusion. “What is this place?” she asked Troy. “And how are we going to get out?”

Troy was standing in the center of the room with his head tilted back as far as it would go. He was staring up at a vast arched ceiling some thirty to thirty-five feet above them. “Wow,” he exclaimed, “this is one huge place.” The muted light illuminating the room was coming from slabs of partially translucent material, possibly glass crystals, that were embedded in the ceiling.

The brown and white panels forming the walls for the particular room they had entered were only ten feet high, but they were high enough to prevent Carol and Troy from seeing out. They had a strange sense of both freedom and confinement. On the one hand, first the tunnel and now this small room, the size of a child’s bedroom in a small house, had made them feel claustrophobic; however, the sense of space conveyed by the cathedral ceilings was liberating.

“Well?” asked Carol, somewhat impatiently, after waiting a few moments while Troy walked around and surveyed the room. He was observing that the brown and white wall panels were only slightly curved and were thus much closer to normal walls than those in the initial room had been.

“I’m sorry, angel,” he replied, “I forgot the question.”

She shook her head. “There is only one question, Mr. Jefferson. I believe that you asked it of me on our last tour stop.” She looked at her watch. “In about fifteen minutes, we will have exceeded the maximum time for our air supply. Unless I miss my guess, our friend Nick is probably starting to worry right now. But we still have no idea… What are you doing?”

She interrupted herself when Troy bent down to pull a small knob on one of the brown panels in the corner of the room. “These are drawers, angel,” he said, as the bottom part of the panel came out several inches from the wall. “Like a dresser.” He opened a second drawer above the first. “And they have something in them.”

Carol came over to see. She reached into the second drawer that Troy had opened and pulled out a rust-colored sphere about the size of a tennis ball. The surface of the ball was very curious. Instead of being smooth and regular, it had grooves cut into it, mostly on one side, and tiny bumps, like those on the surface of a pickle, around and next to the grooves. In other places there were poorly defined indentations as well. Carol examined the sphere in the weak light. “I’ve seen something like this before,” she said. “But where?” She thought for a few seconds. “I’ve got it,” she announced, pleased that her memory had come through, “this looks exactly like the model of Mars in the National Air and Space Museum.”

“Then I must have the Earth,” Troy replied, showing her a mostly blue sphere the size of a softball that he had removed from the top drawer. The two of them stood together in the dim light, looking back and forth at the spheres they were holding in their hands. “Shit,” Troy shouted eventually, spinning around and looking at the ceiling. “And double shit. Whoever you are, we’ve had enough. Come out now and identify yourself.”

A partial echo of his voice came back to them. Otherwise they heard nothing. Anxious to be doing something, Carol continued her search of the room. She found another group of three drawers in a nearby brown panel. While she was opening the first of these, Troy playfully hurled his blue ball at what appeared to be an exit, a dark opening between panels on the other side of the room. The sphere hit a white panel near the exit with a thunk and started to fall to the floor. However, just before it touched the ground, the sphere lifted up, as if pulled somehow from above, and stopped in the center of the room about five feet above the floor. It began to spin.

Troy’s eyes opened wide. He walked over to the sphere and placed his hand between the ball and high ceiling, trying to find the strings. Nothing happened. The Earth sphere continued to spin slowly and inscribe a circle in the air in the middle of the room. Troy pushed the ball lightly. It moved in response to his push, but after his applied force was removed and the effect had dissipated, the sphere returned to its previous location and continued its earlier movement. Troy turned around. Carol had her back to him and was searching unsuccessfully for another set of drawers. The Mars ball was still in her left hand.

“Uh, Carol,” Troy said slowly. “Would you mind coming over here a moment?”

“Certainly,” she replied without looking. “Jesus, Troy, these drawers are full of all kinds…” She had turned around and now noticed the Earth sphere hovering in the air near the center of the room. Her brow knitted. “That’s cute,” she said tentatively, “real cute. I didn’t know you were a magician as well.” Her voice trailed off. She could see the perplexed expression on Troy’s face. She walked over next to him to have a closer look.

The two of them stood silently for at least ten seconds as they watched the blue softball slowly spin in the air. Next Troy took the Mars sphere from Carol and tossed it, under-handed, up toward the high ceiling. It arched up and fell down normally, until it was just above the floor. Then, like the blue sphere before it, the Mars ball developed its own sense of direction and momentum. It floated up about five feet off the floor, began to spin slowly, and hovered in the air next to the blue sphere representing the Earth.

Carol grabbed Troy’s hand. She shivered and then regained her composure. “There’s something about this that gives me the willies,” she said. “All in all, I would deal better with a caterpillar asking me, ‘Who are you?’ At least in that case I would have some idea what I’m up against.”

Troy turned around and led Carol back over to the partially opened drawers. “I ran into this old bearded dude once when I was hitchhiking,” he began, as he pulled out a basketball that was covered with latitudinal belts and bands in shades of red and orange. He aimlessly tossed the big Jupiter ball over his shoulder, using both hands. Carol watched it, still fascinated, as it joined the other two spheres orbiting around an empty focus in the middle of the room.

“He was driving an old run-down pickup truck and smoking a joint. At first we talked a little. He would ask me questions and I would start to give an answer. But after a sentence or two, he would interrupt me and say, ‘You don’t know shit, man.’ That was his response to everything.”

Troy methodically emptied all six of the drawers while he was telling his story. He threw all the objects he found into the center of the room. A few of them he watched, casually, as if he were witnessing an everyday occurrence. Each of the new spheres repeated the earlier pattern. A nearly complete working model of the solar system was forming about five feet above the f1oor.

“Finally I grew tired of his game and was quiet. We drove along for miles in silence. It was a clear and beautiful night and he kept hanging his head out the window to look at the stars. Once, when he pulled his head back in, he lit another joint, handed it to me, and pointed back out the window at the stars. ‘They know, man, they know,’ he said. Miles later, when he let me out of the truck, he leaned over and I could see the wildness in his eyes. ‘Remember, man,’ he whispered, ‘you don’t know shit. But they know.’ ”

As Troy finished the tale, Carol came over beside him and pulled out two handfuls of tiny fragments from the final drawer. They were a little sticky to the touch. She shook them off her hands and they miraculously flew around the room and coalesced into the ring systems of Saturn and Uranus. She looked at Troy in awe.

“Does that bizarre story have a point?” Carol asked. “I must admit that I am amazed at how nonchalant you are about this whole damn thing. For myself, I’m just about ready to freak out. Completely.”

Troy pointed at the miniature planets floating in the air. “What we are seeing has no explanation in terms of our experience. We’ve either died together or transferred to a new dimension or someone is playing mind games with us.” He smiled at Carol. “If you must know, angel, I’m scared absolutely shitless. But like that old stoned hippie, I keep telling myself, ‘They know.’ Somehow it gives me comfort.”

They heard a soft sliding sound and a shaft of bright light burst into the room from an opening that was forming between two panels, one brown and one white, just to the right of the exit. Carol recoiled automatically and covered her eyes for an instant. Troy also jumped back at first, but then shaded his eyes with his hands and watched. The panels continued to slide until an opening about two feet wide had developed. The room was beginning to fill with light. Troy saw a great illuminated ball coming slowly through the opening. “Here comes the Sun Doot-un-Doo-Doo Doo… Here comes the Sun,” he sang anxiously, “And I say… it’s all right…” He hummed a few more bars of the song as Carol opened her eyes.

“Jesus,” she said. The bright orb, the size of a giant beach ball, lifted itself into its proper place in the orrery and flooded the entire room with its radiance. The spinning, orbiting planets shone with reflected light from their sides facing the Sun. Carol stood transfixed, silent tears running down her face. She could not speak or move. She was completely overwhelmed.

Troy was also frightened, but not yet so much that his ability to function was impaired. However, a moment later he saw something in the exit that sent a bolt of terror through his system. His heart surged into overdrive as he blinked and then squinted, making certain his mind was not playing tricks on him as he looked just around the bright light of the model Sun. Instinctively, he turned to protect Carol and shielded her from what he had just seen.

“Don’t look now,” he whispered, “but we have a visitor.”

“What?” said Carol, confused and still stunned.

Troy held her by the arms and they moved together several steps to the right. He looked over his own shoulder and saw the thing again.

“Over by the exit,” he said, turning around, unable any longer to hide his panic.

Carol’s eyes indicated that she had found the source of Troy’s terror. She had no idea what it was, but she could see that it was large, clearly threatening, and absolutely different from anything that she had ever seen or imagined. It had also moved into the room. She heard Troy’s frantic, incoherent shouts, but their meaning didn’t register. She looked at the thing again and her mind balked. She opened her mouth to scream. Nothing came out at first. She dropped to her knees on the floor. She heard the sound of screams in her ear, but they seemed far, far away. Her brain was sending a message that said, ‘You’re screaming,’ but for some reason it didn’t seem possible. It had to be someone else.

The thing was coming toward her Its main body was about eight feet tall at that moment, but it was continually changing its shape and size as it undulated across the room. Whatever it was, Troy and Carol could see into it and even through parts of its structure. A transparent external boundary membrane was wrapped around a permanently seething set of mostly clear fluid matter that ebbed and flowed with each movement. The thing moved like an amoeba, matter simply heading in the right direction, but with astonishing speed. Tiny black dots were scattered just behind all its external surfaces, darting in all directions, apparently supervising the continuous reconfigurations that gave it motion. A half dozen chunks of grayish, opaque matter, objects a foot or so square, were also embedded near the center of the primary body.

But it was not the main body of the thing that was so terrifying. Protruding from its upper portions was a frightening array of a dozen appendages, mostly long and slender in shape, that appeared to be stuck into the main body like sharp objects in a pin cushion. It looked as if the large, clear, amoebalike structure was a versatile transportation system that could carry virtually anything and that the payload, at least for this usage, was this family of constantly active rods, all of which were threatening because their end effectors resembled needles, hands, brushes, teeth, and even swords and guns. In Carol’s mind, she was being attacked by a heavily armored tank that could change size in an instant and move on invisible treads in any direction.

Troy moved to the side, trying to calm his fear and catch his breath, as he watched the thing zero in on Carol. Its longest attachment, a reddish plastic implement which split into two short tines about a foot away from the primary body, suddenly extended itself outward an additional three feet and stopped just six inches in front of Carol’s eyes. She screamed and pushed it away, forcefully, but it popped right back into position. Troy plucked the Jupiter ball out of the air and, with all his might, hurled the sphere at the center of the thing. The shapeless mass fell back on impact and immediately retracted its extended appendages. But in an instant the thing reconfigured itself somehow and adjusted its matter to let the ball pass completely through. Before it hit the floor on the other side, Jupiter rose into the air and came back to take its proper position in the solar system model.

The thing had now stopped advancing toward Carol. It was sitting in the middle of the room, its spindly appendages flailing around in all directions. It seemed to be making a decision. Troy bravely grabbed a rod with an end effector like a brush and tried to pull it away from the main structure. Instantly, core clear material flowed into the joint where that particular rod was attached, strengthening the connection. But Troy’s action definitely caused a change in its pattern. The thing started after him. Ever so carefully, making sure it would follow him while watching out for another quick extension of the red implement with the two tines, Troy edged toward the exit. As the thing continued to move toward him, Troy motioned for Carol to get back. Then he broke for the door, tripping slightly over an extended rod on his way out.

It hardly hesitated. With surprising celerity the thing made itself short and squat. A maximum amount of exposed surface was now on the floor and it could move more quickly and efficiently. The deployed group of attachments were placed into some kind of compact traveling configuration and the thing hustled out the door.

Carol was left alone on her knees on the floor. The solar system model was above her and to the right. For over a minute she didn’t move. She just watched the spinning planets abstractedly and listened for the occasional sound of Troy’s footfalls in the distance. At length there was a long period of silence and Carol rose to her feet. She took several small, slow steps, reassuring herself that she was all right, and then walked over to the exit opening between the panels. The exit opened onto a corridor that ran in both directions.

Troy had gone to the right when he had left the room. After remembering her camera and going back to take a few quick photographs of the suspended planets, Carol followed Troy’s path, also taking the corridor to the right. She walked slowly down the black hall, turning around frequently to locate the light coming from the room that she had just left. There was now a close ceiling over her head. The hall next split into two forks; both directions were dark. Carol listened for sounds. Again she thought she heard music, but she couldn’t begin to identify where it was coming from.

This time she chose the left fork in the hallway. Soon it narrowed and seemed to be circling back in the direction from which she had just come. She was just about to turn around and retrace her steps when she distinctly heard two noises, something like a thud followed by a scraping sound, off to the right in front of her. Drawing her breath slowly and struggling to conquer her fear, Carol moved forward in the dark. After about twenty more feet she came upon a low door that opened to the right. She bent down slightly and peered in. In the dusky light she saw unusual shapes and structures in another small room with walls made of the now familiar curved and colored panels. She crawled through the doorway and stood up.

Soft local lights located in a few of the wall panels came on as soon as Carol’s feet contacted the floor in the room. Her arrival also triggered two or three notes from some kind of musical instrument. It sounded like an organ and was apparently way off in the distance in another part of the cathedral area enclosed by the vast arched ceilings that were again above her. She stopped, surprised. She stood still for several seconds. Then, without moving, Carol carefully surveyed her new surroundings.

In this room the wall panels were very bright, alternating between purple and gold, and they were extremely curved. Along with Carol in the room there were three objects of unknown purpose. One looked like a writing table, a second like a long, low bench that was wide at one end and tapered to a point at the other, and the third resembled a very tall telephone pole whose top and bottom were connected by sixteen thin strings stretched out and around a broad ring about one third of the way down the pole.

Carol could walk between the thin strings. The ring, made out of a gold metallic material, was a couple of feet above her head, almost at the level of the top of the wall panels. She grabbed one of the strings and felt it vibrate. It made a muffled, flat sound. She backed away from the string and tried to pluck it. A note sounded, very lyrical, like a heavy harp. Carol realized she was standing inside a musical instrument. But how to play it? She spent a few minutes wandering around the room, trying without success to find the equivalent of a bow. She knew it would be impossible to play the harp if she had to run around and pluck each individual string herself.

She walked over to the writing table. She quickly figured out that it was also a musical instrument. It looked much more promising. There were indentations in the table, sixty-four altogether, set up in eight rows and eight columns. Pressing each key produced a different sound. Although Carol had taken five years of piano lessons as a small child, it was a difficult chore, at first, for her even to play “Silent Night” on the strange writing table. She had to correlate the sounds made by pressing the individual keys with the notes and chords that she remembered from her childhood. While she was teaching herself to play the instrument, she stopped often to listen to the delicate, crystal sound that it made. It reminded her mostly of a xylophone.

Carol stood at the table for several minutes. Eventually she played an entire verse of “Silent Night” without making a single mistake. Carol smiled, pleased with herself, and relaxed momentarily. During this interlude the great organ in the distance (which she had heard briefly when she had entered the room and could now pinpoint as being somewhere in the upper reaches of the cathedral area) suddenly began to play. Carol felt goose bumps rise on her arms, partially due to the beauty of the music and partially because it reminded her again of what a bizarre world she had entered. What is that organ playing? she thought to herself. It sounds like an overture. She listened for a few seconds. Why… that’s an introduction. To “Silent Night”! It’s very creative.

The organ sound was joined by several others, each emanating from somewhere in the ceiling. All the instruments together played a complex version of the “Silent Night” that Carol had so painstakingly pounded out on the writing table a few moments before. The beautiful music swelled throughout the cathedral. Carol looked up and then closed her eyes. She spun her body around and around in a little dance. When she opened her eyes again, each of them confronted what appeared to be a tiny optical instrument no more than an inch away. Carol froze in terror.

The thing had noiselessly come up behind her while she was playing music at the writing table and had waited patiently, while deploying its appendages, until she was ready to turn around. It was about her height now and the closest part of the translucent main body was only an arm’s length away. As Carol stood there motionless, barely daring to breathe, five or six of the thing’s attachments came forward to touch her. A small digging instrument scraped some skin off her bare shoulder. The sword cut off some of her hair. A tiny cord attached to one of the long rods wrapped around her wrist. A set of bristles the size of the head of a toothbrush traveled across her chest, tickling her nipples through her bathing suit and crossing over the camera that was draped around her neck. She was having so many feelings simultaneously that she had lost track of all the stimuli. Carol closed her eyes and tried to concentrate on something else. She felt a needle prick her forehead.

It was over very fast, less than a minute altogether. The thing retracted its appendages, backed up a couple of feet and stood there, observing her from a distance. Carol waited. After another twenty seconds, the attachments were stowed, as they had been when the thing had gone after Troy, and it left the room.

Carol listened for sounds. It was totally quiet again. She backed up from the writing table and tried to organize her thoughts. After about a minute, the purple and gold wall panels began to move to the side on their own accord. They folded upon themselves and formed small stacks. Then the corridors around the music room collapsed and automatically organized their partitions into neat piles. Carol found herself standing in one huge room under the cathedral ceilings. In the distance her weird antagonist with the flailing appendages passed through a side door about twenty-five yards away and disappeared quickly from view.

She looked around. There was no sign of Troy. The walls were creamy white and nondescript, somewhat boring after the colored panels in the earlier rooms. There were two doors, opposite each other in the middle of the room. Except for the musical instruments, which now seemed completely out of place clustered together at one end of such a vast room, the only other object she could see was a small piece of carpet against thc wall to the left. In front of her against the far wall, about fifty yards away, there was what appeared to be a large window on the ocean. Even from a distance she could see and identify some of the fish swimming by.

At first Carol hurried toward the window. When she was about halfway there and even with the doors, she stopped a few seconds and took a few photographs of the rather bland room. Curiously, the small carpet was not where she remembered it. It had somehow been moved while she was walking. She approached the carpet very slowly. Her weird experiences since she and Troy had been sucked out of the ocean had made Carol understandably wary. As she drew closer, she saw that the flat object lying on the floor was definite]y not a carpet. From above she could see an intricate internal design, like a complex network of sophisticated electronic chips. There were strange whorls and geometric patterns on its surface; they had no specific meaning to Carol but they reminded her of the fractal designs Dr. Dale had shown her one night in his apartment. The symmetries of the object were readily apparent. In fact, each of the four quadrants of the carpet was identical.

It was about six feet long, three feet wide, and two inches thick. The dominant color was slate gray, although there were some significant color variations. Some of the larger individual components must have been color-coded according to some master plan. Carol could identify groupings of similar elements in red, yellow, blue, and white within the design. The overall harmony of the colors was striking, suggesting that some effort had been made by the designers to include aesthetic considerations.

Carol bent down on her knees beside the carpet and studied it more intently. Its surface was densely packed. The closer she looked, the more detail she found. Extraordinary, she thought. But what in the world is it? And how did it move? Or could I possibly have imagined it? She put her hand on the exposed top surface. She felt a soft tingle, like a gentle electric shock. She slid one hand under the edge and lifted slightly. It was heavy. She removed her hand.

Her desire to escape from this strange world now overruled her curiosity. Carol took a photograph of the carpet from the top and started walking away in the direction of the window. After several strides, she turned quickly to her left to look at the carpet one more time. It had moved again and was still even with her in the room. Carol continued walking toward the window, now watching the carpet out of the corner of her eye. When she had walked another ten feet, her peripheral vision saw it arch up quickly along a line through its center, pulling the rear of its body in a forward direction. Half a second later the front end of the carpet scooted forward and the center fell flat against the floor again. This maneuver was repeated six or eight times in rapid succession as the carpet zipped up to a position even with Carol in the room.

Despite her situation, Carol laughed. She was still full of adrenaline and uptight, but there was definitely something humorous about a multicolored carpet that could crawl like an inchworm. “Ha,” Carol said out loud, “I caught you. Now you owe me an explanation.”

Carol certainly did not expect a reply to her comment. Nevertheless, after just a short delay, the behavior of the carpet was altered. First it began to generate small wave pulses along its surface, with four or five crests from front to back. After smartly reversing the direction of motion of the waves several times, the carpet’s next trick was to keep its front end fixed on the floor, as if there were suction cups holding it down, and raise its back side entirely off the floor. In that mode it was about six feet tall. It seemed to be looking at Carol.

She was flabbergasted. “Well, I asked for it,” she said out loud, still amused by the antics of the carpet. Now it seemed to be motioning for her to go toward the window. I have lost my mind, she thought to herself. Completely. Troy was right. Maybe we’re dead. The carpet arched over on the floor and began to scamper toward the window, tumbling in somersaults like a slinky toy. Carol followed. This is nuts, she thought as she watched the carpet move somehow through the window and into the ocean. And Alice thought she was in Wonderland.

The carpet was playing in the water, dodging fish as they swam by in schools and teasing a sea urchin stuck fast against the reef. At length it came back into the room and stood upright. A little water dripped on the floor when the carpet set in motion a series of fast simultaneous waves, both latitudinal and longitudinal, that effectively shook the residual liquid from its surface. It then faced Carol and clearly beckoned for her to go through the window into the ocean.

“Look here, flat guy,” she said, chuckling to herself as she tried to figure out what to say. Now I know I’m insane, she thought in a flash. I’m standing here talking to a carpet. Next thing I know it will talk back. “Now I’m not stupid,” she continued. “I recognize that you’re trying to get me to go into the ocean. But there are a few things that you don’t—”

The carpet interrupted the conversation by going quickly through the window into the ocean again. It performed a couple of flips and came back into the room with Carol. Once more it shook itself and then stood rigidly, upright as before as if to say, “See, it’s easy.”

“As I was saying,” Carol began again, “I have perhaps gone crazy, but I’m willing to trust that I can indeed go through that window in some magical way. My problem is that these is water out there. I can’t breathe in water. Without my diving gear, which I left somewhere in this labyrinth, I will die”

The carpet didn’t move. Carol repeated her statement, using elaborate hand gestures to make her key points. Then she fell silent. After a short wait the carpet began to move about actively. It then approached her carefully and amazingly stretched itself out in all directions so that it was almost double its original size. Carol wasn’t significantly fazed. At this point she was almost incapable of being astonished again. Even by an elastic carpet that pulled its two top sides together, over her head, to form a cone.

Carol backed away a couple of steps from the now giant carpet. “Oh ho,” she said, “I think I understand. You are going to form an air pocket for me so that I can breathe.” She stood still for a moment, thinking and shaking her head. “Why not,” she said at last, “it’s no weirder than anything else that’s happened.”

With the carpet hovering over and around her head, Carol closed her eyes and walked directly toward the window. She took a deep breath when she felt a soft plastic touch on different parts of her body. Suddenly the water was all around her except for the small air pocket from the neck up. It was hard for Carol to keep her diving discipline, but she managed to equalize the pressure every six to eight feet during her ascent. She took one final breath and zoomed up to the surface. The carpet peeled off in the last foot before she broke water.

The Florida Queen was about fifty yards away. “Nick,” she shouted with all her might, “Nick, over here.” She swam furiously toward the boat. A wave broke over her head. The boat was again visible, she could see a figure in profile. He was looking over the side of the boat. “Nick,” Carol cried again when she had gathered her strength. This time he heard her and turned around. She waved her arms.

5

NICK had followed Carol and Troy on the monitor right after their initial descent, when they were still directly under the boat searching for the fissure. But he had quickly tired of watching them swim around in circles and had returned to his deck chair to read his novel. Afterward he had walked over to the screen several more times to look for them and had seen nothing; Carol and Troy had already left to investigate the area under the overhang.

Nick had checked the monitor again after he had finished Madame Bovary. He had been a little surprised to discover that the fissure was again clearly visible underneath the Florida Queen. He next assumed that he must have been correct, that it had just been a case of bad lighting, since with the sun directly overhead, the hole in the reef looked much smaller to him than it had two days before. He had then busied himself about the boat until his wrist alarm went off, indicating that Carol and Troy had about five more minutes of air remaining.

Nick walked over and looked at the images being taken by the ocean telescope and placed in realtime on the screen. There was no sign of Carol and Troy under the boat. Nick started becoming restive. I hope they’re paying attention, he thought. He realized that they had been gone from view for a long time and that he had never seen them actually explore the fissure, their primary goal. A creeping disquiet began to spread through him as the clock continued to run out.

There’s only one explanation, he thought, fighting against the negative ideas that were filtering into his mind. They have been gone a long time, so they must have found something interesting at the overhang. Or somewhere else. For just a moment Nick imagined that Carol and Troy had found a lode of treasure, full of objects that looked like the strange trident they had retrieved on Thursday.

The second hand seemed to be racing on his watch. It was now one minute until they should run out of air. Nick nervously checked the monitor again. Nothing. He felt his heart speed up. They must be in the red, he thought. Even if they have carefully conserved the air, they must be in the red. Nick worried for a second about a gauge failure, but he quickly remembered checking both of them himself when he arrived at the boat that morning. Besides, it’s terribly unlikely they would both fail… so there must be trouble.

Another minute passed and Nick realized that he had not formulated a plan as to what he would do if they didn’t show up. His mind raced swiftly through his options. There were two distinctly different action patterns he could follow. He could put on his diving gear and go look for them along the trench between the fissure and the overhang. Or he could assume that, in their excitement, Carol and Troy had simply neglected to check their air gauges regularly and as a result had been forced to surface wherever they were when they ran out of air.

If I go down after them, he thought, I probably won’t reach them in time. Nick had a moment of self-recrimination because he had not properly prepared for this contingency. It would take him several valuable minutes to put on and check out his own diving apparatus. That settles it. I must assume they’re around here somewhere. Floating on the surface. He looked briefly at the screen one more time and then walked over to the side of the boat. He scanned the ocean. It was a little choppy now. He didn’t see any sign of them.

Nick turned on the engine and pulled in the anchor. He made a quick mental assessment of the general direction to the overhang and started steering with the engine at very low throttle. Unfortunately, he could not see the telescope monitor from the steering wheel, and the canopy blocked his vision behind him. Nick was in perpetual motion, back and forth from the wheel to the screen to the sides of the boat. As his fear and frustration began to build, so did his anger. It was now five minutes after the nominal time that their air supply would have been depleted.

Damnit, Nick thought, still not allowing his brain to nurture images of disaster, How could they be so careless? I knew I shouldn’t have let them go as a pair. He continued to castigate himself and then turned on Carol. I let that woman push me around. I will sure as hell straighten her out when I find them. Nick turned the boat sharply to the left.

He thought he heard a voice. Nick ran to the side of the boat. He had no sense of what direction the shout had come from. After two or three more seconds he heard it again. He turned and saw a figure wave. Nick waved back and went over to the steering wheel to change the direction of the boat. He pulled out a strong rope from the equipment drawer and tied it around one of the stanchions next to the ladder. He threw the line to Carol as the boat pulled up alongside her and then he cut the motor back to idle.

She had no trouble catching the line. As he was reeling her in, Nick’s eyes searched the surrounding water for Troy. He could not see him. Carol had now reached the ladder. “You would not believe…” she started, trying to catch her breath as she put her first foot on the ladder.

“Where’s Troy?” interrupted Nick. gesturing out at the ocean.

Carol took another step up the ladder. It was clear that she was exhausted. Nick took her hand and she came into the boat. She stood up on her wobbly legs.

“Where’s Troy?” Nick asked again forcefully. He looked at Carol. “And what happened to all your gear?”

Carol took a deep breath. “I… don’t know… where Troy is,” she stammered. “We were sucked down—”

“You don’t know!” shouted Nick, now frantically looking around on the ocean surface. “You go on a dive, come up without your gear, and don’t know where your partner is. What kind—”

A small wave hit the boat. Carol had raised her hand to protest Nick’s diatribe, but the motion of the boat knocked her feet out from under her. She fell hard on her knees and winced at the pain. Nick was hovering over her, still shouting. “Well, Miss Perfect, you better come up with some fucking answers fast. If we don’t find Troy soon, he’ll be dead. And if he’s dead, it will be your goddamn fault.”

Carol instinctively cowered at the anger of the large man. Her knees hurt, she was exhausted, and this man was yelling in her face. Suddenly her emotions gave way. “Shut up,” she shouted. “Shut up, you asshole. And get away from me.” She was flailing with her arms, hitting Nick on the legs and in the stomach. “You don’t know anything,” she said after taking a quick breath. “You don’t know shit.”

Carol put her head in her hands and began to cry. In that instant, a long-buried memory burst upon her mind Her five-year-old brother was sobbing hysterically and attacking her, pummeling her with his fists. She had her hands up to protect herself. “It’s your fault, Carol,” he was screaming, “he left because of you.” She remembered the hot tears in her eyes. “It’s not true, Richie, it’s not true. It wasn’t my fault.”

On the boat Carol glanced up through her tears at Nick. He had backed away and was looking sheepish. She wiped her eyes and took a deep breath. “It was not my fault,” Carol said deliberately and emphatically. Nick stuck out his hand to help her up and she smacked it away. He mumbled “I’m sorry” as she rose to her feet. “Now if you’ll just shut up and listen,” she continued, “I’ll tell you what happened. The reef under the boat wasn’t a reef at all… Oh, my God… It’s here.”

Nick saw a look of consternation break on Carol’s face. She pointed over behind him, on the other side of the boat. He turned around to look. At first he didn’t notice anything. Then he saw a strange flat object that looked like a piece of carpet inching along the boat toward the telescope monitor. He screwed up his face and turned back to Carol with a puzzled expression.

While Carol had been talking, the carpet had somehow crawled up the side and then flopped into the boat. By the time she started to explain, it was already standing in front of the television monitor, looking at the images the telescope was taking of the ocean floor beneath the boat. There was no time for lengthy explanations. “What the fuck?” Nick said, and walked over to apprehend the peculiar visitor. When his hand was about an inch away from touching the carpet, he felt a strong electrical discharge in the end of his fingers. “Ow!” he said, jumping back. He shook his hand and watched with amazement. The carpet continued to stand in front of the screen.

Nick looked at Carol as if he expected some assistance. But she was finding the whole scene amusing. “That thing is just one of the reasons the dive was strange,” she said, making no effort to provide any help. “But I don’t think it will hurt you. It probably saved my life.”

Nick grabbed a small fishnet hanging on the side of the structure holding up the canopy and slowly approached the carpet. As he drew near, it seemed to turn and look at him. Nick lunged forward with the net. The carpet dodged deftly and Nick lost his balance. He fell against the monitor with his arms akimbo. Carol laughed out loud, remembering the first time they met. The carpet flipped over to the telescope data system and wrapped itself tightly around the entire set of electronic equipment.

From the floor of the boat Nick watched the carpet investigating the data system and shook his head in disbelief. “What the hell is that thing anyway?” he shouted to Carol.

She came over and graciously offered a hand to help him up. It was her way of apologizing for her earlier outburst. “I have no earthly idea,” Carol replied. “At first I thought it might be a sophisticated Navy robot. But it is much too advanced, too intelligent.” She pointed at the sky with her free left hand. “They know,” she said with a smile.

The comment reminded Carol of Troy and she became solemn. She walked over to the side of the boat and stared at the ocean. Nick was now standing up next to the monitor within an arm’s length of the carpet and the data system. It looked as if the carpet had somehow extended part of itself into the internal electronics. Nick watched for a few seconds, fascinated, as the various digital diagnostic readouts on the top of the data system went crazy. “Hey, Carol,” he said. “Come here and look at this. That damn thing is plastic or something.”

She did not turn around at first. “Nick,” Carol asked softly, finally facing him, “what are we going to do about Troy?”

“As soon as we get this damn invader out of here,” Nick replied from underneath the canopy, where he was now looking through his kitchen implements, “we’ll do a systematic search of the area. I may even dive and see if I can find him.”

Nick had picked up a large cooking fork with a plastic handle and was about to attempt to pry the carpet off the data system. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” admonished Carol. “He’ll leave when he’s ready.”

But it was too late. Nick stuck the fork into and through the carpet and up against the uppermost rack of electronic parts. There was a popping sound and a tiny blue arc zapped down the fork, driving Nick backward with a powerful kick. Alarms went off, the digital readout from the data system went blank, and the ocean telescope monitor began to smoke. The carpet dropped down on the floor and began making the little waves that it had showed to Carol in the large room with the window on the ocean. A moment later, two alarms from the navigation system sounded, indicating not only that the boat’s current location had been lost, but also that the nonvolatile memory, where all the parameters that permitted satellite communication were stored, had been erased.

In the middle of the noise and smoke, Nick stood with a puzzled expression on his face. He was rubbing his right arm from his wrist to his shoulder. “I’m numb,” he said in astonishment. “I can’t feel anything in my arm.”

The carpet continued with its wave patterns on the floor of the boat while Carol picked up a pail, leaned overboard for some water, and doused the monitor. Nick had not moved. He was still standing there, looking helpless and pinching his arm. Carol threw the rest of the water on Nick. “Shit,” he sputtered, backing up involuntarily, “why did you do that?”

“Because we have to find Troy,” she said, walking over to the boat’s controls. “And we can’t wait all day. Ignore the damn carpet… and your arm. A man’s life is at stake.”

She increased the speed of the boat. As she did, the carpet stood up again, twisted around, and hustled to the side. Nick tried to stop it but it was out of the boat and into the water in a flash. As Carol steered the boat through circles of larger and larger radius, Nick stood on the side of the Florida Queen and searched for Troy.

An hour later they both agreed there was no reason for them to continue the search. Carol and Nick had been over the entire region of the ocean in the boat several times (with some care and difficulty, because they no longer had a working navigation system) and had found no trace of Troy. After he had convinced himself that his arm was all right. Nick had even donned his diving equipment, as a last resort, and had retraced the path from the fissure to the overhang and back. Still no sign of Troy. Nick had been just slightly tempted to investigate the fissure, but Carol’s wild story seemed remotely plausible, and Nick did not like the idea of being sucked into some bizarre underground laboratory. And he knew that if he were to disappear, it would be virtually impossible for Carol to guide the boat back to Key West without an active navigation system.

Carol recounted the whole story of her dive while she and Nick were canvassing the area. He was certain she was liberally embellishing the details, but he could see no over-arching logical flaws in her tale. And he himself had, after all, confronted the carpet on the Florida Queen. So he acknowledged, in his own mind, that Carol and Troy had indeed had hair-raising experiences in an underwater building of some type and that the technology they had encountered was definitely more advanced than anything they had ever seen before.

But Nick was reluctant to accept Carol’s blithe explanation that the trio had met some extraterrestrials. It didn’t seem likely to Nick that a first contact would be made under such mundane circumstances Although he readily admitted that the carpet was a marvel of capability far beyond his ken, he did not think of himself as being technologically sophisticated and therefore he could not state, categorically, that human beings could not have created it.

Infact, Nick thought to himself as he was carefully searching the horizon with his binoculars for reference landmarks before beginning the trip back to Key West, what a perfect deception. Suppose the Russians or even our own Navy wanted to mislead… He stopped himself in mid-thought and realized that if he were right, and their encounter had been with a human creation, then they could very well still be in danger. But why was Carol allowed to leave? And why didn’t they confiscate my boat? Nick found a small island that he recognized off in the distance and changed the orientation of the boat. He shook his head. It was all very confusing.

“You don’t agree with me that we’ve just met some ETs?” Carol came up beside Nick and slightly teased him with her question.

“I don’t know,” he answered slowly. “It seems like quite a leap to make. After all, if there is an extraterrestrial infestation in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, it should have been found before now. Submarines and other boats with active sonar must cross this region at least once or twice a year.” He smiled at her. “You’ve been reading too much science fiction.”

“On the contrary,” she responded, fixing him with her gaze, “my experience with state-of-the-art technology is almost certainly more extensive than yours. I have done a series of features on the Miami Oceanographic Institute and have seen what kind of ingenious new concepts are being developed. And nothing, absolutely nothing, comes close to the carpet or the giant amoeba thing. The likelihood that there is some nonfantastic explanation for all this is very very small.” She paused for a moment. “Besides,” she continued, “maybe the laboratory hasn’t been there for long. Maybe it was just recently finished or even transported here.”

Nick had felt himself bridle when Carol had started her comment. There she goes again, he had thought. So sure of herself. So cocky and competitive. Almost like a man. He admitted to himself that he had also been known to make arguments from authority. And she was certainly right in one respect. She had had much more exposure to high technology than he had. Nick decided not to argue with her. This time.

There was a momentary pause in the conversation. Carol was also becoming more sensitive to the dynamic of their interaction. She had noticed in realtime that Nick’s face had tightened when she had suggested that she knew more about technology than he did. Uh oh, had flashed through her mind. Come on, Carol. Be a little more tactful and considerate. She decided to change the subject.

“How long will it take us to reach the marina?” she asked. In her excitement on Thursday afternoon, she had not paid much attention to time during their return trip.

“A little less than two hours,” Nick replied. He laughed. “Unless I get lost. I haven’t used manual guidance in these waters for over five years.”

“And what are you going to say when we get there?”

Nick looked at her. “To whom… about what?” he asked.

“You know. About our dive. About Troy.”

They stared at each other. Nick finally broke the silence. “My vote would be to say nothing about it… until… until we know for certain,” he said quietly. “Then if Troy shows up, there’s no problem.”

“And if he doesn’t ever show up…” Carol’s voice trailed off, “then we, Mr. Williams, are both in very deep shit.” The gravity of their situation was becoming clear to both of them.

“But who do you think will ever believe such an incredible tale?” Nick said after a moment. “Even with your pictures, there’s no really hard evidence to corroborate our story. These days people can create any kind of photo they want on a computer. Remember that murder case in Miami last year, where an alibi photograph was produced and admitted as official evidence? And then later that data processor showed up and blew the whistle?” He paused. Carol was listening intently. “And whoever built that place may be dismantling it at this very moment,” he continued. “Otherwise. why did they let us get away? No. I say we wait awhile. Twenty-four hours or so anyway. And think carefully about what we’re going to do.”

Carol nodded her head affirmatively. “I think I agree with you, although not exactly for the same reasons.” She was aware there was still a journalistic voice inside her that wanted to guard the information for her sensational scoop. She hoped her ambition wasn’t somehow standing in the way of making the right decision for Troy. “But Nick,” Carol said reflectively, “you don’t think we’re endangering Troy in any way by not contacting the authorities?”

“No,” Nick replied immediately. “I suspect that if they were going to kill him, they would have done so already. Or will soon.”

This part of the conversation was too casual for Carol. She walked over to the edge of the boat and stared out at the sea again. She thought of Troy and their wild adventure after they were sucked into the fissure. He had helped her hang together. No question about it. His humor and wit had kept her from falling apart. And he may have well saved her life by deflecting the attention of that thing.

He was a warm, sensitive man underneath that funny exterior, she thought. Very aware. He also seemed to be covering lots of pain. From somewhere. For a moment Carol convinced herself that Troy was all right. After all, they had helped her to escape. Then she wondered why she had never run into him again down there. A seed of doubt was planted in her mind. She squirmed. Damnit. We don’t really know one way or the other. It’s uncertainty again. I hate uncertainty. It’s unfair.

A profound sadness, a deep and disturbing feeling from the past, stirred in Carol. She felt helpless, without any control of the situation. Tears filled her eyes. Nick had come up beside her without saying anything. He saw the tears in her eyes but didn’t comment. He just put his hand over hers for a moment and then removed it.

“Troy was becoming a good friend,” Carol said, starting to hide what she was really feeling. All of a sudden her need to share her true emotions overcame her normal protection mechanisms. She looked down at the water. “But that’s not really why I’m upset just now. I’m crying because of the uncertainty. I can’t stand not knowing.” Carol paused and wiped her eyes.

Nick was quiet. He did not understand exactly what she was saying, but he sensed that something special was about to happen between them. The gentle waves lapped against the side of the boat. “It reminds me of my childhood, right after my father left,” she continued softly. “I kept believing that he would be coming back. All three of us, Richie, my mom, and I, would tell each other that it was just a temporary separation, that someday he would walk through the door and say ‘I’m home.’ At night I would lie in my bed and listen for the sound of his car in the driveway.”

The tears were flowing now, big drops cascading down her cheeks and falling into the vast ocean. “When he would come to pick us up for dinner, or on a Saturday, I would help Mom fix herself up, choose her clothes for her, brush her hair.” Carol choked up for a moment. “After I hugged him at the door, I would always take him to Mother and say, ‘Isn’t she beautiful?’

“For six months this went on. I never knew what I was going to feel from day to day. The uncertainty destroyed me, made me sick. I begged my father to give my mom one more chance. Richie even suggested that he could buy the house next door if he and Mother couldn’t get along. So we could at least all be close together.” Carol smiled grimly and took a huge breath.

“Then my father took my mother to San Francisco for the weekend. I was so excited. For thirty-six hours my heart soared, my future was assured. I was the happiest ten-year-old girl in the San Fernando Valley. But when they came home un Sunday night my mother was very drunk. Her eyes were swollen, her mascara was running, she was a mess. She marched right past Richie and me and went to her room. My dad, Richie, and I stood in the living room, all hugging, and wept together. In that instant I knew it was all over.”

Carol was calming down now but the tears were still there. She looked at Nick, her eyes entreating. “It would have been so much easier if I could have cried one time and been done with it. But no. There was uncertainty, so there was still hope. So every day, every goddamn day, my little heart was broken again.” Carol wiped her eyes one more time. Then she looked out at the ocean and shouted with all her might, “I want to know now, or at least soon, what happened to Troy! Don’t make me wait forever. I can’t take it.”

She turned to Nick. He opened his arms. Without a word she put the side of her face against his chest. He closed his arms around her.

6

NICK reached above the door to Troy’s duplex and found the key on the ledge. He knocked on the door again and opened it cautiously. “Hello,” he called out, “is anybody there?”

Carol followed him into the living room. “I didn’t know you two were such close friends,” she said, after she glanced with amusement at Troy’s motley collection of furniture. “I don’t think I’ve ever told anyone where I keep my key.”

What Nick was looking for was not in the living room. He walked down the hallway, past the large bedroom with its storehouse of equipment, and into the smaller bedroom where Troy slept. “Actually,” Nick yelled at Carol, who had stopped behind him in the hall opposite the first bedroom and was gawking at the jumble of electronics filling every conceivable cranny, “it was only yesterday that I came over here for the first time. So I don’t really know where… oh, good, I think I’ve found something.” He picked up a sheet of computer printout that was underneath a paperweight on the end table beside Troy’s bed. It was dated January 15, 1994, and contained about twenty names, addresses, and phone numbers.

Nick met Carol in the hallway. He read quickly through the page and showed it to her. “There’s not much here. Phone numbers and addresses for electronics and software supply houses. A bunch of numbers for Angie Leatherwood, probably while she was still on tour.” He pointed at one entry. “This must be his mother, Kathryn Jefferson, in Coral Gables, Florida. But there’s no phone number listed with the address.”

Carol took the sheet from Nick and checked it herself. “I never heard him mention anyone but Angie, his mother, and his brother Jamie. No other friends or family. And I somehow have the impression that he hasn’t seen much of his mother recently. Did you ever hear him say anything about any other family?”

“No,” Nick replied. They had wandered together into the game room and Nick was idly turning knobs and switches as he walked past the arrays of equipment. He stopped and thought for a moment. “So that means Angie is the one. We’ll tell her right away and then wait—”

Carol and Nick both froze as they distinctly heard the front door open and close. After about a second, Nick called out in a loud but uncertain voice, “Hello, whoever it is, we’re back here in the bedroom.” There was no answer. They could hear soft footsteps in the hallway. Nick instinctively moved over to protect Carol. A moment later Troy came around the corner and into the room.

“Well, well,” he said, grinning broadly, “as I live and breathe. I have found a pair of burglars in my home.”

Carol ran up to Troy and threw her arms around his neck. “Troy,” she said, her comments coming in quick staccato bursts, “is it ever good to see you. Where have you been? You scared the shit out of us. We thought you were dead.”

Troy returned Carol’s hug and winked at Nick. “My, my. Such a reception. I should have vanished before.” He extended a hand to shake the one that Nick was offering him. For a moment his face became serious. “On second thought, one experience like that is definitely enough.”

Carol backed away and Troy saw the computer sheet in her hand. “We were going to try to notify your family…” she started. Troy reached out to take the page and Carol noticed a bracelet on Troy’s right wrist that she had never seen before. It was wide, almost an inch and a half, and looked as if its twenty or so links had been made from flattened gold nuggets. “Where did you get this?” Carol asked, holding his wrist up so that she could see the bracelet more clearly.

Nick was unable to restrain himself any longer. Before Troy could answer Carol’s question, he jumped into the conversation. “According to Carol,” he said, “you were last seen disappearing down a corridor in an underwater laboratory. With a six-foot amoeba in hot pursuit. How the hell did you escape? We searched all over the area…”

Troy held up his hands. He was enjoying being the center of attention. “Friends, friends. Wait a minute, will you? I will tell you the story as soon as I take care of the necessities of life.” He turned and walked into the bathroom. Nick and Carol heard a familiar sound. “Get some beer out of the refrigerator and go into the living room,” Troy shouted from behind the closed door. “We might as well enjoy this part of it.”

Two minutes later Nick and Carol were sitting together on the large couch in the living room. Troy plopped into the chair opposite them just as Nick took a huge swig from his beer. “Once upon a time,” Troy began with a mischievous grin, “there was a young black named Troy Jefferson, who, while diving with his friends, vanished for almost two hours in a strange building underneath the ocean. When he emerged from his underwater adventure, he was rescued by divers from the United States Navy, who just happened to be in the area at the time. Soon thereafter young Troy was flown in a military helicopter back to Key West. There he was interrogated at length about why he was swimming in the Gulf of Mexico, all by himself, ten miles from the nearest island. An hour later he was released without anyone believing any part of his story.” Troy looked back and forth from Nick to Carol. “Of course,” he added, now more serious, “I didn’t tell them anything that really happened. There’s no way they would have believed the truth.”

Carol was leaning forward on the couch. “So the Navy picked you up. Just after we left.” She turned to Nick. “They must have been following us for some reason.” The missile must have been there after all, she thought to herself. But where did it go? Did the Navy find it? And how are they involved with this crazy laboratory? Nothing makes sense…

“We spent over an hour looking for you.” Nick was saying. He was feeling remorseful because they had abandoned the search for Troy so quickly. “It didn’t occur to me that you might still be down in that place, whatever it was, and of course we couldn’t hang around forever. All of our electronics were zapped by this funny carpet thing that came out of the sea. So we lost all nav—” He stopped in mid-sentence and looked at Troy. “I’m sorry, friend.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Troy replied with a shrug, “I would have done the same thing. At least I now know that you have met one of the bizarre characters in my story. You didn’t, by any chance, also meet one of the wardens did you? Great big globs of clear jelly, amoebalike, with little boxes in the middle and removable rods hanging out all over the top?”

Nick shook his head. “Warden?” Carol asked quickly, her brow knitted. “Why do you call that thing a warden?”

Warden, sentinel, whatever,” Troy answered. “They told me the warden things protect the principal cargo of the ship.” Troy stared into the blank gazes of his friends. “Which leads me back to the first question,” he continued. “They gave me this bracelet. It is some kind of two-way communications device. I couldn’t begin to explain how it works, but I know that they are listening and watching as well as transmitting messages to me. Only a few of which I understand.”

Carol was starting to feel overwhelmed again. In her mind this already complex situation had added a new dimension. Hundreds of questions were crowding into her brain and she could not decide which one to ask first.

Meanwhile Nick stood up. “Hold it a minute,” he said, looking dubious and just a little confused. “Did I hear you right? Did you say you were given a communications bracelet by some extraterrestrials and then released into the ocean? And then the Navy picked you up and brought you back to Key West? Christ, Jefferson, you do have an imagination. Save your creativity for that computer game. Please just tell us the truth.”

“I am,” replied Troy. “Really—”

“What did they look like?” Carol interrupted, her journalistic training taking over. She had pulled a small tape recorder, the size of a fountain pen, out of her purse. Troy reached over and switched it off.” For now, angel,” he said, “this is strictly between us… I don’t think I saw any of them anyway. Just the wardens and the carpets. And my guess is that they’re just robots, machines of some type. Intelligent, yes, but controlled by something else—”

“Jesus,” Nick interrupted, “you’re serious.” He was becoming exasperated. “This is turning into the most amazing shaggy dog story that I have ever heard. Wardens, carpets, robots. I am lost. Who are they? What are they doing in the ocean? And why have they given you a bracelet?” He picked up one of the little pillows on the couch and threw it across the room.

Carol laughed nervously. “Nick’s not the only one feeling frustrated, Troy. I was with you down there and I must admit that I’m having a hard time tracking your story. Maybe we should stop interrupting and let you talk. I’ve told Nick what happened in that solar system room up until you ran out and the thing or warden followed. Start from there, if you would, and tell the story in logical sequence.”

“I’m not sure there is such a thing as a logical sequence, angel,” Troy replied, echoing Carol’s laugh. “The whole episode defies logic altogether. The warden thing eventually trapped me in a blind alley and sort of anesthetized me with one of its rods. It was like I was dreaming, but the dreams were real. I remember a similar feeling, after a fistfight when I was a teenager. I had a small concussion then. I knew that I was alive, but I was very very slow to react. Reality seemed toned down, out there in the distance somewhere.

“Anyway, another warden character showed up, same kind of body but different fixtures sticking in the jelly, and carried me to what I think was an examination room. I don’t know exactly how long I was there. I was stretched out on the floor and touched by all kinds of instruments. My brain felt as if it were in superfast motion, but I don’t recall any specific thoughts. Some images I do remember. I relived my brother, Jamie, breaking through the line on a trap play and going forty-five yards for a touchdown in the Florida state championship. Then the bracelet was put on my wrist and I had the distinct impression that someone was talking to me. Very quietly, perhaps even in a foreign language, but every now and then I understood what was being said.

“What they told me,” Troy continued with an intense and distant expression on his face, “was that what we call the laboratory is really a space vehicle from another world. And that it has crash-landed, in a sense, on the Earth to allow time for some difficult repairs. They, that is, whoever built the ship, need help from us, from me and you, to obtain some of the specific items necessary for the repairs. Then they can continue on their journey.”

Nick was now sitting on the floor just opposite Troy. Both Carol and he were hanging on every word. They sat in silence for almost thirty seconds after Troy had finished. “If this story is true,” Nick finally spoke, “then we are—”

There was a loud knock at the door. All three of them jumped. Several seconds later the knock repeated. Troy went to the door and partially opened it.

“There you are, you little shit,” Carol and Nick heard a gruff, angry voice say. Captain Homer Ashford pushed through the door. He didn’t see Nick and Carol at first. “We had a deal and you’ve welshed on it. You have been back two hours already…”

Out of the corner of his eye, Captain Homer saw that there were other people in the room. He turned around to talk to Greta, who had not yet entered the house. “Guess what?” he said. “Nick Williams and Miss Dawson are also here. No wonder we couldn’t find her at the hotel.”

Greta followed Homer into the living room. Her clear, expressionless eyes spent no more than one second staring at each of the trio. Carol thought she saw just a trace of disdain in Greta’s look, but she wasn’t certain. Homer turned to Carol, the tone in his voice markedly more civil. “We saw you two return from your excursion around two o’clock,” he said with a fake smile. “But somehow we missed Troy.” He winked at Carol and turned to Nick. “Find any more exciting trinkets today, Williams?”

Nick had never made any attempt to hide the fact that he did not like Captain Homer. “Why of course, Captain,” he answered, sneering the epithet, “would you believe we found a veritable mountain of gold and silver bars? Looked like that Santa Rosa stack we had on the boat one afternoon, must be about eight years ago. Remember? That was before Jake and I let you and Greta unload it.”

Homer’s voice had a nasty edge to it. “I should have sued you for slander, Williams. That would have shut your loud mouth once and for all. You had your day in court. Now knock off the crap, or one day you’ll have more trouble than you can handle.”

While Nick and Homer were trading insults and threats, Greta was strutting around the living room as if she were in her own house. She seemed to be oblivious to the conversation and even to the presence of the other people in the room. She was wearing a tight white muscle shirt and a pair of navy blue shorts. When Greta walked, she carried her arms high, her back straight, and her breasts erect. Carol was intrigued by her behavior. She watched Greta stop and sort through Troy’s compact discs. Greta pulled out the disc with the cover picture of Angie Leatherwood and licked her lips. This pair belongs in a kinky novel, Carol thought, as she overheard Troy tell Captain Homer that he was busy this afternoon but would get back to him later. What’s their story? wondered Carol. And where does fat Ellen fit in? Carol remembered that she was scheduled to interview the three of them later in the evening. But I’m not sure that I really want to find out.

“We were calling to tell you to bring your swimming suit tonight,” Captain Homer was addressing Carol. She had missed the first part of his statement while she was watching Greta parade around the room.

“Pardon me,” she said politely. “Could you repeat what you just said? I’m afraid I had drifted away for a few seconds.”

“I said that you should come early, about eight o’clock.” Homer replied. “And bring your suit. We have a most interesting and unusual pool.”

During this exchange, Greta walked up behind Nick and quickly reached both arms around him. With everyone else in the room watching, she lightly twisted his nipples through his polo shirt and laughed when he jumped. “You always did like that, ya, Nikki,” she said, releasing him after an instant. Carol saw anger flash in Homer’s eyes. Nick started to say something but Greta had already walked out the front door before he could register a protest.

“Be sure to call me when you’re through here, Homer said to Troy after an embarrassing silence. “We need to straighten out a few things.” The older man turned around, awkwardly, and without additional comment followed Greta toward his Mercedes parked in front of Troy’s house.

“Now where were we?” said Troy abstractedly, as he closed the door behind Homer and Greta.

“You,” said Nick with emphasis, “were telling us an amazing story and had almost reached the punch line, where you were going to tell us what we could do to help some aliens who landed here on Earth to repair their space vehicle. But first I, for one, would like some explanations. I don’t know if I believe any of this wild fairy tale you’re telling us, but I will admit that it is extremely creative. What concerns me at this minute, however, is not the issue of creatures from another world. It’s those two real-life sleazebag human beings who just left. What did they want? And are they somehow involved in our current adventure?”

“Just a minute, Nick,” Carol intervened. “Before we become sidetracked, I would like to know what kind of help these ETs of Troy’s want from us. A telephone? A new spaceship? Let’s find this out now and talk about Homer and your girlfriend Greta later.” Her reference to Greta was light and playful. Nick accepted it with good humor and feigned a wound. Then he nodded his assent to Carol’s suggestion. Troy pulled a sheet of paper from his pocket and took a deep breath.

“Now you guys must understand that I’m not yet absolutely certain that I am properly receiving all their messages. But this particular transmission, where they list the things they need from us, is repeated every half hour. My interpretation of it hasn’t changed for the last ninety minutes, so I’m fairly certain that I have it right. It’s a long list and of course I don’t pretend to comprehend why they want all this stuff. But I am certain you will both find it very interesting.”

Troy started reading from his handwritten list. “They want an English dictionary and grammar, plus the same thing for four other major languages; an encyclopedia of plant and animal life; a compact world history; a statistical tract defining the current political and economic status of the world; a comparative study of the world’s major existing religions; complete issues covering the last two years of at least three significant daily newspapers; summary journals of science and technology, including surveys of weapon systems both deployed and under development; an encyclopedia of the arts, preferably including video and sound where appropriate; forty-seven pounds of lead; and fifty-eight pounds of gold.”

Nick whistled when Troy was finished. At Carol’s request, Troy handed the sheet to her and Nick read it another time over her shoulder, absorbing every item. Neither of them said anything. “Believe it or not,” Troy added as an afterthought about a minute later, “the first eight items are not too difficult to obtain. I stopped by the Key West Public Library on the way home from the marina and, for a fee, they are preparing for me a set of compact discs that contain virtually all of the requested information. The difficult items are at the end of the list. That’s where your help is needed.”

Troy stopped for a second to see if Nick and Carol were following him. “Just to make certain I understand.” Nick was now walking slowly around the room with the list in his hand, “what you want, or they want if you will, is for us to return to their laboratory or vehicle or whatever it is with all this information plus the lead and gold?” Troy nodded. “But fifty-eight pounds of gold? That’s about a million dollars’ worth. Where would we get it? And what would they do with it anyway?”

Troy acknowledged that he didn’t know the answers to those questions. “But I have the feeling,” he added, “again based upon what I think they are telling me, that partially satisfying their needs will make their task that much easier. So I guess we do what we can and hope that it’s enough.”

Nick shook his head back and forth. “You know, Carol,” he said as he handed the list back to her, “never in my wildest flights of imagination could I have concocted such an intricate and crazy scheme. This entire thing is so unbelievable and fantastic that it just begs to be accepted. It’s pure genius.”

Troy smiled. “So you will help after all?” he asked.

“I didn’t say that,” answered Nick. “I still have lots of questions. And of course I can’t speak for Miss Dawson. But somehow, even if it’s all make believe, the idea of playing the good Samaritan for an extraterrestrial ship is very appealing.”

During the next half hour both Carol and Nick questioned Troy extensively. Troy dismissed Homer and Greta in a hurry, simply stating that he had agreed on Thursday night to keep them informed about what was happening onboard the Florida Queen in exchange for a short-term loan. He also indicated that he never intended to really give them any information, but that was all right because they were crooks anyway. Nick was not completely satisfied with Troy’s explanation. He felt that he was not being told the whole truth.

In fact, the more questions he asked, the more doubt there was in Nick’s mind about the entire story Troy was telling. But what are the other options? Nick thought to himself. I have seen that carpet with my own eyes. If it is not an ET, or at least made by one, then it must be a very advanced robot designed by us or the Russians. As he continued to question Troy, Nick’s facile mind began to construct an alternative scenario, admittedly wild and improbable, but one that nevertheless explained all the events of the previous three days in a way that Nick found just as reasonable as Troy’s crazy story about the alien space vehicle.

Suppose somehow Troy and that turd Homer are working with the Russians. And this entire thing is just an elaborate cover for a rendezvous where illegal information will be passed. Homer would do anything for money. But why would Troy do it? Having Troy participate in a scheme to sell U.S. secrets to a foreign country was the acknowledged weakness in Nick’s alternative explanation, but he rationalized it by convincing himself that perhaps Troy needed a lot of extra money to pay for all the electronic equipment in his computer game.

He certainly couldn’t have saved enough money from his paltry salary, Nick continued thinking. So suppose these computer discs of Troy’s have secret military data instead of all that crazy information he just listed. Then the gold could this payoff. Or someone else’s. Nick asked several more questions about the gold. Troy admitted he did not understand very well what they were telling him, through the bracelet, about why they needed the lead and the gold. He just mumbled something about those two elements being difficult to produce by transmutation and then added nothing else.

For her part, Carol grew more and more convinced that the story Troy was telling was true. His inability to answer all the questions did not disturb her; as a matter of fact, given the rather fantastic nature of his story, if he had had pat answers to all the questions, she would have felt less assured of its truth. Despite her critical journalistic background, she found herself intrigued and a little enchanted by the idea that some superaliens from another world needed her help.

Carol’s intuition was just as important as her rational thought processes in the formation of her opinion. First of all, she trusted Troy. She watched him very carefully when he answered the questions and did not see the slightest indication that he was lying. She had no doubt that Troy believed he was telling the truth. But whether Troy was indeed telling the truth, or was instead being manipulated and directed by the very ETs that he was purporting to represent, was another issue altogether. But for what purpose? she reasoned. There’s not much that the three of us can do for them. Even the information they requested, except for the weapons stuff, is relatively innocuous. She temporarily set aside the notion that her friend Troy had become some kind of pawn for the aliens.

Carol could tell that Nick was growing more suspicious. Nick thought it was very peculiar that there were three Navy divers in the water at the exactly correct location when one of the carpets ushered Troy to the surface. And Troy’s report of the interrogation process after they had flown him to Key West was so confused that Nick became exasperated again.

“Christ, Jefferson,” he said, “you either have a very short or a very convenient memory. You tell us that the Navy kept you in custody for almost an hour, yet you hardly remember any of their questions and have no idea why they were interrogating you. That just doesn’t sound right to me.”

Troy was becoming a little angry. “Shit, Nick, I told you that I was tired. I had been through a traumatic experience. Their questions didn’t make sense to me. And the entire time I felt as if a little voice was trying to make itself heard inside my head.”

Nick turned to Carol. “I think I’m changing my mind. I don’t want to play in this game, no matter how clever it is. Homer and Greta annoy me, but I can deal with them if it’s necessary. On the other hand, the Navy scares me. There was some reason they were following us. It’s just too damn unlikely to be a coincidence. Maybe Troy knows something about it and maybe he doesn’t. I can’t tell. But I don’t like the smell of it.”

He stood up to leave. Carol motioned for Nick to sit down and took a deep breath. “Look, you two,” she said in a low voice. “I have a confession to make. And it seems as if this is the perfect time to make it I did not come down here to Key West to look for whales.” She glanced at Nick. “And not for treasure either. I came here to check out a rumor that a new Navy missile had gone astray and crashed in the Gulf of Mexico.” She paused several seconds to let her message register. “I probably should have told you earlier. But I never found the right time. I’m truly sorry.”

“And you thought the missile was in the fissure,” said Troy a few seconds later. “Which was why you came back yesterday.”

“We were going to salvage it for you and give you a worldwide scoop,” added Nick, his feeling of betrayal softened somewhat by the obvious sincerity of her apology. “You were using us all the time.”

“You could call it that,” Carol conceded, “but as a reporter, I don’t see it that way.” She noticed the tension in the room. Nick seemed especially guarded. “But now it doesn’t matter anyway,” she continued. “What is important is that I have given an explanation for the Navy’s presence at the dive site. During the last two days I have made several inquiries at all levels about the clandestine activities that the Navy currently has underway to search for the missile. Last night that Mexican lieutenant got a good look at our best close-ups of the missile in the fissure. Undoubtedly someone put two and two together.”

“Look, angel,” Troy spoke after another short silence, “I don’t know anything about a missile. And too much is going on for me to be hurt because you lied to me. I’m sure you had your reasons. What I need to know now is whether or not you will help me take this stuff back to the ETs or aliens or whatever you want to call them.”

Before Carol could answer, Nick stood up again and started walking toward the door. “I’m very hungry,” he announced, “and I want to think through this entire situation. If you don’t mind, Troy, I’ll have an early supper and meet you later on tonight with my answer.”

Carol realized that she also was extremely hungry. It had been a long, exhausting day and she had not eaten anything significant since breakfast. She was also a little concerned about Nick’s response to her confession. “Why don’t I join you for a bite?” she said to Nick. He gave a noncommittal shrug, as if to say suit yourself. Carol gave Troy a hug. “Let’s all meet at my room in the Marriott around seven-thirty. I have to go there anyway to dress for my interview with the triple creeps. You guys can give me some pointers.”

Her humor did not lighten the atmosphere in the room. Troy was clearly worried about something. His face was very earnest, almost stern. “Professor,” he said to Nick in a soft and deliberate monotone, “I know I didn’t have all the answers to your questions. I don’t even have the answers to my own. But I do know one thing for certain. Nothing like this has ever happened on the Earth before. At least not in recorded history. The creatures who built that spaceship are, when compared to us, as we would appear to the ants or the bees if they could comprehend us. They have asked the three of us for help in repairing their vehicle. To say that this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity would be a colossal under-statement.

“It would be great if we could sit around and debate this issue for weeks or even months. But we can’t. Time is running out. The Navy is certain to find them soon, maybe they have already, with possibly dire circumstances for the human beings on this planet. They have made it clear to me that their mission must be fulfilled, that they must repair their vehicle and continue their voyage, even if they must interfere with the Earth system to achieve their goal.

“I know all this sounds incredible, maybe even absurd. But I am going to collect some lead weights from my diver friends and pick up the compact discs at the library. With or without your help, I want to be over their spaceship at dawn tomorrow.”

Nick studied Troy very carefully during this speech. For an instant in the middle, it seemed as if it were not Troy speaking at all, but someone or something else speaking through him. An eerie chill raced down Nick’s spine. Shit, he thought. I’m as bad as they are. I’m now caught up in this thing too. He gestured to Carol to follow him and walked out the door.

7

As I have told you twice before?” the voice sounded tired and bored, “I was out diving with my friends, Nick Williams and Carol Dawson. She had a problem with her equipment and decided to make a quick return to the boat. We had found a particularly interesting reef, with some very unusual features, and we weren’t certain we would be able to locate it again. So I decided to stay and wait for her to come back. When I finally surfaced half an hour later, there was no sign of them or the boat.”

The recorder clicked off. The two lieutenants stared at each other. “Shit, Ramirez, do you believe that bastard’s story? Any part of it?” The other man shook his head. “Then why the hell did you let him go? That black shitass sat there for an hour, making fools out of us with ridiculous answers to our questions. and then you summarily released him.”

“We can’t detain someone without positive evidence of wrong doing,” responded Ramirez, as if he were quoting from a military manual. “And swimming in the ocean ten miles from the nearest island, although strange, does not constitute wrong doing.” Ramirez could see that his colleague was scowling. “Besides, he never slipped up. He always told exactly the same story.”

“The same bullshit, you mean.” Lieutenant Richard Todd leaned back in his chair. The two men were sitting around a small conference table in an old room with white plaster walls. The tape recorder was on the table in front of them next to an empty ashtray. “He didn’t even believe his own story. He just sat there, that cocky grin on his black face, knowing that we couldn’t charge him with anything.” Todd put all four of his chair legs back on the floor and pounded the table for emphasis. “An experienced diver would never stay down by himself for five minutes, much less thirty. Too many things could go wrong. As for his friends, why the hell did they leave him?” Now Todd stood up and made gestures in the air with his hands. “I’ll tell you why, Lieutenant. Because they knew he was all right, that he had been picked up by a Russian submarine. Shit, I told you we should have taken one of the new vessels. We probably could have spotted the sub with the upgraded electronic gear.”

Ramirez was playing idly with the glass ashtray while Todd was giving his lecture. “You really believe that those three are involved with the Russians in this, don’t you? It sure seems farfetched to me.”

“Fucking A,” replied Todd, “nothing else makes even a tittle sense. Every engineer we have talked to says there are no conceivable failures that are consistent both with the observed behavior of the missile and the telemetry we received at our tracking stations. So the Russians must have commanded it off course.”

Todd grew excited as he explained the rest of the plot. “The Russians knew they would need some local help to find the exact location of the missile in the ocean, so they hired Williams and crew to search for the bird and then tell them where it was. They planned to pick it up with one of their subs. Adding that Dawson woman to their team was a master stroke; her inquiries have slowed down our own search by making us more concerned about the press.”

Lieutenant Ramirez laughed. ‘You always sound convincing, Richard. But we still do not have even one shred of evidence. I don’t believe Troy Jefferson’s story any more than you do, but there could be many reasons why he lied, only one of which is any of our business. Besides, there still is a fundamental problem with your explanation. Why would the Russians go to all this trouble just to seize a Panther missile?”

“You and I and even Commander Winters may not know the true story of the Panther missile,” Todd countered quickly. “It may be designed to carry some new breakthrough weapon that we haven’t even heard about. It’s not all that unusual for the Navy to represent a project falsely and to keep its true purpose hidden.” He stopped to think. “But what’s motivating the Russians is not that important to us. We have evidence of a conspiracy here. Our job is to stop it.”

Ramirez did not reply right away. He continued to push the ashtray around on the table. “I guess I no longer view it that way,” he said at length, gazing directly at Todd. I see no substantial evidence of any conspiracy. Unless Commander Winters himself orders additional work from my department, I am abandoning my investigation.” He looked at his watch. “At least I can still spend Saturday night and Sunday with my family.” He rose to leave.

“And what if I bring you proof?” Todd asked, making no effort to hide his disgust with Ramirez.

“Proof will convince Winters as well,” Ramirez answered coldly. “I have taken enough risk on this project. I will not take any more action unless instructed by the proper authority.”

Winters wasn’t really certain he would find something appropriate. Ordinarily, he carefully avoided shopping malls, especially on a Saturday afternoon. But while he had been lying on the couch, watching one of the NCAA basketball games and sipping a beer, he had remembered how pleased he had been when Helen Turnbull, who had played Maggie, had given him a set of unusual tile coasters after the opening weekend of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. “It’s a fading tradition in the theater, I fear,” the experienced actress had said when he thanked her, “but giving small presents after the opening night or nights is still my way of congratulating those people I have enjoyed working with.”

The mall was crowded with Saturday shoppers and Commander Winters felt oddly conspicuous, as if everyone were looking at him. He walked around for several minutes before he even thought about what kind of gift he might get for her. Something simple of course, he thought. Nothing that could be misinterpreted. Just a nice memento or souvenir. He saw Tiffani in his mind’s eye as she had appeared in his fantasy just before he had fallen asleep the night before. The image embarrassed him in the shopping crowd and he nervously called up another picture, this one wholesome and acceptable, of the little girl Tiffani during his conversation with her father. Her hair, he thought, remembering the pigtails. I’ll buy her something for her hair.

He walked into a gift shop and tried to make some sense out of the jumble of bric-a-brac that lined the walls and was assembled on top of an assortment of tables in no identifiable pattern. “Can I help you?” Winters jumped when a salesgirl approached him from behind. He shook his head. Now why did you do that? he said to himself. Of course you need help. Otherwise you’ll never find anything.

“Excuse me, young lady,” he almost shouted at the retreating salesgirl, “I guess I could use some advice. I want to buy a present.” Winters again felt as if everyone were watching him. “For my niece,” he added quickly.

The salesgirl was a brunette, about twenty, very plain, but with an eager face. “Did you have anything in mind?” she asked. Her hair was long, like Tiffani’s. Winters relaxed a little.

“Sort of,” he said. “She has beautiful long hair. Like yours. What could I get her that would be really special? It’s her birthday.” Again he felt a strange anxiety that he did not understand.

“What color?” the girl asked.

The question didn’t make sense. “I don’t even know yet what I want,” he replied with a puzzled expression, “so I certainly don’t know the color.”

The salesgirl smiled. “What color is your niece’s hair?” she said very slowly, almost as if she were speaking to a mental retard.

“Oh, of course,” Winters laughed. “Reddish-brown, auburn,” he said. “And it’s very long.” You said that already, a voice whispered inside of him. You are acting like a fool.

The salesgirl motioned for him to follow her and they walked back to the rear of the store. She pointed at a small round glass case full of combs of all shapes and sizes. “These would make excellent gifts for your niece,” she said. There was an inflection in her voice when she said the word “niece” that bothered Winters. Could she know something? One of her friends? Or maybe she was at the play? He took a breath and calmed himself. Again Winters was astounded by the volatility of his emotions.

On one of the small shelves were two beautiful matching brown combs with gold filigree across the top. One of the combs was large enough to hold all that magnificent hair in a chignon against her neck. The other smaller comb was a perfect size to adorn the side or back of her hairstyle. “I’ll take those,” he said to the girl, “the ones with the gold work along the top. And please giftwrap them for me.”

The efficient salesgirl reached inside the display case and pulled out the combs. She told Winters to wait a couple of minutes while she wrapped the present. She disappeared into the back of the store and winters was left alone. I’ll leave them on her dressing table at the end of intermission, he was thinking. He conjured up a picture of Tiffani going into the dressing room, by herself, and finding the present under her nameplate against the mirror. Winters smiled as he imagined her reaction. At that moment a woman with her eight- or nine-year-old daughter brushed by him in the store. “Pardon me,” the woman said, without looking around, as she and the little girl rushed to finger some Easter baskets hanging on the wall.

The salesgirl had finished wrapping the present and was standing next to the computer cash register. When Winters reached the counter, she handed him a small card that had “Happy Birthday” imprinted on the upper left corner. Winters stared at it for a few seconds. “No,” he said finally. “No card. I’ll buy another at the stationery store.”

“Cash or charge?” the girl asked him.

Winters panicked for a moment. I don’t know if I have enough cash on me, he thought. And how would I ever explain the charge to Betty? He opened his wallet and counted his money. He smiled at the girl and said “Cash, please” when he realized that he had almost fifty dollars. The bill was only thirty-two dollars, including the tax.

Commander Winters felt a rush of Joy as he nearly skipped out of the store. His earlier nervousness had completely disappeared. He even began to whistle just before he pushed open the door and left the enclosed air-conditioned environment of the mall. I hope she likes the combs, he said to himself. Then he smiled again. I know she will.

8

NICK poured the last of the bottle of Chablis into Carol’s glass. “I don’t think I could ever be a journalist,” he said. “To be successful it sounds to me as if you have to be a sneak.”

Carol moved a piece of broiled catfish mixed with some cauliflower onto her fork and put the bite in her mouth. “It’s not that much different from any other job. There are always questions of ethics, as well as places where your personal and professional lives come into conflict.” She finished chewing her food and swallowed before she continued. “I had thought that maybe I would tell you and Troy on Friday evening. But things just didn’t work out, as you know.”

“If you had,” Nick pushed his plate away to indicate that he was finished with his meal, “then everything would have been different. I would have been aware of the possible danger and most likely it would have been you and I in that place together. Who knows what might have happened then.”

“I’ve had worse conflicts before.” Carol took a drink from her glass of wine. She wanted to finish with this subject. In her way. “Right after I graduated from Stanford, I worked for the San Francisco Chronicle. I was dating Lucas Tipton a little at the time that the Warrior drug scandal broke. I used the social contacts I had made through him to obtain a unique slant on the story. Lucas never forgave me. So I’m used to problems. They go with the territory.”

A waiter came by and poured them some coffee. “But now that I have finished apologizing, for the third time,” Carol said pointedly, “I hope we can go back to more important matters. I must tell you, Nick, that I find your Russian plot idea absolutely off the wall. The weakest element is Troy. There’s simply no way he could be a spy. It’s preposterous.”

“More preposterous than a super-alien space vehicle in need of repairs at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico?” Nick countered stubbornly. “Besides, I have a definite motive. Money. Did you see all the equipment he has wrapped up in that computer game?”

“Angie probably makes enough off her royalties in one week to cover all that computer stuff,” Carol replied. She reached across the table and put her hand on Nick’s forearm. “Now don’t overreact, but you know there are some relationships where the woman carries the financial load. I can tell that she loves him. There’s no doubt in my mind that she would offer to help him.”

“Then why did he try to borrow money from me and then Captain Homer on Thursday night?”

“Hell, Nick, I don’t know.” Carol was becoming slightly frustrated. “But it’s irrelevant anyway. I can’t imagine any set of conditions, unless I was convinced that I was going to be killed, that would prevent my going back out there with Troy. Whatever the truth is, it is certainly a sensational story. I’m surprised you are so hesitant. I thought you were an adventurer.”

Carol stared directly across the table at Nick. He thought he saw a flicker of flirtation hiding behind her unwavering gaze. You are one fascinating woman, he thought. And you’re taunting me a little now. I caught your double meaning. He remembered how good he had felt when he held her on the boat in the afternoon. Underneath that aggressive veneer is another person. Beautiful and intelligent. Hard as nails one minute and a vulnerable little girl the next. Nick was certain that any hope he might have of continuing his relationship with Carol was dependant on his helping Troy. She wasn’t interested in men who were not willing to take chances.

“I used to be,” Nick finally replied. He twirled his empty wine glass in his hand. “I don’t know what happened. I guess I got stung a couple of times and that has made me more cautious. Particularly where people are concerned. But I will admit that if I stand back from this situation and imagine myself as simply an observer, I find the whole affair absolutely fascinating.”

Carol finished her wine and put the glass back on the table. Nick was quiet. She drummed her fingers on the tabletop and smiled. “Well,” she said, fixing him with her eyes and picking up her coffee cup, “have you made a decision?”

He laughed. “Okay. Okay. I’ll do it.” Now it was his turn to reach out and touch her arm. “For lots of reasons.”

“Good,” she remarked. “Now that something has been decided, why don’t you help me prepare for my interview with Captain Homer and the crew. How much was the stuff worth that you pulled up from the Santa Rosa? And who was Jake? I must act as if I’m serious about this story.” Carol put her fountain pen tape recorder on the table and turned it on.

“We officially cleared a little over two million dollars. Jake Lewis and I each received ten percent, Amanda Winchester was reimbursed for the expense advance plus twenty-five percent of the profit. Homer, Ellen and Greta kept the rest.” Nick stopped but Carol indicated for him to continue. “Jake Lewis was the only close friend I have ever had as an adult. He was an absolute peach of a person, honest, hard-working, intelligent, and loyal. And completely naive. He fell for Greta like a ton of bricks. She manipulated him completely and then used his love to her own advantage.”

Nick looked away, out the window of the small seafood restaurant, at some seagulls who were soaring over the water in the fading twilight. “The night we came back with the big haul, Jake and I agreed that one of the two of us would always be awake. Even then there was something peculiar in the Homer-Ellen-Greta triangle. At that time they were not yet all living together, but I still didn’t trust them. While Jake was supposedly on watch, Greta balled his brains out. ‘To celebrate,’ he said, when he apologized to me for falling asleep afterwards. When I woke up, more than half of the treasure was gone.”

Anger long buried was seething in Nick. Carol watched him carefully, noting the intensity of his passion. “Jake didn’t give a shit about the money. He even tried to talk Amanda and me out of going to court. That’s the kind of guy he was. I remember he told me, ‘Hey, Nick, my friend, we made two hundred thousand apiece out of this. We cannot prove there was more. Let’s just be thankful and get on with our lives.’ Homer had cheated him and Greta had shit all over him, but Jake still wasn’t pissed. Not much more than a year later, he married a water ski queen from Winter Haven, bought a house in Orlando, and went to work as an aerospace engineer.”

The light was vanishing outside. Nick was deep in a memory, recalling the full measure of his storm of righteous indignation from eight years before. “I’ve never understood them,” Carol said quietly. She switched off the recorder. Nick turned and looked at her, a quizzical frown on his face. “You know,” she added, “the people like your friend Jake. Infinite resiliency. No harbored grudges. Whatever happens to them they just shake off, like water, and go on living. Cheerfully.” It was her turn to feel a little emotion. “Sometimes I wish I could be more like that. Then I wouldn’t be afraid.”

They stared at each other in the soft light. Nick put his hand over hers. And there’s that vulnerable little girl again. He felt a deep emotional longing stirring in his heart. She’s let me see it twice in a single day. “Carol,” he said gently, “I want to thank you for this afternoon. You know, for sharing your feelings with me. I feel like I saw an entirely different Carol Dawson.”

“You did,” she said, smiling and making it clear that her protective shield was going up again. “And only time will tell if it was a huge mistake.” She pulled her hand slowly away from his “For the moment, though, we have other business. Back to the menage a trois. What kind of facility is it that they manage and what do they do there?”

“Excuse me?” replied Nick, obviously confused.

“A friend of mine, Dr. Dale Michaels of the Miami Oceanographic Institute, told me that Captain Homer and Ellen have some kind of high-tech operation here. I don’t remember exactly how he described it—”

“You must be mistaken,” Nick interrupted. “I have known them for almost ten years and they are never anywhere except in that fancy house of his or onboard the Ambrosia.”

Carol was puzzled. “Dale’s information is always correct. He just told me, yesterday in fact, that Homer Ashford had field tested the institute’s most advanced underwater sentries throughout the last five years and that his reports—”

“Hold it. Hold it.” Nick was leaning forward on the table. “I’m not sure I’m following you. Back up. This could be very very important.”

Carol started again. “One of MOI’s newest product areas is underwater sentries, robots, essentially, that protect aquaculture farms from sophisticated thieves as well as large fish or whales. Dale said that Homer contributes money for the research and then field tests the prototypes—”

“Son of a bitch.” Nick was standing up. He was bursting with excitement. “How could I have been so stupid? Of course, of course.”

Now Carol was lost. “Would you mind telling me what’s going on?”

“Certainly,” Nick answered. “But right now we’re in a hurry. We have to go by my apartment to look at an old map and pick up another navigation system for the boat. I’ll explain everything on the way.”

Nick put his key card in the reader and the garage door opened. He pulled his Pontiac into his reserved spot and stopped the car. “So you see,” he was saying to Carol, “he knew that we wouldn’t find anything. He let us search both his house and the lot that he had bought for his new mansion, down at Pelican Point. We found nothing. At that time it was still hidden somewhere out in the ocean.”

“Did you look in the water around his new property at that time?”

“Yes, we did. Jake and I each dove there, on separate days. We found a very interesting subterranean cave, but no sign of any of the Santa Rosa treasure. But we must have given him the idea. I bet he moved the stuff there a year or two after Jake left. He probably figured it was safe by then. And he had doubtless worried himself sick that someone would discover the treasure out in the ocean. You see, it all fits. Including his involvement with underwater sentries.”

Carol nodded and laughed a little. “It certainly makes better sense than your idea that Troy was working for the Russians.” They opened the doors and climbed out of the car. “So how much do you think they have left?” Carol asked as they headed for the elevator.

“Who knows?” Nick answered. “Maybe they stole three million out of five.” He thought for a minute. “They must still have a bunch. Otherwise Greta would have split by now.”

The elevator doors opened and Nick pressed the button for the third floor. Carol heaved a big sigh. “What’s the matter?” he asked.

“I’m exhausted,” she said. “I feel as if I’m on a carousel that’s spinning faster and faster. So much has happened in the last three days. I’m not sure I could deal with much more. What I need now is a second wind.”

“Magic days,” Nick replied as they walked out of the elevator. “These are magic days.”

She looked at him with a curious expression. He laughed. “I’ll explain an old theory of mine later,” he said. He entered a sequence of numbers into the small plate on his door and the lock disengaged. Nick moved to the side with feigned gallantry and let Carol enter first. What she saw was chaos.

The place was a total shambles. In the living room, just beyond the kitchen area, all of Nick’s precious novels had been scattered randomly about on the floor, the couch, and the chairs. It looked as if someone had taken each book out of the bookcase, held it up and shook it (trying to find loose papers perhaps), and then either dropped it or thrown it across the room. Nick pushed by Carol and stared at the destruction. “Shit,” he said.

The kitchen had been plundered as well. All the drawers were open. Pots, pans, and tableware were strewn on the counters and on the floor. To Nick’s right, the cardboard boxes containing his memorabilia had been pulled into the middle of the second bedroom. Their contents had been partially dumped onto the floor around them.

“What hurricane hit this place?” Carol asked as she surveyed the mess. “I didn’t expect you to be a good house-keeper, but this is ridiculous.”

Nick was unable to laugh at Carol’s comment. He checked the master bedroom and found that it also had been ransacked. He then returned to the living room and started picking up his beloved novels and stacking them neatly on the coffee table. He winced when he found his worn copy of L’Etranger by Albert Camus. The spine of the book was destroyed. “This is not the work of vandals,” he said as Carol knelt down to help. “They were searching for something specific.”

“Have you found anything missing yet?” she asked.

“No,” Nick replied, picking up another novel with a mutilated cover and shaking his head. “But the bastards have really screwed up my books.”

She stacked his Faulkner collection on the easy chair. “I can see why Troy was impressed,” she said. “Have you really read all these novels?” Nick nodded. Carol picked one up that had fallen under the television stand. “What’s this about?” She held up the book. “I’ve never even heard of it.”

Nick had just arranged another dozen books on the coffee table. “Oh, that’s a fantastic novel,” he said enthusiastically, forgetting for a moment that his condominium had just been trashed. “The whole story is told through this exchange of letters among all the principal characters. It’s set in eighteenth-century France, and the main couple, socially prominent and bored, cement their weird relationship by sharing details of their affairs. With other lovers of course. It caused quite a scandal in Europe.”

“That doesn’t exactly sound like your typical Harlequin romance,” Carol remarked, trying to commit the title of the book to her memory.

Nick stood up and walked into the smaller bedroom. He began to sort through the contents of the cardboard boxes. “There are things missing in here,” he called out to Carol. She stopped arranging books and joined him in the bedroom. “All my photographs of the Santa Rosa treasure and even the newspaper clippings are gone. That’s odd,” he said.

Carol was beside him on the floor, in front of the boxes. She frowned. “Is the trident still on the boat?”

“Yes,” he answered. He stopped rifling through the papers. “Down in the bottom drawer of the electronics cabinet. You think there’s a connection?”

She nodded. “I think that was what they were after. I don’t know why. It just seems right.”

Nick picked up a large yellow folder that had been on the floor and replaced it in one of the cardboard boxes. A photograph and some sheets of typing paper fell out. Carol picked up the picture while Nick scrambled after the papers. She studied the photo and read the French inscription. She was surprised to feel a twinge of jealousy. “Beautiful,” she commented. She noticed the pearls. “Also very rich and sophisticated. She doesn’t look like your type.”

She handed Monique’s photograph to Nick. Despite his attempt to be nonchalant, he was blushing. “That was a long time ago,” he mumbled as he hastily stuffed the photo back into the folder.

“Really?” Carol said, eyeing him carefully. “She looks as if she’s about our age. It couldn’t have been too long ago.”

Nick was flustered. He packed some more loose material in the boxes and glanced at his watch. “We’d better leave soon if we’re going to meet Troy at your hotel.” He stood up. Carol remained kneeling on the floor, looking up at him with a steady gaze. “It’s a long story,” he said. “Someday I’ll tell you all about it.”

Carol’s curiosity was piqued. She followed Nick out of his condominium and into the elevator. He was still ill at ease. Bullseye, she thought to herself. I think I have just discovered a major key to Mr. Williams. A woman named Monique. She smiled as Nick motioned for her to precede him out of the elevator. And the man does love his books.

Carol’s room at the Marriott had two entrances. The normal approach to the room was by way of the corridor that led to the lobby. But there was another door that opened on the garden and the pool. When she exercised in the morning, Carol always used the garden entrance.

Nick and Carol were talking casually but quietly as they came toward her room from the lobby. She pulled out her electronic card key just before they arrived. As she started to insert the card into the lock, they heard an unusual sound, like metal banging against metal, from the inside of her room. Before Carol could say anything, Nick shushed her by putting his finger to his mouth. “You heard it too?” she whispered softly. He nodded his head. Using gestures, he asked her if there was another entrance to the room. She pointed out the door to the hotel grounds at the end of the corridor.

Palm trees and tropical hedges covered most of the area to the east of the Marriott swimming pool. Nick and Carol left the walkway leading to the pool and crept up to the windows of her room. The venetian blinds were drawn but they could still see into the room through a crack under the bottom of the blinds. At first the room was completely dark. Then a solitary beam from a flashlight reflected for an instant off one of the walls. In that split second they saw a silhouetted figure in the neighborhood of the television set, but they could not identify him. The flashlight came on again and it paused for a moment on the door to the corridor. The door was bolted. In the brief flicker of the light beam, Carol also saw that all her dresser drawers were open.

Nick crawled over next to Carol in the flower bed just under the windows. “You stay here and watch,” he whispered. “I’ll go get something from the car. Don’t let them know you’re here.” He squeezed her shoulder and disappeared. Carol stayed glued to the window. Once more the flashlight came on, illuminating electronic parts spread out on the far bed. Carol strained for a look at who was holding the flashlight. She couldn’t see him.

She became acutely aware of the passage of time. Her intuition told her that the intruder was getting ready to leave. She suddenly realized she was completely exposed sitting out there underneath the window. Come on, Nick, she said to herself. Hurry it up. Or I may be chopped liver. The figure in the room moved toward the garden door and then stopped Carol felt her pulse rate increase. At just that moment Nick returned, out of breath. He had brought back a long crowbar from the trunk of his car. Carol motioned to him to stand by the door, that the intruder was about to come out.

She saw the figure put his hand on the doorknob and she flattened herself against the dirt. Nick was behind the door, poised to deliver a powerful blow to whoever exited from the room. The door opened, Nick started to strike. “Troy,” screamed Carol from the flower bed. He jumped back just in time, barely missing the downward swoop of Nick’s crowbar. Carol was on her feet in an instant. She ran up to a shaken Troy. “Are you all right?” she said.

His eyes were wide from fright. “Jesus, Professor,” he said, glancing at the crowbar that Nick was wielding, “you might have killed me.”

“Shit, Jefferson,” Nick replied, the adrenaline still coursing through his system, “why didn’t you tell us it was you? And what were you doing in Carol’s room?” He looked at Troy accusingly.

Troy backed into the room and turned on the lights. The room was a disaster. It looked like Nick’s condominium when Carol had first walked through the front door.

Carol turned to Troy. “Why on earth…”

“I didn’t do it, angel,” he replied. “Honest Injun.” Troy looked at his two friends. “Sit down,” he said. “This will only take a second.”

Meanwhile Carol’s eyes were scanning the room. “Crap,” she said angrily, “all my cameras and film are gone. And virtually the entire telescope system, including the post-processor unit. Dale will shoot me.” She looked in one of the open drawers. “The assholes took my photographs from the first dive as well. They were in a large envelope on the right side of this top drawer.”

Carol sat down on the bed looking a little dazed. “All the film from the photographs that I took inside that place has been stolen. So much for my sensational story,” she said.

Nick tried to comfort her. “Who knows. Maybe they’ll turn up. And besides, yal still have all the negatives from the first dive.”

Carol shook her head. “It’s not the same thing.” She thought for a minute. “Damnit,” she said, “I should have kept the exposed film with me when we left the hotel to go to Troy’s apartment.” She looked at the two men and then brightened a bit. “Oh well,” she said. “There’s always tomorrow.”

Troy was still waiting patiently to give his explanation. He indicated for Nick to sit down on the bed next to Carol. “I’ll make this short and sweet,” he said. “Just the facts. I arrived here about seven o’clock. I came early because I wanted to make some modifications to your television set. I’ll explain why in a minute.

“The people in the hotel wouldn’t give me a key to your room so I came down here and fooled the card reader.” He smiled. “It’s no problem for someone who knows how these things work. Anyway, as soon as the green light came on and the guard bolt released, I heard the garden door slam. Someone had been in the room while I was opening the door. I caught a fleeting glimpse of him as he hightailed it around the corner of the building. He was a big man, not someone I recognized immediately. He was moving with difficulty, as if he were carrying something heavy.”

“Part of the ocean telescope,” Carol said.

“Go on,” added Nick. “What happened next? I want to hear why you were in Carol’s room working in the dark. I bet you’ll come up with a good story for that too.”

“That’s easy,” Troy said to Nick. “I was afraid the thief or thieves might come back. I didn’t want them to see me.”

“You’re amazing, Jefferson,” Nick responded. “You’re the kind of person who would tell a cop that you were exceeding the speed limit because you wanted to get to a filling station before you ran out of gas.”

“And the cop would believe him,” Carol remarked. They all laughed. The tension in the room was diffusing.

“All right,” said Nick. “Now tell us what you’ve done to the television. Incidentally, how did you get inside it? I thought these hotel sets were all alarmed.”

“They are,” Troy replied, “but it’s very simple to disable the alarm system. It always cracks me up. Somebody sells the hotel the idea that they can protect their property with these alarms. But the burglars can easily find out what system has been installed, buy the circuit data sheets, and completely disable the protection.”

Troy glanced around the room. He then checked his watch carefully. “Let’s see,” he said. “Why don’t you two move over here in these chairs. I think you’ll be able to see better.” Nick and Carol exchanged puzzled looks and arranged themselves as Troy had requested. “Now,” he continued in a surprisingly serious tone, “you will see what I believe is incontrovertible proof that my story about the aliens is true. They have told me, through this bracelet, that they are going to televise a short program from inside the vehicle at exactly seven-thirty. If I have translated their directions properly and made the correct modifications, this television should now be able to receive their transmission.”

He turned on the set and put it on channel 44. There was nothing but snow and static. “This is great, Troy,” Nick commented. “It will probably steal rating points from soap operas and music videos. Watching this requires even less intelligence—”

A picture suddenly appeared on the screen. The lighting was poor, but Carol immediately recognized herself in the scene. She was standing with her back to the cameras, her fingers moving around on top of what appeared to be a table.

An orchestral version of “Silent Night,” featuring an instrument not unlike an organ, accompanied the picture.

“That’s the music room I told you about,” Carol said to Nick. “I guess that warden thing had a video camera in all his paraphernalia.”

The television scene switched immediately to a close-up of Carol’s eyes. For five seconds her marvelous, frightened eyes filled almost the entire screen. She blinked twice before the camera pulled back and revealed her in front view. terrified, standing and shaking in her bathing suit. Carol shuddered as she recalled the horror of those seconds when the warden’s appendages intruded upon her person. It was all shown in the video, some parts even in slow motion. One of the featured scenes was the deliberate movement of the bristles across her chest, including both her erect nipples. Oh my God, she thought. I hadn’t realized they were erect. Maybe fear does that. Carol squirmed. She felt surprisingly embarrassed in front of Nick.

There was a jump discontinuity in the program. In the next scene the three of them were looking at Troy, lying on his back on the floor somewhere, with enough wires and cords attached to him that he could have been Gulliver bound by the Lilliputians. The camera panned around the room. Two wardens were in one of the corners. Their upper body attachments were not even similar, but they both had the same central body, amoebalike, that had confronted Troy and Carol. On the other side of the room a pair of carpets were standing together. From their motions it looked as if they were engaged in a conversation. Nick and Carol and Troy watched while the camera stayed fixed for about ten seconds. The carpets apparently finished conferring and then flipped off in separate directions.

The final frames of the transmission were a close-up of Troy’s head showing more than a hundred probes and inserts connected to his brain. Then the screen went back to snow and static. “Wowee,” said Nick after a moment. “Can I have an instant replay?” He stood up from the bed. “You were terrific,” he remarked to Carol, “but I think your scenes will have to be edited if we want a PG rating.”

Carol looked up at him and blushed slightly. “Sorry, Nick, but I don’t think you make a good comedian. We have one already,” she nodded at Troy, “and I think that’s enough.” She glanced at the clock beside her bed. “Now I figure we have fifteen minutes or so to make plans. No more. And I have to dress as well. Why don’t you tell Troy about your decision and what you have concluded about the Santa Rosa loot while I change my clothes.” She grabbed a blouse and a pair of pants and headed for the bathroom.

“Hey, wait a minute,” Nick protested. “Aren’t we going to discuss who it was that broke into my condominium and your hotel room?”

Carol stopped outside the bathroom door. “There are only two possibilities that make any sense,” she said. “It’s either the Navy or our sicko friends from the Ambrosia. Either way we’ll find out soon enough.” She stopped a moment and an elfin smile played across her lips. “I want you two to see if you can figure out a way to steal Homer’s gold. Tonight. Before we go back to meet with our extraterrestrials tomorrow morning.”

9

Carol and Troy went over the details one last time and she checked her watch. “It’s eight-thirty already,” she said. “If I’m much later I know they’ll be suspicious.” She was standing outside Nick’s Pontiac in the parking lot of the Pelican Resort, a restaurant about three-quarters of a mile from the Ashford mansion at Pelican Point. “Where is he?” she fretted. “We should have finished with this fifteen minutes ago.”

“Just calm down, angel,” Troy replied. “We have to test this new unit first. It could be very important in an emergency and I’ve never actually used it.” He gave her a reassuring hug. “Your friends at MOI originally developed it.”

“Why did I have to suggest such a wild-ass idea?” Carol said out loud to herself. “Where’s your brain, Dawson? Did you leave it in the…”

“Can you hear me?” Nick’s garbled voice interrupted her. It sounded as if it were coming from the bottom of a well.

“Yes,” Troy answered into a tiny walkie-talkie shaped like a thimble. “But not too clearly. How deep are you?”

“Say again,” said Nick. “I did not copy completely.”

“Yes, we can hear you,” Troy shouted. He carefully enunciated each word. “But not very clearly. You must speak slowly and distinctly. How deep are you?”

“About eight feet,” was the response.

“Go down to sixteen and try it again,” said Troy. “Let’s see if it will work from the deepest part of the cave.”

“How’s he doing that?” Carol asked, while they waited for Nick to descend.

“It’s a brand-new system, built into the regulator,” Troy answered. “You have to speak while you’re exhaling for it to work. There’s a small transmitter/receiver inside the mouthpiece and an earphone attachment. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work much below ten feet.”

Almost a minute later Carol and Troy heard something, very faint, not even recognizable as Nick’s voice. Troy listened for a moment. “We cannot read you, Nick. There is too much attenuation. Come on back now. I’m going to send Carol on her way.” Troy pressed a button on the walkie-talkie that would repeatedly transmit this last message.

He handed the communications unit to Carol. “Okay, angel,” he said, “you’re ready. We should be in the water around nine o’clock and out, if all goes well, by half an hour later. Keep them occupied with your questions. You should leave by ten-thirty at the latest and drive directly to Nick’s apartment. We will meet you there with your wagon.” He raised his eyebrows. “And the gold, I hope.”

Carol took a deep breath. She smiled at Troy. “I’m scared,” she said. “I would rather face a carpet or even one of those warden things than this trio.” She opened the car door. “Do you really think I should go in Nick’s car? Isn’t that certain to make them suspect something?”

“We’ve been through all this twice before, angel,” Troy laughingly replied. He gently nudged her into the car. “They already know we’re friends. Besides, we need your wagon for the diving gear, the backpacks, and the lead and gold.” He closed the door and planted a light kiss on her cheek through the open window. “Be safe, angel,” he said. “And don’t take any unnecessary chances.”

Carol started the car and backed into the middle of the parking lot. She waved at Troy and pulled into the dark lane that led through the marsh to the end of the island. The only light was from the nearly full gibbous moon that was already above the trees. All right, Dawson, she thought to herself. Now you’re in the middle of it. Just stay calm and alert.

She drove very slowly. She reviewed the plans for the evening several times in her mind. Then she started thinking about Nick. He holds on to things. Like I do. He still hates Homer and Greta for cheating him. He couldn’t wait to dive for the gold. She smiled as she turned into the circular drive in front of Homer Ashford’s house. I just hope there is some left over for him.

A split second after Carol rang the doorbell, Homer opened the door and greeted her. “You’re late,” he said in a pleasant monotone. “We thought maybe you were not coming. Greta is already in the pool. Do you want to change and join her?”

“Thanks, Captain Homer, but I decided not to swim tonight,” Carol answered politely. “I appreciate the offer, but I’m mostly here on business. I would prefer to start the interview as soon as possible. Even before dinner, if that would be all right with everyone else.”

Homer led Carol into a gigantic family room and stopped by a large wet bar. A magnificent hand-carved wooden statue of a swimming Neptune, about four feet long altogether, was on the wall above the bar. Carol asked for some white wine. Homer tried without success to talk her into something stronger.

The family room had a billiards table at one end. On the other side, a sliding glass door opened onto a covered patio that narrowed into a cement walkway. Carol followed Homer in silence, sipping from her white wine every twenty steps or so. The walkway wound past big trees and a lighted gazebo off to the left before it spread out around the huge swimming pool.

Actually there were two pools. In front of Carol was a classic, rectangular, Olympic-sized pool under strong lights. At one end was a slide and waterfall that ran down an artificial mountain into the swimming area. At the other end, in the direction of the second pool and the ocean, there was a sunken Jacuzzi constructed out of the same decorated blue tiles that rimmed the top of the main pool. The entire complex was cleverly designed to create the impression of moving water. There seemed to be a steady flow from the waterfall, to the large pool. down into the Jacuzzi, and then into a stream that meandered off in the direction of the house.

The second pool was circular and dark. It was off to Carol’s left at the edge of the property, near what looked like a small cottage for changing clothes. Greta was in the rectangular pool in front of Carol. She was swimming laps, her powerful body moving rhythmically through the water. Carol, who was an excellent swimmer herself, watched Greta for a few seconds.

“Isn’t she something?” Homer walked over next to Carol. His admiration was obvious. “She won’t let herself eat a big meal unless she works out beforehand. She can’t stand fat.”

Homer was wearing a light brown Hawaiian shirt with a pair of tan slacks. Brown loafers were on his feet, and a big drink, crammed with ice cubes, was in his hand. He seemed relaxed, even affable. Carol thought he could have passed for a retired banker or corporate executive.

Greta continued to swim relentlessly through the water. Homer was hovering over Carol and she was beginning to feel uncomfortable, as if her space were being invaded.

“Where’s Ellen?” she asked, turning to the large man and moving just slightly farther away from him.

“She’s in the kitchen,” Homer replied. “She loves to cook, especially when we have guests. And tonight she’s making one of her favorite dishes.” There was almost a twinkle in his eye. He leaned down to Carol. “She made me promise not to tell you what we’re having,” he whispered confidentially, “but I will tell you that it’s a powerful aphrodisiac.”

Ugh, said Carol to herself as she caught a whiff of Homer’s breath and listened to his leering chuckle. How could I have forgotten how repulsive this man is? Does he really think that… Carol stopped her thought. She reminded herself that people with excessive money very often lose touch with reality. Probably some of the women respond. For what he can give them. She almost gagged. The thought of having any kind of sexual liaison with Homer was totally repugnant.

Greta had finished swimming laps. She climbed out of the pool and dried herself off. Her all-white racing uniform was like a transparent body stocking. Even from a distance, Carol could not avoid seeing the full detail of her nipples and breasts as well as her clump of pubic hair through the thin suit. She might as well have been naked. Homer stood beside Carol, unabashedly staring as Greta strode across the cement.

“No suit?” Greta said just before she reached them. Her eyes were trying to bore holes in Carol’s. Carol shook her head. “I’m sorry,” said Greta. “Homer had hoped that we might have a race.” She looked at the captain with an odd expression that Carol did not understand. “He loves to see women in competition.”

“It would have been no contest,” Carol answered. She thought she saw Greta tense. “You would have won easily,” she added. “You swim beautifully.”

Greta smiled, accepting the compliment. Her eyes roamed over Carol’s body. She made no effort to hide the fact that she was doing an appraisal. “You have a good body too for swimming,” Greta said. “Maybe a little too fat on the ass and upper legs. I could suggest workout—”

“Why don’t we show Miss Dawson the other pool?” Homer interrupted. “Before you go inside and change clothes.” He started walking toward the little cottage near the ocean. Without saying another word, Greta turned and followed him. Carol took a sip from her wine. Who knows what goes on here, she thought. Those three have not had to work for eight years. They take people out fishing and diving for amusement. A strange mixture of disgust and depression started to spread in her. So they manufacture entertainment to keep from being bored.

Moments after Homer entered the cottage, a bank of flood-lights down underneath the second pool was illuminated. Homer gestured for her to hurry and Carol skipped into the cottage. They led her down a flight of steps. Under the ground was a walkway that completely encircled the large glass aquarium that had looked, in the darkness, like a second swimming pool. “We have six sharks now,” Homer said proudly, “as well as three red occi, a pair of cuttlefish, and of course hundreds of more standard species of fish and plants.”

“Occi?” inquired Carol.

“That’s the slang plural of octopus,” Homer responded with a smug, self-satisfied smile. “Actually, the correct plural is octopodes, even though everyone now accepts octopi because it has been used so much.”

Greta was standing with her face pressed against the glass. A couple of bat rays swam past. She was waiting for something. After twenty seconds or so a grayish shark appeared. The shark seemed to notice Greta and stopped, watching her, its face about five feet away from the glass. Carol could see the long sharp teeth and identified it as a mako, a fierce smaller cousin of the man-eating great white shark.

“That’s Greta’s pet,” said Homer. “His name is Timmy. Somehow she has trained him to recognize her face against the glass.” Homer watched a few more seconds. “From time to time she goes in there to swim with him. When the sharks have finished eating, of course.”

The shark remained in place, staring blankly in Greta’s direction. She began to drum her fingers against the glass in regular cadence. “Now this is exciting,” Homer said, walking over next to Greta and the aquarium. “What you are going to see is what biologists call a typical Pavlovian response. I’ve never seen it quite this way before in a shark.”

The mako began to be agitated. Greta started increasing the tempo, the shark responding by whipping the water back and forth with its tail. Suddenly Greta disappeared up the stairs. Carol thought she noticed a faraway look in her eyes when Greta zoomed by her. Carol looked at Homer for an explanation. “Come down here closer,” he gestured to Carol. “You don’t want to miss this. Greta cares for the rabbits herself. And Timmy always puts on a grand show.”

Carol wasn’t exactly sure what Homer was talking about. But she was enjoying the lovely aquarium. It contained crystal-clear sea water, obviously filtered and recycled regularly. Carol noticed several species of sponges and coral, as well as urchin and anemone. Someone had gone to great trouble and expense to re-create the conditions in the reefs just off-shore Key West.

Suddenly a beheaded white rabbit impaled on a long vertical staff, the blood still spurting from its arteries, appeared in the aquarium just opposite where Carol and Homer were standing. It was over in an instant. Driven to immediate frenzy by the blood in the water, the mako attacked, its teeth ripping half the hapless rabbit off the stave with the first bite. The second swoop captured the rest of the rabbit and snapped the rod as well. Carol barely had time to recoil and turn her head. When she jumped back, she spilled wine all over her blouse.

Trying to appear calm, she reached in her purse for a tissue to wipe her blouse. She said nothing. She had had a perfect view of the shark’s attack and could still feel the adrenaline imbalance that the fright had produced. Great way to start a dinner party, she thought. Why haven’t I ever thought of it? Dawson, these people are weird.

Homer was still excited. “Wasn’t that spectacular? Such raw, savage power in those jaws. Driven by pure instinct. I never get tired of it.”

Carol followed him up the stairs. “Good show, Greta,” she heard Homer say when they walked out of the cottage. “It was right in front of us. Two bites. Wham, wham, and the rabbit was gone.”

“I know,” said Greta. She was holding a diving mask. What was left of the staff was on the ground beside her. “I could see from up here.” Greta was staring at Carol, obviously trying to discover her reaction. Carol averted her eyes. She was not going to give Greta the satisfaction of knowing she had found it repulsive.

“Greta has the whole thing down to split-second timing,” Homer continued as they walked back through the gardens to the house. “She prepares the live rabbit on the chopping block an hour early. Then, when Timmy is ready, she…”

Carol tuned his gruesome story out of her mind. I don’t want to hear this, she thought. She glanced at her watch. Ten minutes after nine. Come on guys. Be swift. I’m not certain I can stand these people for another hour.

Nick and Troy swam silently along the shoreline in the moonlight. They had carefully rehearsed the plan. No additional light until they were in the cove beside Homer’s property and at least ten feet under water. Troy would lead, searching for alarm systems he could disable with the tools stuffed in the pockets of his wet suit. He would also keep a lookout for the infamous robot sentries. Nick would follow with the buoyancy bags they would use to carry the gold.

They had walked along the beach from the Pelican Resort parking lot, wearing their heavy diving suits as well as the backpacks, until they were only about a hundred yards from the thick fence that marked Homer’s property. Then they had set down the packs containing their clothes and eased into the water. During the walk Troy had had several problems with his tools, and a decision to reduce his arsenal of gadgets had delayed their arrival at the embarkation point by five minutes. Just before they went into the water, Nick had given an uncharacteristic squeal of excitement and grabbed Troy by the shoulders. “I hope that fucking gold is there,” he had said. “I cannot wait to see their faces after we steal it.”

It was time to submerge. Holding hands in the darkness, Nick and Troy dropped about five feet under the water. They stopped, equalized the pressure in their heads, and repeated the procedure. When they were down about ten feet, Troy turned on the searchlight. They quickly worked out their directions and headed around the corner, deeper into the cove adjoining Homer’s estate.

Troy was in the lead. He had no trouble finding the entrance to the natural tunnel that led to the subterranean cave. As they had planned, Nick waited outside the tunnel while Troy went inside to look for alarms. The rock cliffs closed over his head. The watery entryway was about five feet across and four feet high. Troy immediately found a metal box affixed to the left wall, where it was partially hidden from view. When he examined the box, he discovered that it was emitting two laser beams separated by about three feet.

On the other side of the natural tunnel were the receiving plates for the beams as well as the alarm electronics. Troy swam over carefully, pulled out his screwdriver, and dismantled the housing. The system was very simple. Failure of either plate to receive a beam would trigger the opening of a relay. When both relays were open, current could flow to the alarm. Thus an object had to be large enough to break both beams simultaneously to set off an alarm. Troy smiled to himself as he validated the operating principle by passing his hand in front of one of the beams. Then he jerryrigged one of the relays permanently closed. Satisfied with his work, he swam back and forth in the tunnel, breaking both beams at the same time, assuring himself that he had rendered the alarm system ineffective.

He swam back out to meet Nick and gave him the thumbs-up sign. The two men passed through the fifty yards of natural tunnel into the subterranean cave. Where the narrow passageway widened, Troy again gestured to Nick to remain behind while he, Troy, went into the cave to check for booby-traps. Nick let his feet fall to the bottom of the tunnel and switched on his own small flashlight. He was in a perfect place for an ambush. The tunnel was so small here that there was virtually no maneuvering room He wondered what an underwater sentry would look like. What a place to die, he thought suddenly. Fear swept over him as he turned off his flashlight and looked down at his illuminated diver’s watch. He watched the glowing second hand sweeping around the face. He tried to calm himself. It had been three minutes since Troy had left. Why is he taking so long? he asked himself. He must have found something. Another minute passed. Then another. Nick was having a hard time quelling the onset of panic. What do I do if he doesn’t return?

Just as Nick was about to swim into the cave on his own, he caught sight of Troy’s searchlight coming toward him Troy waved and Nick followed. Within thirty seconds they were in the shallow part of the cave, where the water was only about four feet deep. The two men stood up with their flippers lodged against the rocks to protect themselves from falling in the intermittent tidal surges.

Nick pulled his regulator out of his mouth and flipped his mask back on his head. Before he could speak, Troy put a finger against Nick’s lips. “Speak very softly,” Troy’s whisper was barely audible. “The place could be alarmed for sound as well.”

There was no light in the cave except Troy’s searchlight. However, over their heads, in the highest corners of the rock ceiling, Troy pointed out two separate banks of fluorescent lighting. The cave itself was an irregular oval, about thirty yards in its longest dimension and maybe fifteen yards across at its widest point. The ceiling was only about three feet above the water near the entrance to the tunnel out to the ocean, but it was twenty feet high in the corner where they were standing in the shallow water.

“Well, Professor,” Troy continued whispering, “I have good news and bad news. The bad news is that there is no treasure here in this cave. The good news is that there are two other tunnels, both manmade, that lead away from this place and go under Captain Homer’s property.” He paused for a moment and watched his partner. “Shall we go for it?”

Nick looked at his watch. It was nine-twenty already. He nodded. “The bastard spent a lot of money down here. They must have stolen more than I figured.” Nick adjusted his diving equipment.

“We’ll start with the tunnel on the left. As before, I’ll lead to look for trouble.” Troy cast his searchlight around on the ceiling. “This is a strange place. But beautiful. It looks like another planet, doesn’t it?”

Nick pulled his mask back over his face and slipped the regulator in his mouth. He flopped backward into the sea water. Troy followed and, once under the surface, showed Nick the way to the first manmade tunnel. This tunnel was on the other side of the cave, about twelve feet below the water at its lowest point. It was made of normal circular sewer pipe. The diameter of the pipe was about five feet, making the tunnel approximately the same size as the natural passageway between the ocean and the cave. Troy entered the tunnel gingerly. He swam back and forth from side to side, examining one wall for a few yards and then going across to the other. He almost missed the long, slender alarm box. It was embedded in the ceiling at a junction between two sections of sewer pipe and Troy just happened to look up before he triggered the alarm.

This system worked on a different principle. A camera or other optical device in the box on the ceiling took repeated images of a square foot of the tunnel bottom that was backlit by an illuminated square cleverly concealed below the normal concrete floor. Apparently some kind of data comparison algorithm in the alarm processor contained logic by which the consecutive pictures could be assessed, in terms of threat, and an alarm triggered if necessary. It was the most complicated device of its kind that Troy had ever seen and he quickly recognized the similarities between this system and the ocean telescope that had been onboard the Florida Queen. That means MOI designed and developed it, he thought to himself. So I’d best be careful. I bet the algorithm is set so that disturbances to the camera trigger the alarm as well.

Nick had swum over to the side of the tunnel, out of the way, and was watching Troy try to open up the alarm box without jiggling the optical instrument. To accommodate the almost two-inch width of the box, there was a gap of that size everywhere around the circle connecting the two sequential sections of pipe. Throughout the rest of the tunnel, all adjoining sections were cemented together. Here the passageway was discontinuous.

Curious, thought Nick. He idly shone his small flashlight into the blackness in the gap beside him, expecting to see nothing but a wall of rock. What in the world is that? he wondered, as his light fell upon some metal object that looked like a large grating. The grating was resting upon an old piece of railroad track. Nick looked more carefully. He could make out a gear box and some pulleys, but he had no idea how all these mechanical devices fit together.

Meanwhile Troy had managed to remove the housing from the alarm box without disturbing the camera and was busy trying to understand the inner workings of the system. Whew, he thought. This is much too complicated to figure out in five minutes. If I can just isolate the alarm, that should be enough. It was tough work under the water. But Troy was clever and the electronics were packaged in a logical fashion. He was able to find the alarm and disable it. Afterward Troy lingered for several seconds trying to determine the purpose of the other circuits connected to the alarm subassembly.

Nick had intended to show Troy what he had found in the gap; however, as he watched his friend struggling with the complex circuitry of the alarm box, he became again worried about the passage of time. It was now almost a quarter to ten. He caught Troy’s eye and pointed at his watch. Troy reluctantly abandoned his investigation of the alarm and proceeded down the tunnel.

Thirty yards farther the tunnel passed what looked like a door to a submarine on their left. Both Troy and Nick tried pulling on the handle of the large and very heavy round door but nothing happened. With gestures Troy told Nick to continue trying to open the door while he swam on down the tunnel.

The gold bars and other objects that remained from the Santa Rosa treasure were sitting in the tunnel another thirty yards beyond the round door. The passageway itself came to an abrupt halt against a rock wall. In front of the wall was an array of gold and silver objects, stacked to an average depth of a foot or so across the width of the tunnel. The treasure was not hidden in any way, it was simply scattered in random piles on the concrete floor at the end of the tunnel. Troy was ecstatic. There’s plenty here, he thought. Enough for the aliens. Enough for Nick. Maybe even some left over for Carol and me.

He swam back to find Nick. Nick was absolutely exultant when he saw the unmistakable smile on Troy’s face. He raced around his friend to the end of the tunnel When Nick first reached the treasure, he spent a minute or two swimming around, picking up each object that was different and dropping it back into the piles on the floor.

Holy shit, Nick said gleefully to himself as he and Troy started putting gold bars into the buoyancy bags. I was right for once. There must be over a hundred pounds in bars alone. They had agreed before the dive just to bring out the bars, provided there were enough. The bars were the only objects they could be certain were pure gold. Even if we take fifty-eight to Troy’s friends, that might leave fifty or so for us. He did a quick mental calculation. That could be over three hundred thousand dollars apiece. Whoopee.

Joy and excitement surged through Nick. He was having difficulty containing himself. He wanted to sing, to dance, to jump with joy. He had been right after all. The bastards had stolen most of the treasure and now he was stealing it back. There’s no happiness quite like the redressing of an old and painful grievance. And to do it with panache… Nick was already celebrating in his heart. This was his day.

Filling the bags took no time at all. Nick and Troy both felt as if they had infinite energy. When they had finished picking up the gold bars, Troy gestured down the tunnel. Nick looked down at the other treasure objects remaining on the floor. We should take it all, he thought. We should leave Homer and Greta nothing. Nothing at all. But he had to be practical. Each of their bags was virtually full and they would be heavy enough as they were.

Nick swam off in the direction of the ocean, his buoyancy bag full of gold trailing behind him. Troy followed. As they passed the bulky door on the right, Troy found himself thinking again about the circuitry leading to the alarm in the box just ahead, between the two sections of pipe. What could those other connections be for? Suddenly he remembered seeing a diagram in an electronics magazine about advanced timers that could reinitialize systems and swap out failed parts. By now the component that Troy had disabled might have been declared a failure by the smart processor in the alarm box, in which case it would have either been replaced by a redundant part or the system would be ignoring its output. In either situation, Troy thought, that means the system could be active again.

It was too late. Nick swam into the field of view of the optical device and lights came on throughout the tunnel. A metal gate started closing behind Nick and his bag of gold. It was only with a burst of speed that Troy propelled himself through before the gate shut completely. But his buoyancy bag full of gold bars was left behind, on the other side of the gate.

Nick stared at Troy’s lost bag as it floated to the floor. He reached through the bars, grabbed the bag, and tried to pull it through. It was useless. He shook the gate. The metal was extremely sturdy. Angry and frustrated, he punched the gate with his fists. As Nick caught his breath in between punches, he became aware of a strange droning sound, like a motor, somewhere in the distance behind him. He turned around to find Troy. He could not see him anywhere.

Troy had been exhausted by his swimming sprint through the closing gate. His energy spent, he had let himself fall to the floor of the pool in the deepest part of the cave, halfway between the two manmade tunnels. He took several deep breaths through his mouthpiece and checked his air supply. He had about ten minutes remaining. He watched for a moment as Nick, almost out of sight to his right, tried fruitlessly to pull Troy’s bag through the gate. Shit, Troy thought, disappointed that he had lost the gold, if only I had been thinking. I should have known… He heard an unusual sound off to his left. Curious, Troy swam over to the entrance of the other tunnel and right into the path of the robot sentry.

Even though the original distance between them was over fifty feet, the guidance mechanism of the sentry fixed on Troy as soon as he appeared. Startled and fascinated, at first Troy did not try to avoid the onrush of the bullet-shaped submarine. The sentry was three feet long and a foot wide in its midsection. When it was about eight feet away, the sentry slowly loaded and fired a small but powerful spear, the size of a table knife, that Troy just managed to avoid as it hurtled past. The spear crashed into the wall beside him.

Adrenaline surged into Troy’s system and he swam out into the middle of the pool. The sentry did not follow him immediately. Instead it moved over in front of the natural passageway to the ocean, thereby cutting off the escape route, and then turned around to make a systematic search of the pool. Damnit, Troy was thinking, why didn’t I leave while I had the chance? He wondered if Nick was still over by the gate.

The sentry had now found Nick in its field of vision. He was swimming slowly toward the exit with his buoyancy bag. He was unaware that he and Troy were not alone in the pool. By the time Nick saw the sentry, he was fifteen feet away and within easy range of its underwater gun. Troy watched the sentry load a spear. Oh no, he cried out to himself. Watch out, Nick. There was nothing he could do.

It happened so fast that neither Nick nor Troy knew exactly what occurred. Troy would later explain that he felt a sudden warm tingle on his wrist and then something, a light beam or a laser burst or a stream of plasma perhaps, fired out of his bracelet and zapped the robot sentry into silence and motionlessness. Nick would say that the sentry, just when it was going to fire at him, was first distracted by Troy and then recoiled as if from an impact. Whatever happened, the sentry stopped all activity. Immediately thereafter the two men swam together over to the shallow part of the cave. They were temporarily safe.

Carol could not believe how plump and succulent the oysters were. Ellen was sitting at the other end of the table opposite her, and was beaming with pride. “Would you like some more, dear?” she smiled, lifting the huge pot containing the oyster stew. I’m now going to eat a second portion, Carol thought. In addition to the catfish with Nick. Greta would be disgusted. She smiled to herself and nodded at Ellen. There was at least one thing she had learned this evening. Ellen was certainly a fantastic cook.

And a very sad person too, Carol thought as she spooned herself some more spicy stew rich with the fabled Appalachicola oysters. Homer had personally answered all the questions during the twenty-minute interview before dinner. Whenever a question had been controversial or delicate, such as when Carol had asked about the allegations that part of the treasure haul had been secretly stolen and hidden by the three of them, he had looked only at Greta before he made a response. No wonder Ellen eats all the time. She’s the odd man out. Or is it woman?

“This stew is fabulous,” Carol remarked to Ellen. “Would you mind giving me the recipe?”

Ellen was delighted. “Certainly, dear,” she said, “it would be my pleasure.” Carol remembered Dale’s reference to Ellen’s behavior at the MOI awards dinner and wondered if there was, indeed, any sexual component to the warmth Ellen was displaying. I don’t see it, Carol decided. This is just a lonely and profoundly disturbed woman. I don’t feel one iota of sexual tension.

“You’ve been asking the questions all evening, Miss Dawson,” Homer was saying. “Now why don’t we ask you a few?” He had been surprisingly pleasant and subdued since the bizarre preprandial shark feeding. They must be normal sometimes, Carol thought. Otherwise they couldn’t survive. But who knows when Mr. Hyde will show up again.

“Ya,” Greta said. It was the first time she had spoken directly to Carol during the meal. “Homer told me you were with Dr. Dale. You are lovers, no?”

You don’t beat around the bush, do you Greta. Carol partially evaded the question. “Dale Michaels and I are very good friends. We spend quite a lot of time together, both socially and professionally.”

“He is a smart man,” Greta said. Those clear eyes stared at Carol and a smile played at the corner of Greta’s lips. What is she trying to tell me?

The conversation was interrupted by the sound of a sharp alarm. Carol knew immediately that something had gone wrong. “What in the world is that?” Carol asked innocently as the strident alarm continued with its loud bursts.

Homer and Greta were already up from the table. “Excuse us,” Homer said, “it’s our burglar alarm. Probably an error. We’ll go check it out.”

They hurried out of the dining room, leaving Carol and Ellen alone, and headed down a nearby hallway. I must follow them and find out what’s going on, Carol thought, her heart and mind racing together. She sneaked a peek at her watch. It was five minutes past ten o’clock. They should have finished by now. “I’m going to the rest room,” she said to Ellen. “Don’t bother,” she added, as Ellen started to explain the directions. “I’m sure I can find it myself.”

Carol walked quickly into the hall and listened for sounds of Homer and Greta. Moving very quietly, she followed them until she was just outside a large den on the opposite side of the house. The door to the den was ajar. “It will focus in a second,” she heard Homer say. There was a pause. “Shit,” he shouted, “it looks like the gold bars are already gone. They must have moved very fast… The picture is really not very clear. Here, you take a look.”

“Ya,” said Greta. “The bars are gone, I think… But Homer, the gold would be very heavy. Maybe the thieves are trapped in the tunnel… Timmy could search for them.”

“That would fix the bastards,” Homer’s nervous laugh sent chills down Carol’s spine. She back pedaled slowly until she had retreated to the main foyer of the house. She heard an outside door slam in the direction of the den. They’ve gone out to turn the sharks loose. Jesus. I must warn Nick and Troy.

Carol walked into the nearest bathroom in the hallway, pushed the door closed, and turned on the water faucet. Then she flushed the commode and untaped the small walkie-talkie that was hidden inside her shirt. She put the unit right next to her mouth. “Mayday, mayday,” she said. “They know you’re there. You are in danger.” She repeated the message and then pushed the button that would automatically recycle the communication several more times. I certainly hope this damn thing works, she thought.

She started to affix the tiny unit to the inside of her blouse again. While she was taping it down, she happened to look in the mirror. Her heart nearly stopped. Ellen was standing in the doorway, staring at her, the baleful glare in her eyes indicating that she had seen and heard everything. She took a step toward Carol.

“Just hold it right there, Ellen,” Carol said. Carol put her hands up. “I have no quarrel with you.” The fat woman hesitated. “Homer and Greta only use you anyway,” Carol added softly, “why don’t you leave them and make a life for yourself?”

Anger broke across Ellen’s face. Her eyes narrowed, her cheeks reddened, and she raised her huge fists to threaten Carol. “It’s none of your damn business how I live my life,” she said menacingly. She moved again in Carol’s direction.

Carol grabbed the thick metal towel rack beside her and pulled with all her might. The bar sprung free from the wall, dumping two peach bath towels and a wooden end piece on the linoleum floor. Carol brandished the bar over her head. “Don’t make me hit you,” she said. “Just move aside and get out of my way.”

Ellen did not slow down. Carol aimed carefully and struck her hard, on the right shoulder. The heavy woman collapsed.

“Greta,” she wailed in a monstrous voice, “Greta, help me.”

Still waving the bar from the towel rack, Carol walked carefully around Ellen and backed toward the door. Once in the hall, she sprinted to the family room and headed for the front door. Right beside the wet bar she was tackled from behind. Carol fell forward, hard, and smashed her nose on the carpet. She tried to squirm out of Greta’s arms but it was impossible. She was pinned. A few drops of blood trickled out of Carol’s nose and fell on the carpet.

Both women were breathing heavily. Carol managed to turn her body around so that she was facing Greta. She struggled vainly to free herself. Greta’s strong arms slammed Carol’s wrists against the floor. Greta bent down until her face was only inches away from Carol’s. “You were trying to get away, ya, and just why vere you in such a hurry.”

There was something feral in Greta’s eyes. On impulse, Carol lifted her head and kissed Greta, full on the lips. Startled, her assailant’s arms momentarily relaxed. That was all Carol needed. Gathering all her strength, she smashed the bottom of her palm into the side of Greta’s head. Greta was stunned. Carol pushed her off and made a dash for the door.

Carol was already calculating when she ran out the front door and down the steps. Greta will be up in an instant, she thought. I won’t have time to open the car door. I might as well run for it.

The German woman was only fifteen yards behind her, and gaining fast, when Carol turned onto the lane that led from Homer’s house to the Pelican Resort. For ten years I have run three times a week. But this is the only time my life has ever depended on it. She tried to accelerate. Greta continued to close the gap. Carol was certain she was going to be caught at any minute. Once she thought she felt Greta’s hand on her blouse.

But after two hundred yards Greta began to drop back. When she was a quarter of a mile from Homer’s driveway Carol dared to look over her shoulder. Her pursuer was clearly struggling and was now fifty yards behind her. Carol felt a renewed burst of energy. I’m going to make it, she thought. I’m actually going to escape.

Greta slowed to a walk. Eventually Carol did too, but not until she was almost to the restaurant. Even then she continued to look back, to try to find her antagonist in the moonlight. Now I’ll call a taxi, she was thinking, And go over to Nick’s apartment. I hope that the two of them heard my warning and are safe.

She could no longer see Greta. She stopped and strained her eyes. She must have turned back, Carol thought. While she was looking back down the lane, a pair of very strong hands grabbed her shoulders. She spun around and stared into the laughing eyes of Lieutenant Richard Todd.

10

HE had purposely waited until all the rest of the actors had left the dressing room. The package itself was inconspicuous, about the size of a large bar of soap, wrapped in white paper with a dark red ribbon. You don’t even know if it’s from her, Winters thought as he pulled the bow on the ribbon. The commander was full of anticipation. The show had been even better tonight. And in the bedroom scene he had felt, for just a second, the touch of Tiffani’s tongue against his lips. She didn’t have to do that, Winters told himself, suspending for a moment all vestiges of guilt.

His hands trembled a little as he opened the package. It was a plain white box. Inside was a silver cigarette lighter simple but handsome, with the initials VW engraved on the outside at the bottom. His heart raced. So she does feel it too. Commander Winters felt a powerful burst of lust in his groin. Now he was imagining a scene no more than three or four hours in the future. He was taking Tiffani home and they were kissing at her front door. “Would you like to come in,” she would say…

“I feel pretty… oh so pretty… I feel pretty and witty and gay…” He heard her singing as she came down the hall. She pushed open the door to his dressing room and twirled around. Tiffani’s hair was stacked high on her head showing the lines of her elegant neck. The gold filigree along the top of the comb that the commander had given her blended in perfectly with the rich red and brown of her hair. Her dress was white, low cut, with her shoulders exposed except for tiny straps in the corners.

“Well?” she said with a big and eager smile. She turned around again. “What do you think?”

“You look beautiful, Tiffani,” he replied. He stared at her with such intensity that she blushed.

“Oh, Vernon,” she sighed, now changing her mood, “the combs are wonderful.” She pulled a cigarette from his pack on the dresser table and lit it herself with his new lighter. She took a deep drag, her eyes fixed on his, and put the cigarette down in the ashtray. “I don’t know how to thank you,” she murmured.

She walked over to him and put her hands in his. “It’s already been another wonderful evening.” She put her left hand behind his head and reached up to kiss him. His heart was about to explode within his body. She could feel his arousal as her lips nestled softly against his. She pulled his head down to meet hers and subtly increased the pressure of her kiss. At length he put his arms around her and pressed her body against his.

Commander Winters thought he was going to drown in the pleasure of that kiss. Never had he felt such longing. He was certain he would gladly die in the morning if he could just continue to kiss her all night first. For a moment, as he let himself experience fully the rush of joy and love and lust, all his worries and despair were pushed aside. He wanted to wrap himself around Tiffani, somehow zip her inside his skin, and close out everything else in the universe.

Melvin and Marc had come to the dressing room to find the commander. They had not approached with stealth and were not even being especially quiet, but neither Tiffani nor Commander Winters heard them walk up. The two men could see the pair kissing through the open dressing room door. They looked at each other and reached out instinctively to touch hands for an instant. From their own experience they knew about the difficulty of love affairs outside the accepted norm.

Tiffani and Winters finally broke the kiss and she put her head against his chest. Her back was to the door. Winters opened his eyes and saw Melvin and Marc standing there in front of him. He blanched, but the director made a gesture with his hands that said, “It’s all right. It’s your business, not ours.”

Melvin and Marc considerately waited several seconds so that it would look as if they had not arrived until after the kiss. The commander patted Tiffani on the shoulder and turned her around in a fatherly manner. “Great show, Commander,” Melvin said as he walked into the room. “And another super performance from you too, young lady.” He paused. Marc smiled his compliments and Tiffani unconsciously straightened out her dress. “There’s a Lieutenant Todd waiting outside for you, Commander,” Melvin added. “He says it’s urgent. He asked me to tell you to hurry.”

Winters face was creased with wrinkles. What in the world is he doing here? he thought. It’s after ten o’clock on a Saturday night. “Thanks, Melvin,” he answered. “Tell him I’ll be out in a few minutes.”

The director and his friend turned and left the dressing room. Tiffani reached over for the lit cigarette, whose ash had grown so long it had nearly fallen out of the ashtray. She inhaled and handed it to Winters. “Did they see us kissing?” she asked anxiously.

“No,” lied Winters. But already he was realizing how untenable his fantasy was. Precious Tiffani, he thought. My teenage lover. We were lucky. But we cannot kid ourselves. We will be seen eventually. He looked into her eyes and saw the flame of adolescent passion. Again he felt the surge in his loins. He reached down and pulled her forcefully to him. And if the wrong person sees us, he thought as his lips tingled with her kiss, there is no limit to my risk.

Winters threw his cigarette down on the ground and stomped it out. He shook his head in disbelief. “You are telling me that you have taken those three into custody? And you’re holding them at the base?”

Lieutenant Todd was confused. “But sir, don’t you understand? We have an entire set of photographs. In three of them you can clearly see the missile. And there are other pictures that show the black guy in some kind of underwater structure down there in the ocean. Just as I had guessed. What more could we possibly need? We also caught them, red-handed no less, coming back from a dive with fifty pounds of gold bars in their backpacks. Fifty pounds!”

Commander Winters turned around and went back in the theater. “Go back to the base, Lieutenant,” he said disgustedly. “I’ll be there in five minutes.”

It was apparent that Melvin and Marc were just waiting for Tiffani and the commander before they locked up the theater and went to the party. “Can you take her over, Melvin?” he asked. “There’s a big mess out at the base tonight and it looks as if I will have to straighten it out.” The conversation with Todd had been sobering for Winters on at least two levels. First, it had reminded him that there was a real world out there, outside of the theater, a world that would not look kindly on a forty-three-year-old Navy commander having a sexual relationship with a seventeen-year-old high school student. Secondly, Todd’s astonishing announcement that he had indeed detained three civilians, one of whom was a well-known reporter, jolted the commander into realizing that his preoccupation with Tiffani had affected his work. I should never have let this thing get so far out of control, he thought. From here on out that lieutenant makes no move that I don’t personally approve.

“I’m sorry, Tiffani,” he said in a fatherly voice. He gave her an ambiguous hug and a light kiss on the top of her head. “I’ll come to the party as soon as I can.”

“Hurry or you’ll miss the champagne,” Tiffani said with a smile. Melvin turned off the lights in the theater. The four of them walked out the door.

Winters had parked down the street almost a block away. He waved to Tiffani as she climbed into Melvin’s car. I wonder if you will ever know, young lady, he thought. Know how close I came tonight to throwing everything away. In his mind’s eye it was twenty-four years before, on a cold night outside of Philadelphia, and he had just gone berserk and virtually raped Joanna Carr. Winters started his Pontiac and eased into the street. It would be so easy, he thought. Just one time to forget the rules and constraints. To dive into the water without looking first. He remembered his pact with God after he had spent the night with Joanna. So You kept Your part of the bargain. I guess And I became an officer and a gentleman. And a killer.

He winced. He turned the car past the swank Miyako Gardens and headed for the base. With great effort he forced himself to stop thinking about Tiffani and Joanna and sex. It’s not enough that I have this trial with Tiffani. At the same time I am assigned a redneck lieutenant who runs roughshod over civilians in his attempt to prove some cockamamie…

Commander Winters stopped at a signal. Slowly, the full impact of what Todd had told him began to sink in. Jesus. I may be in trouble too. Unlawful entry. Wrongful detention. They’ll throw the book at Todd… He eased his car through the intersection. He mechanically put a cigarette in his mouth and lit it. So I should be apologetic. But shit. That Dawson woman is a reporter. Bad bad news.

He had arrived at the base. He waved to the security guard and drove on to where Todd had said they were keeping the trio. Winters stopped in front of a plain white building situated on a small hill about fifteen feet above the street level. A nervous Lieutenant Roberto Ramirez was waiting at the edge of the road. He was holding two large, thick envelopes in his hands. Ramirez turned and called something toward the front door. Todd came out in a moment. He locked the door carefully, came down the steps, and walked toward the other two officers. Ramirez was already showing the photographs to Commander Winters when Todd joined them. The three men had a short but animated discussion.

“So what happened after you received my message?” Carol turned to the other two as soon as Todd disappeared out the door. They had not had many chances to talk in private since Todd and Ramirez had taken them into custody in the parking lot at the Pelican Resort.

“Troy was ready to split,” Nick laughed. “But I thought your warning only referred to the robot sentry. And since he had been quiet for several minutes, I figured we were already safe. I was still really pissed off about the second bag of gold bars. So I hurried back over to the gate.

“I was concentrating so hard on finding a way to pull the bag through the opening that I must have been oblivious to everything else. Suddenly I felt Troy jerk me backwards. Maybe a second later two or three sharks, one definitely a mako, slammed hard into the gate. I was certain the gate was going to fall into pieces.”

“Those sharks were really nasty, angel,” Troy interjected. “And stupid too. The big one must have banged against the gate a dozen times before he gave up.”

“The buoyancy bag with the gold bars was immediately ripped to shreds by the crazy sharks. They may even have swallowed most of the bars themselves. It was not fun being that close to them.” Nick shuddered. “When I close my eyes I can still see that mako’s teeth three feet away from me. I’ll probably have bad dreams for years.”

“I pulled Nick toward the ocean. I didn’t want any part of those mean bastards and I didn’t trust the gate to remain intact in case they launched another attack. We made it out in record time. Of course, neither of us expected to be greeted by the U.S. Navy when we returned to the station wagon.” Troy paused. “This Todd character, what’s his problem any way? He sure thinks he’s a bad ass. Is he just pissed because the professor decked him last night?”

Carol smiled. She reached her left hand over and put it on Nick’s leg just above the knee. Her hand remained there while she was talking. “Todd is one of the naval engineers trying to find the lost missile. I’m certain that he and his men must have been responsible for the break-ins at Nick’s apartment and my hotel room. Otherwise they wouldn’t have detained us.”

“What grounds do they have for holding us?” Nick inquired. He dropped his hand down and wrapped it around Carol’s. “It’s not against the law to have gold bars in a backpack. Don’t we have rights as citizens that prevent this kind of thing?”

“Probably,” Carol replied. She squeezed Nick’s hand and then retracted her own. “But as a reporter, I find this part of our adventure extremely interesting. You can tell that Lieutenant Ramirez is very nervous. He wouldn’t let Todd even ask us any questions until Commander Winters was contacted. And he has been very concerned about our comfort.”

As if on cue, the front door opened and the three naval officers walked in. Winters was in the lead with the two lieutenants just behind. Nick and Carol and Troy were sitting on gray metal auditorium chairs on the left of a partitioned area that served as a waiting room for the larger offices in the rear of the building. Winters moved into the area and half leaned against the large gray desk opposite them.

“I’m Commander Vernon Winters,” he said, his eyes meeting each of theirs in turn. “As Miss Dawson knows, I’m one of the senior officers on the base here. I am currently in charge of a secret project, code named Broken Arrow.” He smiled. “I’m sure you are wondering why you have been brought to the base.”

Winters reached out with his left arm and Ramirez handed him the infrared blowups that showed the missile in the most detail. He waved the photos at the three detainees. “One of the goals of project Broken Arrow is to find a Navy missile that has been lost somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico. Lieutenant Todd here believes, based on these photographs, that you know where that missile is. That is why he has acted to bring you here for questioning.” Winters’ voice rose in pitch and he began to wave his arms. “Now I’m certain I don’t need to remind you that state-of-the-art weapons systems are what keep our nation free and secure—”

“Spare us the patriotic lecture and the histrionics, Commander Winters,” interrupted Carol. “We all know that you are searching for a lost missile and that you think we may have found it. Sorry. We went out looking for it today but were unable to locate it again.” She stood up. “Now you listen to me a minute. Your zealous lieutenant there and his men have broken more laws than I can count. In addition to kidnapping us, they have looted and vandalized my hotel room and Mr. Williams’ apartment. They have also stolen some photographs and valuable equipment.” She fixed Winters with a hard gaze. “You sure as hell better have good reason for dragging us down here or I swear I’ll see to it that all three of you are court martialed.”

Carol glanced at Ramirez. He was squirming. “In the meantime,” she continued, “you can start by giving us an official, written apology, returning all our property, and making adequate payment for all the damages. In addition I want exclusive access to all Broken Arrow files from this moment on. If you don’t agree to all these terms, you might as well prepare right now to read about the Gestapo tactics of the United States Navy in the next edition of the Miami Herald.”

Uh oh, thought Winters. This is not going to be easy. This woman reporter intends to play the bluff and threat game. He pulled out a cigarette while he was thinking. “Would you please not smoke in here?” Carol broke into his train of thought. “We all find it offensive.”

Damn these aggressive nonsmokers. He replaced the Pall Mall in the pack in his pocket. Winters had been thrown off at first by Carol’s rapid attack, but he eventually regained his composure. “Now, Miss Dawson,” the commander began a minute later. He looked away from the trio, in the direction of the front door. “I can understand why you might be upset by what has happened. I will admit that our men may indeed have acted in an unwarranted manner while they were searching your rooms to find evidence. However…” Winters stopped in mid-sentence, turned around, and came back toward Nick and Carol and Troy.

“However,” he repeated. “We are talking about treason here.” He waited to let his threat register. “And I don’t need to tell you, Miss Dawson, that treason is serious business. Even more serious than journalism.” He hesitated again for effect and his voice became very stern. “If any of you have knowledge of the whereabouts of this missile and have conveyed that knowledge to a member of any foreign government, especially one viewed as inimical to our national interests, then you have committed treason.”

“What kind of dope have you been smoking, Commander?” Carol replied. “We freely admit that we’ve been looking for your missile. But that doesn’t make us spies. You have no case against us.” She glanced at Nick. He was admiring her performance. “I’m simply a reporter covering a story. This treason business of yours is pure fabricated bullshit.”

“Oh, yeah,” said Lieutenant Todd, unable to restrain himself. “Then where were these pictures taken?” He showed the photo of Troy in full diving regalia in the initial underwater room with the red and blue walls. He then turned and pointed to the backpacks sitting in the opposite corner of the room. “And what were your two friends doing with fifty pounds of gold after their dive tonight?”

“All right, man,” Troy remarked in an exaggerated manner. He took a step toward Lieutenant Todd. “All right. You’ve figured it out, haven’t you? We found the missile and sold it to the Russians for fifty pounds of gold.” His eyes widened as he looked at Todd. “And now the missile is onboard a submarine on its way to Moscow or wherever… Come on, man, get serious. We’re not that stupid.”

Lieutenant Todd’s temper flared up. “You black bastard—” he muttered before Commander Winters jumped between them. Winters needed some time to think. Todd’s questions were after all. still unanswered. Even if there were good answers, it was not difficult to understand how someone could have come to the conclusion, based on the photographs, that there might be a conspiracy involved.

In addition, there was the issue of defending the actions of his junior officers and the investigating team. If I let these three go now, thought Winters, then we are essentially admitting that we made an error in the first place… Ramirez was gesturing at the commander. He nodded outside with his head. Winters did not understand at first, but Ramirez repeated the motion.

“Excuse us a second,” Winters said. The two officers walked out on the porch above the steps, leaving Todd with Nick and Carol and Troy. “What is it, Lieutenant?” Winters asked.

“Commander, sir,” Ramirez answered, “my career is the Navy. If we release these three now, after no formal questioning—”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Winters interrupted abruptly. “I wish that none of this today had happened. But it did. Now we must finish it up properly and thoroughly or we have no defense for what we did.” He thought for a minute. “How long would it take you to get the video and sound equipment set up for a formal interrogation?”

“About thirty minutes,” Ramirez replied. “Maybe forty-five at the most.”

“Let’s do it. While you’re getting ready, I’ll prepare the list of questions.”

Shit, said Winters to himself as he watched Ramirez walk briskly toward his office on the other side of the base. I am indeed going to be here all night. He thought of his missed chance with Tiffani. I’d better call her and explain while I’m drafting these questions. He felt a sudden burst of anger toward Lieutenant Todd. As for you, he thought, if we come out of this unscathed, I will personally see to it that you are transferred to Lower Slobbovia.

It was after eleven o’clock. Lieutenant Todd stood near the front door. He was holding a billy club in his hand. Once before in the evening, just after Nick and Troy had reached the Pelican Resort parking lot, Todd had used the club on Nick’s back to coerce him into the car. Nick could still feel the welt.

“How long is all this going to take?” Troy asked. He was standing near the desk. “Can’t we go home now and get some sleep and come back on Monday morning…”

“You heard what the man said,” Todd replied. He was definitely gloating. “They’ve gone off to prepare for a formal interrogation. You should be using this time to get your story straight.” Todd pounded his palm with the billy club.

Troy turned to his companions. “All right, team,” he said with a wink. “I move we blow this joint. Let’s overpower this geek and blast out of here.”

“Just try it, you shits,” Todd rejoined. He smacked one of the empty folding chairs with his club for emphasis. “I’d like nothing better than to report that you tried to escape.”

Nick had not said much since Winters and Ramirez had left. He now looked across the room at Todd. “You know what annoys me the most about this, Lieutenant?” he said to his captor. “It’s that people like you,” he continued, without waiting for an answer, “end up in positions of power or authority all over the world. Look at you. You think that because you have us under your control, that makes you somebody. Let me tell you something. You aren’t shit.”

Todd did not try to hide his dislike for Nick. “At least I can find white men to be my friends,” he replied sarcastically.

“I do declare,” Troy chimed in swiftly. “I believe our associate Lieutenant Todd may be a bigot. We may be talking to a true life honky. Let’s see if ‘nigger’ is his next—”

“Boys, boys,” Carol interceded as Todd started to move toward Troy. “Enough is enough. “The room became quiet. Troy walked back over to his friends and sat down in his chair.

A minute later Troy leaned over to Nick and Carol. As he was whispering to them, he put the gold bracelet right next to his mouth. “You know, folks,” he said, “if we don’t get out of here soon, we may be here all night. I can well imagine the questions taking three or four hours. And that means the Navy will get to the dive site before us in the morning.”

“But what can we do?” Carol asked. “It would be a miracle if they let us just walk out without any questions.”

“A miracle, angel.” said Troy with a grin, “is just what we need. A good old-fashioned miracle. Like the blue fairy.”

“What are you shits whispering about over there?” The truculent Lieutenant Todd began to walk toward the bathroom at the west end of the long room. “Knock it off. And don’t try anything. The outside door is locked and I have the key.” He didn’t close the bathroom door. The urinal was fortunately out of view to the right.

There was not much light in the back of the small bathroom. As Todd was finishing his piss, he became aware of a strange sensation all over his right side, as if a thousand very small needles were sticking in him. Puzzled, he turned toward the corner. What he saw there sent an incredible shock of terror racing through his system.

In the corner, partially hidden in the poor light, was what could only be described as a six-foot carrot. The thicker end of the creature was balanced on four webbed pads planted on the floor. There were no arms, but about five feet above the ground, just under a maze of blue spaghetti of unknown purpose on top of its “head,” four vertical slits, each a foot long, were cut in what might have been its face. Out of each of these slits something strange was hanging. Troy would later explain to Nick and Carol that these were sensors, that the carrot saw, heard, smelled, and tasted with these dangling extensions.

Lieutenant Todd did not wait to study the creature. He let out a whoop and backed quickly out of the bathroom. He did not stop to retract his penis or zip his fly. When the weird orange thing next appeared in the light at the door to the bathroom, The lieutenant was certain it was going to follow him. He stared at it, petrified and immobile, for half a second. Then, when it did indeed move toward him, Todd immediately turned around, unlocked the front door, and burst through it.

Unfortunately he forgot about the eight concrete steps. In his panic he tripped and fell. He smacked his head hard on the second step and tumbled down to the bottom. He lay unconscious on his back on the sidewalk in front of the building.

Carol had cowered against Nick when she had first seen the carrot. Then they had both glanced at Troy. He was smiling and humming to himself, “When you wish upon a star… makes no difference who you are.” He seemed so blase about everything that Nick and Carol even relaxed temporarily. However, after Lieutenant Todd disappeared out the front door and the carrot turned to face them, it was difficult to remain calm.

“Nuts,” said Troy with a big smile. “I was really hoping for the blue fairy. I thought she might make me rich, or maybe even white.”

“All right, Jefferson,” Nick said. His face looked as if he had just eaten a lemon. “Please explain what that thing in front of us is.”

Troy first walked slowly over to the corner of the room to pick up their backpacks. “This, Professor,” he replied as he then walked directly up to the carrot, “is what we might call a holographic projection.” He put his hand into and through the orange body. “Somewhere in the universe there is supposedly a real life creature like this, but they have only sent his image to help us escape.”

Even with Troy’s explanation Nick and Carol did not want to come any closer to the stationary carrot than was absolutely necessary. They moved with their backs against the walls until they reached the door. “Don’t worry,” Troy laughed. “It won’t hurt you.”

The sensor hanging out of the slit on the far right of the carrot’s head was totally incomprehensible. Carol could not take her eye off of it. It looked like a wad of gooey honeycomb stuck on the end of a majorette’s baton. “What does it do with that?” Carol asked, pointing as she preceded Troy out the door.

“I don’t know, angel,” Troy answered. “But it must be fun.”

Nick and Troy joined Carol on the platform at the top of the stairs They all saw Todd at about the same time. They were naturally surprised to find him lying at the bottom of the steps. His head was bleeding. “Should we help him?” Carol wondered out loud as Troy bounded down the stairs in front of her.

“No way,” Nick replied quickly.

Troy bent down beside Todd and carefully examined the unconscious lieutenant from head to toe. He slapped the big man lightly on the cheek. Lieutenant Todd did not move. Troy winked at his friends at the top of the stairs. “The professor was right, my man,” he said, breaking into a grin, “you really aren’t shit.”

“So I kissed her,” Carol said with a laugh.

“You did what?” asked Nick. They were in Troy’s old Ford LTD. driving toward the Hemingway marina. After leaving the base they had walked the mile and a half to Troy’s duplex to pick up his car. Carol was beside Troy in the front seat and Nick was in the back next to the backpacks containing the gold and the information discs.

Carol turned around to Nick. “I kissed her.” She laughed again as Nick screwed up his face in disgust. “What was I supposed to do? The woman is stronger than most men. She had me pinned on the floor. There was something just a little suggestive about the way she was holding me…”

“Whoooee, angel,” Troy slapped the dashboard with his left hand. “You are amazing. What did superkraut do next?”

“She released her grip on my wrists. Just for a second. I think she was deciding whether to kiss me back.”

“Yuch,” said Nick from the back seat. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

“So you smashed her up side of the head and then ran off?” asked Troy. Carol nodded. Troy laughed heartily and then became more serious. “Be careful if you ever see her again, angel. Greta does not like to lose.”

“But you’re wrong about her in one respect, Carol,” Nick remarked. “Greta’s not into women at all. She likes sex with men too much.”

Carol found Nick’s comment smug and even irritating. She spoke across the front seat to Troy. “Why is it, Troy, that men naturally assume that any woman who has sexual relations with men could not possibly be interested in having sex with another woman? Is this another example of their fundamental belief in their own innate superiority?” She didn’t wait for an answer. Carol turned around again to talk to Nick. “And in case you’re wondering, the answer is no, I’m not a lesbian. I am relentlessly heterosexual, as much because of my San Fernando Valley middle class background as anything. But I will admit that sometimes I grow extremely tired of men and what I call their baboon demonstrations of macho.”

“Hey,” Nick replied, “I didn’t mean to start an argument. I was just suggesting—”

“Okay, okay,” Carol interrupted, loosening up a bit, “no harm done. I guess I am a little quick on the trigger.” She was quiet for a few seconds. “By the way, Nick,” she remarked then, “there’s one part of this that I still don’t understand completely. Why did Captain Homer go to such great lengths to hide the rest of the treasure all this time? Why didn’t he just sell it off as soon as he could?”

“Lots of reasons,” Nick replied. “Not the least of which was fear that he might somehow be discovered and indicted for the perjury he committed during our trial. But this way he also escapes the IRS, the value of the gold appreciates in time, and, most importantly, Greta has to hang around if she wants her whole share. He almost certainly converts some of it to cash from time to time, probably through a third party. But never enough to call attention to the transaction.”

“So you see, angel,” Troy said, “that’s why there’s no way he can call the police. Because he would have to admit everything. I bet he’s really pissed off.”

Troy pulled into a left-hand turn lane and waited for the signal to change. A car pulled up beside them on the right, next to Carol, and she just happened to look idly in that direction. It was a Mercedes.

Later on Carol would recall that time seemed to dilate for her. Each second of the next minute was recorded in her memory in super slow motion, as if it were covering a much longer period of time. Greta was driving Captain Homer’s car and was staring at Carol. Homer was sitting beside her, waving his fists, shouting something that Carol couldn’t hear through her closed window. Carol focused on Greta’s amazing eyes. Never had she seen such hatred. For just an instant Carol looked away to alert Troy and Nick. When she turned back she saw that Greta had a pistol pointed directly at her.

Three things happened almost simultaneously. Carol ducked, Troy pulled into the intersection against the red light, barely missing a speeding car, and Greta fired the gun. The bullet ripped through Carol’s window and crashed into Troy’s door, somehow miraculously missing them both. Carol sat cringing under the dashboard in the front seat. She fought against panic and tried to catch her breath.

The chase was on. It was after eleven-thirty on a Saturday night in Key West and the traffic in the residential area was light. Troy’s Ford was no match for the Mercedes. Twice more Greta maneuvered into position and the Ford was sprayed with bullets. Windows were broken and pitted but none of the occupants of the car was injured.

Nick was lying on the floor in the back seat. “Get down-town if you can,” he shouted at Troy. “Maybe we can lose them in the traffic.”

Troy was hunkered down behind the steering wheel as far as he could go. He could barely see the roadway in front of them. He was driving like a lunatic, swerving across the four-lane street into oncoming traffic, honking frantically, and making it impossible for Greta to predict his next move. “Where are the cops when you really need them?” he said out loud. “We have maniacs firing guns at us in the middle of Key West and there are no men of blue anywhere in sight.”

After Nick’s suggestion Troy suddenly spun around in the middle of the street and started heading in the opposite direction. Greta was not prepared. She hit the brakes on the Mercedes, went into a skid, caromed off a parked car, and then resumed the chase.

There were now no cars on the street in front of them and the Mercedes was closing the gap. “Uh oh,” said Troy, fearing another attack. He violently pulled the steering wheel to the left, shot through an alley, into a parking lot, and back onto a narrow street. A few moments later he made a quick turn into a driveway. The car became flooded with light and Troy jammed on the brakes. “Everybody out,” he hollered. While Nick and Carol were trying to determine what the hell was happening, Troy was giving his car keys to a tall figure dressed in a red uniform.

“We’re just having drinks,” he said. They heard the screech of the brakes on the Mercedes. “And those people behind us,” Troy said in a loud voice to the half dozen onlookers, including two parking attendants, who were standing nearby, “have guns and are trying to kill us.”

It was too late for Greta and Homer to escape. Troy had driven into the parking entrance of the Miyako Gardens Hotel and already another car had come into the circular drive behind the Mercedes. Greta threw the car in reverse, smashed against the grill and bumper of the Jaguar behind her, and then tried to make a run for it by squeezing around Troy’s Ford. Troy and the uniformed attendant dove for cover as Greta hit the open door of the Ford, lost control of the Mercedes, and eventually crashed into the parking kiosk in the middle of the driveway. As Nick and Carol stumbled out of the car, four hotel security men surrounded Greta and Homer.

Troy walked over to join his friends. “Anybody hurt?” Both Carol and Nick shook their heads. Troy broke into a grand smile. “I guess that ought to take care of those characters,” he said.

Carol gave him a hug. “It was a brilliant idea to drive here,” she said. “What made you think of it?”

“Birds,” Troy answered.

“Birds?” Nick responded. “What the fuck are you talking about, Jefferson?”

“Well, Professor,” said Troy, opening the door to the elegant hotel and following his colleagues inside into the open atrium, “when they were about to catch us that last time, I realized that they were probably going to kill us for stealing their gold. And I wondered if there really were birds in heaven. My mother always told me that there were.”

“Troy,” Carol said with a smile, “you are so full of shit. Come to the point.”

“Exactly, angel,” he answered. “Look around you.” In the atrium of the Miyako Gardens was a magnificent aviary whose tiny, threaded wire rose four stories into the air under a bank of skylights. Hundreds of colored birds played among the vines and palm trees and brought the real sound and feel of the tropics to the lobby of the hotel.

“When I thought about birds,” Troy could no longer restrain a crazy laugh, “I realized we were in the vicinity of this hotel and the plan sort of jumped into my mind.”

The three of them stood together and gazed up at the aviary. Carol was in the middle. She reached out her hands to both men.