imals, all creepers or crawlers, that are
dangerous, but they spend the extreme hot and cold periods in burrows,
in almost cataleptic sleep. It occurred to me that something might
have burrowed among the rocks near the camp and been roused by the
heat of the fire.

We hadn't carried a floodlight with us--there was no need for one in
the moonlight. Of the two at camp, one was pointed up the ravine
toward us, and the other into the air. We began yelling as soon as we
caught sight of them, not wanting to be dusted over lightly with
7-mm's before anybody recognized us. As soon as the men at the camp
heard us, the shooting stopped and they started shouting to us. Then
we could distinguish words.

"Come on in! We made contact!"

We pushed into the hut, where everybody was crowded around the
underhatch of the boat, which was now the side door. Abe shoved
through, and I shoved in after him. Newsman's conditioned reflex; get
to where the story is. I even caught myself saying, "Press," as I
shoved past Abdullah Monnahan.

"What happened?" I asked, as soon as I was inside. I saw Joe Kivelson
getting up from the radio and making place for Abe. "Who did you
contact?"

"The Mahatma; _Helldiver_," he said. "Signal's faint, but plain;
they're trying to make a directional fix on us. There are about a
dozen ships out looking for us: _Helldiver_, _Pequod_, _Bulldog_,
_Dirty Gertie_..." He went on naming them.

"How did they find out?" I wanted to know. "Somebody pick up our
Mayday while we were cruising submerged?"

Abe Clifford was swearing into the radio. "No, of course not. We don't
know where in Nifflheim we are. All the instruments in the boat were
smashed."

"Well, can't you shoot the stars, Abe?" The voice--I thought it was
Feinberg's--was almost as inaudible as a cat's sneeze.

"Sure we can. If you're in range of this makeshift set, the position
we'd get would be practically the same as yours," Abe told him. "Look,
there's a floodlight pointed straight up. Can you see that?"

"In all this moonlight? We could be half a mile away and not see it."

"We've been firing with a 7-mm," the navigator said.

"I know; I heard it. On the radio. Have you got any rockets? Maybe if
you shot one of them up we could see it."

"Hey, that's an idea! Hans, have we another rocket with an explosive
head?"

Cronje said we had, and he and another man got it out and carried it
from the boat. I repeated my question to Joe Kivelson.

"N