"Quite a place, huh?" Sarah said.

The lights suddenly dimmed to near blackness and the partitions lining the hull and at the extreme bow started to part and slide into each other, just like the salon, only on a much larger engineering scale. The action was mimicked on the seaward side. It was a double-hulled protection screen.

As they watched, the deep blue sea opened up before them, in front and over their heads, since the glass covered not only the front, but a hundred feet of upper deck. The expansive vista of Arctic Ocean stretched out before them, and the brightest lighting any of them had ever seen illuminated the depths. They could even see the massive conning tower high above them when they looked aft and out of the windows at the top.

"It's so beautiful ... I ... I ..."

Lee patted and then squeezed Sarah on the shoulder as she hung on to the ship's wheel and watched the sea erupt before the passage of Leviathan. The glass nose was sectioned by forty-foot areas of acrylic, separated by composite beams that the glass fit into. The partitions that slid away to reveal the depths had all been packed neatly into the section beams. Their view was unobstructed as far as the eye could see.

"The engineering is beyond that of anything naval architecture has achieved thus far. It has opened a completely new world. It would be criminal not to come to some accommodation," Niles said aloud as he watched the deep blue sea beyond the glass.

"If it were as simple as that, Niles, I would agree," Lee stated flatly and without emotion. "However, we are not seeing something here. There is a touch of desperation beyond the captain's claim of pollution and the degradation of the ecosystem."

"I believe her, and I believe she thinks this is our only course." Virginia placed her hand against the cold glass, just as the captain had done earlier. She felt that coldness and let it travel up her arm. "No, in her opinion, there can be no other choice in this matter. She wants the unconditional surrender of the seas, and I don't believe she'll settle for anything less."

The others looked at Virginia in mild surprise. She had been so silent since their abduction she had begun to worry them.

"Ginny developed an environmental conscience rather late in her academic life."

Everyone except for Virginia Pollock turned and looked up toward the back of the compartment. On a ten-foot-wide railed overhang there was a large chair. The captain of Leviathansat and watched the sea shrouded in darkness. Heirthall slowly stood and looked out over the wooden deck sixty feet below.

"Ginny?" Niles asked, looking from the captain to Virginia, who had merely lowered her head and placed it against the cold glass.

"Virginia always seemed so formal--so at MIT I called her Ginny. We were what they called child prodigies. She was always into books and study, but never noticed the world around her. However, she was always preaching God and country, but never allowed a thought to what her country was doing to the world's environment--indeed, God's environment."

"You two know each other?" Sarah asked before Niles could.

"You Americans are surprisingly entertaining," Farbeaux said as he walked over and started looking for the bar he knew must be in the compartment somewhere.

"We are ... or I should say, at one time, the best of friends," Heirthall said from her high vantage point.

"Tell me you're not the saboteur?" Compton said, taking a step toward the glass.

Virginia turned, looking shocked and hurt.

"What?"

"You didn't allow this woman to attack the vaults and then the complex itself, killing our people?" Niles asked, even shocking the others.

"Of course I didn't. Just because I knew her many years ago, that makes me a traitor?" Virginia said as she left the window and advanced on the director.

"Please, no one here is a traitor to any cause." The captain turned away from the upper railing and started making her way down a set of winding stairs, holding the rail and looking at the group as she did. "Ginny could no more betray her country"--she paused and looked at Niles--"than she could her friends. No, the only thing she was ever good at was being loyal, even to a fault."

Virginia stopped and then sat hard into a chair at the large table.

"No, Doctor, she's not the person you are seeking, but she was a name to throw your security teams off the trail, so to speak," she said with a trace of a smile.

Niles nodded at Sarah, then walked over to Virginia and sat next to her.

"Why didn't you tell me?" he asked.

Virginia looked up and saw her face in Niles's glasses. She did not like her reflection.

"I was praying that it wasn't her." Virginia looked from the director to the captain. "Because I was frightened, scared to death. Niles--she's not bluffing, and yes, Senator Lee, you're right, she is quite insane, but not in the way you may think."

Heirthall turned, and none of them cared for her look. She was looking straight at them. Then she suddenly walked at a brisk pace toward the conference table.

"Insane? Let me show you the true meaning of insane." She hit a switch embedded in the table. "Commander Samuels, alter course to the coordinates we discussed earlier, please."

"Captain, we are beyond the point of center ice. If we alter course right now we--"

"Alter course to the impacted zone immediately," she ordered angrily into the small microphone in the table. "Bring her shallow, Commander. We have to show our guests the consequences of human folly," she said, slowly but firmly placing her hand down on the intercom, not waiting for the first officer's reply. She placed both hands on the table, looked straight ahead, and then suddenly rubbed her temples and visibly relaxed.

"Aye, Captain, altering course to three-five-seven."

Alice leaned into Lee and nudged him. "Her eyes, Garrison."

Lee looked and saw Alice's meaning. The captain's eyes were dilated almost to the point of becoming totally blue.

Alice looked nervously at Lee, and even Farbeaux had stopped searching for the bar long enough to show concern on his face when he saw the intense way Heirthall was acting.

Alexandria lowered her head and then sat in the center chair of the large conference table. She brushed back a strand of long black hair that had fallen loose from her tightly woven braid. She swallowed and then looked up.

"You have my apologies. Some words .... well ... they are made to hurt. Insanityis such a word. What is the difference between this awful thing and passion? A fine line can be affixed in between the two and make them unrecognizable as opposites."

"Alex, your actions explain quite adequately your state of mind. What other conclusions can people draw from the things that you have done? Yes, as a species we are self-destructive, and yes, our country is one of the worst violators, but we need time, Alex," Virginia said.

The captain suddenly stood, walked over to Virginia, and placed a hand on her cheek. In the spotlights surrounding the room, the raven-haired woman was indeed beautiful. She smiled down at her old friend.

"Time has expired, Ginny." Their eyes locked, and Virginia saw something the others did not in those dilated blue eyes: a call for help. Heirthall was almost two people, gentle one minute, extremely violent the next.

Compton and Farbeaux felt the angle of the deck change before the others. Leviathanwas coming shallow.