It was odd the way the crew hurried about their duties as calmly as if they were leaving the dock in San Francisco. There were no wasted words. It was equally odd that there was no discussion about the danger they were in. There was no apprehension, no foreboding. The scientists, bent on keeping out from underfoot, went to their staterooms and stayed there.

Captain Burch crouched low on the bridge wing, staring through the darkness at the hijackers' workboat. He held the ship's portable phone to his mouth and said softly, "Ready when you are, Chief."

"Then bring up the anchor," replied House. "Soon as it's off the bottom, call me and I'll give her every pound of torque these engines got in them."

"Stay tuned," said Burch. There was a time when anchors were brought up by crewmen operating switches and levers. All Burch had to do with the modern systems on board the Deep Encounter was punch a code into the computer. Then it was all automatic. But there was nothing he could do, there was nothing anybody could do, to muffle the rattle and clank as the chain scraped through the hawsehole into the chain locker.

His years of experience told Burch the instant that the anchor broke free of the bottom. "Okay, Chief. Full speed. Take us the hell out of here."

Down below in his kingdom, House's hands played over the control panel. He felt a measure of pleased satisfaction as he felt the propellers bite the water and drag down the stern as the ship lurched forward.

Giordino took the automatic rifles gathered from the two hijackers he and Pitt had overpowered and stationed himself behind the gunnel a few feet away from the gangplank leading to the pirate ship. He lay on the deck, one rifle held in the crook of his arm. The other rifle he laid on the deck beside him next to the revolver. He didn't fool himself into thinking he could win a heavy firefight. But his line of fire could easily keep boarders off the survey vessel once it got under way. He could have pushed the gangplank between the two ships into the water, but thought better of making any unnecessary sound. It would fall of its own accord after the Deep Encounter began to move away.

He felt the vibrations through the deck as Chief Engineer House switched on the big generators and set the diesel electric engines at full speed. Two of the survey ship's crewmen crawled along the deck under the steel gunnel shields and cast off the mooring lines to the work boat from the starboard bollards, before scrambling back inside the undercover of the superstructure.

Now comes the fun part, Giordino thought to himself, as he heard the clatter from the anchor chain. To the people on board Deep Encounter, the sound came like twenty hammers striking an anvil. True to expectations, three of the hijackers rushed out of the mess room to see what the noise was about.