Now, one at a time, these springs are harvested by small instruments inside the spongy outer section of the pellet and then loaded in carriers that are electrically fired toward the central cavity of the pellet.  Within that cavity sits a single black, amorphous spot, its exterior constantly changing shape as its opaque material shifts around to follow unknown stimuli.  This spot is surrounded by a yellow goo that fills the remainder of the cavity.

      The first spring slips out of its carrier, then locates and penetrates the spot.  The spring can be seen for an instant moving toward the center.  However, it is broken up and destroyed within milliseconds.  Other springs are fired into the cavity at regular intervals and all try, after penetration, to reach some special region in the spot.  Finally one of the procession succeeds and the spot changes color to bright red.  In rapid succession, some enzyme in the spongy outer section of the pellet is dumped into the yellow goo, turning its color a little toward green, and all the rest of the springs disappear, apparently absorbed by the pellet structure.  The entire pellet itself next elongates and extends a miniature propulsion system into the emerald liquid.  After carefully steering around the many hazards, it then joins the queue of fertilized pellets moving, one by one, through a round diaphanous membrane in the bottom of the beaker.

      The fluid dense with pellets speeds along a narrow tube until it reaches a partially closed container approximately the size of the beaker.  Inside this translucent jar, a mechanical, spoonlike object digs into the stream of liquid flowing through and plucks out the pellets.  They are lifted up and then suspended momentarily around the passing fluid in a heavy gas enclosed by the jar.  Within moments each of the pellets splits and their carapaces apparently dissolve, leaving visible inside the jar an array of the little red spots surrounded by the off-yellow goo and suspended in an invisible gas.

      The goo extends itself slowly throughout the jar above the flowing fluid until all the open areas between the red spots are filled.  When the emerald stream below drops to a trickle and then disappears altogether, the goo hardens into a gelatin and fills the ports where the fluid once entered and departed.  Within the jar are several thousand red spots embedded in the yellow-green gelatin.  The spots undergo no visible change throughout this process.

      Time passes.  Activity in the jar ceases.  Occasionally mechanical probes to test the stability of the gelatin are inserted into the jar at the old fluid ports.  At last the translucent jar is removed from its storage location by what looks like a robotic forklift.  It is placed on a moving belt that now carries it, along with several dozen other jars containing different kinds of objects (blue pencils, purple stars, and red boxes can all be seen) also suspended in yellow-green gelatin, to a vast circular oven almost an inch in diameter.  Here all the jars are carefully baked together.  Inside the oven, the molecules of the jar material immediately evaporate.  Next a pair of disembodied manipulator hands wrap an incredibly thin blanket of connective filaments around all the gelatinous structures.  After some time this ensemble unit is then pulled automatically out of the oven and packaged inside a gold metallic envelope whose several layers are designed to provide all the remaining environmental protection.

      The hypergolic propellants mix and burst instantly into flame, pouring fire out the rocket nozzle.  The slender vehicle rises, slowly at first, but later with astonishing speed.  Before reaching the zenith of its flight, the rocket stage underneath the strange paraboloid payload falls away and tiny motors ignite on the underside of the flying boomerang.  At the apex of the trajectory, the entire package suddenly explodes and apparently disintegrates.  Hundreds of pieces of the original payload fall toward the surface of the planet in seemingly random directions.

      Closer inspection reveals that each individual piece resulting from the explosion is made of a gold metallic material encased in plastic.  A small sensor/propulsion package is attached to the plastic; it supplies needed vernier corrections during the descent after the controlled explosion.  The plastic debris falls upon a strange, hybrid planet, obviously artificial judging by the wide variety of incongruous surfaces and cloud groupings that can be recognized from an altitude of tens of miles.  There are scattered liquid lakes of different hues plus discontinuous surface topography with regions of desert and grasslands as well as barren mountains and canyons.  A connected quarter of the planet is covered with clouds .  The clouds are here white and fleecy, there brown and thick.  Some of the clouds are active, building and changing with hints of turbulence.  Other parts of the cloudy region are static, small wisps of white stretching without change across the sky.

      One of the plastic vehicles plunges through a misty blue cloudbank into an emerald sea.  The plastic is left on the surface, but the encased gold metallic object sinks thirty feet to the floor of the ocean.  For a day or two there is no discernible change in its appearance.  Then a protrusion begins to form in its north polar region, on the top of the golden sphere as it sits on the ocean floor.  The growth expands slowly, until the spherical shape appears to have a large carbuncle on its top.  A metamorphosis now takes place.  On the outside of the protrusion, the hard metal surface softens and begins to resemble an organic membrane.  Although the membrane is thick and dense, it occasionally bulges, suggesting some motion on the other side of its golden barrier.

      Eventually a thin black rod, a probe of some kind, thrusts through the surface into the emerald ocean.  A second probe becomes visible, then a third, both long black rods like the first one, but each equipped with strikingly different apparatus scattered along the length of the rod.  Something larger pushes against the membrane, once, twice, then finally breaking through.  What a strange contraption!  It’s an aerodynamic shape about three inches long, in two separate segments with a joint between them.  The forebody is a nosecone; the afterbody is long and slender and tapers to a point.  In addition to the three probes on the front of its forebody, it has four other furlable appendages or arms, two connected to the side of each segment.

      It swims over to a nearby underwater plant with its arms stored next to its smooth body.  There it unfurls the multi-faceted appendages and begins to examine the plant.  An astonishing array of tiny instruments studies the plant for a few moments and then the entity moves away.  The same procedure is repeated with each plant encountered.  Eventually the thing finds a plant that it “likes” and its pincers remove a -major leaf.  The leaf is neatly folded into a smaller volume and is then carried back to the object with the golden membrane.

      The strange forager is joined by a partner, a carbon copy of itself, and by two fat fish with multiple arms and legs.  The latter pair scuttle off to the side and begin modifying the ocean floor.  Days pass.  The things with the probes work ceaselessly, bringing more and more varieties of plant and animal life back to the home base.  The legged fish meanwhile have constructed, out of available sand, rocks, shells, and living creatures, almost a thousand tiny, sealed rectangular homes on the ocean floor.  These fish entities too work without break.  Their next task is to transport each of the red spots, one at a time, from the golden cradle to their new houses.

      If a microscope were available, it would show that some structure was already developing inside the red spots, giving them definition and distinction, by the time of their initial transport.  But they are still very, very small.  Once the red spots and their gelatin protection are carefully implanted inside their tiny houses, the foragers make routine stops on each trip to deposit a portion of their harvest.  At the same time, the fish with legs, the architects and builders of the rectangular houses, begin working on transparent, igloolike homes for the embryos of another species.

      A year later moonlight falls on the emerald lake.  Several hundred eager, excited, wriggling necks, some royal blue and some pale blue, struggle upward to find the moon.  Their heads pivot to face all directions and maybe two dozen separate indentations and orifices can be seen in each face.  The necks crane this way, then that way.  The silent serpents are searching for something.

      From the direction of the moon a bizarre ship approaches on the water.  It is large compared to the young serpents, its twin towers standing about eight feet out of the water and about six feet above, on the average, a squarish platform fifteen feet on a side that forms the bottom of the boat.  The top surface of this platform is irregular, undulating, and cratered.  The platform floats smoothly upon the water.

      The ship comes into the middle of the serpents and stops.  The serpents divide into two groups according to the color of their necks and then line up on either side of the ship in very orderly rows and columns.  A single musical note, a B-flat with a Hautish timbre, comes from the ship.  Quickly the note is repeated up and down the rows and columns by each of the serpents on the two sides of the boat.  Then a second note issues forth from the ship, also sounding like a flute, and the process repeats itself.  For hours the music lesson continues, covering a range of both notes and chords, until some of the serpents on each side lose their voices The exercise concludes with an attempted ensemble performance by the royal bluenecked serpents, but the result is a painful cacophony.

      Inside the ship, every note, every movement, every response by the juvenile serpents to the music lesson is carefully monitored and recorded.  The ingenious engineering design of the boat is based upon the key controlling elements of the original cradle.  However, although segments of gold metallic material (as well as the long black rods and even portions of the fat fish with legs) appear in the computer that runs the ship, the primary constituents of its mass are derived from great quantities of local rock and organic matter taken from the floor of the emerald lake.  The ship is the quintessential music teacher, a virtually perfect synthesizer equipped with microprocessors that not only store all the responses of the pupils, but also contain software that will allow experimentation with a range of individualized methods of teaching.

      But this sophisticated robot, engineered by the artificial .intelligence packed around the serpent zygotes and made almost entirely of chemical compounds extracted from material found in the neighborhood of the landing point, is itself being watched and studied from afar by test engineers.  The current test is in its earliest stages and is progressing splendidly.  This is the third different configuration tried for the music teacher, the hardest part of the design of the cradle that will carry the serpent zygotes back to Canthor.  The first was an abysmal failure; the embryos developed into adolescents all right, but the teacher was never able to instruct them well enough that they could sing the mating song and reproduce.  The second design was better; it was able to teach the serpents to perform the courtship symphony and a new generation of the species was produced.  However, this next group of adult serpents was not able subsequently to teach their progeny to sing.

      The best of the bioengineering personnel in the Colony were brought in to study this problem.  After pouring over quadrillions of bits of accumulated data associated with the development of the serpents and other related species, they found a curious correlation between the degree of nurturing provided by the parent and the resulting ability of that infant, upon reaching maturity, to teach its own offspring.  The artificial intelligence package responsible for the first six months of serpent life was then redesigned to include a surrogate mother whose only purpose was to hold and cuddle the fledgling serpents at regular intervals.  Subsystem tests proved successful; this slight alteration of the early nurturing protocol produced adult serpents that were able to teach their children to sing

      This demonstration test lasts for more than four millcycles.  At the end of the period, the test is declared an unqualified success.  A strong, creative serpent population nearing twenty-five thousand fills the artificial lake.  Limitations to future growth are only test related.  Eventually the test survivors are transported to another locale in the Zoo Complex and the Canthorean serpents are added to the list of species ready for zygote repatriation.

SATURDAY

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.”