Come on, we’ve got to swim for it. Gisco sets out for shore in an

Olympic-quality dog paddle.

What’s the point? I ask. We’ll never outrun those speedboats.

Instead of swimming, I tread water and just watch hopelessly as the black speedboats come on, their laser weapons turning the water around us into a sauna.

The mini-tank that is now an amphibious carrier of Dark Army motorcycles is also closing in fast. Even if we did make it to the far bank, those motorcycles would chase us down in seconds. There’s no possible escape.

The yellow dinghy does not stay close to us. It turns in a quick circle and heads directly back, toward the speedboats and the amphibious mini-tank.

Lasers punch holes in the kamikaze dinghy’s sides. A missile just misses it, and nearly capsizes it. But it steams right for them at full speed.

Is it my imagination, or is it starting to glow?

Maybe it’s on fire. The lasers could have ignited it.

But the reddish glow doesn’t seem to be a natural flame. It’s flickering. A cherry nimbus spreads out from the damaged boat and licks the waves in its own wake.

The reddish glow touches me in the water and I feel something strange. Not a telepathic message from a machine. The boat can’t think, the way I can.

Yet for one last second I become part of it. I share its strange mixture of joy and regret, its implacable sense of mission and the sad knowledge that it will never be able to serve again. And even a trace of something akin to a friendship ending, or at least a comradeship cut short.

The bond is broken. I gulp down river water and cough it back up. The dinghy is now far from us—already nearly halfway back to the pursuing boats. The glow that emanates from it changes color, from cheery cherry to savage scarlet smoldering with yellow-black.

And it’s pulsing! What the heck is happening?

It’s going hypercritical! Dive, Jack!

What’s going hypercritical? The dinghy? Where are you? I look for Gisco, but he’s vanished.

Something grabs my left ankle and yanks me under the surface. I thrash wildly and struggle to get away. Open my eyes underwater. See that it’s Gisco who’s dragging me down, my left leg in his jaws.

Then the sky falls in. The explosion is deafening even though I’m under the water.

The clouds catch fire. Flames rake the surface of the river. I feel the sizzling heat. The shriek of water whistling into steam is all around me, as if I’m trapped in a giant teakettle.

I stay down as long as I can. And then I pop back up.