No! Thea swam like a pollywog but not at night! Suddenly dizzy, Ellen tried to call. Not a single word came out.

Was this a nightmare too? Her limbs began to jerk as if on strings. She found herself whirling on the sand, possessed by a hundred impulses she had never known before.

She saw herself as if from a distance, frozen-faced, as stiff as a zombie, spinning and strutting, lurching on the beach.

The child, knee-deep in the water, gazed out at the Sound. Then she squatted, shoved off carefully, and began to dog-paddle away.

Screaming silently, her grandmother danced in the moonlight, all alone.

***

Carla peered from the wharf down at the darkened ketch. Suddenly she was frightened. She was rape bait out here, in her filmy shorty nightgown, with Mike out God knew where, chasing a wraith.

Ridiculous. There was no rape on Whiskey Cay, or anything else.

Boom... boom... boom...

"Is somebody aboard?" she called, shivering. If anyone answered, she'd flee.

Boom... boom... boom...

Whatever it was, it was getting louder. They would easily hear it from the house. It would keep them up all night.

She stepped aboard. The drumbeat was coming from the deckhouse. She crossed the deck and peered in a porthole.

The lab inside was bathed in a weird, greenish glow, as if existing at the bottom of the sea. The computer screen was lit, and a series of peaks was marching across it, moving from left to right.

My God. All this noise from the heart of a conch no bigger than her foot?

She tried the deckhouse door. It was locked, but she knew where Mike kept the key. She moved to the mizzen, reached under its canvas sail cover, and touched a halyard winch. Hanging from the winch by a lanyard was the key, buoyed with a cork from a bottle of Dago Red in case it dropped into the water.

She opened the deckhouse door. Inside, the noise was deafening and getting louder all the time. She flipped on a light and looked around.

She hated to fool with Jake's equipment; even Mike was leery of his partner's temper. But the drumming, if it kept increasing, would be unbearable.

The computer was easy; she'd had access to an Apple Lisa, herself, in Boston, taking a course in computer-aided design. The switch was invariably behind them so that you wouldn't inadvertently turn them off. She found the switch but didn't have the guts to try it. Suppose she lost data he wanted to save?

She glanced at the other equipment on the chart table. One gray-paneled unit looked promising. It read "Transducer and Sonic Amplifier, Mark I Mod. 2."

She found a rotary switch labeled "Audio Gain: Up. Down. Off."

She hesitated. She'd better not touch that, either.

Boom... boom... boom...