“Wow!” Yaeger said. “You didn't tell me you had programmed the full picture. All it needs now is a couple of dolphins.”

Instantly, simulated seas appeared under the ship, and at her bow a pair of dolphins leaped and splashed. The three-dimensional image spun slowly as the whistles and twitters of the dolphins filled the air

Yaeger clapped his hands and laughed like a child with de light.

“Max, you're brilliant!”

“I should be,” the voice replied. “You created me.”

Not only had Yaeger created the vast artificial intelligence system, but he had programmed his own voice into the original program. He didn't like talking to himself, so he modified it into Max's female tones. The computer system had developed a feminine personality all on its own.

“Flattery will get you everywhere,” Yaeger said.

“Thank you. If you're through I'll take a break to allow my circuits to cool down. Holograms always exhaust me.”

Yaeger knew Max was prone to exaggerate and that the ship represented only a tiny fraction of the capacity in her circuits. But along with a feminine version of his own voice, he had programmed in some human traits, including the need to be appreciated. He waved his hand. The ship, the roiling seas, the leaping dolphins vanished in a blink of the eye.

Yaeger turned to the sound of applause and saw Austin standing there clapping his hands.

“Hi, Kurt,” he said with a grin. “Have a seat.”

“Quite a show,” Austin said, easing into a chair next to Yaeger. “Right down to the vanishing act. I doubt even David Copperfield could make a full-blown English capital ship disappear.”

Yaeger was truly a magician, but his sleight of hand was performed with computers rather than a top hat and wand. He was an unlikely-looking magus, dressed with a studied scruffiness in Levi's jeans and denim jacket over a plain white T-shirt. Beat-up cowboy boots adorned his feet. Yet he presided like a master sorcerer over the vast computer network that covered nearly the entire tenth floor of the NUMA building. The National Underwater & Marine Agency oceans center stored and processed the most enormous amount of digital data on oceanography and related sciences ever assembled under one roof.

“That was nothing,” he said with boyish delight. Excitement danced in the gray eyes behind wire-rimmed granny glasses perched on his narrow nose. “Wait until you see the treat Max and I have planned for you.”

“I can hardly wait. That was Sovereign of the Seas?”

“Right. Launched in 1637 at the orders of Charles I. One of the largest seagoing vessels constructed up to that time.”

'Also one of the most top-heavy, as I recall. She had her top deck cut down, which was appropriate, given that Charles lost his head."

“I'll add the modifications later. The new program will be available for the nautical archaeology department of any university that wants it. Max has been making a list of hundreds of old vessels. We feed their plans, architect's renderings, dimensions, history, everything we know about a vessel, into the computers. Max pulls it all together into a holographic reconstruction. She'll even fill in missing details when information is incomplete. Max, would you mind telling Kurt what you found with the material he gave us?”