“Oh, that’s all right, I had it coming.” He was very calm, very still. “Can I do something to help?”

“No, there’s really not much to do. Can you see anything down there?”

“No, it’s black as ink.”

She checked the altimeter. “We’re at sixteen hundred feet now. I’m going to put on the landing lights. If you can help me look for the waves, that’d be a help.”

“Look for the waves?” he said blankly.

“Which way they’re running. We want to come in parallel to them, between the crests, if we can. If we run smack into them, it’ll be like running into a stone wall. Into a row of stone walls.”

“I see. Yes, all right, I’ll try.”

Neither of them said what they both knew to be true: What did it matter whether they landed in one piece or ran head-on into a wave and got it over with all at once? They were in one of the most remote, little-traveled areas of the largest body of water in the world, it was pitch-black, and, most important, no one had any idea of where they were. They had taken off from Waimea after-hours, with no attendant around. No flight plan had been filed, the transponder had been turned off, no radio contact had been made. The chances of anyone accidentally spotting their little orange raft, if they ever made it out of the plane, were a million to one, probably less.

But the will to live, if even for a few hours longer, didn’t depend on such considerations, and when she turned on the lights they both peered hard to determine how the waves were running.

It took a while for them to make sense of the water’s surface. “I don’t see any waves at all,” Torkelsson said.

“There have to be waves.”

“No, it’s like a lake, there’s nothing.”

“There have to be waves,” she said again, but she couldn’t see any either, only a flat surface of green so pale it was almost white. She’d never come in over water at night, so she wasn’t sure if the color was the result of her lights, or if it was a sign of relatively shallow water. Shallow water… no waves, she thought with a little jet of hope. Could it be a lagoon? If it’s a lagoon, that means land. .. an island “Watch out!” Torkelsson shouted.