"But," she protested, "if you run it into the water they can see from the air in daylight. I know. They used to spot our sub. Why not run it off into those weeds and little trees? They'll hide it and maybe we could get it later." It wasn't a bad idea but he didn't feel like admitting it. He gunned the rod into the tangle of undergrowth. * * * * * Danniels came back to the girl with his arms and face laced with scratches from the limbs. He tried to roll his trousers up at the cuff but they wouldn't stay. So he would spend a soggy ten minutes while they dried. He told the girl to go ahead and he went after her, marking the spongy wet sand and slapping into the white-scummed, very blue water. The tiny submarine was just where Julie had said it would be. He waited impatiently as she worked the miniature airlock. They squeezed down into the metallic hollowness of the interior and Julie screwed the hatch shut, a Mason lid inappropriately on a can of sardines. There were a lot of white-on-black dials that completely baffled Danniels. He had never been particularly mechanically minded. His field was closer to pure science than practical engineering. Because of this, rather than in spite of it, he had great respect for engineering. It bothered him being in such close quarters with a woman after the months of isolation as a Jonah, but he had enough of the conventions of society fused into him and enough other problems to attempt easing his discomfort. "It isn't much further," Julie at last assured him. He was becoming bored to the point of hysteria. For the past several months he hadn't had much diversion but he had not been confined to what was essentially an oil drum wired for light and sound. One of the lights changed size and pattern. He found himself tensing. "That?" He pointed. "Sonadar," Julie hissed. "Patrol boat above us. Don't make any noise." Danniels pictured the heavily equipped police boat droning past above them and managed to keep quite silent. Something banged on the hull. It came from the outside and it rang against the port side, then the starboard. The rhythm was the same, unbroken. Danniels knew somehow the noise from both sides were made by the same agency. Something with a twelve-foot reach. Something that knew the Morse code. Da-da-da. Dit-dit-dit. Da-da-da. S. O. S. _Help._ "It's not the police," Julie said. "We've heard it before." She added, "They used to dump non-dangerous amounts of radioactives into the lake," as she decided the police boat had gone past and started up the engines again. Danniels never forgot that call for help. Not as long as he lived. III The electron microscope revealed no significant change in the pattern of the bacteria. Danniels decided to feed the white mice. He got out of his plastic chair and took a small cloth bag of corn from the warped, sticking drawer of the lab table.