The last remaining sliver of outside view vanished beneath the sheet of brown-gray. "I don't know,"

Chippawa admitted. "Maybe an electric discharge, if we can boost the voltage high enough and figure out how to deliver it. Or maybe some acid from one of our fuel cells will do something."

"Or maybe a fire," Faraday said. That was it; they'd made a fire in the whale's stomach. "Don't forget, most of that soup out there is pure hydrogen. If we can supply enough oxygen from our own air supply, we should be able to get a nice little fire going."

Chippawa whistled softly. "And maybe fry ourselves in the process," he pointed out. "But it's better than doing nothing. Let's figure out how much we can spare—"

He broke off as, once again, the chairs dropped out from under them. "We're heading down again,"

Faraday said tightly, looking over at the depth indicator.

The indicator, contrary to what his stomach and inner ear were telling him, was holding perfectly steady. "What the—? Oh. Right."

"It's the pressure of the skin around us," Chippawa said. "Fouls up the readings. Still, at least that means we're not going to get flattened like roadkill."

"It also means that if we wait too long to punch our way out, we won't be able to do so," Faraday countered. "Not much point in breaking free if you're only going to get squashed a millisecond later."

Chippawa made a face. "Yeah. Point."

"And of course, with the depth meter off-track, we won't even know when we've passed that nochance depth," Faraday added. "We don't even know how deep we are right now."

"Maybe I can do something with the emscan," Chippawa said. "You get busy and figure out how much oxygen we can spare."

Once again silence descended on the probe. This time, muffled in their freshly grown cocoon, there wasn't even the wailing of the wind outside to keep them company.