“Zebediah?” said the hermit, and something awoke in him. You could see it in his eyes: a light behind all the misted confusion of his poor, injured brain. “Zebediah? Where is Zebediah?”

“Well, we don’t know for sure, but we think he wished himself to be with his father on the Argot.”

“He can’t be on the Argot,” snapped the hermit. “They haven’t worked out all the bugs yet.”

“But he is,” I chimed in. “Zebediah’s father, Mr. Madden, has stolen it. The air force is out to shoot it down as soon as they see it. They think it’s full of Japanese spies. And then Zebediah … Zebediah will be killed.”

“The air force is probably less concerned than they are giving out. It may go for a time, but it won’t go indefinitely. It’s unlikely it will fly for the kind of periods of time the air force has claimed. It’s a tool for saber rattling,” said the hermit, roughly impatient. He no longer looked dull and confused. You could see the kind of man he had been before the cold waters got him.

“But Fixing Bob and everyone on the radio, the air force itself, is calling it a long-distance surveillance plane. They said it can fly for days without refueling,” said Sina.

“Yes, yes,” barked the hermit. “That’s the story given out. That’s the official story, but the truth is quite different.”

“But Fixing Bob must have known what it’s really capable of. He’s maintained it for years,” I argued.

“Oh, maintenance!” scoffed the hermit. “Why would anyone entrust such a secret to maintenance? I’m telling you, it’s only a matter of time. That plane is going down.”

“It’s already been up for hours,” I said.

“Where would they have taken it for that period of time?” asked the hermit. “More than likely they’ve already crashed somewhere remote and just haven’t been found.”

“Oh no, oh no,” cried Sina, leaping around and biting her knuckles.

“And if they haven’t, they will soon,” said the hermit.

“Zebediah and Fixing Bob don’t know that!” I cried. “So they’re going to keep flying until they explode!”

“It won’t explode,” said the hermit. “It will just lose altitude and crash.”

“Oh no! Oh no!” cried Sina.

“Then Zebediah will crash.” I thought it best to keep putting Zebediah’s name before him, as this seemed to tether the hermit’s brain to some kind of here and now. “Zebediah will die! Zebediah will die!”

“But you must have known Fixing Bob was going to try to fly that plane,” Sina said, “because Zebediah said you gave him the access code to give to his father. You helped him print it!”

“I gave Zebediah the access code because he wanted to know how the plane started,” said the hermit. “He never said his father wanted to take it up.”