"Well, I forgot to bring my three-piece suit, man," said one of the antisplatter faction.

"That's okay. I brought mine." I do, in fact, have a nice three-piece suit that I always wear in combination with a dead-fish tie and a pair of green sneakers splattered with toxic wastes. It's always a big hit, especially at GEE fundraisers and in those explosively tense corporate boardrooms. "They're expecting, basically, people who look like you." I pointed to the hairiest of the Blowfish crew. "And they're expecting us to act like flakes and whine a lot. So we have to act before we whine. We can't give them an excuse to pass us off as duck squeezers."

There was a certain amount of passive-aggressive glaring directed my way; I was asking these people to reverse their normal approach. But I was directing this gig and they'd do what I asked.

"As usual, if you don't like the plan, you can just hang out, or go into town or whatever. But I'll need as many enthusiasts as I can get for this one."

"I'm into it," said a voice from the galley. It was Arty, short for Artemis, author of the omelets, the best Zodiac jockey in the organization. Naturally she was into it; it was a Zodiac-heavy operation, it was exciting, it was commando-like. Artemis was even younger than me, and military precision didn't come with all the emotional baggage for her that it did for the middle-aged Blowfish crew.

At 4:00 A.M., Artemis powered up her favorite Zode and prominently roared off, heading for some dim lights about half a mile away. The lights belonged to a twenty-foot coast guard boat that was assigned to keep an eye on us. It happens that boats of that size don't have cooking facilities, so Artemis had whipped up a couple of extra omelets, put them in a cooler to keep them warm and was headed out to give these guys breakfast.