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Cisco clutches the steel cowling and breathes hard, like he’s just run a record-fast mile

“This is bullshit,” Cisco says “I’d rather takefor land, but the night is dark in every direction, with the Azores already far astern

“Your father disagrees,” Rainy says “Anyway, you’ll get used to it” But she herself is far froht air to make her realize just how enclosed and cramped—trapped—she has felt down inside that steel tube

A tube is what it is: a cylinder The curves of the ballast tanks, the external tubes, the superstructure, the rudder and the screws and the hydroplanes are all added onto that essential steel tube, which is just a sort of long tin can, really, though built to take fartin can craines and electric motors, batteries, stores of water and food, sixty-one e and extremely explosive torpedoes

The trip from the Azores to Sicily is better than 2,200 miles At a steady eleven knots (just under thirteen miles an hour) they can make it in about a week Seven days in a steel tube full of ster She shudders and tells herself it’s only the cold air

“I ain’t going back down there,” Cisco says defiantly

“You’re going to have to,” Rainy says

“The hell I do I’m okay up here Maybe a blanket or—”

A jet of icy spray slaps them both in the face

“A raincoat A poncho,” Rainy says, coht “Look, Cisco, I know you’re scared—”

He snarls It’s an ani an ani!” Then he softens it just a bit “At least no man And sure as hell no skirt It’s justI don’t like tight spaces, never have, not since I was a kid” He finishes in a lower tone, a haunted tone that hints at sohtmare

“If you don’t go down peaceably when the commander orders, they will not let you come back up Consider that”

“I need a drink I’ve got a bottle inThey ht?”

But rum, while served on board Royal Navy ships, is doled out in precise amounts at prescribed tile cocktail The boat’swhile, when it becoet Cisco down, the lass of amber liquid

“What’s this supposed to be?”