Steve slept in plain blue cotton pajamas. Jerry wore sweatpants and a ratty T-shirt. Odds were that left them both about equally comfortable. Jerry scrambled up into the top bunk. The mattress was better than he’d expected. Goldilocks would have approved. It wasn’t too hard or too soft, but just right. However many millions the CIA had spent on the Glomar Explorer, some of the money must have gone into keeping the crew happy.

He turned off his reading lamp a little before eleven. Steve’s stayed on. It didn’t bother Jerry. He fell asleep right away.

He woke with a jerk after what didn’t seem very long. The rumble of the ship’s engines had got louder. And her motion had changed—she felt like a ship on the ocean, not one peaceably tied up to a pier. They were moving! They were on their way … to a spot in the middle of the North Pacific. To a Russian sub. To bringing up a Russian sub, if everything worked the way it was supposed to.

Steve’s reading light was still on. Jerry grabbed his watch off the little steel shelf by his head. The dim light from below was enough to tell him it was a quarter to one.

“You awake up there?” Steve asked quietly. The thrash must have tipped him off.

“Nah, I’m still asleep,” Jerry said.

After a few seconds digesting that, Steve chuckled. “Okay. We’re heading out now to take advantage of the high tide. We draw a lot of water. When the tide’s low, we might not make it over the sandbars.”

“That’d be embarrassing.” Jerry imagined a swarm of tugboats trying to pull the grounded Glomar Explorer free.

“Maybe a little, yeah. Anyway, that’s what’s going on,” Steve said. “But since you’re still asleep, you don’t need to worry about it. G’night.” He turned off his lamp and plunged the cabin into darkness.

So there, Jerry thought. Pretty soon, Steve started to snore. He wasn’t loud, but he was noticeable. Jerry noticed. He didn’t mind Anna snoring when she lay next to him, but this seemed different. He couldn’t have said how or why, but it did.

Having been startled out of deep sleep, he took a while to find it again. Just when he thought he never would, he did. He woke one more time when Steve went to the side door and used the head, but returned to sleep before his roommate came back. They both got up at eight o’clock.

Breakfast was as good and as copious as dinner had been. Jerry washed down two fried eggs, four strips of bacon, and crispy hash browns with two cups of coffee. Steve had his eggs scrambled, and sausages instead of bacon. He remarked, “Not everybody your age drinks coffee.” He was most of the way through his third cup.