positive nothingness. Sanders’ eyes were open, but they did not see-not his bubbles as he breathed, nor the rim around the faceplate of his mask, nor a finger held an inch in front of his face. For a second, he believed he had suddenly been struck blind. Water washed around his nose. He tilted his head to clear his mask, feeling for the top of the faceplate, pressing hard with his fingers, exhaling through his nose, and he saw undulating pinpoints of light- starlight refracted by the water.
As he exhaled and his lungs emptied, Sanders began to sink toward the bottom. He took a breath, and his descent slowed. The water, chilly at first, was warming to body temperature inside his wet suit. He felt warm and helpless and peaceful, as if he were revisiting the womb. He spread his arms and let himself glide softly to the bottom.
His flippers touched sand. There was a gentle current, enough to make standing difficult, so he dropped to his knees. The light hung around his wrist by a rubber thong. He felt for the on-off switch and pushed it with his thumb. A cylinder of yellow stabbed through the black.
Sanders had no idea where he was or which way he was facing. He swung the light left and right over the sand and rocks and was startled by the brilliance of the colors brought out by the incandescent beam. By day, the sand had looked pale blue-gray, the rocks blue-brown, the fish blue-green. But the flashlight brought out the natural in colors. He saw the whites and reds and oranges of the coral, the power-pink belly of a slumbering parrot fish. The light hit a line of brown, covered by green, and Sanders recognized it as one of the timbers from the wreck. The head of a small barracuda appeared at the edge of the beam of light.
It lingered for only a moment. Sanders looked around.
Outside the narrow shaft of yellow, all was black. He wondered if sharks were attracted by light.
Something touched his shoulder. He jerked backward in spasmodic shock and felt fingers tapping him. Then he saw the black figure of Treece move into the beam of light. Treece gestured for Sanders to turn off the light and follow him; he held out his hand.
Sanders took the hand, turned off the light, and when he felt a slight tug, began to kick alongside Treece.
Still he saw only black. Without Treece’s special mask, the infrared light was invisible. Sanders assumed that Treece was homing in on the cave, for there was no hesitation to his movement: he was swimming fast, in what felt like a relatively straight line.
Treece slowed, then stopped. With his hand, he guided Sanders to a spot on the bottom. He tapped the light, and Sanders pressed the switch.
They were at the mouth of the cave.
The light reflected off the white sand and rock walls. Sanders saw the rock marker they had placed in the cave. Treece’s hand moved it and set it in the sand next to the infrared light. A finger pointed to the depression in the sand where the rock had been, telling Sanders to train the light there. The finger withdrew, and a hand appeared, holding the Ping-Pong paddle. Treece moved the paddle over the sand in short, swift motions. The sand rose in billows: in seconds, the cave was filled with a cloud. Sanders put his face down beside the light. The hole in the sand grew. It was several inches deep, more than a foot in diameter. Treece brought his face down beside Sanders’, and the two heads clustered about the light as the paddle waved the sand away.
Treece stopped fanning. At first, Sanders thought he had given up. Then he saw two fingers reach into the sand hole and withdraw, clutching what looked to Sanders like a brown leaf. There was a faint impression on the leaf, traces of writing or printing. The fanning resumed, and Sanders saw a glint in the sand. The fingers probed again, as delicately as if they were extracting a splinter from a child’s foot. An ampule was pulled from the sand.
Soon more leaf appeared-rotten wood, Sanders now assumed, from the cigar boxes that held the ampules; and then another ampule. Then two ampules together.
Then, as the hole deepened, the corner of a box, faded and flaking. Sanders backed off a few inches, for most of the box seemed to lie outside the cave.
Treece fanned until he had uncovered the box.
It lay upside down, a brown square about six inches by eight. He set the paddle down and gently lifted the box bottom, which came away in one mushy piece. Inside, protected by a honeycomb of cardboard partitions, lay forty-eight ampules, all intact.
Treece didn’t touch them. He picked up the paddle and began to fan again, moving away from the mouth of the cave. The sand that swirled around the cave was already sifting between the ampules, covering them.
Treece fanned until he found the edge of another box, then stopped. He held his left wrist up to the light and rolled back his wet-suit cuff.
Sanders saw the dial of his wrist watch: they had been down for thirty-two minutes. Treece’s thumb pointed up, and his hand reached to take the light from Sanders.
Sanders rose slowly in the black water, watching the beam of light below him. It would move a few feet, then stop, then move again. Sanders swam without using his arms, kicking smoothly, making as little commotion as possible, for he suddenly felt lonely and vulnerable in the blackness. His senses were useless, and he did not want to attract the attention of anything equipped to prey upon the weak or solitary.
His head broke the surface. He looked around and saw that he had misjudged his ascent; he had risen away from the boat, not toward it. It rested at anchor, a black sculpture in the moonlight, about fifty yards away. He did not want to swim on the surface, where he would make sounds and vibrations that an animal below might determine were being emitted by a wounded fish. So he ducked underwater and kicked in the general direction of the boat. Twice he poked his head out of water, twice discovered that he had strayed way wide of the boat.
Since he could see nothing on the bottom against which to measure his progress, he could not maintain a steady course.
He was breathing too fast, too deeply, his lungs gasping for more air than the regulator would give them. Stop it!
he told himself. Stop it, or you’ll run out of air. He stopped swimming and lay motionless in the water, forcing himself to breathe more slowly. Gradually, the ache in his lungs subsided. He raised his face from the water, saw the boat, and, with a smooth, deliberate breast stroke, swam toward it.
Sanders reached the boat and held onto the diving platform at the stern that made it possible for divers to board the boat without assistance. He unsnapped his shoulder harness and heaved his tank onto the platform.
Then he hauled himself up and sat, breathing heavily, letting his flippered feet dangle in the water.
He heard a distant whining from the direction of the bow.
Treece’s head popped up beside the platform. He spat out his mouthpiece and said, “Where’s Charlotte?”
“Forward. Sounds like she’s having a nightmare.”
“Not bloody likely.” Treece pulled himself, tank and all, onto the platform. With one motion, he shed his tank and stepped over the transom onto the deck. “She doesn’t sleep on the boat. She waits for me, so she can lick the salt off my face.” He started forward, and Sanders followed.
As they neared the bow, the whining grew louder, more frantic. Sanders saw the outline of Treece ahead of him, a wide, towering figure that moved with certainty and grace even in the dark. He saw Treece stop, then heard him cry, “Bastards!”
“What is it?” As he drew even with Treece, Sanders saw the dog.
She had thrust herself against the port gunwale, where she thrashed in a contorted ball, wildly biting at her flanks.
Something shiny protruded from her rear end, just above the tail, where the dog couldn’t reach with her teeth. She had tried to get at whatever it was, and in gnashing at her flanks had torn tufts of hair and flesh from her haunches. Exhausted, whining, she continued to snap at herself.
Treece squatted down and put out a hand to soothe the dog. The dog curled her lip and growled. “It’s all right,” Treece said softly. “It’s all right.” He grabbed the dog’s neck and forced her head to the deck. With his other hand, he reached around and yanked a piece of steel from the dog’s back.
Freed from pain, the dog moaned and licked herself.
“What happened?”
Treece strode aft, swung down into the cockpit, and snapped on an overhead light. In his hand was a two- inch-long dart shaped like a feather.
