Andy's sun-streaked mop of blond hair poked out of a fold of cloth. "It's okay, Kate, it's only me."

She stood where she was, swaying. "What the hell are you doing pitching a tent in the middle of the goddam floor? What's wrong with your bunk?"

He crawled out on all fours and rose to his feet. "It's not a tent, it's a pyramid."

"It"s a what?" she said stupidly.

"A pyramid," he repeated. "I was reinforcing my prana.

"Reinforcing your what?"

"Reinforcing my prana." Andy picked up the top of the tent and it collapsed into a limp cylinder of linen and rods. "It's got the same ratio of structure as the pyramid at Giza."

Kate was very, very tired, or she never would have asked. "What's prana?"

He set the pyramid in a corner and looked at her, very solemn, very earnest. "Prana is the universal life force. All energy derives from it. It brings together East and West, the spiritual and physical. The pyramid concentrates that energy, and I meditate beneath it, thus enhancing my own personal prana." He stretched and yawned. "Long shift. Think I'll turn in." He climbed into the top bunk and burrowed beneath the covers. "Get the light, would you?"

TWO

THE smell of bacon frying brought Kate wide awake the next morning. For a moment she lay listening to the throb of the engines and the rush of the Avilda's hull through the water. It wasn't necessary to hang on to anything to stay in her bunk. Of course. Now that they were no longer picking pots and hanging their asses out over the water, the high seas had abated. Naturally.

Raising up on one elbow, she peered out the porthole.