“No!” he said, in the first nonscatological English phrase Mitch had ever heard him use. “She is bad woman.”

“What?” Mitch gasped, disbelievingly.

Louie jabbed the mountain of flesh before him. “Allez!” he ordered. The Vespa snorted into the traffic.

“Wait a minute, you little son of a bitch—” yelled Mitch. An Australian couple off the liner, garlanded in cameras and leis, stared at him.

Angrily, he crumpled the photo and dropped it in a trash can. He hated to keep things from Lindy, but that was one message, after all she had done for the little bastard, she wasn’t going to get.

Chapter 10

CHAPTER 10

Dawn had not come. The flash, when she saw it occasionally, seemed no closer. But the cramp did not return. The dark seas were calm.

She rested again. She lay back and looked straight up. A magnificent star was overhead. It shone steadily, like a planet, but there were tiny beams radiating from it, like a star on a Christmas card. She thought that it might be Antares, at the head of Scorpio, and tried to trace the tail and the stinger.

One night at Papeete, under a gold-studded sky, Jean-Paul had shown her how easy it was to pick the star directly overhead. That was how the ancient Polynesians could find an island in an infinite sea. Their navigators would know, in summer perhaps, that a certain star peaked directly over an atoll after dusk. They would sail and paddle, using the sun and the swells as a compass by day. Each twilight they would readjust their course toward the star. When it was straight overhead just after nightfall, they would be at the island.

But how did they know there were islands out there in the first place? Very simple: accidentellement. Par hasard, a fisherman might be swept downwind by current or the trades. He might die of thirst. But if he survived, he might drift upon an uninhabited island. He could not sail home against the trades, but if the island was pleasant, and the fishing good, he would use the coconut radio. Eh bien: a brother or a son would dream of the star and the island, and know, and the whole village would launch their pirogues and set sail. You see?

OK, Jean-Paul. Or Mitch. Either one. Winner take all. I am here, right below the big orange star. Antares, I think, because it is big, and it is bright, and I think I see Scorpio’s tail leading away. So steer for Antares, and quickly, OK? Before it begins to set?

Mitch, darling, are you coming, or not?

There was no answer. It was no use. Mitch did not really believe. Jean-Paul might receive her, but God knew where he was now.

She turned toward the Southern Cross and began to swim again. It was ages before she saw the flash, and when she did it seemed no closer.