So, this place doesn't exist, he said, the same as you.

That's right.

Then it's not bugged, no, it couldn't be, the way most bars are these days.

It's still a bit of wilderness.

I hope it stays this way.

Me, too.

Thanks for the Christmas card. You looking for a job?

You know it.

All right. I've got one for you.

And that's how this one started.

Do you know about the Leeward and Windward Islands? he asked me. Or Surtsey?

No. Tell me.

Down in the West Indies, in the Lesser Antilles system, starting in an arc heading southeasterly from Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands toward South America, are those islands north, of Guadeloupe which represent the high points of a subterranean ridge ranging from forty to two hundred miles in width. These are oceanic islands, built up from volcanic materials. Every peak is a volcano, extinct or otherwise.

So?

The Hawaiians grew up in the same fashion ... Surtsey, though, was a twentieth-century phenomenon: a volcanically created island which grew up in a very brief time, somewhat to the west of the Vestmanna Islands, near Iceland. That was in 1963. Capelinhos, in the Azores, was the same way, and had its origin undersea.

So? But I already knew, as I said it. I already knew about Project RUMOKO, after the Maori god of volcanoes and earthquakes. Back in the twentieth century, there had been an aborted Mohole Project and there had been natural-gas-mining deals which had involved deep drilling and the use of shaped atomic charges.

RUMOKO, he said. Do you know about it?

Somewhat. Mainly from the Times Science Section.

That's enough. We're involved.

How so?

Someone is attempting to sabotage the thing. I have been retained to find out who and how and why, and to stop him. I've tried, and have been eminently unsuccessful to date. In fact, I lost two of my men under rather strange circumstances. Then I received your Christmas card.