hemical explosive. Cataclysmite,
probably."

"Ravick?" he asked, rather unnecessarily.

"You know how well he can get along without you and Joe Kivelson, and
here's a chance to get along without both of you together." Everybody
in the boat was listening, so I continued: "How much do you know about
this fellow Devis, who strained his back at the last moment?"

"Engine room's where he could have planted something," Joe Kivelson
said.

"He was in there by himself for a while, the morning after the
meeting," Abdullah Monnahan added.

"And he disappeared between the meeting room and the elevator, during
the fight," Tom mentioned. "And when he showed up, he hadn't been
marked up any. I'd have thought he'd have been pretty badly
beaten--unless they knew he was one of their own gang."

"We're going to look Devis up when we get back," somebody said
pleasantly.

"If we get back," Ramon Llewellyn told him. "That's going to take some
doing."

"We have the boat," Hans Cronje said. "It's a little crowded, but we
can make it back to Port Sandor."

"I hope we can," Abe Clifford, the navigator, said. "Shall we take her
up, Joe?"

"Yes, see what it's like on top," the skipper replied.

Going up, we passed a monster at about thirty fathoms. It stuck its
neck out and started for us. Monnahan tilted the boat almost vertical
and put on everything the engines had, lift and drive parallel. An
instant later, we broke the surface and shot into the air.

The wind hit the boat as though it had been a ping-pong ball, and it
was several seconds, and bad seconds at that, before Monnahan regained
even a semblance of control. There was considerable bad language, and
several of the crew had bloody noses. Monnahan tried to get the boat
turned into the wind. A circuit breaker popped, and red lights blazed
all over the instrument panel. He eased off and let the wind take
over, and for a while we were flying in front of it like a rifle
bullet. Gradually, he nosed down and submerged.

"Well, that's that." Joe Kivelson said, when we were back in the
underwater calm again. "We'll have to stay under till the wind's over.
Don't anybody move around or breathe any deeper than you have to.
We'll have to conserve oxygen."

"Isn't the boat equipped with electrolytic gills?" Murell asked.

"Sure, to supply oxygen for a maximum of six men. We have sixteen in
here."

"How long will our air last, for sixteen of us?" I asked.

"About eight hours."