Dave said the Glomar Explorer was designed to work once. If it worked twice, everyone would be amazed. Over the few days after the Chazhma sailed away, Jerry began to wonder whether all the complex systems the Explorer carried would work even once. They had trouble separating Clementine from the docking legs, and more trouble with the pipe-handling system.

“It’s supposed to be automated, dammit,” Dave grumbled. “We can sort of make it go, but we’ve got to have somebody keeping an eye on everything all the goddamn time. That gets wearing, you know?”

The pipe-farm guys and divers worked regular shifts, twelve hours on, twelve hours off. The engineers and CIA men were on call around the clock. They ate and slept when they weren’t trying to smooth out problems.

And, just to make matters more delightful, another Russian snoop showed up to keep an eye on the putative seafloor mining ship. This one was a lot less prepossessing than the Chazhma: she was an oceangoing tug, maybe 150 feet long, with “SB-10” painted in fading Cyrillic letters on either side of the bow.

Jack Porter, the CIA man in charge of security, scratched at his beard—which was thicker than Jerry’s, though not in the same league as Professor Krikorian’s—as he scowled at the tug. “SB is right,” he said. “The Russian use those bastards to spy all over the damn world.”

“Not exactly hiding what they’re up to, are they?” Jerry asked.

Porter’s smile was thin to the point of starvation. “Now that you mention it, no.”

The SB-10 had hung back at first, though its crew had to know radar would have picked it out. Now, though, it was making circuits of the Glomar Explorer at a distance of no more than a hundred yards. Crewmen pointed cameras and binoculars at the bigger vessel.

Jerry didn’t need long to notice that not all the crewmen were. “They’ve got a woman aboard!” he exclaimed.

“Two, I think,” Jack answered. “They do that sometimes. You ask me, it causes more problems than it solves.”

Jerry hardly heard him. Except on the screen, he hadn’t seen anyone of the female persuasion for more the month. Till he did, he hadn’t realized how acutely he felt the lack. The SB-10 was too far away for him to get a good look at the women she carried, but they were bound to be the two most beautiful girls for a thousand miles in any direction.

He and the security director weren’t the only ones to notice the SB-10’s coed crew. Divers, pipe wranglers, stewards, and even some of the contractors and CIA people who mostly lived in their containers lined the rail to check things out. They whistled. They whooped. They yelled invitations Jerry hoped the Russian women didn’t understand.

“Jerks,” Jack Porter aid.