"Don't be a fool," she said. "You sound like a revival of a Mickey Spillane comedy. You can't bring her back to life and you've got a job to do for the Syndic." "You do it," he said, and snapped another of the blunt, fat, little cartridges into the magazine. She cast off, reached for the moderator-rod control and pulled it hard. "Gee," he gasped, "you'll sink us!" and dashed for the controls. You had seconds before the worm-gears turned, the cadmium rods withdrew from their slots, the reactor seethed and sent boiling metal cycling through the turbine-- He slammed down manual levers that threw off the fore and aft mooring lines, spun the wheel, bracing himself, and saw Lee Falcaro go down to the deck in a tangle, the .45 flying from her hand and skidding across the knurled plastic planking. But by then the turbine was screaming an alarm to the whole base and they were cutting white water through the buoy-marked gap in the harbor net. Lee Falcaro got to her feet. "I'm not proud of myself," she said to him. "But she told me to take care of you." He said grimly: "We could have gone straight to the wharf without that little layover to pick you up. Take the wheel." "Charles, I--" He snarled at her. "_Take the wheel._" She did, and he went aft to stare through the darkness. The harbor lights were twinkling pin-points; then his eyes misted so he could not see them at all. He didn't give a damn if a dozen corvettes were already slicing the bay in pursuit. He had failed. XVI It was a dank fog-shrouded morning. Sometime during the night the quill of the dead reckoner had traced its fine red line over the 30th meridian. Roughly half-way, Charles Orsino thought, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. But the line was straight as a string for the last four hours of their run. The damn girl must have fallen asleep on watch. He glared at her in the bow and broke open a ration. Blandly oblivious to the glare, she said: "Good morning." Charles swallowed a mouthful of chocolate, half-chewed, and choked on it. He reached hastily for water and found the tall plastic column of the ion-exchange apparatus empty. "Damn it," he snarled, "why didn't you refill this thing when you emptied it? And why didn't you zig-zag overnight? You're utterly irresponsible." He hurled the bucket overside, hauled it up and slopped seawater into the apparatus. Now there'd be a good twenty minutes before a man-sized drink accumulated. "Just a minute," she told him steadily. "Let's straighten this out. I haven't had any water on the night watch so I didn't have any occasion to refill the tube. You must have taken the last of the water with your dinner. And as for the zig-zag, you said we should run a straightaway now and then to mix it up. I decided that last night was as good a time as any."