LeBaron reveled in the challenge. The exhilaration of second guessing the moods of the antique gas bag and wrestling with her aerodynamic whims far exceeded any enjoyment he received from flying any of the five jet aircraft belonging to his corporate holdings. He sneaked away from the boardroom at every opportunity to travel to Key West so he could island-hop around the Caribbean. The Prosperteer soon became a familiar sight over the Bahama Islands. A native worker, laboring in a sugarcane field, looked up at the blimp and promptly described her as a "little pig running backwards."

LeBaron, however, like most entrepreneurs of the power elite, suffered from a restless mind and a driving urge to tackle a new project lying over the next hill. After nearly a year his interest in the old blimp began to wane.

Then one evening in a waterfront saloon he met an old beach rat by the name of Buck Caesar, who operated a backwater salvage company with the grandiloquent title "Exotic Artifact Ventures, Inc."

During a conversation over several rounds of iced rum, Caesar spoke the magic word that has fired the human mind into insanity for five thousand years and probably caused more grief than half the wars-- treasure.

After listening to Caesar spin tales of Spanish galleons littering the waters of the Caribbean, their cargoes of gold and silver mingled with the coral, even a shrewd financial manipulator with the acute business sense of LeBaron was hooked. With a handshake they formed a partnership.

LeBaron's interest in the Prosperteer was revived. The blimp made a perfect platform for spotting potential shipwreck sites from the air. Airplanes moved too fast for aerial survey, while helicopters had a limited flying time and churned up the surface of the water with wash from their rotor blades. The blimp could remain airborne for two days and cruise at a walk. From an altitude of 400 feet, the straight lines of a man-made object could be detected by a sharp eye a hundred feet beneath a calm and clear sea.

Dawn was crawling over the Florida Straits as the ten-man ground crew assembled around the Prosperteer and began a preflight inspection. The new sun caught the huge envelope covered by morning dew, giving off an iridescent effect like that from a soap bubble. The blimp stood in the center of a concrete runway whose expansion cracks were lined with weeds. A slight breeze blew in from the straits and she swung around the mooring mast until her bulbous nose faced into it.

Most of the ground crew were young, deeply tanned, and casually dressed in an assortment of shorts, bathing suits, and denim cutoffs. They took scant notice as a Cadillac stretch limousine drove across the runway and stopped at the large truck that served as the blimp's repair shop, crew chief's office, and communications room.