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10:26 P.M.

Cynthea was sleeping in her cabin when the beeper of her walkie-talkie went off on her night table. She sprang up as she heard Dante’s voice.

She dashed in her navy blue pajamas toward the Control Room with the walkie-talkie to her ear. “Dante! You shouldn’t be doing this!” she scolded as she ran.

“Hey, it’s done, Cynthea. I told you I could climb this thing. Here I am!”

“Oh my God!” she groaned.

As soon as she reached the Control Room and saw the live feed, frustratingly dark and erratic as it was, she grabbed the shipboard satphone and speed-dialed.

“This is Cynthea Leeds, may I speak to Barry? Just wake him up, honey. Trust me, OK? DO IT!” She looked at Peach, frowning, and put her hand over the receiver: “Can you bring down the contrast and brighten the image or something, Peach? We gotta get more than that.” She took her hand off the receiver. “Barry, I’ve got a rock climber with a camera thirty feet from the top of Henders Island, ready to go live. Wake up, Barry. Wake up! We’ve got to go LIVE now! This is the broadcast of the century! We can get it through the news blackout from Henders Island! Damn it, that’s our hook! Barry?”

Peach could hear Barry breathing through the phone’s ear speaker.

“Do you know what time it is on the East Coast right now, Cynthea? It’s one-thirty in the morning!”

“That’s what makes it legendary television, Barry!” Cynthea shook her head, glancing at Peach. “Do it! You’ll have the exclusive rights to a MILLION RERUNS! This is like the first MOON LANDING, BARRY!” She put a hand over the receiver. “Tell Dante to hold off from getting to the top-Barry’s getting his fat ass out of bed and is going down to the office, but Dante has to stay put for ten minutes.” She put the satphone to her ear. “OK, Barry, sweetie. Thank you, my darling!”

“OK, I hope this night vision is coming through-I have the camera strapped to my chest now and you’re looking at the cliff above me,” Dante said. “I’m climbing a seam. You may be able to see some gliders just outside the crack. I’m protected from them in here, but they’ve been getting a little close for comfort- one of them seems to have taken a nip out of my elbow. But mostly they seem to eat these big fireflies that were coming after me…”

Dante climbed fifty feet before setting some pro. He estimated that he was now a hundred feet from the top.

Peach’s voice suddenly crackled through the walkie-talkie. “Can you stop about thirty feet from the top and wait for a green light, Dante?”

“No problem. Don’t make me wait too long, though, the last bit’s an overhang, dude.”

“OK, cool. Keep videoing, we’re getting all this. You shouldn’t have done it, you know,” Cynthea scolded. “But you’re going to be a superstar, baby!”

“Woo-hoo!” Dante grinned as he steadily climbed up the crack, ducking occasionally to avoid a swooping glider.

“Are you getting this, Barry?”

“We’re getting it, we’re getting it. It’s exciting stuff.”

“Are we live?” There was a pause and Cynthea glared at the phone. “Barry?”

“It’s great stuff, Cynthea, but I don’t know… I’m having dinner with Congressman Murray tomorrow night from the FCC Oversight Committee to hash out the merger details-”

“Why, you cocksucking motherfucking backstabbing son of a bitch,” Cynthea snarled.

“Now, Cynthea, we can maybe get better airtime and a real special out of it later without getting in trouble with the FCC or violating the goddamned Patriot Act or God knows what else the lawyer is nodding his head at me about right now, all right?”

“Don’t let me down, Barry!” Cynthea threatened.

Dante dangled from a pair of cams that he had chocked into the roof of the overhang, thirty feet below the cliff’s summit. As he looked across the chasm, the opposite cliff face seemed to draw nearer, then recede. “It’s kind of gnarly up here, man. We’re having another earthquake, I think. I hope you’re getting this, man!”

“Try to hold it steady.” Peach’s voice came over the walkie-talkie taped to Dante’s upper arm.

“You try!” Dante snarled.

Dante set two nuts in small cracks above his head and equalized the tension on the tie-ins. Cliff-gliders leaped past him, devouring the flying, glowing bugs attracted to his dangling body.

He swung forward and caught the edge of the overhang, locking off with one arm and reaching up with the other to place a final cam.

He was ten yards of rock away from the top. “Tell me when, guys. And make it fast, OK?”