There were flecks of foam about the reefs which flanked the half-moon beach when all three LCVP's rose on their steps like amphibians ready to take off, and headed north for the beach, so white it dazzled the eyes. Behind the beach lay the spined brush wherein, theoretically, enemy troops were lying in wait to rip us apart. I always thrilled to a landing, even a make-believe one. So did the men, boring though peacetime soldiering was. The APD was dropping dud shells ashore. The jets were diving on us, just to make a noise, and our three motors sounded like the crack of doom. The men kept down because that was the rule, but occasionally I pulled myself up and looked ahead over the ramp--which would come crashing down when we rammed our nose into the sand. Out over that ramp the marines would charge, to race for cover and swing into position to give our new weapons a workout. We'd be in in five minutes. The boat-handlers were talking to the ship and the jets. I just listened in. I didn't see or hear a thing out of the ordinary. "Stand by!" came the cry. "We're smacking in a coupla seconds!" The jets were having fun right over the beach and for a moment I envied their pilots. When we got ashore it was going to be like sitting atop a burning galley stove, on that sand. It would be even worse under the brush on the land beyond that rose to the hills and the coral cliffs which crowned them. The other two LCVP's had drawn abreast now. We hit the beach nearly together. I heard the rasping of the chains as the ramps went down, hitting the sand. There was knee-deep water over the outer ends of the ramps. The marines dashed ashore. The first odd thing happened then; one instant there was water over the ends of the ramps, then there was none. As a matter of habit every marine did his job. Without command, they sprayed out to right and left, getting unbunched as quickly as possible, just in case a theoretical enemy projectile should land among them. But their deployment slowed and came to a halt. I think they, like myself, must instantly have missed the racketing of the jets. I looked up. The sky, a pale blue, with slowly moving clouds in which I was aware of greenish tints, was utterly empty of the four jets which were supposed to support our maneuver. I whirled and looked back. Where the Caribbean had been there was a huge sprawl of desert, blinding in the midday sun, stretching away southward to a semicircle of brooding hills. I judged their crests to be at least four thousand feet high. And where those crests were, five minutes before, the Caribbean had been--fully a mile deep under the stern of the _Odyssey_! Where the _Odyssey_ might now be I hadn't the slightest idea.