“ Glad to hear your paranoia's left you. You like the idea? I mean about us being the only two people on Earth, the only two that matter at the moment?”
“ I might…”
“ Maybe we could arrange for something a little more… permanent.”
“ What? Knock off the rest of the population?”
“ I meant, maybe we could do this again. This doesn't have to be our only visit to Hana.”
“ Okay, maybe we can, but maybe we can also concentrate on this night?” She leaned over and kissed him. Jim passionately returned the kiss. In his embrace all her fears melted like ice under a South Pacific sun, and it did feel as if they were the only two people on the planet, at least this stretch of it on the edge of nowhere.
“ Let's move into the tent where the sleeping bags are,” he suggested. “As pretty as this black beach is from the air, it'll work havoc on your backside.”
“ Whataya mean, my backside?”
“ Huh?”
“ It's my turn to be on top.”
“ Just who's counting and who's making the rules around here?” he countered.
“ Make no mistake about it: I am. Chief.”
“ What good is it then to be called Chief?”
“ Come here. Chief…”
They embraced again and Parry lifted her into his arms, carrying her toward the tent.
“ No, let's go for a swim first,” she suggested.
“ A swim…” he said as if it were a mad notion.
“ When's the last time you went skinny-dipping with a girl. Chief?”
“ A swim it is,” he agreed, carrying her out and into the surf. As their clothes became soaked, each peeled pieces of the other's clothing away.
6:35 A.M., July ZO, Maui
The lovemaking lasted well into the night. Spent and asleep in one another's arms, the couple was roused by a sudden change in the environment inside the tent which made Jessica bolt upright, causing Jim to do likewise. The incoming tide. They'd pitched the tent too close and now water was lapping at the sleeping bags. It was dawn on Maui. Parry rousted her up and out, fighting to salvage all the equipment. Once this was done, he turned to her sleepy eyes and said, “Let's make the dive.”
“ What about breakfast?”
“ No dice. Not where we're going.”
“ Are you sure this is safe?”
“ No, but we're both well-experienced divers, and I wouldn't ask you to go where I wouldn't go, and furthermore, I've brought a lifeline. We'll secure it to one of the outcroppings and we stay buckled to it at all times, if necessary.”
From the sound of the crashing waves, she thought it'd be absolutely necessary.
“ How're we going to see anything with the sediment as stirred up as it's likely to be?” she asked.
“ Look here,” he said, snatching out a curious photograph. It was an aerial photo taken from a satellite in space. He pointed to their exact location.
“ How'd you get this on such short notice?”
“ Suffice it to say, I have my contacts at Science City. Look here.” He pointed. “See here and here, these lines cutting away from the Spout.”
“ I do. What are they?”
“ Experts tell me there's a valley on the bottom that's been cut away by the years of run-out, possibly thirty feet below the surrounding terrain at bottom level.”
“ Like an underwater caldera?”
“ Inside which there could possibly exist a treasure of evidence against Lopaka Kowona, maybe not. Any rate, if we can make it to the bottom, locate the valley and enter it, we'll be protected from the powerful current.”
“ Still looks dangerous.”
“ Jess, if it looks bad, we'll turn around, come straight back up.”
She nodded. “Okay, I'm game.”
“ Somehow, I knew you'd say that.”
Before they did anything else, Jim swam out to the jagged rocks, careful not to be caught in the incoming waves and forced against the volcanic spikes. There he tied the one-hundred-foot- long nylon cable with its anchor-end being sent into the depths below the Spout tunnel. In the meantime, Jessica began gearing up and with Jim's return to shore, they were soon both in their colorful diving outfits, tanks on their backs, wading out into the waves like a pair of alien creatures from another planet.
Out of water and flapping their fins, they were an awkward pair, like beached dolphins, but the moment they submerged they became free of weight as they expertly descended.
She knew she'd been right about the sediment here in their private little bay, for even in the protected area, hugged by natural barriers on two sides, the waves created a gray snowstorm before their eyes. It was impossible to see Jim's fins or his signals just ahead of her. She grabbed onto his left fin and held on, and he guided her. He was an accomplished diver, like herself, capable of navigating underwater with his compass alone. He'd obviously trained in dark water and night diving, as she had.
They weren't met with undersea life except for jagged coral reefs that seemed bent on reaching out to tear their suits. The current was swift and no fish would be foolish enough to be caught in it here. So they saw no other signs of life or light, save the brightness of the sun overhead, and even that was being slowly crushed as they ventured deeper and deeper.
A date with Jim Parry was a lot of things, but it was never dull, she told herself here.
He slowed ahead, the current tugging fiercely at his frame, turning him like a top. They'd both found the anchor line and were holding onto it for guidance and now dear life. She half hoped now that Jim saw what she saw, that it was more than foolish to go on, that it was deadly dangerous to be here. Still, he corkscrewed down, holding to the lifeline.
She'd let go of his fin once they'd found the line, holding to the line instead. She momentarily forgot her fright for herself and worried instead about Jim when a powerful wave overhead sent a monstrous current into her. The current forced her and the lifeline in one direction toward the coral bed and the rock outcroppings, slamming her into the volcanic base. She felt the rap against her air tank, knowing that it was dented badly by the sudden impact, the sound of the thud softened by the absorbing environment and her own labored breathing through the regulator in her mouth. She feared the next wave might send her skull into the bone-hard rock. But then she was swept in the opposite direction, toward the open ocean, the lifeline so stretched and with so much weight per ounce tugging at it, she feared it might snap. Somehow Jim had gone on, but she felt trapped between the incoming and outgoing current. She forced herself to tug for the bottom, follow Jim, get out of the influence of the run-out.
She used all her strength to do so, her body being whiplashed by the power of sea meeting land. But suddenly, she felt free of the hostile force that had so wanted her. She was below the current's sweep, and waiting anxiously for her, his one hand on the lifeline, the other extended and waving her on, was Parry, bubbles fleeing madly around him. He was on his knees in calmer water.
She realized that the satellite photo was correct. Here was a crevice created over eons of time by the forces of this watery world. They were in the vestibule and hopefully the repository created here by the constant wash of time.
It was a large area, perhaps the size of a Littie League baseball infield, handily, small enough that they could scan every inch to locate what they'd come for, //… if there was anything to find. The current was still strong here, pushing them about like corks, but it was not so stalwart that they could not maneuver, if they forced the issue. She'd dived in places where the current swept by like space and stars against the porthole of an airplane, seaweed and small fish caught up in it and passing by her mask at thirty, maybe forty miles an hour, and yet she had still slowly managed to make headway against the current to return to the diving boat, using a draw line as last resort. She'd been in such a dive off the coast of Key Largo at the John Pennekamp underwater Coral Reef State Park in the Florida Keys once, when the dive-master, an enormous whale of a man whose only interest, it seemed, was his
