"This guy came by and asked me if I wanted to buy it. He didn't want to sell it because it had been in his family for six generations, but he was broke and needed the airfare to get home. I didn't want to buy it like that, a family antique and all, but what could I do? The guy said I'd be doing him a favor."

With a superhuman effort Kate refrained from asking how much the guy had charged him for the figurine, and with still another superhuman effort did not tell Andy that billikens had not appeared on the Alaskan scene until the Klondike Gold Rush in 1899 brought the first Orientals into the Yukon and some sourdough thought up the billiken in Buddha's image. She even managed to refrain from asking how someone could just "wander" by the fourth boat in a raft, and was justifiably proud of herself and her restraint.

"Isn't Alaska just the greatest place?" Andy said, beaming. Fortunately it was a rhetorical question and Kate was not required to answer. "Oh, I almost forgot.

Want your check?" He handed her a slip of paper.

"Well, since it's here." She examined the figures written on it, her mouth pulled into a wry expression. $8,300.

Eighty-three hundred smackeroos. Eight thousand three hundred dollars in legal tender for all debts, public and private. No matter how many times she read it, it came out the same.

Yes indeed, Jack Morgan just might live after all.

Folding the check carefully, she tucked it into her pocket and went down to her stateroom for a change of clothes.

Andy watched quizzically when she reemerged on deck and started back across the railing. "Where are you off to now?"

She flashed a grin at him. "Got a date."

He cast his eyes heavenward. "Ask a stupid question."

After extensive research and careful study of the resulting data, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has decreed that on average there are only eight days of sunshine per year in the Aleutian Islands. This day, midway through October, usually the first month of the storm season, was, incredibly, one of them. The storm that had blown the Avilda back to Dutch had blown out again, and on its heels was a high pressure system that stretched as high, wide and handsome as they could see in every direction. The view from five thousand feet up was spectacular.

"I don't believe this," Kate said over her headset.

"Don't believe what?" Jack said. He barely cradled the yoke in one large fist, his feet relaxed on the pedals.

There was no turbulence, and Cecily the Cessna sailed smoothly down the Aleutian sky for all the world like a Cadillac sailing down a freshly paved section of interstate.

"I don't believe that, for one thing," she said, pointing to Jack's relaxed grip. "I don't believe you're steering this crate with one finger."

His look was of mild surprise. "Why not?"