o. Your Dad tried to call the _Javelin_ by screen; that must have
been after we abandoned ship. He didn't get an answer, and put out a
general call. Nip Spazoni was nearest, and he cruised around and
picked up the locator signal and found the wreck, with the boat berth
blown open and the boat gone. Then everybody started looking for us."

Feinberg was saying that he'd call the other ships and alert them. If
the _Helldiver_ was the only ship we could contact by radio, the odds
were that if they couldn't see the rocket from Feinberg's ship, nobody
else could. The same idea must have occurred to Abe Clifford.

"You say you're all along the coast. Are the other ships west or east
of you?"

"West, as far as I know."

"Then we must be way east of you. Where are you now?"

"About five hundred miles east of Sancerre Bay."

That meant we must be at least a thousand miles east of the bay. I
could see how that happened. Both times the boat had surfaced, it had
gone straight up, lift and drive operating together. There is a
constant wind away from the sunlight zone at high level, heated air
that has been lifted, and there is a wind at a lower level out of the
dark zone, coming in to replace it. We'd gotten completely above the
latter and into the former.

There was some yelling outside, and then I could hear Hans Cronje:

"Rocket's ready for vertical launching. Ten seconds, nine, eight,
seven, six, five, four, three, two, one; rocket off!"

There was a whoosh outside. Clifford, at the radio, repeated: "Rocket
off!" Then it banged, high overhead. "Did you see it? he asked.

"Didn't see a thing," Feinberg told him.

"Hey, I know what they would see!" Tom Kivelson burst out. "Say we go
up and set the woods on fire?"

"Hey, that's an idea. Listen, Mahatma; we have a big forest of
flowerpot trees up on a plateau above us. Say we set that on fire.
Think you could see it?"

"I don't see why not, even in this moonlight. Wait a minute, till I
call the other ships."

Tom was getting into warm outer garments. Cesario got out the arc
torch, and he and Tom and I raced out through the hut and outdoors.
We hastened up the path that had been tramped and dragged to the
waterfall, got the lifters off the logs, and used them to help
ourselves up over the rocks beside the waterfall.

We hadn't bothered doing anything with the slashings, except to get
them out of our way, while we were working. Now we gathered them into
piles among t