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anything you want"

"Do British vessels still stock grog?" Austin said

"I don't have any grog, but I have a bottle of fine Scotch whiskey in my cabin"

"That will do just fine," Austin said

A WELCOME OF A different sort greeted the Scapa as it sidled up to the dock at Kirkwall, Orkney's capital Lined up on shore, waiting for the Coast Guard boat to arrrve, were a bus, a hearse and about two dozen figures dressed in white hooded contamination suits

Austin stood at the rail of the boat with Captain Bruce He eyed the welco committee and said, "That's either a decontamination team or the latest in British fashion"

"Fro on shore leave anytime soon," the captain said "The Scapa and its crew have been quarantined in case you and your friends have left any nasty bugs behind"

"Sorry to cause you all this trouble, Captain"

"Nonsense," Captain Bruce said "Your visit has certainly enlivened ould have been a routine patrol And as I say, it's e do"

Austin shook hands with the captain, then he and the other

refugees froer set foot on land, he or she was asked to don a clear plastic suit and cap and a surgical mask Then they were escorted onto the bus and the dead were loaded into the hearse The passengers were asked not to raise theblinds After a ride of five e brick building that once could have served as a warehouse

A huge bubble tent had been set up inside the building to serve as a decontamination lab staffed by more people in white suits Everyone who had been on the island was asked to shower and their clothes were stuffed in plastic bags and taken off to be analyzed When they were finished showering, they were given cotton hospital outfits that made them look like mental patients, poked and prodded by a phalanx of plastic-wrapped doctors and pronounced fit to rejoin the hunities, they were treated with the utmost politeness

After being exaiven back their neatly folded and newly laundered clothes Then they were taken into a small, mostly bare room furnished with several chairs and a table At their entry, the man in the pin-striped suit who sat behind the table stood and introduced himself as Anthony Mayhew He said he ith MI5, the British doence service, and asked them to take a seat Mayhew had finely chiseled features, and an upper-class accent that led Austin to say, "Oxford?"

"Cae, actually," he said with a smile Mayhew talked in clipped sentences, as if he had taken verbal shears to extraneous words "Distinction is hard to catch My apologies for the folderol with the sawbones and those lab people in the space suits Hope you weren't inconvenienced"

"Not all We were badly in need of showers," Austin said