contagious laughter, his unrelenting grasp of hope, his strength of character sustained and helped them face the worst that nature could throw at them. Never did they perceive a bare hint of depression in his perspective, whatever the situation. No matter how strained he appeared as he sighted his sextant on the stars or warily watched for a sudden change of the wind, he was always smiling.
When she realized she was falling deeply in love with him, Maeve’s independent spirit fought against it. But when she finally accepted the inevitable, she gave in to her feelings completely. She continually found herself studying his every move, his every expression as he jotted down their position on Rodney York’s chart of the southern sea.
She touched him on the arm. “Where are we?” she asked softly.
“At first light I’ll mark our course and figure the distance separating us from Gladiator Island.”
“Why don’t you give it a rest? You haven’t slept more than two hours since we left the Miseries.”
“I promise I’ll take a nice long siesta when we’re on the last leg of the voyage,” he said, peering through gloom at the compass.
“Al never sleeps ‘either,” she said, pointing at Giordino, who never ceased examining the condition of the outriggers and the rigging holding the boat together.
“If the following wind holds and my navigating is anywhere near the mark, we should sight your island sometime early morning on the day after tomorrow.”
She looked up at the great field of stars. “The heavens are lovely tonight.”
“Like a woman I know,” he said, eyes going from compass to the sails to Maeve. “A radiant creature with guileless blue eyes and hair like a shower of golden coins. She’s innocent and intelligent and was made for love and life.”
“She sounds quite appealing.”
“That’s only for starters. Her father happens to be one of the richest men in the solar system.”
She arched her back and snuggled against his body, feeling its hardness. She brushed her lips against the mirth lines around his eyes and his strong chin. “You must be very smitten with her.”
“Smitten, and why not?” he said slowly. “She is the only girl in this part of the Pacific Ocean who makes me mad with passionate desire.”
“But. I’m the only girl in this part of the Pacific Ocean.”
He kissed her lightly on the forehead. “Then it’s your solemn duty to fulfill my most intimate fantasies.”
“I’d take you up on that if we were alone,” she said in a sultry voice. “But for now, you’ll just have to suffer.”
“I could tell Al to take a hike,” he said with a grin.
She pulled back and laughed. “He wouldn’t get far.” Maeve secretly sensed a flow of happiness at knowing no flesh-and-blood woman stood between them. “You’re a special kind of man,” she whispered. “The kind every woman longs to meet.”
He laughed easily. “Not so. I’ve seldom swept the fair sex off their feet.”
“Maybe it’s because they see that you’re unreachable.”
“I can be had if they play their cards right,” he said jokingly.
“Not what I mean,” she said seriously. “The sea is your mistress. I could read it in your face through the storm. It was not as if you were fighting the sea as much as you were seducing it. No woman can compete with a love so vast.”
“You have a deep affection for the sea too,” he said tenderly, “and the life that lives in it.”
Maeve breathed in the night. “Yes, I can’t deny devoting my life to it.”
Giordino broke the moment by emerging from the deckhouse and announcing that one of the buoyancy tubes was losing air. “Pass the pump,” he ordered. “If I can find the leak, I’ll try and patch it.”
“How is Marvelous Maeve holding up?” Pitt asked.
“Like a lady in a dance contest,” Giordino replied. “Limber and lithe, with all her body joints working in rhythm.”
“She hangs together until we reach the island and I’ll donate her to the Smithsonian to be displayed as the boat most unlikely to succeed.”
“We strike another storm,” said Giordino warily, “and all bets are off.” He paused and casually glanced around the black horizon where the stars melted into the sea. Suddenly, he stiffened. “I see a light off to port.”
Pitt and Maeve stood and stared in the direction Giordino indicated with his hand. They could see a green light, indicating a ship’s starboard side, and white range masthead lights. It looked to be passing far in their wake toward the northeast.
“A ship,” Pitt confirmed. “About five kilometers away.”
“She’ll never see us,” said Maeve anxiously. “We have no lights of our own.”
Giordino disappeared in the deckhouse and quickly reappeared. “Rodney York’s last flare,” he said, holding it up.
Pitt gazed at Maeve. “Do you want to be rescued?”
She looked down at the black sea rolling under the boat and slowly shook her head. “It’s not my decision to make.”
“Al, how say you? A hearty meal and a clean bed strike you as tempting?”
Giordino grinned. “Not half as inviting as a second go-around with the Dorsett clan.”
Pitt circled an arm around Maeve’s shoulder. “I’m with him.”
“Two days,” Maeve murmured thankfully. “I can’t believe I’ll actually see my boys again.”
Pitt said nothing for a moment, thinking of the unknown that lay ahead of them. Then he said gently, “You’ll see them, and you’ll hold them in your arms. I promise you.”
There was never any real inclination to turn from their established goal. Pitt and Giordino’s minds ran as one. They had entered a zone where they were indifferent and uncaring of their own lives. They were so wrapped up in their determination to reach Gladiator Island that neither man bothered to watch as the lights of the passing ship grew smaller and gradually disappeared in the distance.
When the interisland cargo ship carrying the dismantled antenna steamed into Halawa Bay on Molokai, all hands lined the railings and stared in rapt fascination at the peculiar vessel moored in the harbor. The 228-meter- long ship, with its forest of cranes and twenty-three-story derrick rising in the middle of its hull, looked like it had been designed and constructed by an army of drunken engineers, spastic welders and Oklahoma oil riggers.
An expansive helicopter pad hung over the stern by girders as if it was an add-on accessory. The high bridge superstructure rose on the aft end of the hull, giving the ship the general look of an oil tanker, but that’s where any similarity ended. The center section of hull was taken up by an enormous conglomeration of machinery with the appearance of a huge pile of scrap. A veritable maze of steel stairways, scaffolding, ladders and pipes clustered around the derrick, which reached up and touched the sky like a gantry used to launch heavy rockets into space. The raised house on the forecastle showed no sign of ports, only a row of skylight-like windows across the front. The paint was faded and chipped with streaks of rust showing through. The hull was a marine blue, while the superstructure was white. The machinery had once been painted myriad colors of gray, yellow and orange.
“Now I can die happy after having seen it all,” Gunn exclaimed at the sight.
Molly stood beside him on the bridge wing and stared in awe. “How on earth did the admiral ever conjure up the Glomar Explorer?”
“I won’t even venture to guess,” Gunn muttered, gazing with the wonder of a child seeing his first airplane.
The captain of the Lanikai leaned from the door of the wheelhouse. “Admiral Sandecker is on the ship-to-ship phone, Commander Gunn.”
Gunn raised a hand in acknowledgment, stepped from the bridge wing and picked up the phone.
“You’re an hour late,” were the first words Gunn heard.
“Sorry, Admiral. The antenna was not in pristine shape. I ordered the crew to perform routine repair and maintenance during disassembly so that it will go back together with less hassle.”
“A smart move,” Sandecker agreed. “Ask your captain to moor his ship alongside. We’ll begin transferring the antenna sections as soon as his anchors are out.”
“Is that the famous Hughes Glomar Explorer I’m seeing?” asked Gunn.
