He pushed back his mask and glared at her. What she meant was, "Watch it, Buster, you’re forty-three." Screw that. Jean-Paul was hardly younger, and had probably been diving the mess already for half an hour. Xanadu was due at the yard, and it was his own damn fault that she was snubbed where she was, missing the afternoon breeze. He was not about to let her hang here as a tribute to his own misjudgment while he charged around trying to get his tanks filled. He tugged down his mask and dove.

He seemed to plummet downward forever until he found the bottom. He felt for his chain, and followed it to his anchor. The visibility was less than a foot; the whole area was turgid with the mud they’d stirred.

Taarii, topside, had apparently eased Xanadu’s anchor back to the bottom. Her chain hung now in a steep catenary. To untangle the mess they must somehow hoist Linda Lee’s hook over Xanadu’s chain, not once, not twice, but three times, one for each twist. Then, if they were lucky, they could drop his own anchor for him to reset when Xanadu had sailed away.

He grabbed the shank of his CQR, heaved mightily in the mud, and tugged it toward the surface. When he was half over Jean-Paul’s chain, he felt the Frenchman helping him. They pitched it over, grabbed it again, and repeated, swimming side-by-side, stirring the murk until it was impossible to tell which way the surface lay. They heaved it over, found it again, and started to drag it upwards.

Mitch felt his lungs convulsing, but the Frenchman showed no sign of letting go. He could feel the granite body next to his own, straining. A rock-hard chest with hair like steel wool pressed him against the chain. The anchor was caught, no, free, and ready to drop, no, snagged...

He hung on frantically, damned if he’d give up first. He felt Jean-Paul pat his shoulder once, saying goodbye, then tug at his arm, urging him to let go too. He shrugged him off, caught a quick glimpse of the orange trunks rising through the murk, bound for the surface through a cloud of bubbles. Still he hung on, hauling the anchor over the chain with a last mighty effort.

He hated to let it fall, for then, later, he would have to haul it up from the raft, hand over hand, to reset it. Reluctantly, he began to ease his grip, then changed his mind. He had a feeling of immense and sudden power.