He wrapped his arm around the base of the small steel-frame pyramid atop the buoy and tried to pull himself up a little more. Two hands were firmly clenched in his belt, holding him up. His fellow survivors were a little less battered.

Reese shuddered, he was freezing, his shoulder was a mess, his right arm virtually useless; Shaw's ankle was sprained and they were floating about clinging to the channel marker buoy and waiting for rescue. And things had got weirder.

Peck was back.

Peck was the only one of their numbers who had guessed about the existence of the machine. Finch had helped him escape with a new identity and enough money to live a very comfortable life. The bright young analyst had done exactly that.

Until now, Reese had thought that Henry Peck was thousands of miles away enjoying life under a new identity. Now their most stubborn and perhaps most brilliant number was working as a deck hand on the now sunken vessel that Reese and Shaw had been employed as First Mate and Captain.

Reese, who knew that the pointy front end was called the bow, and the blunt back end was called the stern, and very little else about boats, had more of a nodding acquaintance with farm machinery. Shaw had actually spent her youth messing about in boats. Shaw was a natural captain.

It had taken them about an hour to realize that the majority of the crew were in on whatever the owner, one Charles Fanning, their number, had in mind. It had taken Reese thirty more seconds to work out that they had one ally, Peck, or Hansen as he was calling himself these days.

"How do you know?" Shaw's tone was belligerent, Reese ignored it.

"A man who writes a seventy-eight page letter to dispute a parking ticket, on principle, is unlikely to turn to a life of crime. He's got far too many principles."

Shaw grudgingly acknowledged that this was very likely to be true. When some twenty minutes later, Fanning put a spear through Reese's right shoulder, effectively pinning him to the bulkhead, and the rats deserted the sinking ship, Peck and Shaw were chained together and left to die with Reese.

Despite the pain of her bruised and swollen ankle, Shaw was a lady of infinite resource. She had herself and Peck out of their unpleasant predicament in a few seconds, and then they had hauled Reese off the impaling spear. While Shaw busied herself getting the cabin door open, Peck, or Lewis Hansen was busy wrapping Reese's gaping shoulder entrance and exit wounds as firmly as he could manage with what they had available.

All of which had barely left them with thirty seconds to clear their rapidly sinking vessel.

They were in deep trouble. The water was cold, the current was strong and the shore too far for them to swim through the current, they would get carried out to sea before they could make it to shore.

Reese had faith in Finch. He would rescue them.