"It looks like a ten-hour trip, submerged," Joe said. "That's two hours too long, and there's no way of getting more oxygen out of the gills than we're getting now. We'll just have to use less. Everybody lie down and breathe as shallowly as possible, and don't do anything to use energy. I'm going to get on the radio and see what I can raise." Big chance, I thought. These boat radios were only used for communicating with the ship while scouting; they had a strain-everything range of about three hundred miles. Hunter-ships don't crowd that close together when they're working. Still, there was a chance that somebody else might be sitting it out on the bottom within hearing. So Abe took the controls and kept the signal from the wreck of the _Javelin_ dead astern, and Joe Kivelson began speaking into the radio: "Mayday, Mayday, Mayday, Mayday. Captain Kivelson, _Javelin_, calling. My ship was wrecked by an explosion; all hands now in scout boat, proceeding toward Sancerre Bay, on course south-by-southwest from the wreck. Locator signal is being broadcast from the _Javelin_. Other than that, we do not know our position. Calling all craft, calling Mayday." He stopped talking. The radio was silent except for an occasional frying-fat crackle of static. Then he began over again. I curled up, trying to keep my feet out of anybody's face and my face clear of anybody else's feet. Somebody began praying, and somebody else told him to belay it, he was wasting oxygen. I tried to go to sleep, which was the only practical thing to do. I must have succeeded. When I woke again, Joe Kivelson was saying, exasperatedly: "Mayday, Mayday, Mayday, Mayday..." 11 DARKNESS AND COLD The next time I woke, Tom Kivelson was reciting the Mayday, Mayday incantation into the radio, and his father was asleep. The man who had been praying had started again, and nobody seemed to care whether he wasted oxygen or not. It was a Theosophist prayer to the Spirit Guides, and I remembered that Cesário Vieira was a Theosophist. Well, maybe there really were Spirit Guides. If there were, we'd all be finding out before long. I found that I didn't care one hoot which way, and I set that down to oxygen deficiency. Then Glenn Murell broke in on the monotone call for help and the prayer. "We're done for if we stay down here another hour," he said. "Any argument on that?" There wasn't any. Joe Kivelson opened his eyes and looked around. "We haven't raised anything at all on the radio," Murell went on. "That means nobody's within an hour of reaching us. Am I right?" "I guess that's about the size of it," Joe Kivelson conceded. "How close to land are we?" "The radar isn't getting anything but open water and schools of fish," Abe Clifford said. "For all I know, we could be inside Sancerre Bay now." "Well, then, why don't we surface?" Murell continued. "It's a thousand to one against us, but if we stay here our chances are precisely one hundred per cent negative."