They were loudly unhappy about that, the way anyone would have been. Much bad language ensued. Jerry listened to some of it in slack-jawed wonderment. He was good with words, good enough to get paid for them (occasionally). He’d never dreamt the English language could be so creatively profaned. He scribbled stupid whistleass chucklefucks in his notebook, vowing to use it as soon as he found an editor who’d let him sneak it into print.

Getting the hydraulics disconnected from the pipe string, adding the new double, and hooking the hydraulics up again should have taken a few hours. To make things all the more delightful, one of the heave compensators, which shielded the string from the ship’s motions, chose that moment to go on the fritz. The seas stayed moderate, but the engineers swore like pipe-farm guys as they worked around the clock to get the compensator compensating again.

Another day gone. Another month gone. They didn’t try lowering the breakout legs till after noon on the first of August. Jerry still didn’t go into the Control container, but he and Steve and a lot of the CIA guys hung around near it to hear the word as soon as there was word to hear.

“Like sitting around in the waiting room while your wife is having a baby,” Dave Schoals muttered.

“Like sitting around in the waiting room hoping your wife does have a baby,” Steve added.

Jerry topped them both: “Like sitting around in the waiting room hoping your wife doesn’t have Rosemary’s Baby.”

Dave winced. Steve thumped Jerry on the shoulder. He thought both reactions were similar.

A few minutes later, Paul opened the door to Control. He came halfway out and said, “We have the object off the bottom! We’ve jettisoned the breakout legs from Clementine—well, we’ve jettisoned three of them. The fourth one doesn’t want to let go, so we’re leaving it on for now. Extraction went as well as though we’d been practicing for weeks or something.”

He grinned a wide, foolish, relieved grin and started to duck back into his sanctum. Before he could, Dave held up a hand. “Hang on! Do you have any feel for the object’s weight?”

“I’m not on the controls right now—obviously,” Paul answered. “Eric says he thinks it’s lighter than he was braced for, but he isn’t sure. We haven’t done much with it, and we have the whole pipe string and Clementine down there.”

“Gotcha. Thanks,” Dave said. Paul nodded and disappeared. The lock gave forth an authoritative click as it engaged.

“We have it. Dear God in heaven, we really have it,” Steve said softly. His head swung Jerry’s way. “And it isn’t the Devil’s kid.”