"What's happening?" said George. "Where's Howard?"

"Howard is leading them," said Hagbard. He flipped a toggle on the railing of the balcony on which they stood in the center of a globe that looked like a bubble of air at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. "War room, get missiles ready. We may have to back up the porpoise attack."

"Da, tovarish Celine," came a voice.

The porpoises were too far away to be seen now. George discovered that he was not afraid. The whole thing was too much like watching a science-fiction movie. There was too much illusion involved in this submarine of Hagbard's. If he were able to realize, in his glands and nerves, that he was in a vulnerable metal ship thousands of feet below the surface of the Atlantic, under such enormous pressure that the slightest stress could crack the hull and send water bursting in that would crush them to death, then he might be afraid. If he were really able to accept the fact that those little distant globes with waving legs appended to them were undersea craft manned by people who intended to destroy the vessel he was in, then he could be afraid. Actually, if he could not see as much as he was seeing, but only feel and sense things and be told what was happening, as in the average airplane flight, then he would be afraid. As it was, the 120,000-year-old city of Peos looked like a tabletop model. And though he might intellectually accept Hagbard's statement that they were over the lost continent of Atlantis, in his bones he didn't believe in Atlantis. As a result, he didn't believe in any of the rest of this, either.

Suddenly Howard was outside their bubble. Or some other porpoise. That was another thing that made this hard to accept. Talking porpoises.

"Ready for destruction of enemy ships," said Howard.

Hagbard shook his head. "I wish we could communicate with them. I wish I could give them a chance to surrender. But they wouldn't listen. And they have communications systems on their ships that I can't get through to." He turned to George. "They use a type of insulated telepathy to communicate. The very thing that tipped off Sheriff Jim Cartwright that you were in a hotel room in Mad Dog smoking Weishaupt's Wonder Weed."

"You don't want them too close when they go." said Howard.

"Are your people out of the way?" said Hagbard.

(Five big rhinoceroses, six big rhinoceroses…)

"Of course. Quit this hesitating. This is no time to be a humanitarian."

"The sea is crueler than the land," said Hagbard, "sometimes."

"The sea is cleaner than the land," said Howard. "There's no hate. Just death when and as needed. These people have been your enemies for twenty thousand years."

"I'm not that old," said Hagbard, "and I have very few enemies."

"If you wait any longer you'll endanger the submarine and my people."

George looked out at the red and white striped globes which were moving toward them through the blue-green water. They were much larger now and closer. Whatever was propelling them wasn't visible. Hagbard reached out a brown finger, let it rest on a white button on the railing in front of him, then pressed it decisively.

There was a bright flash of light, dimmed slightly by the medium through which it traveled, on the surface of each of the globes. It was like watching fireworks through tinted glasses. Next, the globes crumbled as if they were ping-pong balls being struck by invisible sledge hammers.

'That's all there is to it," said Hagbard quietly.

The air around George seemed to vibrate, and the floor under him shook. Suddenly he was terrified. Feeling the shock wave from the simultaneous explosions out there in the water made it real. A relatively thin metal shell was all that protected him from total annihilation. And nobody would ever hear from him or know what happened to him.

Large, glittering objects drifted down through the water from one of the nearby Illuminati spider ships. They vanished among the streets of the city that George now knew was real. The buildings in the area near the explosion of the Illuminati ships looked more ruined than they had before. The ocean bottom was churned up in brown clouds. Down into the brown clouds drifted the crushed spider ships. George looked for the Temple of Tethys. It stood, intact, in the distance.

"Did you see those statues fall out of the lead ship?" said Hagbard. "I'm claiming them." He hit the switch on the railing. "Prepare for salvage operation."

They dropped down among buildings deeply buried in sediment, and at the bottom of their television globe George saw two huge claws reach out, seemingly from nowhere- actually he guessed, from the underside of the submarine- and pick up four gleaming gold statues that lay half-buried in the mud.

Suddenly a bell rang and a red flash lit up the interior of the bubble. "We're under attack again," said Hagbard. Oh, no, George thought. Not when I'm starting to believe that all this is real. I won't be able to stand it. Here goes Dorn doing his world-famous coward act again… Hagbard pointed. A white globe hovered like an underwater moon above a distant range of mountains. On its pale surface a red emblem was painted, a glaring eye inside a triangle.

"Give me missile visibility," said Hagbard, flicking a switch. Between the white globe and the Lief Erickson four orange lights appeared in the water rushing toward them.

"It just doesn't pay to underestimate them- ever," said Hagbard. "First it turns out they can detect me when they shouldn't have equipment good enough to do that, now I find that not only do they have small craft in the vicinity, they've got the Zwack herself coming after me. And the Zwack is firing underwater missiles at me, though I'm supposed to be indetectable. I think we might be in trouble, George."

George wanted to close his eyes, but he also didn't want to show fear in front of Hagbard. He wondered what death at the bottom of the Atlantic would feel like. Probably something like being under a pile driver. The water would hit them, engulf them, and it wouldn't be like any ordinary water- it would be like liquid steel, every drop striking with the force of a ten-ton truck, prying cell apart from cell and crushing each cell individually, reducing the body to a protoplasmic dishrag. He remembered reading about the disappearance of an atomic submarine called the Thresher back in the '60s, and he recalled that the New York Times had speculated that death by drowning in water under extreme pressure would be exceedingly painful, though brief. Every nerve individually being crushed. The spinal cord crushed everywhere along its length. The brain squeezed to death, bursting, rupturing, bleeding into the steel-hard water. The human form would doubtless be unrecognizable in minutes. George thought of every bug he had ever stepped on, and bugs made him think of the spider ships. That's what we did to them. And I define them as enemies only on Hagbard's say so. Carlo was right. I can't kill.

Hagbard hesitated, didn't he? Yes, but he did it. Any man who can cause a death like that to be visited upon other men is a monster. No, not a monster, only too human. But not my kind of human. Shit, George, he's your kind of human, all right. You're just a coward. Cowardice doth make consciences for us all.

Hagbard called out, "Howard, where the hell are you?"

The torpedo shape appeared on the right side of the bubble. "Over here, Hagbard. We've got more mines ready. We can go after those missiles with mines like we did the spider ships. Think that would work?"

"It's dangerous," said Hagbard, "because the missiles might explode on contact with the metal and electronic equipment in the mines."

"We're willing to try," said Howard, and without another word he swam away.

"Wait a minute," Hagbard said. "I don't like this. There's too much danger to the porpoises." He turned to George and shook his head. "I'm not risking a goddamned thing, and they stand to be blown to bits. It's not right. I'm not that important."