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Tim nodded.

“Yep, that does it,” he said. He reached out, wiped his hand right to left, clearing the video from his view.

“Yes indeedee dodee, that certainly f.u.c.king does it right f.u.c.king there. f.u.c.k you, Mister Triangle, f.u.c.k you right in your f.u.c.king face, f.u.c.k you very much.”

Tim returned to dividing up the yeast into four cultures of equal size. He knew what he had to do. If Margaret didn’t like it, well, then that was just tough s.h.i.+t.

t.w.a.tTER

Twenty-five miles south of the task force, the Mary Ellen Moffett rocked gently from three-foot swells. Compared to most of the trip since leaving Benton Harbor, Steve Stanton considered it d.a.m.n near a dead flat calm.

He watched his laptops. Bo Pan was lying on the bed. Steve didn’t want to look at him. Maybe the old man had the gun pointed at Steve’s back; maybe it was better not to know for sure. Steve felt sick, twitchy — the stress was grinding him down.

If the Platypus didn’t make it back …

A laptop beeped.

“Contact,” Steve said.

Bo Pan scooted out of his bunk, stood at Steve’s right. Steve leaned a little to the left, an instinctive reaction that he checked before he fell off the edge of the chair.

The old man bent closer. “Did it get the container?”

Steve pointed to the screen.

@TheMadPlatypus: Bottle in hand at the microphone stand.

“It got it,” Steve said. “Holy s.h.i.+t, it got the thing.”

Bo Pan thumped him in the back. “Genius! Steve, you are a genius!”

Steve laughed, the giddy feeling that rolled through him undeniable and unquenchable. For just a moment, he forgot about the old man with the gun, forgot about the danger of an alien disease. Had he really just beaten the entire U.S. Navy? Everything had gone according to plan. The Platypus had the small container holding the alien artifact and had left behind ten pounds of C-4 to blow the submarine’s nose to bits and cover its tracks.

Bo Pan thumped his back again. “This is very good. Are there movies? Can t.w.a.tter show us what the Platypus saw?”

For the first time, the old man had used the proper name for Steve’s creation.

“Yes, but we shouldn’t send the movies,” Steve said. “You told me the navy had stepped up activity, remember?”